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Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Want To Make Lifepaths "Matter More" In The Sequel – TheGamer

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Cyberpunk 2077's sequel may have much more complex lifepaths, as devs want them to "matter more" during the story.

Cyberpunk 2077 starts out with you choosing a Lifepath, which is essentially one of three backstories you get to pick from that will radically alter the beginning of the game. Each Lifepath eventually leads to the same conclusion, allowing you to play through the same story no matter which Lifepath you chose, but it's possible that this might not be the same when it comes to the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel that's currently in development.

This is according to CD Projekt Red narrative director Philipp Weber, who said during the most recent episode of the AnsweRED Podcast (thanks IGN) that he'd like Lifepaths to "matter more" in the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. Weber claims that Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't really deliver on the promise that you're playing different characters when you pick your Lifepath, and wants to improve on this aspect for future projects.

I do think that there are things with, for example, the Lifepaths, that kind of gives you a promise as being able to play more different kinds of characters. I think this is a thing where, in the future, that's, as an example, something we would like to improve.

Weber also expresses regret at how much the Lifepath aspect of the first Cyberpunk 2077 "goes away a little bit", and that he would make them a little bit more involved in the main story had he had a little more experience and time during development. He obviously now has that experience, so it'll be interesting to see how Lifepaths differ in the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel when it eventually does launch.

In fact, the sequel may look totally different to the first game, as CD Projekt Red was recently tossing up whether to stick with first-person, or make the series third-person, similar to The Witcher. With decisions such as the perspective of the entire game still to be pinned down, you get a good idea of just how far away Cyberpunk 2077's sequel actually is. How much Lifepaths are woven into the story is probably the least of CD Projekt Red's worries right now, though it's nice to know the devs are thinking about it.

CD Projekt Red is currently working on the next Witcher game, currently codenamed Project Polaris, but it was recently claimed that development on the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 is scheduled to begin in 2024. We don't have release windows for these titles just yet, though you can imagine the studio will take its time with them to avoid another disaster. You'd hope so anyway.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Want To Make Lifepaths "Matter More" In The Sequel - TheGamer

DeepSouth Supercomputer: A Revolutionary Project to Simulate the Human Brain – Medriva

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In a groundbreaking feat of technology and neuroscience, a supercomputer designed to simulate the entire human brain is set to be operational in 2024. This ambitious venture, known as the DeepSouth project, promises to replicate human brain functions and behaviors, with the potential to revolutionize our understanding of neurological disorders, artificial intelligence, and cognitive processes.

DeepSouth, the worlds first human brain-scale supercomputer, is being developed at Western Sydney University. Once activated, it will be capable of 228 trillion synaptic operations per second. This astonishing rate of operations rivals the estimated rate at which the human brain processes information. Interestingly, the human brain accomplishes this feat while using a considerably small amount of power. Understanding this efficiency is one of the key ambitions of the DeepSouth project.

The DeepSouth supercomputer takes a neuromorphic approach to replicate the human brain. This means it is designed to emulate large networks of spiking neurons, closely imitating the biological processes that occur in our brains. The project involves a collaboration of scientists and researchers from various fields, all working together to develop a supercomputer capable of mimicking the complex functions of the human brain, including consciousness and emotions.

The supercomputers potential applications extend far beyond academic curiosity. It is expected to be a game changer for the study of neuroscience, offering unprecedented insights into how our brains work. This could lead to significant advancements in diagnosing, managing, and treating neurological disorders.

Moreover, the supercomputer holds promise for the field of artificial intelligence (AI). By understanding how the human brain processes vast amounts of information so efficiently, engineers could design more efficient AI systems. This could dramatically improve a wide range of technologies, from autonomous vehicles to voice recognition software.

DeepSouths potential impact extends to diverse fields such as sensing, biomedical, robotics, space, and large-scale AI applications. The supercomputer could revolutionize these sectors by providing a deeper understanding of human cognition and its efficient processes. In essence, the DeepSouth project brings us a step closer to fully understanding the brains complex mechanisms, a frontier that remains largely unexplored in science.

With the DeepSouth supercomputer set to be operational by April 2024, the countdown to this remarkable scientific achievement has begun. As we approach this milestone, the anticipation surrounding the project continues to build. While its too early to predict exactly what the DeepSouth project will uncover, one thing is for sure this pioneering venture stands to significantly advance our understanding of the brain, its processes, and its potential.

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DeepSouth Supercomputer: A Revolutionary Project to Simulate the Human Brain - Medriva

Could Online Gambling Become a Reality in Maryland? – Eye On Annapolis

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The latest MDBetting.com poll has caught the eye, showing that 75% of Marylanders support the idea of legalizing online casinos and are ready to express their support in the 2024 election. According to the latest report from theMaryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency, this state could generate more than $533 million in revenue in the very first year after legalizing online gambling.

In order for the issue to get on the ballot, Bill 267 must pass both houses of the Maryland legislature. If this happens, a simple majority of voters could authorize the launch of online gambling as early as June 2025. This could be a major moment for the state, which is expecting a significant economic infusion and new development opportunities in the gambling industry.

One of the bills sponsors is SenatorRon Watson, who is a Democrat from Prince Georges. He claims that legalizing online casinos will lead to more funds being allocated to the Maryland Future Project. This project is an education reform initiative that aims to close achievement gaps and create new developmental opportunities for students from preschool through high school.

Revenues from conventional casinos are directed to the Education Trust Fund and minority-owned small businesses in Maryland and in the areas where the casinos are located. Online casino revenues are also expected to support these same areas.

Currently, online casinos are legal in six states such as Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Many Maryland players play in other states online or even in other countries. For example, many ventures to play casino games with Canadian dollars, which can be found at thelink http://www.twinspinca.com, despite the conversion fee. Nevada offers online poker. Also, Rhode Island has passed a bill to introduce online casinos, but for now, it wont go into effect until next March. This suggests that Maryland has precedents and successful models for taking full advantage of online casinos, which can serve as inspiration for the state and encourage the industry to grow.

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Could Online Gambling Become a Reality in Maryland? - Eye On Annapolis

NASA Laser Reflecting Instruments to Help Pinpoint Earth Measurements – NASA

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The best known use of GPS satellites is to help people know their location whether driving a car, navigating a ship or plane, or trekking across remote territory. Another important, but lesser-known, use is to distribute information to other Earth-viewing satellites to help them pinpoint measurements of our planet.

NASA and several other federal agencies, including the U.S. Space Force, U.S. Space Command,the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are improving the location accuracy of these measurements down to the millimeter with a new set of laser retroreflector arrays, or LRAs.

The primary benefit of laser ranging and LRAs is to improve the geolocation of all of our Earth observations, said Stephen Merkowitz, project manager for NASAs Space Geodesy Project at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

A team of scientists and engineers with the project tested these arrays earlier this year to ensure they were up to their task and they could withstand the harsh environment of space. Recently the first set of these new laser retroreflector arrays was shipped to the U.S. Space Force and Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado, to be added to the next generation of GPS satellites.

How do Laser Retroreflector Arrays Work?

Laser retroreflector arrays make it possible to do laser ranging using small bursts of laser light to detect distances between objects. Pulses of laser light from a ground station are directed toward an orbiting satellite, which then reflect off the array and return to the station. The time it takes for the light to travel from the ground to the satellite and back again can be used to calculate the distance between the satellite and the ground.

Laser ranging and laser retroreflector arrays have been part of space missions for decades, and they are currently mounted on and essential to the operation of Earth-viewing satellites like ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation satellite 2), SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography), and GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On). LRAs for laser ranging were even deployed on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo missions.

The LRAs are special mirrors, said Merkowitz. Theyre different from a normal mirror because they bounce back light directly towards its original source.

For laser ranging, scientists want to direct light beams back to the original source. They do this by placing three mirrors at right angles, essentially forming an inside corner of a cube. The laser retroreflector arrays are made up of an array of 48 of these mirrored corners.

When light enters the array, due to those 90-degree angles, the light will bounce and take a series of reflections, but the output angle will always come out at the same angle as the one that came in, said Zach Denny, optical engineer for the Space Geodesy Project at Goddard.

What Will Laser Retroreflector Arrays Help?

Geodesy is the study of Earths shape, as well as its gravity and rotation, and how they all change over time. Laser ranging to laser retroreflector arrays is a key technique in this study.

The surface of Earth is constantly changing in small ways due to shifting tectonic plates, melting ice, and other natural phenomena. With these constant shifts and the fact that Earth is not a perfect sphere there must be a way to define the measurements on Earths surface. Scientists call this a reference frame.

Not only do these arrays and laser ranging help to precisely locate the satellites in orbit, but they also provide accurate positioning information for the ground stations back on Earth. With this information, scientists can even go so far as to find the center of the mass of Earth, which is the origin, or zero point, of the reference frame.

Geodetic measurements laser ranging to reference satellites like LAGEOS (Laser Geodynamic Satellites) are used to constantly determine the location of Earths center of mass down to a millimeter. These measurements are critical for enabling scientists to assign a longitude and latitude to satellite measurements and put them on a map.

Significant events like tsunamis and earthquakes can cause small changes to the Earths center of mass. Scientists need accurate laser ranging measurements to quantify and understand those changes, said Linda Thomas, a research engineer at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

Satellite measurements of subtle but important Earth phenomena, such as sea level rise, rely on an accurate reference frame. The long-term global trend of sea level rise, as well as its seasonal and regional variations, occur at rates of just a few millimeters a year. The reference frame needs to be more accurate than such changes if scientists want to accurately measure them.

Geodesy is a fundamental part of our daily lives because it tells us where we are and it tells us how the world is changing, said Frank Lemoine, project scientist for NASAs Space Geodesy Project.

ByErica McNameeNASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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NASA Laser Reflecting Instruments to Help Pinpoint Earth Measurements - NASA

NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program: Where Future Tech is Developed – Popular Mechanics

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What will the future of

The NIAC program has a relatively tiny budget, just a few million dollars per year. Its a drop in the bucket compared to NASAs entire expenditure (which is itself just a fraction of a percent of the entire federal budget). But the purpose of NIAC isnt to build the next rocket or design the next mission. Its here to look 20, 30, 40 years into the future, and provide seed funding to anyone with a crazy, but still plausible, idea that can radically change spaceflight as we know it.

If you want a peek into the future of humanity in space, then NIAC is your window. (Full disclosure: I have served in NIAC review committees for several years, and recently joined the external advisory council. So if this reads like Im a big fan of the program, its because I am.)

As an example of the game-changing possibilities NIAC investigates, take FLUTE, the fluidic telescope. The largest telescope flown into space is the James Webb, a massive array with a width of 6.6 meters (21.7 feet). That sounds impressive (and it is), but ground-based telescopes dwarf itthe largest one stretches more than 30 meters (98.4 feet) across. And with telescopes, you care more about the total surface area than the diameter. Placed on Earth, the James Webb would be a decent, but not groundbreaking or world-class, telescope.

But space offers so many advantages for astronomers. It gets you away from light pollution, and, more importantly, from the distorting effects of Earths atmosphere. Thats why the James Webb is able to deliver such spectacular results. However, the telescope was also the most expensive scientific mission ever flown into space, because that large of a mirror couldnt fit within existing rockets. The engineers behind the James Webb devised a clever origami-like folding mechanism, something that had never been tried before with a telescope.

The FLUTE telescope would have a 50-meter (164-foot), unsegmented primary mirror based on fluid shaping in microgravity.

In astronomy, bigger is always better. Larger mirrors allow us to see further into the reaches of the distant universe, and they give better resolution of closer objects. If we want to go bigger, we dont have a lot of options unless we get clever. The FLUTE design envisions a radical new kind of telescope mirror, one made from liquid. The idea is to launch the observatory with tanks of some highly reflective compound. Once in space, the telescope would unfurl its support beams and begin rotating, allowing its own spin to stabilize the liquid in the shape of a mirror. The best part is that the only design limit is how much liquid you can pack on board. The reference design is for a jaw-dropping, 50-meter (164-foot) telescope, which would make the James Webb look like a hobbyists toy in comparison.

If astronomy isnt your main focus, the creative people NIAC funds have some other ideas for you, like utilizing fungi to build habitats on Mars. Thats right: fungi. Known as mycotecture, the projects aim is to solve one of the most basic problems facing any future Martian mission: building structures.

We take our building materials for granted. Cement, bricks, wood, plaster, drywall, all of it is readily accessible and relatively cheap. When you want to build something on Earth, you just grab your tools, load up your materials, and go for it. But on Mars there is no wood, no drywall, no plaster, no bricks. Just a lot of red dust and pavement-like desert floor, all at temperatures usually well below freezing. For the near term, NASA and other space agencies envision bringing all our building materials along with us for the ride, which increases the cost and complexity of any crewed mission to the Red Planet.

Building material wouldnt be made of mushrooms, but from specialized strains of fungi that grow tight, interwoven webs of material. This would yield cheap and effective Martian habitats.

But what if we could build our habitats directly on Mars? Unfortunately, the Martian soil isnt a great building material on its own, and its not like well have easy access to quarries. Enter the radical NIAC idea to use fungi instead. In this project, the researchers are developing specialized strains of fungi that grow tight, interwoven webs of material. The hope is that we just need to bring along the basic foodstuffs; we can grow the walls, ceilings, and even plumbing pipes that will enable the rapid infrastructure expansion needed to maintain a long-term presence on Mars.

Even if you just want to stay warm and cozy on planet Earth, NIAC is funding a project to help youliterally to save your life from a catastrophic asteroid impact. Simply called PI, the plan is to avert disaster by blowing up an asteroid before it ever reaches our planet.

Earth is constantly under cosmic bombardment. Thankfully, most of the material crossing our orbit is small, making no more than a delightful meteor shower. About every year or so, however, a large enough rock impacts our atmosphere with a velocity of 5070,000 mph. That releases enough pure kinetic energy to be the equivalent of a nuclear weapon, but usually these detonate safely in the atmosphere over some random patch of ocean. And then there are the big ones, like the asteroids that ended the reign of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. Those come every few million years, and its been a while since the last one.

The PI approach would use energy transfer to pulverize very large asteroids so that their pieces burn up in Earths atmosphere.

If we are to last as a species into the long term, then we need to protect ourselves. One way will be to settle on other worlds, giving us backup options. But even if we leave Earth, were still going to be nostalgic for it, and well probably want to prevent large space rocks from messing up the place.

Recently, NASA demonstrated the DART mission, which nudged the orbit of an asteroid. This can work for planetary defense, but only if we see the asteroid from far enough away that we can effectively deflect it. With PI, however, the game plan is different. The idea is to send a swarm of small, hypervelocity impactors straight for an incoming asteroid. Instead of trying to nudge it off course, the colliding objects would burrow themselves into the body of the asteroid, tearing it to shreds.

The resulting fragments would still be headed toward Earth, but our atmosphere is great at taking a punch. If we get the pieces small enough, we can all celebrate as we enjoy the fireworks in the sky.

All of these ideas, along with the dozens of other projects NIAC funds, are only in their initial stages of development, and have no guarantee of success. In fact, most of these projects will not pan out. But, if we want to take big swings, were going to have to accept some misses, because when we hit, we really hit! Take the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, which is currently setting records and laying the groundwork for an entirely new class of planetary exploration; NIAC inspired that project.

The best part: anyone can apply, from an established player in the space industry to a garage tinkerer. If you have an idea for the future, and you have a plausible path to getting there, then NIAC wants to hear from you. Its the only way we can make the science fiction dreams of the future become reality.

Paul M. Sutter is a science educator and a theoretical cosmologist at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University and the author of How to Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena and Your Place in the Universe: Understanding Our Big, Messy Existence. Sutter is also the host of various science programs, and hes on social media. Check out his Ask a Spaceman podcast and his YouTube page.

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NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program: Where Future Tech is Developed - Popular Mechanics