Chronopin: upcoming release dates, events and other important dates

Like many, I’ve been waiting for a truly excellent Harry Potter game since I was in the third grade. In that time, we’ve gotten some respectable LEGO Potter games, an underwhelming EA Sports Quidditch game for some reason, and even suffered through the fevered nightmare that is Harry Potter Kinect. But none of these has come close to fulfilling that fantasy of receiving a Hogwarts admission letter that opens the door to a secret world. With Hogwarts Legacy, I’m happy to say that we finally got a Harry Potter game that captures some of that magic. Its open world map absolutely nails the vibe of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, it has spellcasting combat that’s stupefyingly good, the characters that inhabit it are charming and unforgettable, and it is positively brimming with countless diversions to soak up dozens of hours of your time. It may not be the most impressive technical achievement and it is certainly cursed with a lack of enemy variety, but none of Hogwarts Legacy’s issues can cast a Descendo charm on this triumphant visit to the Wizarding World.

Hivemapper relied on ride-hail, delivery and truck drivers with dash cams to collect 1 million unique kms of fresh map data.

Hivemapper, the startup that puts dashcams on ride-hail and delivery vehicles to map the world, is getting a little closer to its goal of toppling the B2B mapping empire that Google has built.

With only 2% of the world’s roads mapped, Hivemapper is still very much the underdog in this fight. But Gabe Nelson, Hivemapper’s head of operations, reckons the startup is reaching an inflection point that will lead to exponential scale.

Hivemapper said Thursday it collected more than 1 million kilometers (about 620,000 miles) of unique street-level imagery. Compared to Google’s 60 million kilometers, that’s small potatoes. However, Hivemapper collected this data over the last three months. It took Google from 2007 to 2019 to collect 16.1 million kilometers of unique road data.

Now the startup aims to map 10 million unique road kilometers by early next year.

Hivemapper relies on individual contributors around the world to collect its street-view data, rather than spending millions of dollars putting dedicated mapping vehicles on the road. Its dashcams are equipped with a high-quality imager and precise GPS, and they go for $549. Mapping with dashcams, the company says, means its data is continuously being refreshed, whereas much of Google’s Street View imagery, particularly outside of urban centers, is over a decade old.

In light of the high-quality remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 released in 2019 and 2020, it felt like a safe bet that Capcom would do an equally admirable job of rebuilding Resident Evil 4. Even so, when I hit the start button on this 2023 remake of the legendary 2005 action-horror game I wasn’t prepared for how forcefully it would knock my knees out from under me and suplex me headfirst into 16 hours of sustained tension and exhilaration. This fully revitalised campaign dramatically one-ups the original in almost every conceivable way. Its Spanish countryside setting is substantially more sinister, its pacing has been tightened to the point where hardly a single minute is wasted, and its controls have been modernised in order to allow its signature dynamic shooting mechanics to really shine. I’ve been waiting 18 years for a game to thrill me in the same way as Resident Evil 4; as it turns out, this whole time I’ve just been waiting for another Resident Evil 4.

At first I was afraid, I was petrified – I kept thinking "how could Respawn follow up on its outstanding Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order?" But then I spent so many nights playing the sequel finding out how they got it right and Cal Kestis grew strong, and I learned how to get along. And now we’re back, in outer space… okay, okay, don’t leave! I’ll stop. The point is that with vastly expanded combat options, bigger, more open maps, vastly more abilities to play with, and enough collectable stuff to fill a Correllian freighter, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is in many ways the Batman: Arkham City to Fallen Order’s Arkham Asylum. And much like the Arkham games did for Batman, nothing else convincingly captures playing as a Force user quite as well as this.

Wholesale used vehicle prices declined last month for the first time this year.

Cox Automotive reported a 3% decline from March to April in its Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index.

Further declines could help bring used vehicle pricing down for consumers, since retail prices traditionally follow changes in wholesale prices.

The increase is the 10th straight interest-rate hike since last March in what has been the most aggressive rate-hiking regime since the 1980s.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 253,000 for April, beating Wall Street estimates for growth of 180,000.

The unemployment rate was 3.4% against an estimate for 3.6% and tied for the lowest level since 1969.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.5% for the month and increased 4.4% from a year ago, both higher than expected.

Kyiv plans to launch a counteroffensive against Russia this spring. A former US military meteorologist has taken to Twitter to provide valuable predictions as to when ground conditions will be right.

The U.S. could fail to meet its debt obligations sooner than expected, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned in a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Yellen said a drop in tax receipts meant the U.S. could hit its debt ceiling as soon as June 1, earlier than Wall Street and Washington had estimated.

This date is earlier than Wall Street economists were expecting. Goldman Sachs’ latest estimate this week put the deadline at some point in late July, though the bank’s economists acknowledged that weaker-than-expected tax receipts could advance that timeline.

The fourth in the action role-playing series will be darker than the last iteration - a return to the grittier roots of the original Diablo.

Diablo 4 is on the way - there's plenty more hacking and slashing to be had. The next game in Blizzard's mega-popular franchise was unveiled a good while ago, and its release is drawing ever closer.

Here's everything you need to know about the next Final Fantasy game's story, characters, gameplay, and world.

Six years have passed since the last mainline installment in the decidedly not-so-final Final Fantasy series, making this one of the largest gaps between games in the series' 35 years of history. However, all that waiting seems to be for good reason. What we've seen from Final Fantasy XVI makes the game look like a high-fantasy epic combining the grandeur of older titles with the cutting-edge technology of newer games, making us hopeful that this next entry will be well worth the wait.