’90s kids will remember this. Final Fantasy VII, the game that busted JPRGs out of their niche and helped make the original PlayStation the must-have console of the generation, is, as we all know, being remade. But until today it wasn’t really clear just what “remade” actually meant.

The teaser trailer put online today is packed full of details, though of course they may change over the course of development. It’s exciting not just for fans of this game, but for those of us who prefer VI and are deeply interested in how that (superior) game might get remade. Or VIII or IX, honestly.

The trailer shows the usual suspects traversing the first main area of the game, Midgar. A mix of cutscenes and gameplay presents a game that looks to be more like Final Fantasy XV than anything else. This may be a bitter pill for some — while I doubt anyone really expected a perfect recreation of the original’s turn-based combat, XV has been roundly criticized for oversimplification of the franchise’s occasionally quite complex systems.

With a single button for “attack,” another for a special, and the rest of the commands relegated to a hidden menu, it looks a lot more like an action RPG than the original. A playable Barret suggests the ability to switch between characters either at will or when the story demands. But there’s nothing to imply the hidden depths of, say, XII’s programmatic combat or even XIII’s convoluted breakage system.

But dang does it look good. Aerith (not “Aeris” as some would have it) looks sweet, Cloud is stone-faced and genie-panted, and Barret is buff and gruff, all as detailed and realistic we have any right to expect. The city looks wonderfully rendered and clearly they’re not phoning in the effects.

It’s more than a little possible that the process for remaking VII is something that the company is considering for application to other titles (I can see going all the way back to IV), but with this game being the most obvious cash cow and test platform for it.

“More to come in June,” the video concludes.

Will we enter a gaming era rife with remakes preying on our nostalgia, sucking our wallets dry so we can experience a game for the 4th or 5th time, but with particle effects and streamlined menus? I hope so. Watch the full teaser below:

Delta says it plans to eventually offer free WiFi on flights. The first step to achieving that goal, however, involves testing it out on a handful of planes, beginning later this month. Starting May 13, the carrier will begin offering free service on 55 domestic flights per day.

The idea here is to test the strain on the system. Currently, the number of passengers who actually use the inflight service is fairly low. Delta’s current provider Gogo says it’s around 12 percent of passengers across its various airline partners. Obviously that figure is going to jump pretty significantly if service is offered up for free.

“Testing will be key to getting this highly complex program right—this takes a lot more creativity, investment and planning to bring to life than a simple flip of a switch,” Delta’s Director of Onboard Product told The Wall Street Journal.

But while installing and maintaining that service on planes certainly isn’t cheap, exorbitant prices stand out in a world where many businesses offer up access for free. Like luggage check prices, WiFi has become another indication of airlines looking to squeeze every last penny out of travelers.

In fact, JetBlue is currently the only major U.S. airline that offers up free internet access to all passengers, but it relies on corporate sponsorships to offer up the service. Delta hasn’t given a firm date on when its own passengers might gain free access on a larger scale.

Unity Technologies, the company behind one of the world’s most popular game engines, could nearly double its reported valuation in a new round of funding.

The company has filed to raise up to $125 million in Series E funding according to a Delaware stock authorization filing uncovered by Prime Unicorn Index and reviewed by TechCrunch. If Unity closes the full authorized raise it will hold a valuation of $5.96 billion.

A Unity spokesperson confirmed the details of the document.

The SF company builds developer tools that allow game-makers to build titles and deploy them on consoles, mobile and PC. More than half of all new games are built using the platform. Customers pay for the platform per developer once their projects reach a certain scale.

Unity’s competitors include Fortnite-maker Epic Games, which has been able to rapidly acquire startups and game studios in the past two years fueled by the profits of their blockbuster hit.

Unity most recently closed $400 million in Series D funding led by Silver Lake, a “big chunk” of which went toward purchasing the shares of longtime employees and earlier investors. The round left the company’s valuation north of $3 billion. The company, founded in 2003, has raised more than $600 million to date.

The company’s previous backers include Sequoia, DFJ Growth and Silver Lake Partners.

Earlier this year, Cheddar reported that Unity was eyeing a 2020 IPO, though the company did not comment on the report.

In a recent commentary, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg argues for new internet regulation starting in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability. He also advocates that government and regulators “need a more active role” in this process. This call to action should be welcome news as the importance of the internet to nearly all aspects of people’s daily lives seems indisputable. However, Zuckerberg’s new rules could be expanded, as part of the follow-on discussion he calls for, to include several other necessary areas: security-by-design, net worthiness and updated internet business models.

Security-by-design should be an equal priority with functionality for network connected devices, systems and services which comprise the Internet of Things (IoT). One estimate suggests that the number of connected devices will reach 125 billion by 2030, and will increase 50% annually in the next 15 years. Each component on the IoT represents a possible insecurity and point of entry into the system. The Department of Homeland Security has developed strategic principles for securing the IoT. The first principle is to “incorporate security at the design phase.” This seems highly prudent and very timely, given the anticipated growth of the internet.

Ensuring net worthiness — that is, that our internet systems meet appropriate and up to date standards — seems another essential issue, one that might be addressed under Zuckerberg’s call for enhanced privacy. Today’s internet is a hodge-podge of different generations of digital equipment, unclear standards for what constitutes internet privacy and growing awareness of the likely scenarios that could threaten networks and user’s personal information.

Recent cyber incidents and concerns have illustrated these shortfalls. One need only look at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack that exposed the private information of more than 22 million government civilian employees to see how older methods for storing information, lack of network monitoring tools and insecure network credentials resulted in a massive data theft. Many networks, including some supporting government systems and hospitals, are still running Windows XP software from the early 2000s. One estimate is that 5.5% of the 1.5 billion devices running Microsoft Windows are running XP, which is now “well past its end-of-life.” In 2016, a distributed denial of service attack against the web security firm Dyn exposed critical vulnerabilities in the IoT that may also need to be addressed.

Updated business models may also be required to address internet vulnerabilities. The internet has its roots as an information-sharing platform. Over time, a vast array of information and services have been made available to internet users through companies such as Twitter, Google and Facebook. And these services have been made available for modest and, in some cases, no cost to the user.

This means that these companies are expending their own resources to collect data and make it available to users. To defray the costs and turn a profit, the companies have taken to selling advertisements and user information. In turn, this means that private information is being shared with third parties.

As the future of the internet unfolds, it might be worth considering what people would be willing to pay for access to traffic cameras to aid commutes, social media information concerning friends or upcoming events, streaming video entertainment and unlimited data on demand. In fact, the data that is available to users has likely been compiled using a mix of publicly available and private data. Failure to revise the current business model will likely only encourage more of the same concerns with internet security and privacy issues. Finding new business models — perhaps even a fee-for-service for some high-end services — that would support a vibrant internet, while allowing companies to be profitable, could be a worthy goal.

Finally, Zuckerberg’s call for government and regulators to have a more active role is imperative, but likely will continue to be a challenge. As seen in attempts at regulating technologies such as transportation safety, offshore oil drilling and drones, such regulation is necessary, but normally occurs only once potential for harm becomes apparent. The recent accidents involving the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft could be seen as one example of the importance of such government regulation and oversight.

Zuckerberg’s call to action suggests a pathway to move toward a new and improved internet. Of course, as Zuckerberg also highlights, his four areas would only be a start, and a broader discussion should be had as well. Incorporating security-by-design, net worthiness and updated business models could be part of this follow-on discussion.

Uber has set its initial public offering at $45 per share, per reports, raising $8.1 billion in the process. Uber has yet to officially disclose its IPO price.

The price, which falls at the low end of Uber’s planned range, values Uber at $82.4 billion.

The pricing comes one day after drivers all over the world went on strike, with drivers in San Francisco protesting right outside the company’s headquarters.

Uber filed for its IPO last month, reporting 2018 revenues of $11.27 billion, net income of $997 million and adjusted EBITDA losses of $1.85 billion. Though, we knew this thanks to Uber’s previous disclosures of its financials.

But this is not the first time we’ve seen Uber’s financials. Over the last couple of years, Uber has willingly disclosed many of these numbers. Its last report as a private company came in February when Uber disclosed $3 billion in Q4 2018 revenue with rising operating losses.

From ridesharing specifically, Uber’s revenues increased from $3.5 billion in 2016 to $9.2 billion in 2018, with gross bookings hitting $41.5 billion last year from ridesharing products.

Competitor Lyft filed its S-1 documents in March, showing nearly $1 billion in 2018 losses and revenues of $2.1 billion. It reported $8.1 billion in booking, coverings 30.7 million riders and 1.9 million drivers. About a week later, Lyft set a range of $62 to $68 for its IPO, seeking to raise up to $2.1 billion. Since its debut on the NASDAQ, Lyft’s stock has suffered after skyrocketing nearly 10 percent on day one. Lyft is currently trading about 20 percent below its IPO.

As part of his big reveal of Blue Origin’s new lunar lander, “Blue Moon”, Jeff Bezos announced Club for the Future, a new organization to inspire a new generation of space explorers and entrepreneurs.

The new organization, open to educators, parents and children in kindergarten through high school, seems designed to integrate educational lessons with Blue Origin missions.

“Club members’ ideas combined with a foundation of affordable, frequent, and reliable access to space, will help spark a future without limits,” reads the website’s exhortation to new members.”Dream. Experiment. Build. As we grow, look out for new activities, content, and opportunities to access space.”

The first project is to “receive a postcard from space”.

All participants need to do is draw or write a vision for the future of life in space on the blank side of a self-addressed, stamped postcard, and send it to “Club for the Future” at PO BOX 5759, KENT, WA 98064, U.S.A.

The first 10,000 postcards received before July 20, 2019 will be placed inside the Crew Capsule on a New Shepard flight, and then returned to senders with a stamped “flown to space” certification.

Today at an intimate event in Washington D.C., Jeff Bezos took the wraps off some grand space plans. But that future, which includes trips to the lunar surface, isn’t much without the gear to get it there.

Among the more impressive unveils was Blue Moon, a new lunar lander. Bezos unveiled the vehicle, which was hidden behind a curtain for much of the event. “This is an incredible vehicle,” he told the crowd, “and it’s going to the moon.” Powered by liquid hydrogen, the lander has an on-board system capable of navigating in space. It also utilizes gigabit internet to communicate back to Earth using a laser. 

Blue Moon features an on-board LIDAR system capable of mapping lunar terrain, in order to choose the right landing site. According to Bezos, the system using existing maps of the moons surface to determine where to navigate relative to known landmarks. The 3.6 metric ton vehicle features landing gear that’s stowed in an upward configuration and capable of landing on inclines up to 15 degrees.

Today at a packed event blocks from the White House, Jeff Bezos took the stage in front of select members of the media, executives, government officials and a gaggle of middle schoolers to reveal new details of his plan to get to the Moon by 2024. 

Blue Origin is going to send humans to space on New Shepard later this year and has unveiled a lunar lander, called “Blue Moon”, to access the resource-rich lunar surface, Bezos said.

Setting the stage with Neil Armstrong’s famous words as the first man to walk on the moon, Bezos took to the stage to explain his vision of answering a very simple question. Given the finite resources available to humanity, “where would a trillion humans live?”

It’s a vision that Bezos has articulated before.

For Bezos, the only impediment to this space utopia comes down to a mundane roadblock that the founder of Amazon knows all-too-well — the lack of logistics and infrastructure to drive down costs.

“My generation’s job is to build the infrastructure,” said Bezos. “We’re going to build the road to space.”

According to NASA and the U.S. government, that road is going to go through the moon, which is one reason why Bezos unveiled the lunar lander today.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in March called on NASA to use “any means necessary” to put American astronauts on a Moon-orbiting space station and eventually on the Moon’s South Pole by 2024.

But why the South Pole? Because of the ice.

Speaking at a National Space Council meeting, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine stated that NASA scientists estimate there are upwards of 1 trillion pounds of ice at the lunar poles. This estimate comes from data collected by the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which detected the ice hiding craters tilted away from the sun.

The ice is locked in these craters, unable to evaporate, as temperatures reportedly never rise above -250 degrees Fahrenheit in these spots. NASA hopes to use this ice to make rocket fuel.

“In this century, we’re going back to the moon with new ambitions,” Pence said in March. “Not just to travel there, but also to mine oxygen from lunar rocks that will refuel our ships, to use nuclear power to extract water from the permanently shadowed craters of the south pole, and to fly on a new generation of spacecraft that will enable us to reach Mars in months, not years.”

Startups like Momentus are already building spacecraft which use alternative fuel sources (like oxygen) to propel their vessels.

Pence’s proclamation came after delays forced NASA to push back the first crewed mission to the Moon until 2028. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) has been in development for years amid delays and budget cuts.

Returning to the moon is set to be a pricey venture and even more so given the updated target. NASA and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget calculated the cost but have yet to reveal the price tag to the American public.

“Right now, [the cost estimate is] under review, and we can’t come up with a number,” Mark Sirangelo, special assistant to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, said today during a hearing of the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Science, Space, and Technology committee. “We’ve provided the information, and the discussions have been very positive and open, and as soon as those discussions are complete and OMB has approved the numbers, they’ll provide them to you.”

As Space.com reminds, returning to the moon has been part of official U.S. policy since December 2017 after President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1.

Though NASA has yet to reveal the detailed plan, the general timeline calls for crewed moon landings in late the 2020s paving the space road to Mars landings in the 2030s.

That’s where Blue Origin comes in.

In addition to the lunar lander, Blue Origin has two space vehicles in development. The New Shepard is a suborbital rocket designed for short-duration flight and not launching large satellites into orbit. That will be handled by the New Glenn, which is slated for a 2021 launch and will be able to ferry 45,000 kg of goods to low Earth orbit. Both rocket platforms are designed for reusability.

Last week the Blue Origin New Shepard completed its 11th mission after launching and landing while carrying 38 experiments into low Earth orbit. The New Shepard rockets to 100 kilometers at which point, the capsule detaches and continues upwards on its momentum. The tests (or eventually humans) onboard are exposed to several minutes of microgravity before the capsule descends back to Earth on three parachutes. The New Shepard rocket itself lands independently on its deplorable struts.

It’s this launch platform Bezos intends to use in part for space tourism. Tickets could cost $200,000-$300,000 according to a Reuters report last year.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has taken a different path, designing and producing larger and larger rockets. The Falcon Heavy is the company’s current largest rocket and is capable of carrying 63,800 kg to low Earth orbit. SpaceX is also working on its next-generation launch platform Starship that is said to be able to lift over 100,000 kg of goods to low Earth orbit. The first orbital fight for Starship is planned for 2020.

There is plenty of space for both companies and others. Startups like Rocket Lab, Virgin Galactic, and Vector are also developing launch platforms intended to be used by commercial operations and government bodies. These startups have to compete with incumbents such as the Russian government and the United Launch Alliance, which is co-owned by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. And that’s just the rockets. Other startups are springing up to build different components, satellites, landers and telematic solutions needed for space travel.

OneDegree, an insurance technology startup based in Hong Kong, announced today it has extended its Series A round to $30 million, up from the $25.5 million it announced in September. Its extension, which the company is calling its “A2” round, was led by BitRock Capital, an investment firm that focuses on financial tech. Cyberport Macro Fund, Cathay Venture and investors from its initial Series A also participated.

The company is preparing to launch its online insurance platform, designed to make buying insurance plans easier for both consumers and providers by using data analytics to automate the most tedious parts of the process. The company will start with medical insurance for pets after its license is approved by the Hong Kong Insurance Authority before expanding into other products, including travel, cyber and human medical insurance.

In a press statement, OneDegree co-founder Alvin Kwock said its strategy is “not to compete head-on with traditional insurers, but rather to work together, steering the whole industry towards a fully digital ecosystem.”

U.S prosecutors have brought charges against a Chinese national for his alleged involvement of the 2015 data breach at health insurance giant Anthem, which resulted in the theft of 78 million medical records.

Fujie Wang, 32, and other unnamed members of a China-based hacking group, are charged with four counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, identity theft and computer hacking.

Names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and highly sensitive medical information numbers were stolen in the breach.

The hackers are also accused of breaking into three other businesses, all of which were not named.

Prosecutors said the hackers used “sophisticated techniques to hack into the computer networks of the victim businesses without authorization” — including spearphishing attacks — and transferred archive files from Anthem’s data warehouse back to China.

The hackers said to have “patiently waited months” after they broke into the health insurance giant’s systems before they stole data. The hackers are said to have stolen the 78 million records over a month between October and November 2014.

“The allegations in the indictment unsealed today outline the activities of a brazen China-based computer hacking group that committed one of the worst data breaches in history,” said U.S. assistant attorney general Brian Benczkowski in remarks. “These defendants allegedly attacked U.S. businesses operating in four distinct industry sectors, and violated the privacy of over 78 million people by stealing their personal identifiable information.”

Developing… more soon.