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Since first being introduced for a customized Harley-Davidson, Keanu Reeves and co-founder Gard Hollinger ’s motorcycle company, ARCH Motorcycle , has begun creating bikes that are not only optimized for spectacular and reliable riding but also tailored to their riders. Now, after launching in 2011, the duo is ready to show the world what these bikes are capable of . After establishing themselves in the production of world-class bikes, Reeves and Hollinger made their debut in professional racing at MotoAmerica, the premier motorcycle road racing series, documented in Samsung TV Plus’s new six-part docuseries, Hooligans: The ARCH Racing Project .

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Rousing seafaring anthems are as vital to Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced as they are in the original, but sea shanties do not exist in isolation. Waves crash rhythmically against the hull as birds join the chorus of voices on-deck. Wind snaps the large black sails to and fro, a meditative drum beat as The Jackdaw journeys across Dry Tortuga. It's everything I remember from Black Flag, only better.

"I think that's one of the good things about a remake: that there was a blueprint that we could follow." Sitting down with Ubisoft's Erik-Jon Evangelista, audio director for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, it's clear this is a blueprint he knows intimately. He's been with Ubisoft since 2012, having served as an audio designer for the original Black Flag and 10 others among the best Assassin's Creed games , but Resynced is a very different beast.

"It's an iconic game, so we had to be faithful and familiar, but not necessarily the same. So I tasked my team with three different things – three different pillars: to recreate, elevate, then innovate."

One more, with keeling

(Image credit: Ubisoft) Drink up, me hearties

(Image credit: Ubisoft) Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review: "Far from smooth sailing, even though I love the original"

The first of those three pillars – recreation – is where it all starts. Presented in the brand new Anvil engine, much of the original sound assets had to be remade for Resynced.

"It really wasn't a cut and paste job, something that we could just port over," Evangelista says. "It was showing its limitations based on the current hardware of that time, so we wanted to make sure that we leveraged and took advantage of [Anvil]" – for example, in creating realistic spatial soundscapes using physics-driven Doppler effects – "while at the same time being faithful to the original. So, one example was with music.

"I'm not going to change Brian Tyler's music – it's iconic, it's familiar," Evangelista says, meaning elevation was off the table here. Rather, Evangelista sought to work around the limitation of some tracks being "short and possibly repetitive, depending on the difficulty level you play at." I'm reminded of the combat stings of Assassin's Creed Unity, how frequently (and sometimes comically) the combat music would stop and start after the most minor scuffle.

(Image credit: Ubisoft) "I wanted to make sure that we modernized it and innovated in a way that was still familiar, and that was to implement a system that had the music react to gameplay animations or stabs, in this case." This responsiveness is clear in game; at the end of my first boss battle, I hear the music growing louder, more urgent, desperate to reach its crescendo as I hurl smoke grenades at Templar Du Casse's feet. When my Hidden Blade hits home, the backing track mirrors that instant relief.

It makes for incredibly cinematic encounters, more immersive than anything I remember hearing and feeling in the original Black Flag. "It was a time before John Wick," Evangelista reflects. "Now, you can't not think of action being tagged to music, so I wanted to be able to try to do something like that because of how dynamic it is. This makes very familiar music have a very different experience per player."

Many unique actions are tagged to specific character actions and movements, including stealthy Hidden Blade takedowns. "If you played without ever doing takedowns, you'll just hear the music as it was, but if you do a lot of takedowns, you may never really hear the music in the same way."

The sound of pirates

(Image credit: Ubisoft) We're usually like quiet ninjas in the background.

Erik-Jon Evangelista

Returning to Black Flag, Evangelista brought more experience to its all-important sea shanties. "My team here was in charge of making the shanties on the long ship for Valhalla," Evangelista says as an example. "I'm definitely leaning on the experiences that I've had previously, and I think part of what we do is being able to make a sonic signature for the game, regardless of whether it's a remake or it's a new game."

Everything from the Spanish songs of the Havanaean NPCs to the more Euro-centric language and subject matter of the sea shanties – and Evangelista's favorite track "at the end of Stede Bonnet's questline" – point to a specific historical context in the 1700s West Indies. But it's the subtle layers of environmental texture that root players in a specific time and place.

"Sound that is tied to gameplay, whether it's by player input or from something that happens in the world that the player can hear, tends to have the highest value," Evangelista says, with the goal being to "create the illusion of you being in a very specific geographical position." Think again of the wind whistling past the Jackdaw as the crew breaks into song, one sound complementing the other to achieve a far more powerful scene-setting effect than either in isolation.

Method and the madness

(Image credit: Ubisoft) But with all the recreation, elevation, and innovation on the table in Resynced, some things stay the same. Like, the sound of Edward drowning.

"Edward's drowning voice is me!" Evangelista exclaims, to mine and our Ubisoft PR's surprise. "We were in charge of the underwater [environments] back then, so all the swimming sounds and everything was done by myself and another audio designer.

"When it came to drowning sounds, I clearly didn't drown, right, but it's more of the fact that we had to make sure that it sounded like I was struggling." For this, Evangelista stuck his head in a barrel of water and choked. "I could only do like three max [gulps] before I had to come up for air and go down again. We used hydrophones to be able to record those, but they needed to be at like a depth of at least like two meters-ish, so that at least you don't hear the bubbles pass by and pop [on the surface]" – which would shatter the illusion of Edward drowning in more than a few inches of water.

"Back then I recorded it as an audio designer, and as audio director now, I'm keeping it!"

(Image credit: Ubisoft) It's subtle sound design choices like these that make a game feel grounded in reality, and if drowning for your art was commitment personified back in 2013, it's almost expected of game developers in 2026.

"I think there's a lot more appreciation for not just music, but how sound also makes people feel in games these days," Evangelista notes. It does feel like every month another touring video game concert is announced, from Death Stranding: Strands of Harmony to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Painted Symphony. How does it feel to see game audio design finally having its moment just as Resynced drops anchor?

"What a time to be in," Evangelista laughs. "I'm used to people not noticing audio. Like, 'no news is good news,' and if they mention it, it means that you've been found out, or you've been noticed. We're usually like quiet ninjas in the background. We teach the player a language that helps them to comprehend gameplay feedback – setting, size, scale. I'm glad we have an audience that appreciates that nowadays."

What's next for the publisher? Here's all the upcoming Ubisoft games we know of right now.

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We’ve talked plenty of times here about the infeasibility of launching a mirror big enough to directly image exoplanets using current rocket fairings - at least as long as we’re not sending them 500+ AU away to a gravitational lensing point. We’ve also talked at length about the potential solution to that problem - interferometry, where multiple smaller satellites link up precisely, but are spaced far enough apart to act as one gigantic mirror. The problem is, from a technical standpoint, it’s really hard to build these kinds of systems. But the field has taken another step forward with a new paper from researchers at Xidian University and the Beijing Institute of Control Engineering, published in Space: Science & Technology, which describes a system to both control and calibrate a free-floating interferometer.

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Archie Comics have been all the rage since their start back in the 40s. 20 years later, they brought Sabrina the Teenage Witch into the fold and the rest was made in Riverdale history. Now, there is a new take on Sabrina the Teenage Witch coming for fans of the character with some pretty powerful people bringing her to life. Hugo Award-nominated writer Corinna Bechko , who has written iconic stories for characters like the Green Lanterns and the Na'vi of James Cameron 's Avatar franchise, is set to tell her Sabrina story with Eisner Award-Nominated Artist Kano . And we have exclusive pages from Bechko's comic to get fans excited for its October release.

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While the AI data center boom is undoubtedly an opportunity for the fiber industry, it also presents something of a challenge.

Sure, investment in network infrastructure is rarely a bad thing. I can’t help, however, getting flashbacks to the early 2000’s - operators pouring billions into fiber, without proven demand.

This resulted in stranded assets, empty capacity, and ultimately, a bust that hampered telecoms for nearly a decade.

This time around, as serious AI momentum continues to grow, with megawatt campuses, GPU clusters, hyperscaler capex announced seemingly every week, the temptation to ‘follow the boom’ is rearing its head again.

I’m optimistic, however, that the industry has learnt its lesson. Not just to avoid overspend, but to be far more targeted about where fiber actually gets built, what kind of fiber is needed, and which partnerships can make new routes commercially viable.

AI demand is real, but discipline will be crucial

There’s no denying AI demand is there, but it's important operators don’t get caught up in the hype and assume it will be everywhere.

It may sound basic, but the industry needs to read the tea leaves carefully. Data centers have never had the luxury of a ‘build it, and they will come’ approach. The strongest sites tend to sit where demand, power, fiber and customer ecosystems can all be brought together. Things are changing however; data centers are on the move.

Fiber investment therefore, should focus on solid signals, from AI Growth Zones and established data center corridors to cloud on-ramps, internet exchanges and emerging compute clusters. While the latter two have traditionally centered around London (particularly the London Docklands and Slough), the Government’s proposed AI Growth Zones point to a broader regional shift.

Sites in Oxfordshire, the North East, North Wales, South Wales and Lanarkshire in Scotland aim to spread AI infrastructure development away from the capital, bringing data center demand closer to new regional power, land and connectivity ecosystems.

Beyond the Government initiatives investors are also placing bets on other development opportunities outside of the traditional areas.

AI hyperscalers want platforms, not just physical fiber

But even if you do invest in fiber build in all the right places, that’s no longer a guarantee. While location is one aspect (and admittedly, not a ground-breaking one, pardon the pun), there’s a new, arguably even bigger factor that network operators can’t ignore - consumability.

Hyperscalers, neoclouds and AI infrastructure businesses are not always buying connectivity in the same way as traditional telecoms customers. They expect capacity to be identifiable, orderable and scalable at speed. In other words, they want the fiber market to feel more like a platform than a slow procurement exercise.

AI workloads are also pushing future rack-density designs towards 1MW, which places extreme demands not just on power and cooling, but on fiber density and the speed at which capacity can be provisioned.

As these companies scale, providers that can offer API-driven ordering, rapid provisioning, clear visibility of available routes and flexible rerouting will be in the strongest position when capacity decisions are made.

Having fiber in the right place may secure a place in the conversation, but making that fiber easier to consume will increasingly determine who wins the work.

Compute is useless without connectivity

There’s another major factor, however, one that is often overlooked and missed in the media conversation around UK AI infrastructure - backbone connectivity.

As a call back to the opening of this article, AI infrastructure is often viewed as a hardware arms race. With much of the focus falling on megawatts, GPU clusters and hyperscaler capex, with data center capacity treated as a shorthand for infrastructure readiness.

This view missed the wider systems those facilities depend on. Without the right infrastructure backing up development, the UK risks repeating old DC patterns, where new sites sit underutilized due to a lack of customers, or are delayed entirely due to missing fundamental backbone infrastructure. This concern is already starting to bite. According to recent research, 82% of UK DC operators have already delayed new facilities or expansions because of limited access to high-capacity fiber infrastructure.

Take the UK government’s compute ambitions. The UK has said it will need at least 6GW of AI-capable data center capacity by 2030 to support the growing demands of AI. That is a serious statement of intent, but the gap between ambition and deliverability is still understated. The UK’s AI ambitions are often framed in terms of compute capacity, rather than the connectivity and required to make those investments viable.

None of this makes the UK’s AI ambitions unrealistic. But it does mean fiber can’t be treated as an afterthought. Data-center operators, hyperscalers and network providers need to plan connectivity earlier. Developing a clearer view of where capacity exists and where new resilient routes are needed, particularly in more regional locations outside of London or where the landscape is more challenging for development. Alongside how quickly they can be made commercially available.

Interestingly, in recent months we have seen a change in the approach to fiber emerging. Much earlier engagement from the DC developer/operators on fiber availability and timeline to deliver, along with a significant increase in the capacity required from day one, with a much steeper ramp in uptake.

This tells us two things, the forecast in uptake and data movement has shifted, as has the move to further de-risk a development by getting assurance on fiber/connectivity at a much earlier stage.

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