Housemarque has a new video game that struck me as so unique and fascinating that I was compelled to buy it.

I made the decision to buy the game without watching a ton of demos or reading up on internet reviews.

It was a no brainer. From the trailer, I could already tell that Returnal was similar to many other games. It was about a strong, smart, and capable protagonist who had to conquer the odds. That is not what compelled me to make the purchase.

The main character Selene is a woman. That in itself is an anomaly. But what makes her even more of an oddity is her age. Selene is a middle-aged woman.

Female videogame characters are typically youthful and sexy. The few who are not young are elderly women revered for their wisdom or hated for their villainy.

So a middle-aged female lead captured my attention so strongly that I just had to buy it.

I could finally see someone like myself in a game. You see, I am a 50-year-old woman who has recently found out that (surprise!) middle age is not exactly what I thought it would be.

At 50, I do not feel young. I do not feel old either. My body is not as fast as it was in my youth, even though I am in good shape.

In fact, I feel like I am at my best ever. But there is a certain invisibility that middle aged women can all identify with.

People can be rather awkward around a 50-year-old woman. Rarely do they start conversations. When they do talk to you, they ask about your children.

This adds another layer of awkwardness and invisibility for me as a childless woman.

With no children, they cannot imagine anything else to talk about.

When you find a woman in a game, she could be a companion or just there to add color to a party. She is not the star.

We can all remember how big of a shock it was for fans of Metroid to discover that the hero they had admired for so long was really a woman.

It was supposed to be a shocking plot twist. And it did shock many.

Today, gamers who want to play as women have many more opportunities than ever before. Some games even allow you to create the character you want to play.

But these female characters are almost invariably young.

To be honest, there are advantages to playing younger characters. Younger bodies are stronger and more agile. So it makes sense to have a main character in their 20s or 30s.

In Tomb Raider’s 2013 reboot, Lara Croft’s youth and experience are a huge part of what makes the story powerfully inspiring.

She was a fresh college graduate who found herself alone and injured after surviving a shipwreck.

Her inexperience meant that she had to challenge herself in ways she had never done before. She was discovering her own strength and we were there to watch her develop resilience. It was an awesome journey.

As a 50-year-old gamer, I cannot help but imagine what Lara Croft would be like two or three decades older. What challenges would she face? How would she tackle them? What allies and enemies would she have acquired along the way?

We have no way of knowing. Because the creators are not particularly interested in Lara Croft post 30.

At this point, you are probably wondering just how many gamers are wondering about the same thing I am wondering about.

I looked up the numbers, and female gamers my age are almost as many as male gamers. There is only a 2% difference in the numbers.

My point is that if we can have such a variety of middle-aged male characters, then women my age deserve representation, too.

I would love to see more female gaming characters who are my age saving the world, solving mysteries, and slaying the occasional dragon.

Speaking of dragons, I can remember when the dragons in video games looked more like ducks than dragons.

Not too long ago, Ubisoft argued that they could not increase the playable female assassins in Assassins Creed because they were difficult to animate.

We have made some progress since then, thankfully. But we still have a long way to go.

I love that Selene features on the cover and stars in the game. I feel validated by her presence.

Selene represents the best aspects of being middle aged. Young people are more ambitious but also vulnerable to people-pleasing.

Selene comes armed with life experience the way only a middle-aged woman can be.

She is sure of herself and understands who she is and what she stands for. She is guided by her own internal compass and not other people’s opinions.

She has the confidence to steal a spaceship and go on a mysterious quest.

She is decisive and confident in her ability to handle whatever comes her way. She goes after what she wants without apology. I would love to see more characters like Selene.

Microsoft is going to change its release time table for Edge to Chrome’s four-week interval between releases that Google announced recently.

Google announced that it would start following a four-week pace just recently and Microsoft had no choice but to follow suit.

“As contributors to the Chromium project, we look forward to the new 4-week major release cycle cadence that Google announced, to help deliver that innovation to our customers even faster,” Edge announced on their company blog on March 12^th.

Just a week earlier, Google had announced its intention to release Chrome at a faster pace to keep up with Mozilla’s Firefox which was following a four-week release schedule instead of a four-week schedule.

Chrome 94 is coming out on September 21^st. Chrome 95 will launch on October 19^th. Microsoft will follow the same cycle. Microsoft announced that the new release cycle will begin with the Edge 94.

It has been customary for Microsoft to come out with a corresponding Edge every two days after a Chrome upgrade.

Google’s updates come out on Tuesdays, and this means that Microsoft’s comes out each Thursday. Edge 94 will therefore come out on 23^rd and Edge 95 on October 21^st.

Microsoft Edge is an open-source venture that builds and maintains Chrome’s core technologies. From January 2020, Edge has timed its releases to coincide with Chrome’s. It is a better alternative to delaying the release of Edge.

Chrome runs on multiple browsers, but Google has more control over it than Opera, Brave, Edge, or any of the other browsers. Google created Chromium and Google Engineers do most of the work. It is not yet clear what role Microsoft played in accelerating the release of Chrome.

If things go as Google has planned, Microsoft will offer a different version of Edge for commercial users that will last longer in between upgrades.

This release will come out at eight-week intervals instead of four weeks. Security upgrades every two weeks will provide service.

Only those organizations that have the capacity to manage their own machines will access the Extended Stable.

But even Chrome and Edge’s new eight-week release time table seems brief when compared with Firefox’ Extended Support Release that lasts at least a year with only security updates in between.

Microsoft observed yet another milestone on March 9^th when it stopped supporting the original Microsoft Edge browser.

The legacy Microsoft Edge was launched with Windows 10 in 2015 but it did not gain traction. Microsoft preferred to dump its own technology for Chromium’s instead of wasting their hard work. The first new Edge for Chromium came out a year and two months ago.

Now that there is no more support for Microsoft Edge, users will run the software at their own risk, without Microsoft to fix hitches. Microsoft is preparing users to take up Edge on Chromium instead of moving to Firefox or Chrome.

This is why the Windows 10 update coming up next month will automatically remove the original Edge and install a new version.

So far, the Windows on Snapdragon program by Qualcomm has focused its attention on premium hardware. But the new 7cx chip is signaling a whole new direction.

The first Widows on Snapdragon portable computers came out in 2017, and since then, it has been obvious that Qualcomm is adopting a different take on portable devices.

Qualcomm’s vision is ‘always on, always connected’ and wants to achieve better PCs that wake instantly from sleep mode and whose batteries last multiple days.

Their ARM-based portable electronic devices are lightweight and fan less. The new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 chipset is 5G enabled.

This convenience does not come without its tradeoffs. The Surface Pro X is pricey as are other Snapdragons. At a minimum price of $999, the device goes for well above what would be considered affordable. The pricey Surface Pro X is a modified Snapdragon 8cx.

Snapdragons have developed improved performance and better compatibility with apps of late, but they haven’t quite caught up with normal PCs yet for the most part.

In 2019, Qualcomm came out with the Snapdragon 7c chipset that was more affordable, but the other devices don’t yet have cheaper versions. The cheapest ARM-based Windows device costs $599 which is still expensive as far as budget laptops are concerned.

Qualcomm is still determined to go on improving on the Windows on Snapdragon. Windows Latest reports that Qualcomm is preparing to come out with a different Snapdragon 8cx Gen2 chip soon.

We don’t know much about the next offering from Qualcomm, but the article on Windows Latest explains that the device will have a clock speed significantly faster than the original, at 2.7GHz for all four cores, compared to the 7cx which hits a maximum of 2.4GHz.

The moderately higher speeds may not significantly impact the price since they will not be adopting 5G. Also, processors for ARM-based devices need to have other qualities as well, including power efficiency.

The 7cx Gen 2 may not necessarily come in devices costing less than -£500, and we are yet to see whether it will register satisfactory performance and sufficient compatibility options to pull users from AMD and Intel devices.

If both of these wishes come true, it will make Windows on Snapdragon a major player in the budget laptop market.

There are other companies besides Qualcomm that are developing ARM-based computers. Samsung, Microsoft, and AMD are all working on their own improved models of ARM-based devices.