Ah, yes. GoldenEye 007. One of the classic Nintendo 64 titles and a memorable first-person shooter is certainly a game that I spent a lot of time with. Now we have a glimpse of what the game could look like if it was made with the tools available to...
Today, I met my new upstairs neighbors. They have a four month old child and appear to be firm believers in the "let them cry it out" philosophy. The baby's room is right above mine. A few days of trying to sleep through this shit and I'll look like a Walking Dead extra. FML
LOL Poverty solved! Everyone gets $4.33! Which, after taxes and lump sum, is more like $1.30!
If only solving poverty really were this easy.
This week, many Americans are buying lottery tickets hoping to win the record-breaking, $1.4 billion Powerball jackpot.
Joshua Lott / Getty Images
The drawing for the largest-ever lottery prize will be on Wednesday, if you still want a ticket.
But on Monday, a meme began to circulate on Facebook that urged people to take a good, hard look at what kind of impact the jackpot, at that time a paltry $1.3 billion, could REALLY have.
He's gonna need it to run the Oculus Rift. LOL SICK BURN I'M SO FUNNY
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus VR and creator of the Oculus Rift, somewhat unsurprisingly, is a fully paid-up member of the PC Master Race.
During a recent Reddit AMA, Luckey was asked about the hardware specs of his PC. The first part of his response was to be expected, and probably straight out of the company's PR playbook:
I have lived on the bleeding edge of PC hardware for as long as I could scrape the money together, but for VR, I am sticking to hardware that sticks to our recommended specs: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/
That way, I get the same experience as most of my customers. I don’t want to become disconnected from the reality of how our hardware and software performs.
On the side, though, Luckey is working on something just a little bit more exciting:
I LOLed at this: "The authors write in the official report: "The numbers are similar enough that each defecation event may flip the ratio to favour human cells over bacteria.""
Scientists say we do not have 10 times more bacteria in our bodies than human cellsiStock
Bacteria in our bodies do not outnumber our cells by 10 to one, say researchers. A new study has put the rumour to bed that we contain far more bacteria than human cells.
The researchers say that the average human male has approximately 30trn human cells, and 39trn bacteria (56%) – a long stretch from the myth regarding how many bacteria we have.
The authors write in the official report: "The numbers are similar enough that each defecation event may flip the ratio to favour human cells over bacteria."
The study used experimental data from a wide range of literature in order to re-estimate the number of cells in the human body. The estimate suggesting a 10:1 ratio was first published in 1972, but the Israeli and Canadian authors of the paper found flaws in the calculations.
They suggest Thomas Luckey, author of the 1972 paper, overestimated the number of bacteria in our guts. Luckey estimated that there are 100trn bacteria in our guts by multiplying the estimated number of bacteria in a gram of faeces (100bn), and the total volume of the alimentary canal (the entire passageway that food travels, from the mouth to the anus).
The researchers, Ron Sender, Shai Fuchs and Ron Milo, say that almost all of that calculation is wrong. Firstly, they believe there are not as many bacteria in a gram of faeces than Luckey believes. They also say that most bacteria can only be found in the colon, which means a better number for the calculation would have been 0.4 litres, as opposed to an entire litre.
The researchers aimed to correct the myth after other scientists expressed their doubts in 2014. Judah Rosner, National Institute of Health, said in the 'Letters' section of Microbe Magazine: "Once in a while some fake 'fact' gets into the literature that is difficult to expunge. This discussion should make clear that the assertion of 10-fold more microbiota than human body cells was not based on hard facts."
After all the teased products that didn't live up to their promises and the trouble caused by self-balancing scooters, ArcaBoard appears to be the closest we'll get to an actual hoverboard in 2015. Designed by the US-based Arca Space Corporation, the mattress-shaped vehicle packs 272 horsepower and is propelled by 36 ducted fans spinning at 45,000rpm. Buying one will set you back about £13,500 ($19,900).
Arca has begun taking pre-orders for ArcaBoard and promises to start shipping it to the customers in April 2016. The device's speed is limited to 20km/h (12mph) and its flying height to 30cm (1ft). It's powered by a set of Li-Po batteries that account for a significant part of its price: getting a new battery pack after the 1-year warranty has expired will cost you £4,600 ($6,840).
There are two versions of the device: one for riders that weigh up to 80kg (176lbs), and another for riders up to 110kg (242lbs). The lighter option can hover for six minutes, the heavier just three minutes. The lighter rider can theoretically travel up to 2km (1.2mi) on one charge.
Today, my parents confirmed we were going to be taking a Disney World trip for Christmas vacation. I already knew that we were taking a trip, but I was now missing a week of school. Being in 3 honors and an A.P. class, I said that I didn't want to go. I got called an "ungrateful, little prick". FML
David Bowie—an icon whose music and swagger influenced the lives of so many people—has died at the age of 69 after an 18-month-long battle with cancer, his son Duncan Jones confirmed on Monday morning.
The news of Bowie's death comes just a few days after the megastar, known for hits that include Space Oddity, Heroes, and The Man Who Sold The World, released his latest album, Blackstar.
Bowie was not only a hugely influential musician to millions of fans during a career spanning 50 years, but he was also something of a pioneer in the online world, too.
I don't understand why they are so hellbent on landing on a ship?
After SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launches the Jason-3 satellite on January 17th, its first stage will attempt to land back to Earth unscathed. The private space corp performed a successful touchdown in December, but that was on solid ground. This time,...
Hungarian journalist Boglarka Balogh told BuzzFeed News that she doesn’t think blackface is offensive in her country because it doesn’t have the same history with it that the United States does.
Two weeks ago, a Hungarian journalist named Boglarka Balogh posted an article on Bored Panda headlined “I Morphed Myself Into Tribal Women To Raise Awareness Of Their Secluded Cultures,” which has since been deleted.
With the help of a graphic designer, Balogh transformed herself into seven different women she said were reflective of different African tribes.
Courtesy of Boglarka Balogh
As the post started getting shared on Facebook, it met immediate criticism. Jezebel wrote about Balogh's project, calling it the "least honorable project in the history of stupid stupid racist bullshit."
DENVER—Tearing her blouse seams as she angrily flexed her massive, rippling biceps, Ashley Manning, the 14-foot-tall wife of Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, crushed the skull of a journalist inquiring about allegations that she received shipments of human growth hormone on behalf of her husband, sources confirmed Friday. “Arrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!” the enormous, muscle-bound 390-pound woman bellowed upon being asked about her connection to the Indianapolis-based Guyer Institute medical center, before she then grabbed the reporter’s head with one hand, squeezed it until his skull caved in, and violently slammed his limp body into the ground. “No comment!” Sources confirmed that Peyton Manning was unavailable for questions after his wife tucked him under her arm and carried him away.
Again! "You got: Woman in her mid- to late twenties We reckon you’re a woman in her mid- to late twenties. You’re probably combining a career you’re starting to get really settled in, and really good at, with a still fun and exciting social life. You’re in one of the best periods of life, so it’s definitely worth making the most of it."
Charlie: My resting heart rate was stable until the bear attack. Then, precisely 26 minutes into Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant, it spiked. As I watched Leonardo DiCaprio being mercilessly mauled by a nightmarish CGI bear, my heart rate began to elevate, slowly at first, before rocketing to above-average levels. During a particularly intense moment near the end of the film — there was a machete! — my heart rate spiked again, beating 23% faster than it did as the lights in the theater dimmed. During the film's two-and-a-half-hour run time, I gaped at the screen, motionless for exactly 2,930 seconds.
Anne: There was a moment, about halfway through the attack, when my entire body shivered. It was precisely 26 minutes into the movie. I usually have to leave the theater to go to the bathroom at least once. But in The Revenant, I not only stayed in my seat the entire time, but spent 4221 seconds — that's 70 minutes — completely transfixed. I startled seven times, and my body went into fight-or-flight mode (what happens to your body when it senses extreme threat) a whopping nineteen times.
We knows all this thanks to medical-grade heart rate, motion, temperature, and sound sensors that measured my vitals and those of a colleague 10 times a second for the film’s duration. More specifically, we know these things because Fox Films and a biometrics company called Lightwave strapped some Fitbit-style devices to our wrists to determine what we thought of The Revenant — physiologically. It’s part of an early experimental effort by studios to wring every last intensely nuanced droplet of unfiltered feedback from test audiences. It might also be a glimpse into the future of movie marketing — and moviemaking.
When we arrived at the theater, Lightwave strapped its black rubber tracking bracelets, approximately the size of an Apple Watch, snugly to the wrists of our dominant hands. A green light flickered, indicating that our real-time biometric data was now being fed to a laptop in the back of the theater.
“Pulling data 10 times a second, you can see some amazing, crazy things,” Lightwave CEO Rana June said, securing the band. “We do it through sensor fusion.” That term is a fancy way of saying that Lightwave takes biometric data signals (heart rate, motion, temperature) and merges them with the context of the event (intense scenes, swelling music) to measure physical reactions. One of the “crazy things” we’d be tested for: triggering of the fight-or-flight instinct.
“When your body goes into fight-or-flight mode, there’s a momentary deceleration of the heart rate when something called the orienting response kicks in,” June explained. “The way you get flight-or-flight response is not from a sensor but from a calculation. We have neuroscientists on our team and we’re doing applied neuroscience using wearables data. Engagement could be measured by heart rate increasing while motion is low. Or by a subtle change in the variability between your heartbeats."
According to Lightwave’s data, my body’s fight-or-flight instincts kicked in 16 times during The Revenant. My colleague — who is “stupid-easy to scare” — had 19. All in all, it looks like this:
Lightwave
While Lightwave has tested its software in numerous venues (Wimbledon, the Cannes advertising festival, concerts), none provide the sort of consistent stimulus — the same content, screening to screening — as a movie. The potential benefits for studios and filmmakers are manifold. On the research side, it’s a way to quantify the sorts of things that test screenings have been looking at for decades: engrossment, engagement, pleasure, whether men laugh more than women, whether jokes and plot points resonate with an international audience — now the most crucial market for most American films.
The data — which June assured us was anonymous and only identifiable by gender and Nielsen-esque age ranges — could also be used as a marketing tool: Fox, the studio behind The Revenant, could put “14 Scientifically Proven Heart-Pounding Moments!” or “More than 4,000 seconds of pure transfixion!” in the spot usually reserved for critics' blurbs at the end of a trailer. Or, in the form of a slick, eye-catching, easily-shareable-across-social-media-and-the-internet infographic that uses data captured from 100 audience members in four different U.S. cities:
Lightwave
There’s also the potential for such data to influence the moviemaking process all the way down to the level of the original pitch. The modern blockbuster has always depended on a narrative interspersed by “whammies”: moments in a film (a car chase or fight, a sex scene, horror movie "jumps") that theoretically grip the audience. Jaws, often cited as the first blockbuster, has masterfully placed whammies. In a perfect Hollywood world, every blockbuster would be a lovely integration of plot and whammy. But as the industry grows increasingly reliant on “intellectual property” — concepts, like superheroes, video games, board games, etc., that come with “presold” interest — plot sometimes takes a backseat to spectacle. The flimsier the plot, the greater reliance on whammies: see Transformers 3, Fast & Furious, Step Up, San Andreas -- even Magic Mike XXL.
Today, you can pitch a movie purely on the promise of audience recognition — but as flops like Battleship and Fantastic Four make clear, even that’s not a guarantee of audience interest or engagement. Same with the promise of whammies: Just because it’s an explosion doesn’t mean people will be gripped by it — chalk it up to blockbuster/destruction-of-the-world fatigue. Hollywood has, in recent years, continued to struggle with audience surveys, which no longer seem to predict box office success. But with tech like Lightwave, studios could gain precise information about what sort of sequences, timing, and integration of plot and whammy are most effective for audiences. Basically: an algorithmically tailored, Big Data–fueled paint-by-numbers for a billion-dollar blockbuster.
While Lightwave's tech could serve as a tool that could enhance storytelling in film, it seems equally plausible that it will be used simply to ratchet up those cinematic whammies I mentioned earlier, until the movies we see in theaters are little more than a sizzle reel of explosions and boobs. June, for her part, dismissed these claims. “My hope for this is for people to use the data as they want but not to be led by the data,” she said.
What seems most promising, from an artistic standpoint, is the capacity for Lightwave specifics to sell a film to which audiences might otherwise find themselves indifferent. Perhaps audiences could be convinced to see a film by scientific evidence that it's a great movie experience. And if they were, perhaps studios might be willing to approach the idea of The Blockbuster a bit differently.
A similar tactic worked in the early ’70s, when the studios, floundering in the face of a series of massive bombs and an unpredictable audience, benefited from similar “authenticated” promises of a visceral theater experience, with films like The Exorcist, which the press breathlessly reported to have caused mass fainting, vomiting, and even a miscarriage, and Jaws, which incited screaming, fainting, and a drop in popcorn sales — as clear a marker as any of engagement.
Jaws and Exorcist dominated the box office — and helped establish a new marketing strategy, now established practice, in which studios spent millions on buildup with the understanding that every dollar spent would eventually bring in more. This sort of attention-grabbing publicity was nothing new — horror genre films and exploitation films had been using similar carny-barker-style tactics since the beginning of the cinema. What was new, then, was the scale — and the sophistication.
Lightwave, and the data it generates, offers the next jump in sophistication. At the same time, it points to the increased need to see quantified data of an experience in order to understand how we experienced it. I was engrossed, in other words, because the little chart told me, 24 hours after the fact, that I was — a fact that I could then share, and back up, by posting on social media. It’s no different from the actual Fitbit or any other wearable dedicated to quantifying, and thus ostensibly authenticating, our every movement.
But here’s the thing: Parts of The Revenant were terrifying. It’s arguably the most engrossed either of us has been in the movie theater all year. There were moments of sublime joy and visceral abjection. Anne covered her eyes and winced on two separate occasions. Everything we'd heard before seeing the film proved to be true. But after years of buying into grandiose movie trailers only to be disappointed by the films they promoted, there’s a certain skittishness at play. Now we may actually have supporting scientific evidence to back up movie trailer promises.
It’s inside this rift in the circle of trust between studios and audiences where Lightwave’s technology could prove transformative. Drown out the fears of dead-inside, algorithmic art and the specter of a future filled with vapid, whammy-filled sizzle reels and maybe there’s room for something like hope: that movies could, perhaps, get better. That a technology that, though it might appear to be a gimmick, could have the potential to do something invaluable: help us believe in the blockbuster again.
Winter is....wait, April 24? That's like, totally spring, man.
Do not mess with the Queen of Dragons. (credit: HBO)
You know that feeling when you fly on the back of a wild dragon who has rescued you from an angry mob, and then it lands in a remote area full of another angry mob, but you still feel badass because of the aforementioned dragon and your uncanny ability to walk through fire unscathed? Well, that's how we feel right now, because there's an official air date for the premiere episode of Game of Thrones' sixth season.
Prepare to glue your face to the monitor of your choice on April 24, when HBO kicks off a season that promises to be pretty intense. First of all, Bran is back—so you can expect some serious magic and warging. Then there is the dragon situation I've already discussed. Plus Arya is still in assassin high school, there is family drama in King's Landing, and Brienne of Tarth is definitely going to cut somebody with her sword soon. Oh yeah, plus winter is seriously coming for real now, and Jon Snow is playing Schrödinger's cat until we find out for sure whether he's dead or alive.
With season six, we'll also leave the George R.R. Martin books behind. Martin is still finishing up The Winds of Winter, though it's set to publish this year. That's right—the book this season is based on hasn't actually come out yet. The author has been sharing his plans with the producers of Game of Thrones, so there will be some crossover. But for now at least, your friends who have read the books can't threaten you with spoilers.
"I think they are attracted specifically to the highway because it has open, grassy fields nearby, which is perfect for hunting their favourite prey, which is small rodents," she said.
"They like to get a good lay of the land and the high lampposts or other posts that they can perch on while hunting just suits them perfectly."
This is pretty cool. Wonder what the range is... I'm up on the 21st floor, but there's a payphone right outside the front door of my apt building.
We've been charting the progress of LinkNYC for the past year -- from a mere concept to a legitimate replacement for New York City's payphones. Now as LinkNYC has begun installing its gigabit-speed wireless hotspots, I sat down with Colin O'Donnell a...
Today, I played charades with my girlfriend and her family. When it was her turn to act out a phrase, she simply walked to the center of the room and pointed to herself and then at me. It took less than 5 seconds for someone to correctly guess "Beauty and the Beast". FML
Transcripts of phone calls between then prime minister Tony Blair and US president Bill Clinton have been released, giving a strange insight into their attitudes, relationship, and appetite for eating moose lips.
The files, which cover calls between 1997 and 2000, were released by the Clinton Presidential Library, following a Freedom of Information request by BBC journalist Martin Rosenbaum.
Linguists at McMaster University have crunched the numbers, and it turns out Canadians really are nicer and more upbeat than Americans, at least on Twitter.
These two word clouds show the most commonly used words by Americans (on the left) and Canadians (on the right).
Two PhD candidates, Daniel Schmidtke and Bryor Snefjella, sorted through about three million geo-tagged tweets from 2015 to get these results.
You may notice that the American results are partially blurred, because there were so many cuss words. Still, you can make out some other favourites like "hell," "damn," and "hate."
Yep, there's definitely some "shit" and "ass" in there.
McMaster University
The Canadian cloud, meanwhile, is dominated by upbeat, positive words like “great,” “amazing,” “gorgeous,” and “favourite.”
Also: "habs," "raptors," and "leafs."
McMaster University.
"We could see the difference between the two countries' tweets as soon as we created a word cloud of the findings," Schmidtke told McMaster Daily News.
Ever since SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk proposed the idea, people have been wondering whether Hyperloop is actually possible. Two companies are hell-bent on making it a reality and one of them, Hyperloop Technologies, is starting to build a tes...
In addition to being the most delicious topping to spill forth from Canada's majestic forests, maple syrup may be harbouring some medicinal properties.
Researchers at at Quebec City’s Université Laval have been studying quebecol, a molecule that can only be found in maple syrup. Discovered in 2011, quebecol is created at some point during the process that turns maple sap into sweet, sweet pancake-enhancing goodness.
After synthesizing quebecol, bio-organic chemist Normand Voyer and a colleague in the Faculty of Dentistry found the molecule has anti-inflammatory properties.
"The interesting thing is that since maple syrup has been demonstatred to have some sort of anti-inflammatory properties, but no one knew what compounds in maple syrup have that property," Voyer told BuzzFeed Canada.
Now, they do. The research is still in its early stages, but in the future quebecol could be used in things like yogurt or toothpaste. Anti-inflammatories reduce things like swelling and pain caused by injury or disease.
Creighton359 / Getty Images
But don't go chugging maple syrup in hopes of finding a miracle cure. Voyer said that even downing two litres of pure maple syrup wouldn't be enough to get a sufficient amount of quebecol to do anything.
"Unfortunately the concentration of quebcol within maple syrup is way too low that you wouldn’t be able to get any bioactivity by drinking it," he said.
Although this study might make the maple syrup industry happy, it was an independent project. Voyer is just a Quebec man who really, really loves maple syrup. He calls it "scientific patriotism."
"I think it’s important that we try to help, using science, the development of Canada in general," he said.
"If you can provide a scientific basis of something that is in the cultural tradition in Canada, why not do it."
On Wednesday evening, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles County in connection with a massive natural gas leak that’s ongoing at a Southern California Gas Company storage facility. The leak, which began on October 23, has been spewing methane into the air at a rate of tens of thousands of kilograms (PDF) per hour.
Governor Brown’s declaration of a state of emergency requires that SoCal Gas and other gas storage facility operators throughout California start conducting daily inspections of well heads and implement infrared imaging technology to detect leaks. Facility operators will have to monitor the wells for mechanical integrity, gas pressure, and safety on an ongoing basis.
The emergency declaration doesn’t earmark any state funds to help fund a cleanup, but it orders the California Public Utilities Commission to "ensure that Southern California Gas Company covers costs related to the natural gas leak and its response, while protecting ratepayers.”
Ah, yes. GoldenEye 007. One of the classic Nintendo 64 titles and a memorable first-person shooter is certainly a game that I spent a lot of time with. Now we have a glimpse of what the game could look like if it was made with the tools available to...
After SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launches the Jason-3 satellite on January 17th, its first stage will attempt to land back to Earth unscathed. The private space corp performed a successful touchdown in December, but that was on solid ground. This time,...
We've been charting the progress of LinkNYC for the past year -- from a mere concept to a legitimate replacement for New York City's payphones. Now as LinkNYC has begun installing its gigabit-speed wireless hotspots, I sat down with Colin O'Donnell a...
Ever since SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk proposed the idea, people have been wondering whether Hyperloop is actually possible. Two companies are hell-bent on making it a reality and one of them, Hyperloop Technologies, is starting to build a tes...
