Stars made of antimatter? Humans arrived in North America during the last ice age? These are just two of the mind-boggling discoveries of 2021 that Science News claims that "if true, could shake up science." Of course, more evidence is needed for these bold findings and others shared by Science News:
— Read the restAntistarry night
Scientists may have spotted stars made of antimatter.
"The Book of Boba Fett" is almost here. In two days, on December 29, "Star Wars" fans will have a series dedicated to the most mysterious Mandalorian in the galaxy. "The Book of Boba Fett" will be a crime story, following Fett (Temuera Morrison) and his right-hand woman, Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) as they take over the criminal underworld on Tatooine. Fett is filling the vacuum left by the late crime lord Jabba the Hutt, killed by Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) some decades before.
In the "Throne" teaser dropped on Christmas Eve, a new character made her debut: Sophie Thatcher's Drash, riding a speeder that looks like a vintage motorcycle with an aesthetic that's basically Joan Jett meets "Star Wars." So who is this rad new rebel, and what will she mean for Fett and his new criminal enterprise?
We don't get to see much of Thatcher in the teaser above, but the few seconds we do get are a lot of fun. She zooms down a desert city street (Mos Eisley? Mos Espa?) on her sweet custom speeder before pulling up sideways in the biker-girl move of my dreams. So who could she be?
The Bespin Bulletin reports that Drash is described as "cool, self-assured, a defier of authority and in need of refinement." All of that comes across pretty clearly in the few seconds we see her, as Thatcher absolutely exudes cool. As someone who defies authority, she's likely some kind of operator within Tatooine's criminal underworld. This is all speculation, mind you, but she could be a mercenary who works with Fett and Shand to bring order to the planet. Her rebellious attitude would probably grate the nerves of the more stoic Fett, which leads to plenty of fun conflict. I personally love the "young rebel vs. old grumpy man" dynamic, and it works well within the "Star Wars" canon.
Drash feels like a Robert Rodriguez creation. Rodriguez is executive producing "The Book of Boba Fett" and directed the episode of "The Mandalorian" that featured his return, so that's not a huge surprise. Tough girls on motorcycles are a Rodriguez standby — just look at Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) in "Planet Terror" or Alita (Rosa Salazar) in "Alita: Battle Angel." It should go without saying that we can expect Drash to be a badass, because that's becoming Thatcher's speciality.
We can only guess at how Drash will impact "The Book of Boba Fett," but we know that Thatcher will be great. She's absolutely killing it as the teenage version of Natalie on the Showtime thriller series "Yellowjackets," and she's no stranger to space adventures, starring as Cee in the 2018 science fiction thriller "Prospect." (Fun fact: "Mandalorian" star Pedro Pascal plays a rival space prospector in that film, so if he shows up on "The Book of Boba Fett," they'll get to have a nice little reunion.)
In an interview with W Magazine, Thatcher said while she's good at playing rebel girls, she wants to expand her horizons:
"I hope that in the next couple of years people won't recognize me. I want to be committed to wigs. It's a hard process, but I really hope to do that and not be held as just the rebel girl or outsider. I want to tell stories that make people feel less alone. Movies helped me so much through my childhood, and I want to do the same for others."
That doesn't look like a wig in the teaser, but at least she's changed her hair color? Maybe "space rebel" is the first step towards a whole world of roles for the talented young performer. You can check out her latest performance as the mysterious Drash when "The Book of Boba Fett" premieres on December 29, 2021, exclusively on Disney+.
Read this next: The 10 Most Essential Episodes Of 'Star Wars Rebels'
The post Who is Sophie Thatcher's Cool Biker Chick Character in Book of Boba Fett? Let's Speculate Wildly! appeared first on /Film.
The world of animation can be a vast one. With films that tackle adventure, romance, slice-of-life drama, and everything in between, the medium can open viewers' eyes to new perspectives in a variety of imaginative ways. Creators from around the world have turned to animation to tell their stories, resulting in some of the most beloved works in cinema history. And with the industry constantly inventing new techniques and technologies, even more unique and essential tales can be told to audiences across the globe.
Yet, even with the acclaim that many animated films receive, quite a few fall through the cracks. That's why it's time to give some much-needed respect to these underrated animated movies. Some come from big studios, others from independent filmmakers. But, no matter their origins, these movies should be seen not just as distractions for small children, but as impressive and crucial pieces of art that should be watched by all different types of audiences. Let's take a look at some underrated animated feature films that deserve your time.
Based on the work of Osamu Tezuka, "Metropolis" focuses on a futuristic society where robots are blamed for taking all of the humans' jobs. There, Detective Shunsaku Ban and his young nephew, Kenichi, are on a mission to arrest Dr. Laughton, a scientist known for stealing organs. However, when Kenichi finds a mysterious girl inside Laughton's destroyed laboratory, Tima, his life is changed forever. The film follows the two young protagonists as they attempt to discover Tima's true purpose, along with her connections to the powerful Duke Red and his giant superweapon, the Ziggurat.
Directed by the legendary Rintaro, "Metropolis" was hailed as an impressive achievement back in 2001. It pioneered the use of CGI in anime and stood as a beautiful tribute to both Tezuka's work and Fritz Lang's groundbreaking movie of the same name. However, since its release 20 years ago, this beautiful film has fallen into obscurity. While that's partially due to its unavailability on streaming services, this under-appreciated gem also evokes a long-passed era of anime — "Metropolis" doesn't have the same flashy character designs and action sequences that new fans are accustomed to. Regardless, "Metropolis" deserves to be seen and respected for its achievements.
Helmed by the great Yoshiaki Kawajiri ("Nina Scroll", "Wicked City"), "Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust" exists not only as an excellent sequel to the original "Vampire Hunter D" film but also as a stunning homage to the great westerns and anti-hero stories of cinema's past. The movie follows D, a half-human, half-vampire bounty hunter searching for a girl named Charlotte, who has been kidnapped by Meier Link, a powerful vampire. But when Charlotte and Meier's romantic connection is discovered, D finds himself at a moral crossroads that complicates everything.
With stunning art direction and fantastic character designs by Yutaka Minowa, this adaptation of Hideyuki Kikuchi's novel continues to impress over 20 years later. Not only is it the gold standard of "Vampire Hunter D" movies, but it shows Kawajiri's understanding of the action and horror genres perfectly. From some narrative and visual nods to Clint Eastwood films to some incredibly memorable on-screen battles, "Bloodlust" is an animated film that respects the history of the films that came before it while setting a new standard for the heights that anime can achieve.
Released before Disney and Pixar's "Coco," 2014's "The Book of Life" is a quirky, visually engaging movie that tells a grand story. A musically inclined bullfighter, Manolo (Diego Luna), and a sword-fighting hero, Joaquín (Channing Tatum), are both in love with their childhood friend, María (Zoe Saldana.) Two gods, La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and her husband, Xibalba (Ron Perlman), decide to wager on which of the two men Maria will choose to marry. However, when Xibalba sees that Manolo and Maria are falling for each other, he dispatches a snake to kill Manolo, sending the young musician on a wild journey through the afterlife to prove himself.
While the score is not as memorable as that in "Coco," and the voice cast isn't as authentic, "The Book of Life" deserves a lot more credit than it gets. Not only does it sport an impressive array of talent behind the scenes, including writer-director Jorge R. Gutierrez, producer Guillermo del Toro, and musicians Gustavo Santaolalla and Paul Williams, but it tells a refreshingly romantic story that marches to the beat of its own animated drum. "The Book of Life" takes big risks that pay off, and should be respected for its unique visual achievements.
One of the few hand-drawn animated films from Dreamworks Animation, "The Road to El Dorado" is an adventure story with exciting visuals and memorable characters. The story centers around the dynamic duo of Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) and Tulio (Kevin Kline), two con artists who find themselves on a mysterious island with the map to the city of El Dorado in their hands. Following various clues, they eventually find themselves in the legendary city of gold, where they are greeted as prophesied gods. With the help of the fast-thinking local Chel, the boys must keep up appearances so that the evil high priest, Tzekel-Kan, doesn't discover their true identities.
With luscious art direction and catchy music by Elton John, "The Road to El Dorado" evokes the best of classic Hollywood buddy films, especially those of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby variety. Yet, the best aspect of this Bibo Bergeron and Don Paul-directed flick is its perfect balance of laughs and heart. "The Road to El Dorado" knows when to turn the dial up on the swashbuckling action, and when to slow down to focus on the emotions felt by its brilliant ensemble of characters. When combined with the efforts of its talented voice cast, "El Dorado" remains one of those movies that will always bring a smile to the viewer's face.
While most people know Sanrio for creating marketable characters like Hello Kitty, it also has a pretty fascinating history of producing animated films. One such project goes by many names, but western viewers likely know it best as "A Journey Through Fairyland." Directed by Masami Hata, this pastel fever dream is truly a sight to behold. Taking inspiration from Disney's "Fantasia," "A Journey Through Fairyland" focuses on a young man, Michael, who becomes consumed by doubt when it comes to his musical aspirations. When he meets a beautiful fairy, Florence, he's taken on a wild adventure on which he must confront both the forces of evil and his inner demons.
"A Journey Through Fairyland" is simple in its dialogue, but complex in its visual design. It represents the best of the '80s anime industry, while also showcasing the changing aesthetic styles of the time. With intense moments of genuine drama and the bizarre inclusion of Sanrio's cast of kawaii characters, it is a movie that must be seen to be believed. And yet, despite its weirder moments, "A Journey Through Fairyland" is an important piece of anime history that deserves a place alongside other classics.
Forgotten by many, Amblimation was the short-lived passion project of Steven Spielberg. Starting with the moderately successful "An American Tail: Fievel Goes West" and followed by the flawed "We're Back," Amblimation wouldn't survive past 1997, but its last feature film, "Balto," is arguably its most under-appreciated on a technical level (even though it spawned many direct-to-video sequels). The film adapts the real-life story of the heroic sled dog who helped get the diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, and while the narrative is full of typical '90s flourishes, it has a down-to-earth nature that still sticks with audiences.
Featuring a talented voice cast that includes Kevin Bacon, Bob Hoskins, and Phil Collins, "Balto" is often remembered for its heartwarming characters. However, it makes this list for two simple reasons: its memorable, emotionally charged, and almost dialog-free sequences, and its underrated James Horner score. The animation is top-notch, Horner's melodies swell, and everything comes together wonderfully. Sure, it might not be the most mature film on this list, but "Balto" is more than just a distraction for kids — it's also a compelling piece of art.
Considered one of Walt Disney Animation's riskiest productions, "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" is a pulp-inspired adventure that takes inspiration from the great action films of the past. The film tells the story of Milo James Thatch (Michael J. Fox), a nerdy linguist who is determined to find the lost city of Atlantis. When his late grandfather's friend, Preston B. Whitmore (John Mahoney), finances his expedition, Milo finds himself on a grand journey, during which he meets quirky crew members and a warrior princess and discovers the true power behind Atlantis.
Though flawed in its pacing and in certain character arcs, "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" is one of Disney Animation's most mature films. It's a story that could have been told using live-action, but that somehow looks even more beautiful when animated. It combines the talents of Disney's best artists at the time, taking inspiration from both anime and comic books ("Hellboy" creator Mike Mignola even served as a character design consultant). But the best aspect of "Atlantis" is how it evokes the best elements of classic adventure tales, making it a beautiful tribute to the genre.
Loosely based on the 1968 children's book "The Iron Man," Brad Bird's "The Iron Giant" is an animated gem that has gained a significant cult following. It details the adventures of Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), a young boy who discovers a mysterious metal-eating robot (Vin Diesel) in the woods. What follows is a fairly typical story of the friendship that blossoms between the pair, complete with parental anxieties, intervention by the military, and plenty of other drama. And yet, "The Iron Giant" stands above many similar tales because of the maturity of its themes.
From the Iron Giant's vague, militaristic origins to the movie's powerful exploration of death and Cold War paranoia, Brad Bird's masterpiece is far from a typical family film. While many might argue that "The Iron Giant" isn't really underrated, this is still a movie that not enough people have seen — it's a film that should be ranked among the greatest animated classics of all time.
Only a few comic book movies are criminally underrated. "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" is absolutely one of them. Not only does it contain magnificent visuals, a stunning musical score, and a delicate use of CGI, but it's also one of the most superb Batman stories to ever exist. In the film, the Dark Knight gets mixed up with a series of mob-related murders in Gotham. Simultaneously, a figure from Bruce's past returns, making his already complicated life more complex than ever. Romance, drama, and more Gothic vigilante mayhem ensues.
Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm's beautifully directed film takes Batman on a much more down-to-earth journey than his live-action theatrical films. Much of the action (aside from the bold finale) is intimate and small-scale, reflecting the emotional journey that Bruce Wayne goes on throughout "Mask of the Phantasm." When mixed with the art deco aesthetic perfected by "Batman: The Animated Series" and the haunting melodies of Shirley Walker, it really is the ultimate Batman movie.
When it comes to stop-motion animation, there are a number of classics, but Laika's "Kubo and the Two Strings" holds a unique and special place in animation history. Filled with jaw-dropping images and a classic story structure, the movie follows the titular hero on his quest to battle his evil, all-powerful family members. Along the way, he befriends unlikely allies and unlocks aspects of his past. The end result is nothing short of pure movie magic.
Keep in mind that the plot description above is simplified. "Kubo and the Two Strings" weaves an inventive tale of family drama, which would require many more words to detail correctly. In this case, though, the less information you have going in, the better. It's also a film full of tiny visual details. From the leaf-covered boat to the intricate monsters, this is a production that deserves to be examined frame by frame. Considering how laborious stop-motion animation is, the handcrafted world is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Considered by many to be animator Don Bluth's crowning achievement, "The Secret of NIMH" weaves a tale of adventure, mystery, science, and magic that is still beloved to this day. Mrs. Brisby, a field mouse, goes on a quest to seek the help of the rats of NIMH, a secret society of hyper-intelligent creatures. There she hopes that the rodents can protect her family, and keep their home from being destroyed. However, before that happens, Mrs. Brisby must prove her courage and save the ones she loves from danger.
Bluth's directorial debut is a masterpiece filled with haunting yet beautiful imagery from beginning to end. Although it has its weak points, it excels when it is allowed to be a dramatic piece, rather than a distraction for children. While "The Secret of NIMH" has a devoted fanbase among viewers of a certain age, it is still a film that not nearly enough people have enjoyed, making it a clear candidate for this list.
Serving as a sequel to William Joyce's "Guardians" stories, Peter Ramsey's "Rise of the Guardians" is a heartwarming tale that's full of whimsy, with just a touch of drama. The film focuses on Jack Frost, a mischievous character who's reluctant to become a new Guardian. But when the evil Pitch Black returns to give nightmares to the world's children, Jack must join Nicholas St. North, Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman to protect kids' dreams while also discovering his true purpose.
Though it's a silly concept on paper, "Rise of the Guardians" is one of the few Dreamworks movies that's earnest from top to bottom. Unlike the "Shrek" franchise, for example, it never mocks itself, and it wears its heart on its sleeve. Plus, it has one of the best casts of any of the movies on this list — Chris Pine's performance as Jack in particular doesn't get anywhere near the amount of recognition it should. When paired with a ravishing score by the magnificent Alexandre Desplat, "Rise of the Guardians" never fails to deliver just the right amount of sweetness, drama, and genuine emotion.
Though its reputation has improved as the decades have passed, Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is easily one of the most underrated films in the studio's animated catalog. Serving as a vague adaptation of the classic Victor Hugo novel, the House of Mouse's take on the material is a mixed bag. It's hard to ignore the wisecracking gargoyles and the out-of-place (and increasingly dated) pop culture references. However, when those awkward elements are pushed to the side, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is a powerful examination of themes like acceptance, inclusion, and understanding.
The true star of the movie is, of course, the animation. From the unforgettable visuals during the "Hellfire" musical number to the sweeping vistas as Quasimodo saves Esmeralda, "Hunchback" proved the scope of what Disney could accomplish when its hand-drawn animation program was at its peak. With a cast of believable human characters, the narrative's real-world elements only become more poignant as the years pass, too. Sure, some will argue that this movie is too adult for children and too childish for adults, but if you're willing to give this flawed yet fascinating film a chance, the finished product is truly a sight to behold.
A Japanese-American co-production, "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland" is a collaborative effort like none other. The film, directed by both Masami Hata and William Hurtz, depicts the adventures of the titular protagonist as he journeys to Slumberland to become the heir to the kingdom's throne. He meets new friends, fights off the evil Nightmare King, and learns important lessons along the way. With stunning narration and a somewhat clumsy structure, this fascinating movie has gained quite the cult following over the years.
From its majestic set designs to its pastel-filled art direction, "Little Nemo" is about as dreamy as it can get. Sure, the film had a bumpy road to the finish line, with talent dropping from the project left and right. But even with these famous hurdles, this charming slice of late-'80s nostalgia proves that hand-drawn animation has no limits, able to take you to luscious, well-realized fantasy worlds while also telling messy (but adorable) stories.
With many talented folks behind it, "The Last Unicorn" is a treasure. Via a screenplay written by the original novel's author, Peter S. Beagle, the film tells the story of a unicorn who believes that she is the last of her kind, only to set out on a quest when she learns that she may not be as alone as she thinks she is. Along the way, she gains new allies and fearsome foes, learns of love and loss, and discovers aspects of herself that she never could have imagined.
Brought to life by Topcraft, which would later go on to become part of Studio Ghibli, "The Last Unicorn" is one of the most unique-looking films ever produced. From its curvy lines to its pastel hues, there's really no animated movie on this list (or any other) that has the same visual flair. Yet none of that would work without the beautiful, mature tale at its center, which breaks the demographic barrier in more ways than one. No matter what age you are when you see "The Last Unicorn," this haunting yet lovely tale of fantasy and heartbreak should make you quite emotional.
Inspired by the tales of Sherlock Holmes, Disney's "The Great Mouse Detective" is the definition of cozy. With its cushion-covered set design and cheese-crumpet-filled details, it is a film as pleasing as a cup of hot cocoa. But don't let that description fool you — this adaptation of Eve Titus' novels doesn't hold back when it comes to action or snark, particularly when it comes to the interactions between its hero and its villain.
In the movie, the famous Basil of Baker Street (Barry Ingham) must go on a mouse-sized quest to save a young girl's missing father from the clutches of his arch-enemy, Ratigan (Vincent Price), and it's the banter between the two that makes for the film's most entertaining moments. But the action is quite good, too — there's nothing quite as thrilling as the film's groundbreaking clock tower fight, which revolutionized the animation world by using CGI to create a massive and memorable set piece. This, alongside its other remarkable elements, makes "The Great Mouse Detective" a significant part of Disney history.
Though some would argue it is far from an underrated film, Dreamworks' "The Prince of Egypt" deserves more credit. While it has recently gained some TikTok fame and remains a significant piece of millennial nostalgia, this remarkable movie stands the test of time. Adapting the Book of Exodus, the film explores the complex tale of Moses as he famously leads the Jews out of Egypt. With its breathtaking art direction and luscious animation, this is a film that respects its source material in the most beautiful of ways.
Featuring a remarkable voice cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Val Kilmer and a stunning score by Hans Zimmer, with songs by Stephen Schwartz, "The Prince of Egypt" is a project filled with talent from top to bottom. But it's the way that the filmmakers combine jaw-dropping spectacles with more down-to-earth touches that remains the most significant element of this already great movie. From the parting of the Red Sea to the tender moments between Moses and Tzipporah, each frame of this movie could be hung in an art gallery. It is that impressive.
Helmed by the lesser-known Studio Ghibli director, Isao Takahata, "Only Yesterday" is a journey through the forests of nostalgia for both its lead character and its audience. Based on the manga by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone, the film follows Taeko Okajima, a 27-year-old, unmarried businesswoman. As Taeko travels from the big city to the rural countryside during the summer, she reflects on her youth, wondering if her younger self would be impressed with the woman she's become. The answer she finds is one filled with love, tears, and a Japanese version of the famous song, "The Rose."
Though many would consider "Only Yesterday" a story more suited for live-action, Takahata and the team at Studio Ghibli make Taeko's hilarious and relatable stories a delight to watch. Takahata perfectly realizes the dreamlike world of memories and the bitter regret that one sometimes feels when recalling past experiences. With its tear-inducing finale, there's no denying that "Only Yesterday" is a unique slice-of-life film that brings the complicated process of growing up to life in some remarkable ways.
Inspired by the musicals of the '30s and '40s, the Turner Feature Animation film "Cats Don't Dance" was way ahead of its time. In the movie, a wide-eyed cat named Danny comes to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star, but when he encounters Hollywood's biggest celebrity, Darla Dimple, Danny realizes that Tinseltown is more brutal than the movies made it out to be. And yet, even with Darla throwing every obstacle in his way, Danny is determined to prove that "nothing's gonna stop" him and his animal friends from showcasing their talents.
With a story that depicts the struggles around inclusion and discrimination in Hollywood, "Cats Don't Dance" walked so that "Zootopia" could run. But even with that obvious comparison point, this Mark Dindal-directed film stands on its own toe-tapping feet. It features a color palette as bright as its lead characters' personality, clever lighting, and some of the most inventive musical sequences in any animated movie of its era. Ultimately, though, it's the film's sense of humor and heart of gold that viewers will treasure for decades to come.
Directed by the late filmmaker Satoshi Kon, "Millennium Actress" is a remarkable tribute to the movies and the history of Japanese cinema. In the film, viewers follow the fictional biography of Chiyoko Fujiwara, a fading film actress. As two documentary filmmakers interview her about her life, they relive incredible memories along with her. Yet, as her stories progress, a mysterious part of Chiyoko's past begins to unravel, resulting in one of the most romantic and heartbreaking stories to ever be animated.
Though many anime fans know of Kon's small yet fantastic filmography, not enough people have taken the time to see "Millennium Actress." Sure, it doesn't have the over-the-top visuals of "Paprika" or the Hitchcock-inspired thriller elements of "Perfect Blue," but "Millennium Actress" is a personal, down-to-earth movie from Kon, one that flourishes both in the small details of both its narrative and also its stunning animation. Yet nothing quite compares to its final sequence, a moment that will remind you of the magic of lost love, the movies, and everything in between.
Read this next: The 13 Scariest Animated Movies
The post 20 Underrated Animated Movies You Need to Watch appeared first on /Film.
Windows 11 is a massive update, bringing a host of changes — ranging from a grand visual overhaul to enhancements like Microsoft Teams integration and support for running Android apps. When it comes to the system requirements for the new OS, Microsoft has made some significant changes as well. One of the more widely-criticized requirements is the need for a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chip. While that requirement is waived if you’re installing the current stable channel release of Windows 11 (Build 22000.x) in a virtual machine, Microsoft has started enforcing it on newer Dev channel builds.
The reason Microsoft is making TPM 2.0 a requirement for Windows 11 is due to the necessity to offer hardware-level protection against cybersecurity attacks. Keep in mind that almost every PC since mid-2016 has built-in TPM in its firmware — you might just need to fiddle with a BIOS setting to enable it. The scenario is a bit different on a virtual machine (VM), though, as hypervisor vendors have yet to come up with a common standard of TPM passthrough. Moreover, the process of virtualizing the TPM itself greatly differs from one hypervisor to another.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to configure some of the most popular hosted hypervisors in order to add a virtualized TPM device for a Windows 11 VM.
Navigate this article:
Hosted hypervisors need an underlying operating system to work. They can be installed like regular computer programs. A guest operating system runs as a process on the host. Due to this design, you don’t need a specialized hardware just for the sake of virtualization — anyone can use a hosted hypervisor on their home PC.
Originally created as a native hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V is now included as an optional feature in the client editions of Windows (Pro and up). With a little tweaking, it is also possible to install it on the Home SKUs of Windows.
Once you enable the Hyper-V feature on your host Windows OS, you can easily add a virtualized TPM 2.0 device on a Windows 11 VM by following the steps below:
If you prefer to manage your Hyper-V settings from command line, then you can also use the Enable-VMTPM PowerShell cmdlet to perform the aforementioned steps. To know more, take a look at the official documentation of the cmdlet.
Oracle VM VirtualBox is a fantastic open source hypervisor and the developers behind the project are actively working on features like Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 for Windows 11 support.
Notably, the current 6.1.x lineup of VirtualBox will not likely receive these features due to the massive changes required in the codebase. The next major release, i.e. VirtualBox 7 should support them out of the box. There are development snapshots available, which include preliminary support for software emulation of a TPM 2.0 device, but your mileage may vary.
If you’re ready to play with the bleeding edge builds, then download the latest Oracle VM VirtualBox snapshot release from this page. Next, create a VM instance from scratch and set the target OS as Windows 11. The hypervisor should automatically create a virtualized TPM device for the VM. The module can be seen by booting to the UEFI firmware and navigating to Device Manager => TCG2 Configuration.
Starting version 17.1.0, Parallels Desktop enables the virtual TPM chip (vTPM) by default for all Windows 11 virtual machines — both new and existing — on Intel-based Macs as well as Apple M1-based Macs. In case you’ve a legacy version (like Parallels Desktop 15 and 16 for Intel-based Mac computers), a vTPM chip is available for Pro and Business Editions only. Parallels Desktop 16 doesn’t support this feature on Mac computers with Apple M1 chip.
Note that when the virtualized TPM is enabled, the virtual machine is restricted from running on other Macs. Moreover, it cannot be started on another computer if copied or moved.
The manual process of enabling vPTM on Parallels Desktop VMs is as follows:
VMware offers several hosted hypervisors for Windows, Linux, and macOS. You can easily enable a virtualized TPM on all of them.
For VMware Fusion Pro (macOS) and VMware Workstation Pro (Windows/Linux), you have to create a VM with a minimum hardware version of 14 and firmware type set as UEFI. You also need to encrypt the VM before attempting to enable the virtualized TPM.
To add the virtual TPM 2.0 device, go through the following steps:
Unlike its “Pro” sibling, VMWare Workstation Player doesn’t offer an option to add a virtualized TPM. Nonetheless, you can still enable it using a nifty tweak.
Back in October this year, Michael Roy, a VMWare Product Manager, confirmed that users of the free VMWare Workstation Player can enable TPM through an undocumented flag. Under the hood, the flag partially encrypts the VM without a password. The tweak should work with VMWare Workstation Player 16.2/Fusion Player 12.2 and above.
oh but you should try this new experimental and currently undocumented feature… Instead of encrypting and adding the TPM, just add this VMX flag instead:
managedvm.autoAddVTPM=”software”It only encrypts enough for the “secure enclave”, so perf should be way better, & no pwd.
— Michael Roy (@mikeroySoft) October 14, 2021
Here’s how to add TPM to a VMWare Workstation Player VM:
managedvm.autoAddVTPM = "software"
After configuring the hypervisor, do the following to check if the virtualized TPM is working properly.
tpm.msc and press enter.
Virtualized TPM under Oracle VM VirtualBox
As you can see, configuring a virtualized Trusted Platform Module 2.0 device on a hypervisor isn’t that difficult, but it’s not a completely straightforward method either. Hopefully, this tutorial made the process easier for you to understand and follow. Enjoy playing with Windows 11 VMs!
The post How to add TPM on your VM for Windows 11: VMware, VirtualBox, Parallels Desktop, and Hyper-V appeared first on xda-developers.
Good news! One of my predictions from episode five came true! Bad news ... one of my predictions from episode five came true. "Yellowjackets" ends the holiday weekend with "No Compass," directed once again by producer Eva Sørhaug ("Witch Hunt," "90 Minutes" and from a script by Katherine Kearns ("Hacks," "Little Fires Everywhere"). It seems like we're out of the character specific episode woods, and while this week doesn't bring something nearly as emotionally relevant as Shauna's abortion attempt, the last five minutes will surely knock the wind out of you. It's time to lie to our best friends, lie to our lovers, and lie to ourselves, so let's dive in! BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!
We're picking up exactly where we left off last week with Taissa's teeth covered in dirt and her own blood because mama's nighttime activities include climbing trees, eating soil, and making a midnight snack out of human flesh. Unfortunately, she's not got any time to waste on unpacking why in the actual hell she is self-cannibalising in her sleep, because she's gotta meet Natalie and Shauna to make the blackmail ransom drop. Back in 1996, Taissa is making good on her plans to head south to look for help but Van, Mari, Akilah, and Misty have decided to go with her. Coach Ben Scott is too relieved to have Misty out of his sphere to care, but Lottie's dream of a "blood river and red smoke" has convinced some (especially Laura Lee) to stay behind.
Since Jackie's not a total idiot, she's losing her mind trying to figure out what Shauna is hiding from her and finally confronts her about her secret. Shauna finally breaks and tells Jackie she's pregnant, but lies and says the baby belongs to Randy, not Jackie's boyfriend. Unfortunately, Shauna is a terrible liar and her half-assed story about it being a one-night mistake after too many "Milk and Malibus" (I audibly gagged typing this) immediately makes Jackie suspicious since she was at the same party. COME ON, SHAUNA! JUST SAY YOU WERE SNEAKING AROUND! Welp, Jackie ends up stealing Shauna's diary and reads it, crying, over a fire. The jig is up, Shauna. I can't tell if Shauna's inability to lie is a sign of her character or a reflection of what a monster I was at her age.
Good news, it's definitely her character, because adult Shauna is equally as dreadful at lying. After Shauna, Natalie, and Taissa chase down their blackmailer (don't worry, I'll come back to this) she finds Adam hanging around her house at 4:00 A.M. and tries to act like she's not super into it. Adam is a walking red-flag and that Shauna needs to run, but the longer this affair goes on, the more it's obvious Shauna clearly knows that Adam is bad for her but does not care. Anyway, they bang it out in her MARITAL BED and fall asleep which leads her to hiding him in the closet and lying to husband Jeff about her night with the same convincing tone as a teenager lying to their parents about their boyfriend hiding in the closet.
Teenage Misty doesn't have a lot to do this week, but she does deliver a hug to Coach Scott before she leaves with Taissa that overwhelmed me with second-hand embarrassment. Adult Misty, on the other hand, is continuing to be holding-a-journalist-hostage-to-the-tune-of-the-"Phantom of the Opera"-soundtrack levels of bats***, and I love her for it. I called her a baby Annie Wilkes in "Misery" during episode four, so seeing her VHS collection featuring "While You Were Sleeping, "Primal Fear," and "Misery" immediately fired up Dashboard Confessional's "Vindicated" in my brain, once again. Her love of "While You Were Sleeping" clearly comes from a very sweet moment of Van telling the girls the plot of the film around a fire, but her choice as an adult to make a hostage watch it while chained to a bed is uhhhh... Girl, whatever court-appointed therapist they made you see after the rescue did not do enough.
Misty isn't super keen on Jessica's claim that she's not the one blackmailing the group, and threatens to mail her dad a box of fentanyl-laced chocolates if she doesn't tell her everything she knows. All Jessica's got is that Taissa hired her, and that she knows Travis was murdered because someone cleaned out his bank account right after he died. So far that seems enough to keep Misty from killing her dad, but she's unpredictable and plays by her own rules so who knows where this hostage situation is going to go from here. At this point I think I'd risk double-crossing Tony Soprano before I'd piss off Misty F****** Quigley.
After convincing Taissa that she can't take the gun while traveling south to look for help, she also convinces Travis not to join them on their journey because she thinks she's in longing to change the subject with him. After the group leaves, those staying at home base head to the lake leaving them the cabin all to themselves. The two finally attempt to make the beast with two backs but Travis either can't go as hard as Natalie can, or he went too hard too fast. Either way, teen Nat is left alone and unsatisfied, half-naked in the bed, and Travis takes off somewhere and isn't seen again for the rest of the episode.
Adult Nat? She's continuing to go hard. She's got the ransom money, she thinks Shauna's plan to track the money is stupid and won't work (it doesn't), she and Taissa chase down the blackmailer through a store where he gets knocked into a barrel of glitter, and she pulls a gun on him. Taissa luckily knocks her aim so the shot goes off into the ground, saving all of them for adding a(nother?) murder to their growing closet of skeletons. Where did Nat get a gun, you ask? She snaked it from Kevyn of course! Unfortunately, cop Kevyn has to account for every round and he doesn't buy her story that she was "just playing with it." He KNOWS that Nat knows her way around a firearm, but she hits him below the belt by telling him that they were strictly screwing and his high-school crush on her is getting pathetic. Juliette Lewis' face is heartbreaking, and I genuinely don't think Nat meant anything she said to him.
I will happily confess that I'm a massive lurker of the "Yellowjackets" subreddit, because my brain is filled with a rolodex of increasingly ridiculous theories and I need people with even more farcical bananas ideas to make me feel sane. From the very beginning, one of the most popular theories has been that the mysterious Adam is Javi all grown up, and this is the first episode where I find myself getting worked into a shoot about it. In 1996, Javi is struggling with the loss of his dad in the plane crash and his first moment of hope comes after Shauna gives him pages from her diary so he can draw.
In this week's episode he is caught going through her stuff looking for the hunting knife so he can carve a wolf out of wood as an "art project" that he later gifts to her. In 2021, Shauna tries to dismiss Adam's crush on her by mocking his softboi antics as being "an artist" and "going with the flow." Adam has a back tattoo of two mountains, and when Shauna opens her safe in the pilot, we see that she has a drawing of two mountains inside, presumably drawn by Javi on the paper she gave him. Is this theory far-fetched? Yes. If this theory is false do I think show creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson planted these nuggets on purpose to make all of us go full Citizen's Detectives? Also yes. Either way, after that Domme text she sent him last week, I think Shauna KNOWS Adam is up to no good and she's getting off on out-playing him. WAIT. IS SHE ACTUALLY A VERY, VERY GOOD LIAR?!
I predicted weeks ago that Taissa's frequent hallucinations of wolves was due to her witnessing something go down between Van and some wolves, and I hate myself for being right. Early on in the episode, Van tells Taissa about how the time she went to New York City as a kid sucked because all she wanted was a soft pretzel and a horse and carriage ride, but her parents took her to see "Cats." She then confesses that she's going to join her on the journey south, because it'll get her one step closer to taking her to NYC and buying her a soft pretzel. Rules of lesbian representation in television state that if a character makes a cute gesture of affection, they're going to die.
Van grips a deer spine necklace given to her by Lottie as a token of luck on their journey, but when the girls come across a river flowing red water (like blood) she still follows Taissa. That night Taissa awakens (having climbed a tree and now wearing the spine necklace?) to find the girls trying to ward off a pack of wolves, but Van is attacked. Taissa fires a flare gun (making red smoke!!) and then axes the everloving s*** out of the wolf. Van doesn't move, and when Taissa turns her over, her face is like Jack Goodman in "An American Werewolf in London," but worse. We don't know for sure if Van is dead (she is seen in a flashback from the pilot looking like she's got fabric over her face AND one of the forest cult members is seen wearing her same "Coed Naked Soccer" t-shirt) but Taissa sure thinks she is and lets out a blood-curdling scream.
Highlight of the episode is Lewis' performance when she gives her tear-filled speech about Travis and snaps at Taissa and Shauna by telling them that they're just as f'd up as she is but they're better at lying to themselves about it. SHE'S RIGHT. If they weren't, Taissa likely wouldn't be EATING HER OWN HAND in her sleep and Shauna wouldn't be having an affair with a human red flag. Juliette Lewis has consistently been underappreciated throughout her career and this moment is such a great example of what a talent she is and has always been. I've been trying not to speak any more hyperbolic about the show than I already have, but we're genuinely seeing career-best performances from three women who have been acting since they were children in Lewis, Lynskey, and Ricci. (Tawny Cypress is obviously also incredible but she's the only adult of the core four that isn't played by someone who was also a massive star in the 1990s.)
"Yellowjackets" is on Showtime every Sunday. Showtime app users can watch the episode early, but the channel broadcasts at 10 P.M. PST/7 P.M. EST.
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The post Yellowjackets Are Up Bloody Premonition Creek with No Compass appeared first on /Film.
Even if you live somewhere with central heating, sometimes it’s nice to get an extra boost of warmth from a space heater. And though modern space heaters have features that make them safer than earlier versions, it’s still important to keep safety in mind when dealing with anything that produces such high…
Sure, 2021 gifted us with plenty of good new releases, even if we streamed them from home rather than experiencing them in a movie theater. Even so, we saw no reason to limit ourselves only to that which this year has provided—especially now, as omicron wreaks its havoc, we’ve got all the time in the world to dive…
Buying a Weber Kettle charcoal grill is one of the best decisions I made in 2021. Up until this year, I had been wary of this seemingly dad-dominated community of cookers, but I should have known better: All of my nicest readers are dads.
Starlink relies on thousands of small satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), 550 kilometers above the earth, to beam the internet down to ground transceivers, which in turn, broadcast locally or wire directly to your Starlink router. SpaceX plans to deploy up to 30,000 satellites to ensure global internet coverage via Starlink (some figures put the total as high as 42,000).
Per tradition, we're taking the week before the new year as a chance to review some of our favorites from this year. We open with this one from way back in January. Consider it… a gift.
Tyra was standing around the coffee maker with her co-workers when their phones all dinged with an email from management.
Edgar is no longer employed at Initech. If you see him on the property, for any reason, please alert security.
"Well, that's about time," Tyra said.
They had all been expecting an email like that. Edgar had been having serious conflicts with management. The team had been expanding recently, and along with the expansion, new processes and new tooling were coming online. Edgar hated that. He hated having new co-workers who didn't know the codebase as intimately as he did. "My technical knowledge is a gift!" He hated that they were moving to a CI pipeline that had more signoffs and removed his control over development. "My ability to react quickly to needed changes is a gift!" He hated that management- and fellow developers- were requesting more code coverage in their tests. "I write good code the first time, because I've got a gift for programming!"
These conflicts escalated, never quite to screaming, but voices were definitely raised. "You're all getting in the way," was a common refrain from Edgar, whether it was to his new peers or to management or to the janitor who was taking too long to clean the restroom. It seemed like everyone knew Edgar was going to get fired but Edgar.
Six months later, the team was humming along nicely. Pretty much no one thought about Edgar, except maybe to regale newbies with a tale of the co-worker from hell. One day, Tyra finished a requirement, ensured all the tests were green in their CI server, and then submitted a pull request. One of her peers reviewed the request, merged it, and pushed it along to their CD pipeline.
Fortunately for them, part of the CD step was to run the tests again; one of the tests failed. The failing test was not anything related to any of the changes in Tyra's PR. In fact, the previous commit passed the unit test fine, and the two versions were exactly the same in source control.
Tyra and her peers dug in, trying to see what might have changed in the CD environment, or what was maybe wrong about the test. Before long, they were digging through the CD pipeline scripts themselves. They hadn't been modified in months, but was there maybe a bad assumption somewhere? Something time based?
No. As it turned out, after many, many hours of debugging, there was an "extra" few lines in one of the shell scripts. It would randomly select one of the Python files in the commit, and a small percentage of the time, it would choose a random line in the file, and on that line replace the spaces with tabs. Since whitespace is syntactically significant in Python that created output which failed with an IndentationError.
A quick blame confirmed that Edgar had left them that little gift. As for how it had gone unnoticed for so long? Well, for starters, he had left during that awkward transition period when they were migrating new tools. The standard code-review/peer-review processes weren't fully settled, so he was able to sneak in the commit. The probability that it would tamper with a file was very low, and it wouldn't repeat itself on the next build.
It was hard to say how many times this had caused a problem. If a developer saw the unit test fail after accepting the PR, they may have just triggered a fresh build manually. But, more menacing, they didn't have 100% unit test coverage, and there were some older Python files (mostly written by Edgar) which had no unit tests at all. How many times might they have pushed broken files to production, only to have mysterious failures?
In the end, Edgar's last "gift" to the team was the need to audit their entire CI/CD pipeline to see if he left any more little "surprises".
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There are dark delights and darker revelations to be found in "Nightmare Alley" — both figuratively and literally. Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham is a grim cautionary tale of the monsters that men make, and the monstrous natures that men hide.
"Nightmare Alley" is a lush and lascivious noir that basks in the shadowy corners of society, where freaks, geeks, grifters happily reside, and where the high-powered elite only deign to drift through before returning to their pristine mansions. But what happens to the people from those shadowy corners and alleyways find their way to the hallowed halls of the uber-rich? That's what Bradley Cooper's ambitious con man Stanton "Stan" Carlisle discovers, as he works his way up from a low-ranking carnival worker to a lauded psychic who gets entangled with Chicago's most powerful and corrupt politicians along with a slinky psychiatrist (a scorching Cate Blanchett) with her own schemes. But for all his ego and ambition, it lands him right where he started.
Warning: spoilers for "Nightmare Alley" follow.
Stan Carlisle is a mystery for much of "Nightmare Alley," introduced in a wordless 15-minute sequence — in which he throws a body down a hole in a dilapidated house, sets the house on fire, and boards a bus to nowhere — before he finally utters his first line to a carnival's resident "geek" who had escaped his cage. "I'm not gonna hurt you," he promises, before the geek lunges at him, leading him to reciprocate and beat the poor man bloody. In just that one action, we get a glimpse of who Stan is: a man of contradictions, bad news in a handsome face, an enigma hiding a violent temperament. But as the film unfolds, we learn that Stan isn't that much of a mystery, he's just another man.
"Everybody has some trouble. Somebody they hated. A shadow of their past," alcoholic carnie Pete (a quietly devastating David Strathairn) tells Stan. Every man boils down to a series of issues and traumas, and as much as he might think of himself as a brooding loner, even Stan can be easily read like a book by Pete, who is one part of a clairvoyant act with his wife Madame Zeena (Toni Collette). Even the men who become the carnival's resident "geeks" — often destitute alcoholics or drug addicts who are culled from Nightmare Alley by the traveling carnival owner Clem Hoatley (a wonderfully skeevy Willem Dafoe) — are just ordinary men after a bad day. Geeks were a common act in early 20th century circuses; presented as the most shocking and lurid part of the "freak show," they were "wild men" who would entertain the masses by chasing live chickens and biting their heads off in a bloody display of violence. It was a comfort of sorts for the audiences, who got the temporary thrill of witnessing something so primal and brutal, while being assured that they are nothing like these feral creatures. But perhaps the differences between the civilized and the wild aren't so few, and perhaps the distinction between the light and the dark isn't that obvious.
Despite his dubious morality and secretly violent temper, Stan is presented as a character who believes in that distinction. He's disgusted by Clem's underhanded tactics to "recruit" geeks from Nightmare Alley once his current one dies — luring them in with promises of alcohol and temporary employment before essentially kidnapping them — but doesn't voice his displeasure. At least he's not like them, Stan appears to assure himself. And who would miss just another bum from Nightmare Alley?
But the thing that sets Stan apart from the destitute "geeks" who serve as the shocking opener of the carnival's freak show, is his aversion to alcohol and his handsome face. It's that face that lands him a job at the carnival, and that face that earns him a spot on Madame Zeena's team, after the clairvoyant takes a shine to him and offers him a job (of both varieties, if you know what I mean). Zeena's husband Pete resignedly accepts Stan as part of their team, and even as a protégé of sorts, teaching him about his and Zeena's old two-person psychic act – which he warns Stan against using, or be swept away by the power of reducing even the most sane person into a teary mess. But the one thing Stan must never do, everyone warns him, is to turn his act into a "spook show." This is when the performer leads a person to believe they have the power to contact the dead. The carnival workers who have no qualms about turning the homeless into freak shows, draw the line at giving people hope of contacting their long-gone loved ones. Because there's nothing crueler than false hope.
But Stan, of course, doesn't heed their warnings. He thinks he's above these low-life carnies and their low-level dreams — he and his young love Molly Cahill (a wide-eyed Rooney Mara) are destined for bigger, greater things. And after a mishap with wood alcohol leads to him accidentally poisoning Pete (a mistake that turns into a black spot on Stan's consciousness), Stan decides to shoot for these greater things — and essentially achieves them. Just two years later, he and Molly have perfected Pete and Zeena's old act, performing as the mentalist "The Great Stanton" and his beautiful assistant in the glamorous nightclubs of Chicago. But when one performance nearly gets derailed by Blanchett's particularly astute Dr. Lilith Ritter, Stan distracts her wealthy client Judge Kimball (Peter MacNeill) with a Hail-Mary spook show — and it works. Judge Kimball is convinced that "The Great Stanton" is the real deal, and employs him to communicate with his dead son, and later refers him to one of the most powerful, and dangerous, men in Chicago: Ezra Grindle (an alarmingly sinister Richard Jenkins).
Ignoring Molly's protests, Stan becomes drunk on his newfound influence over these affluent men, and eventually, on the actual drink, thanks to the creeping influence of Dr. Lilith Ritter. Lilith — who not-so-coincidentally shares the name of the "fallen" first wife of Adam, a Biblical seductress and destroyer of men — becomes Stan's partner-in-crime, his confidante, and the most fatal of femme fatales. She's the one who pries open Stan's psyche in exchange for the information on her rich clients, whom he swindles for cash that they agree to share. They embark on a steamy affair as Stan becomes more intoxicated with it all — with Lilith, with the money, with the power of his private "spook shows," and of course, with the alcohol, which he begins to indulge in — breaking a lifelong avoidance of the stuff — as he opens up about his guilt over Pete's death, more of a father figure to him than his real father. But his swift meteoric rise only means a more devastating fall.
With each private session, the guilt-ridden Ezra Grindle becomes more demanding, eventually ordering Stan to conjure his illegitimate lover Dora, who died of a forced abortion. Desperate and greedy, Stan turns to an embittered Molly, who reluctantly agrees to one last performance together before she leaves his life forever. But their act goes terribly wrong: as a bloodied Molly appears in the distance as Ezra's dead lover Dora, Ezra runs and grabs her and quickly realizes that she and Stan are frauds. He threatens to end their lives but before he can call for his grunt (Holt McCallany), Stan violently beats Ezra to death — this time with no one to stop him as he was before with the geek. Molly flees the city and Stan flees to Lilith, who gives him one last show of adoration before unveiling her true nature: the conwoman who conned the conman. She had hoarded all the money for herself and used the recordings of their sessions to frame him as a mentally disturbed client. All along Stan had believed they were equals — scammers who had gamed the system, people who could bypass that rigid class hierarchy — and all along, Lilith had seen him for what he actually was: just another greedy, low-life man.
Injured and humiliated, Stan is a man reduced to his primal functions: eat, breathe, drink. On the run from the police, he once again boards transportation to nowhere — this time, hopping a cargo train which takes him right back to the proverbial Nightmare Alley, one of the many hobo camps that littered America during the Great Depression. Now a full-fledged alcoholic wearing ragged clothes and stinking of rotting flesh, Stan looks and acts no differently than the Nightmare Alley residents he turned his nose up to all those years ago. And it's like this that he wanders into a nearby carnival, hoping to get a job as a mentalist. But this carnival boss (Tim Blake Nelson) has no use for mentalists, who have long gone out of style. But amused by Stan's story about the grotesque pickled baby in a jar which he bought off a carnival that shuttered (a disturbing story that Stan had first heard so long ago from Clem), he offers him a drink. He has a "temporary" job available for a new geek. Is he interested? The realization dawns on Stan's dirty, haggard face, just as quickly as it's overtaken by an ecstatic despair. "Mister, I was born for it," he says, laughing ... or perhaps sobbing.
And there we return full circle to the beginning, except now Stan is the trembling wild man at the end of the rope, and not the man holding the rope. How thin that distinction is, how fragile our concept of civilization is, and how easily it is for a man to be reduced to the dregs of society — the "geek" who amuses the horrified gentry with his displays of violence. Stan might've been a man of above-average looks and intellect, but he can't beat the system, and for that, he is punished with a fate that he once thought others were so deserving of.
From it morally grey protagonist, to its lamplit halls, and seedy office dealings, "Nightmare Alley" lives up to its label as a noir with a delicious vigor. But it is also a cautionary tale, a morality play, a modern American tragedy, and a cogent class commentary all at once. It cautions against trying to game the system, but it also highlights a system designed to trap the emotionally and physically damaged. It points out how easy it is for a man with ambition to temporarily bypass those class divisions, only to be shoved back in his place in the most harrowing of ways. And it shows how easily men can make monsters out of each other, and unearth the monsters within themselves.
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The post Nightmare Alley Ending Explained: Of Monsters and Men appeared first on /Film.
Like I’ve belabored already, I didn’t get to play a lot of stuff this year. My general impression is that this year is a lot like 2014, which was a generally “meh” year that didn’t have a lot of standout titles. Or maybe there were some great games and I missed them because I was distracted. Or maybe the games I played were great, but I couldn’t really get into them because I wasn’t feeling my best.
Ugh. Enough introspection. Whatever. I didn’t get excited about a lot of games in 2021, but I did manage to have a good time with a few. Here are the first four:
This was a charming little trifle of a game. The game deals you a stack of hexagonal pieces. Each edge can be woodlands, plains, houses, water, or farmland. Your goal is to place tiles with as many matching edges as possible. The better you do at matching edges, the higher your score. Scoring more points earns you more tiles, allowing you to continue expanding the map.
This one falls into the “trivial to learn, difficult to master” space that so many puzzle games aspire to. It’s a simple idea with simple rules and pretty art. This is the perfect coffee-break game for when you find yourself getting tired of old standbys like Tetris and Minesweeper.
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This was a nice little surprise. This free community-made mod for Portal 2 features a handful of new puzzles built around a time-shifting mechanic. In this game you have your usual portals for moving through space, plus an additional portal that allows you to jump between the present-day testing center and the dilapidated testing center of 20 years from now. Which means the puzzles in this game are slightly 4-dimensional.
In the future-space, some machines will be broken, glass will be shattered, power might be out, and piles of rubble will sometimes block your way. Going through the rectangular time portal will carry you to the other version of the facility, standing in the same spot. There are tricky shenanigans where you can leave a cube on the ground in the present and find it sitting in the same spot in the future, but moving the future cube will obviously not impact the position of the one in the past. This asymmetry takes some getting used to and forms the foundation for a lot of the early puzzles.
On top of having great puzzles, a brilliant new gimmick, and solid level design, the writing is pretty solid. The writing in fan-made Portal works is usually pretty bad. The best ones simply re-tell the jokes of the original with inferior voice acting, and the bad ones blunder into cringe territory. Eric Wolpaw – author of the original games – is a tough act to follow and his characters have a very unique voice that can be difficult to replicate.
I can’t promise that Portal 2 Reloaded attains Wolpaw-level humor, but it’s an admirable work with jokes that land. The author wisely didn’t try to bring GlaDOS into this, and instead features the voice of the “pre-recorded” announcements we heard in the introduction to Portal 2.
I’d have been happy to pay money for this, but with a price tag of zero this is a no-brainer. If you’re a fan of the Portal universe or gameplay, then this one is easily worth your time. Check it out.
I don’t usually go for roguelikes. I get a little too frustrated when a run ends and I have nothing to show for it.
I’m also not a huge fan of side-scrolling platformers. In my own personal journey through the hobby, I never spent time with the genre. As a kid in the 70s I was stuck with the early arcade classics of the time. Then I sort of took the 80s off from gaming to focus on programming. When the 90s rolled around it was time for shooters. Which means I basically skipped over the Nintendo years and never developed the passion for platformers that so many gamers seem to have. In fact, I’ve always been generally terrible at the genre and I find it vaguely annoying.
I’m also not crazy about games with huge checklists of crap to do. Stuff like:
I don’t know. I just can’t get into games where you need a wiki and a spreadsheet to figure out how to unlock all the goodies.
All of this is to say that I have no idea how this checklist-driven roguelike platformer wound up on my best-of-2021 list. Neon Abyss is like the anti-Shamus game. Why did I like it? Was it the groovy music? The gentle (by the standards of the genre) difficulty curve?[1] The neon lights? The deity-tier pixel art? I honestly don’t know.
In this game you dive into a dungeon beneath a nightclub to fight various gods. I didn’t really worry about the endless checklists of unlocks. I just slammed head-first into the game again and again until I managed to beat Prometheus. I got the impression that there was still a lot more to do after that, but I knew I was at the limit of my abilities so that’s where I decided I’d call it quits.[2]
I had fun with it, but I can’t explain why. I realize this means I’m failing at my job as a critic. Sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s been a weird year.
I had a hard time figuring out how I felt about this game. It’s not bad, but it wasn’t really what I wanted from developer Arkane and I had a hard time not holding that against it.
It’s like if BioWare made a really solid first-person shooter with a minimalist story. One one hand, the game is fine. On the other hand, it doesn’t contain any of the elements I look for in a BioWare game.
I have very particular tastes when it comes to immersive sims. I want the environment to be dark and spooky. I want the atmosphere to be thoughtful and isolating. I want the enemies to be monstrous and mysterious. Ideally, the environment itself should feel hostile to my presence.
Deathloop is pretty much the opposite of all of this. Instead of a spooky installation filled with monsters, I’m invading an island where a bunch of drunken idiots have set up a time loop so they can have a never-ending party without consequences. Instead of feeling isolated, I have a rival badass that calls me up for some bravado and trash talk.
Shit, I’ve played 20 hours of this game and I still don’t know why I’m supposed to care about breaking this stupid time loop. I guess my character is tired of the loop and wants to do something else? The System Shock games had a setup of “I am nearly the last person alive on this space station, fighting for my own survival in the face of a malevolent enemy that is compelled to destroy me.” Deathloop has the setup of “I’m bored and I’d rather go home.”
I dunno. That just doesn’t grab me.
Having said all that: It’s not a bad game. I had fun with it, but I spent the whole time wishing it was something else.
So that’s the first half of my list. I’ll post the rest later this week.
I’m a rules girl. I like structure everywhere but my bras. I like menus and time tables and responsibility charts, and if you give me a walkie-talkie to use I will never try hard drugs. I love rules because I know what works. I’ve thrown parties for five and soirees for 20,000 (in all kinds of absurd settings), and in…
The post The Gardener 2021 1080p WEB-DL DD5 1 H264-EVO appeared first on SceneSource.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Back in the '90s, if you were making videogames, you needed to make an answer to Mario. This is how we got everything from Sonic the Hedgehog to Crash Bandicoot, and we even got similar efforts on PC. Sure, id's Commander Keen was great in its day, but a few years later, Epic was building something cool. Epic had Jazz Jackrabbit.
Now, in 2021, 1994's Jazz Jackrabbit just got a fresh patch, with a range of fixes for the original game. These include correcting an "issue that made it nearly impossible to finish Orbitus 2", fixing "areas that should force you to ditch your hoverboard in Medivo 1, Turtemple 2, and Pezrock 2", and more.
The patch has been distributed with the GOG version of the game, and is actually the effort of a team of community members. You can read the patch notes over at Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online - or just go grab a bunch of mods from the fansite.
This year felt, in many ways, like a repeat of the one that came before it. Covid is still around, our healthcare system still sucks, and eating inside restaurants still feels like a dangerous and mildly irresponsible activity. Another (happier) thing that didn’t change all that much was the air fryer’s popularity.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Coming off the Marvel’s Avengers disaster, I expected Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy to be another big letdown. Instead, I was delighted by Guardian’s endearing cast, excellent storytelling, and ample charm. Quite simply, it’s a breezy good time that everyone is better off having experienced. A Focused, Pure AAA Vision Made by the same developer … Continue reading Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Review: A Charming Delight →
The post Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Review: A Charming Delight appeared first on DSOGaming.
Zach Galifianakis is back with a brand new holiday edition of Between Two Ferns (do note that the ferns are festive). As is his way, he awkwardly 'interviews' his guests and creates cringeworthy moments for all. This time around he's got Samuel L. — Read the rest
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We recently reported that the HDMI Licensing Administrator stopped labeling newer HDMI displays with the 2.0 version, and allowed manufacturers the ability to utilize the HDMI 2.1 moniker, as long as it fits the standards already set. This potentially can cause a manufacturer to label an HDMI 2.0 display as the 2.1 version to falsify claims to consumers and was seen by a Chinese seller practicing that exact scenario.
Now, there is a new HDMI 2.1 variant about to be released at some point in the future with the moniker of "HDMI 2.1a."
What is currently odd is the information about HDMI 2.1a, as it will be soon called, was appearing on the Licensing Administration's page but has since mysteriously disappeared with no explanations. It is possible that there are a few last-minute decisions to finalize the new standard for use, but that in and of itself is pure speculation. VideoCardz has mentioned that the information can be found via Google Cache. One of the newest additions to the HDMI 2.1a is the use of Source-Based Tone Mapping or SBTM.
Source-Based Tone Mapping (SBTM) is a new HDR feature that allows a portion of the HDR mapping to be performed by the Source device instead of the Display device. SBTM is especially useful in cases where HDR and SDR video or graphics are combined together into a single picture, such as picture-in-picture or a program guide with an integrated video window. SBTM also enables PCs and gaming devices to automatically produce an optimized HDR signal in order to maximize the utilization of the display’s HDR capabilities without manual user configuration of the Source device.
— HDMI.org
Gamers and PC enthusiasts will see the most use of the new technology, due to the ability for multiwindowed environments. The source device, in essence, controls the tone mapping. This process allows separate windows to display either SDR or HDR optimized content simultaneously. TFTCentral states that the new SBTM is not a replacement for the current HDR technology (HDR10 and HLG, as well as other offerings). SBTM is set to deepen the HDR experience by offering more capability for optimization with HDR-capable devices.
Source: TFTCentral, VideoCardz
The post HDMI 2.1a to get new standards for next-gen HDMI displays, including Source-Based Tone Mapping by Jason R. Wilson appeared first on Wccftech.
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Welcome to the last newsletter of 2021. I sincerely hope you enjoyed and benefited from this publication. It may be corny to say, but this newsletter is more to me than just a list of shop tips and tool recommendations. I see it as a community, a continuing conversation. I love when an issue goes out and I instantly get messages of encouragement, tips, and feedback on the content. This newsletter is one of my favorite things I do each week and I thank you for participating in it with me. I’m looking forward to sitting around the virtual potbelly stove with all of you in 2022, trading tips, tool recomendo, and tall tales from the shop.
Stay safe, have fun, and we’ll see you in the new year.
My Top 5+ Tips for 2021
On Boing Boing last week, I did my annual round-up of favorite tips from this newsletter. You can see all of those tips here. Below are my top five. OK, top five plus some additional 3D printing tips.
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BTW: Here are my round-ups for 2019 and 2020 (part 1 and part 2).
Ooey Gooey Spruey
Anyone who’s done any scale or game modeling, dungeon crafting, or other plastic modeling is no doubt familiar with sprues. They are the ubiquitous frames that hold plastic model parts and are part of the injection molding process. In this four-part video, game modeler Jon of Miniature Hobbyist, shows close to 40 different things you can make from this plastic waste material, from model doors, walls, and cobblestone streets to piles of treasure, tents, barricades, cages, and even tools for your workbench, such as painting sticks and paint-pot holders. In part 4, he shows how you can turn sprue material, broken down in acetone, into a goopy plastic material (that he’s dubbed “Ooey Gooey Spruey”) for casting, gap-filling, turning into pipes and thick cables, miniature bases, and more. Fascinating stuff.
Paint-On Copper Plating?
In a follow-up to her recent video where she electroplated the gas tank on her motorcycle with copper, Laura Kampf decided to try a much easier platting method of simply painting on a copperplate solution. She saw a video demonstrating the technique and wanted to try it out herself. It appears to work. As she points out, this could lend itself to all sorts of applications.
Using 3D Printing Infill as a Design Feature
I absolute love this idea of using infill structures in 3D printing as an artistic design. (Infill is the patterned support structure used inside of objects to provide strength while cutting down on printing time, weight, and filament). Joe of Makes’n’Breaks decided to foreground the usually hidden patterns of infill in a series of coasters combining the 3D printed infill structures in a wooden frame. The results are beautiful.
Making a Table Stable
You know the drill. You’re at a restaurant or bar and the table wobbles, so you or your server shoves a matchbook or napkin under a leg. As this video explains, it’s not the table legs that are likely different lengths, it’s likely the floor that is uneven. To stabilize, simply turn the table a quarter turn to find more level ground. Coincidentally, right after seeing this video, my wife and I were at an outdoor restaurant with a wobbly table. Our server came up, twisted the table a few inches. Problem solved.
Edge Gluing Tip
North of the Border is a YouTube channel where crafter Adam makes really clever book nooks (little dioramas that go on bookshelves). During this Mines of Moria infinity mirror episode, he shares a great tip. When gluing two pieces of material together (especially something you want to keep clean and glue-free, like mirror glass), don’t apply the glue all the way to where the two pieces will join or smear the glue down along edge (as it will accumulate as you go). Apply a thin bead of glue along the edge and then smear it out and over the over the edge. This way, when you join the two pieces, there will be no glue squeeze-out along the seam of the join. (See the video if this to too confusing).
Ten 3DP Tips from a Seasoned Maker
On Alexandre Chappel’s YouTube channel, he offers up ten top 3D printing tips. His advice includes:
* Upgrade to a .06mm nozzle.
* Increase perimeter (wall thickness) over infill to improve part strength and reduce print time.
* Don’t get distracted by all the fancy filaments out there – most everything you print can be done with PLA.
* Use glue stick for better bed adhesion.
* If you have a large or complicated part, print out a small section of it to test fit and function before committing to a full print.
* You don’t have to 3DP everything. Create hybrid objects with 3D parts and conventional hardware (bolts, screws, threaded rods) – saves time and adds strength.
* When designing parts, avoid support structures as much as possible. See more details and the rest of his list here. [H/t Kevin Kelly]
More Readers Favorite Tools for 2021
Reader James Brown writes:
A painter’s tool. Some call them a 5-in-1 or a 7-in-1 or whatever, depending on the number of functions. I use it as a pry bar, scraper, cutter, putty knife, nail remover, hammer, spacer, etc. In fact, I rarely paint, so I probably don’t use the dedicated functions, such as the roller cleaner, nearly as much as the general purpose functions. They are so inexpensive, I never worry about breaking or damaging it but they seem almost indestructible anyway.
Kent Barnes:
I have the DiResta mini ice pick brass handled with a very pointy steel tip. Such a simple, elegant idea. I use it all the time for a multitude of things. Punching through leather, starting screw holes, marking the cut on wood, picking up that piece of food that fell between the hot gas grill grate. I have even chipped ice with it! A very cool tool.
Keny Marshall:
Just discovered this oldie but goodie: Curv-o-Mark Wrap-a-Round. Gasket material and good for dividing curved pipe sections as well as measuring and marking cylindrical material.
Mug Messaging
My friend Kent Barnes tweeted the above picture to me and said:
“Laurie has a white porcelain tea mug. I decorate it with dry-erase markers when I bring her tea. Wipes off easy so the mug is ready for more signs of Love.”
I can’t think of a sweeter way to wrap up the year before the holiday break. It’s little gestures like this that can communicate so much. These are the real gifts we give each other. Unexpected gestures of kindness, love, and inspiration, uncommon courtesies, anything that communicates care, consideration, and the fact that you’re listening to the people you care about. That and a little whimsy forever go a long way. More of all of this in 2022.
Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy holidays.
