firehose

According to a recent report, Google might also be getting into the smartwatch game.

Surprisingly, the UN reports there are now more people with mobile phones (six billion for world population of seven billion) on earth than there are with access to clean toilets (4.5 billion).

Eidos Montreal didn't mess around when it came to fixing one of the most widely criticized aspects of Deus Ex: Human Revolution in the upcoming Wii U Director's Cut.

"The boss fights are now as they should have been," Emile Pedneault, game designer on the Director's Cut told us today at PAX East. "We took them and completely rebuilt them. We couldn't change [the boss' character] model and the way they need to die because of the story telling, but we changed the level layout. We tweaked their AI and we've added tons of ways to deal with them."

He continued, "You can deal with a boss fight in a stealth way, you can deal with a boss fight in a hacking way. We even have for each boss fight a way to kill them without firing a single bullet."

Pedneault showed us the first boss fight, pointing out all the different ways that it could now be completed using other skills beyond "throw every grenade in your inventory and just keep shooting." There are several corridors now for stealth attacks and turrets for hacking, along with other goodies for players to discover.

The boss fights were widely criticized when Deus Ex: Human Revolution originally launched, with Eidos Montreal eventually admitting it farmed out that portion of the game to an outside developer. Deus Ex DLC "The Missing Link," bundled with the Wii U version, designed in-house at Eidos Montreal gave a far more flexible experience.

Gallery: Deux Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut

Deus Ex: Human Revolution boss fights on Wii U 'as they should have been' originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Capcom is bringing back DuckTales in a new game developed by WayForward Technologies. This is one of the two new games teased by Capcom ahead of the "World of Capcom" panel, along with Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara.

The new DuckTales, of course, is inspired by the NES classic, a Mega Man-esque game in which Scrooge McDuck used his cane as both a golf club and a pogo stick. The new version has new hand-drawn sprites, and features original voice work. It's coming to Wii U, PSN, and XBLA for $15.

Update: DuckTales Remastered is actually a full remake of the NES game, with new features including a museum and "A MONEY BIN YOU CAN ACTUALLY SWIM IN!" So we've now solved that mystery, and rewritten history to reflect it.

Capcom reveals DuckTales Remastered, developed by WayForward [update] originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Necropolis

By Samit Sarkar on Mar 22, 2013 at 12:39p

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, a side-scrolling four-player brawler, was announced by Capcom during its "World of Capcom" panel at PAX East 2013 today.

It is a collection of two old Dungeons & Dragons arcade games by Capcom, Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara. Listings for both games were found on the Korean ratings board last week.

It will be available for $15 this June on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Windows PC via Steam and the Wii U eShop. Four-player drop-in/drop-out online co-op will be powered by GGPO, including leaderboards, and local co-op will be available as well.

Players will be able to alter the game with customizable house rules. Completing in-game challenges will provide additional experience to level up characters, as well as Vault points, which allow players to unlock items like character art.

le Bat

Ex libris

With Megan Fox confirmed as Woman In Jumpsuit Who Agrees Not To Talk Out Of Turn Again in the Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, production has now moved on to casting the turtles themselves, because this film is really happening. First up among the turtles who are ninjas, no longer mutants, and only nominally teenage is the red-bandana-wearing, sai-wielding Raphael, who ancient songs tell us is “cool but crude,” a volatile combination that makes him easily the most emotionally rich of all the Ninja Turtles. Those characteristics will be embodied by Alan Ritchson, whose experience with wielding daggers as Gloss in the upcoming Hunger Games sequel, along with his time spent being an amphibian as Smallville’s Aquaman, apparently won him the role from the world’s most literal casting director. Deadline clarifies that Ritchson will be hidden behind a performance-capture suit for the role. Though of course, there ...

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To celebrate what would have been Akira Kurosawa’s 103rd birthday if he hadn’t died in 1998, Hulu is streaming 24 of his films from the Criterion collection, plus various supplementary featurettes and interviews, for free this weekend. They’re available now through Sunday at the site’s Happy Birthday, Akira Kurosawa page, and they amount to more than 44 hours of viewing, so you’ve got just about enough time to make some lame excuse to your boss, professor, or the friends you made plans with this weekend, then head straight home, grab some popcorn, and move in for the duration. Need help prioritizing? Our Kurosawa Primer from 2010 covers the director’s career, which films are essentials, and why he’s a crucial part of the cinematic landscape. It does not cover the essentials of peeing into a cup and going without sleep for three days so ...

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whospam:

I need all of these.

WarpZone › DrWho Cookie Cutters

savagedamsel:

First time accepted submitter GovCheese writes "Canonical, the software company that manages and funds Ubuntu, announced that the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will base their national reference architecture for standard operating systems on Ubuntu, and they will call it Kylin. Arguably China is the largest desktop market and the announcement has important implications. Shuttleworth says, 'The release of Ubuntu Kylin brings the Chinese open source community into the global Ubuntu community.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s one of the great untold stories of the 2012 presidential campaign, a tale of ego and intrigue that nearly upended the Republican primary contest and might even have produced a different nominee: As Mitt Romney struggled in the weeks leading up to the Michigan primary, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum nearly agreed to form a joint “Unity Ticket” to consolidate conservative support and topple Romney.

A video of unknown origin appearing to show a grown man sexually abusing an infant girl went viral overnight on Facebook, garnering as many as 32,000 shares and over 5,000 likes before finally being removed by the website.

Clearly failing to learn the lessons of countless TV movies and Dateline reports, the increasingly reckless Amanda Bynes put a hit out on her vagina yesterday in a public arena, using Twitter to contract Drake for the job. “I want @drake to murder my vagina,” Bynes whispered coldly into the Internet, presumably sliding a manila envelope full of unmarked bills and a black-and-white photo of the target toward her smartphone. It was the culmination of an imaginary relationship that comprises years of Bynes sending alternately flattering and flirtatious tweets the pop star’s way. Eventually, Bynes pretended to grow close enough to Drake that she felt safe in recruiting him for the dangerous assignment of putting an end to her genitals, once and for all.

But now that her plot has been exposed and likely derailed, we’re left to wonder at Bynes’ motivation for wanting to murder her vagina ...

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Friend of the Atlas @nickhide passed along this ChickGeekGames blog post containing a raft of imaginary maps depicting various game worlds. (See also Part 2 of the post.). Among them is this finely drawn map of Vvardenfell, scanned from the paper map that came with Morrowind.

FotA @Strange_Bundle also passed along this explorable map of the same world, built on the Google Maps API. It’s nicely done, with additional locations appearing as you zoom in to increasing levels of detail.

“In 1986, Foot was the subject of one of the best-known newspaper headlines of all time. The Times ran an article about Foot, who had been put in charge of a nuclear disarmament committee. The headline stated “Foot Heads Arms Body.” Although originally written as a joke by editor Martyn Cornell, the paper ran it.”

- Michael Foot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

America would never allow a president with Down syndrome, but that does not mean we would eat that person.

via http://lagerkoller.soup.io/

#unsungHeroesOfGoogleReader (with tweets) · mihai · Storify:

Notable:

@arif_pasha For a while, the lone remaining maintenance engineer on Reader. SERIOUSLY. Kept lights running.

@jenna: Designed the major social improvements – which were later rolled back to serve Google+ @dolapo: The amazing frontend code behind comments, friends, iPhone Safari UI, fine-grained trends. @susan_nectarine: The wizard behind Comments! Fought for server support (which kept Reader alive longer). @justinhaugh: helped with infamously gnarly “mark all as read”, sort by oldest, subscriber counts in headers

never forget

(via @mihai, Twitter)

If Google Reader were a movie or TV show, at the end of the spectacle the credits would roll and you would get to see who was responsible for what you just saw. But in today's age, software "about box credits" are no longer common.

I thought it might be nice, for the sake of posterity, to list all those who worked on Reader over the years. There's been a lot of discussion about Reader's imminent shutdown, but most of it focused on Google (the corporate entity) and its strategy. However, at the end of the day, Reader was built by people. I and a few others have been lucky enough to be more visible, but everyone involved deserves credit and thanks. This is especially the case since as Chris and Brian have described, Reader faced quite a few internal struggles. As I remember it, nearly everyone on the Reader team explicitly requested to join it, and often had to fight to keep their role.

Coming up with this list was difficult, both technically (can you name all your coworkers going back 8 years?), and because it was tough to decide where to draw the line. Google is a big company, and many people in many supporting roles helped to Reader out. First, here's a list of all full-time Reader team members:

• Chris Wetherell (2005-2008): Software Engineer, now at Avocado.
• Jason Shellen (2005-2006): Product Manager, now at Boxer.
• Ben Darnell (2005-2009): Software Engineer, now at Viewfinder.
• Laurence Gonsalves (2005-2010): Software Engineer
• Steve Goldberg (2005-2011): Engineering Manager, still at Google
• Mihai Parparita (2005-2010): Software Engineer, now at Quip
• Kevin Fox (2005, 2006): User Experience Designer, now at Electric Imp.
• Misha Dynin (2006, 2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Justin Haugh (2006-2008): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Brad Hawkes (summer of 2006, 2007-2010): Software Engineer Intern, Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Nick Baum (2006-2007): Product Manager, now at StoryWorth.
• Dolapo Falola (20% in 2006, 2007-2009): Software Engineer, now eating yogurt and granola at Foursquare.
• Chrix Finne (2007-2008): Product Manager, now at Optimizely.
• Jenna Bilotta (2007-2010): User Experience Designer, now at Avocado.
• Shreyas Desai (2007-2008): Software Engineer in Test, now at Yahoo!.
• Susan Shepard (2007-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Gaurav Jain (2007-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Jason Hall (summer of 2007): Software Engineer Intern, still at Google.
• Nitin Shantharam (summer of 2007): Software Engineer Intern, now at Swapbox.
• Brian Shih (2008-2010): Product Manager, now at Pocket Gems.
• Mike Knapp (2008-2009): Software Engineer, now at Shoes of Prey
• Nick Santaniello (2008-2009): Product Support, now at Robysoft.
• Derek Snyder (2008-2009): Software Engineer, now at a as-of-yet-unnamed startup.
• Matt Steiner (2008-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Beverly Yang (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Derek Mauro (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Garrett Wu (2009-2010): Software Engineer, now at WibiData.
• Ye Zhou (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Devin Kennedy (summer of 2009): Software Engineer Intern, still at Google.
• Arif Siddiquee (2009-2011): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Alan Green (2011-2012): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Mick Hollins (2011-2012): Software Engineer, still at Google.

Additionally, here's others who contributed to Reader in various roles at Google:

• Design: Micheal Lopez
• Executives: Greg Badros, Jeff Huber, Pavni Diwanji
• Legal: Halimah DeLaine
• Localization: Gabriella Laszlo, John Saito, Katsuhiko Momoi, Sasan Banava
• PR: Nate Tyler, Oscar Shine, Sonya Boralv
• Product Management: Bruce Polderman, Sabrina Ellis
• Product Marketing: Kevin Systrom, Louis Gray, Peter Harbison, Robby Stein, Tom Stocky, Zach Yeskel
• Quality Assurance: Amar Amte, Jan Carpenter, Kavitha Venkatesan, Madhuri Kulkarni, Thanh Le
• Site Reliability Engineering: Chen Wang, Christoph Pfisterer, David Parrish, Ed Bardsley, Eric Weigle, Gary Luo, Huaxia Xia, James Long, Jerry Zhiwei Cen, Keith Brady, Lantian Zheng, Liren Chen, Matthew Eastman, Nadav Samet, Niall Sheridan, Olivier Beyssac, Patrick Scott, Paul Chien, Pereira Braga, Petru Paler, Sara Smollett, Scott Lamb, Sebastian Adamczyk, Vladimir Filipović, Wensheng Wang, Yu Liao
• 20% time and additional engineering: Aaron Boodman, Abdulla Kamar, Akshay Patil, Aman Bhargava, Brad Fitzpatrick, Brett Bavar, Brett Slatkin, Charles Chen, Ed Ho, John Pongsajapan, Olga Stroilova, Peter Baldwin, Steve Jenson, Steve Lacey, T.V. Raman, Wiktor Gworek
• User Experience Designers: Jonathan Terleski, Sean McBride
• User Experience Research: Anna Avrekh, David Choi, Nika Smith, Theresa Sobczak
• User Support: Graham Waldon, Paul Wilcox, Wen-Ai Yu

I'm sure I'm missing names and got things wrong, so don't hesitate to contact me with corrections. And to everyone that I worked with on Reader, it was a pleasure!

P.S. For another take on the people behind Reader, see Chris's #unsungHeroesOfGoogleReader tweets.

“This kind of reaction is not uncommon, for Skyler in particular and for women – often wives – on top-drawer TV dramas in general. Characters like Skyler become targets of vituperation unimaginable to their male counterparts, most of whom engage in vastly more destructive and immoral behavior every episode. By failing to indulge every whim of the the male antiheroes around whom their shows are built, the women become obstacles to those men getting exactly what they want when they want it at all times, which is the core fantasy of antihero fiction. Cold cunning, ruthlessness, rage, self-interest, a propensity for physical violence – we gender these unheroic characteristics as male, and celebrate them; passivity, bitterness, grief, emotional enmeshment, a knack for attacking and deflating egos – we gender these unheroic characteristics as female, and loathe them. Skyler White, Betty Francis, Megan Draper, Catelyn Stark, Sansa Stark, Cersei Lannister, Carmela Soprano: On the sole count of “being women,” Fan Court finds you guilty as charged.”

-

‘Breaking Bad’ Recap: The Sky Is Falling

Been seeing some .. pretty COLORFUL critiques of characters from popular shows lately!  You don’t like them?  They deserve what because you don’t like them?  Ok.

That's Joystiq, as seen through a new Google Chrome "Experiment." The game World Wide Maze turns the website (or Google search result) of your choice into a three-dimensional maze, full of jumps, elevators, and desirable blue spheres to pick up.

It's sort of a 3D Marble Madness - or, if you prefer, a Super Monkey Ball with somewhat less. If you have Chrome on your phone, you can connect it to your computer and play the game using your phone's tilt sensor, adding to the Monkey Ball-ness.

This is a really neat experiment to play as a game, though we don't recommend you try to read our site this way. We don't want to be responsible for your illness.

Google Chrome 'experiment' transforms websites into thrilling marble mazes originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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