Dominique Luchart's Blog, page 605
June 4, 2021
A very sus chicken nugget shaped like an Among Us crewmate sells for $99,997 on eBay, Jay Peters
I’d still eat it. | Image: eBayAfter an intense, dayslong bidding war, a single McDonald’s chicken nugget shaped like one of the Among Us crewmates has just sold for an eye-watering $99,997 on eBay.
The little nugget started off from humble beginnings, listed for a respectable 99 cents on May 28th. (I’d pay that much for it. Maybe even $5.) And for a little while, there were no bids.
But then, two days after it was first listed, somebody placed an (at the time) astonishingly high $14,869.69 first bid on the nugget, and things just escalated from there. I recommend scrolling through the bid history, it’s wild.
Screenshot: eBayThe completed listing.
One factor that may have driven up the price is that the nugget apparently came from a BTS…
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June 3, 2021
Taito announces mini arcade cabinet with rotating screen and trackball controller,
Taito is the latest Japanese video game publisher to resurrect old hardware in mini form. The company behind Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and many more arcade classics has just announced the Egret II Mini, which like Sega’s excellent Astro City Mini is a shrunken-down version of a popular arcade cabinet.
The original Egret II was released in the ’90s, and its key feature was the ability to rotate its screen 90 degrees so that games with tall aspect ratios — like Space Invaders and other shooters — could be played in tate (vertical) mode. Appropriately enough, that feature is present on the Egret II Mini, which has a 5-inch 4:3 LCD that can be played in either orientation.
The Egret II Mini’s primary controls include six primary buttons and an arcade-style microswitched stick that can be adjusted from four to eight directions depending on the game. There’s also an optional expansion controller that includes a paddle input for games like Arkanoid, as well as a trackball for the likes of Cameltry.
Here’s what the controller looks like. It’s 240 x 100 x 48mm, so it looks pretty substantial — somewhere between a traditional gamepad and fighting stick in size.
Taito is also selling a gamepad and an additional arcade stick as optional extras:
There’ll be 40 games preloaded on the cabinet itself, and the expansion controller also includes an SD card with ten games that use the paddle or trackball. Here’s the list of titles that have been confirmed so far:
Space Invaders Lunar Rescue QixElevator ActionChack’n PopBubble BobbleRastan SagaRainbow Islands ExtraNew Zealand StoryDon Doko DonViolence FightCadashLiquid KidsMetal BlackKaiser KnuckleThe paddle/trackball games so far confirmed for the bundled SD card include:
Strike BowlingArkanoidPlump PopSyvalionCameltryArkanoid ReturnsBeyond the SD card slot, the Egret II Mini also has a USB-C port for power, two USB-A ports for controllers, an HDMI port for TV output, and a headphone jack.
The Egret II Mini could get pretty expensive depending how big of a Taito fan you are. The cabinet itself costs 18,678 yen (~$170), the expansion controller is 12,078 yen ($110), the extra arcade stick is 8,778 yen ($80), and the gamepad is $3,278 yen ($30). There’s also a 49,478-yen ($450) limited bundle that includes everything plus some extras like soundtrack CDs, and a 32,978-yen ($300) bundle that excludes the arcade stick and the gamepad.
At least there’s time to save up your yen — the Egret II Mini won’t ship until March 2nd 2022.
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Taito announces mini arcade cabinet with rotating screen and trackball controller, Sam Byford
Taito is the latest Japanese video game publisher to resurrect old hardware in mini form. The company behind Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and many more arcade classics has just announced the Egret II Mini, which like Sega’s excellent Astro City Mini is a shrunken-down version of a popular arcade cabinet.
The original Egret II was released in the ‘90s, and its key feature was the ability to rotate its screen 90 degrees so that games with tall aspect ratios — like Space Invaders and other shooters — could be played in tate (vertical) mode. Appropriately enough, that feature is present on the Egret II Mini, which has a 5-inch 4:3 LCD that can be played in either orientation.
The Egret II Mini’s primary controls include six…
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Apple’s next iPad Pro has wireless charging and a glass back: report, Sam Byford
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeApple is working on a new version of the iPad Pro with wireless charging, according to a new report in Bloomberg. To accommodate the technology, Apple will reportedly switch to a glass back for the new models, instead of the aluminum found on the rear of every iPad released so far.
Apple is said to be testing a magnetic charging system for the new iPad Pro similar to the MagSafe connector introduced with the iPhone 12 range of phones last year. Apple may also include reverse wireless charging in the new iPad Pro, according to the report, which would allow the iPad to serve as a wireless charging point itself.
Apple only just released the new M1 iPad Pro with its Mini LED display, and the wireless charging model reportedly won’t be ready…
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Apple’s next iPad Pro has wireless charging and a glass back: report,
Apple is working on a new version of the iPad Pro with wireless charging, according to a new report in Bloomberg. To accommodate the technology, Apple will reportedly switch to a glass back for the new models, instead of the aluminum found on the rear of every iPad released so far.
Apple is said to be testing a magnetic charging system for the new iPad Pro similar to the MagSafe connector introduced with the iPhone 12 range of phones last year. Apple may also include reverse wireless charging in the new iPad Pro, according to the report, which would allow the iPad to serve as a wireless charging point itself.
Apple only just released the new M1 iPad Pro with its Mini LED display, and the wireless charging model reportedly won’t be ready until next year. However, Bloomberg also says that Apple will release a redesigned iPad Mini in 2021 with narrower screen bezels. It’s not clear whether it’ll switch to Face ID like the iPad Pro or Touch ID on the power button like the iPad Air — Bloomberg’s report only says that “the removal of its home button has also been tested.”
Alongside the new iPad Mini, Apple is also said to be planning to release a thinner version of the 10.2-inch iPad. Both products are likely to be released around the end of the year.
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Climate tech is about to fly commercial, Justine Calma
Hiring private contractors to sample greenhouse gases from the air is an important aspect of NOAA’s climate research. Here, Paolo Wilczak pilots a sampling flight over southeastern Connecticut on April 25, 2020, as part of the East Coast Outflow field mission. The Global Monitoring Laboratory hopes to add civilian airliners to its sampling fleet. | Paolo Wilczak, Scientific AviationA greenhouse gas-tracking technology is about to go commercial. Greenhouse gas detectors will soon take flight on an Alaska Airlines-run Boeing 737-9, in an effort to help federal scientists get even more information about how we’re changing the climate. The tools would measure concentrations of planet-heating pollution in the air, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today.
They’re calling the plane, which won’t have any passengers, an “ecoDemonstrator.” It’s testing a number of contraptions along with the greenhouse-gas detector — including features that might make the plane more fuel-efficient or less noisy.
Over several test flights this year, NOAA will figure out the best place to install their…
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Climate tech is about to fly commercial,
A greenhouse gas-tracking technology is about to go commercial. Greenhouse gas detectors will soon take flight on an Alaska Airlines-run Boeing 737-9, in an effort to help federal scientists get even more information about how we’re changing the climate. The tools would measure concentrations of planet-heating pollution in the air, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today.
They’re calling the plane, which won’t have any passengers, an “ecoDemonstrator.” It’s testing a number of contraptions along with the greenhouse-gas detector — including features that might make the plane more fuel-efficient or less noisy.
Over several test flights this year, NOAA will figure out the best place to install their devices — either mounted on a window or in a duct that feeds outside air into the plane — in order to stay out of the way of the plane’s own exhaust. The goal is to beef up NOAA’s existing data collection efforts by eventually getting the equipment on a number ofcommercial airliners making domestic and international flights.
A handful of private jets already collect samples for NOAA. An entire fleet of commercial planes adding to the effort could become a powerful tool for tracking where greenhouse gas emissions come from and how much they’re building up in the atmosphere. That knowledge could also help scientists and policymakers measure whether or not humans are making any progress towards tackling climate change.
“We think we’re making inroads, but are we making inroads? Is the atmosphere actually changing?” says Colm Sweeney, lead scientist for the NOAA Earth System Research Lab Aircraft Program. “Are we looking at the forest or are we just looking at one tree?”
Sweeney and his colleagues plan to focus on carbon dioxide and methane. From the ground, researchers can get pretty good estimates of how much CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels for things like electricity, transportation, and industry. Ground-level data on methane emissions, on the other hand, is murkier because it typically just leaks out of oil and gas infrastructure. There have been more efforts lately to measure these things by satellite, too. But planes can fly through the air where these greenhouse gases actually build up, making more precise measurements.
“We’re actually measuring where it counts,” Sweeney says.
Big news! NOAA and @Boeing are teaming up on the 2021 ecoDemonstrator program, which will allow NOAA to test out its greenhouse gas sampling system on an @AlaskaAir airplane. https://t.co/TAwmP4thOx pic.twitter.com/6wnAaMaZgM
— NOAA Research (@NOAAResearch)
By taking samples of the outside air over the course of the plane’s journey, researchers can potentially triangulate the source of the pollutants that they measure. Not only are they tracing the emissions back to their source, but they’re also seeing how that pollution travels.
That’s also important for sussing out how changes to the natural world are affecting the climate. Rising temperatures are melting permafrost, releasing even more methane into the atmosphere, pushing temperatures higher in a dangerous feedback loop. NOAA hopes to better understand the extent to which that’s happening.
Scientists are also worried about how much humans can continue to rely on natural resources, like oceans and forests, to draw down and store carbon dioxide emissions. NOAA’s measurements could give some early warnings before these ‘carbon sinks’ reach their limits.
Sweeney hopes NOAA’s test runs are successful. Thousands of commercial planes are already taking temperature readings used for weather forecasts. So perhaps one day they could all also take stock of the pollution that’s giving the planet a fever in the first place.
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Former NASA astronaut pleads guilty in deadly car crash: Report, ,
A former NASA astronaut was sentenced to four years in prison followed by 10 years of probation in relation to a deadly car crash in 2016, according to media reports.
James Halsell Jr., 64, pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter and two counts of first-degree assault — lesser charges than his initial indictment on murder and assault, the New York Times reported May 27.
Hays Webb, district attorney for the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Alabama, told reporters he agreed to honor Halsell’s plea for lesser charges in part because the initial indictment carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, the Times added.
“We offered the maximum, under manslaughter, and thought that was appropriate,” Webb said, according to the Times. When asked if Halsell’s past work history had any influence on the charges, Webb told reporters, “Absolutely not.”
The June 6, 2016 crash in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama killed sisters Niomi James, 11, and Jayla Parler, 13, who were in a Ford Fiesta being driven by their father, Pernell James. The sisters were thrown from the Fiesta and killed, and two adults in the same car (including James’ fiancee) were injured and taken to the hospital, the Associated Press reported shortly after the crash happened.
After the hearing, the Times reported, James said the former astronaut should have been sentenced to “the max” because his daughters “didn’t even get a chance to live.”
Halsell’s lawyer, James R. Sturdivant, said in a statement that a toxicology report “clearly showed that Ambien/Zolpidem sleep medication was the primary cause of the bizarre and tragic sequence of events that occurred that night.” Halsell had also been on probation for a crash in California that happened while he was under the influence of alcohol, the Times said.
Halsell, who was promoted to colonel in the United States Air Force while at NASA, joined the agency in January 1990, the agency said in a 2002 biography of the former astronaut. He clocked more than 1,250 hours across five space missions: STS-65 (July 1994), STS-74 (November 1995), STS-83 (April 1997), STS-94 (July 1997) and STS-101 (May 2000). Halsell commanded his last three spaceflight crews.
Halsell served as NASA director of operations at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia in 1998, as the International Space Station program was beginning. Halsell’s last mission, STS-101, also visited the ISS.
Following Halsell’s conclusion of flight duties, he served as the manager of launch integration at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla, which was a role “responsible for all aspects of Space Shuttle preparation, launch execution, and return of the orbiter,” NASA stated.
Another of Halsell’s prominent roles – before leaving the agency in 2006 to join ATK Launch Systems (now part of Northrop Grumman) – was leading the space shuttle return to flight team following the fatal Columbia accident of 2003 that killed seven astronauts.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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Stephen King teleportation story ‘The Jaunt’ to be adapted into TV series, ,
Co-creator of “Fear The Walking Dead” Dave Erickson is set to develop Stephen King’s short story “The Jaunt” for indie studio MRC (Media Rights Capital) Television.
According to Deadline, this is part of a multi-year deal in which Erickson will exclusively work on the creation and development of an unspecified number of television shows on which he will serve as writer and/or showrunner.
“The Jaunt” was published in the June 1981 issue of “The Twilight Zone Magazine.” The story takes place in the early 24th century, when teleportation (referred to as “Jaunting”) is commonplace, allowing for instantaneous transportation across enormous distances, even to other planets in the solar system.
It follows a family who are waiting at an airport-like location to be transported from New York to Mars. While they wait, the father entertains his two children by telling them the story of how teleportation technology was discovered and developed. He explains how the scientist who invented it found that conscious living creatures emerged from a jaunt insane and erratic and quickly died. This is why every human being who uses the instantaneous teleportation must be unconscious in order to survive the “jaunt effect.”
It’s believed that while jaunting occurs virtually instantaneously to our physical bodies, to a conscious mind it lasts an eternity. To that person, they are utterly alone in an endless, blank void for what is thought to be anywhere from hundreds to billions of years, unable to die.
While his two young children are spared one or two of the fine details of this fascinating fable, the reader learns of some of the unpleasant events in this chapter of history, including some 30 or so human test subjects that went through conscious – and subsequently all emerged insane before dying — and even that the machine had been used on more than occasion as a murder weapon; one jaunt research pushed his wife through without setting a destination.
“This had raised the terrible specter of the woman, discorporeal but somehow still sentient, screaming in limbo … forever.”
When it’s their turn to get seated and sedated, they are subjected to the sleeping gas and jaunted to Mars. But when the father awakens, he hears his wife and attendants scream. His curious son had deliberately held his breath while being administered the anesthetic so that he could experience the jaunt while conscious. The crinkled, frail body of what was once his son writhes and screams and he shrieks, “It’s longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think!” before clawing out his own bloodshot eyes as he is wheeled away.
Peak Stephen King. No doubt about that.
To be honest, we’re surprised it’s taken this long to adapt this incredible story, although we rather thought it might be a movie, rather than a TV show. That said however, it could also work well as a limited series. Let’s just hope it’s not utterly butchered like “Snowpiercer” has been.
“We’ve long admired Dave’s visionary creative work and are thrilled to welcome him to MRC,” said Elise Henderson, President of MRC Television. “A true master of his craft, he’s the ideal partner to build upon the work of Stephen King, and create and develop more originals as the studio continues to expand.”
MRC Television’s recent credits to date include “Ozark,” “House of Cards” and “The Outsider.”
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WhatsApp says accounts will soon be usable across up to four devices,
WhatsApp has confirmed that its long-rumored multi-device support will be entering public beta in the coming months, allowing users to access their accounts from up to four linked devices. New “view once” and “disappearing mode” features were also officially announced. The news came in an interview between WABetaInfo and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp head Will Cathcart.
Cathcart stopped short of confirming reports that WhatsApp has an iPad app in development, but said that multi-device support will make WhatsApp on iPad a possibility.
As well as multi-device support, Zuckerberg also confirmed that WhatsApp is adding a new “view once” feature, which will allow users to send content that disappears after it’s been viewed. The service is also expanding its disappearing messages feature, which currently allows messages to be deleted after a set period of time. In the future, a new “disappearing mode” will let you turn on disappearing messages across all chat threads.
Facebook’s CEO confirmed that the multi-device feature will not compromise the end-to-end encryption that WhatsApp offers for messages sent between individuals. “It’ll still be end-to-end encrypted,” Zuckerberg wrote. “It’s been a big technical challenge to get all your messages and content to sync properly across devices even when your phone battery dies, but we’ve solved this and we’re looking forward to getting it out soon!”
WhatsApp did not confirm when the “view once” and “disappearing mode” features are expected to launch, but Cathcart said that multi-device support will be entering public beta “in the next month or two.”
Alongside multi-device support, WABetaInfo has also reported that WhatsApp is working on a new password-protected encrypted chat backups feature which could finally allow users to transfer their chat histories between iOS and Android devices. WABetaInfo has previously discovered numerous features before their official release, including adding contacts via QR codes and WhatsApp’s disappearing messages feature.
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