Sam Machkovech from Ars Technica reviews the game Engare, describing it as a “clever, deceptively simple, and beautiful rumination on geometry and Islamic art-making traditions.” The game consists of relatively simple puzzles and a freeform art toy that unlocks its puzzles’ tools to allow you to make whatever patterns you please. From the report: The game, made almost entirely by 23-year-old Iranian developer Mahdi Bahrami, starts with a 2D scene of a circle repeatedly traveling along a line. Above this, an instructional card shows a curved-diagonal line. Drop a dot on the moving circle, the game says, and it will generate a bold line, like ink on a page. As the ball (and thus, your dot) rolls, the inked line unfurls; if you put the dot on a different part of the circle, then your inked line may have more curve or angle to it, based on the total motion of the moving, rotating circle. Your object is to recreate this exact curved-diagonal line. If your first ink-drop doesn’t do the trick, try again. Each puzzle presents an increasingly complex array of moving and rotating shapes, lines, and dots. You have to watch the repeating patterns and rotations in a particular puzzle to understand where to drop an ink dot and draw the demanded line. At first, you’ll have to recreate simple turns, curves, and zig-zags. By the end, you’ll be making insane curlicues and rug-like super-patterns.

But even this jaded math wiz-kid couldn’t help but drop his jaw, loose his tongue, and bulge his eyes at the first time Engare cracked open its math-rich heart. One early puzzle (shown above) ended with its seemingly simple pattern repeating over and over and over and over. Unlike other puzzles, this pattern kept drawing itself, even after I’d fulfilled a simple line-and-turn pattern. And with each pass of the drawing pattern, driven by a spinning, central circle, Engare drew and filled a new, bright color. This is what the game’s creator is trying to shout, I thought. This is his unique, cultural perspective. This looks like the Persian rugs he saw his grandmother weave as a child.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – The Geometry of Islamic Art Becomes a Treasure of a Game

According to Variety, Roku is looking to start streaming videos on devices made or controlled by competitors like Apple and Google. The company’s first foray into streaming on third-party hardware will likely involve mobile devices. From the report: The move could further accelerate Roku’s efforts to transition from a hardware-revenue-based to a services-based business model — a transition that has been in progress for years. Now, it plans to also stream some content on devices that don’t run its operating system, with mobile being a likely first step. Key to Roku’s expansion into mobile video is going to be the company’s existing mobile app, which has already been downloaded tens of millions of times on iOS and Android. The app’s current primary function is remote control, as it allows owners of Roku streaming devices and Roku-powered TVs to control these devices directly from their phones. In fact, the app can’t currently be operated if there is not a Roku device available on the same Wifi network. This could change soon, as Roku is looking to integrate video playback directly into its mobile app. A first step is likely going to be the integration of the Roku Channel, an ad-supported channel that the company launched last month. The Roku Channel currently offers free, ad-supported access to several hundred movies from major studios like Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. as well as smaller publishers like American Classics, Fandor, FilmRise, Nosey, OVGuide, Popcornflix, Vidmark, and YuYu. However, Roku has been asking publishers to also grant the company the rights to stream their titles on mobile devices, according to a source familiar with these stipulations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Roku Wants To Start Streaming To Third-Party Devices

entirely_fluffy shares a report from The Guardian: Electric cars emit significantly less greenhouse gases over their lifetimes than diesel engines even when they are powered by the most carbon intensive energy, a new report has found. In Poland, which uses high volumes of coal, electric vehicles produced a quarter less emissions than diesels when put through a full lifecycle modeling study by Belgium’s VUB University. CO2 reductions on Europe’s cleanest grid in Sweden were a remarkable 85%, falling to around one half for countries such as the UK. The new study uses an EU estimate of Poland’s emissions — at 650gCO2/kWh — which is significantly lower than calculations by the European commission’s Joint Research Centre science wing last year. The VUB study says that while the supply of critical metals — lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite — and rare earths would have to be closely monitored and diversified, it should not constrain the clean transport transition. As battery technology improves and more renewables enter the electricity grid, emissions from battery production itself could be cut by 65%, the study found.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Electric Cars Emit 50 Percent Less Greenhouse Gas Than Diesel, Study Finds