I don’t know why the Muppets love Christmas so much, but they certainly do. Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and the extended Muppet cast of characters have made nearly a dozen holiday specials, along with a feature-length TV movie and a theatrical movie. That last one is The Muppet Christmas Carol, one of the…
Source: Gizmodo – It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie Is the Maddest Muppet Special Ever
With inflation at 7.7% in October and food prices increasing in grocery stores as and restaurants alike, the prospect of free food sounds more enticing every day. Especially when we’re talking about guaranteed free food “for life.” Even if we’re talking about McDonald’s. And that’s exactly what McDonald’s if offering…
Source: LifeHacker – You Can Get Free McDonald’s for Life
Sony’s PlayStation Tournaments are finally available to play on PS5, and the biggest upgrade may simply be the greater chance of joining an event. The eSports-for-everyone feature now centers around shorter tourneys at regular intervals — it should be easier to find a competition that fits your life. Sony will even create multiple brackets to keep the duration in check. You can sign up directly from your console, too, so you won’t have to head to another device just to get started.
The new PlayStation Tournaments system also boasts a revamped interface that takes advantage of PS5 activity cards and notifications to help you find events, track (automatically updated) results, and let you know when it’s time to play. You can locate competitions from games’ home screen sections. And if you’d like to do more than just compete, a Discord community hub promises both chat as well as hosted interviews and game sessions.
Anyone in an eligible country with a PlayStation Plus membership can join, with the first PS5 tournaments focusing on FIFA 23, Guilty Gear Strive and NBA 2K23. Prizes range from in-game currency through to cash, PlayStation hardware and “experiences.” To reel you in, Sony is running a “Win-A-Thon” leaderboard event between December 1st and January 31st that rewards you the better you fare in regional tournaments. The promo will also be available to PS4 owners.
As with Microsoft’s Xbox Live tournaments, the PlayStation eSports offering is meant to keep you engaged and spending money. You might be more likely to buy the latest sports title if you know you can win real-world rewards. Even so, the PS5 expansion might be helpful by making eSports more accessible to current-gen console owners.
Source: Engadget – PlayStation brings its eSports tournaments to PS5 with easy to join events
Enlarge / Researchers have finally cracked the secret code of this 1547 letter from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to his ambassador. (credit: Bibliotheque Stanislas de Nancy)
In 1547, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V penned a letter to his ambassador, Jean de Saint-Mauris, part of which was written in the ruler’s secret code. Nearly five centuries later, researchers have finally cracked that code, revealing Charles V’s fear of a secret assassination plot and continued tensions with France, despite having signed a peace treaty with the French king a few years earlier.
The future Holy Roman Emperor was born in 1500 to Philip of Hapsburg and Joanna of Trastamara—daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in Spain. She was nicknamed “Joanna the Mad” because of her rumored mental illness and actually gave birth to Charles in a bathroom in the wee hours because she insisted on attending a ball despite clearly having labor pains. Generations of inbreeding conferred on Charles an enlarged jaw (mandibular prognathism), a condition that later became known as “Hapsburg jaw,” since it became even worse in subsequent generations. Charles also suffered from epilepsy and gout; the latter became so severe late in life that he had to be carried around in a sedan chair.
Charles V began inheriting various family titles at a young age, and his dominion eventually encompassed the Holy Roman Empire—which extended from Germany to northern Italy in the early 16th century and included Austrian hereditary lands, the Burgundian states, and the Kingdom of Spain. During his reign, he continued the Spanish colonization of the Americas and embarked on a short-lived German colonization effort, earning the label “the empire on which the sun never sets.” As his health deteriorated, Charles V abdicated as emperor in favor of his brother Ferdinand in 1556, although it was not legally recognized until February 1558. He retired to the Monastery of Yuste in 1557 and died the following September.
Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – It took nearly 500 years for researchers to crack Charles V’s secret code
The mind-altering effects of a well-known parasite may extend to more species than we thought. In new research this month, Yellowstone scientists are making the case that Toxoplasma gondii infection can influence the behavior of gray wolves in the area. It appears to increase their odds of risk-taking behaviors, such…
Source: Gizmodo – Mind-Altering Parasite Could Be Making Wolves Bolder
Texas-based ICON has been assigned the pivotal task of developing the means for NASA to build critical infrastructure on the Moon to further its Artemis ambitions.
Source: Gizmodo – Texas Company Wins Million From NASA to Develop Lunar Construction Tech
If you listen closely, you can hear the bells ringing: Christmastime is upon us, and if you’re a fan of the holiday like me, you’ll want a live countdown to the big day, no matter how you celebrate. And that’s where some fun iPhone apps can help. These iPhone apps add a little bit of Christmas cheer directly to your…
Source: LifeHacker – Add One of These Holiday Countdown Widgets to Your iPhone
Two months after its chaotic launch, Overwatch 2 is in a much healthier place and Blizzard is gearing up for the game’s second season. A gameplay trailer for the season, which starts on December 6th and will introduce another new tank character, provides a glimpse of an upcoming limited-time mode. It’s called Battle for Olympus and it will run from January 5th until January 19th.
Blizzard only offered a brief look at Battle for Olympus in the trailer, but it takes place on a revamped version of the Ilios map and shows Roadhog firing rocks (instead of his usual scrap) and Junker Queen raining lightning down onto the battlefield. To wit, Blizzard says heroes will be “imbued with awesome god-like powers” in this mode.
Speaking of Junker Queen, the tank who joined the lineup when Overwatch 2 launched, she’s the recipient of a mythic skin in season two, which (perhaps unsurprisingly) has a Greek mythology theme. The Zeus look has customizable parts and new weapon models, voice lines and special effects. That rad skin is the reward for reaching level 80 of the next battle pass.
The Winter Wonderland and Lunar New Year events will return during the season as well, and they’ll feature fresh skins. During last month’s Halloween event, there was no way for players to earn new event skins for free, which led to a backlash from players. However, Blizzard has said that, starting in season two, every event will have a skin that fans can unlock by simply playing the game — just like they could in the Overwatch 1 days.
The trailer also offered a look at the new escort map for season two, Shambali Monastery, where Zenyatta and the latest tank hero, Ramattra, used to live (a deeper dive into the map is coming later this week). Ramattra is the game’s first so-called “tempo” tank. He can change forms and gain access to alternate abilities. He’s all about closing the gap between his team and the enemy. Ramattra will initially be gated behind the season two battle pass. Buying the premium battle pass will unlock him instantly, but you’ll need to grind through the ranks to claim him for free.
Elsewhere, Blizzard will rotate the map selection for the core game modes. Two maps, Oasis and Nepal, will be playable at different times of day. Balance changes for some heroes are on the way and those who miss out on unlocking Sojourn, Junker Queen and Kiriko in season one will be able to add them to their roster by winning a certain number of games.
Source: Engadget – Overwatch 2’s season two trailer teases a new game mode and the latest map
’Tis the season for music apps’ “year in review” rewinds that let you relive the songs and artists you streamed from the past 12 months. Only a few hours after the revamped Apple Music Replay arrived, YouTube Music announced its 2022 Recap, which begins rolling out today for iOS and Android.
This is only the second year Alphabet’s music service has offered its personalized retrospective, and this time, you’ll find it in both YouTube Music and the main YouTube app. Unfortunately, it isn’t yet live on our devices, but once it’s fully available, you’ll find it by visiting the Recap landing page in YouTube Music or searching for “2022 recap” in YouTube.
Like last year’s edition, the 2022 Recap displays your most-streamed artists, songs, music videos and playlists. Additionally, this year’s version adds a few new stats. These include Top Trends (highlighting artists you listened to before most other people), Identity (assigning you a “music personality” based on your musical selections) and Hard-to-Find Content (noting YouTube-exclusive streams like remixes and live performances).
Like other companies’ annual rewinds, YouTube Music uses a story-style format with cards you can tap through or share. You can share your personalized recap by tapping the arrow at the bottom of each story. Exclusive to the YouTube Music app, you’ll also find shareable cards showing your most-streamed songs from each season. And if you want to personalize it further, you can add a slideshow of Google Photos images from each corresponding season.
With Apple and YouTube’s music rewinds now available, Spotify Wrapped likely isn’t far behind. It typically launches in early December, so we could see that as early as this week.
Source: Engadget – YouTube Music’s 2022 Recap begins rolling out today
Terraforming Mars, the resource-building strategy board game where you play as rival CEOs attempting to make Mars habitable, might be heading to your screens, reports Deadline. The game is widely considered a fantastic example of larger strategy hex games, and has already been adapted as a video game.
Source: Gizmodo – Sci-Fi Board Game Terraforming Mars Has Been Optioned for Film
Enlarge / Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk presents a vaccine production device during a meeting September 2, 2020, in Berlin, Germany. Musk met with vaccine-maker CureVac, with which Tesla has a cooperation to build devices for producing RNA vaccines. (credit: Getty | Filip Singer)
Under the leadership of billionaire Elon Musk, social media platform Twitter has abandoned its efforts to prevent the spread of dangerous COVID-19 misinformation on its platform, dismaying experts who say false and misleading health information can harm individuals and put lives at risk.
“Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” the company noted in various places on its website.
From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health responses have been severely stymied by a plague of misinformation, often in digital spaces.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Musk’s Twitter abandons COVID misinfo policy, shirking “huge responsibility”
When it comes to coffee, I’m something of a veteran; I was investigating fussy brewing methods and turning my nose up at the office coffee pot long before I moved to gentrifying Brooklyn, where adherence to strict edicts over how your hot, brown flavored water can and should be prepared is tantamount to law (not…
Source: LifeHacker – 10 Fancy Gifts for Experienced Coffee Drinkers
Digital thieves are using horny TikTok viewers’ thirst for nude images against them in a new malware attack.
Source: Gizmodo – Software Claiming to ‘Unfilter’ TikToks and Expose Nudes Actually Infects Users With Malware
Back in August, we reported on a leak from Skyjuice over at Angstronomics that gave different values from earlier leaks for some of the specifications in AMD’s RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 family. While the Navi 33 specifications were essentially similar, Skyjuice predicted lower-than-expected core counts for Navi 32. A new leak seems to have
Source: Hot Hardware – AMD Seemingly Leaks Navi 33 And 32 Core Counts For Upcoming Radeon RX 7000 GPUs
Make a big FOSS for Ubuntu Touch OTA-24, Mir 2.10, and the return of Unity on Arch LinuxVarious parts of Ubuntu’s cancelled desktop/fondleslab convergence project are all still ticking away – some officially and some thanks to user communities.…
Source: LXer – Fresh versions of Ubuntu Touch, Mir display server, and Unity arrive
Beyond Intel’s well regarded open-source software work deep down the stack on everything from ensuring timely new hardware support to optimizing the Linux kernel with various performance optimizations and investing heavily in the upstream GNU and LLVM toolchains (and much more!), they also make terrific software ecosystem advancements higher up the stack. One of their most promising areas of open-source software work in recent years has been around oneAPI. Next week Intel will be hosting a virtual oneAPI DevSummit for AI and HPC where they will be showing off their latest software advancements…
Source: Phoronix – Intel Hosting oneAPI AI/HPC Developer Summit Next Week
It’s been a few days, and that giant mound of turkey is still staring at you. You’ve whittled down the pile with the usual turkey soup and cold turkey salad, but those get old fast. Finishing turkey leftovers shouldn’t feel like a punishment. Instead of a cold turkey sandwich for the fifth time in a row, make a meal…
Source: LifeHacker – 10 Ingenious Ways to Use Up Your Leftover Turkey
The original Willow film feels like the first act of a larger story. While it does end with the defeat of the evil Queen Bavmorda thanks to Willow and his friends, almost every other major character and storyline is left dangling. The whole film is predicated on this small child, Elora Danan, being the chosen one…
Source: Gizmodo – The Lingering Willow Questions the Stars Want Answered
Frequent Elon Musk watchers raised an eyebrow on Monday when the billionaire started lashing out at Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, over the many ways Twitter had been wronged, at least in his view. At one point, Musk even tweeted a meme about “going to war” with Apple, but later appeared to change his mind. He deleted…
Source: Gizmodo – Elon Musk Is Extremely Pissed at Apple, but He Deleted a Tweet About ‘Going to War’
There was a time when laser printers were a luxury. High prices pushed them out of the budgets of most homes and small businesses decades ago, but they eventually became more affordable. But now, printer-vendor Epson is turning its back on the technology in favor of inkjet alternatives and self-bestowed sustainability cred.
As noted by The Register on Monday, Epson announced last week that it will stop selling and distributing laser printers by 2026, affecting both its consumer and business users. The Seiko-owned company proudly declared that the move is being done in the name of “sustainability,” but the company still has a long way to go in that department.
Epson’s announcement said that its decision to focus completely on inkjet printers over laser ones is about the planet. And this is largely based on how laser printers work compared to inkjet. Laser printers rely on a laser, drum, toner, and heat to print an image. Inkjet printers, meanwhile, use nozzles to deposit ink.
Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Epson quitting laser printers doesn’t address its bigger sustainability issue
