Before the Internet provided walkthroughs to complete a game, gamers would call companies and ask for assistance on finishing a game! The Nintendo Power hotline was one of the hotlines gamers would call for help. Did you know that the gameplay counselors from the Nintendo Power hotline used a “forbidden map” to guide players through Super Metroid? NintendoLife has the details:
According to Twitter user ArtofNP (also known as Archon 1981 on YouTube), the map was drawn by a Japanese developer, and Nintendo of America couldn't confirm if it was entirely accurate. It turns out it wasn't, either.
As highlighted by Twitter user vervalkon, this particular map features a room that isn't in any version of the final game.
A bunch of adorable baby bats have been taken in by The Australian Bat Clinic & Wildlife Trauma Centre. The center takes in baby bats when their mothers have died. The center wraps the baby bats in blankets, to compensate for the lack of warmth from their mother.
With all that’s happening right now around the world, one could only wish that this is all just a nightmare — a bad dream that we will all wake up from. But what if all of this is really not real? And not just this one, but everything that’s happened in our lives? This theory of us being in a computer simulation has been around for quite some time. And now, a new theory emerges and takes this theory to a whole new level.
Philosopher Nick Bostrom famously considered this in his seminal paper Are you living in a computer simulation?, where he proposed that all of our existence may be just a product of very sophisticated computer simulations ran by advanced beings, whose real nature we may never be able to know. Now a new theory comes along that takes it a step further – what if there are no advanced beings like that either and everything in "reality" is a self-simulation that generates itself from pure thought?
Good Morning America on Tuesday featured a segment from reporter Will Reeve about pharmacies. Like many broadcasters, Reeve is now reporting from home via internet link. However, you have to be careful when you are doing your own video and audio hookup, because the shot of Reeve was a little wider than it should have been, and you can see he is wearing a suit coat but no pants. This is one clip from GMA that, so far, had not been posted to YouTube by the network. And if you are wondering about the resemblance, Will Reeve is the son of the late Christopher Reeve. Read more on the incident at Gizmodo.
Salazar Slytherin was one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the world of Harry Potter. Now a new species of snake has been named in his honor. And it's only appropriate: the species Trimeresurus salazar translates to Salazar’s pit viper.
The newest member of the genus Trimeresurus Lacépède, which includes at least 48 species of pit viper distributed across east and southeast Asia, the snake is the fifth reptile discovered by scientists in India’s northern state of Arunachal Pradesh in the past year or so, joining three other snakes and a tortoise also native to the region. A paper published in the April issue of Zoosystematics and Evolution describes the find, made by a team of researchers led by Zeeshan Mirza, a biologist at India’s National Centre for Biological Sciences.
The genus Trimeresurus has been described as "charismatic, venomous serpents.” Read more about the snake and its name at Smithsonian.
Be warned that this video may or may not give you the willies. Artist François Vogel has turned his surrealist eye on what's available at home, and that means his cat. He calls this sequence "Jellyfish Cat," although commenters at reddit called it "Salvador Dali's cat." However, that phrase makes us think of an ocelot. See more of Vogel's cat hijinks at Laughing Squid.
Relics can be a part of a holy person’s body or his belongings that people keep as an object of reverence. To many churches in the Middle Ages, these are valuable artifacts that could put your town on the map and bring pilgrims in (as well as money and prestige). What’s more, it is said that these relics will protect you through miracles.
With this being the case, many bishops participated in the tradition of relic theft, going to drastic measures just to secure themselves a relic.
Consider the case of St. Foy. The monk who brought her relics to Conques, a French commune, went undercover for ten years at the Agen monastery there, before seizing the chance to make off with St. Foy’s skull...
There even seem to have been professional relic dealers, like the mysterious Duesdona, who raided the Roman catacombs for holy martyrs to trade away. It was a good trade: a single saint’s body could be divided into many saleable relics. Theologians held that “the whole was in each part,” meaning that the saint was equally present in each fragment of their body, no matter how small. As Paulinus of Nola writes, “Wherever a drop of dew has fallen on men in the shape of a particle of bone, the tiny gift from a consecrated body, holy grace has brought forth fountains in that place, and the drops of ashes begotten rivers of life.”
More details about this strange tradition over at JSTOR Daily.
Just when you thought you’ve already seen the hardest puzzles that take countless hours to solve, Kodak brings to you what they call the “World’s Largest Puzzle”. Consisting of 51,300 pieces, this puzzle will surely consume a big chunk of your time while you stay at home.
At 28.5-feet wide and 6 feet tall, the "world's largest puzzle," as Kodak calls it, requires its own decent-sized room. Instead of one scene, it consists of 27 distinct photographs of landmarks from around the world, including the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum, and the Taj Mahal. The 27 components are individually packaged as 1900-piece puzzles, so you can focus on one image at time before stitching them together.
According to the photography company, "Each photo was initially taken by a professional photographer, then digitally enhanced and printed in high quality. You'll see the quality in every piece."
This monster of a jigsaw puzzle is available at Amazon for only $410. So if you’re looking for something that will keep you busy for days to come, you might want to get your hands on this one.
The opening sequence of a TV series can be very memorable -after all, the same introduction begins every episode, sometimes for just a season, sometimes for years on end, designed to let you know your favorite show is starting now. Andrew Stephens constructed a quiz about those opening sequences that you might breeze through, or might drive you nuts.
Here are a number of frames taken from well-known television shows. Likely you have seen these frames dozens of times - but can you remember the shows?
Click on an image and type the name of the show (press return to submit your answer). You will know when you get the answer correct.
The shows range from decades old to some that are running now (or both). Can you name the show from one screenshot? If you guess right, the quiz will tell you, but if you are wrong, you'll just have to try again until Stephens adds an answer key -any day now. The best I can do is 12 out of 20 so far. -via Metafilter
The Wi-Fi we know and love will be much faster soon.
A few days ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to “open up a plot of spectrum in the 6GHz band for unlicensed use”. This means that there will be more open airwaves that routers can use to broadcast Wi-Fi signals, which will translate into faster data speeds and more reliable connections.
This is the biggest spectrum addition since the FCC cleared the way for Wi-Fi in 1989, so it’s a huge deal. The new spectrum basically quadruples the amount of space available for routers and other devices, so it will mean a lot more bandwidth and a lot less interference for any device that can take advantage of it.
[...]
If you’ve ever had trouble connecting to your Wi-Fi network, there’s a good chance spectrum congestion was the problem. Whenever you have too many devices trying to connect over the same band of frequencies, some devices will start to get dropped. So if you see a long list of nearby Wi-Fi networks in your area, that may be why your connection is getting slower and less reliable. There are simply too many competing signals for your computer to get through.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Lots of these were made and used at one point in our history. That time was called the Bronze Age.
Unlike other metals that we use today, bronze is known to be a soft kind of metal. In fact, it is so soft that scholars say the swords made with bronze were not really used in battle. Rather, they were used for ceremonial purposes, “such as displays of status, burial offerings, or sacrifices to the gods.”
While this may be true in some instances, researchers led by Dr. Andrea Dolfini at Newcastle University have found evidence that many of these swords were used in combat and have even begun to learn how they were used. By combining laboratory work by Leicester and Durham universities, the British Museum, and the Great North Museum: Hancock with field experiments conducted by members of the Newcastle-based Hotspur School of Defence, the Bronze Age Combat Project (BACP) learned how soft bronze weapons could be used practically.
How did the Bronze Age warriors fight? Find out over at New Atlas.
(Image Credit: Bronze Age Combat Team/Hotspur School of Defence)
You may have always thought of "chintz" as a derogatory term for garish style, like your grandmother's floral curtains. The term "chintzy" was coined just for that purpose. But actual chintz was a kind of imported fabric that took the Western world by storm.
Chintz — although it might today be largely associated with twee or cutesy armchairs and wallpaper — is, in its true form, a fabric that was not only once highly prized the world over, and helped revolutionise fashion and design, but also changed the course of history — in many cases, unfortunately, for the worse. “[Chintz tells] a story that is much larger, and often much less pleasant”, according to Harvard historian Dr Sven Beckert. “A tale of armed trade, colonialism, slavery, and the dispossession of native peoples.”
The story Beckert is referring to begins, for the most part, in the late 15th Century; but the history of chintz extends far beyond that. Chintz — which comes from the Hindi word chint, meaning “‘spotted’, ‘variegated’, ‘speckled’, or ‘sprayed’”, as Fee writes in the book Cloth That Changed the World — originated in modern-day India and Pakistan thousands of years ago. Contrary to what many think, chintz does not necessarily have anything to do with glazed fabric, or even floral prints. Simply put, chintz is cotton to which substances called ‘mordants’ and ‘resists’ — used to help dyes adhere to it — have been applied.
The demand for chintz helped to shape the shipping industry which in turn shaped much of world history. It is true that chintz was banned in some places, to protect local fabric producers. But the story is much bigger, as you'll read in an article at BBC Culture. -via Damn Interesting
Most of us, in the US, view Air Conditioner units as an eyesore. We go to great lengths to hide them, or make them blend in with the environment. Some companies in Asia, however, are suggesting a totally different approach. They are suggesting that the AC unit should be a design feature.
Companies, like Samsung, are now selling specially decorated AC units targeted to children and Frozen fans.
Samsung Electronics has adopted Elsa, the main character from Disney’s hit Frozen movies, as the exterior design of its flagship wind-free air conditioners, the company said Monday.
The “Frozen 2” edition, only for the wall-mounted type, offers two exterior panels including the one with Elsa on it and the original version, allowing customers to change the panel design as they wish.
Some might say they are venturing "into the unknown" of home decor.
Gourd crafts can be fun, but the shapes are often impractical for daily usage. With The Gourd Project, Jun Aizaki of the CRÈME design house is trying to change that. To reduce waste from packaging, he's making completely biodegradable cups, jars, and vases from gourds.
From a farm in Pennsylvania, Aizaki is able to grow complete vessels in six weeks. He grows the gourds inside molds with optimal shapes.
Molding gourds is not new. What is new about Aizaki's project is his objective of making this process available for mass production. He writes:
We plan to initially invest money towards R+D, so we can grow the gourds in both indoor farming facilities and outdoor farms, allowing us to scale up the quantity and lower the price per gourd. The goal is to keep the high quality and quantity, so that The Gourd can be a viable challenger to the plastic waste industry.
Ipley Cross is one of the most dangerous junctions for bicycle riders in Britain, with a couple of crashes every year, and two cyclists have died there in the past few years. What causes these nearly-identical crashes? Tom Scott explains, and in doing so reveals some things about British traffic customs that American will find odd.
