Despite being over a decade old, the game Punch-Out!! for the Wii still looks good to this day. But more than its aesthetics, it’s really the gameplay experience that sells the game. With the different opponents that you will fight (with each of them having different personalities and their own tells when they punch), you’ll surely have a great time playing the game.

Dan from New Frame Plus tells in detail what makes Punch-Out!! For the Wii great, and why its animation is phenomenal.

(Video Credit: New Frame Plus/ YouTube)

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology developed a new camera that can take seventy trillion frames per second. That’s right, a whopping seventy trillion frames. The discovery is called compressed ultrafast spectral photography, or CUSP. Popular Mechanics has more details: 

Prior imaging developments based on silicon sensors have ushered in speeds up to millions of frames per second, Lihong Wang, a medical engineering and electrical engineering professor at Caltech, tells Popular Mechanics. But that still isn't nearly fast enough to observe and document some of the most fleeting curiosities in our physical world, from nuclear fusion, to ultrashort pulses of light on the order of picoseconds (10−12 second), to the fluorescent radioactive decay of molecules.

image via Popular Mechanics

#ICYMI Here is our image comparing #AsianGiantHornet to other flying insects. No, its name is not the #murderhornet pic.twitter.com/cwIgIPGC1t

— WA St Dept of Agr (@WSDAgov) May 3, 2020

With the arrival of an invasive insect species in Washington state, and with the New York Times publishing a story about them, the usage of the term “murder hornet” has rapidly increased in the last week. Entomologists, however, say that naming these species as “murder hornets” is irresponsible.

"It's a ridiculous name," said Akito Kawahara, an entomologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History who researches the evolution and diversity of insects. "I think it's totally misleading."

"Insects already have a bad perception," he added.

[...]

The insects are not even commonly called "murder hornets" in Japan, where they're native. "No one calls them 'murder hornet,'" explained Kawahara. "People there often call them a 'large hornet' or a 'giant hornet,'" he said.

While these hornets are not aggressive to humans (except when you poke their nests), they could, however, be a threat to Western honey bees. But Kawahara assures the people.

"Don't freak out," cautioned Kawahara, noting it's unknown how many hornet colonies there are in the U.S. "Lots of things come to the country and they aren’t able to survive. Just be aware."

More details about this over at Mashable.

In summary, just call it a large hornet.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: WA State Dept. of Agriculture/ Twitter)

If you haven't got any hot water and your heating isn't working then you'll need an engineer. Ringing 999 and asking for the police won't help you. #Not999

— WYP Contact Management Centre #StayHomeSaveLives (@WYP_Contact) May 10, 2020

A few days ago, the West Yorkshire Police Contact Management Center of England reminded the public to not call them for non-emergency situations. Apparently, someone called 999 (Britain’s equivalent to 911) and reported that their hot water wasn’t working.

"If you haven't got any hot water and your heating isn't working then you'll need an engineer. Ringing 999 and asking for the police won't help you," the police department tweeted.

A similar reminder was also issued last month by the Essex Police when someone phoned 999 to report that their neighbor was snoring loudly.

(Image Credit: @WYP_Contact/ Twitter)

Check out this crocheted aquarium made by Italian artist Lindadi of Le Creazioni Di Lindadi. The said aquarium features various aquatic creatures, such as clownfish, jellyfish, octopus, and turtles. She even crocheted the seagrass! If that’s not dedication and passion, then I don’t know what is. Just look at this. It’s amazing!

Some of her creations are available at her online store.

Via Laughing Squid

(Image Credit: Le Creazioni Di Lindadi/ Facebook)

Chelsea, from the staff of the Seattle Public Library, rules over the known universe as its tyrant who controls and embodies the spice. She is Leto II Atreides, the God Emperor of Dune.

This cosplay is part of a cosplay challenge conducted by that public library system. It makes me ponder that I should do something similar for my own closed library. But as I work for an academic library, perhaps my colleagues and I should dress as subscription databases like JSTOR.

-via Super Punch

At a glance from afar, two buoys can be seen floating next to each other. However, as they go near the shore, one would notice a strange detail from the pair of buoys: both of them have a pair of hands. Clearly, those aren't buoys at all! As the two men emerge from the sea and go to the shore, suddenly, a whistle can be heard from the background, and both panic.

Find out what happened next over at DailyMail.

“Boys will be buoys” indeed.

(Image Credit: DailyMail)

Many of us now probably just spend most of our time sitting down in front of our computers at home to work or to communicate with friends. Too much sitting down, however, is bad to our body and our overall health.

In addition to being a risk factor for many life-threatening cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, excessive sitting can lead to depression, chronic pain and increased risk of physical injury, according to research. That's why it's important for us to become aware of our sitting habits and do what we can to counteract them.

A way to counteract the effects of excessive sitting is exercise, and CNN gives us five exercises that address the poor posture problem and others. See the exercises over at the site.

(Image Credit: Dana Santas/ CNN)

Facebook will pay $52 million in a settlement for failing to protect its moderators. A court case alleged the company failed to protect its moderators from the mental health impacts of their job. Moderators will get a minimum of $1,000 each from Facebook, as The Guardian details: 

As part of the settlement, which was announced Tuesday, moderators will get a minimum of $1,000 each from Facebook with the potential for additional compensation if they have been diagnosed with mental health disorders, including PTSD.

Moderators, who are generally contracted by third-party firms, are constantly exposed to graphic content including child sexual abuse, beheadings, terrorism, animal cruelty, and “every other horror that the depraved mind of man can imagine”, Steve Williams, a lawyer for the plantiffs, told the Guardian.

Workers may be eligible for additional damage awards of up to $50,000, lawyers for the plaintiffs said, and Facebook will change a number of policies to better address mental health.

More than 11,000 people who have worked as moderators for Facebook in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida from 2015 until now will qualify for compensation under the settlement.

image via The Guardian

Fugetsu-Do Confectionery is home to LA’s legendary mochi. The shop opened in 1903, making it the oldest shop in LA’s Little Tokyo. The Fugetsu-Do Confectionery is also the oldest Japanese-American business in the country. In this episode of Legendary Eats, Food Insider shares the history of the shop and how the current owner took ten years to master the art of making mochi. 

The pandemic has caused a lot of establishments to close. Gatherings, events, concerts, and graduations have been postponed as well. The current situation did not stop this Texas principal as he drove over 800 miles to visit all the graduating students of his high school. Check the full story on CBS News. 

image screenshot via CBS News

Marcus Hutchins single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Hutchins saved the internet from a piece of malware called WannaCry, which destroyed data on hundreds of thousands of computers. Hutchins was able to find and trigger the kill switch in its code, stopping WannaCry from wreaking havoc on the world. To learn more about Hutchins life, including how despite saving the world from the cyber threat, he was still arrested by the FBI, head on to Wired.

image via Wired

In the African savanna, a cheetah can be seen upside down in midair, with its paws near the hind legs of its prey. Its prey, the impala, is caught. The photograph, however, does not say if the impala escaped, or if it was devoured by its predator.

Meanwhile, in the snowy mountains of Scotland, a female mountain hare can be seen tucking herself into a ball in order to conserve heat and to minimize its exposure to the shards of ice and other elements that the ferocious wind carries.

These are just some of the amazing photographs that won in the 2020 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition. Check out the other photos over at The Atlantic.

(Image Credit: Yi Liu / BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition)

(Image Credit: Andy Parkinson / BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition)

Quick- which animals kill the most humans? What we are scared of has little to do with what is really dangerous. But then again, tapeworms don't make a great movie villain the way a shark does. -via Digg

Excited to be able to control my air-conditioner with a GameBoy Color, using my own ROM!

(How I built it: https://t.co/K1Rzhx0qbn ) pic.twitter.com/wQGq3iMHQC

— JinGen Lim (@jg_lim) April 27, 2020

Just when we thought that the GameBoy Color was already obsolete, we then find something rather amazing in this late 90’s gadget. Apparently, it can be used to control your air conditioner because of its feature that’s often forgotten — its infrared transmitter/ receiver. This feature…

allowed users to wirelessly share data and play co-op for supporting games, but so few titles used the feature (they didn’t call the system the Game Boy Infrared, after all) that it was often overlooked and is now largely forgotten. But forgotten or not, the infrared communication port is still there along the top edge of the system, and as Singaporean technophile JinGen Lim (@jg_lim on Twitter) looked at it, he got an idea. What if, instead of waiting for the extremely rare opportunity to use the infrared function to play some obscure decades-old game, he used it to help keep his home comfortably cool?

Since the Game Boy Color’s IR transmitter sends out invisible-to-the-naked eye flashes of light, just like a remote control, Lim’s theory was solid.

Lim was apparently inspired by this video that’s been around for quite some time.

Wow!

(Video Credit: JinGen Lim/ Twitter)