Daily Archives: August 4, 2021

Hello, everyone! After a long period of intense work with the team, we are delighted to finally be able to show more about our game Stray with this just-released gameplay trailer. But we wanted to add a bit more context to what youve hopefully just enjoyed.

At its core, Stray is an adventure game. It tells the story of a cat who accidentally falls into a weird, mysterious city and his journey to return to his family. Exploration is a key element and as we love to add lots of details to our environments, we hope players will enjoy looking for all the little bits of hidden lore that weve added across each level.

Theres quite a lot to find and learn about this forgotten city and the surprising characters who live in it! Not everything will be explained clearly, so it will be up to the most attentive and insightful players to figure out what exactly this place is, who these inhabitants and creatures are, and the story and purpose of this beguiling world in which we are immersed.

The cat is definitely the star of the show in the game though, and it was important for us to show a glimpse of all the playful interactions that he can have with his environment. Some of them are useful and will help solve puzzles as you progress, and some are just here because cats will be cats and as most cat owners know painfully well, no sofa can be left unscratched.

The unique perspective of playing as a cat also creates interesting opportunities in terms of level design. Some of the usual tropes of videogames can be twisted in funny and interesting ways: a grid blocking the way for humans? Not for a cat! A decorative rain pipe spiraling along a building? Perfect platforming sequence for a feline!

But even though cats can do lots of amazing things, they dont usually interact with technology that well. The small drone, B12, that youll encounter has lots of helpful features like translating the language of the machines inhabiting the world, or storing precious items that you find during your journey. But above all, he is a friendly being with a mysterious story learning about his past as his relationship with the cat evolves is a key element to this adventure.

Their journey will not be a calm river, though action and fast-paced sequences are a strong component of Stray, too. Some areas of the game are way more dangerous and unwelcoming for the little duo, and our heros agility and quick moves will be put to the test to survive vicious enemies like the swarm of Zurks as seen in the trailer. The Zurks have a big impact on the lives of the inhabitants of the city, but they are not the only type of foe that you may encounter. And while being quick and agile is required, being stealthy and sneaky will be just as important to find the exit of this strange and futuristic maze.

Hopefully this gives you a more detailed and in-depth look at the world of Stray, but we still have a lot more to show! Theres a whole other part of the city waiting to be discovered that we shared a glimpse of in our very first teaser. The whole team is working full speed to deliver the most polished experience possible, and we look forward to seeing players explore our world early next year. Until then, like Oscar, our Office Manager, always says: PrrrMEeow!

Go here to see the original:
An in-depth look into the mysterious, futuristic world of Stray - PlayStation.Blog

A small seaside park in Venice, Italy, was recently upgraded to include an innovative new concrete pedestrian bridge from the research arm of the global contemporary design firm Zaha Hadid Architects. Like many of the firms signature projects, it has swooping lines, smooth curves, and the vaguely futuristic shape of something that seems built either by or for space robots.

Whats important about the concrete bridge is what it doesnt have. Using a building technique inspired by ancient masonry, the bridge requires neither steel reinforcements, binding mortar, nor the large amount of carbon-intensive concrete that a conventionally built structure would require.

[Photo: in3d/courtesy BRG/ZHACODE]The bridge is able to stand, and indeed to carry the weight and forces of regular use, through a highly detailed and computer-driven design that used 3D printing to precisely generate 53 hollow chunks of concrete that stack together into a structure as strong as stone.

[Photo: in3d/courtesy BRG/ZHACODE]The bridge was designed by Shajay Bhooshan, co-founder of Zaha Hadid Architects Computation and Design Group ZHACODE and Philippe Block, a professor in the Institute of Technology in Architecture at ETH Zurich, in collaboration with 3D printing company incremental3D and the global building materials company Holcim. Like ancient stone bridges and cathedrals, the structure was designed in an old style but with new material precision. Installed as part of the current Venice Architecture Biennale, the bridge is an attempt to prove that ancient and modern techniques can be combined to create better structures.

[Photo: Tom Van Mele/courtesy BRG/ZHACODE]Many masonry structures are standing after centuries because of their capacity to move and to settle. Theyre still there, theyre very robust but not in a way that modern engineering enables, says Block. Arched stone bridges from Roman times, for example, have stood intact for centuries due to their sheer compression and weight. This is a beautiful thing that we want to reintroduce into modern architecture and engineering practice.

[Photo: Naaro/courtesy BRG/ZHACODE]The pieces of the bridge were 3D printed to be discrete chunks that are mostly hollow, with only small concrete braces within. Computational design was used to determine how each piece could support weight on its own, and how all 53 pieces of the bridge could fit together and provide structural strength entirely through compression. This approach cuts down the amount of concrete and eliminates the need for the steel reinforcing bars that concrete structures require. Fewer materials lower the overall cost of building, and the relative ubiquity of concrete means this type of construction could potentially happen anywhere.

Youre placing material exactly where it is needed, says Bhooshan, who developed the design as part of his PhD research at ETH Zurich.

[Photo: Naaro/courtesy BRG/ZHACODE]Rather than the typical 3D printing approach that lays a uniform line of mixture over and over again to build simple walls, Bhooshan and Block worked with Holcim to develop a special 3D printing approach that can lay a variable width of material, enabling a more complex structural form while using less steel and concrete. The non-parallel forms open up new aesthetic opportunities for 3D printing concrete. Its really about starting from the design and thinking about how the materials want to be used in the best way, says Francis Steiner, Holcims head of digital design and fabrication. This is where we see the future of 3D concrete printing.

[Photo: Naaro/courtesy BRG/ZHACODE]Constructed earlier this summer over a simple wooden bracing structure, the bridge also has small concrete pads and steel tension ties at the five points where it meets the ground, and steel steps. Because the bridge requires no mortar or glue to hold it together, it is capable of being disassembled and rebuilt elsewhere as needed (there may come a time when buildings and infrastructure have to be moved quickly for cities to adapt to climate change). Block says the team is currently in the process of finding a second home for the bridge.

Despite its location in the lagoon city of Venice, the bridge is situated in the middle of a park and doesnt actually cross water. But that hasnt stopped it from being used, according to Bhooshan. Since opening, it has been popular with kids, people walking dogs, and park visitors walking up just for a perch to stare out at the ocean. It turned out to be a very social space, he says. That was quite a surprising and pleasant and happy coincidence to discover.

Continued here:
Venice bridge is built with ancient masonry and 3d printing - Fast Company

"Transformational system changes are required, and they must rise above politics."Dying Earth

The ecological vital signs of the planet are in dire shape, according to an updated report endorsed by almost 14,000 scientists.

Even before it came out, we knew that the paper would present a grim outlook for the future of life on Earth. And now, the very first sentence of the study, published Wednesday in the journal BioScience, points out that the panel of scientists declared a climate change emergency that would cause untold suffering back in 2019. And the rest of the paper explains how nearly every single measurement save for a few exceptions like increased solar energy adoption is now worse than before.

The updated planetary vital signs we present reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual, the paper reads. A major lesson from COVID-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required, and they must rise above politics.

The scientists behind the updated report plan to revisit the planets vitals again in another few years, Live Science notes. If we want to see improvement and perhaps mitigate some of that suffering by then, the scientists recommend taking three crucial steps.

First, they say that we as a planet need to stop using and ban fossil fuels. Then we need to impose a significant price on carbon in order to discourage emissions, and finally we need to protect and restore the planets various forests, wetlands, and other natural carbon sinks in order to get things back on track.

Implementing these three policies soon will help ensure the long-term sustainability of human civilization and give future generations the opportunity to thrive, the paper reads. The speed of change is essential, and new climate policies should be part of COVID-19 recovery plans.

READ MORE: Ignoring climate change will yield untold suffering, panel of 14,000 scientists warns [Live Science]

More on the climate change emergency: Scientists Warn That the Earth Is Literally Dying

See the original post:
New Paper Warns That Environmental Collapse Will Lead to "Untold Suffering" - Futurism

The ISS spun nearly enough to qualify for Olympic skateboarding.Record Baby

Last week, calamity nearly struck the International Space Station when Russias newly-docked Nauka module accidentally fired its thrusters and sent the space station literally spinning.

Now, it seems the problem was worse than anyone admitted at the time. Initially, NASA announced that the ISS had rotated about 45 degrees away from its original position. But faced with reporting from The New York Times, the space agency confirmed that the ISS actually spun a full rotation and a half before crew members got it under control.

The 45-degree number was initially offered in the first minutes after the event occurred by our guidance, navigation and control officer in Mission Control, but were later updated following an analysis of the actual divergence, a NASA spokesperson told Space.com.

Its easy to imagine the Hollywood version of the events, where the ISS is spinning so rapidly that panicked crew gets plastered against the walls as they try to regain control. But even with the incident being more dangerous than NASA first let on, the space agency says the ISS still rotated too slowly about half a degree per second at its fastest for any astronauts to physically feel the movement.

The ISS spun one-and-a-half revolutions about 540 degrees before coming to a stop upside down, NASA flight director Zebulon Scoville, who led the ground effort during the incident, told the NYT. The space station then did a 180-degree forward flip to get back to its original orientation.

As a result, a sense of calm professionalism pervaded throughout, Scoville said.

Probably the intensity goes up a little bit, Scoville said. But theres a pervasive kind of calmness of people not panicking and just looking at the data, figuring out what was happening and try to solve the problem from there.

However, Scoville did add that he had to declare a spacecraft emergency for the first time.

READ MORE: Space station mishap with Russian module more serious than NASA first reported [Space.com]

More on the ISS incident: Crisis Briefly Spins International Space Station Out of Control

More:
The Space Station Incident Was Far Worse Than NASA Admitted - Futurism

Did your country make the cut?Civilization Collapse

While Australians are fighting over rat carcasses in a Mad Max scenario, it might be pretty much business as usual in New Zealand.

At least, thats the conclusion of a new study by researchers at the UKs Anglia Ruskin University, who examined which places on Earth would be best prepared to deal with breakdowns in global supply chains, financial structures, and other complex systems that we couldnt count on anymore after a true breakdown of world order.

Significant changes are possible in the coming years and decades, said Aled Jones, one of the researchers who worked on the study, in a press blurb. The impact of climate change, including increased frequency and intensity of drought and flooding, extreme temperatures, and greater population movement, could dictate the severity of these changes.

Along with New Zealand, the study published this month in the journal Sustainability found that Iceland, the UK, and Ireland would be most likely to sustain order as the rest of the world collapsed. Also on the list, with all apologies to the Mad Max franchise: Australia.

Underlying the report, though, is a chilling assumption: that the global order we take for granted could genuinely come under threat within our lifetimes due to looming environmental, energy, and infrastructure crises.

As well as demonstrating which countries we believe are best suited to managing such a collapse which undoubtedly would be a profound, life-altering experience our study aims to highlight actions to address the interlinked factors of climate change, agricultural capacity, domestic energy, manufacturing capacity, and the over-reliance on complexity, are necessary to improve the resilience of nations that do not have the most favorable starting conditions, Jones said in the blurb.

READ MORE: New Zealand is best placed to survive collapse [Anglia Ruskin University]

More on Nikola: Founder of Tesla Wannabe Charged With Fraud for Lying About Hydrogen-Electric Truck

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Study: These Countries Are Most Likely to Survive Collapse of Civilization - Futurism

A team of scientists from Chinas Nantong University just completed animal tests for an interesting new approach to male birth control but you probably wont enjoy hearing how they got there.

The one-simple-trick involved injecting mice with magnetic nanomaterials, using external magnets to guide the particles into their testicles, and then using another magnetic field to heat their you-know-whats so much that they temporarily stopped producing sperm, according to research published this month in the journal Nano Letters.

Now look, maybe youre wincing a little or crossing your legs as you read this, and we assure you that you can relax. Believe it or not, this approach to male contraception is actually a lot less unpleasant than similar attempts, a new press release on the research claims. Other experiments used higher temperatures to achieve longer-lasting results, but they also risked causing burn injuries or required painful injections directly into the testes themselves both of which this new experiment avoided.

In the experiment, the researchers found success after heating the little magnets that theyd guided into the mouse testes to just 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Thats certainly a noticeable amount of heat, and considerably warmer than your typical body temperature, but its still seemingly safe. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, your skin will start to experience first degree burns at 118 degrees F, so its reasonable to suggest that the warmed magnets wont damage anything that theyre not supposed to.

On top of that, the treatment worked for months at a time,after which the mice that were injected with the magnetic nanomaterials returned to their usual reproductive health. Initially, the mouse testes shrank a bit and stopped producing new sperm in response to the heat. Seven days after treatment, the mice were firing nothing but blanks. But by day 60, the treated mice were back to fathering litters of around 12 pups per female, just like normal.

That suggests that when it comes to family planning, a treatment like this that could eventually become available for humans would be far from the nuclear option. Because the treatment was designed to be temporary and the biodegradable nanomaterials vanish over time, it seems like opting to take a little heat for a month or two of birth control wont mess with anyones long-term plans for parenthood.

See the rest here:
Experimental Male Birth Control Is Magnets That Heat Up Your Testicles - Futurism

Image by Pxfuel/Victor Tangermann

Thanks to newly renegotiated contracts between the European Union and pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna, vaccines are about to become a lot more expensive for some countries.

European nations will now pay 25 percent more for Pfizers COVID-19 vaccines and 10 percent more for Modernas, the Financial Times reports, bringing a Pfizer dose from $18.40 to $23.15 and a Moderna dose $22.60 to $25.50. As Gizmodo notes, European governments will still distribute the shots to citizens for free, but the new price hikes illustrate just how lucrative the pandemic is becoming for the two pharma companies.

It shouldnt necessarily come as a shock that the companies are seeking a higher profit from the vaccine. Even though Moderna took $483 million in grant funding from the US government and Pfizers partner firm BioNTech collected $445 million from Germany, both companies were upfront about their plan to make money off the vaccine rather than selling it at cost like AstraZeneca.

Though Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla didnt directly connect the higher costs in Europe to lower costs elsewhere in his second-quarter earnings call statement last week, he did point out that the company will sell discounted vaccines to poorer nations around the world.

We anticipate that a significant amount of our remaining 2021 vaccine manufacturing capacity will be delivered to middle- and low-income countries where we price in line with income levels or at a not-for-profit price, Bourla said. In fact, we are on track to deliver on our commitment to provide this year more than 1 billion doses, or approximately 40 percent of our total production, to middle- and low-income countries, and another 1 billion in 2022.

Read more from the original source:
Pfizer and Moderna Hike the Price of COVID Vaccines - Futurism

"Cook and I have never spoken or written to each other ever."Likely Story

Remember late last week, when a new book claimed that Elon Musk once demanded that Apple CEO Tim Cook give up his job so that Musk could take it?

Now, Musk and Apple, sort of are both saying that the story is nonsense. They could be right. But its also conceivable that theyre both downplaying the story, even if it might be true, because of the sheer chaos and unprofessionalism that it represents.

According to Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins new book,

But the call went off the rails, according to Higgins sources, when Musk told Cook that the deal would only work if Musk could take Cooks job as the CEO of Apple. In Higgins telling, Cook responded with the words f*ck you, and hung up the call.

Musk, though, now says none of that happened.

Cook and I have never spoken or written to each other ever, he tweeted. There was a point where I requested to meet with Cook to talk about Apple buying Tesla. There were no conditions of acquisition proposed whatsoever.

And Apple, speaking to The Verge, pointed out that Cook has previously said that hes never spoken to Musk.

Should we take these billionaires at their word? You decide.

READ MORE: Review: A deep new history of Tesla takes the shine off Elon Musk [Los Angeles Times]

More on Elon Musk: Elon Musk Reportedly Demanded to Be Made CEO of Apple

Read more here:
Elon Musk Denies Demanding That CEO of Apple Give Up His Job - Futurism

"Yup, hes a great leader! He motivates us to do great work."Dear Leader

If you take a ride on Loop, Elon Musks underground tunnel transportation system in Las Vegas, you might get a bizarrely rosy portrait of the enigmatic megabillionaire during your journey.

Thats because The Boring Company provides drivers yes, the high-tech underground transportation of the future is no different than driving through a tunnel with a specific script to help them field any passenger questions, according to documents obtained by TechCrunch. Most of the time, the prepared answers are designed to shut down conversation as quickly as possible but not before peppering founder Elon Musk with compliments about how awesome, inspiring, and motivating he is.

All in all, its just another example of what would be a baffling move by any other company,but kinda business-as-usual in the zany world of Musk.

Most of the scripted responses are designed to reassure passengers and downplay crashes. For example, if someone asks a driver how long theyve been working for The Boring Company, theyre supposed to say Long enough to know these tunnels pretty well!

But the language gets pretty specific and forcibly enthusiastic when passengers bring up Elon Musk, his management style, or his endless antics. Any general questions about Musk are supposed to be met with a Hes awesome! or inspiring or motivating, according to TechCrunch. And then follow-up questions will get one of several carefully crafted replies designed to avoid any criticism.

This category of questions is extremely common and extremely sensitive, the document reads, according to TechCrunch. Public fascination with our founder is inevitable and may dominate the conversation. Be as brief as possible, and do your best to shut down such conversation. If passengers continue to force the topic, politely say, Im sorry, but I really cant comment and change the subject.

If a passenger asks what its like to work for Musk, drivers are instructed to reply Yup, hes a great leader! He motivates us to do great work.

Ask about Musks bizarre tweets, and the drivers are supposed to say Elon is a public figure. Were just here to provide an awesome transportation experience!

Any other mention of Musks many controversies or pointed questions about him being difficult to work is supposed to be met with I havent seen that article, but that hasnt been my experience.

All things considered, its a bizarre push to protect the image of a man who doesnt seem particularly interested in avoiding controversy and scandal on his own.

READ MORE: Drivers for Elon Musks Loop get a script about their great leader [TechCrunch]

More on Elon Musks ego: Tesla Is Reportedly Trying To Make People Delete Mean Posts About Elon Musk

Continued here:
Elon Musk Employees Are Instructed to Tell People He's "Awesome" and "Inspiring" - Futurism

The centrist 90s werent ready for Ngozi Onwurahs Welcome II the Terrordome a confrontational and experimental futurist thriller or hip-hop dystopia, envisioning a Britain whose bigotries have further metastasised in a lawless failed state created by the cruelties of the past.

In an audacious dreamlike opening section, Onwurah reimagines the 1803 Igbo Landing defiance in the US state of Georgia, in which captive Igbo people took their own lives by drowning rather than submit to slavery. Then, using the same cast, Onwurah launches us into a world of oppression still to come, in a bizarre official ghetto for black people somewhere in Britain named Transdean, nicknamed the Terrordome. Here, for the purposes of surveillance and control, the rules about drug manufacture and interracial association are unofficially suspended, like a mix of apartheid South Africas Soweto and Sun City. Gangster Spike (Valentine Nonyela) is living with Jodie (Saffron Burrows), a white woman in flight from an abusive relationship, and Spikes sister Anjela (Suzette Llewellyn) finds herself in confrontation with the police.

This is a movie that resists categorisation: in many ways, it feels like political cinema from an earlier age, a rough-and-ready document in which the Terrordome is something like Godards Alphaville or the alternative New York from Lizzie Bordens Born in Flames. But interestingly, Onwurah is also engaging with more mainstream, commercial cinema and music, aiming to create a film like Escape from New York or Boyz N the Hood: a studio movie made with arthouse resources. At all events, this is a film that wouldnt be pigeonholed. Maybe weve needed a quarter-century for its spiky refusal to compromise to be understood. Its a film that speaks more to 2021 than 1995.

Welcome II the Terrordome is released on 7 August on Mubi.

Read more from the original source:
Welcome II the Terrordome review dystopian drama offers a bleak vision of Britain - The Guardian