Category Archives: Chess Engines

The Chess Programming Wiki is a repository of information about programming computers to play chess. Our goal is to provide a reference for every aspect of chess-programming, information about programmers, researcher and engines. You'll find different ways to implement LMR and bitboard stuff like best magics for most dense magic bitboard tables. For didactic purposes, the CPW-Engine has been developed by some wiki members. You can start browsing using the left-hand navigation bar. All of our content is arranged hierarchically, so you can see every page by following just those links. If you are looking for a specific page or catchword you can use the search box on top. You will notice updating progress almost daily.

CPW was founded by Mark Lefler on October 26, 2007 [1], first hosted on Wikispaces [2]. Due to that site closure [3], it moved to its present new host at http://www.chessprogramming.org.

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The team behind the Stockfish chess engine has announced the release of Stockfish 14.1. The update comes almost four months after the previous stable release and improves the engines Elo rating by 17 points and wins three times more game pairs than it loses. According to Computer Chess Rating List, Stockfish 14 has an Elo rating of 3549 so an additional 17 points put Stockfish 14.1 at around 3566 thats a huge 684 point lead over the best human chess player, Magnus Carlsen.

Over the last few months, the team said it had been preparing this update to include a more advanced NNUE (neural network) architecture and various search improvements have been included. The team said that at these lofty heights of play, draws are very common and during Neowins brief four-game test between Stockfish 14.1 and Stockfish 14 all the results came out as a tie.

For those of you who want to see how long you can last against the latest Stockfish release, you can follow our guide on setting up Stockfish in a program called PyChess. While youre sure to be defeated (not even the world champion can beat Stockfish), it can be fun to see how many moves you can hold out. As it analyses positions deeply, its ruthlessly efficient at taking your pieces and landing a checkmate.

As Stockfish is built by a community of enthusiasts, the team asks chess fans to join the fishtest testing framework to help improve the engine and programmers are offered the opportunity to join in with the coding work. You can learn more about participating on the Get Involved page.

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Stockfish can crush you at chess even more efficiently in the 14.1 update - Neowin

Alireza Firouzja has been playing under the French flag since July 2021. In round 5 of the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss, he faced former Frances number one Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on top board. The youngster, who is currently rated 7 points higher than his rival, faced MVLs Najdorf Sicilian and drew his compatriot with white in 31 moves.

After being the sole leader for two rounds, Firouzja was caught up by two veterans on Sunday Alexei Shirov (49 years old) and Evgeniy Najer (44). Shirov will get to face Firouzja on top board in round 6. Much like his young opponent, the man from Riga is no stranger to changing federations, as he has represented the Soviet Union, Latvia and Spain at different points during his illustrious career.

Fascinated by the French Winawer

The Winawer Variation in just 60 minutes - that can only work by reducing it to a clear repertoire for Black and, where possible, general recommendations rather than variations. Alexei Shirov was surprised at how quickly he managed to make of the French Winawer an opening he himself could play. And now he will let you share in his conclusions.

The three co-leaders have a 14-player chasing pack a half point back. Fabiano Caruana, Bogdan-Daniel Deac, Krishnan Sasikiran, David Navara, Anton Korobov and Gabriel Sargissian all won in round 5 to join the large group of chasers, which also includes two rising stars who are having a great 2021 so far Nihal Sarin (aged 16) and Samuel Sevian (20).

...54 boards

Alireza Firouzja facing Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | Photo: Anna Shtourman

Shirov beat Croatias number one Ivan Saric with the black pieces. Not surprisingly, the combative opponents entered a line of the Ruy Lopez that gives plenty of play for both sides. A critical position was reached after 20 moves.

The older of the two had spent over 40 minutes on his last four moves, while Saric needed 34 minutes to decide what to do after Shirovs 20...c5. Saric was calculating the consequences of 21.Qd7, when Black can respond either with 21...Rb7 or 21...cxd4, two variations that lead to vastly different positions.

Offering a queen swap was the only move that would have kept the balance though, while the Croatians 22.dxc5 actually leaves Black in the drivers seat after 22...Qxe5 23.Bf4 Qxb2

White has given up a piece, but can now grab an exchange on b8 or go for 23.Qd7, Sarics choice, trying to create complications by leaving more pieces on the board. By this point, the Croatian grandmaster surely noticed he was on the back foot against an opponent famous for his ability to handle the initiative.

There followed 23...Ng6 24.Bd6

Here Shirov did not hesitate before going for 24...e3. The engines show 25.fxe3 is the best response at this point, but all ensuing lines are uninspiring for White, to say the least. Saric played 25.Rf1instead, but after 25...exf2+ 26.Kh1 Rbe8 it was clear that Black would not let this one slip away.

The rook on e8 is ready to infiltrate on e1 with decisive effect. Saric resigned after 27.Rcd1 Bb8 28.Bxf8 Kxf8 (the rook stays on e8) 29.g3 Bxf3 30.c6 Qc2. It was animpressive second win in a row for one of the most famous players to hail from Riga!

2015 European champion Evgeniy Najer| Photo: Anna Shtourman

Russian grandmaster Evgeniy Najer never quite made it to the very top of the world ranking, but he has nonetheless accumulated a number of remarkable results during his career. Among other accolades, he won the European Championship in 2015 and the strong Aeroflot Open in 2016. Moreover, at the first edition of the Grand Swiss on the Isle of Man, he managed to upset Vishy Anand in the very first round.

Najer could have joined Firouzja in the lead on Saturday, but missed a big chance to take down Saric from a clearly superior position. The disappointment did not hurt his good form though, as he beat Robert Hovhannisyan with black in round 5.

Hovhannisyan had faltered while under pressure a couple of moves ago, and here found nothing better than 29.e5, giving up his weak pawn and entering a double-rook endgame after 29...Bxe5 30.Nf3 Rd5 31.Nxe5 Rxe5

Najer did not fail to convert his advantage for a second day in a row, as he forced his opponents resignation 17 moves later.

...108 players

Replay all games at Live.ChessBase.com

It was an eventful round in the womens tournament, with six decisive results on the top 10 boards, leaving five players sharing first place with 4/5 points. Former sole leader Lei Tingjie signed a 30-move draw with the black pieces against second seed Nana Dzagnidze, which allowed Nino Batsiashvili, Zhu Jiner, Elisabeth Paehtz and Jolanta Zawadzka to catch up with her atop the standings.

19-year-old Olga Badelka from Belarus also scored a win, joining the chasing pack going into round 6, the last one before the only rest day in Riga.

...25 boards

Nino Batsiashvili playing white against Alexandra Kosteniuk| Photo: Anna Shtourman

On the second board, Batsiashvili got the better of this years World Cup winner Alexandra Kosteniuk. Out of a Ragozin Defence, Batsiashvili saw her opponent playing overly optimistically, giving White a visible positional advantage in the early middlegame. She still needed to convert her trumps into a tangible edge though and Batsiashvili managed to do just that, in style.

After a quick glance at the position, we can sense that there might be a tactical shot for White here. Batsiashvili had spent almost 20 minutes before pushing17.e4 in the previous move, and after 17...dxe4, she knew what she had to do the Georgian immediately responded with 18.Nxh6+.

The game continued 18...gxh6 19.fxe4 Kg7 20.e5

Calculation Training in Attack & Defence Vol.1 & Vol.2

The two DVDs offer you the chance to solve 66 exercises with multiple questions. These exercises are presented in the interactive format, which makes them accessible for players of different strengths as we will go through the thought process step by step

There is not much Black can do at this point. Kosteniuk kept on playing until move 33, but Batsiashvili patiently made the most of her strong initiative to join the leading pack with six rounds to go.

Go here to read the rest:

Grand Swiss: Shirov and Najer join Firouzja in the lead - Chessbase News

Oberhasli immediately feels like an early vision of how music fandom could evolve in a post-metaverse world.

You may not immediately be familiar with the platform it calls home, Manticore Games' Core. But you really don't need much background to appreciate the visually dazzling surreality of this new virtual creative space, which was built for and will now be curated by the popular EDM producer and DJ, Deadmau5.

"Ever since the big old pandemic clamped down on live events, we saw everyone doing the mad dash to get their virtual presence out in one form or another," Deadmau5, whose given name is Joel Zimmerman, said in an interview with Mashable ahead of Oberhasli's October launch.

So yes, that includes things like Fortnite's blockbuster in-game concerts, which recently featured pop superstar Ariana Grande. But it's also stuff like Phish's "Dinner and a Movie" archival streaming series on YouTube, which culminated in 2020 with the band challenging fans to a game of chess as a 1995 New Year's performance "aired" on their channel.

For Deadmau5, who has a background in animation and programming that predates his music career, giving fans a way to directly interact with an online music event is key. Early examples like Fortnite's Marshmello sets in 2019 were largely passive, with crowds of avatars gathering in front of a digital performance stage. Deadmau5 took note, but envisioned more of a "Passive Experience+, [and] one that was explorable."

Oberhasli, then, is "our first baby step of me being set down a certain path." The sprawling and visually chaotic virtual landscape is a starting point. It's filled with Easter eggs for fans, and it includes both a Fall Guys-inspired mini-game and a virtual concert experience that feels more like a theme park ride. But for Deadmau5, who has taken possession of and responsibility for Oberhasli's ongoing updates now that the world is built, it's only a starting point.

"Probably within the year, I would say, we're gonna start unlocking a lot more cool interactivity," he said. Picking up on a comment I had made about part of the concert resembling a Destiny boss fight, he noted: "Adding a gunfight to that concert is really like five clicks away with Core."

Core is a piece of software that you can download for free from the Epic Games Store. It's not really a game, though there are plenty of games to play once you install it. Core is more of a creative space where anyone with an idea or even just a willingness to experiment can dive in and intuitively piece together their own digital creation. It's essentially a sandbox filled with easy-to-use game development tools.

Fortnite maker Epic Games may be best known in the mainstream for its mega-popular battle royale, but the company's most important claim to fame inside the video game business is its Unreal Engine. Games are built using software development tools (often referred to as a "game engine"). Unreal is the Gucci of game engines. It's the machine powering everything from recent gems like The Artful Escape and Returnal to classics like the BioShock and Borderlands games.

Core, then, is like a simplified version of Unreal. It was built with Epic's game engine, and the creation tools it offers are simplified versions of the ones that professional game developers use. As an overall experience Core is meant to be pick-up-and-play, and anything you build there lives exclusively inside the platform.

"Probably within the year, we're gonna start unlocking a lot more cool interactivity."

If you have it installed, a plain old link is all it takes to jump into someone's creation. That's how I got to check out Oberhasli before it was released. Manticore sent me a link, clicking it whisked me off to the right destination in Core. This new home for Deadmau5 fandom is one more destination in a crowd that includes homemade survival games, battle royales, farming simulators, and basically anything you can imagine. Where a concert in Fortnite is a standalone affair, a customized space inside Core is a fixture.

That's where the appeal lies for Deadmau5. He knows that Manticore, just like Epic with its Fortnite concerts, would love for Oberhasli to be a gateway into the platform for new users. But if world-renowned DJ Deadmau5 was just Joel Zimmerman, programmer and digital artist, he'd still be welcome there, with all the tools he'd need to build something on the scale of Oberhasli.

"Things that have absolutely nothing to do with me are inherently in Core as well," he said. "I have no problem with that because I'm not being locked into a style guide."

That creative freedom is what makes Oberhasli, and really every other Core creation, stand out. While there's some uniformity in the way certain things look such as basic character avatars and outfits there's no guiding philosophy for creators to adhere to. Oberhasli is a celebration of Deadmau5, full stop. It's not his personality filtered through someone else's vision, beyond the basic building blocks that give Core a somewhat cartoonish look that isn't so far off from Fortnite.

Stepping into Oberhasli's concert space, which replays the headlining feature of the new virtual space on a schedule, is like hitting play on a music video, except you're walking around inside it and poking at anything that seems interesting. As the 10-minute set plays, you cycle through environments that fit the musical mood of the moment. They're all filled with different ways to directly engage.

These aren't just static scenes where your avatar stands around and watches. What starts as a neon-drenched dance hall transforms in an instant as the floor melts away and concertgoers or is it players? drop into a circular pit lined by rainbow-colored pulsing beats that are reminiscent of the lights on an equalizer. In the distance, a giant, chomping Deadmau5 head is waiting at the pit's terminus. After players are gobbled up the scene shifts once again to an undersea setting as the music dials back to a slower and more chill tempo.

There are several such scene shifts throughout the event. At one point, you're set loose in an industrial space that's all conveyor belts and pulsing hydraulic rods (that double as jump pads), while an enormous robot, which looks like the love child of Voltron and a Deadmau5's DJ rig, fires emerald-colored eye lasers into the crowd. This leads directly into the gripping finale, a pseudo-chase where the Deadmau5 Voltron, now flying, pursues the players through a lava-scorched landscape while a giant, Deadmau5 head-shaped mushroom cloud hangs in the sky.

None of it is genuinely live. That's a hurdle of our current technical reality, where performing in real-time before a crowd of player-controlled avatars is limited by the number of people who can be crammed into a virtual lobby. (In Core, that number is 32). But the audiovisual intensity of the event coupled with the many small ways you can interact with each space creates a kind of energy that feels like the distant cousin of being in a dance hall, moving to the beat as it's created on the spot.

"I'm not hanging up the mouse head and saying I'm just gonna throw all my shit in here."

"That's the fun part," Deadmau5 said. "There's a billion ways to think of that [energy exchange]." He's already imagining scenarios where visits to Oberhasli can be further gamified with the dangling carrot of virtual rewards or an Achievements-style point system for players to chase. Perhaps even team-based exercises that split the gathered crowd, giving them proverbial levers to pull that could influence the way things play out.

"[Imagine] they get to vote on the next sequence of events," he offered. "Or events that have taken place in previous performances that they really liked, that I could re-inject back in [when the vote goes a certain way]." While the march of technology could eventually allow for more of a truly live performance, that's not really the goal with Oberhasli as Deadmau5 sees it.

"For me, the experience is more leaning toward the gamification of the event, because [Core] is inherently a game platform," he said, "I would say not all Deadmau5 fans are video game fans, but at least the ones that are video game fans, and that are in this little section of the metaverse, are music fans. So it's a good crossover."

"I know I'm hitting a narrow margin of everybody that I have to hit as my Deadmau5 schtick goes," he added. "But I'd like to see that widen up once you can successfully illustrate or demonstrate that this type of interaction is available. Thus bringing more people into just the whole idea of game engines being the new interactive music video."

That's where Manticore's ongoing efforts to develop Core play a key role. For now, the platform is only available for Windows through Epic Games Store. But an iOS version is coming in 2022 "for sure," according to studio co-founder Jordan Maynard. It's also in development for unspecified consoles, and a planned cloud gaming release should open access up to pretty much any internet-connected hardware that sports a full-featured web browser.

For Deadmau5, the now-launched Oberhasli is meant to live on (and on and on) as a space for his creative pursuits to live. Primarily his game and game development ideas, but bigger projects as well. "I'm not hanging up the mouse head and...saying I'm just gonna throw all my shit in here," he explained, "But the things I want to do in terms of interacting with my online community, I would prefer to do there."

If that means tweaking Oberhasli or working with Manticore on finding ways to, in Deadmau5's words, "synergize a couple of different platforms" he cited Twitch as an example then that's on the table too. "Some people are just happy to watch, and don't necessarily [want to] go out and...rip two [or] three grand on a gaming PC they don't play games on just to come in and enjoy the fun."

For someone like me who treats music and live performance as something adjacent to a religious experience, it's a compelling pitch. One of the more positive lessons of the pandemic, if there's any positivity to draw from our miserable shared trauma, is that certain fundamentally in-person experiences translate surprisingly well into virtual settings.

Oberhasli follows along from the Fornite concerts and band vs. fan remote chess matches, evolving the notion of what's possible when a tech-literate performer turns their creative energies toward a new kind of canvas. However we end up defining "metaverse" in the end, you can be sure our cultural faves in music and nearly any other medium are coming along for the ride.

For all its flaws as a movie and a book, Ready Player One got that concept perfectly right. So with Core and Oberhasli together, we're seeing a Deadmau5 experiment that presses hard against the limits we've seen so far. It's abundantly clear after even a few minutes spent inside his virtual play space that those boundaries are already ripe for expansion.

Follow this link:

Deadmau5's 'Oberhasli' is what it looks like when the metaverse comes for music fans - Mashable South East Asia

Oberhasli immediately feels like an early vision of how music fandom could evolve in a post-metaverse world.

You may not immediately be familiar with the platform it calls home, Manticore Games' Core. But you really don't need much background to appreciate the visually dazzling surreality of this new virtual creative space, which was built for and will now be curated by the popular EDM producer and DJ, Deadmau5.

"Ever since the big old pandemic clamped down on live events, we saw everyone doing the mad dash to get their virtual presence out in one form or another," Deadmau5, whose given name is Joel Zimmerman, said in an interview with Mashable ahead of Oberhasli's October launch.

So yes, that includes things like Fortnite's blockbuster in-game concerts, which recently featured pop superstar Ariana Grande. But it's also stuff like Phish's "Dinner and a Movie" archival streaming series on YouTube, which culminated in 2020 with the band challenging fans to a game of chess as a 1995 New Year's performance "aired" on their channel.

For Deadmau5, who has a background in animation and programming that predates his music career, giving fans a way to directly interact with an online music event is key. Early examples like Fortnite's Marshmello sets in 2019 were largely passive, with crowds of avatars gathering in front of a digital performance stage. Deadmau5 took note, but envisioned more of a "Passive Experience+, [and] one that was explorable."

Anyone can install "Core" and step into the dazzling Oberhasli, but this is a playground designed with Deadmau5 fans in mind specifically.Credit: manticore games / deadmau5

Oberhasli, then, is "our first baby step of me being set down a certain path." The sprawling and visually chaotic virtual landscape is a starting point. It's filled with Easter eggs for fans, and it includes both a Fall Guys-inspired mini-game and a virtual concert experience that feels more like a theme park ride. But for Deadmau5, who has taken possession of and responsibility for Oberhasli's ongoing updates now that the world is built, it's only a starting point.

"Probably within the year, I would say, we're gonna start unlocking a lot more cool interactivity," he said. Picking up on a comment I had made about part of the concert resembling a Destiny boss fight, he noted: "Adding a gunfight to that concert is really like five clicks away with Core."

Core is a piece of software that you can download for free from the Epic Games Store. It's not really a game, though there are plenty of games to play once you install it. Core is more of a creative space where anyone with an idea or even just a willingness to experiment can dive in and intuitively piece together their own digital creation. It's essentially a sandbox filled with easy-to-use game development tools.

Fortnite maker Epic Games may be best known in the mainstream for its mega-popular battle royale, but the company's most important claim to fame inside the video game business is its Unreal Engine. Games are built using software development tools (often referred to as a "game engine"). Unreal is the Gucci of game engines. It's the machine powering everything from recent gems like The Artful Escape and Returnal to classics like the BioShock and Borderlands games.

Core, then, is like a simplified version of Unreal. It was built with Epic's game engine, and the creation tools it offers are simplified versions of the ones that professional game developers use. As an overall experience Core is meant to be pick-up-and-play, and anything you build there lives exclusively inside the platform.

If you have it installed, a plain old link is all it takes to jump into someone's creation. That's how I got to check out Oberhasli before it was released. Manticore sent me a link, clicking it whisked me off to the right destination in Core. This new home for Deadmau5 fandom is one more destination in a crowd that includes homemade survival games, battle royales, farming simulators, and basically anything you can imagine. Where a concert in Fortnite is a standalone affair, a customized space inside Core is a fixture.

That's where the appeal lies for Deadmau5. He knows that Manticore, just like Epic with its Fortnite concerts, would love for Oberhasli to be a gateway into the platform for new users. But if world-renowned DJ Deadmau5 was just Joel Zimmerman, programmer and digital artist, he'd still be welcome there, with all the tools he'd need to build something on the scale of Oberhasli.

"Things that have absolutely nothing to do with me are inherently in Core as well," he said. "I have no problem with that because I'm not being locked into a style guide."

That creative freedom is what makes Oberhasli, and really every other Core creation, stand out. While there's some uniformity in the way certain things look such as basic character avatars and outfits there's no guiding philosophy for creators to adhere to. Oberhasli is a celebration of Deadmau5, full stop. It's not his personality filtered through someone else's vision, beyond the basic building blocks that give Core a somewhat cartoonish look that isn't so far off from Fortnite.

Stepping into Oberhasli's concert space, which replays the headlining feature of the new virtual space on a schedule, is like hitting play on a music video, except you're walking around inside it and poking at anything that seems interesting. As the 10-minute set plays, you cycle through environments that fit the musical mood of the moment. They're all filled with different ways to directly engage.

These aren't just static scenes where your avatar stands around and watches. What starts as a neon-drenched dance hall transforms in an instant as the floor melts away and concertgoers or is it players? drop into a circular pit lined by rainbow-colored pulsing beats that are reminiscent of the lights on an equalizer. In the distance, a giant, chomping Deadmau5 head is waiting at the pit's terminus. After players are gobbled up the scene shifts once again to an undersea setting as the music dials back to a slower and more chill tempo.

There are several such scene shifts throughout the event. At one point, you're set loose in an industrial space that's all conveyor belts and pulsing hydraulic rods (that double as jump pads), while an enormous robot, which looks like the love child of Voltron and a Deadmau5's DJ rig, fires emerald-colored eye lasers into the crowd. This leads directly into the gripping finale, a pseudo-chase where the Deadmau5 Voltron, now flying, pursues the players through a lava-scorched landscape while a giant, Deadmau5 head-shaped mushroom cloud hangs in the sky.

None of it is genuinely live. That's a hurdle of our current technical reality, where performing in real-time before a crowd of player-controlled avatars is limited by the number of people who can be crammed into a virtual lobby. (In Core, that number is 32). But the audiovisual intensity of the event coupled with the many small ways you can interact with each space creates a kind of energy that feels like the distant cousin of being in a dance hall, moving to the beat as it's created on the spot.

"That's the fun part," Deadmau5 said. "There's a billion ways to think of that [energy exchange]." He's already imagining scenarios where visits to Oberhasli can be further gamified with the dangling carrot of virtual rewards or an Achievements-style point system for players to chase. Perhaps even team-based exercises that split the gathered crowd, giving them proverbial levers to pull that could influence the way things play out.

"[Imagine] they get to vote on the next sequence of events," he offered. "Or events that have taken place in previous performances that they really liked, that I could re-inject back in [when the vote goes a certain way]." While the march of technology could eventually allow for more of a truly live performance, that's not really the goal with Oberhasli as Deadmau5 sees it.

"For me, the experience is more leaning toward the gamification of the event, because [Core] is inherently a game platform," he said, "I would say not all Deadmau5 fans are video game fans, but at least the ones that are video game fans, and that are in this little section of the metaverse, are music fans. So it's a good crossover."

"I know I'm hitting a narrow margin of everybody that I have to hit as my Deadmau5 schtick goes," he added. "But I'd like to see that widen up once you can successfully illustrate or demonstrate that this type of interaction is available. Thus bringing more people into just the whole idea of game engines being the new interactive music video."

That's where Manticore's ongoing efforts to develop Core play a key role. For now, the platform is only available for Windows through Epic Games Store. But an iOS version is coming in 2022 "for sure," according to studio co-founder Jordan Maynard. It's also in development for unspecified consoles, and a planned cloud gaming release should open access up to pretty much any internet-connected hardware that sports a full-featured web browser.

It's hard to fully capture the visual variety at play in Oberhasli. It's a space that's built for exploration and discovery.Credit: manticore games / deadmau5

For Deadmau5, the now-launched Oberhasli is meant to live on (and on and on) as a space for his creative pursuits to live. Primarily his game and game development ideas, but bigger projects as well. "I'm not hanging up the mouse head and...saying I'm just gonna throw all my shit in here," he explained, "But the things I want to do in terms of interacting with my online community, I would prefer to do there."

If that means tweaking Oberhasli or working with Manticore on finding ways to, in Deadmau5's words, "synergize a couple of different platforms" he cited Twitch as an example then that's on the table too. "Some people are just happy to watch, and don't necessarily [want to] go out and...rip two [or] three grand on a gaming PC they don't play games on just to come in and enjoy the fun."

For someone like me who treats music and live performance as something adjacent to a religious experience, it's a compelling pitch. One of the more positive lessons of the pandemic, if there's any positivity to draw from our miserable shared trauma, is that certain fundamentally in-person experiences translate surprisingly well into virtual settings.

Oberhasli follows along from the Fornite concerts and band vs. fan remote chess matches, evolving the notion of what's possible when a tech-literate performer turns their creative energies toward a new kind of canvas. However we end up defining "metaverse" in the end, you can be sure our cultural faves in music and nearly any other medium are coming along for the ride.

For all its flaws as a movie and a book, Ready Player One got that concept perfectly right. So with Core and Oberhasli together, we're seeing a Deadmau5 experiment that presses hard against the limits we've seen so far. It's abundantly clear after even a few minutes spent inside his virtual play space that those boundaries are already ripe for expansion.

Continue reading here:

Deadmau5's 'Oberhasli' is what it looks like when the metaverse comes for music fans - Mashable

Humans were the strongest chess entities on the planet for centuries. Even in the 1980s, it seemed laughable that a computer could ever defeat the strongest human players.Then in 1997, it happeneda computer defeated the world champion. Which computer, you ask? Deep Blue.

Let's learn more about this computer that changed history. Here is what you need to know about Deep Blue:

Deep Blue was a chess computer developed by IBM. It is famous for defeating the chess world champion, GM Garry Kasparov, in their 1997 match. Deep Blue's victory was viewed as a symbolic testament to the rise of artificial intelligencea victory for machine versus man.

The Deep Blue project (initially called ChipTest) was created by Feng-hsiung Hsu in 1985. In 1989 Hsu and other colleagues joined the IBM team to fully develop Deep Blue. An early version of Deep Blue played a match against GM Joel Benjamin, who joined the Deep Blue team as a GM consultant afterward.

By the time of the 1997 match, Deep Blue's alpha-beta search algorithm (the same type of search that is still used by many conventional computer engines today) along with its custom hardware allowed it to consider up to 200 million positions per second.Deep Blue was dismantled after the 1997 victory, with one of its two racks being displayed at the National Museum of American History and the other at the Computer History Museum.

Deep Blue played two matches against Kasparov in the 1990s. In the 1996 match, Deep Blue lost 2-4 but still accomplished something that no chess computer had done before: it defeated the human world champion in a gamean unprecedented accomplishment. Kasparov is still widely viewed as the greatest player of all time.

Many improvements were made to Deep Blue in between the 1996 and 1997 matches. When they met in the 1997 rematch, Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3.5-2.5 in standard time controls and in a tournament setting. This incredible victory was groundbreaking and marked an achievement for the world of artificial intelligence.

In the first game of the 1996 match, Deep Blue shocked the world by defeating Kasparov. It played the Alapin variation of the Sicilian and was able to force multiple structural weaknesses in Kasparov's position. After 24...exd5, all of Kasparov's pawns are either isolated, doubled, or both:

Kasparov fought his way back to a balanced position but erred with 27...d4, and Deep Blue won the game convincingly. Here is the full game:

This second game example is the final game of the 1997 match. With the match score tied at 2.5-2.5, Kasparov played a solid line of the Caro-Kann Defense and purposefully played 7...h6, which invited an early piece sacrifice.Kasparov believed that Deep Blue would not sacrifice the piece, but it shockingly played 8.Nxe6!:

According to multiple sources, the Deep Blue team added this sacrificial line to Deep Blue's opening book on the same day of this game. After the sacrifice, Kasparov was blown off the boardhe resigned on move 19 and lost the match.

You now know what Deep Blue is, what it accomplished, and more. Head over to Chess.com/CCC to watch chess computers play at any time on any day!

The rest is here:

Deep Blue - Chess.com

In news reminiscent of the initial AlphaZero shockwave last December, the artificial intelligence company DeepMind released astounding results from an updated version of the machine-learning chess project today.

The results leave no question, once again, that AlphaZero plays some of the strongest chess in the world.

The updated AlphaZero crushed Stockfish 8 in a new 1,000-game match, scoring +155 -6 =839. (See below for three sample games from this match with analysis by Stockfish 10 and video analysis by GM Robert Hess.)

AlphaZero also bested Stockfish in a series of time-odds matches, soundly beating the traditional engine even at time odds of 10 to one.

In additional matches, the new AlphaZero beat the"latest development version" of Stockfish, with virtually identical results as the match vs Stockfish 8, according to DeepMind. The pre-release copy of journal article, which is dated Dec. 7, 2018, does not specify the exact development version used.

[Update: Today's release of the full journal article specifies that the match was against the latest development version of Stockfish as of Jan. 13, 2018, which was Stockfish 9.]

The machine-learning engine also won all matches against "a variant of Stockfish that uses a strong opening book," according to DeepMind. Adding the opening book did seem to help Stockfish, which finally won a substantial number of games when AlphaZero was Blackbut not enough to win the match.

AlphaZero's results (wins green, losses red) vs the latest Stockfish and vs Stockfish with a strong opening book. Image by DeepMind via Science.

The results will be published in an upcoming article by DeepMind researchers in the journal Scienceand were provided to selected chess media by DeepMind, which is based in London and owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

The 1,000-game match was played in early 2018. In the match, both AlphaZero and Stockfish were given three hours each game plus a 15-second increment per move. This time control would seem to make obsolete one of the biggest arguments against the impact of last year's match, namely that the 2017 time control of one minute per move played to Stockfish's disadvantage.

With three hours plus the 15-second increment, no such argument can be made, as that is an enormous amount of playing time for any computer engine. In the time odds games, AlphaZero was dominant up to 10-to-1 odds. Stockfish only began to outscore AlphaZero when the odds reached 30-to-1.

AlphaZero's results (wins green, losses red) vs Stockfish 8 in time odds matches. Image by DeepMind via Science.

AlphaZero's results in the time odds matches suggest it is not only much stronger than any traditional chess engine, but that it also uses a much more efficient search for moves. According to DeepMind, AlphaZero uses a Monte Carlo tree search, and examines about 60,000 positions per second, compared to 60 million for Stockfish.

An illustration of how AlphaZero searches for chess moves. Image by DeepMind via Science.

What can computer chess fans conclude after reading these results? AlphaZero has solidified its status as one of the elite chess players in the world. But the results are even more intriguing if you're following the ability of artificial intelligence to master general gameplay.

According to the journal article, the updated AlphaZero algorithm is identical in three challenging games: chess, shogi, and go. This version of AlphaZero was able to beat the top computer players of all three games after just a few hours of self-training, starting from just the basic rules of the games.

The updated AlphaZero results come exactly one year to the day since DeepMind unveiled the first, historic AlphaZero results in a surprise match vs Stockfish that changed chess forever.

Since then, an open-source project called Lc0 has attempted to replicate the success of AlphaZero, and the project has fascinated chess fans. Lc0 now competes along with the champion Stockfish and the rest of the world's top engines in the ongoing Chess.com Computer Chess Championship.

CCC fans will be pleased to see that some of the new AlphaZero games include "fawn pawns," the CCC-chat nickname for lone advanced pawns that cramp an opponent's position. Perhaps the establishment of these pawns is a critical winning strategy, as it seems AlphaZero and Lc0 have independently learned it.

DeepMind released 20 sample games chosen by GM Matthew Sadler from the 1,000 game match. Chess.com has selected three of these games with deep analysis by Stockfish 10 and video analysis by GM Robert Hess. You can download the 20 sample games at the bottom of this article, analyzed by Stockfish 10, and four sample games analyzed by Lc0.

Update: After this article was published, DeepMind released 210 sample games that you can download here.

Selected game 1 with analysis by Stockfish 10:

Game 1 video analysis by GM Robert Hess:

Selected game 2with analysis by Stockfish 10:

Game 2 video analysis by GM Robert Hess:

Selected game 3 with analysis by Stockfish 10:

Game 3 video analysis by GM Robert Hess:

IM Anna Rudolf also made a video analysis of one of the sample games, calling it "AlphaZero's brilliancy."

The new version of AlphaZero trained itself to play chess starting just from the rules of the game, using machine-learning techniques to continually update its neural networks. According to DeepMind, 5,000 TPUs (Google's tensor processing unit, an application-specific integrated circuit for article intelligence) were used to generate the first set of self-play games, and then 16 TPUs were used to train the neural networks.

The total training time in chess was nine hours from scratch. According to DeepMind, it took the new AlphaZero just four hours of training to surpass Stockfish; by nine hours it was far ahead of the world-champion engine.

For the games themselves, Stockfish used 44 CPU (central processing unit) cores and AlphaZero used a single machine with four TPUs and 44 CPU cores. Stockfish had a hash size of 32GB and used syzygy endgame tablebases.

AlphaZero's results vs. Stockfish in the most popular human openings. In the left bar, AlphaZero plays White; in the right bar, AlphaZero is Black. Image by DeepMind via Science. Click on the image for a larger version.

The sample games released were deemed impressive by chess professionals who were given preview access to them. GM Robert Hess categorized the games as "immensely complicated."

DeepMind itself noted the unique style of its creation in the journal article:

"In several games, AlphaZero sacrificed pieces for long-term strategic advantage, suggesting that it has a more fluid, context-dependent positional evaluation than the rule-based evaluations used by previous chess programs," the DeepMind researchers said.

The AI company also emphasized the importance of using the same AlphaZero version in three different games, touting it as a breakthrough in overall game-playing intelligence:

"These results bring us a step closer to fulfilling a longstanding ambition of artificial intelligence: a general game-playing system that can learn to master any game," the DeepMind researchers said.

You can download the 20 sample games provided by DeepMind and analyzed by Chess.com using Stockfish 10 on a powerful computer. The first set of games contains 10 games with no opening book, and the second set contains games with openings from the 2016 TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship).

PGN downloads:

20 games with analysis by Stockfish 10:

4 selected games with analysis by Lc0:

Love AlphaZero? You can watch the machine-learning chess project it inspired, Lc0, in the ongoing Computer Chess Championship now.

Read the rest here:

AlphaZero Crushes Stockfish In New 1,000-Game Match - Chess.com

ProjectResolute has been a chess fan since he was a kid. He now enjoys playing on chess (dot) com and various computer chess programs.

Discover more about UCI chess engines.

Luiz Hanfilaque via Unsplash

Computers rule and humans drool in the world of chess. Since the moment Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, the abyss of skill between human and computers has been getting wider. Nowadays, every avid chess enthusiast can download a chess program and watch intense chess battles being played with precision and skill beyond the dreams of even the top grandmasters, and it can easily be done for free (provided you already have a computer and an internet connection).

When I first downloaded a UCI chess engine, I was a bit confused as to how it all worked. I Googled something along the lines of, best free computer chess program, clicked the first thing that caught my eye, and before I knew it, I had a file named Stockfish 5 64 bit.exe that could play at super grandmaster strength. I wanted a challenge, and it seemed that I had one! I excitedly double-clicked the file and, alas, a black window popped up with the three names of the programmers who wrote the marvelous piece of code but nothing else.

What I didnt know was that I had to have separate software to use the chess engine, something called a GUI. GUI is short for graphical user interface, and though it was a little confusing at first, I eventually got Stockfish running and got the worst whipping in my life.

The concept of an interaction between a chess engine and its GUI is really quite easy to understand. Here's an analogy that best explains it: Lets say this UCI chess engine was a car engine. This engine wouldn't do any good without the rest of the car. You need wheels, a place to sit, a steering wheel, brakes, etc., or it would just be a worthless piece of junk. The same goes for the UCI chess engine. The GUI program provides a way for the user to interact with the engine, which does all the work and is always 2030 moves ahead of you.

There are many different GUIs to choose from, some paid and some free. This article focuses on the free ones. Remember that all GUIs have their own pros and cons. I personally use all of the GUIs mentioned here, because I like to use at least a feature or two on each one:

Here's a screenshot of the UCI Chess Engines in Lucas GUI.

The Lucas Chess GUI is a UCI-compatible chess program created by Lucas Monge and others. It is an open-sourced project, and its likely that many different people lent a hand in creating this software.

An outstanding feature of this GUI is the number of chess engines that it comes with. The website says there are over 30 different engines that have a variety of skill levels. This is a huge plus for users who dont want to go through the hassle of installing a chess engine. However, as with almost all GUIs, users can install as many other chess engines into Lucas Chess as they want.

Another big plus is Lucas Chess has training positions preinstalled, including everything from tactical problems to endgames. There are enough puzzles to last you for months, if not years. I am not sure exactly how many puzzles there are, but I know its in the tens of thousands. If thats not enough puzzles, you can also manually set up your own chess puzzles to practice. If you have a tactical chess puzzle book handy, you could easily copy those over as well (although I discovered it can take time).

What I like most about this software is its analysis feature. I can analyze any game I put into Lucas Chess with a chess engine. I put the game into the program, hit analyze, set the time per move I want it to analyze, and it scrolls through each individual move and color codes which ones are excellent, good, neutral, mistake, or just plain bad! I then click on a move the chess engine deemed bad, and I can see the move the chess engine would have played along with the move I played and what it predicted would've happened afterward.

I wish Lucas Chess offered the ability to print out stored games on a scoresheet, so I could have a nice-looking hard copy of all my favorite games. I did find this feature in another program, Chessbase Reader 2013. However, it would save time when playing a game in Lucas Chess to not have to copy and paste the game over to another program.

The program is only available for Windows OS. However, I believe that it's possible to use on Linux by compiling the program yourself if you're a computer whiz. Another option is using WINE, which lets you run Windows applications on Mac and Linux.

Here is Arena chess program's engine menu.

The Lucas Chess GUI program is useful for analyzing games, practicing tactics, and playing against various chess engines. However, the Arena Chess GUI program is my go-to chess software when experimenting with various chess engines, and I do have quite a few.

One thing that I love doing is pitching engine vs engine tournaments, and Arena makes this quite easy to do. All you need to do is select the engine menu and hit tournament, select which engines to use and length of time to think, and hit start. The GUI will handle everything else (scoring, pairing, saving the games played, etc.). Its quite fascinating to watch!

Its worth noting that the Lucas Chess GUI can also handle engine vs. engine tournaments, but it doesnt have nearly as many options as Arena. With Arena, you can set the skill level by search depth, time to think per move, and blitz. With Lucas chess, only blitz is allowed. If you want to pitch engine vs. engine chess battles, Arena is the preferred choice among the free GUIs.

Another thing that I love about the Arena GUI is the ability to see the UCI engines current search depth, nodes (means positions) per second its searching, and much more. If you love computers and chess as much as I do, it can become quite hypnotizing!

Another feature that's worth noting is it's possible to limit an engines playing strength by a certain percentage of the time allowed to calculate. For example, if it has calculated for two minutes on one position, and I set it at 50%, it really would only have calculated for one minute.

This is something I discovered just recently, and the reason Im excited about this is that even at a skill level of one second per move, I still cant ever hope to beat Komodo 10. However, at 1% of a second, this computer chess titan is much more manageable. Although I havent yet beaten him at this setting, it doesnt leave me feeling like a complete moron at the end of a game. That is, as long as I dont think too much about how little time it has to think about a move.

The only con I can think of that applies to the Arena chess GUI is with all its bells and whistles, it can be quite daunting to learn to use. For me, I love figuring out software, but I understand if some people just dont want to take the time. If this sounds like you, scroll down because the next chess software will make you smile!

Chess GUI Arena is available only in the Windows format. However, it should run in the WINE software for Mac and Linux. The program comes with two opening books, a game database, several engines, and Gaviota 3-man endgame tablebase.

Here is a picture of the Tarrasch Chess Program.

The Tarrasch chess GUI is named after a great chess legend, Siegbert Tarrasch, who lived in the 1800s/1900s. Many of the great chess players of the time criticized his ideas, and he was greatly underappreciated by the chess world. Thus, the developer decided to name this chess software after him as a commemoration to him and to rebalance this injustice.

As I hinted at earlier, the main benefit of this chess program is its simplicity. The Tarrasch chess GUI is very intuitive by design. For example, there are two options to move the pieces with the mouse:

This feature isnt the only thing I like about this chess software. I read a lot of chess ebooks, and Tarrasch is the perfect assistant. Not only can I quickly set up a chess position from the chess book on the GUI, but I can also copy and paste a string of moves from the ebook into the GUI if the moves are written in algebraic notation.

If there are no moves entered into the game yet, the Tarrasch chess program will automatically assume the moves are the moves of the game. However, if there are moves already in the moves box, the text pasted will be as a comment, and one has to promote a comment to variation via the edit menu.

Currently, two versions of the Tarrasch Gui are available for download. Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows OS.

Here's the tree window in SCID vs PC (note the opening statistics!).

Theres no denying that SCID vs. PC is a very powerful piece of software. If I spend a bit of time experimenting with it, the GUI could very well replace Arena. The reason why I dont use it very often is that to me its more confusing than any of the other UCI-compatible chess programs I've tried.

That said, it doesn't stop me from using the program to go through large pgn databases of say, 1000+ games. This is really what the developers were focusing on when creating this program. Its primary function is as a database manager, and its evident through the following features:

The options and features mentioned here are by no means exhaustive; I've only just begun to scratch the surface. If anyone has a lot of games they would like to analyze and sort through, this is probably the best choice of free chess software.

As far as playing against a chess engine and/or analyzing your games for blunders, this will work, but there are better choices, and Id recommend the Lucas Chess program for that. For pitching chess engine tournaments and whatnot, Arena still has the most configurations, even though SCID vs PC has the capability to do blitz tournaments.

This program has versions available both for Windows and Macintosh (Mac). Linux users can use this program also (click the installation tab for instructions).

The Chessbase Reader is another UCI-Compatible chess program.

The ChessBase Reader 12 is the only chess software GUI that is available for free from ChessBase. The others youre going to have to spend some money to obtain, such as Fritz 15. I personally downloaded the freeware to get some decent printouts of some of my favorite chess games and was quite impressed with the scoresheets it created from my pgn files.

This is by no means the only thing this UCI-compatible chess program can be used for. It can also be used with any of the lessons for sale on its website. I personally cant tell you the quality of the lessons, nor can I tell how well the ChessBase reader displays the lessons primarily because I dont have any lessons from the site.

The free version of ChessBase is only available in Windows, and since it was at one time a commercial program, I'm not sure how well it'll run in WINE.

Now that I have listed the top five UCI-compatible chess programs, which one do I recommend downloading? In all honesty, all of them! They are all free, so why not? They all have their unique pros and cons, and once you learn to use all of them, there really isn't anything you cant do!

There is a lot of other chess software that is available for free, and if anyone can think of one that isn't mentioned on this page and is comparable to the top 5 listed above, please let me know. Here are several:

2016 ProjectResolute

TOTTO210 on December 11, 2017:

ARENA IS THE BEAST!

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Free UCI-Compatible Chess Programs for the Stockfish Engine - HobbyLark

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Please replace the release with the following corrected version due to multiple revisions.

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RAZERCON IS BACK FOR ROUND II: TUNE IN FOR A KEYNOTE BY CEO MIN-LIANG TAN FILLED WITH EXCLUSIVE NEW ANNOUNCEMENTS AND GUEST APPEARANCES

Get ready to celebrate all things For Gamers, By Gamers at this years RazerCon the first ever gamers carbon neutral streaming event.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers (Hong Kong Stock Code: 1337), today announced that RazerCon is set to return for its second run on October 21, 2021. The digital event is produced by Razer and its network of partners and will be the first ever completely carbon neutral gamers livestream.

In October 2020, the inaugural RazerCon was a huge hit with the fans, peaking at over 1 million concurrent viewers with a total of more than 250,000 hours viewed and 175 million impressions across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. Following the success of last years event, RazerCon 2021 is poised to deliver an even bigger show than the 2020 edition, remaining a marquee gathering for gamers from around the world in celebration of all things gaming and more.

Viewers will be plugged into the Razer ecosystem with insider access to exciting news and exclusive reveals from Razers interconnected web of hardware, software, and services. Fans will also be treated to special previews of upcoming games, surprise appearances, impressive giveaways, and much more. RazerCon 2021 will be streamed across Razers social network channels, including Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.

The preshow is scheduled to begin at 8 AM PST, with the keynote kicking off the event at 10 AM PST, and is expected to end at around 6 PM PST. In another spectacular production, RazerCon 2021 will feature an exciting lineup of shows with the following segments:

RazerCon was born as our way of saying thank you to our fans and partners, as well as to all gamers around the world. Together we are advancing the industry, evolving competitive gaming, and redefining entertainment. That to me is worth celebrating, and well be doing just that and so much more at this years RazerCon, says Razer CEO and Co-founder Min-Liang Tan. The event is going to be packed with exclusive announcements and reveals from Razer and our partners, and the kind of entertainment that you will not want to miss, so make sure you tune in.

RazerCon 2021, Your Gaming and Entertainment Virtual Destination

RazerCon 2021 will provide thrilling entertainment designed to keep viewers at the edge of their seats, with something for everyone. Gamers can look forward to incredible gameplay previews thanks to supporting partners such as game studios Capcom, Paradox Development Studio, and more. The event will also pit longtime friends and rivals CouRageJD and Cloakzy against each other, as well as feature a cross-Atlantic chess battle between International Masters Anna Rudolf and Levy Rozman.

Fans can look forward to never-seen-before performances by sketch comedy group Viva La Dirt League and going behind the scenes with Miro Shot, a band renowned for their live concert performances using game engines, virtual reality, and music. If thats not enough, there will be a concert featuring video game artists from all around the world, who will be collaborating to put on a show viewers will not forget. Finally, from South Korea, DJ Soda, a fan-favorite among the gaming community, will be bringing down the house and closing the party with a special set just for RazerCon viewers.

Viewers can also participate in a plethora of cool contests and giveaways to win exciting prizes from Razer and our partners. Fans can now register for the event on the RazerCon website, and take part in giveaways leading into the event.

Carbon Neutral Live Streaming

This years RazerCon livestream will be a completely carbon neutral experience. Razer has conducted a projection study to determine the carbon emissions that would arise from viewers tuning into the event. The study looked at the geographical location of viewers, estimated device power usage, and data transmission via the internet to predict the amount of carbon emissions the livestream would generate. Razer is committing to offset all carbon emissions with the industrys gold standard Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) carbon credits to ensure that its community of gamers can immerse themselves in the Razer universe, guilt-free.

RazerCon: Delivering Best in Class Events

Razer launched RazerCon in 2020 with the intention to pay tribute to the global gaming community at a time when physical events were not possible. The inaugural event engaged over one million active viewers and set an entirely new standard for online events. This year, Razer is continuing its innovation streak and is upping the ante with carbon-neutral streaming.

Attendees will also be in for an audio-visual treat as in true RazerCon form, the event will be powered by reactive Razer Chroma RGB lighting (patent pending), a proprietary RGB lighting technology system that features 16.8 million colors to create endless animated lighting effects. Viewers are encouraged to turn on their Razer hardware during the show and watch their Razer Chroma-enabled devices synchronize with the stream, especially during the musical performances at the end.

For more information, please visit https://www.razer.com/razercon

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ABOUT RAZER

Razer is the worlds leading lifestyle brand for gamers.

The triple-headed snake trademark of Razer is one of the most recognized logos in the global gaming and esports communities. With a fan base that spans every continent, the company has designed and built the worlds largest gamer-focused ecosystem of hardware, software and services.

Razers award-winning hardware includes high-performance gaming peripherals and Blade gaming laptops.

Razers software platform, with over 150 million users, includes Razer Synapse (an Internet of Things platform), Razer Chroma RGB (a proprietary RGB lighting technology system supporting thousands of devices and hundreds of games/apps), and Razer Cortex (a game optimizer and launcher).

Razer also offers payment services for gamers, youth, millennials and Gen Z. Razer Gold is one of the worlds largest game payment services, and Razer Fintech provides fintech services in emerging markets.

Founded in 2005, Razer is headquartered in Irvine (California) with regional headquarters in Hamburg, Shanghai and Singapore. Razer has 18 offices worldwide and is recognized as the leading brand for gamers in the US, Europe and China. Razer is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (Stock Code: 1337).

Razer - For Gamers. By Gamers.

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CORRECTING and REPLACING RazerCon Is Back for Round II: Tune in for a Keynote By CEO Min-Liang Tan Filled With Exclusive New Announcements and Guest...

Rediscovering life before digital technology, Internet and social media

Walking through the exhibition feels like traveling back in time. For some, it will seem like an unknown life, whereas for others, it will seem familiar.

Exhibited at the historical Muse de Lachine, La vie sans applis invites viewers to take a walk in a space that shows them life without the internet or social media. The exhibition is presented through different sections, which include social media, photos, music, games, e-mail, and more. Its presented in a manner that displays the evolution of these different subjects. Each section also provides three types of information: a historical fact about Lachine, a did you know, and environmental facts.

When entering the room, viewers can see a blue wall to their left, where photographs of people are displayed. Pictures of hockey teams, as well as people fishing, playing tennis or running a marathon, can be admired among many other photographs. Ironically, in todays world, this would be similar to an Instagram or Facebook feed. Perhaps it could also make visitors think of an old family photo album that they peek at once in a while.

When looking at the photo, video and music sections, there are a variety of objects that can be gazed upon. One can see the evolution of cameras, now old relics with different shapes and sizes. In todays world, we are able to instantly take pictures with our cell phones. Still, some take pleasure in using a film camera, waiting with excitement for the shots to be developed. Aesthetically, old-school looks better.

Phonograph records dating from 1923, and an electric and battery operated radio circa 1937 are among other objects seen in the section. Today, theres no need to worry when it comes to music, considering the multitude of apps that allow people the opportunity to listen to whatever they like. The internet has allowed younger generations to discover music from once upon a time, and help older generations look for their favourite older music with a better sound quality.

One downside of todays music devices is streaming. According to an article published in 2019 by Rolling Stone, a researcher from the University of Oslo explored the environmental impact of streaming music and found out that music consumption in the 2000s resulted in the emission of approximately 157 million kilograms of greenhouse gas equivalents.

The exhibition suggests that the audience download and save the music on ones device.Knowing the amount of music we listen to per day, it would be a challenge for everyone to go back to cassettes and vinyl when everything we listen to is on our devices.

The game section of the exhibition displays familiar pastimes, such as a chess board from 1910, cards from the 20th century, lawn bowling balls from the 19th century and more. Though video games appear to have replaced some of these old forms of entertainment, they are still enjoyed by many out there. In all sincerity, game night with your pals at your favourite board game bar is far more exciting.

The exhibition also demonstrates the way information was received in the past, how products were promoted and the way encyclopedia collections were equivalent to todays search engines. Everything that is exhibited in La vie sans applis can be found on a cell phone. Whether you want to use a calculator, look at the world clock, or communicate with distant family members, everything can be done immediately.

Digital technology has shaped the way the world works as everything travels faster than ever. However, it is essential to take a break and recharge by doing an activity that doesnt involve using our cell phones. La vie sans applis encourages the audience to think about the relationship people have with their electronic devices.

In the end, the real question is: would it be possible today to live without them?

La vie sans applis is being displayed at 1 Chemin du Muse every day from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. until Oct. 10.

Photo by Ana Lucia Londono Flores

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Going back in time in La vie sans applis - The Concordian