Month: July 2016

Since a prototype of the fabled, unreleased SNES-CD (aka the "Nintendo PlayStation") was first found and disassembled last year, we've learned enough about this one-of-a-kind piece of hardware to actually emulate homebrew games as if they were running on its CD-ROM drive. The prototype console itself, though, has never been fully functional—it couldn't generate sound, the CD-ROM drive wouldn't spin up, and, after a recent trip to Hong Kong, it actually stopped generating a picture.

That's when the prototype's owners, Terry and Dan Diebold, went to famed gaming hardware hacker Ben Heck. They want this piece of gaming history up and running again. Heck documented his efforts in a fascinating two-part YouTube series that reveals a lot about the system and what makes it tick.

Terry Diebold starts off talking about how he first discovered the prototype SNES while boxing up an estate sale, where it was sold in a lot alongside CDs, cups, saucers, and other knickknacks. After paying $75 for the entire lot, Diebold recalls, "if you break it down to everything I did buy, I probably paid a nickel for it."

Virtual reality may have launched with gamers in mind, but so far the most interesting applications for the technology have come from outside the games industry. Case in point: Marshmallow Laser Feast's In the Eyes of the Animal, a VR experience showcased at this year's Sundance film festival, which showed what it would be like to see and hear a forest through the eyes of its fluffy (and not so fluffy) inhabitants.

The experience is, as you might imagine, a strange one. When it launched, In the Eyes of the Animal was set in the dream-like Grizedale Forest in the Lake District. Amongst the ferns and ancient oaks, viewers strapped on an Oculus Rift headset (weirdly encased in a grass-covered pod), and were transported through a pink and purple landscape, transforming from a midge into a dragonfly, and then from a frog into an owl.

In the Eyes of the Animal was made using a combination of 360-degree cameras, drones, and laser and CT scans. London's Natural History Museum pitched in too, offering up animal footage captured with photogrammetry, while surround sound and audio vibrations were added to help complete the experience.

This piece is an edited excerpt from James Hsu's recent book, Magic: The Addiction: My 20-Year Gaming Journey. James is a life-long gaming enthusiast and technophile. He currently lives in Beijing.

Addiction is perhaps most often associated with things like drugs, alcohol, or gambling... but what happens when it takes the form of a seemingly innocuous card game? Can you rehabilitate? (credit: Ullstein Bild / Getty Images)

Magic: The Gathering has opened many cultural doors for me. A game with the international reach of Magic allows its players to compete in locations around the world. In places like New York, Amsterdam, and Munich, I have played Magic with strangers, armed only with our mutual love of the game as a shared language.

This became an unexpected benefit in my early thirties as I relocated halfway around the world, from Canada to China, in search of a new beginning.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA (credit: Marlon E)

Drinking alcohol ups your risk of cancer—several kinds of cancer, in fact. The links have been firmly established and reaffirmed over the years with stacks of studies, reviews, and meta-analyses. The National Cancer Institute has had an explainer on the subject since at least 2013.

Yet, the connection remains relatively unknown to consumers.

“We know that nine in 10 people aren’t aware of the link between alcohol and cancer,” Jana Witt, Cancer Research UK’s health information officer, told The Guardian. And the few that are aware of the link may be skeptical of it based on misleading health stories and competing reports on the potential benefits of drinking.

(credit: Nicolas Raymond)

A German maker of 3D virtual reality software is accusing the US Navy of engaging in wanton piracy, and we're not talking about piracy on the high seas. This is about digital piracy of software, according to a federal lawsuit brought by Bitmanagement Software. The company is seeking copyright infringement damages of more than $596,000 from the Navy for allegedly stealing more than 558,000 copies of its BS Contact Geo software.

The amount of damages, if the Navy loses, could go up substantially. That price tag included in the lawsuit is the market value of the unpaid licenses. Bitmanagement also noted that in addition to licensing fees it is seeking pre- and post-judgement interest, punitive damages, legal costs, attorney fees, and statutory damages that could amount to $150,000 per infringement.

According to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in the US Court of Federal Claims:

An undulator, or wiggler, used in a free electron laser. (credit: UCLA Particle Beam Physics Lab)

Lots of interesting stuff happens really fast. Think about a chemical reaction, for instance. The rate of reactions might be slow, but each individual reaction proceeds quickly. This is because a chemical reaction is, essentially, the shuffling of electrons between different atoms, and electrons are fleet of foot.

Generally, if you want to watch something this fast happen, you use what is called pump-probe spectroscopy, in which one short pulse of light initiates an action while another measures the result. A critical requirement for pump-probe spectroscopy is control over the pulses, something that is difficult to achieve in the X-ray regime. This is why a new paper from Physical Review Letters is a promising development.

Pump-Probe

In pump-probe spectroscopy, the pump is a strong laser pulse that sets a reaction (or action of some kind) in motion. After some delay, a gentler probe pulse measures the state of the thing you just kicked. Repeat this for varying delays between pump and probe and you build up a picture of the trajectory a reaction might take.