Month: April 2019

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  Breath of the Wild in VR? I honestly have no idea how that's going to feel, if it's locked at a 30fps refresh. [credit: Nintendo ]

The Nintendo Labo VR Kit, launching later this month, is arguably the Japanese game maker's first virtual reality product in 24 years. Up until today, the product (which starts at $40) was a self-contained collection of new mini-games, all designed around foldable cardboard controllers.

That changed with a Thursday night announcement: two of the biggest games on Nintendo Switch, Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, will receive free VR-mode updates on April 25, two weeks after the Labo VR Kit's launch date. Both will require said VR Kit, which includes a pair of lenses that affix to the Switch's screen and turn it into a makeshift VR headset.

Odyssey's free update will open up three newly designed levels, based on existing 2D ones. In these, players will look at Mario from a third-person perspective, which they can shift by rotating their head. This resembles existing VR platforming games like Moss, as opposed to a VR adventure seen from the famous plumber's perspective. It's unclear whether the camera will remain at a fixed, central point in these three levels, or whether it will follow Mario's movement a la the more dynamic Astro Bot: Rescue Mission.

Enlarge / Ellie Creed (Jeté Laurence) visits the Pet Sematary. (credit: Paramount Pictures)

The good news about this week's remake of the 1989 film Pet Sematary is that it's better than the original. The bad news is that this week's stab (pun intended) at a Stephen King story barely got its feet over that incredibly low bar.

Pet Sematary, after all, remains one of the darkest King properties to come out of the author's booze-and-coke '80s period, and while the book burnt up early '80s sales charts and critics' lists, the same couldn't be said for its garbage 1989 film adaptation. The best I can say about the new film is that it really swims a few laps in that boozy, drug-filled pool and relishes its bad-film origins. The result, however, is far more comedic than any trailer would indicate.

“They spelled it wrong!”

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  A new house in the country. What could possibly go wrong? [credit: Paramount Pictures ]

Let's review: family moves to the woods to "get away from it all." Family is initially stoked about the massive backyard in their new property, only to learn via one Google search that it's linked to a few really troubling stories about murders and animals, uh, coming back to life. The property also has a very short driveway that leads to a two-lane, 60mph highway with no gate.

Enlarge (credit: Mike Mozart)

Women at Microsoft have been sharing reports of sexual harassment by both fellow coworkers and external partners that were often ignored by managers and human resources alike, according to a report by Quartz.

On March 20, an employee emailed other women at the company to ask for advice on moving up the chain after six years without promotion. This brought forward dozens of stories of discrimination and harassment, such as one woman being told to sit on another coworker's lap or a woman in a technical role having her contribution to a project restricted to booking meeting rooms, making dinner reservations, and taking minutes. Quartz verified the contents of the thread with employees at the company, and it has reviewed more than 90 pages of emails.

In many cases, employees say that they reported the events to their managers or to HR, only to have those complaints dismissed or overlooked—for example, written off as "just flirting" or ignored for lack of evidence.

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A federal judge in Arizona dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force the state's major water supplier to continue buying power from the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), a 2.25 gigawatt (GW) coal-fired power plant in Arizona.

NGS is the largest coal plant west of the Mississippi River. But in 2017, its owners decided they would close the plant by the end of 2019, as profits steadily eroded.

The Central Arizona Project (CAP), which buys millions of megawatt-hours of power a year from NGS to operate pumps that irrigate and hydrate higher-elevation portions of Arizona, said it would buy power elsewhere after NGS closed. CAP has maintained for several years (PDF) that coal-fired power from NGS has been more expensive than natural gas and renewable power on the wider market.