Month: November 2022

Enlarge / An isolation tent for an emergency department in Walnut Creek, California, in March 2022. (credit: Getty | Gado)

Although COVID-19 remains in a lull, hospitals across the country are in crisis amid a towering wave of seasonal respiratory illnesses—particularly RSV in children—as well as longer-term problems, such as staffing shortages.

Pediatric beds are filling or full, people with urgent health problems are waiting hours in emergency departments hallways and even parking lots, and some hospitals have pitched outdoor tents, conjuring memories of the early days of the pandemic.

In one of the most striking examples, the emergency department of a Seattle-area hospital became so overwhelmed last month that the department's charge nurse called 911 for help, telling the fire department that they were "drowning" and in "dire straits." There were reportedly over 45 people in the department's waiting room and only five nurses on staff.

Enlarge / An isolation tent for an emergency department in Walnut Creek, California, in March 2022. (credit: Getty | Gado)

Although COVID-19 remains in a lull, hospitals across the country are in crisis amid a towering wave of seasonal respiratory illnesses—particularly RSV in children—as well as longer-term problems, such as staffing shortages.

Pediatric beds are filling or full, people with urgent health problems are waiting hours in emergency departments hallways and even parking lots, and some hospitals have pitched outdoor tents, conjuring memories of the early days of the pandemic.

In one of the most striking examples, the emergency department of a Seattle-area hospital became so overwhelmed last month that the department's charge nurse called 911 for help, telling the fire department that they were "drowning" and in "dire straits." There were reportedly over 45 people in the department's waiting room and only five nurses on staff.

Enlarge / A still from 2019's Gears 5. (credit: Ars Technica)

Gears of War, one of the video games that helped make both Epic Games and Xbox what they are today, will become a movie after a decade and a half of false starts, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The franchise will be picked up by Netflix, which plans both a live-action feature film and an animated TV series. If those are well-received by viewers, it could be just the beginning for the franchise on Netflix.

The first Gears of War game was released 16 years ago this Monday—on November 7, 2006. Since then, it has received four direct sequels up through 2019's Gears 5, as well as a handful of spinoffs like 2020's Gears Tactics.

Enlarge / Bitcoin laundering concept vector illustration.

Federal prosecutors have recovered $3.36 billion in bitcoin that was stolen a decade ago from Silk Road, the dark web bazaar responsible for distributing massive quantities of illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to people worldwide.

Last November, federal agents executing a search warrant on a then-defendant’s Gainesville, Georgia, house seized a little more than 50,491 bitcoin that was stashed in an underground floor safe and on a “single-board computer” that was submerged under blankets in a popcorn tin stored in a bathroom closet, the Justice Department said on Monday. During the same search, agents recovered $661,900 in cash, 25 Casascius coins (physical bitcoin) with an approximate value of 174 bitcoin, 11.1160005300044 additional bitcoin, and four one-ounce silver-colored bars, three one-ounce gold-colored bars, four 10-ounce silver-colored bars, and one gold-colored coin.

A $3.3 billion mystery

At the time, the haul was the biggest cryptocurrency seizure in US Justice Department history and today remains the department’s second largest financial seizure ever, behind a ​​$3.6 billion seizure prosecutors made earlier this year from a married couple charged with money laundering.

Enlarge / Looks comfortable... (credit: Palmer Luckey)

The idea that dying in a video game or simulation could cause your death in real life is a common trope that has appeared in dozens of fictional works in recent decades. Now, though, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has made the concept real.

On his personal blog, Luckey writes of a new VR headset he has designed that uses three embedded explosive charges, planted above the forehead, that can "instantly destroy the brain of the user." The lethal explosion is triggered via "a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency," Luckey writes, making it easy to set off during a "Game Over" screen.

Carnival Row, Prime Video's lavish "Victorian neo-noir" fantasy series that premiered back in 2019, is coming back for one more season. (I called it "part murder mystery, part fairy tale, and 100 percent wholly original" in my review at the time.) The series was renewed for a second season even before the first season aired, but the pandemic delayed those plans. The streaming platform has now announced that the forthcoming second season, premiering in February, will be its last with the briefest of teasers.

(Spoilers for the first season below.)

As I wrote previously, Carnival Row is based on a feature film script by Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim), written when he was still in film school in North Carolina 17 years ago. He was working in the school library and found himself reading about everything from Celtic mythology to Jack the Ripper. All that fodder fed into a 10-page script for a short film about a constable in neo-Victorian London visiting a faerie brothel where a murder has taken place. His professor suggested the subject was better suited to a full-length feature. The finished script made the first Hollywood Black List in 2005, an annual list of the "most liked" screenplays not yet produced. It took another 14 years to make it into production. Legendary Entertainment ultimately bought the script in 2015 and reimagined it as a series for Amazon Prime.

Carnival Row, Prime Video's lavish "Victorian neo-noir" fantasy series that premiered back in 2019, is coming back for one more season. (I called it "part murder mystery, part fairy tale, and 100 percent wholly original" in my review at the time.) The series was renewed for a second season even before the first season aired, but the pandemic delayed those plans. The streaming platform has now announced that the forthcoming second season, premiering in February, will be its last with the briefest of teasers.

(Spoilers for the first season below.)

As I wrote previously, Carnival Row is based on a feature film script by Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim), written when he was still in film school in North Carolina 17 years ago. He was working in the school library and found himself reading about everything from Celtic mythology to Jack the Ripper. All that fodder fed into a 10-page script for a short film about a constable in neo-Victorian London visiting a faerie brothel where a murder has taken place. His professor suggested the subject was better suited to a full-length feature. The finished script made the first Hollywood Black List in 2005, an annual list of the "most liked" screenplays not yet produced. It took another 14 years to make it into production. Legendary Entertainment ultimately bought the script in 2015 and reimagined it as a series for Amazon Prime.