news.buyenne.com

In this cuneiform tablet from the city of Uruk in modern-day Iraq, we see records of people being paid in beer. (credit: Trustees of the British Museum)

In the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk, residents enjoyed many benefits of modern life. The city, located in modern-day Iraq, was home to massive ziggurats that would rival any of today's modern skyscrapers for sheer monumentality. People in Uruk exchanged goods for money, played board games, and sent each other letters on clay tablets using a writing system called cuneiform. They were also paid for their labor in beer. We know this because pay stubs were incredibly common documents at the time, and one such pay stub (pictured above) is now in the possession of the British Museum.

Writing in New Scientist, Alison George explains what's written on the 5,000-year-old tablet: "We can see a human head eating from a bowl, meaning “ration,” and a conical vessel, meaning “beer.” Scattered around are scratches recording the amount of beer for a particular worker." Beer wages were by no means limited to Mesopotamia. In ancient Egypt, there are records of people receiving beer for their work—roughly 4 to 5 liters per day for people building the pyramids. And in the Middle Ages, we have several records of the great fourteenth century poet Geoffrey Chaucer being paid in wine. Richard II generously gave Chaucer an annual salary that included a "tonel" of wine per year, which was roughly 252 gallons.

These salaries weren't just about keeping workers drunk so they would be more compliant. In the ancient world, beer was a hearty, starchy brew that could double as a meal. And during Chaucer's time, people believed that wine brought good health—which may not have been strictly accurate but was certainly a lure at a time when the Black Death was decimating the populations of Europe.

Playdead

News flash: You don't want to be busted by this spotlight.

8 more images in gallery

The era of the "puzzle-platformer" video game—in which players run through a 2D world with a weird gimmick or two to spice up the old Mario formula—has long passed. The late-'00s saw games like the time-bending Braid and the high-speed, tough-as-nails Super Meat Boy offer a breath of fresh, side-scrolling air, but those inventive gems were followed by a mess of games with much less heart.

One of the last greats in that era was Limbo, one of the best indies of 2010. That haunting, wordless game smeared its black-and-white world with a smoky blur and a preoccupation with death, and the results were visually and emotional staggering—but they had less impact in terms of gameplay. Its side-scrolling puzzles were occasionally clever, but they were there not so much to bend the player's mind as to spread out the pacing of the game's somber tale of a brother and a sister.

The Danish team at Playdead took its time crafting a follow-up game, and they could have spent those six years inventing a more innovative gameplay hook. But that's clearly not where their hearts are. Instead, these Danes have returned with Inside, a side-scrolling journey that once again doubles down on atmosphere over puzzles—and is all the better for it.

Valentina Palladino

Huawei MateBook

15 more images in gallery

Another company is getting into the hybrid space. Chinese manufacturer Huawei, known primarily for its smartphones, released the MateBook for people who want tablet features in a device that can also stand in for your regular laptop. There's a bunch of competition in this space: Microsoft has its Surface line of two-in-ones and the Surface Book; Lenovo has its new ThinkPad X1 hybrid along with its Yoga series; HP and Dell each have their own entrants; and you can even lump Apple into this category with its iPad Pro devices, too.

With its first two-in-one, Huawei tried to make the MateBook stand out. The 12-inch tablet is powered by Core M processors, has a side fingerprint sensor, and has keyboard, pen, and docking accessories to suit every type of user. But really, what it comes down to is the twofold experience of using a hybrid: How well does it work as a tablet, and how well does it work as a laptop? If any hybrid is lacking in either respect, it'll be hard to make a case for spending hundreds of dollars on it. Thanks to steep competition, Huawei's $699 MateBook has an uphill battle to set itself apart from the competition.

Look and feel

Huawei's MateBook takes notes from the playbooks of Microsoft's Surface line and Samsung's TabPro S. The tablet itself is a 12-inch rectangle with a 2160 x 1440, IPS touchscreen display surrounded by a 10mm bezel. It has a metal unibody design so there's no hardware interrupting the satin-finished back of the device (there isn't even a rear camera, which is important to note if you have a habit of taking photos with your tablet). The tablet alone weighs just 1.5 pounds (or about 690 grams) and measures 6.9mm thick, so it is heavier than the iPad Air 2 (.95 pounds) and just a hair thicker than that device as well (6.6mm).

Detail from the cover of Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee. (credit: Chris Moore)

Plato believed mathematics was the highest form of beauty, being entirely concerned with universal truths and untarnished by base desire. Bertrand Russell described it as “a beauty cold and austere, sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.” There have even been modern studies that posit that “beautiful” equations engage our brains the way paintings and music do. And Yoon Ha Lee’s stunning debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, makes all of this real.

The world of Ninefox Gambit is a perilous, conflict-riddled conglomeration of planets and factions, inhabited by the members of the ruling hexarcate and rebellious heretics. It is a place where war is “a game between competing sets of rules, fueled by the coherence of our beliefs” and “calendrical rot” can destabilize entire tracts of terrain. Though its setting may be complex, the novel's basic premise is relatively simple. A disgraced general, Cheris, seeks redemption by liberating a fortress that has been overtaken by enemy forces. To accomplish this, she does what all protagonists in her situation invariably do: allies herself with an unsavoury character. In this case, it's Jedao, an undead tactician who just so happens to be a mass murderer.

A fine piece of military fiction, Ninefox Gambit glitters with clever maneuvers and cunning ploys, heart-stopping action and hard decisions, all complicated by a repertoire of strange technologies. At the same time, Lee makes no excuses for violence and does not shy away from illuminating the grisly ramifications of war fought between people who often have more in common than they admit. “The Kel formation held as they butchered their way through the Eels," he writes. “Cheris made a point of noticing the Eels’ faces. They weren’t much different from the faces of her own soldiers: younger and older, dark skin and pale, eyes mostly brown or sometimes grey.”