Tag: easter
An old AMD Athlon K7 Easter egg has a revolver and map of Texas etched onto the chip. They don’t make em like that anymore, eh?
An old AMD Athlon K7 Easter egg has a revolver and map of Texas etched onto the chip. They don’t make em like that anymore, eh?
One Redfall easter egg is a joke that’s been running for three decades
If Looking Glass Studios had survived until this day, its premises would be the least secure in the US games industry. The legendary developer secreted the door code to its office into the first level of System Shock – and ever since, the numbers 0451 have become a calling card for those who share Looking Glass’s immersive sim values; studios that tap into System Shock’s deep worldbuilding, dense level design, and reactive simulation.
Redfall is the latest to pay homage, but follows nearly 30 years of riffs and twists on the code that first allowed you access to Citadel space station’s healing suite. We’ve collated some of the most inventive and memorable below, and won’t even ask you to crack a combination lock to see ‘em.
Ion Storm Austin’s beloved spy story arrived half a decade after System Shock, yet was many players’ first introduction to the four digits that would shape a genre. Tucked away behind the helipad of UNATCO headquarters on Liberty Island – the scene of Deus Ex’s first terrorist standoff – is a comms van with a satellite dish, made accessible via the famous code. Funnily enough, before joining Ion Storm, lead designer Harvey Smith worked in satellite communications for the US air force. He put together the Liberty Island map, and later worked on both Dishonored and Redfall.
The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 7 Easter Eggs – 9 Things You Missed In ‘Chapter 23: The Spies’
This week on The Mandalorian, we got our biggest update ever on what the Empire’s had cooking since they lost the war to the Rebel Alliance, the Mandalorians returned to Mandalore, and Moff Gideon finally made his move. The excellent “Chapter 23: The Spies,” directed by series staple Rick Famuyiwa, is quite dense with lore–by and large, these Easter eggs are substantial updates on characters and situations we’ve wondered about for years.
Even better, some of these Easter eggs are introducing direct plot throughlines from Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens the likes of which we’ve never had before. This is a big episode.
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Chapter 23 of The Mandalorian, titled “The Spies.”
Most of this week’s episode concerns the return of the Manadalorians to their homeworld in force, but before that we had our first scene with Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon this season–he’s receiving an update from the spy Elia Kane within the New Republic about the threat that a united Mandalorian force might pose to the Empire’s short-term plans.
As soon as that phone call ends, Gideon steps into a Zoom meeting with other Imperial leaders to talk about how to handle that Mandalorian threat–and also to talk about Thrawn, the blue Imperial Grand Admiral who’s been missing since the series finale of Rebels.
From there, we move to the titular Mandalorian Din Djarin and the massive new army of fighters from Bo-Katan’s old crew and Din’s Mando cult. And this combined force immediately makes its big move toward Mandalore. There they meet even more Mandalorians–survivors of the Purge of Mandalore who have just been living down there the whole time–and then they all walk right into Moff Gideon’s trap.
This episode is easily the best of the entire series, and it’s got plenty of Easter eggs–but these are largely meaty and substantial references to the greater franchise that hold serious big-picture story implications. Let’s dive in.
1. Imperial Shadow Council
In the second scene of the episode, Moff Gideon meets with a group he refers to as the “Shadow Council.” This is a secretive Imperial leadership group that was established by Imperial Admiral Gallius Rax immediately after the Emperor’s death in the Aftermath trilogy of novels. The group was formed to serve as an oligarchy that secretly ran the Empire behind a figurehead, but it looks like they currently secretly run the Empire while pretending they have no manner of combined leadership at all.
Only one member of the original Shadow Council is still around in the new one. We’ll talk about him in a moment.
2. Grand Admiral Thrawn
Thrawn on Rebels
Originally created by author Timothy Zahn for the Expanded Universe novel Heir to the Empire in 1991, Thrawn was conceived as an unrivaled tactical genius who nearly managed to keep the Empire together after the Emperor’s death. Thrawn was brought into Disney’s Star Wars continuity as a major antagonist on Rebels, and he’s been missing since the Rebels series finale–but apparently he now runs the remnants of the Empire through his representative on the Shadow Council, Captain Pellaeon. While we didn’t actually see him in this episode, this is the first time he’s been mentioned in live-action Star Wars. And we already know he’ll be here soon enough.
3. Captain Pellaeon
Pellaeon himself is also an interesting pull, because he also originated in Heir to the Empire as the captain of Thrawn’s flagship, the star destroyer Chimaera. But aside from one very brief cameo in the Rebels finale and a new backstory in one of the Thrawn novels, he hasn’t really been much of a part of the Disney timeline. Until now, anyway. Pellaeon is played by TV veteran Xander Berkeley, who isn’t really the sort of actor you hire for a cameo–it would be very unsurprising if we saw him again, either in the Mandalorian season finale next week or on the Ahsoka series later this year.
4. Commandant Hux
You remember General Armitage Hux, that First Order guy in the sequel trilogy who screamed that speech about order before blowing up the New Republic capital planet? Well, this is his dad, the previously mentioned only surviving member of the original Shadow Council from the Aftermath novels. Commandant Brendol Hux goes on to help found the First Order, and then eventually he’s killed by Captain Phasma on behalf of his son–he wasn’t a great dad.
General Hux was played by Domhnall Gleeson in the sequel trilogy, and here his father, Commandant Hux, is played by Gleeson’s brother Brian.
5. Project Necromancer
Cloning tanks on Exegol, in The Rise of Skywalker
We learn that Commandant Hux is in charge of something called Project Necromancer, which involves cloning and is intended to provide a new leader for the remnants of the Empire. This has to be the project to resurrect Emperor Palpatine’s spirit in a clone body that is strong enough to support it. If it isn’t that, then this would have to be something new we haven’t heard about before.
6. Praetorian Guard
During this scene, Gideon manages to convince Pellaeon and Hux to provide him with reinforcements for his losses against the Mandalorians, as well as the use of three members of the Praetorian Guard. And we didn’t have to wait too long to see these badass Praetorians in action, because they duke it out with Paz Viszla at the end of the episode. If these guys look familiar, it’s because we previously saw the Praetorian Guard protecting Supreme Leader Snoke in The Last Jedi–until Kylo Ren and Rey killed them and Snoke, anyway.
7. Fake Chess
Star Wars has a lot of different versions of chess, like the one with holographic monsters they played on the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope. And this one that we see Paz Viszla and Axe Woves playing in this episode is a new chess-like game that was invented for The Mandalorian. Though in Star Wars these are not actually variations on chess–in this universe, all of these chess-like games and chess itself are derived from a board game called Shah-tezh. This is not an important fact, but it is a fun one.
8. Ankylosaurus
We were all waiting for our merry band of Mandos to fight the mythosaur that we saw at the beginning of the season, but instead they had to face a different gigantic lizard monster with a massive spiked tail. While we never got a full-body shot of this guy, everything we did see looked like this was a kaiju-sized ankylosaurus–a real dinosaur that existed on Earth during the late Cretecaous Period. On Earth, though, these things were only a couple dozen feet long, rather than the size of a large building.
9. Beskar stormtroopers look more like First Order stormtroopers
Moff Gideon didn’t just bomb Mandalore to smithereens and then move on with his life–no, he set up a base there to mine beskar ore, and he’s been outfitting stormtroopers with beskar armor and jetpacks. But this new stormtrooper armor isn’t just better at protecting the wearer. It also looks different. In fact, the helmet looks a lot like they crossed Mandalorian stylings with the helmets of the First Order stormtroopers from the sequel trilogy.
And, as Poe Dameron once said: They fly now.
Grogu from ‘The Mandalorian’ shows up in a cool Google Easter egg
We all love Grogu from The Mandalorian. And now, you don’t even have to fire up Disney+ to hang out with him.
The little fella formerly known as “Baby Yoda” (and still known as that in my heart) has popped up in a cool little Easter egg on Google search. Simply search for “Grogu” and you’ll see a little animated version of the popular Star Wars character in the lower right corner of the screen, like so.
Credit: Screenshot: Google
Now the fun part begins. If you click on Grogu, he’ll use all those Midichlorians flowing through his bloodstream to force pull elements from the page down to the bottom of the screen. All the image results, for example, will be turned upside down and displaced on the lower end of the page.
Is this a massive innovation in search tech, a la ChatGPT and Bard? Absolutely not. But I would argue that being able to summon Grogu at any time is more important than being able to ask a generative AI bot to write a poem about him or whatever it is people do with ChatGPT.
In any case, this is a fun way to waste a few minutes during your work day. Go try it out.
UK weather: Rain and 60mph gusts to replace Easter sunshine
David and Victoria Beckham join Brooklyn and Nicola Peltz for Easter reunion
DAVID and Victoria Beckham joined son Brooklyn and wife Nicola Peltz for a cheery Easter family reunion to celebrate the couple’s first wedding anniversary.
The family quashed rumours of a rift for good as they gathered over the weekend and posed for a photo together to mark the special occasion.
The 24-year-old son of footie star David, 47, and ex-Spice Girl Victoria, 48, wed Transformers actress Nicola, 28, in a lavish ceremony in Florida.
Victoria shared the sweet snap with her 30.8 million Instagram followers, writing: “So special to be together to celebrate your 1st wedding anniversary…we love you.”
Victoria, donning fluffy rabbit ears, later shared a sun-soaked snap of the family, saying: “Happy Easter.”
It comes as Brooklyn called himself “the luckiest person on this earth”.
He shared a picture of himself and his wife on Instagram today with the caption: “1 year ago today I married my best friend xx
“Here’s to many more years baby xx I love you so so so much x.”
Nicola, who has said she wants a baby, wrote: “This is so cute!!! I love being your wife.”
Witness Recalls 6-FOOT-TALL RABBIT Encounter on Easter Morning!
The following account is reposted with permission from The Singular Fortean Society. Tobias & Emily Wayland are also members of the Phantoms & Monsters Fortean Research team:
The Singular Fortean Society was contacted earlier this year by a Canadian man (name withheld by request) who wished to report his encounter with a “six-foot-tall white rabbit with a dark vest” that he had seen the Easter morning of 1988 in Crofton, British Columbia when he was 11 years old.
According to the man, his sighting took place just before 7 a.m.
I was looking out my bedroom window across my backyard with a backdrop of a forest. I had a rabbit cage at the border of the forest adjacent to our work shed, roughly 40 feet away. I witnessed a six-foot-tall white rabbit with a dark vest facing the door to my pet rabbit’s cage.
I went into shock, as I was beginning to be skeptical of such things as the Easter Bunny as I was aging out of the concept. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I maintained a visual of the rabbit and pinched and slapped myself so hard to try and wake myself up. The pain confirmed I was not dreaming.
I rubbed my eyes; the giant rabbit was still there.
I threw open the single-pane window which led to the backyard facing the rabbit cage. I yelled at the rabbit, “Hey, I see you”. I tried to volley up into the window to leap out and run to the rabbit, (in my tighty whitey kids’ underwear) but couldn’t make it up out the window.
It turned, looked at me, and took a series of bounds at high speed into the forest. I called my little brother, and he arrived at the window as the giant rabbit disappeared into the Douglas firs.
I woke my parents and even a neighbor. I quizzed them as to a possible Easter costume, but I knew no one could make leaps at that speed nor have such a detailed costume, and why run for that matter. They all had a good laugh at my expense.
I explored my pet rabbits’ cage and surroundings as well as the forest soon after trying to get a sense of what occurred. No tracks and no trace evidence were left behind.
The memory haunts me to this day because of the absurdity of the situation.
For some reason, I thought I would google this strange experience, such as the one I had observed in my youth as it stands out in my mind to this day. Your witness’s story came up in my feed and I have goosebumps as I write this. I am in disbelief and a little embarrassed but feel compelled to tell you my story because this is beyond coincidence and indicates something bigger is going on.
Currently, I am a retired police officer and forensic artist residing in Central B.C. I have witnessed strange things in my life and career, but this childhood memory was so strange, and not a hallucination. It feels like a relief to recount it, embarrassing or not. Thanks for your time.
“After the six-foot rabbit incident, I had a bizarre Mary Poppins song stuck in my head on repeat and I could not shake it. It really made no sense as I was not a fan and it was before my time. It was odd and ill-fitting for the occurrence,” he added.
The report referenced in the man’s testimony came from Sharon, an Illinois woman who said that when she was eight or nine years old, she awoke early one Easter morning in 1961 or 1962 to see a six-foot-tall, white, bipedal rabbit wearing a black vest embroidered with multicolored glass beads hopping through her backyard.
In further correspondence with investigator Tobias Wayland, the man noted some synchronicities between his and Sharon’s experiences.
“What’s very strange is the woman from her 1962 encounter had the same dog as me [an Airedale Terrier] and lived in a similar type of suburb and was close to the same age and circumstance,” he said.
Also, like the man, Sharon only submitted her report after seeing another article published by The Singular Fortean Society on a childhood sighting of the Easter Bunny.
While rare, reported encounters with mythological beings associated with major holidays are not unheard of.
In addition to the Easter Bunny sightings mentioned above, The Singular Fortean Society received a report in 2021 from witness Haley Pearce, who said that when she was eight years old, she had stepped outside of the Christmas Eve service at her local church in Lancaster, Ohio, only to see what appeared to be a sleigh pulled by reindeer flying overhead.
Researcher Stephen Wagner posted a list of over a dozen such sightings of Santa Claus that he has compiled to the website LiveAbout, updated most recently in 2019.
The witnesses in the encounters recorded by Wagner are almost exclusively children, with the lone outlier being a sighting of what was, in all likelihood, a perfectly normal human being.
The sighting reports are either partially or entirely anonymous and generally describe up-close encounters with Santa Claus inside of the witness’s home.
So far as the Singular Fortean Society is aware, the report submitted by Pearce very well could be the first such sighting to be given completely on the record.
Multiple competing hypotheses exist to explain these holiday-themed encounters, with the most skeptical including dreams, hallucinations, misidentifications, and outright hoaxes, while more paranormal explanations include Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and other such entities existing as living thoughtforms, along with the possibility that these images are being used as a disguise or otherwise projected by another, unrelated paranormal entity or phenomenon.
This most recent Easter Bunny encounter might favor the latter paranormal hypothesis, considering how the witness has experienced other unusual events that hint at a hidden reality surrounding us.
“Around the same time and years after [my sighting of the Easter bunny], there were instances of sleep paralysis and dreams that could be interpreted as premonitions such as family deaths and nightmares of environmental disasters,” he said. “Strange occurrences…for example, the family dog would sleep at the foot of my bed, and I would find her locked outside of our house and she would be looking in my bedroom window growling at 1 a.m., or the living room couch cushions spread on the living room floor in a pattern. I would be accused of pranking by my mother in the morning. Strange noises of babies crying from the woods at night. My father would say it was cougars trying to lure prey.”
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Have you had a sighting of a winged humanoid or huge bat-like creature in the Chicago, Illinois metro area / Lake Michigan region? The entity has also been referred to as the ‘Chicago Mothman’, ‘Chicago Owlman’ & ‘O’Hare Mothman’ or ‘O’Hare Batman.’ – Chicago / Lake Michigan Winged Humanoid Regional Interactive Map – Please feel free to contact me at lonstrickler@phantomsandmonsters.com – your anonymity is guaranteed. Our investigative group is conducting a serious examination of his phenomenon. We are merely seeking the truth and wish to determine what eyewitnesses have been encountering. Your cooperation is truly appreciated.
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Best Apple Deals of the Week: Easter Sales Emerge on Tech Accessories Alongside Best-Ever Prices on Apple Watch Ultra and SE
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Easter Deals
Easter is coming up this Sunday, April 9, and coinciding with the holiday are a few deal events at retailers like Belkin, Casetify, Meross, and Pad & Quill. With these sales, you can save on wireless chargers, USB-C docks, iPhone cases, Bluetooth speakers, HomeKit-compatible products, leather iPad folios, and much more.
Most of these deals will last through Sunday, so you only have this weekend to take advantage of the sales. Also note that some do require you to enter a coupon code at checkout, and we’ve noted what codes you’ll need in the list below.
- Belkin – Save up to 20 percent off chargers with code CHRGA23 and up to 25 percent off docks with code DOCKA23
- Casely – Buy one Power Pod, get an iPhone case for free
- Casetify – Buy one case, get 50 percent off a second case with code Easter23
- JBL – Save up to 50 percent on Bluetooth speakers and headphones
- Meross – Save up to 30 percent on smart home products
- Moment – Save up to 70 percent on photography equipment and more
- Pad & Quill – Save on leather iPad folios and iPhone cases
AirPods
- What’s the deal? Take up to $49 off the AirPods Pro 2, AirPods 3, and AirPods 2
- Where can I get it? Amazon
Amazon has Apple’s AirPods 2 and AirPods Pro 2 for solid second-best prices this weekend, starting at just $99.00 for the AirPods 2 and rising to $199.99 for the AirPods Pro 2. There is also a deal on the AirPods 3 at $149.99, down from $169.00, but stock on this model has been very inconsistent on Amazon this year, so don’t expect it to last long.
iPad Air
- What’s the deal? Take $99 off the 2022 iPad Air
- Where can I get it? Amazon
- Where can I find the original deal? Right here
Amazon kicked off this week of deals with $99 discounts across nearly every model of the 2022 iPad Air, starting at $499.99 for the 64GB Wi-Fi model and $649.99 for the 256GB Wi-Fi model. You can also still save on cellular versions of the tablet, and Amazon is providing mid-April delivery estimates for most models.
Apple Watch Ultra
- What’s the deal? Take $69 off Apple Watch Ultra
- Where can I get it? Amazon
- Where can I find the original deal? Right here
A match of the all-time low price on the Apple Watch Ultra returned this week on Amazon, with a few models hitting $729.99, down from $799.00. You can find the full list of watches on sale in our original post, and note that you won’t see this deal price until you add the wearable to your cart on Amazon and head to checkout.
Apple Watch SE
- What’s the deal? Take $30 off Apple Watch SE
- Where can I get it? Amazon
- Where can I find the original deal? Right here
Similar to the Ultra, the Apple Watch SE saw a return of its best-ever price this week on Amazon, starting at just $219.00 for the 40mm GPS model and $249.00 for the 44mm GPS model.
Anker
- What’s the deal? Save on Eufy smart trackers and Anker accessories
- Where can I get it? Amazon and Anker
- Where can I find the original deal? Right here
Later in the week, Anker and Eufy opened up new deals that are still offering savings on Bluetooth smart trackers, portable batteries, USB-C cables, and more. Eufy’s smart trackers are down to $16.99 for a 1-Pack on Amazon and Anker is offering up to 25 percent of accessories on its own website. You can find out more details about each sale in our original post.
Keep up with all of this week’s best discounts on Apple products and related accessories in our dedicated Apple Deals roundup.
This article, “Best Apple Deals of the Week: Easter Sales Emerge on Tech Accessories Alongside Best-Ever Prices on Apple Watch Ultra and SE” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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