Tag: origins
Tze Chun and Joe Dante on Gizmo’s Origins in Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai
Gizmo, the OG small but mighty, big-eyed, big-eared hero is back! The adorable Gremlins creature returns in animated form to take us back in time and uncover his history in Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.
TechCrunch+ roundup: Unicorn origins, red flags for investors, generative AI meets copyright law
Every startup isn’t ready to hire a full-time marketer, but that’s no excuse to toss money out the window on paid acquisition.
TechCrunch+ roundup: Unicorn origins, red flags for investors, generative AI meets copyright law by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch
Snag Bayonetta Origins At A Big Discount
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon released last month, which means that it’s unlikely to receive steep discounts at major retailers in the near future. However, you can save $15 by shopping at Super Shop. The retailer is offering Bayonetta Origins for only $45 when using GameSpot’s exclusive promo code GMSPTBYNT. And if you don’t mind a preowned copy, you can get Bayonetta Origins for $40 at GameFly. It will come with the original case, too.
To cash in on the deal at Super Shop, head over to the Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon store page at Super Shop. You’ll see the game already listed at a discount ($55, down from $60), but if you click “Coupon/Gift Certificate” on the checkout page and enter promo code GMSPTBYNT, the price will drop all the way down to just $45. Super Shop offers free shipping, too.
The Transformers Animated Movie Will Follow the Origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron
Whether or not this summer’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts brings the franchise back to its glory days, the robots in disguise will be back in theaters next year. That’s when a long-in-development animated film will head to theaters, and now we finally know a bit more about its plot.
Overwatch 2: Introducing the Origins of Lifeweaver, a New Support Hero
Playable Amy is great, but Sonic Origins Plus is pointless if it doesn’t address the original’s problems
Sonic Origins should’ve been a home run. A slam dunk. A punt return for touchdown. A midfield bicycle kick that shears the keeper’s body in two to slam into the back of the net. Four of the greatest games of all time. How could you possibly go wrong? “Hold my chilli dog,” said Sega. It was a mess.
I wrote about it at the time, calling the game a “masterclass in messing up a classic”. The problems were numerous. A lot of people decided to focus on the unfortunate but legally necessary removal of the iconic Sonic 3 music associated with Michael Jackson, but there were other problems.
Bugs. Resource-hogging on PC. Bizarre oversights, like the inability to play the games with their original lives structure. A blurry presentation thanks to poor, pixel-suffocating image scaling. In some instances, even Tails’ player 2 AI was messed up – something that is meant to follow you through every level of over half of the experience.
Sonic Origins Plus is real, and it’s releasing in June
SEGA has announced Sonic Origins Plus, building on the 2022 collection of digitally remastered Sonic classics.
The announcement shouldn’t come as much of a shock considering the Korean ratings board spilled the beans back in February.
Instead of just featuring four games in one package like Sonic Origins, Origins Plus contains an additional 12 Sonic games for Game Gear, each playable in the museum.
New Data Found Linking Covid-19’s Origins to Wuhan Market. WHO Demands China Release It
The existence of the new data was revealed by the Atlantic earlier this week, in an article reporting that the newly-discovered samples showed the virus was present in creatures for sale there near the very beginning of the pandemic:
A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It’s some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses….
The genetic sequences were pulled out of swabs taken in and near market stalls around the pandemic’s start. They represent the first bits of raw data that researchers outside of China’s academic institutions and their direct collaborators have had access to. A few weeks ago, the data appeared on an open-access genomic database called GISAID, after being quietly posted by researchers affiliated with the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention. By almost pure happenstance, scientists in Europe, North America, and Australia spotted the sequences, downloaded them, and began an analysis.
The samples were already known to be positive for the coronavirus, and had been scrutinized before by the same group of Chinese researchers who uploaded the data to GISAID. But that prior analysis, released as a preprint publication in February 2022, asserted that “no animal host of SARS-CoV-2 can be deduced….” The new analysis, led by Kristian Andersen, Edward Holmes, and Michael Worobey — three prominent researchers who have been looking into the virus’s roots — shows that that may not be the case. Within about half a day of downloading the data from GISAID, the trio and their collaborators discovered that several market samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were also coming back chock-full of animal genetic material — much of which was a match for the common raccoon dog. Because of how the samples were gathered, and because viruses can’t persist by themselves in the environment, the scientists think that their findings could indicate the presence of a coronavirus-infected raccoon dog in the spots where the swabs were taken….
The new analysis builds on extensive previous research that points to the market as the source of the earliest major outbreak of SARS-CoV-2: Many of the earliest known COVID-19 cases of the pandemic were clustered roughly in the market’s vicinity. And the virus’s genetic material was found in many samples swabbed from carts and animal-processing equipment at the venue, as well as parts of nearby infrastructure, such as storehouses, sewage wells, and water drains. Raccoon dogs, creatures commonly bred for sale in China, are also already known to be one of many mammal species that can easily catch and spread the coronavirus. All of this left one main hole in the puzzle to fill: clear-cut evidence that raccoon dogs and the virus were in the exact same spot at the market, close enough that the creatures might have been infected and, possibly, infectious.
That’s what the new analysis provides. Think of it as finding the DNA of an investigation’s main suspect at the scene of the crime.
The article also notes that the genetic sequences “also vanished from the database shortly after the international team of researchers notified the Chinese researchers of their preliminary findings, without explanation.” And it adds that all along China has “vehemently” fought the theory that Covid-19 originated from live animals being sold at Wuhan market. Although “in June 2021, a team of researchers published a study documenting tens of thousands of mammals for sale in wet markets in Wuhan between 2017 and late 2019, including at Huanan.”
“The animals were kept in largely illegal, cramped, and unhygienic settings — conditions conducive to viral transmission — and among them were more than 1,000 raccoon dogs.” And there’s even photos of raccoon dogs for sale at the market in December of 2019.
More coverage of the newly-discovered data is now appearing in numerous news outlets, including the New York Times, NBC News, ABC News, the Guardian, PBS, and Science.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.