BC GAMING
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

So someone on IRC mentioned the ending(s) to Zero Wing and I found out there's a cheat code to skip to it. I thought it might have some more "All your base" style dialogue I could put in the generator, but I really wasn't prepared for what ending #1 looked like

 ending #2 is some very thin credits
ending #3 is reportedly the "true ending", at least on the European release. The Japanese version has 35 endings.

This one is... more serious? a little?
The other 32 endings are translated here, by @ClydeMandelin:
https://t.co/BN33w7zP2B
functionally all the japanese endings work like this. you get CONGRATULATIONS and then CATS says something to you.
usually something silly, or possibly the debug menu cheat code
The way the game selects the ending is apparently there's a "loop counter" which records how many times you've beaten the game. It's initialized to the difficulty, so if you're playing on easy it starts on ending 1, normal is ending 2, hard is ending 3.
so to get to ending 4, you either have to beat the game on hard mode and then beat it again without resetting the console, or beat it 4 times on easy mode.
or you use the cheat code to get to the test menu which lets you pick arbitrary endings.

The only problem is that you learn the cheat code from ending #35
fun fact: THE EXISTENCE of that cheat code was discovered in 2014. (the game is from 1991)

it wasn't until later that someone figured out how to use it
the problem is that the game uses "west" to mean "right", which is... confusing.
To use the code, you start the game, then pause it with start, and enter:
C↑B↓A←→BCC→←→A↓ and hit Start
as is often the case, TCRF has a bunch of info:
https://t.co/mUOCFgfwyV
it's really disappointing that the european release didn't get the extra endings.
admittedly just translating the intro apparently almost killed the translators... 32 more endings worth of text would have been a disaster.
so there's a weird thing with how the game controls endings:
so the way it's been explained is that there's endings 1-3 which are the "normal" endings, then endings 4-35 which are the joke endings, which are only in the japanese version, right?
but here's the thing: if you take the japanese cart and plug it into a european megadrive or US genesis, you can enter the code and you'll only get endings 1-3.

It gates you based on the firmware language! only Japanese Megadrives get the endings 4-35.
I thought at first this just meant that the japanese and european roms were the same, and it just picks language based on the rom language, but NOPE!
if you load up the japanese ROM with firmware set to US or Europe, you still get a Japanese intro.
so now I'm wondering... what happens if you load up the european ROM and set your firmware to Japan?
Maybe everyone was wrong and those endings #4 to #35 ARE in the european version, but people thought they weren't because of the firmware gate?
and the answer is... NOPE!

Even with the firmware set to Japan, the European version limits you to endings 1-3.
anyway, other fun thing:
a lot of the popularity of the whole "All Your Base" meme comes from a song, and later a flash animation.
That song is called INVASION OF THE GABBER ROBOTS
https://t.co/tEAkfp05G9
and it's by a band called The Laziest Men on Mars
which is a reference... to the only movie where Santa is threatened with explosive decompression!
That's right, the 1964 classic SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS!
which you may know from season 4, episode 21 of MST3K.
anyway, in the movie Kimar calls Dropo "The laziest man on mars" after catching him sleeping under a table.

More from foone

foone
foone
@Foone
It is 2018 and this error message is a mistake from 1974.
This limitation, which is still found in the very latest Windows 10, dates back to BEFORE STAR WARS. This bug is as old as Watergate.


When this was developed, nothing had UPC codes yet because they'd just been invented.
Back when this mistake was made, There was only one Phone Company, because they hadn't been broken up yet. Ted Bundy was still on the loose. Babe Ruth's home run record was about to fall.

When this bug was developed, Wheel of Fortune hadn't yet aired. No one had seen Rocky Horror. Steven Spielberg was still a little-known directory of TV films and one box-office disappointment. SNL hadn't aired yet. The Edmund Fitzgerald was still hauling iron ore.

WHEN THIS STUPID MISFEATURE WAS INVENTED, THE GODFATHER PART II HAD JUST OPENED IN THEATERS.

So, why does this happen? So Unix (which was only 5 years old at this point) had the good idea of "everything is a file" which mean you could do things like write to sockets, pipes, the console, etc with the same commands and instructions.
TECH
foone
foone
@Foone
WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD HOLLYWOOD STYLE TITLES TO YOUR HOME VIDEOS?
NOW YOU CAN!


This is the Sima ScreenWriter, a device for putting titles on your home videos.


The back


It's apparently from 1992, and takes a CR2032 battery


The very minimalist IO panel. composite in, composite out, power and a switch.
ALL
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foone
foone
@Foone
So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

so you have to set up a set of actions that never leaves either side of the river in one of the lose-states.

the solution to this variant being:
1. take the goat/goose over
2. return empty
3. take the wolf/fox over
4. return with the goat/goose
5. take the cabbage/beans over
6. return empty
7. take the goat/goose over
GAMES
foone
foone
@Foone
Tomorrow is gonna be fun for anyone in charge of requisitions.

There's gonna be a bunch of SRE teams asking for lockpicks, crowbars, hydraulic rescue tools, chainsaws, and some breaching shotguns

new SRE exercise:
imagine all the digital locks have broken and are keeping you out, and you can't connect in via the network.

how long until you get a console on the main servers?

now figure out how much money you'd lose being down for that long. Multiply out hours-of-downtime by money-per-hour.
There's your budget for designing Creative Solutions to bypass all your security

Although before you go trying to kick down doors:
Remember that doors are secured between the uprights and aren't as easy to smash open as movies might lead you to believe.
But the wall next to the door is probably just drywall and a little insulation.

drywall is also pretty cheap to repair.
CATEGORYPDFMAKERAPP GRAB THISTHREADREADERAPP UNROLL PLEASE
foone
foone
@Foone
I didn't have a picture handy to post today for my sleep-picture, so here's an old picture of when we brought in our recliner and Babby SCSI thought it was a fun new toy to climb on


she also liked to get in the way of keyboard repair process


her favorite youtuber was @TheCaptainSauce


and sometimes she'd just hang out near the keyboard and be like "why are you reading wikipedia and not PETTING ME?"


sometimes she was unaware that an evil wizard was sneaking up on her
FUN

More from Gaming

eric81766 \U0001f579\ufe0f
eric81766 🕹️...
@eric81766
1/8
Some quick thoughts on delivering value and what is of value and to who (whom?).
A lot of indie developers make videos about indie game development -- but are the people who watch videos about indie game development the most likely customers for indie games?
Perhaps not.


2/8
Some #indiedev even go all-in on making YouTube videos and become entertainers that earn money primarily from entertaining rather than selling games.

My general quick take is:

3/8
- An artist (painter, writer, sculptor, or even indie game developers) needs an audience - fans of their work.
- Any way one can develop and nurture an audience is better than having no audience.

4/8
- Delivering value (entertainment, education, etc.) to that audience keeps them coming back.

5/8
- An audience might not help the artist directly. As I pointed out, fellow developers might find devlogs and programming tutorials interesting -- but they might not be a good fit as customers for the actual product being created.
GAMING
Rami Ismail (\u0631\u0627\u0645\u064a)
Rami Ismail (رامي)...
@tha_rami
OK, we're going to go through this and explain why it sucks.

War *is* political machinations. That's the entire thing about war. It's politics that leads to people killing each other. The entire point is political gain or the diminishment of the other party's political power.

In the case of Iraq, it was neither: the US made up a reason.


Engender sympathy for US troops? Excuse the fuck me? When you look up the casualty statistics for the Iraq war you'll find US deaths, but you could barely *find* Iraqi victims, civilian or resistance or insurgent or terrorist. They're all defined "terrorist" or "collateral".


How about the experiences of that individual that was just living there & they & their kids and husband tried to flee but men of military age were refused escape from the besieged city by the US before the US went door to door & killed anyone that was looked at them wrong.


This is literally the least interesting part of the entire conflict: between kill and be killed, people tend to opt to kill. We can play that in DOOM. We can play that in Quake. If you leave out the context of knowing the war is wrong, you might as well not make this.
GAMING
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platonic solid snake
platonic solid snake
@joshmillard
New thread because new day + progress. My Fogleworm configuration search is now pretty darned working-ish. Here's three stages for N=3: finding unique candidates, generating valid configurations of candidates, and filtering that down to unique configs. N(3) = 2, as hoped!


The same output for N=4 looks like this. I'm expecting N(4) = 96. I got...97. Here's a fun game, find the two grids among the 97 in that last pair of images that are congruent under transformation. [screams in math] But this is CLOSE, which is GREAT.


N=5, targeting N(5) = 856. 1087 is...a great deal more than 856.


I don't dare run N=6 right now, but if I'm lucky and the proportion of search time is going up by "only" two orders of magnitude for each N, it'd probably get done overnight if I start it tonight in this current form.

gonna get colorful, testing out graphics stuff
GAMING
GlobalGameJam
GlobalGameJam
@globalgamejam
🎉Global Game Jam Online Sponsor Appreciation thread 2021!🎉

Please support our sponsors this year if you are able as GGJ could not happen without them. Give them a like, RT an @, follow, download or subscribe. Show them how much #GGJ means to the community!! 👏👏👏 #ggjonline

First a huge thanks to @CoreGames for being our Headline Sponsor! 🤍💛💙Core is a radically accessible game construction kit, content exchange, and game-playing platform, all in one. Get started here

Our Empower Sponsors this year are @Microsoft & @unity3d

Unity believes the world is a better place with more creators in it. Game jams and hack weeks are part of Unity’s DNA, so they are proud to be able to help continue the tradition. Visit

The biggest games in the world run on Microsoft Game Stack but Game Stack was born to democratize game development and even the playing field by giving all developers the same powerhouse toolsets as big studios, so they can create the games they want.

Our Diversifier Sponsors for #ggjonline: @IGDAFoundation @Sony/@PlayStation @NextNav @virtuosgames @EpicGames @EndlessOS @CalPoly DxHub & Carina Fund
GAMING
Dr. Rachel Kowert
Dr. Rachel Kowert
@DrKowert
Early this week I ranted about a @nytimes editorial misrepresenting the scientific literature around video game uses and effects.

It's one thing for an editorial piece to mishandle scientific information, but it is another when an “educational” organization does it.

A thread.

A new training from @childrenscreens was announced called BLOOD, SWEAT, and FEARS: Understanding the Psychological Effects of Graphic and Violent Media on Children and

What a title. One that is clearly meant to instill fear, shock, awe, pearl clutching… moral panic.

For a primer on the history of the moral panic see here:

There are many points to discuss in their advertising, but for the sake of time I’ll focus on a few. Starting with this gem of an anonymous quote.


First, games are not addicting in the way as cigarettes or any other chemical addiction

See:
GAMING

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(An extract from Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, Soldiering with Dignity)

The man eventually destined to be free India's first Field Marshal was born on 3rd April 1914 at Amritsar. How did a Parsi couple settle for the holy city of the Sikhs? I once asked him and was told that in+


1899, his father recently qualified as a doctor and just married, could make no professional headway in Bombay, and was advised to try his luck at Lahore in the Punjab. With his young wife, he set off by train for Lahore. The long dusty and hot journey took five days and by the+


end of it, his young wife, who had never left the comforts and civilization of Bombay, was in hysterics and cried to go back. Poor Dr Manekshaw did all he could to comfort her, but as the train steamed into Amritsar, with her first sight of the Sikhs the young bride screamed her+

lungs out and refused to go any further. So they left the train at Amritsar, and there they stayed for forty-five years.

The Manekshaws had six children, four boys and two girls, and Sam was the fifth child. Sam had his schooling at Nainital's Sherwood College.+

After completing his schooling, he should have gone to England to pursue higher studies; this was the promise made to him by his father but, fortunately for the Indian Army, Dr Manekshaw felt that this particular son was far too young to be on his own in a foreign country, even+
HISTORY
Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
1. Project 1742 (EcoHealth/DTRA)
Risks of bat-borne zoonotic diseases in Western Asia

Duration: 24/10/2018-23 /10/2019

Funding: $71,500
@dgaytandzhieva
https://t.co/680CdD8uug


2. Bat Virus Database
Access to the database is limited only to those scientists participating in our ‘Bats and Coronaviruses’ project
Our intention is to eventually open up this database to the larger scientific community
https://t.co/mPn7b9HM48


3. EcoHealth Alliance & DTRA Asking for Trouble
One Health research project focused on characterizing bat diversity, bat coronavirus diversity and the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in the region.
https://t.co/u6aUeWBGEN


4. Phelps, Olival, Epstein, Karesh - EcoHealth/DTRA


5, Methods and Expected Outcomes
(Unexpected Outcome = New Coronavirus Pandemic)
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Amit Schandillia
Amit Schandillia
@Schandillia
[THREAD: HISTORY OF THE HINDU TEMPLE]
1/102
Four hours south of Aswan in Lower Nubia, right by the Nile, is a region dotted with temple complexes built more than 3,000 years ago. Some like the temples of Amada, Derr, and Beit el-Wali go as far back as 1500 BC.


2/102
A little further south, not far from the border with Sudan, is another complex dedicated to Ramses II, Hathor, and Nefertari in the village of Ipsambul, better known locally as Abu Sunbul and internationally as Abu Simbel. These go back to the 13th century BC.


3/102
Djeser-Djeseru, also known as the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut in Upper Egypt also dates to 1400 BC. Over 500 years older is the nearby Mentuhotep II, also a mortuary temple. Both were dedicated to the cult of Amun Ra, besides their respective pharaohs.


4/102
Far older is the Ġgantija complex of Malta. Going as far back as 3600 BC, this one comprises of two temples entirely made of stone and enclosed in a stone wall. From the figures therein, it's understood to be a site of some kind of a fertility cult worship.


5/102
Dating from the same period are the limestone megaliths of Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, both said to have once hosted ritualistic sacrifices as part of the same fertility cult worship as found in the Ġgantija complex. Malta has some of the oldest temple complexes in Europe.
RELIGION
Anshul Pandey
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STORY OF PURANAS AND SUB PURANA (उप पुराण).

We have already gone through the series on importance & characteristics of all the eighteen Purans. We also know that originally there were hundred crore shlokas but were divided by Vyas in each Kalp and was compiled as eighteen Purans


for the common people to understand it properly and now their total is about four lakhs.

In Brahm Puran, Brahma preached this to Marichi. So this Puran of ten thousand shlokas is called Brahm Puran.

In Padma Puran, the base of the story is the appearance of Brahma on a lotus(Padm) from Vishnu' s navel.This has fifty five thousand shlokas.

Vishnu Puran is primarily based in Varah kalp. This book is on Vishnu and this book has twenty three thousand shlokas.

Vaayu Puran is written in Shwet Kalp and has twenty four thousand shlokas. Here Vayudev preaches about Dharma.

In Bhagwat Puran, which is written with the base of Gayatri mantra describes Dharma extensively. It has 18000 shlokas. It also mentions the story of Vritrasur.

In Narad Puran, which has twenty five thousand shlokas, is a sermon on Dharma by Narad based in Brihad Kalp.

Markandeya Puran has nine thousand shlokas and here it is through the birds that Dharma is described.
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Chris Herd
Chris Herd
@chris_herd
The 2020s will be known as the Remote Work decade

A few predictions of what is likely to emerge

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

🏦Third Space: Office and Working from Home will be joined by somewhere close by that a number of people will use

Supermarkets or local bank branches should emerge as a convenient ubiquitous location option – if they are smart

⏰Asynchronous Work: Offices are instantaneous gratification distraction factories where synchronous work makes it impossible to get stuff done

Tools that enable asynchronous work are the most important thing globally remote teams need. A lot of startups will try to tackle this

⚽️Hobbie Renaissance: Remote working will lead to a rise in people participating in hobbies and activities which link them to people in their local community

This will lead to deeper, more meaningful relationships which overcome societal issues of loneliness and issolation

🚜Rural Living: World-class people will move to smaller cities, have a lower cost of living & higher quality of life

These regions must innovate quickly to attract that wealth. Better schools, faster internet connections are a must
REMOTE WORK