This Week in Geekdom

Hi everyone. Woo boy. We're all still a bit worn out from PAX East 2016, but there's plenty of content to help push us through that post-con fatigue. No worries, you'll get all the goodness from PAX in the very near future! In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Comics

DC has fired Shelly Bond, executive editor of Vertigo, and announces a not-yet-detailed 'restructuring of the label.

Games

Blizzard comes clean about their cancelled successor to World of Warcraft


Meet Project Nova, the first-person shooter by CCP that's trying to establish a solid foundation for itself. Oh, and, by the way, it's an Eve game.

Sony hasn't come right out and said as much, but it has dropped some strong hints that the PS4 may be the last console it ever produces.

The Xbox 360 received its official death notice from Microsoft this past Thursday.

Kerbal Space Program gets 'Turbo Charged' in the first large-scale update since the game's release.

Red Dead 2 seems as though it is a very, very real (eventually playable) possibility.

Movies/TV

Somewhere on this planet there exists 39 episodes of a Star Wars-based animated series that we may never get to see.

The showrunners have confirmed that they are approaching the end of the narrative for Game of Thrones


Science/Technology

Is it possible that the entirety of the known and unknown universe is actually just an elaborate computer simulation? Neil deGrasse Tyson and some of the other brightest minds in science concede that there's a chance this could be the case.

On a similar note: is it possible for scientists to prove that a multiverse exists?

The potential physical states of water are some of the best known in science, but, given the results of this study in the latest edition of Physical Review Letters, there may be a whole lot more to the molecule than previously believed.

While we're on the subject of water and the amazing things that we're just discovering it can do, researchers at Kyoto University have managed to isolate a dimer of the substance using a technique called molecular surgery. 
A robot monk? China's Longquan Temple now counts a mechanical member among its monastical ranks.

Vulcanologists are adopting a new type of statistical analysis in their studies, one typically employed by economists.

Need a few moments of beauty? NASA has you covered with these videos of the Aurora Borealis as seen from space. 

Obi-Wan may have believed them to be an elegant weapon, but lightsabers would actually be far more dangerous in real life than their cinematic depiction would have you believe them to be.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are producing AI Squared: an AI protocol capable of stopping cyberattacks.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!
Read More

This Week in Geekdom

Happy Sunday everyone. Yep, I'm right back in the studying swing of things, but even the specter of another exam won't overshadow PAX East next weekend. Unsurprisingly, PAX crept up faster than I'd have preferred given everything else that's been going on this year, so it's not likely that there'll be any cosplaying from me this time around (unless I can whip one of my old costumes into shape in the next week or so). As this will be my only opportunity to cosplay in 2016 (more on this in a future post), it'd be great if I can make it happen. In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom!

Comics

It was explicitly pointed out to us during the course of Episode VII, but we will learn exactly why C-3PO's arm was red in the film thanks to a new comic: Star Wars Special: C-3PO #1

Image credit
Games

If you are a fan of both My Little Pony and Kerbal Space Program, you now have a new cause to rejoice.

The World of Tanks finals at this year's WGL Grand were mind-bogglingly dramatic.

Behold, the new world record speed run of Super Mario Bros.


Movies/TV

Netflix has confirmed that it will offer its services in ultra-high-definition 4K resolution to its premium subscribers.

We're more more than a year and a half away from Episode VIII, but the rampant speculation concerning the plot of the next installment of Star Wars abounds, thanks in part to J.J. Abrams himself.

The promotional buildup for the forthcoming live-action release of Ghost in the Shell is off to an...ehm...less than excellent start.


Deadpool 2 will feature the exact same cast and creative team as its predecessor. It's almost like they saw how successful the first film was and wanted to replicate it. Their common sense is tingling!

February 10, 2017 will bring us John Wick 2.

Thank goodness DC can occasionally possess a lick of wherewithal. Batman: The Killing Joke, slated to make its debut at San Diego Comic Con in a few months, will be rated R

Ben Affleck can't get enough Batman. He's now slated to both star in and direct a standalone film about the caped crusader.

Science/Technology

Google is pushing forward with its crusade to bring self-driving cars to a road near you after filing these patents that will allow its autonomous autos to detect the turn signals of other vehicles.

How do you go about repairing a critical chip or component while travelling through space? Well, if NASA has anything to say about it, the solution may involve bugs that have been engineered to both eat and excrete metal.

We've gotten somewhat adept at discovering planets that exist beyond the reaches of our solar system but that's apparently to be expected given that we've been doing so for nearly a century.

Feats of Nerdery/General Awesomeness

We've been big proponents of 3D printing these four years past, so it's only natural that we get a bit excited about the latest possibilities the technology presents: printable food.


This is the arguably most love a medical frigate has gotten since The Empire Strikes Back.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Read More

This Week in Geekdom

Wait...are we...actually back online? Yes! Thanks for bearing with me guys. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of work, studying, actual test-taking, and recovery from said exam experience. As mentioned a few times in posts from earlier this year, this pattern is going to prevail for pretty much all of 2016. However, that doesn't stop us from reveling in this bit of freedom while we have it. On to the Week in Geekdom!

Games

If you are one of the 150,000 active WoWers playing on the Nostalrius server, we have some unfortunate news for you.

Image source
You can now use your PS4 from any computer in the world.

Movies/TV

If you have not partaken in the Rogue One trailer do not pass go, do not collect $200, but instead watch here:


Though the trailer for Rogue One looks amazing, there are plenty of people questioning just why so much time and energy is being spent on what's arguably one of the weakest narratives in present Star Wars canon.

If you are still irked over the 'cliffhanger' ending to season six of the Walking Dead you have plenty of company.

Science/Technology

On Friday our favorite supervillain-in-the-making, Elon Musk, oversaw the launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, the delivery of the rocket's payload (the Dragon capsule), AND, for the first time, the successful landing of the Falcon's first stage on a seaward droneship! 

The search for the building blocks of life beyond the envelope of our atmosphere has yielded interesting results. In the latest edition of Science, scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center detail their study, which indicates that the monosaccharide ribose may be far more abundant than was previously supposed.

The process of making and storing memories is quite complex, but, as researchers at the University of Oxford and University College London may have found, that may be only half of what actually makes our brains tick.

Who's ready for a new state of matter? Physicists at the University of Cambridge may have just brought us proof the existence of quantum spin liquid, a physical state previously only theorized to exist.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!
Read More