Tag: creation

The arcade world’s first Easter egg discovered after fraught journey

(credit: Arcade Flyer Archive ) The historical record of video games received a strange shake-up on Wednesday from Ed Fries, the ex-Microsoft executive who had a huge part in the creation of the original Xbox . Fries took to his personal blog, which typically covers the world of retro gaming, to announce a zany discovery : he had found the world’s earliest known arcade game Easter egg. His hunt began with a tip from Atari game programmer Ron Milner about the 1977 game Starship 1 . This tip seemingly came out of nowhere, as the duo were talking about an entirely different ’70s arcade game, Gran Trak 10 , which Fries was researching separately. Starship , Milner said, had a few special twists that didn’t all make it to market, but one did: a secret message to players. The game would display “Hi Ron!” if players put in the right combination of button commands. This type of thing is better known to gaming fans as an Easter egg , and more than a few Atari games had them as a way to include the developer’s name (which Atari never put in games or on cabinets). Milner didn’t tell anyone at Atari about the secret message for 30 years, he told Fries, and one reason is because he’d forgotten how to trigger it. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The arcade world’s first Easter egg discovered after fraught journey

MIT-designed windows can rapidly switch from clear to opaque

Imagine not having to use curtains or blinds anymore. Instead of covering your windows when the sun’s too strong, you simply have to flip a switch to turn them completely opaque. A team of MIT researchers have developed a method that could make that scenario a reality. Their technique uses electrochromic materials that can instantly change the color of glass from transparent to nearly black by applying a bit of electricity. It’s certainly not the first method developed to change a window’s color, but according to the researchers, their creation has a much faster response time and requires lesser energy. Other techniques take a few minutes to change the shade of the material, and some can’t achieve the opacity that it can. Further, there are methods that need a constant flow of voltage for the window to remain opaque. This one only needs electricity when switching colors — the window can remain in its nearly black state without being connected to a source of energy. To make sure it has near instantaneous response time, the researchers used sponge-like materials called metal-organic frameworks that can quickly conduct electrons and ions. Electricity is applied to give the window a negative charge, and positive ions attack in an effort to neutralize it. That is what causes the color-changing effect. They also mixed two different chemicals that dye the window red and green to get to a color that’s very nearly black. MIT professor of chemistry Mircea Dincă said the technique could lead to “pretty significant energy savings” by reducing the need for air conditioning. “You could just flip a switch when the sun shines through the window, and turn it dark, ” he added. He also believes that it could lead to low-power smart displays, similar to e-ink found on Kindles. While the researchers already proved that their method works in the lab, they still need to create an actual working sample to entice investors and get their creation into our homes. Source: MIT

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MIT-designed windows can rapidly switch from clear to opaque