• Sonic 3: Who Are the New Characters and What Can They Tell us About Sonic 4?
    www.ign.com
    This article contains spoilers for the Sonic the Hedgehog film & game franchise. Ever since Paramount's animated take Sonic debuted on our screens Gerald RobotnikParamountJim Carrey has been offering up laughs as the often grotesque Ivo Robotnik since the first Sonic movie in 2020, but he returns in dual roles here playing the original villain and his nefarious grandfather Gerald. Not only is the performance the best thing about the film according to our reviewer, but it also introduces a key player in Sonic lore and one of the franchise's most evil but tragic villains. First appearing in the 2001 3D platformer Sonic Adventure 2, Gerald Robotnik is another super-intelligent scientist behind the mysterious "Project Shadow." Through the gameplay and numerous character flashbacks, players learn that the project was his scheme to find immortality. At first, it seemed like a selfish mission, until it was revealed that he was actually trying to save his granddaughter Maria who was terminally ill. We'll get to her in a moment, but otherwise his story is relatively similar to what we saw in Sonic 3. Though, while it appears Gerald died at the end of the film his video game history hints at a potential comeback for the villain in the already announced Sonic 4. After he disappears in the games, Gerald was forced to work for G.U.N to continue his experiments, and also ended up in Prison Island which we saw briefly in this film before being executed. Seems unlikely that the PG film franchise will adapt that bleak part of his lore but, seeing as they did bring to life the deeply controversial murder of a child this time round, never say never. MariaParamountSpeaking of the famously celebrated Sonic franchise child murder, we finally meet Maria (Alyla Browne), Shadow the Hedgehog's (Keanu Reeves) best friend, cousin of Ivo Robotnik, and the tragically sick granddaughter of Gerald who inspired his genocidal rage in the movie and games. Via an extensive sequence of flashbacks, we witness the happiness Maria brought to Shadow's life and the sadness that her untimely demise at the hands of G.U.N caused Shadow and Gerald which, essentially the same lore as in the games. There though, she was actually shot by a G.U.N agent marking a dark moment for the franchise as a whole as she attempted to help Shadow escape the military group's clutches. While Maria won't be getting resurrected in the next movie her impact will still be felt. Shadow is still alive at the end of the movie meaning that her loss will likely still be driving him especially as he takes on a more heroic role in the next film. So don't count out more Maria flashbacks even as the franchise moves on from her untimely death. ShadowParamountThe Ultimate Life Form has long been seen as one of the coolest characters in Sonic canon so, when Keanu Reeves one of the coolest actors on Earth was cast to play him, it felt like a match made in heaven. The inclusion of Shadow immediately meant that the film would hit on some of the darker lore we've already mentioned, as well as setting up a recurring rival or ally for Sonic. We get an interesting reimagining of his origin here, where he's an organic lifeform like Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails rather than a creation of Gerald Robotnik's like in the game. In that original lore, Shadow was created as part of the elder Robotnik's plan to save his granddaughter Maria's life and struggled with a heavy existential crisis when he couldn't help cure the young girl. As we mentioned above, Maria comes to a fateful end in both the games and the films, shaping his future as both an antagonist and ally to Team Sonic. Another vital Sonic Adventures 2 addition, Shadow is an incredibly powerful character who was inspired by famed anti-heroes like Todd McFarlane's Spawn. Just like the end of Sonic 3, Sonic Adventures 2 ended with Shadow's apparent death but, since that game, he's reappeared multiple times, becoming one of the franchise's most popular characters. When it comes to what we can expect for Shadow in Sonic 4, we wouldn't be surprised to see the aliens known as the Black Doom, who are part of his classic origin. We could also see the evil Phantom Copy of the anti-hero come into play as a potential antagonist for him and Sonic to team-up against once again. Super ShadowSegaJust as Sonic 2 finally bought the golden-hued super-powered heroic evolution of Sonic Super Sonic Sonic 3 introduces the souped up version of Shadow too. The action happens in the third act as the pair use the Chaos Emeralds to go Super in order to save the day and defeat Robotnik Sr. In the original game, this is more aesthetic than actual power-based but, in the movie, we saw the Super transformations of the characters gave them extra speed, power, and immense hit impact. Its another nice nod to his game origins as well as an epic final act battle, and we'll surely see Super Shadow and Sonic when Sonic 4 hits in 2027. Metal Sonic SegaThe first of the film's post-credits scenes reveals that one of Sonic's most dangerous foes has arrived in the Paramount Sonic universe. Metal Sonic a futuristic evolution of Eggman's badnik bots has been haunting gamers and the titular hero since Sonic the Hedgehog CD in 1993. The super-powered, high tech menace is like a Bizarro version of the heroic hedgehog, instead of kind and fun loving hes cold and brutal. And even more terrifying here is that in the post-credit scene we actually get multiple Metal Sonics, ready to take down the blue blur. Metal Sonic is regarded as one of Sonic's most fearsome and ferocious enemies, imbued with sentience thanks to his AI chip. Metal Sonic is often allied with Eggman. But will that be true in Sonic 4 even though it seems that Jim Carrey's vivacious villain has seemingly been vanquished? We would love to know the answer! However, what we can say for certain is that the metal menaces have a serious problem on their cold-shiny hands...Amy RoseSegaA mysterious ally arrives just in time to aid Sonic against the barrage of Metal Sonics in the mid-credits scene. Swinging around a giant weapon with sleek efficiency, the hooded helper reveals herself to be none other than one of Sonic's oldest friends and biggest fans, Amy Rose! That weapon is, of course, her Piko Piko Hammer, probably the most legendary of all weapons in Sonic cannon canon (pun intended). Amy Rose also first appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog CD, and she's since become a staple of nearly all Sonic games as well as the female lead of the franchise (sorry Rouge fans, maybe one day soon she'll get some proper respect from Paramount). Amy's not just a fighter she has a mystical side as well thanks to her love of fortunes and tarot and hopefully Sonic 4 will show us all the facets of this fascinating and funny heroine.Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
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  • This Excellent 34" Alienware QD OLED Gaming Monitor Drops to its Lowest Price Ever
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    Dell just dropped the price of one of its best gaming monitors to the lowest price ever, even lower than the deals we saw during Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Right now you can pick up an Alienware AW3423DWF 34" QD-OLED gaming monitor for just $552.49 after 15% off coupon code "MONITORS15". This is one of Alienware's highest end monitors, with a gorgeous QD OLED panel, WQHD resolution, and a respectable 165Hz refresh rate.34" Alienware AW3423DWF QD OLED Gaming Monitor34" Alienware AW3423DWF WQHD 165Hz QD OLED Gaming MonitorThe Alienware AW3423DWF is a curved 34" with a 3440x1440 WQHD resolution, 0.03ms response time, and 165Hz refresh rate. It uses a Samsung quantum dot OLED panel that's brighter and supports a wider color range than traditional OLED panels without losing the incredible black levels and instantaneous response times that OLEDs are known for. The AW3423DWF features a 99.3% DCI-P3 color range and is factory calibrated with a Delta E less than 2. It is HDR True Black 400 certified and boasts up to 1,000nits of peak brightness.If you're not looking for a true 4K monitor, this is one of the best monitors out there. The ultrawide WQHD resolution of this monitor measures out to a respectable 109ppi. You can get something like an RTX 4060 Ti or RTX 4070 GPU and achieve perfectly playable framerates. A true 4K monitor, on the other hand, would require a more powerful and pricier GPU.In our Alienware AW3423DWF review, Chris Coke compared it to its more expensive predecessor, the AW3423DW. He wrote that "Though $1,099 (its MSRP) is far from cheap, the Alienware AW3423DWF feels like a great value compared to the original. It offers the same stunning picture, and dropping G-Sync Ultimate really makes no noticeable difference in actual gameplay. Whats left is a monitor that is extremely similar for $200 less than it was earlier this year. Thats a win and an easy recommendation to make if youre in the market for a high-end display with a spectacular picture."Why Should You Trust IGN's Deals Team?IGN's deals team has a combined 30+ years of experience finding the best discounts in gaming, tech, and just about every other category. We don't try to trick our readers into buying things they don't need at prices that aren't worth buying something at. Our ultimate goal is to surface the best possible deals from brands we trust and our editorial team has personal experience with. You can check out our deals standards here for more information on our process, or keep up with the latest deals we find on IGN's Deals account on Twitter.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
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  • Save $1,200 Off the Lenovo Legion 7 Intel Core i9 RTX 4080 Super Gaming PC
    www.ign.com
    Lenovo has dropped the price of its powerful Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 RTX 4080 SUPER gaming PC to only $1,979 after coupon code: "HOLIDAYT7". This is slightly better than the best Lenovo deal I saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In our Legion Tower 7 review, Jacqueline Thomas wrote that "The Legion Tower 7i is an incredibly powerful gaming PC, especially for the money youre likely going to be paying for it. If all you want is a powerful, upgradeable machine without having to go through the trouble of building it yourself, its hard to find many gaming PCs better than this one."Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 RTX 4080 SUPER Gaming PCLenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 Intel Core i9-14900KF RTX 4080 Super Gaming PC with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSDThe Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 is equipped with an Intel Core i9-14900KF CPU, GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER GPU, 32GB of DDR5-4000MHz RAM, and a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD. The unlocked 14th gen Intel Core i9-14900KF Raptor Lake "Refresh" CPU boasts a max Turbo clock of 6GHz with 24 cores, 32 threads, and a 36MB cache. It's still one of the most powerful Intel CPUs available (in many cases it even beats out the new Intel Core Ultra 9 285K). It's cooled by a robust 360mm all-in-one liquid cooling system that rivals many enthusiast setups.The RTX 4080 Super is Nvidia's second most powerful card. You'll be able to handle any game in 4K at high framerates, even with ray tracing enabled. It's 5%-10% faster in performance than the RTX 4080 thanks to its higher base clock speed, higher CUDA core count, and higher memory bandwidth. It trades blows with AMD's most powerful GPU, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but the RTX 4080 Super pulls ahead in ray tracing performance and where DLSS 3.0 is supported. In our RTX 4080 Super review, Jacqueline Thomas writes "If you're in the market for a 4K graphics card around $1,000, it's hard to think of any GPU that's a better purchase right now. This is the RTX 4080 that should have launched in 2022."Why Choose Lenovo?Lenovo Legion gaming PCs and laptops generally feature better and more rugged build quality than what you'd find from most other prebuilt PCs. For desktop PCs in particular, people like the fact that Lenovo does not use many proprietary components in their rigs, so the PCs are much easier to upgrade with easiy obtainable, off-the-shelf parts. For laptops, Lenovo generally does not throttle the GPU on most of their Legion laptops, so you should expect maximum performance from a given GPU. Lenovo generally includes a solid 1 year warranty with the option to extend.Why Should You Trust IGN's Deals Team?IGN's deals team has a combined 30+ years of experience finding the best discounts in gaming, tech, and just about every other category. We don't try to trick our readers into buying things they don't need at prices that aren't worth buying something at. Our ultimate goal is to surface the best possible deals from brands we trust and our editorial team has personal experience with. You can check out our deals standards here for more information on our process, or keep up with the latest deals we find on IGN's Deals account on Twitter.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
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  • Apple Vision Pro just got a planetarium, and its friggin awesome
    9to5mac.com
    Watching movies, shows, and all kinds of video is easily one of the top two best experiences Apple Vision Pro. visionOS-exclusive apps like Television and Theater exist for that reason. The latter app premiered in June with a live Apple exec interview in 3D to mark the occasion. Today Theater 2 has landed, and with it comes the best new thing Ive experienced on Apple Vision Pro.Both Theater and Television are products of Sandwich Vision, which includes Adam Lisagor, Andy Roth, Jose Marquez, and Dan Sturm. Theater 2 arrives with an awesome introduction by Adam:So there you have it. Theater 2 already streamed YouTube. Now it can stream content from your personal Plex Media Server. Sure beats the visionOS Plex app that doesnt exist yet.And my favorite new experience: the planetarium theater. Talk about a transportive experience. My home office instantly became the same theater I enjoyed in school field trips two decades ago.Earlier this month, Sandwich Vision announced an exclusive partnership with Reef Distribution to bring exactly the kind of video a planetarium deserves on Apple Vision Pro:Starting December 20, 2024, users of Sandwich Visions Theater app, available on the Apple App Store, will have access to a curated selection of the best fulldome films distributed by Reef Distribution. This partnership marks a significant step forward in delivering emotional edutainment experiences directly to the public, transforming how audiences engage with big-screen storytelling through the advanced Vision Pro platform.Reef Distribution, with over 20 years of experience, has been a pioneer in supplying innovative content to planetariums, fulldome theaters, IMAX & Giant Screen theaters, museums, entertainment parks, zoos, and aquariums. Our mission is to contribute to a better world through education, says Dr. Peter Popp, CEO of Reef Distribution. We love shows that share a compelling message and make a positive impact on the audience while also being entertaining.Theater was already a must-have app for Apple Vision Pro. Theater 2.0 gives movie watchers and virtual concert attendees even more reason to love it. Learn more and check it out at sandwich.vision today.Top Apple Vision Pro accessoriesFollow Zac: X, Bluesky, Instagram / Shop Apple on Amazon to support my work Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel
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  • We have put together a giant collection of all the best iOS games and apps now on sale for the holidays
    9to5toys.com
    Every year just before the holidays just about all of the App Stores top publishers put many of their best and most popular titles on sale for folks to enjoy at a discount over the Christmas break. Needless to say, with so many titles going on sale, some likely not worth your time, we like to gather all of the highlights we have rounded up over the past week or more into one handy list you can peruse at your leisure. Whether youre looking to scoop up some new experiences to enjoy while youre traveling to see family, waiting for the turkey, or just to stay occupied during your time off, head below for a closer look at some of our favorite iOS games and apps on sale for the holidays. more
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  • Halide 3.0 will focus on three new features, heres whats coming
    9to5mac.com
    Lux, the makers of pro camera apps Halide and Kino, have today outlined their plans for the next big update for Halide. Here are three new features in the works for Halide 3.0.Coming to Halide in the next major updateBen Sandofsky writes at Luxs blog about three big features being planned for Halide 3.0, which is expected to arrive in 2025.The three additions are:Color grades with a single tapHDR with a Halide twistApp redesignYou can read full details about each of these changes in the blog post.Luxs 2025 plans sound great, and they follow a really big year for the company in 2024. Launching Process Zero in Halide led to a wave of new customers and mainstream attention. Kino debuted as a successful new pro video app. And it even ended up winning Apples iPhone App of the Year earlier this month.New Lux Discord offers early feature access, weekly photography challengesUsers interested in getting a sneak peek at Halide 3.0s forthcoming updates can gain access via a just-launched Lux Discord.Just like in the past, when we were getting ready to launch major updates, we are opening up Early Access to Halide subscribers. Its really helpful at bringing features across the finish line, but wed like to try gathering feedback even earlier.Weve noticed a lot of indie game devs do this through community Discords, and so were stealing that idea (hey, were indies, too!). Were launching an official Halide+Kino Discord!The Discord is available here, and will feature a 2025 challenge too with weekly photography challenge prompts.What features do you hope to see added to Halide 3.0? Let us know in the comments.Best iPhone accessoriesAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel
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  • ZenOne: Full Stack Engineer
    weworkremotely.com
    Posted Dec 23 Remote Full Stack Engineer ZenOne View company profile & all jobs Full-TimeFull-Stack ProgrammingAnywhere in the WorldFull Stack EngineerTeam: Engineering /// Location: RemoteWork schedule: Central Time ZoneMain framework: Laravel + VueAbout the Role:We are seeking a skilled and motivated Full Stack Engineer to join our team and help bring a brand new product from MVP into general availability. The ideal candidate will be a self-starter with experience in building scalable web applications, working closely with a group of engineers, passionate product team, and most importantly the end user! You are not afraid to get your hands dirty and decide if something needs a complete rewrite or just a minor update. We are looking for someone who can work long hours to help us meet the deadline of launching the product. In return we promise you will be talking to actual users and seeing what you have built in real life with real customers, solving real world problems!Some of the responsibilities will include:Develop, record and maintain cutting edge web-based PHP applicationsGood grasp of UX and UI design principles, design patterns, and modern architectureFamiliarity with REST APIEnsure HTML, CSS, and shared JavaScript is valid and consistent across applicationsPrepare and maintain all applications utilizing standard development toolsUtilize backend data services and contribute to increase existing data services APILead the entire web application development life cycle right from concept stage to delivery and post launch supportConvey effectively with all task progress, evaluations, suggestions, schedules along with technical and process issuesDocument the development process, architecture, and standard componentsKeep abreast of new trends and best practices in web development Related Jobs See more Full-Stack Programming jobs
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  • Smudge before flight
    www.technologyreview.com
    Im moving to Boston in three weeks! At my high school graduation, I had just learned Id been accepted into the Interphase EDGE program, an incredible opportunity to acclimate to life at MIT before the 2022 school year began. I was glad to have that chance, since I faced a big change from life at home in Claremore, on the Cherokee Nation reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. Id been away on my own only once, on a fifth-grade trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where I first fell in love with aerospace engineering. It didnt take long to find community on campus. To my surprise, out of the dozen students at a welcome event for the Indigenous community, three grad students and an undergrad were in the aero-astro department. As a prospective Course 16 major and a FIRST Robotics alum, I was excited to discover that they planned to start a new team for the First Nations Launch (FNL) rocketry competition, a NASA Artemis Student Challenge. It was the perfect opportunity to merge my technical passion with my cultural roots. That first year, many people questioned the need for our team. MIT already has a Rocket Team, theyd say. But while most build teams are defined by the specific projects they work on, the product is just one aspect of the experience. Yes, Ive learned to design, build, launch, and safely recover a model rocket. But doing that alongside other Indigenous engineers on the team we call MIT Doya (, Cherokee for beaver) has taught me more than engineering skills. Beyond learning how to work with composites or design fins, Ive learned how to navigate classes and connect with professors. Ive learned about grad school. And Ive learned how to celebrate my Indigenous identity and honor my ancestors with my work. For instance, we often hold smudging ceremoniesburning sage to purify ourselves or our rocketsat our team meetings and competitions. Our team emphasizes universal consensus and buy-in on the technical side and pays attention to the success of each team member on a personal level. We call this gadugi () in Cherokee, or everyone helping each other. Ive also learned that embracing my culture can offer a better approach to engineering challenges. While many engineering settings foster top-down decision-making, our team tests and incorporates as many ideas as possible to engage everyone, emphasizing universal consensus and buy-in on the technical side while paying attention to the success of each team member on a personal level. We call this gadugi () in Cherokee, or everyone helping each other. And we find its led to better technical resultsand a better experience for everyone on the team. I feel incredibly fortunate to work closely with other Indigenous students on an engineering project we all deeply care about. Ive looked up to the senior members of the team, seeing in them proof of what an Indigenous student at MIT can be and accomplish. And Ive loved mentoring newer members, passing along what Ive learned to help them excel. Our launch weekends expand our community further, allowing us to work alongside inspiring Indigenous engineers from NASAs Jet Propulsion Lab and Blue Origin. Ive gotten to meet my heroes and seen that its possible to succeed as a Native American in aerospace engineering. In fact, my FNL experiences have already helped me secure an amazing internship. Last summerexactly a decade after setting my heart on aerospace engineering at Space CampI returned to Huntsville as a lunar payloads intern on the Mark I Lunar Lander at Blue Origin. Through the FNL team, Ive significantly advanced my technical skills. As our systems and simulations lead the first year, I integrated all the components of the physical design into a cohesive computer model with accuracy in both geometry and mass distribution. From that model, I can run simulated flights while adjusting for various launch conditions and trying out different motors. A small change on the ground can yield a big change in our final altitude, which must be within a specific rangeso this analysis drives the overall design. In our first year, our challenge was to re-create the design of a kit rocket while making it lighter by fabricating all the parts ourselves, primarily using hand-laid carbon fiber and fiberglass. We finished in second place and were named Rookie Team of the Year. For 202324, our challenge was to build a rocket large enough to carry a deployable drone, leading us to build an airframe 7.5 inches in diameter. We also had to design and fabricate the drones chassis to meet strict specifications: It had to fit inside the rocket on the launchpad, deploy at apogee (ours was 2,136 feet), unfold from a compact stowed configuration to 16 by 16 inches, descend by parachute to 500 feet, and then release the parachute for piloted navigation to a landing pad. To meet FAA requirements, two of our team members studied for and earned Part 107 remote pilot certificates so they could operate the drone. Since this new challenge required us to fabricate a rocket while also designing and building the drone, we broke up into two subteams to work on both in parallel. This approach required precise coordination between the subteams to ensure that everything would integrate well for the final launch. As team captain, I managed this coordination while staying involved on the technical side as systems and simulations lead and airframe lead. And as we worked our way through the project milestones from proposal through flight readiness review, we kept in mind that we needed both an operational drone and a safe flight to the right altitude to meet the challenge. In April our team traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to put our rocket to the test. We loaded the parachutes and payload, blessing it with some medicine before sending our hard work into the sky. But when I went to load our motor, the motor mount fell off in my hand. We quickly proceeded to the range safety officer, who was able to salvage our rocket and our launch with the last-minute addition of an external motor retention device. After that minor (but almost catastrophic) delay, we had a safe launch and successful recoveryand earned the Next Step Award, a $15,000 grant to represent FNL in the University Student Launch Initiative, a NASA-hosted competition open to everyone, for the 202425 season. Six weeks later, when the overall competition winners were announced, we were thrilled to learn we had won the grand prize! Along with bragging rights, we won a VIP trip to Kennedy Space Center in August and got to walk through the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, explore the shuttle landing strip, see Polaris Dawn on the launchpad, and watch a Starlink launch from the beach in the early morning hours. This year, Im honored to serve as team captain again, leading an expanded team as we tackle the challenges of the new Student Launch Initiative. Im already looking forward to May, when well launch the rocket well be perfecting between now and then. And to honor our Indigenous heritage and send it into the sky with good intentions, Ill make sure we smudge before flight. Hailey Polson 26, an aero-astro major and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is captain of MITs First Nations Launch team.
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  • Tapping the wisdom of human-centered fields
    www.technologyreview.com
    When I last wrote to you in this magazine, I told you a bit about the MIT Collaboratives, an effort to spark new ideas and modes of inquiry and help the people of MIT solve global problems. Since then, weve launched the first collaborative, grounding it in the human-centered fields represented by our School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). Were calling it the MIT Human Insight Collaborative, or MITHIC. In broad terms, MITHIC is an endorsement of the quality of our faculty in these fields and an expression of how deeply we value the scholarly and artistic practices that expand our understanding of the things that make us human. In a practical sense, its designed to help our scholars in human-centered disciplines go big. MITHIC will give them the resources to pursue their most innovative ideas within their discipline, create opportunities for them to collaborate with colleagues outside it, and enable them to explore fresh approaches to teaching our students. We celebrated the launch of MITHIC with a showcase of creative excellence. MIT faculty shared research that blends the humanistic with the technological, MIT students improvised on jazz saxophone, and in a keynote conversation, the acclaimed novelist Min Jin Lee talked about her dedication to putting the human at the center of her work. Our faculty are wonderfully energized by MITHIC, and more than 100 have already taken part in the collaboratives Meeting of the Minds events, organized to connect researchers across the Institute who work on similar topicsfrom cybersecurity to food security, climate simulations to the bioeconomy. There may never have been a more important time for society to make humane choices about new technologies. And Im thrilled that at MIT weve created a collaborative powered by human insight to support our scholars, students, explorers, and makers in shaping a future of technology in service to humanity.
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  • More puzzles, less sleep
    www.technologyreview.com
    We need a strategy to deal with a hydra. Its Sunday, January 14, 2024, more than 50 hours since the annual MIT Mystery Hunt kicked off at noon on Friday, and Setec Astronomy is one of more than 200 teams racing to solve hundreds of puzzles over three days. The 60-some members of Setec, many of whom are joining remotely from as far away as Australia, are making good progress, even though many of us are running on limited sleep and questionable nutritional decisions. Several of the chalkboards in the Building 2 classroom weve been assigned for our team headquarters are covered in lists of puzzle solutions or messy diagrams charting out theories about how to crack the various challengesall of them constructed, as Mystery Hunt tradition dictates, by the most recent winner, in this case The Team Formerly Known as the Team to Be Named Later. The hydra were dealing with is a metapuzzle: We have to find a way to use the solutions from other puzzles that weve already solved to extract one more answer. If we solve this one, well be rewarded with more puzzles. We know we need to diagram the answers for this round of puzzles as a binary tree. In keeping with the hydra metapuzzles mythological analogue, every time we solve one puzzle, two more branch off until we have a diagram five levels deep. Were still missing answers from several unsolved puzzles that would help us figure out how the diagram works and how to extract an answer to the metapuzzle. The diagram weve drawn, in green chalk, gets more chaotic with every addition, erasure, and annotation we squeeze onto the overcrowded chalkboard. But we can sense that were just one aha! away from a solution. MITs Mystery Hunt has been challenging puzzle enthusiasts every year since Brad Schaefer 78, PhD 83, wrote 12 subclues on a single sheet of paper as a challenge for friends during Independent Activities Period (IAP) in 1981. The answers led solvers to an Indian Head penny he had hidden on campus. Todays Hunts are still built around that basic concept, but what constitutes a challenge has changed over four decades. One of the clues from the original 1981 Hunt is just a missing word in a quote: He that plays the king shall be _____; his majesty shall have tribute of me. Its easy to solve today with Google, but in 1981, even if you knew it was Shakespeare, if you didnt notice the subtle hint that you should look for a character referring to a play within the play, it might have taken a few hours of skimming the Bards collected works to find the answer. The Setec Astronomy team tries to map out whether the human knot theyve gotten themselves into can be untangled.JADE CHONGSATHAPORNPONG 24/MIT TECHNIQUE We add a few more solutions to the hydra diagram over the next few hours. Eventually someone notices that all the answers in the fifth level of the diagram seem to have an odd prevalence of Ls and Rs. This is the aha! moment: They tell us how to navigate the binary tree. From the first node at the top of the tree, we follow the Ls and Rs in the order they appear in each of the 16 solutions on the fifth level. Take the left branch, then right, then left again, landing on a word that starts with H. The second fifth-level answer leads us to a word that starts with E. Repeating the process with all 16 answers spells out an apt way to deal with a hydra: HEADTOHEADBATTLE. (Puzzle solutions are traditionally written in all caps with no spaces or punctuation.) Those of us whove been tackling the puzzle take a moment to enjoy our victory before splitting up to find new puzzles to work on. Some elements of the Mystery Hunt are hard to describe, the kind of must-be-seen ingenuity that also inspires hacks on the Great Dome and any number of above-and-beyond engineering projects showcased around campus every year. Most of the puzzles are utterly unique, although they do often incorporate logic and word problems as well as more mainstream elements like crosswords, sudoku, and Wordle. But almost anything can be turned into a puzzle. For example, chess puzzles might be combined with the card game Magic: The Gathering. Or solvers could be asked to organize a Git repository with 10,000 out-of-order commits (that is, find the correct sequence of 10,000 changes to a file as it was tracked in a version control system), identify duets from musicals, or draw on their knowledge of pop culture trivia. For most of its history, the Mystery Hunt had little official status on campus. By tradition as much as any organizational effort, teams simply showed up in Lobby 7 on the Friday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday for the kickoff. In 2014, the MIT Puzzle Club was formed to help provide year-to-year continuity and other support, such as securing rooms for teams to work in and reserving Kresge Auditorium for the opening ceremonies. Puzzle Club also hosts other events, such as mini puzzle hunts and sudoku and logic puzzle competitionswhich Becca Chang 26, the clubs current president, says has helped a lot with outreach to new students or anyone who might be interested in [puzzles]. Technology has enabled the Mystery Hunt to grow and evolve in significant ways, and not just in terms of the kinds of puzzles that are possible. Through the mid-1990s, a single person could take on the responsibility of writing and running the event. Today its a yearlong commitment for the winning team to design the next years Hunt. Doing so requires managing creative output and technological infrastructure that rival those of a small business. Duties include spending thousands of hours writing and testing puzzles, constructing physical puzzles and props, and building a dynamic website that can withstand the huge influx of puzzle-hungry visitors. Todays Hunts are built around a story. Here John Bromels as the god Neptune checks in on Galactic Trendsetters progress to restore the god Pluto after his planet was demoted.JADE CHONGSATHAPORNPONG 24/MIT TECHNIQUE Just organizing a team of solvers can be a major undertaking, especially now that more and more participants are joining remotely. Anjali Tripathi 09, who started the team Im Not a Planet Either in 2015, got her introduction to puzzle hunts through a miniature Mystery Hunt that Simmons Hall runs for first-years. After tackling the main event with the Simmons team on campus as an undergrad, she participated remotely for the first time in 2010. I was abroad in England and still wanted to do Hunt, and I remember how hard that was, she says. The team had no infrastructure for it. Its about connecting with other humans thats why we do it. Erin Rhode 04, whose team name one year was the entire text of Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged Today, solvers can work together across the room or across a continent. Platforms like Slack and Discord have become indispensable to many teams, which use them for updates and announcements as well as creating separate channels where people can tackle a given puzzle together. Many teams use applications that organize the convoluted deluge of puzzles into a workflow so everyone can see which have been solved, which need attention, and whos working on what. Google Docs and Google Sheets make it easy for multiple people to contribute to progress on the same puzzle whether theyre sitting side by side on campus or are separated by several time zones. I think especially post-2020, there is just the expectation that everything is going to be accessible online, says Tripathi, who still has a Hunt-related Google doc from 2008, just a couple of years after the service launched. But even as the Mystery Hunt has adapted to the internetand to increasingly powerful search engines, smartphones, the Zoom era, and even some machine-learning applicationsat its core it remains a very human experience. Its about connecting with other humansthats why we do it, says Erin Rhode 04, a longtime Mystery Hunter whose team has won twice. She recalls being inducted into the Hunt as a first-year in 2001. An upperclassman came in and was like, Youre coming to the math majors lounge. Were doing this puzzle hunt thing. The name of Rhodes team changes every year, though they might be best known for the year their name was the entire text of Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged. Last year, they were . (Thats not a typo or a missing wordits the zero-width space, a Unicode non-character primarily used in document formatting.) Early Mystery Hunts led solvers to an Indian Head penny hidden on campus. Today, winning teams are awarded coins unique to each years Hunt. Ringed with a repeating MH24, the 2024 coin shows the cities teams visited on their quest.JADE CHONGSATHAPORNPONG 24/MIT TECHNIQUE Like so much of the Hunt, team names are an exercise in creativity. The full name of the team running the 2024 Mystery Hunt was officially The Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team to Be Named Later. Some teams keep their name every year, like Setec Astronomy (an anagram for too many secrets, in a reference to the classic 1992 heist film Sneakers). Others change every year or every few years, or when teams merge, as when Death from Above joined forces with Project Electric Mayhem to become Death and Mayhem. Rhode remembers one particular puzzle from her first Hunt that she and her team (known that year as the Vermicious Knids) worked on through the night. They had to figure out that a list of enigmatic phrases were clues to song titles. For example, Of course; you just go north on Highway 101 clued the song Do You Know the Way to San Jose? I think today, we would have solved that puzzle in about an hour, Rhode says. There werent song lyric databases back then. And so it was a lot more sitting around on your own trying to come up with songs as opposed to just finding some master list and then searching it. Writing puzzles with the knowledge that solvers will have a slew of tools at hand is just part of the process. Use whatever technology you have at your disposal to solve the puzzle is the general rule of thumb, says Jon Schneider 13, a machine-learning researcher who hunts with Galactic Trendsetters . (The in their team name is pronounced like a plane taking off and landing, respectively.) Schneider has been hunting since 2010, when it was common for solvers to have to identify clips of songs or other audio. Hes seen that change in the past decade, though: Audio recognition [technology] like Shazam has become a thing, so its harder to create puzzles that require the skill of music recognition. When youre a constructor, you try to figure out: What is my challenge for the solver? says Dan Katz 03. Katz has solved and written a lot of puzzles. (In fact, he created a five-puzzle mini Hunt for this issues Puzzle Corner.) He attended his first Mystery Hunt in 1998, as a junior in high school, before he had even applied to MIT. Hes been part of a winning team eight times (probably a record) and competes in events like the World Sudoku Championship and US Puzzle Championship. In Katzs view, technology should make puzzling more interesting for the solver. While solvers might need to, say, code a program, organize information in a spreadsheet, or navigate a video-game-like interface to arrive at an answer, what he prizes most is the mental challenge of figuring out how to solve a puzzle. During whats known as the Mid-Hunt Runaround, a team follows a set of cryptic instructions that lead them on a subterranean journey across campus.JADE CHONGSATHAPORNPONG 24/MIT TECHNIQUE Rhode misses the days before an app was able to listen to a few seconds of a song and identify it. One of my superpowers in the early days of the Hunt was: Play me a bunch of pop songs and I can identify like 90% of them, she says. Now everybodys got Shazam on their phone. And so as fast as I might be, Shazam was always going to be faster. That doesnt mean puzzles cant be based on song identificationor image identification, another common puzzle element that has been made trivial by tools like Googles image search capabilities. It just means constructors must become more creative. You have to obscure the images or the music in such a way that the technology cant find it quickly, Rhode says. She describes a puzzle she wrote when she wanted solvers to identify songs without using technology: I arranged eight songs a cappella and sang them myself, but buzzing like a bee. And the whole idea was you cant Shazam that. Schneiders team took a similar approach to constructing a puzzle in which solvers had to identify specific visual artistsnot by their work, but by their distinctive style. Solvers were prompted to upload an image of their choosing, and a generative AI tool similar to DALL-E rendered it in the style of the artist they were supposed to name. I mostly justwant to be surprised. Jon Schneider 13 of the team Galactic Trendsetters Thats not the only puzzle to have incorporated some machine-learning elements in the last few years. A few examples have used semantic similarity scoring systems where solvers have to guess words or phrasesa kind of machine-learning-enabled version of hot or cold. Even if machine learning has potential as a tool for puzzle constructors, generative AI is unlikely to solve Mystery Hunt puzzles anytime soon. ChatGPT can answer questions that might be helpful in getting started and maybe even help solve a crossword clue or two, but the puzzles are often so unusual that it doesnt know where to begin. When presented with them, it usually responds by stating that it would need more context or clues in order to proceed. Schneider did find ChatGPT very helpful, though, in solving a nonMystery Hunt puzzle about navigating the byzantine rules of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which he admits hes never played. A few years ago, there would have been no way around spending hours digging through the rulebooks and figuring out each step, but giving the puzzle to ChatGPT worked. It was really good at doing this. I guess it had trained on enough data of people playing Dungeons & Dragons that this was within its capabilities, he says. Schneider is optimistic that new technology will be integrated into Mystery Hunt in creative ways, expanding the scope of what puzzle constructors can come up with to entertain solvers. Ultimately, he says, I mostly just want to be surprised. As the sun sets on Sunday, Setec continues solving puzzles at a steady pace, but were also still unlocking new sections of the Hunta sign that were still some distance from the endgame, though rumors (but never spoilers) from friends on other teams suggest that a few teams might be closing in. As midnight rolls around theres still no announcement, and so we push on. Ultimately, the 2024 Hunt ends up running into Monday morning, one of only a handful of times its taken more than 60 hours to complete. The 2024 Mystery Hunt included what was called the Herc-U-Lease Scavenger Hunt. As part of the scavenger hunt, teams were asked to have as many members as possible look as identical as possible. Death and Mayhem realized that many members were wearing black T-shirts and decided to unify the look with paper hats fashioned from copies of The Tech someone found on campus.MOLLY FREY/DEATH & MAYHEM A little after 5 a.m., team Death and Mayhem solves the final puzzle to win the 2024 Mystery Huntand the responsibility of developing the 2025 Hunt, which kicks off on January 17. In the end, 266 teams have solved at least one of the 2024 Hunts 237 puzzles and Setec Astronomy has solved 174. (Teams typically care less about postgame rankings than about how many puzzles they get to before time runs out.) The Team Formerly Known as the Team to Be Named Later sends out an announcement that a wrap-up event, at which theyll give a full overview of the weekend and hand over the reins to Death and Mayhem, will begin at noon in 26-100. Because creating a Mystery Hunt is such a daunting task, Death and Mayhem got to work on this years within hours of winning, says James Douberley 13, who assumed the title of benevolent dictator to orchestrate and oversee the teams puzzle writing. The weight of expectation is not lost on Douberley and his teammates: This is a once-a-year event that holds a lot of meaning for many participants. The Mystery Hunt is about solving puzzles, but its also far more social and immersive than puzzle books and escape rooms. In 2024, nearly 2,000 people representing 91 teams showed up on campus to participateand another 2,450 or so signed up to puzzle from afar. All told, solvers included 52 faculty members, 278 students, and 950 alumni, ranging from recent graduates to those who got their degrees decades ago. For Chang, the Hunt is an opportunity to connect with the broader community, including alumni from her dorm whom she doesnt see often. This is the one time in the year that we get to all just be in one place together and do this thing that we love, she says. Its just a really great bonding experience. Shortly after solving the final puzzles in the 2024 MIT Mystery Hunt, members of Death & Mayhem received the custom coins awarded to the victors and posed for a photo with Aphrodite (of the Team Formerly Known as the Team to Be Named Later), who blew kisses in celebration.COURTESY OF DEATH & MAYHEM The MIT campus plays a special role in the Hunt. Maybe you have to use the walls of the List Visual Arts Center lobby as a grid for a logic puzzle, or find certain names on the memorial plaques in Lobby 10 whose first letters spell out an answer. But its not just that clues can be part of the physical spaceits that campus is the epicenter for the MIT spirit of creativity, inventiveness, and industriousness that makes the Mystery Hunt unique. People talk about New York being a character in movies, Katz says. I feel like MIT is a character in Mystery Hunt. For Douberley, the Mystery Hunt takes him back to his student days, when he tackled hard challenges through marathon work sessions and all-nighters. You fall asleep on the floor, and youre in the dorm lounge and your friend comes and wakes you up and says, Heres a coffeeI need your help with something, he says. And that is something that lives with you for the rest of your life. Editors Note: The 2025 MIT Mystery Hunt kicks off on January 17, 2025. But if youre eager to start puzzling before thenor get a taste of puzzling if youve never taken part beforecheck out theMIT Mystery Heist, a pre-Hunt round of puzzles written by the Mystery Hunt team known as the Providence Crime Syndication. Learn more and solve atmitmysteryheist.com.
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