Dutch food 3D printing company Gastronology has begun large-scale production of 3D printed meals designed for people with dysphagia, a condition that makes chewing and swallowing difficult. Working with contract manufacturer Budelfood B.V. in Poortvliet, the Dutch company rolled out its first industrial batches in April last year. Branded as Dysphalicious, these meals were initially supplied to hospitals and healthcare institutions.  Following increased demand from home users and caregivers, Gastronology has expanded access to its meals through online delivery platform QSTA, where orders can be placed at any time. Products are delivered frozen in boxes containing 20 or 22 portions, each weighing 50 g. A specially designed plate and matching lid, required for proper preparation, can be purchased alongside the meals. “This has numerous positive effects on their physical and mental well-being and that makes us extremely enthusiastic about what we are doing. Being able to make a significant contribution at a social and societal level is a huge motivation,” said Peter Nieuwkerk, Founder and CEO at Gastronology. A range of Dysphalicious meals. Photo via Gastronology. Access to safe and nutritious meals Dysphalicious meals are made from fresh, locally sourced vegetables and potatoes. Ingredients are ground into a smooth paste and shaped using food 3D printing.  The resulting dishes are designed to be visually recognizable and meet the IDDSI Level 4 standard, which ensures a consistency suitable for people with moderate dysphagia. According to the company, the aim is to provide an alternative to traditional puréed or gel-based meals, which often lack taste, smell, and visual appeal. The current range includes eight plant-based items: cauliflower, broccoli, carrot, garden pea, haricot verts, sweet potato, potato, and beetroot. Gastronology plans to add meat-based options later in the year. According to 3DPrintMagazine, Nieuwkerk noted that many patients are limited to food that is functional but unappealing. Consequently, the Dutch company wants to make nutritious and appetizing options more widely available. To support broader distribution, Gastronology intends to increase its production capacity from 700 kgs per day to 2,500 kgs per day over the coming years. The company’s goal is to make its meals accessible to more people affected by dysphagia, whether they are in clinical settings or living at home. Exploring new directions in food 3D printing As the food 3D printing landscape evolves, other developments including alternative proteins and novel production techniques have also been explored. Recently, Austrian food technology company Revo Foods launched EL BLANCO, a 3D printed plant-based alternative to black cod made from mycoprotein and microalgae oils. Developed using a low-temperature extrusion process, the product mimics the flaky, tender texture of fish fillets while offering high fiber, Omega-3s, and all essential amino acids.  Compared to Revo’s previous salmon alternative, EL BLANCO is softer and less processed. Being produced at Revo’s The Taste Factory, it is now available across Europe through retailers like BILLA AG, gurkerl.at, knuspr.de, and Revo Foods’ online store, which ships to multiple countries. Another novel approach was introduced by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) researchers who developed a single-step food 3D printing method that simultaneously prints and cooks food using laser-induced graphene (LIG) infrared heating. Unlike traditional systems that require post-print cooking, this approach enhances precision, energy efficiency, and food safety.  Operating at just 14 watts, it maintains precise surface temperatures and minimizes bacterial growth. Tests on starch-based cookie dough showed improved structural consistency compared to oven-baked samples. Although still under development, this development holds potential for use in restaurants, bakeries, and healthcare settings requiring customized and hygienic food preparation. Take the 3DPI Reader Survey — shape the future of AM reporting in under 5 minutes. What 3D printing trends should you watch out for in 2025? How is the future of 3D printing shaping up? To stay up to date with the latest 3D printing news, don’t forget to subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter or follow us on Twitter, or like our page on Facebook. While you’re here, why not subscribe to our Youtube channel? Featuring discussion, debriefs, video shorts, and webinar replays. Featured image shows a range of Dysphalicious meals. Photo via Gastronology.

Bold recycling claims deliberately distract from the disastrous ecological effects of plastic in buildings The building industry consumes nearly a fifth of all plastic produced globally. Plastic enters buildings not only as elements – window frames, fences, gutters and cable sheathing – but also in the form of petrochemical‑based polymers that permeate building products less visibly: dissolved in solvents, mixed into concrete and asphalt, impregnated into wood products, and affixed, laminated or otherwise agglomerated with other materials. These applications preclude their separation from other waste for recycling – a major reason why only a tiny proportion of the estimated 77 million metric tonnes of plastic waste from demolition or renovation is recycled. The rest is incinerated, landfilled or mismanaged.  This does not prevent building product manufacturers from routinely promoting plastic products as recyclable. VinylPlus, the recycling wing of the European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers, claims that nearly 27 per cent of vinyl products were mechanically recycled in 2021. But nearly two thirds of this was sourced from factory waste, before the vinyl even became flooring or roofing.  Recycling claims serve an important ideological function: to deflect corporate accountability for plastic’s deleterious effects, and to delay and derail efforts to restrict plastic production. Promoting these claims serves as a passcode to a ‘green’ building material industry expected to reach a value of over US$1 trillion by 2032. The infiltration of plastic in buildings runs deep. Some of the largest producers of construction chemicals and synthetic building products include the world’s largest private and state‑owned fossil fuel companies, such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Sinopec and Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC). The chemical and plastics industries are intertwined with the fossil fuel industry via extensive infrastructural, institutional and ideological ties, ranging from their shared and interdependent supply chains, to common political interests and secure global transport routes. These companies provide thousands of polymer‑based building products ranging from ready‑to‑install components (rigid insulation boards, waterproofing membranes, etc), to myriad adhesives, coatings, binders, sealants, admixtures and insulating foams – or provide their constitutive chemicals. ‘Architects must look up from their carbon calculators to question manufacturers’ claims of circularity’     The modern building product industry arose in tandem with the fossil fuel, chemical and plastics industries in the postwar era in the US and Europe. The massive productive capacity that had supplied the war effort was transformed to meet the needs and long‑repressed desires of a populace eager to partake in the fruits of peace, modernity and affluence, resulting in a flood of new plastic consumer goods. Among the new uses for plastic emerged an ever‑widening array of building products from flooring to cladding and furniture. By the late 1960s, however, plastic’s durability began to represent an existential threat to plastics and petrochemical companies as demand for plastic consumer goods began to wane. Industry’s solution? Disposability – not in response to consumers’ demand for convenience, but to the saturation of the market of plastic consumer goods that lasted too long. Disposability transformed a crisis of declining profit into a wellspring of unending demand and plastic waste. Eventually, producers became increasingly unable to credibly deny the problem of discarded plastic accumulating in great heaping piles and circling ocean gyres. What they could do was flood the mediascape with solutions that worked for them: redirecting focus from the obvious step of curtailing production, to downstream, consumer‑focused measures, such as increased recycling and the adoption of biogenic and recycled plastic feedstocks. Though plastic building products are less disposable than single‑use plastics, claims of ‘circularity’ similarly serve to sanction plastic use while ensuring that end‑of‑life costs stay off company ledgers.  Facing the prospect of declining demand for fuel due to electrification and the adoption of electric vehicles in much of the world, petrochemical industries have doubled down on expanding plastic fabrication as an economic lifeline. The immensely powerful nexus of fossil fuel, petrochemical and plastic industries have poured billions of dollars into new refineries and plastic production facilities. With nearly a fifth of plastic demand coming from the construction industry, these cartels have much at stake in maintaining their business. Accordingly, use of plastic in building is widely promoted by their well‑funded trade lobbies, including the American Chemical Council, Plastics Europe and the British Plastics Federation. These trade lobbyists work fervently to influence legislation to ensure the cost and responsibility of recycling is displaced onto consumers and municipalities, ‘externalising’ the cost of remediating what will be a legacy of toxic pollution left for future generations.  As a result, architects remain pressurised and incentivised to specify plastic products due to their low cost, superior performance, availability and lack of alternatives. Architects must look up from their carbon calculators, not only to question manufacturers’ claims of circularity, but also the limits of circularity within an economy predicated both on compulsory growth and – for some time to come – on fossil fuels. Lead image: Plastic is used in numerous applications in the built environment, from cladding and fences to adhesives and insulation foams. Manufacturers claim their plastic products are widely recycled as a tactic to obscure their origin in the petrochemical industry and their contribution to the climate emergency that causes extreme weather events such as wild fires. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / Getty) 2025-05-21 Reuben J Brown Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now

AMD is officially announcing its Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU at Computex today. Like the number implies, this graphics card will challenge Nvidia’s recently released RTX 5060, with AMD offering models with 8GB or 16GB of VRAM. AMD is following Nvidia’s controversial choice to ship a modern GPU with just 8GB of VRAM in the year 2025. The 8GB of VRAM debate has been raging for months now, particularly because of the latest games that can be very demanding on the memory side. AMD is following in Nvidia’s footsteps, though, so it’ll be interesting to see what reviewers make of both cards in this important part of the market. The RX 9060 XT will ship with 32 RDNA 4 compute units, a boost clock of 3.13GHz, and support for DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b. The total board power is between 150 watts and 182 watts, depending on the model. AMD is only announcing the existence of the RTX 9060 XT today, and it hasn’t supplied pricing or even a release date. We’re still waiting to hear how the RTX 5060 stacks up, because oddly, Nvidia launched its latest 50-series GPU yesterday without any reviews available. The GPU maker had reportedly prevented reviewers from obtaining the necessary driver to test the RTX 5060 ahead of the release date, presumably because it’s worried about the paltry 8GB of VRAM spec. While the 8GB of VRAM choice for both Nvidia and AMD is controversial, Nvidia has managed to spark a further wave of outrage from PC gaming YouTubers over comments it has made to Gamers Nexus. In a 22-minute video, Gamers Nexus discusses the pressure from Nvidia to include Multi Frame Generation (MFG) in benchmarks against competitor cards that don’t have a similar feature. Gamers Nexus (GN) alleges that Nvidia has even implied that it would revoke access to interview Nvidia engineers unless the channel discussed MFG more.

Microsoft acknowledges it supplied AI technology to Israel's Ministry of Defense, but "no evidence" it's been used to "target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza" Following calls to boycott the company. Image credit: Microsoft News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on May 20, 2025 Microsoft has acknowledged it has supplied AI technology to the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) but has stated it "found no evidence" the technology had been used to "target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza". Microsoft published a statement last week, where it admitted to providing IMOD with "software, professional services, Azure cloud services, and Azure AI services, including language translation". It added: "As with many governments around the world, we also work with the Israeli government to protect its national cyberspace against external threats". The statement follows reports of Israel using AI in its conflict in Gaza, which has resulted in thousands of Palestinian deaths. As reported by The Guardian last year, the Israeli military employed its own AI system, called Lavender, with intelligence sources claiming Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed. As Microsoft has now acknowledged, there were concerns from its employees and the public regarding the use of its Azure and AI technologies by the Israeli military. In response, it has conducted an internal review, alongside an external firm the company has omitted to name. "Based on these reviews, including interviewing dozens of employees and assessing documents, we have found no evidence to date that Microsoft's Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza," the company said. "Our relationship with the IMOD is structured as a standard commercial relationship," it continued. "Like all our customers, the IMOD's use of our technology is bound by Microsoft's terms of service and conditions of use, including our Acceptable Use Policy and our AI Code of Conduct. These require customers to implement core responsible AI practices - such as human oversight and access controls - and prohibit the use of our cloud and AI services in any manner that inflicts harm on individuals or organisations or affects individuals in any way that is prohibited by law." Microsoft noted it does occasionally provide special access to its technologies beyond the terms of its commercial agreements. It did this in the weeks following 7th October 2023 by providing limited emergency support to the Israeli government to help rescue hostages, but with "significant oversight and on a limited basis". It also noted militaries "typically use their own proprietary software or applications from defense-related providers for the types of surveillance and operations that have been the subject of our employees' questions. Microsoft has not created or provided such software or solutions to the IMOD." The company also acknowledged it does not have visibility into how its customers use its technology on their own servers, typically the case for "on premise software". As such, it does not have visibility to the IMOD's government cloud operations. "In sum, Microsoft has long defended the cybersecurity of the State of Israel and the people who live there," the statement concludes. "We similarly have long been committed to other nations and people across the Middle East. Our commitment to human rights guides how we engage in complex environments and how our technology is used. We share the profound concern over the loss of civilian life in both Israel and Gaza and have supported humanitarian assistance in both places. The work we do everywhere in the world is informed and governed by our Human Rights Commitments. Based on everything we currently know, we believe Microsoft has abided by these Commitments in Israel and Gaza." Last year, a group of current and former Microsoft employees launched the No Azure for Apartheid petition, which currently has 1527 signatures. The group has now called for Microsoft to make this investigation public. "It's very clear that their intention with this statement is not to actually address their worker concerns, but rather to make a PR stunt to whitewash their image that their relationship with the Israeli military has tarnished," said former employee Hossam Nasr to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Nasr was fired in October for helping to organise an unauthorised vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza at Microsoft's headquarters. As RockPaperShotgun reported, the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement called for a boycott of Microsoft products last month in protest against the company's reported connections with the Israeli military. Back in February, the Associated Press published a report into the use of AI technology by the Israeli military, including Microsoft and OpenAI. Similarly, the developer of indie role-player Tenderfoot Tactics removed the game from sale on Xbox in support of the boycott.

Nintendo hired Samsung to build the main chips for the Switch 2, including an 8-nanometer processor custom designed by NVIDIA, Bloomberg reported. That would mark a move by Nintendo away from TSMC, which manufactured the chipset for the original 2017 Switch. Nintendo had no comment, saying it doesn't disclose its suppliers. Samsung and NVIDIA also declined to discuss the matter. Samsung has previously supplied Nintendo with flash memory and displays, but building the Switch 2's processor would be a rare win for the company's contract chip division. Samsung can reportedly build enough chips to allow Nintendo to ship 20 million or more Switch 2s by March of 2026.  NVIDIA's new chipset was reportedly optimized for Samsung's, rather than TSMC's manufacturing process. Using Samsung also means that Nintendo won't be competing with Apple and others for TSMC's resources. During Nintendo's latest earnings call, President Shuntaro Furukawa's said that the company didn't expect any component shortages with its new console — an issue that plagued the original Switch.  Nintendo said in the same earnings report that it was caught by surprise with 2.2 million applications for Switch 2 pre-orders in Japan alone. Despite that, the company projected sales of 15 million Switch 2 units in its first year on sale to March 2026, fewer than analyst predictions of 16.8 million — likely due to the impact of Trump's tariffs. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-is-reportedly-using-samsung-to-build-the-main-switch-2-chips-120006403.html?src=rss

A mother and baby whale swim at Kiama, New South Wales, Australia. CREDIT: Vanessa Risku - Instagram @droning_my_sorrows. Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are master migrators. Some populations of this  baleen whale species travel upwards of 5,000 miles per year from colder waters to feed, towards warmer tropical waters where they give birth and care for their calves. However, new research on a population off Australia’s eastern coast indicates that their trips to more balmy waters are not as essential to calving as biologists thought. Calves in this population can actually be born in colder waters near New Zealand or Tasmania–about 932 miles further south (1,500 kilometers) than previously known. Understanding this pattern could challenge some long-held beliefs about humpback migration and improve protection areas to help these baby whales. The findings are detailed in a study published May 20 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. “Hundreds of humpback calves were born well outside the established breeding grounds,” said Tracey Rogers, a study co-author and marine ecologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “Giving birth along the ‘humpback highway’ means these vulnerable calves, who are not yet strong swimmers, are required to swim long distances much earlier in life than if they were born in the breeding grounds.”  The ‘Humpback Highway’ In the Northern Hemisphere, humpback whales like those found on the east coast of the United States and Canada, typically migrate from colder feeding in the Northern Atlantic Ocean in the summer and south to the Caribbean for the winter to breed and calf.  For Southern Hemisphere humpbacks like those off the coast of Eastern Australia, the directions are flipped because of the equator. They travel from their frigid feeding grounds in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, north towards the Pacific Ocean in Australia to breed, calve, and care for their young.  Finding this new baby whale hotspot arose due to study co-author and University of New South Wales Ph.D candidate Jane McPhee-Frew’s extracurricular work as a marine guide.  A baby whale breaches in Western Australia. Footage by Jason Milligan – Instagram: millo_hd CREDIT: Jason Milligan – Instagram: @millo_hd. “In July 2023, during a whale-watching tour, I encountered a mum and calf at the mouth of Newcastle Harbor—the busiest shipping port in Eastern Australia,” said McPhee-Frew. “The calf was tiny, obviously brand new. What were they doing there? But none of my tourism colleagues seemed surprised.”  This new sighting piqued researchers’ interest and they began investigating the calving range for humpback whales located around Australia and New Zealand. They used data from citizen science observations, government surveys, and reported strandings. New Zealand’s Department of Conservation Cook Strait Whale Project supplied data from migration surveys, and Australian state wildlife departments supplied information on strandings dating all the way back to 1991.   The team found 209 records of newborn calves (including 11 births), 41 strandings, and 168 observations of live calves, representing at least 169 individual whales. They also had data on the direction of travel for 118 whales, which showed the whales were continuing to migrate north after delivery.   “Humpback whale populations undertake extensive long-distance migrations from the Southern Ocean to breeding grounds in the tropics,” said study co-author Adelaide Dedden of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Australia. “They rely heavily on body reserves from an enormous amount of Antarctic krill to support the physiological costs of the journey and reproduction.”   The highest-latitude calf was found at Port Arthur, Tasmania–about 932 miles further south than it was believed that humpbacks could calf.  When they compared these observations taken over the last decade with historical texts and whaling logbooks, they say that calves born during migration were observed more often before the population crashed due to hunting. Humpback whale numbers in Australia crashed during the peak of the whaling industry, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. “I think it’s very likely that this pattern has always existed, but the low number of whales obscured it from view,” said McPhee-Frew. “The Eastern Australia humpback population narrowly escaped extinction, but now there are 30, 40, or 50,000 in this population alone. It doesn’t happen overnight, but the recovery of humpback whales, and the return of their full range of behaviors and distribution, just goes to show that with good policies built on good science we can have excellent outcomes.”  Weighing the risks For all migratory species, these epic journeys cost a great deal of time and energy. The energy expenditures can leave their young vulnerable to predators. While this particular study can’t answer why humpback whales risk migrating if they can give birth further south, it’s possible that other factors are driving migration. The benefits of delivering in tropical waters might outweigh the risks of having a potential calf born along the way.  While the data provided by Western Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation, and Attractions pinpointed a possible nursery area in Flinders Bay, it’s likely that most calves are born much further north in the tropics.  [ Related: Humpback whales use bubble-nets as ‘tools.’ ] According to the team, there are several conservation implications in these findings. Some of the observed calves were injured, so expanded protected areas, awareness campaigns about protective measures boaters and the general public can take, and more research into the habitats that humpbacks use while migrating are critical to safeguarding the calves.  “This study was based on opportunistic observations,” cautioned McPhee-Frew. “This data is excellent for answering questions like, ‘are there newborn whales here?’ But we can’t stretch the interpretations too far. It might appear that we see more calves the further north we go, or that we have seen more over time. But it could be that there are more people whale-watching in the north, or more cameras and social media sharing in recent years.”  “We can only document what we see,” added study co-author Vanessa Pirotta of Macquarie University in Australia. “Perhaps there are things happening in our ocean that we are yet to find out.”

May 19, 2025Ravie LakshmananMalware / Supply Chain Attack The official site for RVTools has been hacked to serve a compromised installer for the popular VMware environment reporting utility. "Robware.net and RVTools.com are currently offline. We are working expeditiously to restore service and appreciate your patience," the company said in a statement posted on its website. "Robware.net and RVTools.com are the only authorized and supported websites for RVTools software. Do not search for or download purported RVTools software from any other websites or sources." The development comes after security researcher Aidan Leon revealed that an infected version of the installer downloaded from the website was being used to sideload a malicious DLL that turned out to be a known malware loader called Bumblebee. It's currently not known how long the trojanized version of RVTools had been available for download and how many had installed it before the site was taken offline. In the interim, users are recommended to verify the installer's hash and review any execution of version.dll from user directories. The disclosure comes as it has come to light that the official software supplied with Procolored printers included a Delphi-based backdoor called XRed and a clipper malware dubbed SnipVex that's capable of substituting wallet addresses in the clipboard with that of a hard-coded address. Details of the malicious activity were first discovered by Cameron Coward, who is behind the YouTube channel Serial Hobbyism. XRed, believed to be active since at least 2019, comes with features to collect system information, log keystrokes, propagate via connected USB drives, and execute commands sent from an attacker-controlled server to capture screenshots, enumerate file systems and directories, download files, and delete files from the system. "[SnipVex] searches the clipboard for content that resembles a BTC address and replaces it with the attacker's address, such that cryptocurrency transactions will be diverted to the attacker," G DATA researcher Karsten Hahn, who further investigated the incident, said. But in an interesting twist, the malware infects .EXE files with the clipper functionality and makes use of an infection marker sequence – 0x0A 0x0B 0x0C – at the end to avoid re-infecting the files a second time. The wallet address in question has received 9.30857859 BTC (about $974,000) to date. Procolored has since acknowledged that the software packages were uploaded to the Mega file hosting service in October 2024 via USB drives and that the malware may have been introduced during this process. Software downloads are currently only available for F13 Pro, VF13 Pro, and V11 Pro products. "The malware's command-and-control server has been offline since February 2024," Hahn noted. "So it is not possible that XRed established a successful remote connection after that date. The accompanying clipbanker virus SnipVex is still a serious threat. Although transactions to the BTC address stopped on March 3, 2024, the file infection itself damages systems." Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    

Sludge Vohaul! Sierra made the games of my childhood. Are they still fun to play? Get ready for some nostalgia. Nate Anderson – May 17, 2025 7:00 am | 14 Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more My Ars colleagues were kicking back at the Orbital HQ water cooler the other day, and—as gracefully aging gamers are wont to do—they began to reminisce about classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. I was a huge fan of these games in my youth, so I settled in for some hot buttered nostalgia. Would we remember the limited-palette joys of early King's Quest, Space Quest, or Quest for Glory titles? Would we branch out beyond games with "Quest" in their titles, seeking rarer fare like Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist? What about the gothic stylings of The Colonel's Bequest or the voodoo-curious Gabriel Knight? Nope. The talk was of acorns. [Bleeping] acorns, in fact! The scene in question came from King's Quest III, where our hero Gwydion must acquire some exceptionally desiccated acorns to advance the plot. It sounds simple enough. As one walkthrough puts it, "Go east one screen and north one screen to the acorn tree. Try picking up acorns until you get some dry ones. Try various spots underneath the tree." Easy! And clear! Except it wasn't either one because the game rather notoriously won't always give you the acorns, even when you enter the right command. This led many gamers to believe they were in the wrong spot, when in reality, they just had to keep entering the "get acorns" command while moving pixel by pixel around the tree until the game finally supplied them. One of our staffers admitted to having purchased the King's Quest III hint book solely because of this "puzzle." (The hint book, which is now online, says that players should "move around" the particular oak tree in question because "you can only find the right kind of acorns in one spot.") This wasn't quite the "fun" I had remembered from these games, but as I cast my mind back, I dimly began to recall similar situations. Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge had been my first Sierra title, and after my brother and I spent weeks on the game only to get stuck and die repeatedly in some pitch-dark tunnels, we implored my dad to call Sierra's 1-900 pay hint line. He thought about it. I could see it pained him because he had never before (and never since!) called a 1-900 number in his life. In this case, the call cost a piratical 75 cents for the first minute and 50 cents for each additional minute. But after listening to us whine for several days straight, my dad decided that his sanity was worth the fee, and he called. Much like with the acorn example above, we had known what to do—we had just not done it to the game's rather exacting and sometimes obscure standards. The key was to use a glowing gem as a light source, which my brother and I had long understood. The problem was the text parser, which demanded that we "put gem in mouth" to use its light in the tunnels. There was no other place to put the gem, no other way to hold or attach it. (We tried them all.) No other attempts to use the light of this shining crystal, no matter how clear, well-intentioned, or succinctly expressed, would work. You put the gem in your mouth, or you died in the darkness. Returning from my reveries to the conversation at hand, I caught Ars Senior Editor Lee Hutchinson's cynical remark that these kinds of puzzles were "the only way to make 2–3 hours of 'game' last for months." This seemed rather shocking, almost offensive. How could one say such a thing about the games that colored my memories of childhood? So I decided to replay Space Quest II for the first time in 35 years in an attempt to defend my own past. Big mistake. We're not on Endor anymore, Dorothy. Play it again, Sam In my memory, the Space Quest series was filled with sharply written humor, clever puzzles, and enchanting art. But when I fired up the original version of the game, I found that only one of these was true. The art, despite its blockiness and limited colors, remained charming. As for the gameplay, the puzzles were not so much "clever" as "infuriating," "obvious," or (more often) "rather obscure." Finding the glowing gem discussed above requires you to swim into one small spot of a multi-screen river, with no indication in advance that anything of importance is in that exact location. Trying to "call" a hunter who has captured you does nothing… until you do it a second time. And the less said about trying to throw a puzzle at a Labian Terror Beast, typing out various word permutations while death bears down upon you, the better. The whole game was also filled with far more no-warning insta-deaths than I had remembered. On the opening screen, for instance, after your janitorial space-broom floats off into the cosmic ether, you can walk your character right off the edge of the orbital space station he is cleaning. The game doesn't stop you; indeed, it kills you and then mocks you for "an obvious lack of common sense." It then calls you a "wing nut" with an "inability to sustain life." Game over. The game's third screen, which features nothing more to do than simply walking around, will also kill you in at least two different ways. Walk into the room still wearing your spacesuit and your boss will come over and chew you out. Game over. If you manage to avoid that fate by changing into your indoor uniform first, it's comically easy to tap the wrong arrow key and fall off the room's completely guardrail-free elevator platform. Game over. Do NOT touch any part of this root monster. Get used to it because the game will kill you in so, so many ways: touching any single pixel of a root monster whose branches form a difficult maze; walking into a giant mushroom; stepping over an invisible pit in the ground; getting shot by a guard who zips in on a hovercraft; drowning in an underwater tunnel; getting swiped at by some kind of giant ape; not putting the glowing gem in your mouth; falling into acid; and many more. I used the word "insta-death" above, but the game is not even content with this. At one key point late in the game, a giant Aliens-style alien stalks the hallways, and if she finds you, she "kisses" you. But then she leaves! You are safe after all! Of course, if you have seen the films, you will recognize that you are not safe, but the game lets you go on for a bit before the alien's baby inevitably bursts from your chest, killing you. Game over. This is why the official hint book suggests that you "save your game a lot, especially when it seems that you're entering a dangerous area. That way, if you die, you don't have to retrace your steps much." Presumably, this was once considered entertaining. When it comes to the humor, most of it is broad. (When you are told to "say the word," you have to say "the word.") Sometimes it is condescending. ("You quickly glance around the room to see if anyone saw you blow it.") Or it might just be potty jokes. (Plungers, jock straps, toilet paper, alien bathrooms, and fouling one's trousers all make appearances.) My total gameplay time: a few hours. "By Grabthar's hammer!" I thought. "Lee was right!" When I admitted this to him, Lee told me that he had actually spent time learning to speedrun the Space Quest games during the pandemic. "According to my notes, a clean run of SQ2 in 'fast' mode—assuming good typing skills—takes about 20 minutes straight-up," he said. Yikes. What a fiendish plot! And yet The past was a different time. Computer memory was small, graphics capabilities were low, and computer games had emerged from the "let them live just long enough to encourage spending another quarter" arcade model. Mouse adoption took a while; text parsers made sense even though they created plenty of frustration. So yes—some of these games were a few hours of gameplay stretched out with insta-death, obscure puzzles, and the sheer amount of time it took just to walk across the game's various screens. (Seriously, "walking around" took a ridiculous amount of the game's playtime, especially when a puzzle made you backtrack three screens, type some command, and then return.) Let's get off this rock. Judged by current standards, the Sierra games are no longer what I would play for fun. All the same, I loved them. They introduced me to the joy of exploring virtual worlds and to the power of evocative artwork. I went into space, into fairy tales, and into the past, and I did so while finding the games' humor humorous and their plotlines compelling. ("An army of life insurance salesmen?" I thought at the time. "Hilarious and brilliant!") If the games can feel a bit arbitrary or vexing today, my child-self's love of repetition was able to treat them as engaging challenges rather than "unfair" design. Replaying Space Quest II, encountering the half-remembered jokes and visual designs, brought back these memories. The novelist Thomas Wolfe knew that you can't go home again, and it was probably inevitable that the game would feel dated to me now. But playing it again did take me back to that time before the Internet, when not even hint lines, insta-death, and EGA graphics could dampen the wonder of the new worlds computers were capable of showing us. Literal bathroom humor. Space Quest II, along with several other Sierra titles, is freely and legally available online at sarien.net—though I found many, many glitches in the implementation. Windows users can buy the entire Space Quest collection through Steam or Good Old Games. There's even a fan remake that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 14 Comments

The Romanian Order of Architects has announced an open international contest to upgrade Mircea cel Bătrân Square in Tulcea (Deadline: 2 June) The single-stage contest – organised on behalf of the Tulcea Municipality – invites proposals to revitalise the town centre public space which occupies a prominent site closely connected to the Saint George Branch of the River Danube. The estimated €7.8 million project focuses on upgrading the historic plaza, which serves an important social and civic role in the centre of Tulcea. Key aims include upgrading pedestrian links, respecting existing heritage and supporting a range of urban functions including housing, administration, commerce, food, leisure, culture and civic life. Competition site: Mircea cel Bătrân Square, Tulcea According to the brief: ‘The competition aims at a high-quality contemporary redevelopment of this space in the context of the urban regeneration of the city centre and the strengthening of pedestrian connections with the Danube waterfront, by transforming Unirii Street into a pedestrian street and restoring the “Trei Fântâni” area. ‘The aim of the competition is to formulate a solution for the development of public space that takes into account the current built heritage and the layers that history has deposited here. ‘Contest participants should take into account all the needs of the studied area — housing; public administration; restaurants, cafes and confectioneries; small-scale commercial spaces; leisure and entertainment; culture and civic life, etc. — to enhance them and situate them in an urban platform for the subsequent coherent development of the entire central area of ​​Tulcea municipality.’ Tulcea is a historic port city located close to the Danube estuary on the eastern fringes of Romania near to the Black Sea and the border with Ukraine. Key local landmarks include the Tulcea Art Museum and the Azizyie Mosque. The competition comes a year after an open international student contest was held for a pop-up community hub next to an abandoned church in Babșa, Romania. Vladostudio and Atelier de Arhitectura Terchila won a contest to upgrade the Cibin Market in Sibiu two years ago. The latest project focuses on upgrading Mircea cel Bătrân Square while also improving its connections to the waterfront and surrounding historic areas. Concepts will be expected to address ‘contemporary needs generated by climate, social and economic changes.’ Competition site: Mircea cel Bătrân Square, Tulcea Judges will include Andreea Catrinel Matache, representing the local chief architect; the architects Ana Maria Zahariade, Laura Cristea, Irina Popescu-Criveanu and Gustavo Figueira Serrano; and the landscape architects Jörg Michel and Barnabás Ede Szakács. Bids will be evaluated 25 per cent on functional response to the brief, 20 per cent on ecology and landscape, 10 per cent on sustainability and economic efficiency, 5 per cent on cost, 15 per cent on development vision and civic purpose, 15 per cent on civic identity and general atmosphere, and 10 per cent on quality and clarity of presentation. The overall winner – to be announced 29 July – will receive an estimated £320,000 (1.9 million LEI) design contract while a second prize of £16,400 (99,500 LEI), third prize of £8,200 (49,000 LEI), fourth prize of £2,000 (12,400 LEI) and fifth prize of £2,000 (12,400 LEI) will also be awarded. How to apply Deadline: 2 June Competition funding source: Not supplied Project funding source: Not supplied Owner of site(s): Not supplied Contact details: achizitii@primariatulcea.roVisit the competition website for more information

An internation contest – featuring a €445,000 prize fund – is inviting architects, designers and engineers to create a ‘new look’ for wind turbines (Deadline: 16 June) The two-stage ‘WinDesign’ competition – organised by Italian energy company Enel – seeks concepts for new wind farms which combine ‘functionality, aesthetics, innovation and sustainability.’ The call for concepts aims to identify a range of solutions to reduce the environmental impact of new wind turbines and to promote ‘harmony between infrastructure and landscape.’ A renewable energy development in the California Desert Credit: Image by Bureau of Land Management Attribution 2.0 Generic The contest – which is open to architects, designers, engineers, students and start-ups – comes amid rapid growth in alternative energy adoption with wind generation expected to surpass coal generation in Europe this year. According to the brief: ‘The wind energy market has experienced exponential growth in the last few decades, with thousands of wind turbines installed globally each year, helping the world to have safe, reliable and sustainable energy. ‘In this context, Enel intends to rethink the aesthetics of wind power plants through innovative solutions that combine functionality, design, innovation and sustainability in order to enhance the harmony between infrastructure and landscape, while reducing the environmental impact. ‘The proposed solutions must meet the criteria of increasing environmental and landscape integration, technical and functional feasibility, flexibility of use and economic sustainability.’ Headquartered in Rome, Enel is an Italian multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas. The company’s subsidiary, Enel Green Power, operates around 1,300 plants harnessing solar, geothermal, wind and hydropower sources around the world. The ‘WinDesign’ contest invites participants to rethink the aesthetics of wind power plants which are typically constructed using conical tubular steel towers supporting a generator in a nacelle with a hub and three or four rotor blades. A renewable energy development in the California Desert Credit: Image by Bureau of Land Management Attribution 2.0 Generic Submissions must meet the contest criteria of ‘increasing environmental and landscape integration, technical and functional feasibility, flexibility of use and economic sustainability.’ Concepts will need to have a rated power output of 5.5MW with a rotor diameter of 161m and a hub height of 98m. Teams selected to participate in the second round of the competition running frodm July to September will each receive a €5,000 honorarium. The overall winner – due to be announced on 10 November – will receive a €250,000 prize while a second prize of €150,000 and third prize €50,000 will also be awarded. Three special prizes worth €15,000 each for design, technical and economic feasibility, and innovation and sustainability will also be awarded. How to apply Deadline: 16 June Competition funding source: Not supplied Project funding source: Not supplied Owner of site(s): Not suppliedVisit the competition website for more information