Valve’s advice on getting an industry job: “Give yourself one”

The "when you come home from work" part of this advice seems to suggest Chet has confused 'job' with 'hobby'.

Valve’s advice on getting an industry job: “Give yourself one”:

Breaking into the gaming industry isn’t as simple and straightforward a process as, say, establishing a reputation as a ruthless flamethrower-wielding mercenary. But you’re not limited to knocking on the doors of large studios to get your break. At the Eurogamer Expo today, Valve writer Chet Faliszek offered would-be developers this simple piece of advice: “Create something.”
“I’m being serious,” he said. “There are no gatekeepers. There are no requirements. There is no prior experience that you need. Just make something.”
Faliszek suggested budding indiesmiths seek feedback on their work through forums and developer communities as well as heightening their exposure through submissions to gaming portals such as Greenlight, Kongregate, and Desura.
“How do you get yourself a job in the games industry?” he said. “This is the answer: You just give yourself one. It’s that simple. You’re in control of your own destiny. Make your resume and ship it to the world. Take whatever ideas you have, whatever computer you have, whatever software you have, and scope it down to something you can ship. Start working on it. Every day you come home from work, work on it some more. Show it to your friends. Talk about it. Get feedback on it. Playtest it. And when it’s ready, release it. There, you just gave yourself a job in the game industry.”
Eurogamer recorded Faliszek’s entire talk at the Expo, should you want to see more.

Interview: Firaxis On XCOM’s Secret Origins

Working with Sid Meier sounds ace.

Interview: Firaxis On XCOM’s Secret Origins:

Not content with a mere three interviews with the lead designer of Firaxis’ upcoming X-COM remake XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I recently settled down for a fourth lengthy chinwag with the effusive Jake Solomon. In this first of two parts, we talk about the difficulty of describing the essential X-COM/XCOM experience, why people shouldn’t immediately start playing in Iron Man Mode (or perhaps why they should), what’s yet to be revealed about the game, some of the near-catastrophic mistakes made during its creation and how designing boardgames/arguing with Sid Meier might just have saved it.

(more…)

Migaloo, perhaps the world's only white humpback whale, has been spotted off the coast of Australia! [Biology]

Migaloo, perhaps the world's only white humpback whale, has been spotted off the coast of Australia! [Biology]:
Everyone, say hello to Migaloo. That's what people call the white humpback whale pictured up top. When he was first spotted back in 1991, Migaloo (which is Aboriginal for "white fella") was the first all-white humpback researchers had ever seen. (And according to his website, he remains the only documented white humpback whale in the world.)
Every year since, whale watchers have kept an eye out for the albino beastie, hoping to catch a glimpse of him during his annual migration from Australia to the Antarctic. The photos up top are screenshots, taken from what's believed to be the first sighting of Migaloo this year. Watch the full video over at CNN. Read more about Migaloo over on his website.

Star Trek really did a shitty job at predicting the future - Imgur

Star Trek really did a shitty job at predicting the future - Imgur

Enslaved worker ants fight back through acts of sabotage [Biology]

Enslaved worker ants fight back through acts of sabotage [Biology]:
It would appear that ants that are kept as slaves by more powerful species aren't as helpless as they might appear. New research from Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany shows that enslaved ants conduct their own form of civil disobedience, by neglecting and killing the offspring of their oppressors. And by doing so, the ants may be preventing their comrades outside the nest from being enslaved themselves.
This discovery was made by ant researcher Susanne Foitzik who started to observe this behavior back in 2009. But what she has since discovered is that this is not an isolated trick limited to one species; over the course of her studies, Foitzik has observed at least three different ant populations in which these acts of rebellion occur. It would appear, therefore, that it may be a fairly common way for enslaved ants to fight back.
Ants such as Temnothorax longispinosus become enslaved when workers from the slave-making ant colony, Protomognathus americanus, attack their nests. The parasitic master ants kill the adults of the subjugated population, and steal their offspring. Once back at their nest, the master ants force the new generation to feed and clean their larvae, thus compelling them to raise the offspring of their oppressors (what's called "brood parasitism").
At least up until a certain point — but it would appear that the enslaved ants have evolved a fairly potent countermeasure.
Foitzik observed that 95% of the brood survives the larval stage — but things change dramatically once the larvae starts to pupate. At this point, the pupae give off a chemical signature that the enslaved ant recognizes as being foreign. In turn, the slave ants ignore and even outright kill the baby ants by tearing them apart — as much as 65% of them (normally, 15% don't survive). Foitzik's research even showed some survival rates that were as low as 27%.
Clearly, the slave ants are making a difference — and at no benefit to themselves. But their free relatives back home (as much as it can be said that ants are "free") are clearly benefiting from their enslaved brethren working behind the front lines. And in fact, slavemaker colonies damaged by slave sabotage have been observed to grow slower and smaller slave-making colonies, while conducting fewer and less destructive slave raids.
What's particularly fascinating about this discovery is that the enslaved ants are not the ones passing the "destroy enemy pupae" genes to the next generation. Instead, this characteristic is arising and being reenforced among the free ants.
This research was financed since October 2011 by the project "The evolution of resistance and virulence in structured populations" funded by the German Research Foundation.
The entire study can be read at Evolutionary Ecology.
Image: Dr. Morley Read/Shutterstock.

Season 1, Episode 14

Season 1, Episode 14:


This episode has so many wasted opportunities.  Why is there no scene where Scully is making out with a dude and then he turns into a lady?  Why even do a gender-switch episode if you don’t put in stuff like that?
I tried so hard to make a Rumspringa joke here, but it just wasn’t happening.

This is the worst death scene ever committed to film [Video]

Put's Boromir to shame.
This is the worst death scene ever committed to film [Video]:




From the 1974 Turkish martial arts flick Kareteci Kız ("Karate Girl") comes this particularly agonizing death sequence. It lacks the family friendliness of Homodi and Badi but certainly delivers thrills on par with the Turkish Rocky. [CDT Crew via MeFi]

Watch how Jim Henson made David Bowie spin crystal balls on the set of Labyrinth [Video]

Watch how Jim Henson made David Bowie spin crystal balls on the set of Labyrinth [Video]:




For the fantasy cult classic Labyrinth, David Bowie played Jareth, the codpiece-sporting Goblin King. And throughout the film, Jareth is constantly twirling crystal balls just to show off how flamboyantly magical he is.
The thing is, Bowie was never spinning those crystal balls. No, director Jim Henson had juggler Michael Moschen secreted away under Bowie's armpit, manipulating those mystical orbs completely blind. I am astounded by how amazing and awkward it would be to spend take after take hanging out under The Thin White Duke's underarms.
BONUS #1 - More Henson Awesomeness: Jim Henson improvising on the set of The Muppet Movie with Frank Oz and his earlier, trippier work.
BONUS #2 - More Bowie Weirdness: The Italian Aladdin Sane army.
[Via The Jim Henson Company]

Squirrel hurls itself through a fourth story window, scampers off unscathed [Video]

Squirrel hurls itself through a fourth story window, scampers off unscathed [Video]:




This is impressive. Watch what happens when a very flustered squirrel makes a daring leap for freedom through the kitchen window of what looks to be a fourth-story apartment. The brief clip, captured on video by Finn83, raises an interesting question: how does a squirrel survive such a fall?
The conceptual explanation is straightforward enough: the wind resistance experienced by a body falling through the air is proportional to its projected area. Smaller bodies (like squirrels) tend to have greater surface-area-to-mass ratios than larger bodies (humans, for example), causing them to accelerate toward the ground at a decreased rate. From a sufficient height, the squirrel would achieve a slower (perhaps even non-lethal) terminal velocity, as well.
Thanks to drag, the squirrel survives; that much is obvious. Less clear is the importance of the squirrel's big, bushy tail when it comes to non-lethal plummets.
In a flyer entitled "Living With Wildlife: Tree Squirrels," the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife notes that "if a squirrel should fall," the tail can act as "a sort of parachute and cushion." Intrigued, I went searching for more information. I discovered that the tail-as-parachute/crash-pad claim has been reproduced in various forms around the internet (and in a handful of pretty adorable books), often alongside the statistic that squirrels can survive falls from as high as 100 feet. However, I've yet to come across any research that supports either of these claims. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no observational studies on the aerodynamics of free-falling squirrels. This, obviously, is a damn shame.
What I did find, however, was proof that the idea of squirrels using their tails like a drag chute has been around since as early as 1927, when, in a February issue of the Journal of Mammology, researcher A. Brooker Klugh wrote of red squirrels:
"That the tail acts not only as a rudder in leaping, but to a certain extent as a parachute in the case of a fall, is probably true."
Hear that? "Probably true." Pah! Does anyone know if there's been any research performed in the last 85 years that supports this assumption, or does tail-mediated squirrel descent remain an untested hypothesis? If you know, please feel free to speak up in the comments!
[Finn83 via Ferris Jabr]

Comic for September 27, 2012

Shenton.

Comic for September 27, 2012:

This prophecy about North America's super-mega-earthquakes in 1998 totally came true [Video]

This prophecy about North America's super-mega-earthquakes in 1998 totally came true [Video]:
Remember how the North American continent was torn asunder in the late 1990s by geological forces beyond all comprehension? Remember how Denver became a seaport and Long Island was lost to the ocean? Those were the days. Let's recollect these halcyon years of tectonic upheaval with precognitive futurist George Michael Scallion, who has been predicting a cartography of the future since 1979. Hey Austin, how are the ocean views?
RELATED: Other occasions the world ended.
[Via Everything Is Terrible]

Interview: Ubisoft On DRM, Piracy And PC Games

This whole interview is hilarious. To summarise: "Hello, yes we'll give you an interview. Here is our prepared statement. In answer to your questions: No comment, no comment, no comment and finally no comment."

Interview: Ubisoft On DRM, Piracy And PC Games:

For a couple of years we have been petitioning Ubisoft for an interview with those involved in their DRM decisions. We’re very pleased to report that this has finally happened, as we spoke to Stephanie Perotti, Ubi’s worldwide director for online games, accompanied by corporate communications manager, Michael Burk. Perotti is involved in all online technologies at Ubisoft, and works with many different studios and teams, with DRM part of her remit. We asked about the evidence for the various figures that have been quoted in the past, whether they have any proof for the efficacy of their extreme DRM, and whether Ubisoft has any regrets with how the matter has been handled in the last few years. And we also learn the rather enormous news that Ubi have abandoned always-on DRM, and will now only use one-time activation for all their PC games.
(more…)

Valiant pig saves baby goat from drowning, wins the Internet's heart [Video]

Valiant pig saves baby goat from drowning, wins the Internet's heart [Video]:




And the award for most adorable thing you'll see today goes to this video of a pig saving a baby goat from drowning at a petting zoo. (NO THANKS TO YOU, MISTER CAMERAMAN.) Here's your chance to watch it before your friends do. And then watch it again. And again. Something tells us this little piggy's gonna be famous. We can feel it.

Hat tip to Shereen!

[Video Link]