The iconic game that came to define 8-bit programming still conjures flutters of nostalgia 40 years on – all thanks to a 15-year-old tea boy who worked a Saturday shift in a computer shop in Greater Manchester
If you were playing games on a home computer in the early 1980s, you knew about Chuckie Egg. No question. This simple-looking platform game had you wandering around a chicken shed, collecting eggs and avoiding the patrolling hens. But when you reached level eight, a large duck was suddenly let loose and would stalk the player like a feathery missile, completely changing the pace and tactics of the game. It was a boss battle before boss battles existed.
Everyone knew about Chuckie Egg because everyone could play it. Originally released on the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and Dragon 32 in the autumn of 1983, it immediately topped the charts, encouraging its publisher, A&F Software, to begin porting it to as many machines as possible. Around 11 conversions followed, including the Commodore 64, Amstrad and Acorn Electron. I first played it on the BBC computer in my school library, but I also had it on my C64 and a friend played on his Speccy. Like Manic Miner, Bruce Lee and Skool Daze, it was woven into the tapestry of British 8-bit gaming culture.
Continue reading...Between the night of April 21 and the early morning of April 22, those looking in the right place will see the sky light up with 15 to 20 meteors per hour.
Earlier this month the AI company Anthropic said it had created a model so powerful that, out of a sense of responsibility, it was not going to release it to the public. Anthropic says the model, Mythos Preview, excels at spotting and exploiting vulnerabilities in software, and could pose a severe risk to economies, public safety and national security. But is this the whole story? Some experts have expressed scepticism about the extent of the model’s capabilities. Ian Sample hears from Aisha Down, a reporter covering artificial intelligence for the Guardian, to find what the decision to limit access to Mythos reveals about Anthropic’s strategy, and whether the model might finally spur more regulation of the industry.
‘Too powerful for the public’: inside Anthropic’s bid to win the AI publicity war
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Continue reading...Billionaire owner elects not to attend voluntary interview as part of investigation by French cybercrime unit
Elon Musk did not appear on Monday for a voluntary interview with lawyers in Paris, who had summoned the American tech billionaire over an investigation into his social media platform X and AI chatbot Grok.
The prosecutors told AFP that they had “taken note of the absence of the first people summoned”, without mentioning Musk’s name. The billionaire called the French authorities involved “retards” weeks earlier in a French-language post on X.
Continue reading...Cook, who will stay on as executive chair, praises head of hardware engineering, who will take over on 1 September
Apple announced on Monday that it had named a replacement for Tim Cook as CEO after nearly 15 years, with head of hardware engineering John Ternus succeeding him on 1 September. Cook will stay at the company in the role of executive chair.
“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company. I love Apple with all of my being,” Cook said in a press release.
Continue reading...Fish swam further and dispersed more widely after exposure to environmental levels of drug and main metabolite
Traces of cocaine that pollute rivers and lakes may accumulate in the brains of salmon and disrupt their behaviour, according to researchers who warn of unknown consequences for fish populations.
Juvenile Atlantic salmon that were artificially exposed to the drug and its main breakdown product swam further and dispersed more widely across a lake, suggesting the substances can affect where the fish go, what they eat and how vulnerable they are to predators.
Continue reading...Earlier this month the AI company Anthropic said it had created a model so powerful that, out of a sense of responsibility, it was not going to release it to the public. Anthropic says the model, Mythos Preview, excels at spotting and exploiting vulnerabilities in software, and could pose a severe risk to economies, public safety and national security. But is this the whole story? Some experts have expressed scepticism about the extent of the model’s capabilities. Ian Sample hears from Aisha Down, a reporter covering artificial intelligence for the Guardian, to find what the decision to limit access to Mythos reveals about Anthropic’s strategy, and whether the model might finally spur more regulation of the industry.
‘Too powerful for the public’: inside Anthropic’s bid to win the AI publicity war
Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod
Continue reading...NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman posted an out-of-this-world iPhone video on Sunday, showing Earth disappear behind the Moon at 8x zoom. "I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view," said Wiseman, noting that this video is "uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom" and "quite comparable to the view of the human eye." The New York Times says the video marks the first time an "Earthset" has been captured on video. "We've seen our fair share of remarkable images and videos from NASA's Artemis II mission around the Moon. Some of those were even captured on iPhone," notes 9to5Mac. "But Reid Wiseman, astronaut and commander for the Artemis II mission, just posted a new video that might take the crown for the most impressive yet."
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