Seaweed, DMCA & Transformers
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Seaweed, DMCA & Transformers
Professor and DJ are back to talk about billion-year-old seaweed found in China. This seaweed is older than the combined ages of all our listeners, but doesn't complain when you say "OK Boomer". It also has no thoughts on how you should live your life. Not many thoughts on anything, really, it's extinct. Professor summarises the development of life to DJ, but since DJ is a robot, he just doesn't get it.
Activision are trying some legal tactics to close some leaks while ignoring their own incompetence revealing the new Warzone game mode to the world without the efforts of a leaker. Are they just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: Modern Zombies Ops 8?
This week it's DJ's turn to rant about a missing voice actor. #NOTMYOPTIMUS. A new Transformers series without Michael Bay is in the works from the same people who made the recent Godzilla anime trilogy. Who joins the ranks of the NA wall of wasted cast?
Of course, the Nerds talk about games and have some remembrances for some big names this week, Katherine Johnson and Kazuhisa Hashimoto.
Stay healthy, and we'll be back next week.
Oldest green plant fossil ever found…..billion year old seaweed found in China
Activision’s modern warfare tactic….DMCA takedown
-https://torrentfreak.com/activision-subpoenas-reddit-to-identify-call-of-duty-warzone-image-200221/
New Transformer anime series coming soon on Netflix
- https://ew.com/tv/2020/02/22/transformers-war-for-cybertron-trailer-netflix-anime/
Games Played
DJ
– Genesis - https://www.genesismoba.com/
Rating – 3.5/5
Professor
– Kingdom - https://store.steampowered.com/app/368230/Kingdom_Classic/
Rating – 3/5
Other topics discussed
Why programmers hate time (Reddit Link)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/programminghorror/comments/5x5ql0/this_is_why_programmers_hate_time/
Dugong’s diet (When eating they ingest the whole plant, including the roots. Although almost completely herbivorous, they will occasionally eat invertebrates such as jellyfish,sea squirts, and shellfish.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugong#Feeding
Wakame (a species of edible seaweed, a type of marine algae, and a sea vegetable. It has a subtly sweet, but distinctive and strong flavour and texture. It is most often served in soups and salads.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakame
Sea Lettuce (The sea lettuces comprise the genus Ulva, a group of edible green algae that is widely distributed along the coasts of the world's oceans.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lettuce
Cyanobacteria (also known as Cyanophyta, are a phylum consisting of free-living photosynthetic bacteria and the endosymbiotic plastids, a sister group to Gloeomargarita, that are present in some eukaryotes.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria
Great Oxidation Event (sometimes also called the Great Oxygenation Event, Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, or Oxygen Revolution, was a time period when the Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean experienced a rise in oxygen, approximately 2.4 billion years ago (2.4 Ga) to 2.1–2.0 Ga during the Paleoproterozoic era.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
Timeline of the evolutionary history of life (This timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. In biology,evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Life_timeline
Oxygen Cycle (The oxygen cycle is the biogeochemical transitions of oxygen atoms between different oxidation states in ions, oxides, and molecules through redox reactions within and between the spheres/reservoirs of the planet Earth)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_cycle
Stromatolite (layered mounds, columns, and sheet-like sedimentary rocks that were originally formed by the growth of layer upon layer of cyanobacteria, a single-celled photosynthesizing microbe.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite
Cyanobacteria found in Australia
- https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanofr.html
Prototype iPhone left in a bar
Rob Cantor – "Shia LaBeouf" Live
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0u4M6vppCI
LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner - HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaBeouf,_Rönkkö_%26_Turner#HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US,_2017_%E2%80%93_present
CNN vs Reddit over Trump meme
- https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit-user-trump-tweet/index.html
Decepticon (main antagonists in the fictional universes of the Transformers multimedia franchise.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decepticon
Roosterteeth Shows
- Camp Camp - https://roosterteeth.com/series/camp-camp
- RWBY - https://roosterteeth.com/series/rwby
- Gen:Lock - https://roosterteeth.com/series/gen-lock
- Haunter - https://roosterteeth.com/series/achievement-haunter
Cybertron (Cybertron is the home planet of the Transformers and (usually) the body of their creator, Primus.)
- https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Cybertron_(planet)
Vector Prime (Vector Prime is Primus's appointed guardian of time and space.)
- https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Vector_Prime
Crocubot (Crocubot is a superhero and a member of The Vindicators. Crocubot is basically part crocodile and part robot, which technically makes him a cyborg.)
- https://rickandmorty.fandom.com/wiki/Crocubot
SwitchBlade (5v5 vehicle game)
- https://www.switchbladegame.com/
Greed (The Greed are the grey, faceless creatures who swarm and attack the Kingdom at night.)
- https://kingdomthegame.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Greed
Other Kingdom games
Kingdom: New Lands - https://kingdomthegame.fandom.com/wiki/Kingdom:_New_Lands
Kingdom: Two Crowns - https://kingdomthegame.fandom.com/wiki/Kingdom:_Two_Crowns
Konami Code (cheat code that appears in many Konami video games, and some non-Konami games.)
↑↑↓↓←→←→BA
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code
Johnny English (2003 spy action comedy film directed by Peter Howitt and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and William Davies.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_English
Aum Shinrikyo in Banjawarn station
Aum Shinrikyo Anime Recruitment Video
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UIyKJwRgaI
Scared Shitless (TNC Podcast)
- https://thatsnotcanon.com/scaredshitlesspodcast
Shout Outs
24 February 2020 – Katherine Johnson passes away - https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/24/us/katherine-johnson-death-scn-trnd/index.html
Katherine Johnson, an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 35-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist." Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the ApolloLunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Johnson died at a retirement home in Newport News, at age 101. Following her death, Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, described her as "an American hero" and stated that "her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten."
25 February 2020 – Kazuhisa Hashimoto, Japanese video game developer, best known for having created the Konami Code passed away – https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/tech/kazuhisa-hashimoto-konami-code-dead/index.html
Hashimoto is best known for inventing the ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A hack found in multiple video games that has become a geek touchstone in the gaming community. The cheat code gives you different perks, depending on the game. Hashimoto had inadvertently created it while bringing the arcade version of Gradius to the NES in 1986. Hashimoto knew the arcade version of the game was hard and he would likely not finish it, so he added a sequence of button presses that he could easily remember that gave the ship he controlled in the game the full range of power-ups so that he could easily complete the game for in-house testing purposes. He had intended to remove the programming code for that sequence before the game was shipped, but the game had shipped with the code included. Since then, the Konami code is not only used across other video games from other developers and publishers in similar manners, but as Easter eggs in other forms of media. His death reported by both Konami and by Hashimoto's friend Yuji Takenouchi , a composer and video game sound designer, who tweeted that the code creator died.
22 February 2020 – 81 year old man became the oldest man to sail around the world - https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-22/bill-hatfield-oldest-person-to-sail-solo-around-the-world/11991436?fbclid=IwAR0r50t6ZI5eHnBuMxqkmgfPTlUiarwhHzVFFPZo5OrKRR4aI95ezGw6Ll0
After four attempts, Bill Hatfield has become the oldest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world. The 81-year-old completed his eight-month journey on Saturday morning, sailing into The Spit on the Gold Coast in his 38-foot yacht L'Eau Commotion. The former fisherman from Bundaberg said he'd been dreaming of this achievement since he was seven years old. Mr Hatfield said he lived on strict rations while at sea. "For fresh water I had a desalinator that pumps through a membrane, and my daily diet was a third of a tin of beans, a tin of tuna, 100 grams of rice and flour and oats, and 150 grams of milk powder." The achievement is all the more impressive considering he sailed west, battling against the prevailing winds and currents.
22 February 2020 – Michael Hughes popularly known as "Mad" Mike Hughes passed away - https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-22/bill-hatfield-oldest-person-to-sail-solo-around-the-world/11991436?fbclid=IwAR0r50t6ZI5eHnBuMxqkmgfPTlUiarwhHzVFFPZo5OrKRR4aI95ezGw6Ll0
Hughes, a self-styled daredevil, flat-Earth theorist and limousine-jumping stuntman, died Saturday when his crudely built contraption propelled him on a column of steam, spiraled through the air and cratered into the sagebrush. The rocket’s green parachute tore away moments after takeoff, sending the crowd of 50 or so people into a panic. In March 2018, Mr Hughes propelled himself almost 600m into the air before a hard landing in the Mojave Desert. After professing his belief in a flat Earth later that year, Hughes gained support within the flat-Earth community. His post-flat-Earth fundraising campaign made its $7,875 goal. He had said he intended to make multiple rocket journeys, culminating in a flight to outer space, where he believed he would be able to take a picture of the entire Earth as a flat disc. He died in Barstow, California at the age of 64.
Remembrances
27 February 1887 – Alexander Borodin -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin, Russian chemist and Romantic musical composer of Georgian ancestry. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as "The Mighty Handful", a group dedicated to producing a uniquely Russian kind of classical music, rather than imitating earlier Western European models. A doctor and chemist by profession, Borodin made important early contributions to organic chemistry. Although he is presently known better as a composer, during his lifetime, he regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only practising music and composition in his spare time or when he was ill. As a chemist, Borodin is known best for his work concerning organic synthesis, including being among the first chemists to demonstrate nucleophilic substitution, as well as being the co-discoverer of the aldol reaction. Borodin was a promoter of education in Russia and founded the School of Medicine for Women in Saint Petersburg, where he taught until 1885. He died from heart attack at the age of 54 in Saint Petersburg.
27 February 1936 – Ivan Pavlov - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov
Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning. Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s, and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and devoted his life to science. Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904, becoming the first Russian Nobel laureate. Pavlov's principles of classical conditioning have been found to operate across a variety of behavior therapies and in experimental and clinical settings, such as educational classrooms and even reducing phobias with systematic desensitization. Pavlov also contributed to many areas of physiology and neurological sciences. Most of his work involved research in temperament,conditioning and involuntary reflex actions. This research served as a base for broad research on the digestive system. He died from natural causes at the age of 86 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR.
27 February 1980 – George Tobias - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tobias
American film and television actor. He had character parts in several major films of Hollywood's Golden Age, but today he is probably best known for his role as Abner Kravitz on the TV sitcom Bewitched. He came to Hollywood in the late Thirties and quickly became a fixture in films of all genres, primarily at Warner Bros. He was a frequent foil for James Cagney and played everything from comedies to dramas and musicals. He died from bladder cancer at the age of 78 in in Los Angeles, California.
Famous Birthdays
27 February 272 – Constantine the Great – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great
Known as Constantine I, was a Roman Emperor who ruled between AD 306 and 337. As emperor, Constantine enacted administrative, financial, social and military reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities. To combat inflation he introduced the solidus, a new gold coin that became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. The Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile units (comitatenses) and garrison troops (limitanei) capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths and the Sarmatians—even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century. Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He has historically been referred to as the "First Christian Emperor" and he did favour the Christian Church. He was born in Naissus, Moesia Superior.
27 February 1869 – Alice Hamilton – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Hamilton
American physician, research scientist, and author who is best known as a leading expert in the field of occupational health and a pioneer in the field of industrial toxicology. Her scientific research focused on the study of occupational illnesses and the dangerous effects of industrial metals and chemical compounds. Hamilton's best-known research included her studies on carbon monoxide poisoning among American steelworkers, mercury poisoning of hatters, and "a debilitating hand condition developed by workers using jackhammers." In addition to her scientific work, Hamilton was a social-welfare reformer, humanitarian, peace activist, and a resident-volunteer at Hull House in Chicago. She was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, most notably the Albert Lasker Public Service Award for her public-service contributions. She was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York.
27 February 1807 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow
American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized by some, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses. He was born in Portland, Maine.
Events of Interest
27 February 1980 – “I Will Survive” wins first and last Grammy for Best Disco Recording
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gave disco their stamp of approval, deciding to give a Grammy award for Best Disco Recording, just as the musical style was preparing to die. As popular as the music was on the radio and in the clubs, disco had failed to produce many of the kind of dependable, multi-platinum acts that the industry depended on for its biggest profits. The Best Disco Recording category, recognized by the Grammys for the first time, was summarily eliminated from the following year’s awards.
27 February 1994 – TekLab was aired - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111387/
On this day in 1994, TekLab aired as one of the telefilms launching William Shatner's TekWar SciFi series. The film starred Greg Evigan and Eugene Clark, and here's the plot summary compliments of IMDB.com: "The actual sword of Excalibur has been stolen in London, and futuristic detectives Jake Cardigan and Sid Gomez are assigned to track it down and to find out who is trying to block the British reign from its rightful heir.".
27 February 2004 – Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, is sentenced to death for masterminding the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Aum/Aleph_today
Asahara was sentenced to death by hanging on 27 February 2004, but lawyers immediately appealed the ruling. The Tokyo High Court postponed its decision on the appeal until results were obtained from a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, which was issued to determine whether Asahara was fit to stand trial. Asahara and twelve other Aum cultists were finally executed by hanging in July, 2018, after all appeals were exhausted. The group reportedly still has about 2,100 members, and continues to recruit new members under the name "Aleph" as well as other names. Though the group has renounced its violent past, it still continues to follow Asahara's spiritual teachings. Members operate several businesses, though boycotts of known Aleph-related businesses, in addition to searches, confiscations of possible evidence and picketing by protest groups, have resulted in closures.
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