MPGH News (3/2/14)

**bowlcut** · 03-03-2014

45th Edition
3/2/14

Nothing!
Yeah, not much has been happening with MPGH from what I can tell. Oh well, here's a drawing I made of a skeleton smoking a blunt.

User News

Postbans

Congratulations to @Reav3R for achieving 2,000 posts!
Congratulations to @iSmexy for achieving 14,000 posts!
Congratulations to @Cataclypse for achieving 6,000 posts!
Congratulations to @Auxilium on 4,000 posts!

Birthdays

Happy Birthday to @Taco! ( I iz feeling hungry for one now. :[ )
Happy Birthday to @Hugo Boss!

Promotions

Congratulations to @JamesRo, he is the new Battleon section minion!
Congratulations to @Oliboli8769, he is the new Battleon section minion and still has no idea he is!

Interview - Pepsi Cola

Chuck's Challenge 3D comes to the Steam Store, and for 10% off, who wouldn't buy?

Chuck's Challenge is a new and improved version of the old 1989 Tile-Based Puzzle Game, "Chip's Challenge". In this game, you play as an alien called Woop, and his job is to learn how to get past each of the Legendary Puzzle Master, Chuck's Puzzles. I got early access to the game and got an Advanced Copy, so I got to test this game out for myself. This game is pretty much the same as Chip's Challenge, but also adds some very cool new items to make the game even more fun. Your puzzle can vary from pushing blocks, getting keys to unlock new areas, finding hidden passages to progress, walk on water/fire/ice, I mean the list goes on and on. Not only does this game provide 125 challenging puzzles to keep you hooked for hours, they even implemented a map creator where you, and other people, can make challenging puzzles that will be sure to boggle your friends minds. As if that was not enough, they give you a Puzzle of the Week, and they even released it 10% off. This game is amazing, and if you are not too into the Puzzle Genre, I recommend giving this a shot.

Usually it is selling for $9.99, but for the time being it is still on sale for $8.99!

Steam releases the most asked for HD Remake since Final Fantasy VII... Resident Evil 4/Biohazard 4

It happened, guys. It finally happened. I know I have been waiting for a fully-functional, HD Wide Screen Resident Evil 4, but I never thought it would see the light of day. Well dust off those computer monitors and stop pinching yourself, because Steam delivered our dream right to us, and I think you will be surprised on the work they did. The ENTIRE GAME got a visual overhaul, which means they made the graphics cleaner and sleeker to get the most out of your HD experience. I gotta warn you though; The controls are a little broken. They seem a bit wobbly and clunky to me, but I think they will fix it in the next update so no need to alarm. This game lets you change the Key Bindings, so you can keep your WASD and mouse controls, and my favorite part: Perfect 60 FPS gameplay. This has never been achieved for Resident Evil 4 and now we get to play our favorite game in smooth, no-lag gameplay. This game is selling for $19.99, and its selling like hot cakes! You want to fight the undead horde as Leon? Fuck yeah you do.

Valve allows Developers to control what sales their game deserves! Valve is making bold moves as always!

Valve will now allow devs to design sales for their own games, with full freedom and to control how long the game will be on sale for. This is a big step for Valve, and an even bigger step for Game Developers, since they can now control their own inventories. This new system titled, "Steamworks", allows them to cover up to two choices; Number One being fixed Week-long Promotions, which means developers can join and set a percentage discount, and also Custom Promotions, which allows developers to decide what price they want, and for how long they want, up to a 2-week period.

"As with the addition of a 'Recently Updated' section to Steam, this is another effort to shorten the distance between developers and customers,"

Says Valve's Alden Kroll in a statement issued to Ars Technica.

"This new Steamworks tool allows developers to configure discounts for their own products, on their own schedules. They can define custom sale periods or opt in to regularly scheduled sales. This will enable developers to better coordinate their promotions with events, announcements, or major updates they are planning for their products."

Chinese Stabbings

[img]https://www.globalpos*****m/sites/default/files/imagecache/gp3_small_article/photos/2014-March/china_kunming_train_station_attack.jpg[/img]

On Sunday in the Kunming province of China, a mass murder took place by knife wielding militants at a train station.

29 people died in hospital from severe stab wounds to the upper torso.

The authorities believe it was a terrorist attack by Xinjiang Militants.

"A group of knife-wielding 'terrorists' from the restive Xinjiang region launched a premeditated attack at the Kunming Railway Station in China's southwest on Saturday night." -Xinjiang Police

More than 130 people were wounded.

Russia invades Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin fought for the parliaments approval to invade Ukraine and finally won.

Putin's open assertion of the right to send troops to a country of 46 million people creates the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

The troops had no significant emblems on their gear however, the vehicles had none other than Russian number plates.

They quickly seized control over the city of Crimea.

Kiev's new authority has been powerless to stop them.

US President Barack Obama told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country is violating international law by sending troops into Ukraine.

Mobile apps overtake PC Internet usage in U.S.

Americans used smartphone and tablet apps more than PCs to access the Internet last month -- the first time that has ever happened.
Mobile devices accounted for 55% of Internet usage in the United States in January. Apps made up 47% of Internet traffic and 8% of traffic came from mobile browsers, according to data from comScore, cited Thursday by research firm Enders Analysis. PCs clocked in at 45%.

Although total Internet usage on mobile devices has previously exceeded that on PCs, this is the first time it's happened for app usage alone.

The shift follows a freefall in PC sales, which suffered their worst decline in history last year.

Smartphone adoption, meanwhile, increased 39%, according to research firm IDC. This trend will likely continue thanks to improved user experience on mobile apps and the expansion of high-speed 4G access, said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing and insights at comScore (SCOR).
As of January, 55% of American adults had smartphones, while 42% owned tablets, according to the Pew Research Center.

Here’s why the Galaxy S5 has such incredible battery life

When it announced the Galaxy S5 this week, Samsung pleasantly surprised the audience at MWC 2014 with the phone’s battery performance. The device packs a 2,800 mAh battery that the company claims can deliver 11 hours of video playback or 10 hours of web browsing over LTE. Samsung’s press materials also say that the phone can offer 390 hours of standby time with LTE on, and 21 hours of talk time over WCDMA.

Furthermore, the company unveiled a new software feature for the phone, the Ultra Power Saving Mode that can offer 24 hours of standby time on a 10% battery. With the battery saving mode on, the phone’s display will show only black and white colors and offer access to only a certain set of applications.

But there’s more to the phone’s battery life than the Ultra Power Saving Mode.

Fudzilla reports that Samsung has partnered with Lucid Logic, a company that knows a thing or two about optimizing battery life through software. The company has various battery saving software technologies including WebXtend, NavXtend and GameXtend that can extend battery life on Android devices.

GameXtend offers up to 50% more battery life during game play, with WebXtend and NavXtend each promising up to 25% more battery life for web browsing and GPS/navigation apps, respectively. These technologies intelligently determine the requirements of each type of app, whether it’s a game, browser or GPS app, and optimize power consumption. In addition to extending battery life, Ludid’s battery life software solutions should also reduce the amount of heat the device produces.

A Simple Tree Branch Can Become a Backyard Water Filter

For people in too many developing countries, clean water is often a luxury. Chlorine treatments are too expensive for small villages, boiling requires a hefty investment in fuel, and UV radiation demands regular high-tech maintenance. But now, scientists say that a simple, inexpensive water filter might be only a tree branch away from reality.

As reported in a paper published yesterday on PLOS One, MIT researchers ran contaminated water through a sapwood branch and found that the plant tissue successfully filtered experimental dye and actual bacteria out of the mix. The filter required only a fresh branch of white pine and some cheap plastic tubing—simplicity that could be ideal in remote villages or emergency situations.

"It's too early to compare, but with further development of xylem-based filters, I think it would be fair to compare it to other filtering methods," says Rohit Karnik, mechanical engineer at MIT and coauthor of the study.

Karnik's sapwood filters harness the hardware already built into plant tissue. In transit from plant's roots to its leaves, water bounces through a meshwork xylem, a series of conduits and membranes with tiny pores that blocks bubbles from clogging the system. Karnik first heard about these plant pores at a NATO-sponsored conference in 2012. "I listened to this talk about how water flows through plants, and it occurred to me that the flow of water has to pass through these membranes in xylem," he says.

After further investigation, Karnik discovered that most xylem pores are about the same size as the average pathogenic bacterium. Intrigued by the possibility of using plant tissue to filter bacteria out of water, he recruited Varsha Venkatesh, a high school student from New Jersey and coauthor of the paper, to run preliminary experiments. By the end of last summer, the lab began to see positive results. "We tried freshly cut sapwood and found that it actually works," Karnik says. "We were able to show that it can filter

Inexpensive, disposable filters could bring clean water to millions of people in developing nations. But Karnik believes that the filter might also help stranded hikers distill clean water in emergency situations. "White pine is so common the Northeast that just cutting off a branch and using it as a filter would be fairly straightforward," he says.

Internationally, sapwood filters could provide a much needed low-cost and low-tech solution to water purification, says Rick Andrew, global business development director of water systems at the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) International. "It's always interesting to see these novel techniques being investigated," he says. "Regardless of whether or not it has real world potential—and it might—it gives us insight into ideas and other technology that could be developed based on the study."

But Andrew has a few concerns about the prototype, and wonders whether heavily polluted water would clog up the sapwood branch and reduce flow rate. Water flow rates are an especially important part of developing a filter for drinking water, and Andrew notes that the study was performed in a laboratory using only pure, deionized water. "Water in an impacted area may have high turbidity and high organic content. One of the next steps would be to look at a more real-world type of water supply," he says.

Karnik is quick to note that his sapwood filter is still in its early testing stages, and that further research will undoubtedly be necessary. "This is the first demonstration that it is possible to use xylem for filtration," he says. "But it's only the tip of the iceberg."

MPGH News Team

Head Editor
- bowlcut

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MPGH Headlines
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User News
- Hero

Interviewers
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Gaming News
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Global News
- Vertice

Technology News
- Aborted
- Hannibal (covered for Aborted)

Freelancers

**Jim** · 03-03-2014

LOL that ****** ass image.

**Astro.** · 03-03-2014

Lol towards the middle it started looking like Pepsi was interviewing @Raple

**Anti** · 03-03-2014

Originally Posted by Vertice

LOL that ****** ass image.

Was gonna say, I don't remember seeing that.

Suprised we got it out on time. Woot.

**[MPGH]Luke420** · 03-03-2014

Fuck if i had of returned yesterday or like 5 hours ago today i would be in there "Luke420 returned after a month of being inactive Welcome back"

**Aborted** · 03-03-2014

Lel @ Autin's c+p, but you can't really expect much when I didn't do my job. I'm practically destroying my skull because I'm facepalming so hard at myself, just really emotionally drained right now. Cat's at the vet in critical condition, and since I live alone, that little fucker's close man.

**bowlcut** · 03-03-2014

Originally Posted by Vertice

LOL that ****** ass image.

The one you linked wasn't working for me, and I was too lazy to re-up, so I just used that instead. Found it on Google.

Originally Posted by Aborted

Lel @ Autin's c+p, but you can't really expect much when I didn't do my job. I'm practically destroying my skull because I'm facepalming so hard at myself, just really emotionally drained right now. Cat's at the vet in critical condition, and since I live alone, that little fucker's close man.

Oi, don't even worry about it m8.

**Gray** · 03-03-2014

Originally Posted by Aborted

Lel @ Autin's c+p, but you can't really expect much when I didn't do my job. I'm practically destroying my skull because I'm facepalming so hard at myself, just really emotionally drained right now. Cat's at the vet in critical condition, and since I live alone, that little fucker's close man.

I feel you man.
I'm in quite a down state myself.