Conseils pour vous protéger en cas dinondation
Pour plus d’information, consultez le www.gov.ns.ca/emo . Les municipalités situées dans les régions de la Nouvelle-Écosse sujettes aux inondations avisent le public que des inondations sont possibles selon les plus récentes prévisions météorologiques. « J’encourage les gens à élaborer leurs propres plans familiaux et de préparer des trousses d’urgence, » a dit David Morse, ministre par intérim de la Gestion des urgences. « Nous avons besoin de radios à piles ou à manivelle afin de pouvoir écouter les transmissions locales en cas de panne d’électricité. J’encourage tous les Néo-Écossais à préparer une trousse d’urgence prête à emporter au cas où ils devraient quitter leur maison. » M. Morse dit qu’il apprécie les coordonnateurs locaux des mesures d’urgence, qui diffusent des messages d’intérêt public afin de rappeler aux résidents que l’accumulation de glace, les précipitations abondantes et les importantes variations de température peuvent entraîner de graves inondations. Voici quelques conseils généraux : Écoutez la radio pour obtenir des instructions locales. Fermez les fournaises situées dans le sous-sol et les robinets de gaz extérieurs. Déplacez les meubles, les appareils électroménagers et autres objets aux étages supérieurs. Coupez l’électricité. Toutefois, si le panneau électrique principal ne se trouve pas dans un endroit sec et sécuritaire, ne tentez pas de couper le courant. Communiquez avec Nova Scotia Power au 428-6004 (MRH) ou au 1-877-428-6004 (sans frais). Ne vous tenez pas dans l’eau qui est entrée en contact avec de l’équipement électrique. Si l’eau potable est contaminée, purifiez-la en la faisant bouillir, en utilisant des comprimés de purification de l’eau ou en la traitant au chlore, à l’aide d’un agent de blanchiment. N’utilisez pas l’eau de puits pour la consommation, la cuisson ou l’hygiène avant que l’eau n’ait été testée et jugée sécuritaire.
The number of Nova Scotians living in poverty is at its lowest level in decades. The number of people with low incomes dropped by more than 7,000 to 64,000 in 2011, a decrease of 10 per cent over 2010, according to Statistics Canada. That means about seven per cent of the population is considered to be living in poverty. This is the lowest percentage of low-income Nova Scotians on record. The number of children in low income households also improved, decreasing by 2,000 to 13,000, a drop of 13 per cent since 2010. “Poverty remains a significant issue and finding solutions remains complex, but these most recent numbers show the province is heading in the right direction,” said Denise Peterson-Rafuse, Minister of Community Services. A recovering economy, improving labour market conditions and government programs have contributed to higher employment and higher incomes. Between 2009 and 2011, the unemployment rate in the province dropped from 9.2 per cent to 8.8 per cent. Since 2009, government has taken a broad-based approach to poverty reduction, investing more than $420 million for income supports training and employment, and more affordable and supportive housing. The province also increased investments in the Poverty Reduction Credit, the Affordable Living Tax Credit, the Seniors Property Tax Rebate and the Nova Scotia Child Benefit. “We have a larger proportion of seniors living in our community so the Seniors Property Tax Rebate is significant, said Wendy Knowlton, the executive director of the Annapolis Valley Family Resource Centre and a member of the Poverty Coalition of the Annapolis Valley. “It enables repairs and upgrades that will keep seniors living in their own homes longer and this is positive.” Personal-use allowances also increased by seven per cent this year, putting more money in the pockets of individuals on income assistance. In 2013, the minimum wage increased to $10.30 per hour, a 20 per cent increase since 2009. Nova Scotia’s rate is the highest among the 10 provinces. The poverty rate for seniors living in Nova Scotia is now 1.9 per cent, among the lowest in Canada. “It’s clear that this government is helping to make life better for our most vulnerable citizens, particularly people living on the streets, low-income families and seniors,” said Ms. Peterson-Rafuse. Housing is also a key component in reducing poverty. The province’s first housing strategy, launched in May, will provide more affordable housing. Over the past year, 200 homeless Nova Scotians were helped off the street and into more stable housing. “The housing strategy includes some exciting prospects. Naturally, we have some questions about how these will work in our area, but there are some good and unique ideas,” said Ms. Knowlton. “Our coalition is working to create a recognition that poverty reduction policies and strategies should recognize the different solutions needed in rural areas.” Compared with the rest of the country, Nova Scotia has the fifth lowest percentage of people living with low incomes, the same rate as Alberta. The Statistics Canada calculation for low income cut-off is based on household size and community size. For 2011, the after tax low-income cutoff ranges from $12,629 for a one-person household in a small rural area to $30,871 for a four-person household in a community the size of Halifax Regional Municipality, which is between 100,000 and 500,000 residents. The Nova Scotia highlights of the Statistics Canada report can be seen at http://novascotia.ca/coms/noteworthy/Decreasingpoverty.html .
HANTS COUNTY: Trunk 1, Falmouth Highway 1 from the Windsor Town Line to Lighthouse Road in Mount Denson has stop-and-go traffic for repaving until Friday, Oct. 31. Work takes place from dawn to dusk. LUNENBURG COUNTY: Varner Bridge Work has begun on a new bridge beside the existing Varner Bridge on Route 208 near New Germany. The existing bridge will remain open during construction, but there may be occasional, brief closures during normal construction activities. Drivers should use extra caution in the area. The new, two-lane bridge will be completed in 2015. HALIFAX REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY: Fall River Roundabout Construction of a modern roundabout is underway at the intersection of Highway 2 and the ramps from Highway 102 and Highway 118. Work takes place between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. on weekdays and 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekends. Even though the work is taking place at night, delays are possible during the day. The work is expected to be completed in late December. Drivers should plan extra time for their trip and use caution when travelling through the construction zone. Use an alternate route if possible. CBRM: Highway 125 Eastbound, Exit 7 Closure The eastbound on-and-off ramps to and from Highway 125 at Exit 7 (Alexandra Street) are closed until Wednesday, Oct. 15, so ramps can be realigned for twinning Highway 125. Traffic on Alexandra Street (Route 327) headed east on Highway 125 can detour on Churchill Drive through Membertou to get on the highway at Exit 8. Eastbound traffic seeking to exit Highway 125 at Exit 7 should use Exit 8. Detour routes are marked. KINGS COUNTY: Whitman Bridge Whitman Bridge, on Whitman Road between Maple Avenue and Ward Road in Aylesford, is closed for repairs until further notice.The detour route is Maple Avenue, Victoria Road and Ward Road. INVERNESS COUNTY: Crowdis Bridge Crowdis Bridge is closed until further notice for repairs. A detour is available via Crowdis Cross Road, West Big Interval Road and Hatchery Road. RICHMOND COUNTY: Highway 4 Traffic on sections of Highway 4, west for about seven kilometres from east of MacNabs Bridge, are reduced to one lane for bridge repairs and repaving until Monday, Dec. 1. HALIFAX REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY: Night Work, Highway 102 During nighttime hours, northbound traffic on Highway 102 is reduced to one lane between Exit 2B at Larry Uteck Boulevard and Exit 4 in Bedford. On weekdays, lane reductions will occur between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. On Saturdays and Sundays, lane reductions will begin at 7 p.m. and end at 7 a.m. There will be similar lane reductions on southbound lanes between the Hammonds Plains Road Interchange (Exit 3A) and Larry Uteck Boulevard. On weekdays, southbound lanes will be reduced to one lane between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. On weekends, lanes will be reduced between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. Drivers should be prepared for delays, or use alternate routes. Work will last until the end of November. HANTS COUNTY: Route 236 Traffic on Route 236, between Route 215 and Gosse Bridge, is reduced to one lane to allow for slope repairs. The work is scheduled to be completed Saturday, Nov. 15. CAPE BRETON REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY: Sydney River Bridge The Sydney River Bridge on Keltic Drive is closed for replacement. While the bridge is closed, there is a free shuttle bus service between Coxheath Arena (305 Keltic Dr.) and Walmart (65 Keltic Dr.). A detour route is marked. The shuttle bus schedule is available at http://novascotia.ca/tran/highways/srb.asp . GUYSBOROUGH COUNTY: Melford Brook Bridge The Melford Brook Bridge, on Route 344 at Middle Melford, is closed. A two-lane detour bridge is in place until a permanent bridge is built. The speed limit is reduced to 60 km/h and warning signs are in place. NEW WORK CUMBERLAND COUNTY: Eddy Road Eddy Road to Fort Lawrence, near Amherst, Cumberland Co., is closed until further notice.
HANTS COUNTY: Woodville Road and Ashdale Road Sections of Woodville Road, from Ashdale Road south to Ardoise School House Road, and Ashdale Road, from Woodville Road, west for about three kilometres, are reduced to one lane for repaving. Drivers should use caution and obey signs and traffic control people in the area. Work will be completed at the end of October. COLCHESTER/HANTS COUNTIES: Highway 102, Shubenacadie River Construction is taking place on Highway 102 at the bridges over Shubenacadie River, until September 2015. A detour bridge allows two lanes of traffic in both directions, however, drivers are urged to travel with extra caution in the area. GUYSBOROUGH COUNTY: South River Lake Road There are alternating lane closures on South River Lake Road for gravelling and paving. Work is taking place at the intersection of Larrys River Road and moving west. Work will finish Friday, Oct. 17. LUNENBURG COUNTY – Highway 103 Starting Saturday, Oct. 11, the bridge on Highway 103 over Barrys Brook, west of Exit 7, will have alternating lane closures for concrete and asphalt repair, as well as installation of new bridge rails. Work will last until the end of December. Temporary traffic signals are in place. DIGBY COUNTY: Melanson Mills Bridge Melanson Mills Bridge on Marc Comeau Road is closed until Friday, Oct. 31, to replace the bridge deck. Detour route in place. CAPE BRETON REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY: Port Morien Traffic on sections of Route 255, between Homeville and Port Morien is reduced to one lane for clearing work until Friday, Oct. 31. INVERNESS COUNTY: West Lake Ainslie Road The Hayes River Bridge on West Lake Ainslie Road has a 15-tonne weight restriction. HANTS COUNTY: Route 277 Traffic on sections of Route 277, between Old Trunk Road and Hurshman Road, is reduced to one lane for repaving until Saturday, Nov. 15. ANTIGONISH COUNTY: Highway 104, Lower South River Traffic on Highway 104 is detoured for one kilometre to Dunns Loop until Friday, Oct. 17. Speed limit is reduced to 60 km/h through the detour. Drivers should use extra caution in the area. CONTINUING WORK VICTORIA COUNTY: Gillis Bridge Gillis Bridge on North Branch Road, just past Uisge Ban (USH-AK BAHN) Falls Provincial Park, is closed until further notice. Access to the park is not affected. -30-
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is promising funding for police, survivor services and public awareness to fight human trafficking.The previous Conservative government created a four-year plan to combat human trafficking in 2012, which expired in 2016 shortly after the Liberals took office.Scheer says the lack of a strategy has sent a message that fighting human trafficking is no longer a federal priority.Scheer is promising to revive the Harper-era plan.He also vows to make changes to the Criminal Code to make it easier to convict people accused of human trafficking.The plan also calls for changes to end automatic bail for those charged with trafficking (though there is no “automatic bail” in Canadian law), and would make those convicted serve consecutive sentences for each victim, rather than concurrent terms.The Canadian Press
The American Red Cross is proud to be featured in SULLY, the newly released film featuring the “Miracle on the Hudson” and the aftermath experienced by hero pilot Captain Chelsley “Sully” Sullenberger.Included in the movie are nearly a dozen Red Cross volunteers and employees who serve as extras after serving a real-life role in the Red Cross response effort more than six and half years ago.Among those who helped reenact the response was Chris Mercado, a volunteer who helped hand out blankets to survivors. Watch Mercado’s interview.“I think that was one of the most important aspects of our relief efforts,” said Mercado. “It shows how quickly the Red Cross responded, how involved we were and how the shoot stayed true to the services we rendered that day.”Volunteer, Sally Phipps, joined the Red Cross after seeing the organization’s response to the Flight 800 crash in 1996. Since volunteering, she had responded to two previous plane crashes both with tragic loss of life.“I went into this response thinking the results were going to be the same as the other two plane crashes,” said Phipps. “To go and see passengers get off the ferry safely was amazing!”Phipps oversaw the passenger area for the Red Cross at the Piers and shared how a man called more than a week after the response to express his gratitude to Phipps for lending his wife her personal cell phone to let him know she was safe. Watch Phipps’ interview.“It was an extraordinary testament to what the Red Cross does for people during some of their hardest times,” said Phipps.Red Cross volunteer Dottie Brier recalls responding to a hotel in Queens where passengers and crew members were being taken. There her role was providing disaster mental health care to help people cope with their reactions to the devastating situation. She says working on the film brought mixed emotions.“It was unbelievable that everyone had survived,” said Brier. “I remember being shocked.”Brier says reenacting the day brought mixed emotions but was still an exciting experience working alongside Tom Hanks and Clint Eastwood.“We spent the whole day there in the pouring rain re-doing the scenes over and over again. We’d take Red Cross blankets, run up to the people coming off the rescue boats, walk them through the pier and then fold the blankets to start again,” says Brier. “It was interesting to see how much goes into filming a movie. It was hard work!”Watch: SULLY & American Red Cross Featurette – True Story.
A Union Jack flag is raised at Tallaght Stadium. (©INPHO/Donall Farmer)A spokesperson for the Garda Press Office confirmed that arrests were made at the ground.The spokesperson told TheScore.ie, “Two people were arrested for public order offences.“Their names were taken and they were released last night.”The spokesperson did hasten to add that the remainder of the night, and post-match, was ‘relatively peaceful’.In follow-up correspondence, the Press Office commented, “A Garda member was thrown from a Garda horse outside a football match in Tallaght on 4 March; the horse had been startled by a firecracker.“The Garda member was taken to Tallaght Hospital for treatment, not believed to be life threatening. [The] horse is uninjured.”Rovers won the fixture thanks to goals from Kilduff, Ronan Finn and Stephen Rice. You can read the report and see the goals here.- Additional reporting by Steven O’RourkeOh captains, our captains: 22 reasons why we’ll miss the Off the Ball team GARDAI IN TALLAGHT made two arrests for ‘public order offences’ last night following a cup clash between Shamrock Rovers and Linfield.Rovers won their Setanta Cup tie 4-1 but the football was often a side-note on a tumultuous night at Tallaght Stadium.A member of the gardaí was treated at Tallaght Hospital when they were thrown from their horse, which was startled by a firecracker.There was sectarian chanting reported from both sets of supporters, with sections of the home crowd singing that there is only ‘one flag in Ireland’.About 10 Rovers supporters ran onto the pitch to celebrate a goal from Ciaran Kilduff that put their side in charge of the fixture.With the Dubliners controlling the game, the off-field action was left to barbs from both sets of fans. A Billy Joe Burns goal for Linfield enlivened the atmosphere.A minority of the Linfield support launched projectiles at the gardaí and match stewards with a small troupe, approximately 12 fans, attempting to gain access to the pitch.A British flag was also raised, before kick-off, at the far end of the Main Stand, where the Linfield fans were situated, which raised the hackles of the local supporters.
Forget Blair Witch. Forget Don’t Breathe. Forget any other horror flick that tries to claim it’s the scariest movie of 2016. Friends, there is only one objective choice for the year’s truly most frightening film, and this past weekend I saw it.That film is Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween.Now that I’ve scared away all but the coolest readers, let’s first talk about the amazing ongoing enigma that is director/producer/actor/multimillionaire media mogul Tyler Perry.In one of the most obvious case studies of how a lack of diversity in entertainment leads to sub par material, Tyler Perry has made his name cranking out plays, movies, and TV shows of questionable quality to a primarily (southern) African-American audience for over a decade. As Hollywood continues to ignore that growing yet underserved market, Perry’s fame has only increased, to the point where Boo! made more money than Jack Reacher: Never Go Back in their shared opening weekend. He’s showing up in movies like Star Trek and Gone Girl and Alex Cross and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows now. He pals around with Oprah!It would be one thing if Perry was just cynically making bad movies for profit. I mean, he is doing that. But because his continued success has granted him such complete creative control, his films are more than just inept. They’re super fascinating windows into Perry’s warped psychology. He’s a wacko schlockmeister in the mold of Ed Wood or Tommy Wiseau, but with an even more shameless lack of artistic integrity.The insanity is dense enough to inspire academic work. I took a class on Perry in film school and wrote a thesis about the Why Did I Get Married? duology (featuring The Rock!). Birth Movies Death author Evan Saathoff wrote an incredible book on Perry’s entire oeuvre.There’s admittedly an element of “so bad it’s good” ironic appreciation going on here, but that’s reductive. It’s so much more than that. Plus, Perry’s outsized impact on modern Black cinema makes studying him especially personal to me. So I believe it’s my moral imperative to use whatever platform I have to educate people about what’s going on with this dude. And Boo! A Madea Halloween is as good a place to start as any.You’ve Been WarnedWhen sensitive single father Brian (Tyler Perry) wants to make sure his rebellious teenage daughter Tiffany stays away from the nearby frat house on Halloween night, he enlists his crotchety father Joe (Tyler Perry) and short-tempered, no-nonsense aunt Madea (Tyler Perry) to maintain order. Tiffany and the frat brothers think they can scare off the old folks and escape to have a good time, but they’ve never crossed paths with Madea.That’s a… fine premise for a family Halloween comedy. You can see how a normal movie might balance Scooby-Doo antics and touching father-daughter reconciliation. But an okay premise is all that most Perry movies have before they start derailing almost immediately. A lot of Boo!’s faults are just boring. The staging and camerawork are flat. The “scary” moments look like they were composed by someone with only the vaguest idea of what a horror movie is. Kudos to Perry for catching the killer clown zeitgeist, but there are no real supernatural elements like we thought there might be. That’s a real disappointment because a truly genre Madea movie could be a mind-blowing thing.Meanwhile, other parts of the movie legitimately work. Perry’s improv is barely coherent, sub-Adam McKay/Paul Feig stuff, but he does so much of it some can’t help but stick. And if you ignore how satisfied he is with himself, as he plays multiple characters laughing at his own jokes like Dr. Hibbert crossed with Jimmy Fallon, Madea can be very funny. There are great gags about stealing candy from children and marijuana jack-o’-lanterns. Even the central gimmick has the kernel of an interesting idea. Dropping untypical characters like Madea and her elderly cadre into typical horror scenarios leads to entertaining results, even if watching senile lower-class Black people get terrorized instead of sexy teenagers gets depressing. Still, I laughed a lot.This is what I (again, a literal Tyler Perry scholar) like to call a “Silver Age” Madea movie. After 2011’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, Perry began to unshackle Madea’s pure comedy from the operatic and arguably offensive melodrama endemic to the rest of his movies. Seriously, if you want to get completely desensitized to child molestation through inane and insane twist endings check out those earlier movies. The new Madea movies are lighter, funnier, and at times nearly plotless, with scenes of endless and airless riffing to nowhere. They’re more mainstream. They attract broader audiences, bigger (rapper Tyga) and whiter (Disney starlet Bella Thorne) stars, and Chinese financiers.However, the comedy is insidious in how it belies that true moral nightmare at the horrifying heart of Boo! A Madea Halloween. Real talk, members of a certain older strain of the Black community romanticize the idea of beating children to keep them from getting into trouble. I empathize with them. Parents would rather beat their kids with love than helplessly watch a racist world kill their kids for slightly stepping out of line. But in my opinion the mindset has become an outdated pathology. Perry clearly disagrees.Beating kids is a frequent theme in Perry’s thoroughly old-school work, but at least the melodramatic movies acknowledge the practice’s dark side. In Boo! not only is child abuse played entirely for laughs, learning how and when to physically and verbally beat your children is essentially the point of the movie. The fourth(!) act is like Christmas for child disciplinarians.In that (surely unintentional) way, the film recalls slasher movies like Halloween or Friday the 13th that present the villains as avenging paternal forces punishing deviant teens. But there’s no fantastical distance here. It’s just scenes like Joe (Tyler Perry) laughing about how he dropped his son Brian (Tyler Perry) off a roof, a comedy scene bafflingly similar to the disturbing and dead-serious tragic climax of Perry’s own butchered adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls poems.The movie doesn’t even seem to recognize how Brian’s trauma (one of his testicles were maimed, hilarious!) might inform his more delicate parenting style. Nope, he has to learn how to beat that girl into behaving. At one point she honestly asks for it. To top it all off, the sequence features what might be the first use of the N-word in a Perry film, in the form of a chilling rebuke from Joe that elicited howls of laughter from the very mixed-race audience. Brian should be grateful his parents didn’t literally murder him. Luke Cage has nothing on this.That all may make it sound like I hate this movie. But what I just described is exactly the kind of fever dream lunacy I go to a Tyler Perry movie for. People think these are just bad Christian family comedies, and that’s kind of true. Tiffany’s best friend is a preacher’s daughter, played by some YouTuber, who acts like she’s 75 and goes to church in costume on Halloween night. But it’s the whirlwind of unaware immorality that really gives these movies their spark.Plus there’s the fun of trying to sort out the deeply complicated Madea-verse continuity, in which only some Perry movies exist. Ten years ago Brian’s(Tyler Perry) wife was a crackhead and his kids were totally different, but here she just cheated on him? Aunt Bam and her blunts are here but where are the Browns? There’s a character from Perry’s stage plays and TV shows, Miss Hattie, who makes her film debut here. It’s like watching Spider-Man swing into Captain America: Civil War.I’ve seen all but three of the 18 Tyler Perry movies, but the only other one I’ve seen in theaters is the serious but similarly nonsensical Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. There’s a real hallucinatory quality to the experience. Often, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and felt as if I was levitating out of the theater chair, my hands over my open mouth. But the thing is, this isn’t even close to his craziest film. It’s pretty standard for Perry, all things considered. So if you want to get existentially spooked to your very soul, go watch Boo! A Madea Halloween, in theaters now. Stay on target Lizzy Caplan Is Chilling Annie Wilkes in ‘Castle Rock’ Season 2 Trailer11 Best Monsters Made From Dead People Parts 
Want to learn how to make your very own custom robots? Check out today’s deal from SkillWise. With this affordable three-course bundle, you can learn exactly what it takes to start creating Arduino-based robots. • Ultimate DIY Arduino Robotics Bundle for $29 (List price: $300)In this bundle, you’ll receive the following courses: • Make an Arduino Robot (List price: $100) • Arduino Robotics with the mBot (List price: $100) • Advanced Arduino Boards and Tools (List price: $100)All combined, that’s more than 22 hours of in-depth instruction spread among 168 individual lessons. You’ll learn the basics of constructing a real-life robot, but you’ll also learn the basics of what it takes to properly program one. Whether robotics is just a hobby to you, or a path towards a career, you’ll learn a lot.If you already have an Arduino board ready to go, that’s great. But if you haven’t jumped in yet, you can pick one up on Amazon for about $28. Motors, servos, and more are needed to make a full-on robot, but all you’ll need to start learning is a PC and an Arduino board.Typically, these courses would sell for roughly $300, but SkillWise is running a sale now for just $29. Better yet, you’ll be eligible for a 15-day satisfaction guarantee. If this course isn’t working out for you, you’ll have 15 days to return your purchase for store credit. That way, you’re not stuck with something you’re not happy with.Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the SkillWise site for more information.Our commerce group sources the best deals and products for the Geek Deals posts. We operate independently of Editorial and Advertising and may earn a percentage of the sale, if you buy something via a link on the post. If you are interested in promoting your deals, please contact us at commerce@ziffdavis.com.For more great deals head over to TechBargains.
With Pokemon: Detective Pikachu finally proving that a truly excellent video game movie can exist, now it’s time to wonder when video games will inspire some good old-fashioned prestige television. It’s already starting to happen with upcoming shows based on Halo and the Console Wars history book. But now two more projects demonstrate how no medium is safe from gamers.First up, Square Enix is making a TV show based on Final Fantasy XIV. And this is weird for a few reasons. It’s live-action, unlike previous animated Final Fantasy features Advent Children and Spirits Within (which famously bankrupted Square). The show is being made in partnership with Hivemind, the production company working on fellow RPG adaptation The Witcher for Netflix.But even among Final Fantasy games XIV is a strange choice because instead of a traditional story-driven adventure like Final Fantasy VII, XIV is an MMO that famously came back from the dead after a rocky launch in 2013. Perhaps the open-ended nature of the massive online multiplayer game gives the creators more freedom to tell their own story. And as we witness this tale of “magic versus technology” in the continent of Eorzea, famous faces like Cid and Chocobos are slated to appear.Meanwhile, Masters of Doom isn’t based on a video game but rather the making of a video game. The original book by David Kushner follows the formation of iD Software, the development of landmark shooters like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Quake, as well as the eventual breakup of founders John Carmack and John Romero. It’s one of the best books about the video game industry.And now James and Dave Franco want to turn Masters of Doom into an anthology TV series through their production company Ramona Films according to Deadline. It reminds us of when the actor brothers turned The Disaster Artist book into a cinematic excuse to remake Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. In fact, the author of that book, occasional games journalist Tom Bissell, is writting and executive producing this Masters of Doom show. Right now USA has only ordered a pilot, but with excitement for Doom sky-high thanks to the upcoming Doom: Eternal, we hope this goes to series. Anything to make us forget about Doom: AnnihilationFor more on video game adaptations learn about the upcoming Sony PlayStation cinematic universe and savor the precious extra months we’ve gained before the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie destroys us all. Stay on target Sorry, You Can’t Date Keanu Reeves in ‘Cyberpunk 2077”Star Wars Pinball’ Has Your Favorite Brand in Ball Form 
San Diego Addiction Treatment Center celebrates grand opening Posted: March 22, 2018 00:00 00:00 spaceplay / pause qunload | stop ffullscreenshift + ←→slower / faster ↑↓volume mmute ←→seek . seek to previous 12… 6 seek to 10%, 20% … 60% XColor SettingsAaAaAaAaTextBackgroundOpacity SettingsTextOpaqueSemi-TransparentBackgroundSemi-TransparentOpaqueTransparentFont SettingsSize||TypeSerif MonospaceSerifSans Serif MonospaceSans SerifCasualCursiveSmallCapsResetSave SettingsSAN DIEGO (KUSI) — The grand opening of the San Diego Addiction Treatment Center was commemorated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday.The new facility, located less than five miles east of downtown San Diego, provides clinical and support services for adult males struggling with drug addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders.San Diego Addiction Treatment Center is also part of the American Addiction Centers’ family of treatment centers, the nation’s first publicly traded company solely dedicated to addiction, as well as outpatient services arm of Laguna Treatment Hospital in Orange County.Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death in Americans under 50. In fact, in 2016, there were 545 drug overdoses in San Diego with adult males accounting for 66 percent of overdose deaths.San Diego Addiction Treatment Center is one of the few gender-specific outpatient clinics offering adult males with clinical treatment and support services. March 22, 2018 KUSI Newsroom KUSI Newsroom, Categories: Local San Diego News FacebookTwitter
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina presides over a meeting of National Implementation Committee on Administrative Reforms (NICAR) at her office in Dhaka on Monday. Photo: PIDMymensingh municipality, a town with a 91.315sqk area and population of 471,858, has been upgraded as the country’s 12th city corporation.National Implementation Committee on Administrative Reforms (NICAR) approved a proposal in this regard at a meeting held at the Prime Minister’s Office in the capital on Monday.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presided over the meeting, reports UNB.After the meeting, cabinet division (coordination and reforms) secretary NM Ziaul Alam said the new city corporation will be consisted of Mymensingh municipality, two complete unions and parts of six unions from the 13 unions of Mymensingh sadar upazila.He also said that the Mymensingh City Corporation has been constituted following the fulfilment of all the eight criteria of forming a city corporation.
Blizzard released Diablo II way, way back in 2000. The Lord of Destruction expansion pack came out a year later. Blizzard kept up with the patches for a surprisingly long time. Then, there was nothing for several years. Late last week, Blizzard finally got around to patching Diablo II again nearly 16 years after it was released. Before this latest patch (v1.14a), the most recent version of the game was 1.13d. That patch was released in 2011 and was mostly aimed at getting modern Battle.net features working in Diablo II. The new patch makes much more substantial improvements to the core game. Players will no longer have to run the game in Windows XP compatibility mode. It natively supports Windows 7, 8, and 10. The new installer for Macs finally understands the Intel architecture, so PowerPC and older versions of the OS (10.9 and earlier) are no longer supported. It will run fine on Intel-based Macs on OS X 10.10 or 10.11.There are still a lot of people around the world playing Diablo II, and that means plenty of cheaters. This patch also improves cheat detection and anti-hacking measures. The announcement notes that this is an ongoing effort. Does that actually mean people are still actively working on Diablo II? It would be wild if this game started getting regular patches rather than a one-off. This isn’t the first time an old game got a surprise patch — Knights of the Old Republic 2 got an update last year after years of neglect. What’s next? Some new Max Payne levels? An Age of Mythology expansion? Actually, it’s another Blizzard game, as Warcraft III is also set to receive a fresh patch this week.
© 2017 Phys.org The researchers, C. Coquidé and B. Georgeot at the University of Toulouse, and O. Giraud at the University of Paris-Saclay, have published a paper on their statistical analysis of go games played by humans and computers in a recent issue of EPL.”We think our work indicates a path towards a better characterization and understanding of the differences between human and computer decision-making processes, which could be applied in many different areas,” Giraud told Phys.org.As the researchers explain, go is a particularly good platform to investigate how computers solve complex problems due to the vast number of possible moves a player can make at any turn. On a 19×19 go board, there are 10171 possible legal positions (compared to “just” 1050 in chess). In addition, the number of possible games of go was recently estimated to be at least 1010^108. Such numbers are gigantic even for a computer, making it impossible for any program to simply use brute-force methods to analyze all possible moves and games. Instead, computers must use more sophisticated approaches. In the new study, the researchers constructed databases of 8000 games played by amateur humans; 8000 games played by the software Gnugo, which uses a deterministic approach; 8000 games played by the software Fuego, which uses a Monte Carlo approach; and 50 games played by the software AlphaGo, which has become famous in the past couple years for beating world champion human go players. The researchers then built networks for each database that capture information about the patterns of moves on the go board. One of the most interesting results is that the networks based on software—especially Gnugo—have large numbers of “communities,” which are parts of a network that are strongly linked within themselves but weakly linked to the rest of the network. As the researchers explain, the presence of these communities indicates that the software programs are creating many different types of strategies that are different from other types of strategies; that is, their strategies are varied and diverse. By comparison, the networks based on human games have fewer communities and more large hubs with lots of direct links, indicating that human strategies were more related to each other and less diverse. Explore further While enlightening, these results are not unexpected, as they correspond to some previous observations of computers playing go. For instance, in 2016 and 2017, human analysts watching AlphaGo compete against world champions were often surprised and puzzled by the strategies that the computer used. Overall, the researchers found that the statistical differences between the computer- and human-generated networks are much larger than the variability within each network, indicating that the differences are statistically significant and could potentially be used to distinguish between groups of human-played games and computer-played games. Further, the results show that it’s not necessary to analyze thousands of games, as the differences could be significant even for the relatively small 50-game database from AlphaGo.As a consequence, the researchers propose that the statistical differences could be used to design a new kind of Turing test, similar to the original test in which a person tries to tell whether they are interacting with a human or a computer by asking questions. The new version of the Turing test would involve playing go games instead of asking questions, and then performing statistical tests to identify characteristic features of human and computer players.The researchers also expect that it would be interesting to use similar statistical methods to investigate the differences in how humans and computers approach other complex problems besides go. From this data, it may be possible to gain a better understanding of how computers “think.””We would like to study in more detail the origin of the differences between the human-generated and computer-generated networks, to see how they reflect in terms of differences in strategies used in the game,” Giraud said. “We are also planning to apply these techniques to other areas where computers and humans are present, starting with other board games such as chess.” More information: C. Coquidé, B. Georgeot, and O. Giraud. “Distinguishing humans from computers in the game of go: A complex network approach.” EPL. DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/119/48001 Citation: Distinguishing between humans and computers in the game of go (2017, November 6) retrieved 18 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2017-11-distinguishing-humans-game.html Google’s new Go-playing AI learns fast, and even thrashed its former self (Phys.org)—By analyzing the statistical features of thousands of go games played by humans and computers, researchers have found that it’s surprisingly easy to tell whether a game is being played by a human or by a computer. The results point to fundamental differences in the ways that humans and computers solve problems and may lead to a new kind of Turing test designed to distinguish between the two. This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. Journal information: Europhysics Letters (EPL) Computers and humans use different kinds of strategies when playing go, pointing to fundamental differences in solving problems.
LeBron James is built like a giant linebacker. Last night, after grabbing a rebound against the Pistons he accidentally flattened Kyrie Irving like an unsuspecting wide receiver going over the middle.Incredibly, LeBron picked up Irving off the floor while maintaining his dribble, and continued to bring the ball up the floor like nothing happened.No hard feelings.