I keep thinking I won’t have anything to say, then… wham! A roundup appears!

I hope everyone is gearing up to have a wonderful Labor Dabor¹ weekend. I don’t have much to report personally. I am gearing up for some prime video game releases in the next few weeks with WarioWare: Get It Together and more. I appreciate you taking the time to read my roundup and getting me back into the habit of writing.

Let’s go!

Reading

Please stop adding more lanes to busy highways—it doesn’t help | Ars Technica

I don’t know if this is a lesson America will ever learn. We’ve made so much of our transit revolve around automobiles it’s made walkability pointless, and we’ve spent so much of our lives in a car. This reminds me of something I learned about a few years ago. Sweden charges a congestion tax during peak hours on its busiest roads, and what they found was it reduced traffic. I think these are the solutions we should be looking for in addition to mass transit.

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Why are hyperlinks blue?

Have you ever wondered why a hyperlink’s default color is blue? Mozilla has a good write-up on the history. Spoiler alert: because everyone else was.

Video Games

The quest to save Marvel vs. Capcom 2 – Polygon

There is a massive campaign to bring back Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to modern platforms. Licensing is usually the dumb reason cool things can’t exist. Marvel vs. Capcom games are some of the most fun and accessible button mashing fighting games out there, and they have quite the legacy within the fighting game community. I’m pretty sure Marvel vs. Capcom was my first introduction into the larger Marvel universe, as I saw Captain America throwing his shield across the screen up at my local bowling alley arcade when I was younger.

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Young Chinese gamers lash out at new, limiting rules | Business and Economy News | Al Jazeera

China is imposing strict time limits on when younger people can game. This will be interesting to see how this plays out, as China is becoming a large market for video games.

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Pokémon Go brings back 80-meter distances for Pokéstops and Gyms – Polygon

Pokémon Go is making the larger distance for Pokéstops permanent after listening to the people who are actually playing the game. So you can Pokémon go to the polls from your car now.

YouTube

Robots! Of course. A couple of weeks ago I posted about how weeds are becoming resistant to pesticides. But I never thought about robots taking care of the job. If weeds become resistant to lasers, then I’m pretty sure we’re all doomed anyway.

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Why it’s not possible to synchronize turn signals (but also absolutely is)

On the same subject of spending a good portion of our lives in our cars: have you ever noticed how your turn signal will never sync up with a car in front of you? Just me? Well, here is more than you ever wanted to know about how turn signals work.

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The Jackbox Party Pack Unboxed: How and Why We Make a Pack of 5 Games Every Year

A great talk from this year’s GDC where Jackbox Games’ Evan Jacover talks about the genesis of the Jackbox Party Pack yearly deployment and the desire to evolve from theYou Don’t Know Jack company. The idea to use your phone as a controller was born from the YDKJ game on the OUYA² of all places. So, the OUYA did at least contribute back to society in this small way. I also like how they take ideas from everyone in the company and a have a rotating approval group for green lighting games.

Retro

Ever wanted to listen to the soundtrack from a K-Mart from the early 1990s? Well now you can thanks to the Internet Archive. I worked at K-Mart, so the late 90s are seared into my brain.

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That’s all this week.

Thanks for the replies for the question last week. I think what surprised me was everyone conflates technology with the Internet. I do too. Likewise, I think privacy is definitely something people will consider more over the next decade. For me, I’ve always loved technology, but I’ve very much disliked the idea of walled gardens. That’s why I run my website independently of any platform.

If you’ve gotten this far, how about another open-ended question? How do you think transportation will change in the United States in the next ten years? I think a lot of us thought 5-7 years ago self-driving cars would be more prevalent.

1. I’m going to keep making Homestar Runner references until I die. ↩
2. I don’t know if I’ve spoken much about the OUYA. It was a neat little toy before indie developers were able to self publish on all the major platforms today. Towerfall got its start there as well as VVVVVV and Super Hexagon. ↩