“The Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort joined “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” to discuss the fallout from the collapse of FTX and scrutiny facing A-list celebrities and the SEC chair.
Attorneys for fallen crypto exchange FTX argued at the firm’s bankruptcy hearing Tuesday that the company served as founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s personal “fiefdom,” reaching $40 billion in market cap as of January before crashing in recent weeks to its current valuation of around $422 million.
Those who have looked under the hood in the wake of the crash, including new FTX CEO John J. Ray III, have expressed dismay at the company’s lack of basic bookkeeping and compliance protocols, sparking questions over how Bankman-Fried was able to build such an enormous, unchecked operation that bought him incredible influence and political power.
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive officer of FTX, speaks during an interview on “Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein” in New York on Aug 17, 2022. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
So, how did Bankman-Fried do it? Ben McMillan, co-founder of IDX Digital Assets, spells it out with a simple analogy:
In a hypothetical scenario, imagine someone owns every house in a 100-home neighborhood and forces the sale of one home for $1 million, then uses that sale to show they have $100 million in “equity.” But then, the owner is forced to sell all the remaining 99 homes, and the houses only sell for $100,000 each – meaning $90 million of their so-called equity disappears.
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But that equity never existed in the first place.
McMillan told FOX Business that is exactly what Bankman-Fried did with his FTT tokens, since he controlled the float.
The FTX logo is seen at the entrance of FTX Arena in Miami on Nov. 12, 2022. (Reuters/Marco Bello/File / Reuters Photos)
FTX, according to McMillan, would make sure and trade a small portion of FTT and other coins like Serum at a favorable-enough dollar price to create the “equity” reflected on the balance sheet. Then Bankman-Fried would borrow a lot of money against what was essentially a very large – and very fake – asset number.
That, in turn, allowed FTX and its hedge fund, Alameda Research, to artificially inflate assets.
WHY THE INVESTING PROS WERE SUCH SUCKERS FOR FTX
“This isn’t new or unique to crypto, by the way,” McMillan explained. “It was done by more than a few hedge funds during the 2008 crash – especially in the distressed debt space.”
FTX and Alameda accelerated the scenario by using the inflated asset number to take out very real liabilities, according to McMillan. It also appears Bankman-Fried was acquiring companies and forcing them into “custody” with FTX so that he could allegedly continue the cycle using customer assets.
Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison via Twitter (Twitter @carolinecapital)
McMillan says a major tell was when Changpeng Zhao, founder and CEO of major crypto exchange Binance, announced Nov. 6 that his firm was selling a large amount of FTT on the open market, and Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison quickly responded by offering to buy all the tokens for $22 each.
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That amount, many now speculate, was the crucial number above which FTT had to trade for FTX and Alameda to remain solvent.
“Once FTT traded down sharply on Nov. 8,” McMillan notes, “the house of cards came crashing down.”
Last year, Michigan stunned Ohio State — and the rest of the college football world — by finally beating the Buckeyes. Michigan won 42-27 at home, giving Jim Harbaugh his first win as head coach over the Wolverines’ arch-rivals and ending an eight-game losing streak in the series. The Wolverines mauled the Buckeyes, and from talking to a dozen coaches who have faced both teams, those men think Michigan has the ability to do it again this year.
On Saturday, The Game will feature two undefeated teams for the first time since 2006 in a matchup of No. 2 (Ohio State) vs. No. 3 (Michigan). The Athletic spoke with 12 college football coaches, ranging from head coaches to coordinators and position coaches to analysts, around the Big Ten and part of teams that have faced the Wolverines and/or the Buckeyes to get insight into the matchup.
Ohio State is less dependent on the run. That bodes well for Michigan
Most coaches agreed that Michigan can handle Ohio State, but a win will be much harder to come by if the weather is relatively mild. Early weather forecasts, though, are predicting a 60 percent chance of rain with temperatures in the mid-40s. The colder, the wetter, the better for Michigan, according to our experts. The Buckeyes, with Heisman favorite C.J. Stroud at quarterback and the nation’s best collection of receivers, has become the most feared passing game in college football.
In the last decade, Ohio State’s aerial attack has only become more explosive and, according to coaches, the Buckeyes have recently been leaning much more on their aerial attack than their running game. They’re still dangerous running the ball, but not quite as dependent on it. Since 2021, they’re averaging 34 carries a game, about 10 carries a game less than the previous decade.
“If the weather’s bad, if there’s snow again, or rain, that plays into Michigan’s hands in a big way,” said one Big Ten defensive coordinator.
A second Big Ten defensive play-caller agreed. “I think it’s just the commitment to who they (Michigan) are even more than what they’re doing. They have an identity and they know what they are. Game control will be so important in this game. They’re very comfortable in grind-it-out, tight games. (Harbaugh) wants to play game control and show you Michigan’s more physical than you are.”
Michigan leads the Big Ten in rushing yards, averaging 244 yards per game. OSU ranks third, but the Buckeyes do lead the league in yards per attempt at 5.53 — just slightly ahead of Michigan’s 5.51. The Wolverines also lead the Big Ten in run defense, allowing just 80 yards per game. The Buckeyes rank fifth.
The Buckeyes have dealt with injury issues at running back for much of the season. TreVeyon Henderson is battling a foot injury that’s sidelined him for a big portion of the season and Miyan Williams suffered a leg injury earlier this month. Against Maryland, with Williams out and Henderson limited, freshman Dallan Hayden shined with 146 yards and three touchdowns.
Coaches who have played the Buckeyes think Ohio State has impressive talent on offense, especially in the passing game, but do have some skepticism regarding their ground game. The Buckeyes have been held to less than four yards per rush in three games this season; twice they ran for less than 100 yards.
“Their O-line is good,” said one Big Ten head coach. “It’s not as good as Michigan’s, but it’s good. They’re so big and long. But it’s been a bit of a head-scratcher. They’re not playing with as much continuity up front. They’re more finesse than they’ve been in the past. They don’t seem to have that same edge to them. Their run game is just OK. It’ll need to be on point against Michigan.”
“They’re better at pass protection than run blocking,” said a Big Ten DC who faced Ohio State in the second half of the season. “I think (they) struggle to run the ball in this game. The trick with them is the explosion. Their backs are so talented, and it’s that one play where they hit it, and they make it count.”
Buckeyes RB Dallan Hayden (5) exploded onto the scene against Maryland. (Photo: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)
Michigan was built to give Ohio State trouble
One veteran O-line coach said stylistically Michigan has become the team built to give Ohio State the most problems. As The Athletic reported earlier this month, Harbaugh and the Wolverines staff overhauled their program two years ago in effort to try and “out-culture” and “out-physical” the Buckeyes, because they believed they wouldn’t have a great chance at “out-personneling” them. That paid off last season on the field and, according to the coaches we spoke to, it shows up on film this season.
“Everybody in college football is built to defend the spread and the zone read now,” that veteran O-line coach said. “Michigan is going to mash you in the face and still do that stuff with the QB run. What they do is really unique now. Everybody wants to say, ‘We’re tough and we have a nasty O-line,’ but then you watch what they do and you see them running a bunch of RPOs. But these guys at Michigan have that mentality, where they’re running real run plays that they call and they know they’re gonna grind you for five or six yards.
“That’s what I respect about those guys. They’ve cultivated that and their kids have bought in. They’re gonna get into 22 personnel (with two backs and two tight ends) and do Inside Run drill with 12 plays of the Power and Inside Zone.
“It’s all about how they rep it and how they work it. You create a mental toughness to get through those things. I love watching them play. One of the big things is alignment. The WRs are on board. They block their butts off. Fifteen, 20 years ago, everybody was doing what Michigan is doing now. They’ve brought it back full circle. It’s so refreshing to me, as an old O-line guy.”
One Big Ten East head coach also raved about Michigan’s line, calling it the best in the conference, and said it’s even better than the group that won the Joe Moore Award last year (given to the nation’s most outstanding line unit). “They have a great combination of length, mass and nastiness,” he said. “They work well. They combo together. They’re always in sync.
“Their center (Virginia transfer Olu Oluwatimi) allows them to take it to another level. He’s such a good one because he can sink his hips and moves really well. He can climb and do that second-level blocking and do the outside zone stuff. He’s made them that much better.”
Behind them has been Heisman candidate running back Blake Corum (1,457 yards, 6 yards per carry and 18 touchdowns) as well as a much faster running threat in quarterback J.J. McCarthy. “His athleticism has given them new dimension,” said the Big Ten East head coach. “He’s very fast and elusive and he has a strong enough arm to hurt you.”
The Wolverines receiving corps is deeper and more talented than it was last year, especially with leader Ronnie Bell (48 catches, 641 yards) healthy after missing all of 2021. “They’re probably underrated as a group because they don’t air it out, but they have a bunch of guys who can run, and tight ends and backs you need to account for,” said a Big Ten DC.
Corum’s status for Saturday’s game is unclear, though, because he was injured against Illinois. Michigan’s second-leading rusher, speedy Donovan Edwards, also may not play after missing the Illinois game. If Edwards is able to play, the Buckeyes will need to keep a close eye on him wherever he lines up. “He’s also a great receiver and they’ll put him out there and go empty and give you match-up problems,” said the Big Ten DC. “I was really concerned about his speed.”
“Corum is so good, you can’t really see him,” a Big Ten East head coach said. “He’s too short but he’s so thick and tough as nails, and he cuts so well. He has great balance and he’s just really hard to handle.”
A Big Ten offensive analyst said his prediction would be for Ohio State to win Saturday — but if Corum is healthy, he gives Michigan a 50 percent chance to win because of how talented the back is and what he means for that team. Another Big Ten assistant coach agreed. “He plays his tail off,” said the veteran coach. “He has great contact balance and great vision. He steps through a lot of tackles.”
Michigan’s offensive philosophy can also do the defense a huge favor. “Their offense causes you a lot of issues,” said the Big Ten offensive analyst. “Is Ohio State gonna get more than nine or 10 possessions in this game?”
As Michigan’s offense improved, so did Ohio State’s defense
Michigan’s offense may be better than it was last year, but so is the Buckeyes’ defense. They’ve improved from No. 43 in the country in yards per play allowed to No. 7. Better still, they’ve gone from second-to-last in the Big Ten in third down defense to No. 3. New DC Jim Knowles, who arrived from Oklahoma State, has made as much of an impact in Columbus as he did in Stillwater.
“Their defense isn’t really confusing. They don’t do a lot of crazy stuff. Other teams blitz more. They feel like they can get to you with their front 4. The thing he (Knowles) does best: He lets his good guys play,” said one quarterbacks coach who faced Ohio State in the first half of the season. “He knows what he has and doesn’t over-coach.”
In 2021, Ohio State allowed four rushing plays of 50 yards or longer. This year, they’ve allowed one.
“They’re very disciplined,” added a Big Ten head coach. “Guys aren’t out of position very often. I think he has created a lot of confidence in them.”
Knowles, who was known for throwing a lot of zero-coverage looks at quarterbacks in the past, hasn’t done it as much this year, according to Big Ten coaches. One said his team didn’t see much of it from the Buckeyes when they played because he thought Knowles was afraid of his quarterback’s ability to run. That coach thought McCarthy’s running ability might also give the Buckeyes DC some pause. That coach said he feels like Ohio State is much improved in the front seven from where they were last year. The two players who have shined the most are sophomore edge rusher J.T. Tuimoloau (9 TFLs, 2 interceptions) and senior linebacker Tommy Eichenberg.
“Tuimoloau is a freak,” said one Big Ten East assistant. “He can beat (you) with power and speed. If your tackle misplaces with his hands just a bit, he’ll take advantage.”
In the past decade, OSU has had more than its share of star defensive linemen, but the last one left Columbus in 2019. Tuimoloau, who was a five-star recruit out of Seattle, has emerged as the next difference-maker for defensive line coach Larry Johnson.
“He’s not so twitchy but he is a great athlete,” said a Big Ten East head coach of the 6-foot-4, 270-pound former high school basketball star. “He doesn’t look like he’s playing that hard because he’s so smooth and effortless. I think he’d probably be an elite tight end too if he wanted to be. It all seems easy for him.”
Eichenberg leads OSU with 105 tackles, almost 40 more than the team’s No. 2 tackler. “He is a dude,” said a Big Ten head coach. “He can run. He has length, is a great tackler and he’s telling them where the ball is going. I think he has a great understanding of what the offense is going to be doing.”
“He was more impressive on the field than I’d thought he was on film,” said the quarterbacks coach who faced OSU in the first month of the season. “He’s bigger, taller and rangier.”
Safety Lathan Ransom has also emerged as a star in the secondary, but that is an area several coaches we spoke to thought was still suspect. “They’re just not as good on the back end as they were in the past,” said a Big Ten East assistant. “They don’t have those cornerbacks that can take people away.”
Whether McCarthy and the Wolverines receivers can exploit that, though, is another matter.
Wolverines LB Junior Colson (25) and DB Mike Sainristil are big presences on defense, but coaches are less confident in Michigan’s unit this season than last. (Photo: Rick Osentoski / USA Today)
The Ohio State aerial attack is ready for Michigan’s defense
No one doubts the Buckeyes’ ability to attack secondaries through the air. Stroud’s accuracy (35 touchdowns to four interceptions) is the best in the country, according to one longtime DC who faced Ohio State early this season. “He’s the most accurate quarterback I’ve ever played against. It’s like he couldn’t have handed the ball to his receivers any better and they’re 30, 40 yards downfield. He’s got high-level NFL accuracy and NFL vision. I think he understands the game so well and gets it out in under three seconds. He has a very high football IQ and really understands what you’re trying to do to him.”
“I was wowed by Stroud,” said a head coach who faced OSU in the first half of the season. “He’s getting the ball to the exact right spot at the exact right time. He’s deadly accurate. He understands exactly where the leverage is and his chemistry with his receivers is extraordinary.”
“C.J. is special,” said another head coach. “He has a great feel for what they do. The thing that really sticks out about them is they can blitzkrieg you and overwhelm you. You can be in a tight game and then you look up at the scoreboard again and you’re down by three or four scores.”
One DC whose team had some success slowing down the Buckeyes’ passing game by mixing up looks on the quarterback said Stroud has “accuracy you don’t see in college football,” and that “when he knows where to go with the ball, he’s almost impossible to stop. The biggest thing is to try to confuse him.”
What’s even more problematic for Michigan is that Stroud is throwing to the nation’s best wideout: sophomore Marvin Harrison Jr., a 6-foot-3 1/2, 206 pounder who was No. 2 on our Freaks list this year. The son of NFL great Marvin Harrison clocked a blistering 3.94 pro shuttle time and did 10-9 on the broad jump while also topping out at 23 mph on the GPS. “It’s his combination of size and speed, his movement in routes and his hands, those are elite,” said a Big Ten East DC. “He’s a big problem.”
“He may be the best wide receiver I’ve ever gone against,” said one Big Ten head coach. “It’s his length and his speed and his ball skills. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a better one.”
What’s also remarkable about the Buckeyes is that they’re tied for No. 1 in the country in scoring despite missing the player many saw as the Big Ten’s top receiver entering the year: Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He has barely played this year due to a hamstring injury. Sophomore Emeka Egbuka has stepped up, and in Harrison’s shadow still may produce a 1,000-yard receiving season. Another big weapon who has emerged is tight end Cade Stover (31 catches, five touchdowns). “Their tight end is a really good player,” said a Big Ten East head coach. “He is a matchup problem. He gives them a lot of physicality in the run game but also has really good ball skills. Way better than I thought. He kind of makes them go. He’s that hidden guy.”
While Michigan has the No. 1 defense in the Big Ten allowing 4.10 yards per play — better than the 4.71 yards Michigan allowed entering the CFP last year — coaches The Athletic spoke to don’t think the Wolverines defense is as talented or as good as the 2021 group.
“The difference is very clear,” said one Big Ten East offensive coach. “Michigan is missing those two defensive ends (first-rounders Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo). Ohio State needs to take advantage of it in the run game. They’ve got to double team (nose tackle) Mazi Smith. Those guys outside are good but they’re not Hutchinson and Ojabo. I think Ohio State is going to run outside zone and attack those edges. Also, their nickel (Mike Sainristil) can run, but he’s so small. He’s not (2022 first-rounder) Dax Hill. I think there’s a major drop-off in personnel compared to what they had last year.”
A Big Ten offensive analyst agreed. “Their defense last year was a lot more impressive. Outside of (leading tackler) Junior Colson, who is twitchy and can go sideline to sideline, I don’t think they have the same kinds of athletes.”
The Big Ten East head coach The Athletic spoke to thinks this unit is better as a group than individually. “They don’t have anybody that really sticks out but they play well together. They really understand their system and they tackle really well. They’re disciplined and physical. They don’t beat themselves. Mazi (Smith) is the best one they have.”
The 6-foot-3, 337-pound Smith is the anchor of Michigan’s defense, a tone-setter and a leader. “He is a load,” said one Big Ten running backs coach. “He makes them go. If — if — you can control him, you got a chance.”
The M.O. of Michigan’s defense has its roots in the NFL with first-year DC Jesse Minter who, like his predecessor Mike Macdonald, spent time with the Baltimore Ravens. One Big Ten coach noted that Sainristil isn’t really asked to be involved in the run fits, so they’re short in the run game and often opt to play the run with those six players in the front and play their coverage top down. Because of that, it’s really hard to scheme them up for play-action passes. “They’re not gonna bite on the run fit,” said the running backs coach. “But I’m very curious to see if their secondary can up hold against Ohio State and how soft is the coverage they’re gonna play?”
Said a Big Ten East assistant: “They do a good job of hiding their cornerbacks.”
Another thing to watch for is how OSU attacks Michigan in the red zone. Minter’s relied a lot on going Blitz 0 and the Buckeyes may try and copy what Maryland did to the Wolverines: running some nakeds, sprint out pass plays and throwing flat routes to the tight end which proved effective. A strength of Michigan’s defense has been Minter’s exotic pressures on third downs. “He has one of the best third-down packages I’ve ever seen,” said a Big Ten East offensive coach. “They really know how to attack your scheme. It seems like they’re always bringing one more than you can handle.”
One other wrinkle in this matchup: “I think Michigan is really good at stealing your signals,” said one Big Ten running backs coach. “They got our stuff early and they got us on both sides.”
So … who wins?
Most of the coaches The Athletic spoke to who have played both teams said if both play at their best, Ohio State should win. They have more firepower, more explosive players and the advantage of playing at home.
“I don’t think we saw Ohio State play close to their A-game. I’m not sure if anyone has seen that in the Big Ten this year,” said a Big Ten East assistant. “I do think we’ve seen that from Michigan, and so you keep expecting that breakout game from Ohio State. I think the Buckeyes are the better team because they’re the more talented team. But the more I think about it, the more of a chance I give Michigan because of how physical they are. And you said it’s gonna rain, right?”
(Top photo of Michigan’s Blake Corum and J.J. McCarthy: Gregory Shamus / Getty)
If companies are going to make augmented reality glasses you’d actually want to wear, they’ll need chips that are powerful but won’t require a large battery on your head. Qualcomm thinks it can help. The company has unveiled a Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 platform that’s built with slim AR glasses in mind. The multi-chip design reportedly delivers 2.5 times the AI performance of the company’s XR2-based reference design while using half the power. You could have eyewear that intelligently detects objects in the room while remaining slim and light enough to use for hours at a time.
Part of the trick is to spread the computing load across the glasses’ frame, Qualcomm says. The primary, 4nm-based AR processor includes a CPU, Tensor AI processing, graphics and engines for features like visual analytics. It can support up to nine simultaneous cameras for tracking both your body and the world around you. A co-processor elsewhere in the glasses includes an AI accelerator for tasks like eye tracking and computer vision, while a third chip handles connectivity to networks and phones. This not only better-balances the weight, but leads to smaller circuit boards and fewer wires than you’d see with a single do-it-all chip.
That networking is also important, Qualcomm says. Like Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in phones, AR2 Gen 1 is one of the first platforms to support WiFi 7. That’s crucial not just to provide the gobs of bandwidth for connecting to a handset (up to 5.8Gbps), but to reduce latency (under 2ms to your phone, according to Qualcomm). Combined with lag reduction in the processor and co-processor, you should have a more natural-feeling and responsive experience.
Hardware built on AR2 Gen 1 is in “various stages” of progress at multiple well-known companies, including Lenovo, LG, Nreal, Oppo and Xiaomi. Importantly, Microsoft had a hand in the platform requirements. Don’t be surprised if you’re one day using AR2 for virtual collaboration in Mesh, not to mention other Microsoft apps and services.
Qualcomm has also introduced meaningful updates to its audio technology. New S3 Gen 2 Sound and S5 Gen 2 Sound platforms promise to make the latest listening tech more commonplace, including spatial audio with head tracking, lower latency for games and the latest take on adaptive active noise cancellation (think of the transparency modes found on some earbuds). You won’t see real-world products until the second half of 2023, but these chips could democratize features that were previously reserved for pricier buds and headphones.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publishing.
A team of researchers at Universität Heidelberg has built an early universe analog in their laboratory using chilled potassium atoms. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their simulator and how it might be used. Silke Weinfurtner, with the University of Nottingham, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team in Germany.
Understanding what occurred during the first few moments after the Big Bang is difficult due to the lack of evidence left behind. That leaves astrophysicists with nothing but theory to describe what might have happened. To give credence to their theories, scientists have built models that theoretically represent the conditions being described. In this new effort, the researchers used a new approach to build a physical model in their laboratory to simulate conditions just after the Big Bang.
Beginning with the theory that that the Big Bang gave rise to an expanding universe, the researchers sought to create what they describe as a “quantum field simulator.” Since most theories suggest it was likely that the early universe was very cold, near absolute zero, the researchers created an environment that was very cold. They then added potassium atoms to represent the universe they were trying to simulate.
The atoms were chilled to just above absolute zero and slowed down using lasers, resulting in the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate—a type of superfluid. The researchers then used light from a specially designed projector to push the atoms into desired arrangements. Under the setup, superfluid excitons known as phonons propagate in two directions.
By manipulating the speed of propagation, the researchers were able to mimic theorized wave propagation in the early universe. They suggest the behavior of their superfluid was somewhat similar to the physics that governed spacetime and the production of particles in those moments just after the Big Bang.
One of the first experiments conducted using the simulator involved mimicking the expansion of the early universe—the atoms in the superfluid moved in a ripple pattern in ways similar to what has been predicted by theory if pairs of particles are being created.
More information:
Celia Viermann et al, Quantum field simulator for dynamics in curved spacetime, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05313-9
Citation:
An early universe analog built in a lab in Germany (2022, November 10)
retrieved 11 November 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-11-early-universe-analog-built-lab.html
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(CNN) — High in the Swiss Alps, St Moritz made its name as a place for pushing the boundaries of winter sport. By the time it hosted the second Winter Olympics Games in 1928 its reputation as a playground for wealthy adventurers was already well established.
On Saturday, the region continued its long tradition of expanding the limits of what is possible with an epic world record attempt — not on snow or ice, but on rails.
To celebrate the 175th anniversary of Switzerland’s first railway, the country’s rail industry came together to run the world’s longest-ever passenger train — 100 cars, 2,990 tonnes and almost two kilometres long.
Formed of 25 new “Capricorn” electric trains the record-breaking 1,906-meter train took almost an hour to cover around 25 kilometers (about 15 miles) over the spectacular UNESCO World Heritage Albula Line from Preda to Alvaneu in eastern Switzerland.
Like the legendary Cresta Run toboggan track, the Albula Line is famous for its endless swooping curves and steep descents. A world-renowned masterpiece of civil engineering, the 62-kilometer line between Thusis and St Moritz took just five years to build despite requiring 55 bridges and 39 tunnels.
Prior to its completion in July 1904, visitors faced a risky 14-hour journey over rough tracks in horse-drawn carriages or sledges.
Centerpiece of the line is the 5,866-meter-long Albula Tunnel, which runs deep beneath the watershed between the Rhine and Danube rivers.
Spirals, soaring viaducts and tunnels
The train spiraled down a switchback of tracks through the mountains.
swiss-image.ch/Philipp Schmidli
Following part of the route taken by the world-famous Glacier Express since 1930, the world record attempt took in the spectacular Landwasser Viaduct and the extraordinary spirals that secured the line’s international heritage status.
In less than 25 kilometers, the train plummeted from 1,788 meters above sea level at Preda to 999.3 meters at Alvaneu, using a succession of spirals, soaring viaducts and tunnels.
The record attempt was organized by the Rhaetische Bahn (Rhaetian Railway, or RhB), supported by Swiss train-builder Stadler, and is perhaps even more astonishing for taking place on a narrow gauge railway.
Unlike most Swiss and European railways, which use the “standard” gauge between the rails of 1.435 meters (4 feet 8.5 inches), RhB rails are just one meter apart.
Combine this with a route with notoriously tight curves, steep gradients, 22 tunnels and 48 bridges over deep valleys and the challenges become obvious.
Previous holders of the world’s longest passenger train record — Belgium and, before that, the Netherlands — used standard gauge railways through flat landscapes to their advantage.
However, preparations started months ahead of the RhB event, including test runs to ensure the unique train could be operated safely.
“We all know the Albula Line very well, every change of gradient, every incline,” said lead driver Andreas Kramer, 46, ahead of the big day. “It goes without saying that we’re going through the process again and again.”
He added: “We need to be 100% synchronized, every second. Everyone has to keep their speed and other systems under control at all times.”
An initial test run ended in failure before the train had even moved when it was discovered that the emergency brake system could not be activated and the seven drivers could not communicate with each other via radio or cellphone in the many tunnels.
Kramer, assisted by six other drivers and 21 technicians instead used a temporary field telephone system set up by the Swiss Civil Protection organization to maintain communications as the train ran at up to 35 km/h through countless tunnels and deep valleys.
Specially modified software and an intercom between the seven drivers allowed the 25 trains to work in harmony. Any mismatch in acceleration or deceleration during the journey would have exerted unacceptably high forces on tracks and power supplies, creating a major safety issue.
RhB Director Renato Fasciati said: “Switzerland is a railway country like no other. This year, we are celebrating 175 years of Swiss railways. With this world record attempt, RhB and its partners wanted to play their part in achieving a pioneering feat that had never been seen before.”
Party atmosphere
The train was made up of 100 cars.
Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
On the long descent, speed was controlled by regenerative braking, similar to that used on some electric cars, which fed current back into the 11,000-volt overhead power supply lines.
However, with so many trains in the same section of line, there was concern that they could feed too much current back into the system, overloading both trains and local power grids. To avoid this, the top speed of the train was limited to 35 km/h and software had to be modified to restrict the power being fed back.
Additional safety control cables also had to be fitted throughout the train to support the standard mechanical and pneumatic connections between trains.
On the big day, the RhB organized a railway festival at Bergün and 3,000 lucky ticket holders were able to witness the record attempt via a live TV feed while also enjoying local entertainment and gastronomy. Normal services through the Albula Tunnel to St Moritz and beyond were suspended for 12 hours.
Three satellite uplinks, 19 cameras in drones and helicopters, on the train and along the track filmed the train, providing a unique record of this once-in-a-lifetime event. This alone was a major challenge in a remote, mountainous region with limited mobile telecoms coverage.
A railway nation
The record attempt was organized to celebrate 175 years of Swiss railways.
Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
For a small country with a mountainous landscape which, at first glance, seems unsuited to railways, Switzerland punches well above its weight in the industry.
Necessity has long made it a pioneer in electrical, mechanical and civil engineering and its technology and expertise are exported all over the world.
Engineering feats such as the Gotthard Base Tunnel, opened in 2016, continue a long tradition of expanding the boundaries of the possible.
With good reason, the Swiss are the world’s most enthusiastic rail users, traveling an average of 2,450 kilometers every year by train — a quarter of their overall annual total. In common with other European countries, mobility has exploded in recent decades — the average annual distance travelled by car and public transport has doubled in the last 50 years.
They traveled 19.7 billion passenger kilometers by rail in 2019, the last “normal” year before the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021 this fell to 12.5 billion passenger kilometers but as Switzerland celebrates 175 years since its first railway opened between Zürich and Baden, ridership is well on the way back to pre-pandemic levels.
So high are the expectations of public transport users in Switzerland that even a small delay is a source of quiet dissatisfaction. And not without good reason; many journeys in and around Switzerland’s biggest cities are multi-modal, reliant on slick connections between trains, trams, buses and even boats at well-organized interchanges.
In 2021, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) operated 11,260 trains carrying 880,000 passengers and 185,000 tonnes of freight per day on a 3,265 kilometer-long network with 804 stations.
Adding the 70-plus “private” standard and narrow gauge railways, many of which are also partly or fully in public ownership, takes that network to around 5,300 kilometers, the densest rail network in the world.
A heavily co-ordinated network integrates SBB’s trains with numerous other operators, extensive narrow gauge railways such as the Rhaetische Bahn (RhB), mountain cog railways, funiculars, post buses, cable cars, boats and more, providing dependable car-free access to every corner of the country (see www.swiss-pass.ch).
Decades of long-term investment have created a core network of intensively used main lines linking all the country’s major cities. Feeding into this are high-frequency S-Bahn (city rail) systems around the biggest cities plus regional and local railway lines, tramways and mountain railways, many of which provide a critical link to the outside world for rural and upland communities.
Despite massive investment over the last four decades, through long-term expansion programs such as “Bahn 2000.” Switzerland’s railways are becoming a victim of their own success. While SBB’s overall punctuality still looks impressive to outsiders, there is concern about deteriorating performance, rising costs and its ability to fund essential maintenance and major projects after the devastating financial losses of 2020-21.
Disruption is still comparatively rare on the SBB network, but reliability has decreased in recent years as a result of congestion, staff shortages and poor punctuality of trains arriving from neighboring countries.
Strategic position
The train dropped nearly 800 meters in its descent from the mountains.
MAYK WENDT
Sitting at the heart of western Europe, between the industrial powerhouses of Germany, France and northern Italy, Switzerland also plays a key strategic role in the wider European economy — as it has since the Middle Ages.
For centuries, the Alps presented a formidable barrier to travelers and trade across this part of Europe but over the last two decades, billions of Swiss Francs have been invested to build the lengthy Gotthard and Loetschberg Base Tunnels deep under the Alps.
While other countries argue and dither over public transport spending, in June 2022 the Swiss Federal Council opened consultations on its next program of long-term rail investment. Perspektive Bahn 2050 is a detailed set of proposals with a clear focus on developing short and medium-distance passenger services to promote a shift away from cars.
Enhancement of the existing network to create extra capacity is to be prioritized over more major infrastructure projects. Transport Minister Simonetta Sommaruga says: “It’s not a question of saving a few minutes on a trunk route such as Zürich-Bern. Rail is already unbeatable on routes like that. It is rather about expansion where rail has been left behind.”
Expected to be passed into law by 2026, the plan’s objectives include increasing annual public transport usage from 26 billion passenger-kilometers to 38 billionn passenger-kilometers by 2050, increasing rail’s share of the passenger and freight markets “significantly” and ensuring that rail services are even more closely integrated with other transport modes to provide greater mobility for all.
Critics often cite Switzerland’s smaller population and relatively short distances when comparing it to countries such as the UK and Germany, claiming that it would be impossible to create similar integrated public transport networks in larger countries.
It’s true that the Swiss have built something ideally suited to their geography, culture and population density, but whatever the arguments elsewhere, the RhB’s incredible achievement on October 29 is a hugely impressive demonstration of Switzerland’s world-class capabilities in the field of railway technology.
Jeff Sheldon’s desk is sort of famous. You might have even seen it before: Sheldon, the founder and CEO of a high-design shop called Ugmonk, uploaded a few photos to Unsplash several years ago, and his ultra-clean setup filled with natural wood and white colors has since been viewed more than 400 million times. People have been asking him for a decade where he got his cool monitor stand, even though it’s actually just an Ikea hack. The desk sits in Sheldon’s home office in suburban Pennsylvania, in the corner of a sun-soaked room with so many windows and so many trees just outside the windows that commenters occasionally ask if he lives in the jungle.
The day I meet Sheldon, he’s looking at that desk from the other side of his home office on a bright, hot day near the end of summer. He’s in jeans and a black T-shirt, and limping ever so slightly thanks to a recent soccer injury. His workspace looks normal enough — a little cleaner than usual, maybe, and Sheldon did just spend a few minutes making sure all the accessories were at perfect 90-degree angles. But a few feet away stand a handful of people and a heaping mound of camera gear. Two of them push a makeshift dolly with a Red camera on it, slowly, steadily in the direction of the desk, as Sheldon walks into frame and sits down. The shot ends in a perfect modern still-life: Sheldon hard at work, his dog Pixel lying on a bed a few feet behind him.
The crew is here to shoot a video for Ugmonk’s latest Kickstarter project for a line of desk accessories called Gather. Gather’s unofficial mission statement is, essentially, that it’s okay to be messy, but it should also be easy to clean up. Sheldon, who has young kids, seems to wage a perpetual battle between his minimalistic and fussy designer tendencies and the simple realities of life. And so Gather is, in one sense, just a set of beautiful containers: a wooden pen holder, a padded stand for your phone, an all-metal bin where you can stash business cards and random detritus, a monitor stand with a dedicated slot for your papers. A place for everything, Gather promises, even if everything’s not always in its place.
For Sheldon, though, Gather is also the most complicated, most ambitious, most difficult thing he has ever made. It’s actually his second attempt to make these kinds of products after the first didn’t go to plan. This time, all the pieces are extremely high quality and extremely high priced. Sheldon admires designers like Dieter Rams, Saul Bass, and Paul Rand and aspires to build things akin to the classic Eames chair. Maybe they won’t be heirloom desk accessories, maybe that’s not even a thing, but Sheldon’s aiming for “definitely heirloom quality.” In a world of cheap crap and planned obsolescence, Ugmonk wants to make things that last as long as you need them.
As the crew resets and director Jon Rothermel watches the footage on a monitor in the hallway, Sheldon obsesses about the details of the shot. He notices the clock on his computer and the clock on his wall are different; will anyone notice? He’s also worried about too many cables being visible and the way the desk shakes when he sits down and the way the sun hits his face when he leans slightly forward and the fact that, whoops, Pixel just left. They do five takes of this shot — which will be the all-important intro for the Kickstarter video — before Sheldon and Rothermel are happy with it.
A few minutes later, after a lot of close-up shots of Sheldon’s desk and the stuff on it, a grand switchover happens. The Ikea-hack monitor stand, the phone holder, the various bins and containers for all of Sheldon’s stuff, almost everything in those viral photos — all gone, all replaced with Gather components. The whole thing feels oddly ceremonious: Sheldon spent years working on a new set of desk accessories but hasn’t upgraded the home office that started it all until right now. His home office and his desk reflect more than a decade of work since he started Ugmonk to sell T-shirts. And now, with a few new pieces, he’s just moved into a new era.
Maybe I’m reading too much into all that. But after spending time with Sheldon, I can tell you confidently he felt it, too. To him, Gather is much more than a bunch of desk accessories.
a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin [&>a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-white md:text-30″>Learn by shipping
Sheldon started a company in 2008 as a side project. He was working full-time at a design firm in Vermont, not making much money and not having much to do thanks to the ongoing recession. Since college, he’d enjoyed entering T-shirt design contests hosted by companies like Threadless, Woot, and DesignByHumans and eventually started to win them. “You’d get, like, $500, and they send you five of the shirts.” In college, this felt like a fair trade, but as Sheldon started to win more often and enter the working world, he realized he was getting the short end of the stick. “They owned all the rights to my artwork,” he says, “and they’re printing five, 10, 15,000 of these shirts, and they’re making all the money. And I’m sitting here with a $500 check.”
Confident that people liked his designs, Sheldon decided to start selling the shirts himself. He borrowed $2,000 from his dad, set up a store on the Big Cartel platform, drew up some new designs in his trademark minimalistic style, printed them onto 200 American Apparel T-shirts, and started posting his stuff in forums and online. He named his shop Ugmonk — a meaningless word that Sheldon doesn’t want to explain because he’s worried people will be disappointed with how boring the story is — mostly because he didn’t want to call it something like “Jeff’s T-Shirt Designs.” He and his wife did most of the shipping, and much of the inventory lived in his parents’ basement.
In 2017, Sheldon decided to take a bigger swing and design a product from scratch. He wanted a place to put his phone, a home for his pens, just a simple organizer to stick behind his keyboard. So he designed a small, modular set, named it Gather, and launched a Kickstarter campaign. Sheldon hoped to get about $18,000 in preorders through the campaign and instead ended up with $430,960. It was a big enough deal that the Shark Tank producers called, he says, though Sheldon had to turn them down since he hadn’t actually made the product yet.
At the time, this seemed like a good problem to have. Sheldon even launched Gather as a separate brand on a separate website, thinking it might be bigger than Ugmonk and could ultimately replace it. He thought Gather might end up in Target. This was going to be huge.
Eager to fill all those orders and capitalize on the interest in Gather, Sheldon turned to a company in Texas that had a factory in China. And he quickly discovered exactly how it works to make products at scale. “We were injection-molding the parts,” he says, “which means the parts cost less than $1, but the molds cost between $20,000 and $30,000.” That meant no small batches, no experiments, only giant orders. The factory in China had never worked with wood before, it turned out, and the first models that came back were warped and wonky and generally nowhere near Sheldon’s standards. So he gave feedback to his contact in Texas, who took that feedback to China, and weeks later, more products showed up at his door. Rinse and repeat, over and over. For months.
Even after all the back and forth, Sheldon estimates now that 30 percent of the products he shipped to Kickstarter backers ultimately had to be replaced. Most users actually liked the product, and he eventually sold out his inventory, but too much of it just wasn’t up to Sheldon’s standards. He thought more than once about just scrapping the whole idea. “I was so disconnected from the process,” he says now. “I didn’t go to the factory, and I should have. I wasn’t the person communicating. I would just wait for photos or prototypes to show up at my house.” He decided, right then and there, that he didn’t want to be a big Target brand if this was what it took.
“Hardware is hard” is a much-repeated maxim in the tech industry, and for good reason. Countless companies have built and marketed cool prototypes, only to discover that there’s a massive difference between making one product and 100 and an even bigger one between 100 and 100,000. Sheldon learned this lesson every step of the way. One of his first-ever batches of shirts came back unusable, which he says taught him a valuable lesson: “how to eat costs.” As the stakes got higher, he decided the only way to get what he wanted was to exert much more control over the process — and to aspire to making a few great things instead of countless crummy ones.
Even that was harder than it sounded, though. With his next product, a paper-based productivity system called Analog, another Kickstarter hit, Sheldon resolved to think smaller and more locally. He contracted with a printer in Indiana for the cards, hoping working domestically would help. It didn’t. There were just too many orders, and the quality suffered as a result. Sheldon had to throw away most of what was produced — though he kept a few of the failures as a reminder of how things really work. But then, through a friend, Sheldon got connected to a woodworker down the road in Pennsylvania who grew up working for his Amish father’s furniture business and eventually started his own. “They bailed us out of the Analog Kickstarter by replacing all the bad ones,” Sheldon says, “and got us connected to the Amish and Mennonite communities.”
“Hardware is hard” is a much-repeated maxim in the tech industry, and for good reason
Analog is now Ugmonk’s biggest product — Sheldon says it accounts for about 80 percent of Ugmonk’s sales. But he never stopped thinking about Gather. He still wanted to design desk accessories and had lots of ideas for new components. He found an industrial designer, Jack Marple, who agreed to help him figure out how to design and manufacture desk accessories in a more local, more predictable, higher-end way. They started sending 3D-printed prototypes back and forth and began reaching out to more local shops and fabricators.
They ultimately built a local supply chain, made up of largely Mennonite and Amish manufacturers, who they hoped could make Gather at a much higher quality. But getting up and running took a huge amount of work. A Mennonite-run company that mostly does metalwork for dairy farms agreed to be one of Ugmonk’s suppliers, for instance, but only after some convincing. “They’re making cattle chutes and plow pieces,” Sheldon says, “and I tell them it’s a stand for an iPhone… they still have flip phones.” But once Sheldon told them about the quality and craftsmanship he was looking for, they were in.
Over the last couple of years, Sheldon and his team — which was, for a long time, mostly Sheldon’s wife and family but now includes five part-time helpers and Tim Fortney, who became Ugmonk’s second full-time employee earlier this year — have spent countless hours driving between factories and warehouses, looking at prototypes and endlessly refining the Gather products.
Sheldon offers one example: “the edges of the metal” for the large monitor stand, he says, “when they came off the laser cutter, [the manufacturers] were doing the bending and the powder coating. Well, if you don’t file the edges just right, the powder coating will stick to the edge. And it’ll glob up and actually accentuate little imperfections.” If you’re cutting metal for a construction vehicle, nobody cares about the globs. But close up, those details matter — at least, they do to Sheldon. So now there’s another step in the process, “where they’ll file all the edges where it gets powder coated.” It’s more work and costs more to do, but for Ugmonk, it’s worth it.
All this makes everything slower and vastly more expensive. Sheldon estimates that building the new generation of Gather this way costs “four or five times” more than doing it the old way, with injection molds in foreign factories. But he likes that he can stand in the factory and watch the test runs happen. He likes being able to take the four or five bad eggs back and have them quickly replaced. “There’s a level of relationship,” he says, “of looking someone in the eye and sitting across the table from someone that you can’t hide from.” He acknowledges he’s a bit of a control freak but says he’s willing to do what it takes — and push others to do the same — to make great stuff. “It doesn’t scale,” he says, “and I’m okay with that.”
a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin [&>a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-white md:text-30″>Embrace the mess
After a few hours of shooting inside Sheldon’s house, the crew finishes by mimicking their opening shot — the slow roll toward Sheldon’s desk — with the full line of new Gather accessories now in place. Satisfied they’ve gotten it right, they relocate to Ugmonk’s new headquarters, a converted paper mill a few miles down the road from Sheldon’s house.
In a backroom of the building, Sheldon and Rothermel have spent weeks building two separate office sets into an otherwise barren and messy concrete space. In one corner, a dark, gamer-style setup with a full suite of black Gather gear. In the other, next to the window, a lighter wall with white accents, plants spilling off of shelves, a pink iMac, and all the white Gather components. Both are clean and camera-ready, at least once Sheldon finishes taping all the cables to walls and table legs. (Yes, he knows accepting some untidiness is part of the point. But he can only take so much.)
The point of these setups is to show how Gather can work for anyone. It drives Sheldon crazy that people are content to prop their monitor on a stack of books or put up with a crappy Amazon Basics laptop stand that is perpetually falling apart. But when he looks around at the people who work on their spaces, he says, caring about your setup is a tech-geek thing, somehow. He wants to bring a design-geek energy to the space.
Caring about your setup is a tech-geek thing, somehow — Sheldon wants to bring a design-geek energy to the space
After a 12-hour day, they’re still not done; another long shoot day follows soon after. Finally, with the video shot, the Ugmonk team spends weeks on every other detail of the launch. They oversee a test run of 30 full Gather sets, in both color options, to see how things come off the manufacturing line. (There are some small defects, like a slightly wobbly headphone stand, but those are quickly fixable.) They touch up the photos, debate the Kickstarter taglines, and sort out the prices. At the last minute, Sheldon remembers he needs to get the project approved by Kickstarter before it can go live, but luckily that goes well.
The Kickstarter launches on October 18th with a modest goal of $12,500. By the end of its first day, it hit $80,000. Sheldon knew this would happen — he just picked a low number because Kickstarter’s recommendation algorithms like projects that crush their goal quickly. By the time the campaign ends in December, he’s hoping for a number closer to $500,000, and if he’s really dreaming, it might even hit seven figures.
It’s a big dream and hardly guaranteed. Even with a Kickstarter discount, the Gather laptop stand is $129, the organizer set is $159, and the full 10-piece set — large monitor stand, laptop stand, organizers, and a magnetic base plate to hold them all in place — is $779. When everything goes on sale in April 2023, that set will cost $1,000. A grand for some desk accessories is a lot to ask.
Sheldon’s confident that people will see the value, though. He has collected a lot of devoted customers over the years — when he announced Ugmonk would stop selling T-shirts, which Sheldon says was because his supplier had become a problem, people flocked to the site to buy as many as they could. What he’s really worried about is whether he can deliver. “What if we get 5,000, 10,000 pieces,” he says, “and they’re all bad?” That would be an expensive and time-consuming problem.
But he has a decade of hard-won lessons in how the industry works and rests secure in the knowledge that, at the very least, that problem would be down the road and not across the world. “We’ve looked everybody in the eye, and we can go there,” he says. “That feels a lot better than the container coming from China, we open up the doors, and we’re like, ‘Oh no.’”
I asked Sheldon if the long-term goal was to become a full-on furniture manufacturer, to move from desk accessories to desks and chairs and tables and everything else. He initially said he might but then immediately began to fret about how the shipping logistics alone would change his small company for the worse. It might be more fun, he says, to find other places where these small things could be useful. “Maybe it goes on your kitchen table or your entry table.”
Then he starts to riff: “I want to do special editions of Gather, like, in a bright orange and just do 100 of them. I want to lean more into the artists’ way of doing it. I could literally just make one.” For him, making one is way more fun than making millions. And he knows exactly how to get it done.
NASA is already packing for its next Moon landing, and it’s ordering some new spacesuits for the trip. It has awarded a $228.5 million contract to Axiom Space to make a “moonwalking system” for the agency’s return trip to the lunar surface, NASA announced Wednesday.
Axiom was one of two companies in the running to make spacesuits for NASA’s Artemis program, which is aiming to send astronauts back to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. NASA already has a limited supply of spacesuits for use on the International Space Station, but lunar spacesuits will have to be very different. In addition to extreme temperature swings, they’ll have to contend with the Moon’s gravity and the notoriously problematic lunar dust that has a tendency to stick to everything.
NASA had been working on its own Moon spacesuits and unveiled the works-in-progress in 2019. But last year, a report found that the development of those suits was delayed and that they wouldn’t be ready in time for the planned lunar landing. Instead, in June, NASA announced that it had decided to outsource the development of its lunar spacesuit to two companies: Collins Aerospace, which has experience building spacesuits for NASA, and Axiom Space.
Axiom previously arranged to send the first entirely private crew to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket. The company’s long-term goals include constructing a commercial space station.
NASA plans to use Axiom’s spacesuits on the future Artemis III mission, which will land the first woman on the Moon. But first, the agency needs to get the Artemis I mission off the ground. That mission, which will send an uncrewed capsule out past the Moon, will serve as a test mission for future flights, including Artemis III. It has been repeatedly delayed.
Squirrel With a Gun is an upcoming Steam game built in Unreal Engine 5 that has taken the internet by storm because it stars a squirrel with… well… a gun.
Squirrel with a Gun is being developed by Dan DeEntremont, and early footage of the game showcases the titular squirrel running through a town with normal-sized guns chasing unsuspecting people and taking down Agents using various weapons.
What is @QuiteDan’s Squirrel with a Gun? It is a squirrel with a gun. pic.twitter.com/MURfkkdPXS
— IGN (@IGN) August 13, 2022
The game will also let you parry attacks to disarm enemies and use the recoil of the guns to fly through the air and cross big gaps you wouldn’t be able to cross with your squirrel skills alone. If you are feeling extra mischievous, you can even rob the residents of your neighborhood of their phones, cake, and more.
Squirrel With a Gun’s first trailer also shows what appears to be adorable hats and accessories you can put on your gun-toting furry friend and puzzles in a secret lab that reward you with a delicious and digital-looking nutty treat.
The video game genre of animals causing chaos in the world looks to have a new contender and one that will one day join the likes of Untitled Goose Game, Goat Simulator, and more. As for when that day will be? DeEntremont is currently saying on the game’s Steam page that Squirrel With a Gun’s planned release date is “good question!” This means it may be sometime before we can become this legendary rodent.
Hello, everyone. I finally got around to cutting a Squirrel With A Gun trailer up on Steam!#gaming #indiedev #gamedev #UE5 #UnrealEngine5 #indiegame #blender3d #blender #b3d #indiegamedev #screenshotsaturday #wishlistwednesday pic.twitter.com/iNCAls934l
— Squirrel with a Gun (Dan DeEntremont) (@QuiteDan) August 14, 2022
For more in the world of animals, check out our list of the top 10 dogs in video games and how pigs can play games using their snouts.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Halo Infinite’s much-anticipated Forge Mode has yet to be released, but that hasn’t stopped @DeathTempler from recreating P.T.’s terrifying hallway in an early version of it.
As reported by PC Gamer, certain players like Death Templer have found a way to access an unfinished version of Halo Infinite’s Forge Mode in the latest co-op campaign test flight and it has given these creators some powerful tools to create some impressive pieces of work.
You can watch a walkthrough of P.T.’s hallway in Halo Infinite’s Forge Mode by clicking here, and you can see that the newest iteration of Forge allows for much more customization, better lighting options, more varied sound effects, and more.
This is only the beginning for Death Templer’s mission to recreate P.T., as he has a goal to “make PT so well in Forge one day, it prompts a cease and desist from Konami.”
PC Gamer notes that players should avoid trying to access Forge mode and wait for the Open Beta in September as the process requires third-party tools that very well may get you banned by 343 Industries. The ban hammer has yet to be swung by the Halo developer, but it may just be a matter of time now.
Forge Mode is one part of the 2022 roadmap for Halo Infinite alongside campaign mission replay, campaign network co-op, season 3, new narrative events, campaign splitscreen co-op, and more.
The 12 Best Horror Games on PC
P.T., which was a demo for the canceled Silent Hills game from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, was set to star Norman Reedus and be the next step forward for the Silent Hill franchise. Unfortunately, Silent Hills was canceled by Konami and P.T. was removed from the PlayStation store for good.
The rumor mill for a new entry in the Silent Hill series has been pretty busy in recent months, and May 2022 saw an image of a potential new game leak and then get swiftly deleted.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
A resident of a newly built apartment building in South Korea began noticing an odor coming from their master bedroom’s closet that became increasingly worse, later discovering three bags of human feces hidden inside a space in the ceiling.
The apartment building, located in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi province, had only recently been built. As new residents began to move in, one noticed a “strong stench” coming from the walls of the master bedroom’s closet. The resident, who moved into the apartment in May, stated that as the weather got hotter, the odor became stronger.
On May 29, the resident requested an inspection. On July 2, an official from the construction company inspected various parts of the home, including the plumbing, floors, walls and ceiling. Upon investigating, three plastic bags filled with human feces were found hidden inside a space in the ceiling of the master bedroom’s closet.
“As soon as the construction company employees removed the ceiling light, a strong odor began filling the room from that hole. They couldn’t even film or take photos of the evidence [due to the stench] and left with the bags as soon as possible,” the resident told Yonhap News.
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A man who lived next door also stated that he smelled an odor coming from the closet, and his wife, who is five months pregnant, began suffering headaches due to the stench.
Officials believe that construction workers had left the bags full of their waste while finishing interior work for the apartment.
The residents stated that they have not received a proper apology and that their requests to have the ceiling and walls replaced have not yet been answered. They were also told to call a professional company to have deodorization work done.
More from NextShark: Alexander Wang Says He’ll ‘Do Better’ After Meeting With Sexual Assault Accusers
“It’s already been 17 days since the bag was discovered, but the construction company is saying that removing the wallpaper and ceiling, sterilizing it and spraying liquid detergent is a deodorizing operation. It’s been done, but I’m not sure how the construction company did it because the smell is still so strong that it gives me a headache,” the resident said.
An official from the construction company stated that they plan to compensate the victims for damages as soon as possible.
More from NextShark: Study: Chinese state-run hospitals conducted heart transplants on prisoners before they were dead
Feature Image: Yonhap News
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SF police travel to Taiwan to arrest man accused of stealing $3 million in home invasion, kidnapping
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