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Technology

One Of Competitive Pokémon’s Top Picks Is Freaking Murkrow

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Image: Game Freak / The Pokémon Company / Kotaku

While competitive players continue to plumb Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s strategic depth and tease out its tactical wrinkles, one creature has gotten a shocking amount of playtime over the last month: Murkrow. The unevolved flying dark type isn’t a heavy hitter and its stats are absolute trash, but it does have a unique advantage over every other Pokémon in the game that’s sent it straight to the top of the competitive charts.

Browse social media, hang out on the Smogon message boards, or climb the ranked ladder and you won’t be able to escape Murkrow. The tiny black bird first introduced in Pokémon Gold and Silver is finally back in the spotlight, and former Pokémon World Champion Wolfe “WolfeyVGC” Glick explained the reasons why in a recent TikTok:

The first is Tailwind, a move the Gen 2 bird has had from the jump, but which is supremely important in the current landscape, providing all other Pokémon on the team bonus speed for four turns. The second is Prankster, a passive ability that lets Murkow’s non-damage-dealing moves, like Tailwind, take increased turn priority during battles, thus allowing it to strike first. In Scarlet and Violet’s Gen 9, Murkrow is the only Pokémon who has both, guaranteeing a match-defining speed boost on turn one.

But why Murkrow and not its evolved form of Honchkrow? Well, Murkrow’s evolved form loses Prankster in exchange for the damage-oriented passive ability Moxie, ruining the whole strategy. Plus, players can mitigate some of Murkrow’s drawbacks by equipping the held item Eviolite which boosts the normal and special defense of Pokémon who aren’t fully evolved.

“Don’t get me wrong, the combination of Prankster is really good but it isn’t the only reason that Murkrow is popular,” WolfeyVGC added in his recent TikTok. “Murkrow also gets the attack Haze which removes all stat changes from the battlefield. This is relevant because one of the most powerful new Pokémon added is Dondozo who has a way to boost all of its stats by 2.” Haze completely nullifies that, making Murkrow a perfect counter to Dondozo in addition to being a major utility pick for boosting the rest of your team.

That’s been enough to make Murkrow the second most picked Pokémon in competitive play for December, just one percentage point behind all-star crypto coin mascot Gholdengo. As WolfeyVGC wrote in a Twitter thread a couple of weeks ago, Gholdengo’s dual ghost/steel type make it a great defensive pick, while special ability Make it Rain does a ton of damage.

The Swords-Dance-wielding Garchomp and Bulk Up defensive tank Annihilape are also top contenders, as is Hydreigon who can finally use the new games’ Terastalization mechanic to mitigate its traditional 4X weakness to Fairy-type moves. The mushroom bug Amoonguss, meanwhile, has been tearing things up thanks to Rage Powder which forces opponents to target it rather than buff themselves.



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Science

James Webb Telescope glitch had NASA engineers completely freaking out: ‘It was very serious’

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On a Science Channel special about the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA Mission Operations Manager Carl Starr spoke of a tense couple of days, in which, it appeared the mission may have been doomed. The sun shield covers necessary for the telescope’s operation were meant to roll back and hit a switch, telling NASA engineers that it had worked properly. But mission control never received that notice after the first sun shield cover was supposed to have unrolled.

“We never saw the switches activate, so we stopped,” Starr said. “So the next thing is to fire it again, so we fired again and it didn’t work.”

For the telescope to properly open up, hundreds of mechanisms had to work perfectly. Starr said they began coming up with ideas about what might have gone wrong.

“Maybe not all of them were fired,” Starr said. “And maybe it was pinched a little bit and it was kind of crooked like this, and maybe just got hung up. Or maybe it got stuck in there somehow. It was very serious. I’m not sure how to describe it, but, again, it got very quiet, and people became very solemn.”

The James Webb Space Telescope wasn’t without issue while it was being developed and tested. The project faced a month-long delay in late 2016 due to an unexpected outcome while testing the telescope’s mirrors. But, fortunately, this time it was a false alarm.

“The thermal engineers came forward with some telemetry,” Starr explained, “and said, ‘I’m seeing these temperatures, and I’m telling you the only way that you can get those is if there’s nothing in the way. So therefore, it must have unrolled. It just didn’t hit the switch.’”

All involved were clearly relieved and they were able to go ahead with the unprecedented mission.

“When they told us that and we were getting the briefing,” Starr said, “the looks on everybody’s faces, the relief, and then we were able to go full speed ahead right after that.”

For more check out the sciencechannel.com.

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Science

Spirals of blue light in New Zealand night sky leave stargazers ‘kind of freaking out’ | New Zealand

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New Zealand stargazers were left puzzled and awed by strange, spiralling light formations in the night sky on Sunday night.

Around 7.25pm Alasdair Burns, a stargazing guide on Stewart Island/Rakiura, received a text from a friend: go outside and look at the sky. “As soon as we actually went outside, it was very obvious what it was he was referring to,” Burns said.

He saw a huge, blue spiral of light amid the darkness. “It looked like an enormous spiral galaxy, just hanging there in the sky, and slowly just drifting across,” Burns said. “Quite an eerie feeling.”

Burns snapped a few images of the lights on long exposure, capturing the spiral from his phone. “We quickly banged on the doors of all our neighbours to get them out as well. And so there were about five of us, all out on our shared veranda looking up and just kind of, well, freaking out just a little bit.”

The country’s stargazing and amateur astronomy social media groups lit up with people posting photographs and questions about the phenomenon, which was visible from most of the South Island. Theories abounded – from UFOs to foreign rockets to commercial light displays.

“Premonition from our orbital black hole,” said one stargazer. “Aliens at it again,” commented another.

The reality was likely a little more prosaic, said Prof Richard Easther, a physicist at Auckland University, who called the phenomenon “weird but easily explained”.

Clouds of that nature sometimes occurred when a rocket carried a satellite into orbit, he said.

“When the propellant is ejected out the back, you have what’s essentially water and carbon dioxide – that briefly forms a cloud in space that’s illuminated by the sun,” Easther said. “The geometry of the satellite’s orbit and also the way that we’re sitting relative to the sun – that combination of things was just right to produce these completely wacky looking clouds that were visible from the South Island.”

Easther said the rocket in question was likely the Globalstar launch from SpaceX, which the company sent into low-earth orbit off Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sunday.

Burns had guessed the spiral was likely a rocket, having read about a similar phenomenon in 2009, when a Russian missile launch caused huge blue spirals over Norway. Even knowing the likely source, he said, it was a confronting sight. “None of us had ever seen anything like that before. It was spectacular.”

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Technology

God of War Ragnarok Fans Are Freaking Out Over a Tiny Detail

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God of War fans are freaking out over a tiny, but wholesome God of War Ragnarok detail, partially because it’s the type of detail that often separates great games from Game of the Year winners. Last month, PlayStation and Santa Monica Studios finally revealed the new God of War game alongside a few snippets of gameplay footage. And hidden within this gameplay footage is the aforementioned detail, which only now has been noticed. 

Taking to Twitter, one God of War fan revealed that there’s a doodle of Atreus and Kratos’ journey to the top of the mountain that happens in the first game on the former’s quiver. As some fans have pointed out, he had the same doodle on his quiver in the first game, but this is actually incorrect. It’s similar, but it’s not the same drawing, which makes it even more impressive. It would have been able to use the same exact quiver in the sequel and most players wouldn’t have noticed, but Sony Santa Monica decided against the easy route. 

Of course, details like this hardly have any impact on the quality of a game, but they almost always are indicative of a game’s quality. Whether God of War Ragnarok will be able to outdo 2018’s reboot, remains to be seen, but it looks like just as much attention to detail and resources are being poured into the sequel, which means it’s an early favorite for 2022 Game of the Year.

God of War Ragnarok is set to release worldwide via the PS4 and PS5 at an unknown date. The current expectation is the game will release sometime next year, but so far this hasn’t been confirmed. For more coverage on the game and all things PlayStation, click here.



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Technology

Metal Gear Solid Players Are Freaking Out Over New Glitch

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Screenshot: Konami

Over the weekend, Twitch streamer Boba was streaming herself playing Metal Gear Solid for the first time ever, and after being attacked by some guards, she turned to fight them. At that moment, she accidentally ended up getting pushed backward through a locked door, discovering a new glitch that could save a ton of time and that has MGS speedrunners going wild with the time-saving possibilities.

In Metal Gear Solid, you eventually reach a section where you need to go up and down some communication towers, fighting a helicopter, climbing a bunch of stairs, and even rappelling down a rope. It’s a lot. During this section, Boba was running from guards and reached a locked door, so she turned around to fight the swarm of angry armed goons. As she did so, she was shot multiple times, getting pushed back enough that Snake’s model clipped through the door and seemingly activated a trigger, letting Boba skip the stairs and enter the outside area early. She celebrated with a song.

In an interview with YouTuber Drakon Astron, Boba explained that she didn’t think much of it at the time. “I thought it was something that probably someone had done before, on accident.”

However, this was a big moment. Nobody had ever seen or documented this bug before and it seemed to let Boba skip a good chunk of gameplay. Quickly, as footage of the bug spread across Twitter and Reddit, the collective Metal Gear Solid speedrunning community lost their shit. It was estimated by some that if this glitch could be replicated reliably, it could save upwards of two or three minutes. And, within a matter of hours, folks had started replicating the bug, which some are calling the “Boba Skip,” though Boba herself wishes for it to be called “Kevin.”

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Now, after replicating the bug, players have begun heavily theory-crafting and investigating how this bug works, what it means for the game, and if it’s viable elsewhere. Players in the MGS speedrunning Discord server are testing out other locked doors and inaccessible areas of the game where this “Boba/Kevin Skip” might be used to save even more time. If some of these areas become skippable using this glitch, it’s possible that Boba not only found a neat trick that saves a few minutes, but a brand new strategy that could completely change how folks run Metal Gear Solid on both PC and console.

Not bad for someone who isn’t obsessively speedrunning the game every day and in fact had never played Metal Gear Solid before. According to Boba, one speedrunner said they loved that she found the bug because instead of a longtime speedrunner, it was someone just having a good time with MGS.

“The best part is it’s not some, like, nerd that’s been speedrunning Metal Gear for like a hundred years,” the speedrunner told her. “It’s just me having fun playing a video game and accidentally discovering this crazy thing.”



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