Playing Pokémon was just a warmup: Twitch users are going to try to install Arch Linux one character at a time in what’s been dubbed a “cooperative text-based horror game.”
Arch Linux, according to its wiki, is “suited to anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude that’s willing to spend some time reading the documentation and solving their own problems.” We’re not sure that sounds like the average Twitch chatroom, but I guess we’ll find out.
The Twitch stream will show a virtual machine, and the chat can vote on which keystroke should come next — every ten seconds a new key will be hit. There will be four goals:
Where did an idea like this even come from? Pokémon.
In March 2014 an anonymous Australian programmer built a unique Twitch stream that allowed the comments to control the gameplay: it was called Twitch Plays Pokémon, and it was a phenomenon. On average 80,000 people were watching it at any given point, with around 10 per cent of people participating in the chaos by saying which button should be pressed next.
Lots of people sincerely wanted to win, and even went so far as to coordinate with wikis full of strategies. This being the Internet, however, lots of other people worked to actively sabotage the game (above you can see a rare Pokémon being released).
A working bash terminal means all sorts of ways to sabotage, like deleting every file on the hard drive or starting a fork bomb. I’m sure “sudo rm -rf /” will show up more than once, regardless of whether that particular command works on Arch or not. There’s a good chance intervention will be needed more than once.
But installing Arch is relatively straightforward, and the voting process here is less chaotic than what was used for the Pokémon effort. So there’s also a chance people could work together and get this done.
If you’re curious, you can start watching, and participating, on Twitch tomorrow.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.