Author: Michele Debczak

Nintendo offers dozens of ways to experience the world of Mario. Video game nerds can have the pint-sized plumber race go-karts, glide through space, or challenge Bowser to a few rounds of tennis. Now there’s a new way for fans to fully immerse themselves in the franchise without purchasing a virtual reality headset. They just have to be willing to book a flight to Lisbon, Portugal, where Airbnb host André Farinha has transformed a room in his apartment into a Nintendo-lover’s paradise, Mashable reports.

The space’s interior pays homage to Super Mario’s 30-plus-year history, from a wall depicting his origins in Donkey Kong (back when he was called “Jumpman“) to a hard hat that references the 2015 game Super Mario Maker. A wall decorated with coins, goombas, and toadstools looks down onto a bedspread that’s been stitched with Mario’s iconic blue overalls and red shirt. The bathroom fully commits to the plumber theme, with green piping winding along the sky-blue walls.

Guests enamored with the entire Nintendo universe will be happy to hear that the theme doesn’t stop with Super Mario. The room also features a Wii U, a display of amiibo characters, and a Nintendo 3DS stand where guests can play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Farinha, a 32-year-old computer game programmer and self-described “major nerd,” spent roughly €10,000 (over $11,000 US) designing the space. Travelers passing through Lisbon can experience it themselves for just $39 a night. If the room happens to be booked for the dates you had in mind, Farinha also has two additional rooms available for rent, including some equally nerdy Star Wars-themed digs.

[h/t Mashable]

All images courtesy of André Farinha // Airbnb.

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Christopher Walken is perhaps best known for his distinctive speaking style, but a new exhibit in Queens, New York pays tribute to the actor’s unmistakable mug. As Time Out New York reports, the installation titled “Monument to Walken” is now on display at the Socrates Sculpture Park.

Artist Bryan Zanisnik created the creepy concrete busts as an homage to the Queens native. In addition to the garden of perfectly coiffed heads sprouting up from the dirt, a comic in a display case nearby illustrates Walken’s history in the Astoria neighborhood where he grew up.

The monument is one of 15 exhibits highlighting the work of young artists as part of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition [PDF]. Each installation, including the disembodied Walken heads, will be on display until March 13, 2017.

[h/t Time Out New York]

All images: Instagram

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Scientists recently made a huge stride toward finding a cure for HIV. A team of researchers from five UK universities reported the apparent disappearance of the virus from the blood of a trial subject. According to The Telegraph, the 44-year-old British man may be the first person fully cured of the disease using the new treatment.

The treatments currently available target active T-cells infected with HIV but do nothing to treat dormant T-cells. The team of scientists are currently running a trial of a different kind of therapy meant to tackle HIV in its dormant state. It goes a few steps beyond existing anti-retroviral therapies (ART) by training the body’s immune system to recognize HIV with a vaccine and awakening dormant T-cells so they’re easier to eradicate.

The therapy is currently being administered to 50 volunteers, and so far it seems to have been fully effective in at least one subject. The virus is no longer detectable in the blood of the unnamed patient. This might be due to the regular drugs he’s taking, but if the dormant cells are completely gone as well then the case represents the trial’s first full cure.

HIV has been eliminated from one patient before using a rather roundabout method: In 2008, Timothy Brown received a stem cell transplant from someone with a natural immunity to the disease and was effectively cured. If this new treatment is as promising as it looks, it could offer a more practical solution to the 2.1 million people infected with HIV each year. Researchers plan to move forward with medical tests for the next five years and may eventually look into the treatment as a replacement for current therapies.

[h/t The Telegraph]

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The accuracy of Google Translate can be hit or miss. It’s often a reliable tool for navigating foreign language websites, but occasionally the tech slips up and confuses terms as different as clitoris and broccoli rabe. In an effort to improve the program, Google has unveiled a new version of Translate called Google Neural Machine Translation or GMNT, Fast Company reports.

The major difference between GMNT and the former phrase-based machine translation system (PBMT) is the way it tackles text. In the past, Translate worked with the individual components of sentences, words, and phrases to translate them separately. The new system looks at whole sentences at a time, improving the technology’s accuracy by roughly 60 percent. This means that even languages as distinct as English and Chinese can be translated to a more precise degree.

GMNT is able to achieve these results by simultaneously running data through multiple cores in computer graphic chips. Each processing layer is allowed limited room for error, which means more layers can be running at once to increase the chances of producing more accurate results (you can read Google’s full paper on the technology here).

Google believes neural networks like this one can be used to expand more than just their translation tool. Researchers at Google Brain have used 11,000 novels to improve the technology’s conversational style and help products like the Google App communicate more fluidly with users.

[h/t Fast Company]

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While artificial light is practical and reliable, sunlight is constantly changing. It’s the reason why you can spend half an hour sitting in front of a sunset without getting bored. Now a new lamp, recently spotted by inhabitat, aims to capture the feel of natural lighting and recreate it in an indoor environment.

The Sun Memories Lamp from the Italian creative agency Olive Lab lets owners relive the light from a specific day long after the sun goes down. A wearable device “records” the color temperature and brightness of the wearer’s environment for up to six hours at a time. An app then allows users to log their data to a “sunlight recordings playlist” and replay it on their LED lamp anytime they please. They can even share specific “sun memories” to special people in their lives who own Sun Memories lamps of their own.

The product isn’t just a tool that brings natural lighting into the home—it’s a new way to record memories. Olive Lab writes on their website: “Have you ever dreamed if you could record the light of a bright sunset, the sunlight of a road trip you have planned for years, or just a special day of your life, and then relive it whenever you want? We did, and we made it possible.”

The Sun Memories Lamp recently debuted at the London Design Festival and you can follow Olive Lab on social media for future product details.

[h/t inhabitat]

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Artists struggling to find inspiration might benefit from a session with Gravity Sketch. Instead of making computer animations by punching buttons on a keyboard, the technology allows users to fill the space around them with 3D designs.

The “paintbrushes” used by artists in this case are a pair of handheld controllers. When users wear a VR headset, they can use the devices to manipulate life-sized creations before their eyes. Their finished products can then be uploaded to a computer’s design program or sent to a 3D printer.

Ambitious doodlers aren’t the only people who might be interested in the tool—outside of the animation world, the program shows promise in the fields of fashion and automobile design. Gravity Sketch launched as a mobile app for iOS in March, and now the team behind it is turning to Kickstarter to develop versions for Windows, Mac, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift. The project seeks to raise $64,814 in funding by October 29. If the campaign is successful, backers who pledge $32 or more can expect to receive full access to Gravity Sketch Desktop and VR by December.

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Ten years ago—maybe even five years ago—asking your roommate to “Venmo you” for the pizza you just split might have earned you some confused looks. The mobile payment service has since become part of our cultural vernacular. In the first month of 2016 alone, over $1 billion in transactions were made through the app. Venmo payments are fee-free for users connected through their debit card or bank account and they’re simple to send and request. It’s easy then to see why the app is a popular choice for Millennials, a group that’s less likely to pay with cash or checks than older generations.

As for what the app is actually being used for, LendEDU discovered that the answer is just about everything. The student loan marketplace recently looked at more than 500,000 transactions to determine which types of payments are the most popular. When a user transfers money, they’re required to indicate what the payment is for. They don’t necessarily have to go into detail: In fact, emojis are often the descriptor of choice. You can see the top choices below.

According to LendEDU, the house and flying money emojis are commonly used for rent and utilities while the pizza and beer emojis are pretty self-explanatory. The text descriptions they looked at reflect these trends. Food was the top category with popular terms including dinner, groceries, and pizza. Rent/utilities came in second followed by fun, transportation, and alcohol. The five most-used individual terms were as follows: food, Uber, rent, fantasy (football), and bills. It’s important to note that in addition to being brief, payment descriptions are also allowed to be inaccurate. So it’s probably safe to assume that the majority of users who helped “strippers” break the top 100 were joking (hopefully the same can be said for “kale,” which somehow places in the 21st spot, above “drinks,” “cable,” and “brunch”).

While a lot of people use the app for minor expenses, a significant portion of users also seem to trust Venmo with larger payments like rent. If you’re among the app’s big spenders, it may be worth looking into the app’s security policies if you haven’t already done so. Google Wallet is one payment app alternative that offers extra protection like fraud monitoring and MasterCard’s liability coverage.

[h/t LendEDU]

All images courtesy of LendEDU.

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Whether you’re into fantasy books or videogames, there’s a novelty chess set out there for every type of nerd. This set, currently for sale from M.S. Rau Antiques in New Orleans, is perfect for history geeks. The price tag? A whopping $1.65 million, Forbes reports.

The item, titled “Battle of Issus” after Alexander the Great’s second battle with the Persian army in 333 BCE, is a board game that doubles as a precious piece of art. Crafted in the late 20th century, each 14-karat gold piece stands in for a character or structure from the battle.

A jewel-encrusted King Darius III and Alexander the Great represent the kings on opposite sides of the board, while the Persian god of war and the Greek goddess of war and wisdom (Athena) assume the roles of their respective queens. When the base of each piece is twisted, a special mechanism is triggered, like the swinging of a sword or the rowing of a ship’s oars.

The board itself is also an example of master craftsmanship. The surface is checkered with pink rhodonite and green malachite, and the base’s perimeter depicts action scenes from the battle. It took a jeweler over 14,000 hours over the course of a decade to craft each detail by hand.

The final product contains nearly 9 pounds of 14-karat gold, 5 pounds of 24-karat gold, 11 pounds of silver, 320 grams of garnets, and accents of pearls, rose quartz, and turquoise. If you don’t have a space in your home worthy of such a game, M.S. Rau Antiques has got you covered: The purchase includes a mahogany table and two 19th-century leather upholstered chairs.

[h/t Forbes]

All images: M.S. Rau Antiques

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The most-trafficked animal on Earth isn’t a species of rhino or elephant—it’s the pangolin. If you’re not familiar with these unusual creatures, they’re badger-sized mammals native to Africa and Asia that resemble walking pinecones. According to some areas of traditional Chinese medicine, their scales can cure cancer, which makes the pangolin a valuable commodity in Asia. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) recently made a move that could help save the vulnerable species from extinction: As NPR reports, commercial trade of the pangolin is now officially banned under international law.

The 183 nations attending CITES came to the decision Monday, September 26, during the summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. All eight species of pangolin are now designated as “threatened with extinction” and protected under the strictest trade regulations the committee can grant. “This is a perfect example of when the international community can come together for a species that truly needs help, and enacts strong, global regulations that can make a real difference,” Mark Hofberg, assistant campaigns officer at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said in a statement.

Pangolins have long been hunted for their scales, and lately they’ve been receiving the same attention for their meat. The animal is seen as a delicacy by the Chinese and Vietnamese middle class, and in some cases it’s the dish of choice when celebrating a business deal.

When threatened, the pangolin curls up into a tight ball to protect its face and armorless underbelly. This might provided adequate protection against most wildlife, but it leaves them defenseless against human poachers. According to Hofberg, “This decision gives real hope that extinction of pangolins may be prevented.”

[h/t NPR]

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Fitting football fields into a densely populated neighborhood requires thinking outside the box. For the Unusual Football Pitch project, property developer AP Thai teamed up with digital agency CJ Worx to build play areas in Bangkok’s Khlong Toei district by making inventive use of the limited space, Dezeen reports.

The goal of the initiative was to create positive spaces where the community’s young people could congregate and play footfall. Building a standard-sized pitch would have been impossible: The few empty lots in the neighborhood are irregularly-shaped because of the buildings that surround them. Instead of fighting this limitation, AP Thai decided to embrace it.

The team claims the four non-rectangular football pitches, which range in shape from trapezoid to Tetris piece, are the first of their kind. As the short film below shows, the quirky courts are a welcome addition to one of the most densely-populated cities on earth.

[h/t Dezeen]

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