A randomly generated, totally novel enzyme rescues mutant bacteria

Enlarge / Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli (E. coli), grown in culture and adhered to a cover slip. (credit: NIAID / Flickr) Proteins are chains of amino acids, and each link in the chain can hold any one of the 20 amino acids that life relies on. If you were to pick each […]

Songbringer is one designer’s procedurally generated ode to classic RPGs

Songbringer is an action role-playing game that’s hoping to clear the name of procedural generation. Nathanael Weiss, who developed the game under his studio name Wizard Fu, teamed up with publisher Double Eleven, and it’s available now for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Weiss thinks that procedural generation has gotten a bad rap when, […]

Uurnog Uurnlimited pairs its Super Mario Bros. 2 style with dynamically generated tunes

Uurnog Uurnlimited is a colorful platformer starring a main character with googly eyes and a shock of neon hair. It will unleash on Steam and the Nintendo Switch later this year thanks to Raw Fury, the publisher of the adorable hellscape of Gonner. Nicklas Nygren, who made Uurnog Uurnlimited under his studio name Nifflas Games, says that he […]

Rail Theory’s Randomly Generated Enemies Ensure Constantly Challenging Shooting

Finding items needed to repair your ship on a hostile alien planet was going to be hard enough, third person shooter Rail Theory takes it one step further with enemies that adapt to your play style on the fly. Rely on any one weapon or combat style too much, and minutes later, you’ll be inundated […]

A computer predicted the success of Etsy, Spotify, and other major startups 8 years ago — and it’s just generated a new list

In 2009, Ira Sager of Businessweek magazine set a challenge for Quid AI’s CEO Bob Goodson: programme a computer to pick 50 unheard of companies that are set to rock the world. The domain of picking “start-up winners” was — and largely still is — dominated by a belief held by the venture capital (VC) […]

In March, wind and solar generated a record 10% of US electricity

Enlarge / The large Barren Ridge solar panel array near Mojave, California. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images) According to the Energy Information Administration’s Electric Power Monthly, a bit more than 10 percent of all electricity generated in the US in March came from wind and solar power (including both distributed residential solar […]