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Project-urok-mara-wilson — Writer and performer Mara Wilson speaks about her experiences with anxiety and depression in a video for Project UROK.

Mara Wilson, writer and performer who made her name as a child actress in Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire, is sitting in front of a gray screen, hair gathered in a messy bun, wearing a sweatshirt with a stylized cat face on it and a big blue pin that says "UROK." In a casual tone that previous generations could never have conjured for such personal subjects, she is talking about anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and the arc of her life from "anxious kid" to "anxious adult."

"I wish somebody had told me it's OK to be anxious, that you don't have to fight it," Wilson says. "When you face anxiety ... when you understand it's just this false alarm in your body, then you can work with it, then you can overcome it."

Wilson is one of the celebrities who have recorded videos for a new video platform, Project UROK, which stands for "you are OK." The month-old nonprofit features candid videos with comedians, actors and other public figures talking frankly about their mental health and how they came to accept themselves.

"We're trying to think of ourselves as a sort of mental illness destigmatization network," Jenny Jaffe, founder of Project UROK.

The aim is to use the force of the Internet for good — a vast departure from the texting, bullying, shaming minefield of social media that can, and has, driven teens to suicide from a sense of isolation. Project UROK aims to give teenagers struggling with mental illness a sense of community, an assurance that they aren't alone and permission to see mental health as a subject that can be mentioned out loud.

Jaffe was inspired by past campaigns that put a human face on important issues, such as the It Gets Better Project, which used YouTube and other social platforms to give hope to LGBT youth facing bullies and harassment. But while other destigmatization platforms exist for mental illness, such as Glenn Close's campaign Bring Change 2 Mind, they're geared more toward adults.

"The generational difference in how people over a certain age interact with the Internet versus how teens and young adults do is monumental," Jaffe says

Teens, as always, speak a different language: the language of text, of Snapchat, of celebrity YouTube bloggers and Instagrams. So Project UROK, and its staff, always keep the language of modern sharing in mind. Instead of asking teens to seek information in a formal way that isn't natural for them — making a phone call or going to a library, as previous generations might have done — the project harnesses the power of the Internet.

In a connected age, using shareable video for something other than cats and memes has proven to have obvious appeal. Kids of all ages and backgrounds have written to the team, expressing interest to record their own videos and write blog posts. Since it officially launched on April 17, the platform has racked up nearly 900 YouTube subscribers, about 18,000 views and more than 13,000 Twitter followers.

The project also relies on another key aspect of the Internet: the first-person voice.

"This is a platform we built for whoever wants to use it. It's really great to have a celebrity or public figure endorsement, because it's someone people can look up to ... but we want it to take form as a two-way conversation," Jaffe says. "My message is, if you're comfortable telling your story, we want to hear your story."

Users can send an unlisted YouTube video or raw file to the team, and they'll post it to the Project UROK and also monitor comments to ensure a safe space.

What 'mental illness' really means

Mental illness is common among adolescents, and yet it's still a subject very much in the shadows. Approximately 1 in 5 teens between the ages of 13 and 18 live with a mental health condition, but only 20% of those teens actually receive help.

Stigma, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), is leaving them behind.
Jaffe feels we're finally progressing in terms of the conversation surrounding mental health, but she says there's a long way to go — especially in the U.S., where mental health and physical health are not given equal importance.

"Mental health is often seen as a luxury," she says. "Just as you need to be able to find an affordable doctor in your neighborhood, you also need to be able to find somebody you can talk to about how you're feeling. Destigmatization and spreading information about what 'mental illness' really means is the first step."

Acceptance of mental health

Jaffe, still in her 20s, is not so far removed from her teen years. She remembers keenly the isolation she felt as a teenager, when she struggled with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Even with professional help and support from her family, acceptance took years.

She turned to comedy to fight her demons and help other people talk about theirs.

"I got into comedy because it helped me when I was at such dark points in my life," Jaffe says.
She decided to switch gears after she wrote about her experience with exposure therapy and saw the outpouring of responses from people who could relate.

"I was doing [comedy] as a sort of indirect way of helping other people who were in similar situations. Project UROK is a way of doing what I was trying to do in a much more direct way," she says.

While these videos may be empowering to teens, Project UROK also makes sure to direct users to professional help if and when they need it. It has a comprehensive resources page, curated based on helpfulness and whether the staff members, all of whom have experienced mental illness or knew someone who did, would use them.

There are also several psychologists on the nonprofit's board, and it works with the Children's Health Council, which is the same organization that helped Jaffe as a kid.

"We can't ourselves administer any treatment, but we can point them in the right direction," she says. "If we come across anyone we're concerned about, we have an order of operations in place for next steps. Keeping our users safe is our No. 1 priority."

For immediate help, contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside the U.S., you can find the appropriate resources here.

We went Western last week for a duel between two talented stop-motion artists.

Since Viners Alicia Herber and Tee Ken Ng were in town, they stop by Mashable. Little did they know what we had in store for them.

As they walked in, we handed them cowboy hats with no explanation. We led them upstairs to our roof, and briefly explained the concept of our video: a speed Vine duel. Then we filmed their game faces.

Back in our Vine studio, we gave Ng and Herber a handful of random materials — patterned paper, Mashable poker chips, fish bowl gravel, sticky tack and scissors. With 30 minutes on the clock, they began crafting their animations.

Watch the video above to see how the duel went down.

Ng, a graphic designer based in Australia, specializes in "surreal and illusionistic" stop-motion. He's been on Vine since the app first launched.

"What got me hooked were the limitations Vine imposed on the recording process," he says. "It all had to be made in-app without uploading from your camera roll, which forced you to think creatively and then it became this epic challenge. The more time I spent with Vine seeing what others were doing with it, I quickly realized that it was developing into its own unique art form."

Herber's Vine followers know her as an artist who dabbles in different styles — food art, cats in costumes, hand-drawn animations. "I love unconventional materials and I'll try to figure out a way to animate with just about anything,".

Herber was also on Vine in the early days — back when there was no option to save drafts, use the ghost mode or lock the camera's focus.

"It was a bit trickier and a lot more stressful, but I liked that I couldn't obsess and finesse things," she said. "It was almost like a sketchbook back then."

Two years later, she's producing shorts for brands. Her profession overlapping with her passion is "like winning the happiness lottery," Herber says.

Whether you're moving into your first home or relocating to your second, there's a good chance you'll need outside financing to obtain it. According to the National Association of Realtors' 2014 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends report, 88% of recent buyers financed their home purchase.
For Generation Y buyers, that figure is as high as 97%, according to the report.

As many home buyers have learned, the process of qualifying for a mortgage can be both tedious and nerve-wracking. Lenders seek to know everything about a potential borrower's past and current finances to ensure that he or she has the cash flow to make monthly mortgage payments.

Here are five ways borrowers can reduce their debt, increase their cash flow and achieve a low debt-to-income ratio before buying a home.

1. Prune away credit report inaccuracies

While you might not put much thought into old information on your credit report, such as an old address or a late payment from a decade ago, lenders do.
"Nothing is overly minute when it comes to making sure your credit score is current and accurate," says Michael Bovee, president of Consumer Recovery Network, a self-help website to resolve credit issues.

Appearances matter on your credit report, and multiple addresses can give off the impression that you're financially unstable. Bovee advises consumers to delete old addresses from their report. He also urges them to contact credit agencies about paid bills that are still showing on credit reports.

"Those shouldn't be there anymore, and they'll follow you around for years if you don't pay attention," Bovee says. "They can affect your score, how you're viewed and your interest rate."

Even if a potential borrower doesn't find any errors or discrepancies on his or her credit report, it's good for him or her to get in the habit of regularly checking its contents.

"It greases the wheels," Bovee says. "It'll get you accustomed to the process of making sure that everything on your credit score accurately reflects your current information."

2. Remove co-signed obligations

When preparing their finances before a home purchase, many consumers overlook obligations that they've co-signed in the past, such as a relative's credit card or a student loan. Though they may not make payments on those obligations, consumers are still responsible for them in the eyes of lenders, who view co-signed obligations as debt and a borrowing risk.

"It's all about what's on paper — just the facts," says Scott Sheldon, a senior loan officer at Sonoma County Mortgages.

Sometimes removing a name from a co-signed obligation can be as easy as placing a phone call, Sheldon says. In the end, removing outside responsibilities from a credit report can free up buyers to borrow more, he adds.

3. Attack large and high-interest balances and improve cash flow

Before approving you for a mortgage, lenders want to feel assured that your current debts won't impede you from making monthly payments on your home. One thing that makes lenders feel uneasy about your ability to make those payments is credit card debt.
To assuage future lenders, consumers should devise a monthly budget that allows them to pay down their credit cards to 30% or less of their credit limits. Not only will this tactic trim monthly payments on the card (which are likely subject to interest), it'll also refurbish the card holder's credit score and lower his or her debt-to-income ratio.

"It’s like a three-in-one punch," says Sheldon. "The borrower will have a better FICO score, a better DTI ratio and better ability to qualify for a home because less their income is mortgaged."
To get started on paying down credit cards, consumers should set aside money each month to whittle away at their cards that have higher interest rates and larger balances, Bovee advises
"You can take someone from zero to hero using their monthly cash flow in six to 12 months, if they have that time," Bovee says.

By attacking those balances, consumers will vastly improve their cash flow, which is central to a lender's decision.

"Us lenders don't care so much about the amount of debt someone has, per se," Sheldon says. "It's the minimum payments associated with that debt that draws the line in the sand between having good probability of qualifying and having a worse probability of qualifying."

"The person with more debt and lower monthly payments is actually better off from a loan qualifying standpoint than the person with less debt and a higher monthly payment," he adds.

4. Negotiate unresolved debt on your own

Though you may have outstanding debts that have gone to collection, you can still qualify for a mortgage in the future, especially if you take prudent steps to bandage debts and erase balances from your credit report.

To start the debt triage process, consumers should reach out to their creditors or collectors and offer to pay half of their sum — or, in some cases, less, Bovee advises.
The end goal, Bovee says, should be to remove all unpaid bills from a credit report and receive documentation that the cases have been closed. With a tidier credit report, creditors will be less skittish about lending to you.

"Because the damage is already done to your credit, you need to get the balances updated to show there's nothing owed," Bovee says.

"Then, that person with three collections on their report today, as long as they're able to put a plan together and enact it over the course of the next six months, could be in the home-buying market by winter."

5. Consolidate debt

If potential home buyers have multiple student loans or credit cards with significant debt on them, they should consider consolidating their debts. In the latter scenario, consumers can search for a zero or low-interest credit card that allows them to transfer their current obligations onto one card and close out multiple open balances.

"That'll have a ripple benefit effect," Sheldon says. "Those other cards will now show zero balance, which improves utilization of credit, and you'll have a lower monthly payment, which will bolster your ability to qualify for a mortgage."

Like Sheldon, Bovee stresses the importance of reducing your debt through traditional means, such as consolidation. He advises against alternative ways to slash debt like debt settlement or credit counseling, both of which can hurt your credit in the long run.

"Use peer-to-peer lending or banks that are back in the credit consolidation market," Bovee says.

For how to calculate your debt-to-income ratio, see this helpful video:

Think music festival and visions of mushrooms dance in your head.

It's far from shocking that some festival goers boost their musical experiences with substances. Drug emergencies even disrupt some events, such as New York's 2013 Electric Zoo, which was shut down early after two attendees died from overdoses.

The substance and addiction resource Drugabuse.com analyzed Instagram posts to find out which drugs people mentioned the most when referring to their favorite music festival. Over 3 million posts were analyzed.

For starters, the most Instagrammed music festival turned out to be Electric Daisy Carnival. Not surprisingly, EDC had the most posts mentioning substance abuse, too — over 40,000. And out of all the substance-related posts for Marley Fest, 82% included mentions of marijuana. MDMA was the most popular for EDC and Ultra, and cocaine for Coachella. And the before-mentioned Burning Man sees quite a bit of DMT.

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When the going gets tough, the tough go get a massage.

Life's little luxuries are what keep many of us refreshed and relaxed when the stressors of work and home leave us frazzled. From bottomless-mimosa brunch to a day at the spa, everybody needs a little pampering every now and then.

Indulging in such activities doesn't have to break the bank. Below are a few sites and services for bringing a little luxury into your life when you've got champagne taste and a beer budget.

You probably don't was Deadpool anywhere near your mom — or a baby for that matter.

Ryan Reynolds, who plays Marvel's antihero, tweeted out a very special Mother's Day message that comes straight from his character's heart. Or what passes for his character's heart.

Only a sarcastic, foul-mouthed mercenary like Deadpool could craft such poetic, honeyed words.

Ryan Reynolds' wife, Blake Lively, is also a proud mama this year. Lively and Reynolds welcomed a baby girl, James, in December.

You think you're so tough because your gun shoots bullets? Pfft. My gun shoots cars.

That's right. A creative Grand Theft Auto V mod making the rounds this week allows players to turn regular weapons into machines of vehicular murder.

View post on imgur.com

This trick works on any gun in the PC version of GTA V, and we're here to help you make that magic for yourself.

As Mon Mothma in Return of the Jedi might put it, many cars died to bring us this information ....

There are two key steps to setting this up. First you need Script Hook V, a handy little file that makes GTA V mod-ready. Download the latest version here, open up the ZIP archive, and copy the two DLL files — ScriptHookV.dll and dinput8.dll — from the "bin" folder to the root folder where you have the game installed.

If you play using Steam, the folder location probably looks something like this: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Grand Theft Auto V

One important note before you proceed:
Neither of the DLLs overwrite anything that's already in the folder, but Script Hook V breaks your ability to play GTA Online. Mods are cleared for use in the single player and "Director" modes, but developer Rockstar Games doesn't allow them to be used online.

Once you're done playing with mods, you'll need to delete the two files and reset the game before you can use GTA Online again.

Now that that's done, head over to the Vehicle Cannon download page on gta5-mods.com and download the mod. Open up the archive and copy the lone file you find there — vehicle cannon.asi — to the same folder you dropped Script Hook V into.

That's it! Fire up the game (remember to start it in single player), travel to whichever lovely vista you'd like to use as a backdrop for an apocalyptic number of car explosions and press the F11 key to activate the mod. Then just shoot any gun in your inventory and enjoy the fireworks.

You'll know the mod works if you see white text pop up in the top left corner of the screen after you hit F11 (though the flood of cars exploding out of your gun barrel is a dead giveaway as well). You can press F11 once for a "normal" rate of fire and a second time for a "fast," though we couldn't see much of a difference between the two.

Pressing F11 a third time turns the mod off, though you'll still need to remove Script Hook V if you want to get into GTA Online.

There are tons of other scripts (the type of mod that Script Hook V enables) on the gta5-mods website if you're feeling adventurous. A lot of them amount to cheats, but there are definitely some intriguing possibilities. Like the one that causes spontaneous chaos in the world. Or the one that turns you into a Jedi Master.

Let us know if you try any of these mods out and please, share videos!

Tech news has been busy this week, with Oculus finally confirming a release date and Google releasing the schedule for its upcoming developers conference. So you may have missed some of the week's best new apps.

Luckily, each weekend, we round up a few of our favorite new and updated apps. This week's list includes an app that lets you play classical music on a piano, a social app from the creator of the Sims and a weight-tracking app.

Check out the gallery, below, to see our top picks. If you're looking for more, take a look at our last roundup here.

Into the Circle

Into the Circle is one of those simple games that is trickier than it seems. The premise is somewhat like darts, in that you want to perfectly aim and time shots to make it into the circles, with extra points for landing in the center. But the speed and angles get progressively more difficult as the levels advance, which takes the games from simple to frustrating very quickly.
Keep an eye on: The circles in the distance. If you overshoot your next target, you can still continue provided you make it into a circle somewhere on the board.

Pro tip: If you run out of stars and want to get around the game’s somewhat maddening freemium constraints, kill the app and restart. It won’t save your previous progress, but it does allow you to start over without making an in-app purchase or clicking through the app’s ads.

iOS: free

Image: Gameblyr

Slim

The aim of Slim’s weight tracking app is to help you not only with daily tracking, but also with small game features like reminders and in-app rewards for meeting goals.

Keep an eye on: The app also supports Touch ID at login to ensure your data is kept private.

Pro tip: Apple Health integration allows you to automatically sync your weight from Wi-Fi-enabled scales like Fitbit’s or Withings’ with the Health app.

iOS: $0.99

Image: Josef Moser

Tastebud

Looking for new music and podcasts to listen to? New books to read? TV and movies to watch and apps to download? Tastebud users ask for recommendations and get suggestions from their extended social networks.

Keep an eye on: Your notifications to find out when people you know need a rec or when someone likes one of your suggestions.
Pro tip: You can customize your feed to filter out certain categories you’re not interested in.

iOS: free
Image: Josar Media Inc

Thred

Created by the man behind the Sims and SimCity games, Thred is a social app that’s a bit like Twitter cofounder Biz Stone’s Super. Users share brief stories by overlaying text and stickers onto images.

Keep an eye on: The featured section, which has some of the app’s more popular ideas. You can also switch to an “everyone” view to get a sense of what all users are sharing.

Pro tip: The app has a neat scroller control that helps you easily search through your camera roll chronologically to find photos on any given day.

iOS: free

Image: Syntertainment Incorporated

Touch Pianist

A simple but beautiful app, Touch Pianist takes classical music you’ve heard a million times and recreates it as a visualization that you “play” just by tapping on the screen in the right rhythm.

Keep an eye on: The app’s music catalog, which comes with more than a dozen songs preloaded for free. You can buy additional scores through in-app purchases.

Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to play too fast or too slow or mix up the beat a bit; the music holds up, regardless of your skill level. Tapping farther down on the screen decreases the volume while moving higher increases it.

iOS: free

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Are you tired of constantly cutting the cheese? Unsurprisingly, there's an app for this.

A little device called the CH4 is named after the chemical compound CH4, or methane, which is found in natural gas. Har har.

Funding for the fart-tracking wearable is underway on Kickstarter, where a pledge of $120 will get you one of these non-invasive little guys.

Brazilian graphic designer and wearables enthusiast Rodrigo Narciso is the brain behind the tiny 3D-printed tracker. He developed the idea for his Master's thesis in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. The concept is simple: Correlate how much you fart to what you're eating.

"People are divided. Some love it and some think it’s just a joke/parody," he told Mashable.
Place the square in your back pocket or attach it to your belt and go about your day. The sensor will detect each time you fart and record it on what resembles a car's gas gauge. Then, on the associated app, enter your daily food intake; the CH4 will figure out which foods make you extra gassy, and can thus be avoided.

Petra Nemcova on the red carpet at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014.

Image: Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP/Associated Press

CANNES, France — Grab your sunglasses and fancy shoes, but leave that selfie stick behind. It's time for the 68th Annual Festival de Cannes, the most spectacular, sensational and, yes, snootiest event in the international cinema calendar.

In an effort to keep this invitation-only event above the fray, festival big Thierry Frémaux has made it clear that red carpet social media snaps are a faux pas. They don't just slow down proceedings, they are “ridiculous and grotesque.” It's that level of 'tude, and the danger of those notorious boos, that gets filmmakers into a froth about debuting here.

While Cannes films don't necessarily make a killing at the box office, their impact is felt in other ways. The work inspires other filmmakers, influences fashion and gets tongues wagging. But for true movie lovers, these 11 days in the South of France are nirvana. If you include the International Critics' Week, Directors' Fortnight and Cannes Classics sidebars, close to 100 features will unspool.

Some of which are on the beach, under the stars! Here are some titles we've got eyes on this year:

Raise your hand if you have a working SNES at home. How about an Atari 2600? What about a functional PC from 1990? Didn’t think so.

Gamers love getting new hardware that can play the latest and greatest titles with maxed out graphics and silky frame rates, but that sometimes means that our old favorites get lost to the march of progress.

Luckily, several developers and designers have shined up their code to give their games fresh life. Whether you want to play on your PC, a console, or a tablet, there are eight excellent games of yore that you can revisit on modern hardware.

1. Halo: Master Chief Edition

The Halo franchise has spanned multiple hardware generations since its first game appeared in 2001. The Master Chief edition offers updates to Halo 2, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 3 and Halo 4. That’s a total of 45 campaign missions and more than 100 multiplayer maps. If that wasn’t enough, the collection also has the Halo: Nightfall live action digital series that serves as a prequel to the upcoming Halo 5: Guardians. It’s a must-have for any serious fans of the helmeted hero.

Available on Xbox One.

2. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition

BioWare’s classic role-playing game Baldur’s Gate got a remaster and more from BeamDog in 2012. The remake spiffed up the original title and its expansion pack with more than 400 improvements. It also added in some fresh content, including new characters, new map areas and a new arena adventure. The team also expanded the available platforms to include mobile options. But it still has all the things that first turned heads about the game when it first launched in 1998: branching dialogue, compelling story lines and complex character relationships.

If that’s not enough classic RPG for you, Baldur’s Gate II also got an Enhanced Edition. That means you can adventure once more through all of this vision of Faerûn on the contemporary hardware of your choice.

Available on Android, iOS, Mac, Linux and Windows.

3. Grim Fandango

Tim Schafer has been supplying gamers with top-notch titles for more than a decade. But before the creation of his Double Fine studio, one of Schafer’s earliest projects was the noir adventure game Grim Fandango. It won critical acclaim for its excellent writing and soundtrack, but seemed lost to the ages when LucasArts closed down its adventure game development arm and eventually was bought out entirely. But fans of Manny Calavera were able to get reacquainted with the skeleton earlier this year thanks to a remaster for modern hardware. Updates in the remaster included character textures, dynamic lighting, a re-recorded soundtrack and lots of developer commentary.

Available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.

4. LucasArts Star Wars games

When Disney Interactive took over LucasArts, it seemed like the end of an era. LucasArts was responsible for several pivotal and beloved titles during the 1990s that we feared would not reemerge again.

Luckily, the Disney crew teamed up with GOG.com to re-release more than a dozen old LucasArts games. From the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Star Wars Battlefront II, Star Wars: Dark Forces and Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.

If that isn’t enough of a treasure trove for you, the partnership also includes refreshed versions of Sam & Max Hit the Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. All of the remastered games can be found DRM-free on GOG.com.

Available on Windows, and selectively on Mac and Linux.

5. Homeworld

This title holds a place in history as the first fully three-dimensional real-time strategy game. Homeworld debuted in 1999 as a space game where you control a fleet in either singleplayer or multiplayer missions.

Then Gearbox Software (of Borderlands fame) picked up the intellectual property and launched remastered versions of both games this February. The Homeworld Remastered Collection also includes the classic versions of the games, but the refreshed takes feature vastly improved graphics and sound. The team even redid the score and the original actors’ voice recordings.

Available on Windows.

6. System Shock and System Shock 2

When the first System Shock debuted in 1994, it was a genre-defining shooter that allowed the player to explore through emergent gameplay. The sequel in 1999 continued that march of shooter innovation. Games that mix the first-person shooter and RPG genres might be a dime a dozen now, but the System Shock games were among the first to find the perfect balance between the two.

Although Looking Glass Studios is no more, the System Shock games have benefited from an active and creative modding community. There are whole fan-sites dedicated to sprucing up the original games and making them playable on today’s PC hardware. SystemShock.org gathered the game’s superfans to create a Community Patch that would bring the creation a final bit of polish for total immersion on today’s PCs.

Available on Windows.

7. Wings Remastered Edition

Back in the days of the Amiga console, Wings brought gamers into the shoes of a World War I fighter pilot. The game drew accolades for its combination of a classic flight simulator with arcade-style fun. While the look of the game was about as good as you could get in 1990, the Cinemaware team launched a Kickstarter project to remaster the game with all the power of modern hardware. Following successful funding at the end of 2013, the team redid the graphics, music, sound and controls for a fresh take on the fighter pilot experience. They even secured enough funding to port the remastered game onto both iOS and Android platforms, although the work on those is ongoing.

Available on Windows.

8. Another World

When a game merits inclusion at the Museum of Modern Art, it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s a classic. Starting with its initial release in 1991, Another World has managed to retain enough players and popularity to support several updates, ports, and anniversary editions. Players have gone on this fiendishly difficult adventure with Lester on the Amiga, Atari, PC DOS, SNES, Mac and Windows platforms. The most recent release is the 20th anniversary edition, which brought it to just about every game-playing piece of hardware you might want.

Available on Android, iOS, Mac, Nintendo 3DS, Ouya, Playstation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, WiiU, Windows and Xbox One.

Image: NepalPhotoProject/Instagram

It is not always cheers of victories for the people involved in the rescue operations. Here, a day before famously rescuing Pema Lama, L.B. Basnet, an officer from the Nepal Armed Police Force (APF) is seen doing necessary paperwork after retrieving a deceased body of a 47-year-old shopkeeper, Dambar Karki.

On April 26, 2015, one day after the most devastating Earthquake to hit Nepal in 80 years, the Nepal Photo Project began.

The project was founded with the intention of documenting the area in and around Kathmandu following the disaster, and to provide critical information so others outside the region can find information about rescue and relief efforts.

Approximately 7,000 people were killed in the 7.8 quake.

Image: Mashable

Nintendo aims to have Mario, Luigi and Link on your smartphones by 2017, the company said in an investor presentation in Japan Friday.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said the company would aim to have five games out by the end of the following fiscal year. (Nintendo's fiscal years run April 1 to March 31.) He reiterated the games would not be mobile ports of existing titles, but new games designed with the touch interface in mind.

"You may think it is a small number, but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business," Iwata said.

Nintendo announced its partnership with mobile game company DeNA in March, finally bringing its well-known characters and games to platforms outside of its own consoles and handhelds. The company said at the time it was going to explore many game types and monetization models, and Iwata clarified that it wouldn't stick to models (like aggressive free-to-play) that would hurt the company's brand.

Nintendo's presentation Friday also mentioned plans to unite its mobile games under the umbrella account system as its other consoles and handhelds, something that really isn't available currently.

We could see Nintendo's first mobile game by the end of the year, though the company made no firm promises, or commented on which licenses are likely to be turned into mobile titles.

Image: Corbis Katie Edwards/Ikon Images

Think of the last time you felt stressed. (For many, that time might be right ... now.)

Maybe your heart's racing a little bit, your brain wheels won't stop whirring, your eyes even feel like they might be bugging out of your head a bit. You probably feel like you're racing toward a finish line you're not sure you'll make it to, while something heavy is pumping through your veins. And all the while there's this looming thought over your head of, "This isn't good for me! I need to de-stress!"

Image: Mashable, Adario Strange

NEW YORK — Fear the Raptor.

That's what the Ford F-150 Raptor driving simulator, lurking on the lower level of the Javits Center at the New York Auto Show, should say as you walk up to its imposing display.

A combination virtual driving course and amusement park ride, the operators of the simulator demand that you sign a lengthy legal waiver before entering the circular area housing the intimidating machine.

In addition to the waiver, a large sign is posted nearby that prohibits anyone under 18 years old, under 5'2" tall or over 220 pounds from entering. Those warnings alone give some indication of how intense the experience might be, but it's not until you sit down behind the wheel of the interactive beast that you really find out just how seriously those warnings should be taken.

Image: Image Source/Corbis

Japan has given us a lot over the years. Karaoke, emoji, anime, Nintendo. Crying rooms.

Wait, crying rooms?

Yeah, apparently this is a new thing in Japan. According to The Telegraph, the Mitsui Garden Yotsuya hotel in Tokyo is offering women special "crying rooms" to help them combat stress.

The rooms, which can be booked for 10,000 Japanese yen per day (that's about $85), through August 31, contain tissues, warm sheets and eye masks. Women can also watch tearjerker films — such as Forrest Gump — or read super-sad manga.

As Jezebel notes, the idea is pretty genius. Sometimes there really is nothing better for the psyche than a good cry. And having a safe space to do it in — away from home, away from work — strikes me as brilliant.

Still, I do take issue with the fact that the rooms are only for women. Yes, I realize this is Japan, where sometimes cultural ideas around gender are, let's say, different from the western world. Still, I'd think Japanese men could enjoy a good cry, too.

Japan has lots of weird hotels and cafes

As The Telegraph notes, crying rooms are just par for the course in the wacky world of Japanese hotels and cafes.

Tokyo is packed with "love hotels" — hotel rooms designed for short stays when you are feeling amorous. Reportedly, 1.4 million couples visit a love hotel each day.

There are also "cuddle cafes" where men pay to sleep next to a girl. They don't get to have sex with the woman, but can pay extra to stare in her eyes for a minute or to stroke her hair. (OK, this is just creepy.)

And of course, Japan gave us the cat cafe — a concept since adopted in America — where individuals can enjoy a latte or juice while stroking a cat. Japan also now has bunny, owl and bird cafes.

Stress is real, crying helps

It's easy to dismiss a crying room as something silly or even unnecessary. Still, studies show that adult workers are under more stress than ever before. This is true in the east and in the west.

Crying is often seen as a sign of weakness, but evolutionary biologists have done studies that show the emotional benefits of crying

It's good to get it out.

And frankly, if we're allowed to have nap rooms at work, I like the idea of having a crying room at a hotel.

It's better than the subway. (Can I get a shout-out from my fellow criers on the C Train?)

Image: Ron Watts/Corbis

A "massive" global expansion of solar power — possibly enough to supply about a third or more of the world's electricity — may be necessary by 2050 to reduce the impacts of fossil fuels on the climate, according to a report published by MIT this week.

Solar's efficiency and abundance make it the clean energy source best suited to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But for it to make a big enough climate difference, the amount of solar power generation capacity on U.S. soil would have to increase from today's 20 gigawatts to up to 400 gigawatts, or enough to provide power to 80 million homes, Robert Stoner, deputy director of the MIT Energy Initiative and a co-author of the report, said.

The study says that may not happen in the U.S. unless solar industry-supported funding and incentives are almost completely re-imagined. The solar industry currently supports keeping those incentives in place.

Those changes would include scrapping state renewable power generation standards for utilities and directly subsidizing solar power generation in lieu of tax credits, according to the report, "The Future of Solar Energy." As new ways of funding solar power are being worked out, new technology needs to be developed for solar energy storage, smarter power grid management and new kinds of solar panels that use more abundant raw materials that would help keep solar panel prices low, the study suggests.

Today, the solar industry is booming. The cost of a utility scale solar photovoltaic installation has fallen about 55% since 2010. Employment in the solar industry rose 22% in 2014 after the number of solar projects in the U.S. jumped 140% the year before. But the solar industry fears its expansion could slow if Congress does not renew a federal solar subsidy, the Solar Investment Tax Credit, after it expires in 2016.

John Rogers, senior energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the study gets a lot of things right and talks about building the foundation for a massive scale-up in solar power in the U.S.

"It says drastic cuts in government support are a bad idea, and I think that many of us would agree with that," he said.

Government support for solar should be redefined, eschewing tax credits for a direct subsidy for solar power generation, creating a direct incentive to generate as much solar power as possible, the study suggests.

A tax credit rewards building solar farms — adding capacity, in industry parlance — more than the actual generation of electricity, Stoner said.

"It never really finds its way to solar panels on roofs," he said. "To get the most bang for your buck in terms of climate with solar assets, you should provide a benefit to production instead of capacity creation."

MIT also downplays the cost effectiveness of residential rooftop solar, saying its current cost per watt is about 80% greater than for a utility-scale solar power plant. It doesn't dismiss rooftop solar entirely, however. The report recommends that more states allow companies such as Solar City to own and operate solar panels on homeowners' roofs.

Though Stoner said the goal of the study is to show that solar power needs all the help it can get from Washington, the solar industry itself disagrees with the tactics the study suggests.

Solar Energy Industry Association Vice President Ken Johnson said the report "offers an incomplete and flawed picture of solar economics," especially regarding rooftop solar and tax credits, which have proved to be an incentive to build nearly all the solar installations operating today.

On a larger scale, scrapping state renewable portfolio standards would make more efficient use of utility-scale solar energy developments, even though the standards are effective in many states, Stoner said.

Renewable portfolio standards are requirements that states impose upon major utilities often mandating that a certain percentage of their power generation come from renewables. They vary from state to state, and many have none at all, especially Southern states.

The standards go far to boost solar in some states. For example, solar installations are being built all across North Carolina, partly because its renewable portfolio standard requires utilities to get a certain percentage of their renewable power from solar.

Stoner said those mandates restrict utilities from building solar farms where it may be sunniest.

"Artificially confining it within the borders of a state makes solar power more expensive," Stoner said.

But that may be based on an outdated assumption about the ability of solar panels to generate electricity, Rogers said.

It was previously thought that fairly cloudy regions such as New England could not produce as much solar power as Southern states, but recent research suggests that solar power generation capabilities of New England and Florida aren't very different if solar panels are oriented optimally to take the most advantage of seasonal sunlight and temperatures, he said.

"Turns out we have a resource a whole lot more widespread than (the study) would lead one to believe," Rogers said. "You want to be setting the record straight, not perpetuating myths."

Image: Flickr, Michael Kappel

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS3 days ago

Amazon wants to give JetBlue passengers a new option for tuning out that crying baby or talkative seat neighbor.

The e-commerce company will let members of Amazon's $99 annual loyalty program Prime stream its instant video service for free on their Wi-Fi enabled devices via JetBlue's inflight Wi-Fi service. JetBlue is the only U.S. airline to offer free Wi-Fi on its planes.

Called Fly-Fi for Amazon Prime, the service will give Prime members access to original Amazon shows like "Transparent," its other streaming TV and movies, as well as the ability to rent or buy other titles on Amazon's Instant Video store.

Major airlines are moving to provide more in-flight streaming options that passengers can access on their own devices.

Previously Amazon Prime members could pay for Jet Blue's premium Wi-Fi service called Fly-Fi Plus and stream video that way. But now members will be able to stream on JetBlue's free service. Amazon's Prime Music streaming service, e-books from its Kindle store and apps and games from the Amazon app store will also be available.

“We want to provide the best digital video experience to our customers and we’re excited that with JetBlue, we will raise the bar in airline entertainment,” Michael Paull, Vice President of Digital Video at Amazon, said in a statement.

Prime members will be able watch Amazon Instant Video from their laptops, Fire devices, iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets without downloading anything beforehand. JetBlue's free Fly-Fi broadband Internet will be available on all JetBlue's Airbus A321 and A320 aircraft later this year, and on JetBlue's Embraer E190 aircraft in 2016.

The agreement will also let JetBlue Airways Corp. use some behind-the-scenes footage from Amazon's original shows on its seatback TV inflight offerings.

Amazon.com Inc. has been expanding its Prime program's offerings in an effort to grow its membership with services such as grocery delivery, one-hour delivery in some cities, beefed up video streaming and the creation of a Bluetooth speaker called the Echo that syncs with Prime music.

If you want to know what Tesla's affordable electric car, the Model 3, will look like, you'll need to wait about a year.

CEO Elon Musk revealed on a company earnings call Wednesday that the company plans to unveil the Tesla Model 3 — which is expected to cost about $35,000 before government subsidies — in March 2016, although he quickly backpedaled and said that the date could change.

"I mean, we are hoping to show off the Model 3 in approximately March of next year," Musk said, according to a transcript of the call. "Again, like, don't hold me to that month, but that's, like — that's our aspiration."

Musk also revealed a target date for the car to go on sale, which would be mid 2017 at the earliest, though he expects the real date would be later that year.

The current cheapest Tesla, the Model S 70D, costs $75,000. Other carmakers have grabbed headlines for announcing and releasing electric vehicles that are much less expensive. The Nissan Leaf starts at $29,000, and GM unveiled $30,000 Chevy Bolt earlier this year; it's expected to be on the road in 2017.

According the Kelley's Blue Book, the average buying price of a new car in the U.S. in 2013 was $32,086.
Musk also gave a progress report on the Tesla Model X, the company's electric SUV. He said customers would be able to begin ordering the vehicle in July 2015, and cars would likely begin shipping in Q4.

Tesla Model X SUV makes a surprise appearance at #CES2015. #MashCES

A photo posted by Lance Ulanoff (@lanceulanoff) on Jan 7, 2015 at 11:55am PST

There's no better way to experience a city than a leisurely tour through the streets where locals outnumber tourists. This mesmerizing video of Shanghai provides a new perspective on the enormous Chinese metropolis, but the creator says it's only the beginning.

"‘Walk in Shanghai’ is only an introductory tour of Shanghai's urban streets," said JT Singh, who produced the video.

Singh has produced similar videos in the past, including a unique look into daily life in Pyongyang, North Korea.

For Shanghai, urban landscapes take on a new shape as the action is reversed, sped up and slowed down.

"It’s through a heightened focus on one man’s seemingly unstructured journey that we discover the ultimate protagonist of this story: the transcendent power of using your legs for discovering a city,".

The team that worked on the video included Singh, Charles Lanceplaine, Joe Nafis, Ling, Jay Meador, Christina Lu, Ema Liao, Lucie Mouchet, Hoi Hoi, with sound design by Slava Pogorelsky.