The Year in News: What Happened Next (Stories From July-August 2016)

Let’s continue our look back at some of the news stories we’ve covered here at GaS in 2016 as well as following up on later developments. In July, producer Larry Kasanoff revealed a planned $80 million budget Tetris movie would need to be a trilogy to tell the “story” in full. There’s no sign of the first instalment yet, but aficionados might prefer to fill their time with a new graphic novel about the history and impact of the game.

A Minecraft user made a working Game Boy Advance, though it could only play Pokemon Fire Red and key features were missing, making it more of an interactive map than a game. That project was topped earlier this month when another Minecraft player created a working Atari 2600 with choice of games. The only hitch was that the game’s screen refreshed at 15 frames an hour, meaning a single second of gameplay would take four hours to recreate.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation launched action to challenge the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy measures, even if you don’t use them to breach copyright. Only those uses specified by the Librarian of Congress are exempt from this rule. The EFF said the law breaches the first amendment because copyright laws should always be an exception rather than a default rule. The government has since filed a motion to dismiss the claim, arguing that anti-piracy rules aren’t a free speech issue and that in any case there’s no reason for the EFF to bring a case because it hasn’t suffered directly itself.

Tourist staff on the Faroe Islands attached cameras to sheep to map the island as part of a campaign to persuade Google to add the remote location to its Street View mapping. Google took notice and has since sent both equipment and advisors to the island to help locals (alongside sheep and tourists) to capture images.

In August a Chinese city tested a giant 300-seat bus that straddles two lanes of traffic, leaving two meters of space underneath for cars to drive through. The project has since been abandoned after investors pulled funding. Engineers had already found problems such as two meters not being enough for some SUVs, and the work to re-site roadside traffic lights being too extensive to make the project viable.

A host of familiar names turned up on the Federal Election Commissions list of people who’d registered as a presidential candidate. They included Eric Cartman, Mr Tyrion Lannister, Kylo Ren and Harry Potter. It appears none made it on to ballots in any states or were classed as official write-in candidates.