Eurovision Fans Find Swiss Franc's Latest Surge Hits a Sour Note
As many as half a million fans heading to Basel for the Eurovision Song Contest next week are about to discover that Swiss prices stoked by the franc's gains are far from music to their ears.
With the currency having hit a decade high against the dollar in April, when it also reached close to the strongest in that period against the euro, visitors will soon find their passion for pop comes at a cost. For those from neighboring countries, a 200-franc ($242.28) hotel night would have been at least 12 euros ($13.56) cheaper if the event took place on the same date in 2024.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Geek Vibes Nation
14 minutes ago
- Geek Vibes Nation
10 Most Difficult Arcade Games In History
If you think modern microtransactions are bad, try playing some classic arcade games sometime. Sure, the game might only cost a quarter or 50 cents, but that's just the starting price. Once you run out of lives, you'll have to refill the machine. In theory, you could complete an arcade game for just a quarter. In reality, it would take weeks or months of practice. It was not uncommon to spend £20, £50 or even more to see the ending of some old arcade games. And, of course, that was just for one playthrough. Yes, classic games were very different from what we have in the 21st century with its multitude of mods and options. But even considering that these games were designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible, some of them. 10. Robotron: 2084 Smash TV is a notoriously tough game, and it becomes even more difficult when using two joysticks — a setup popularized by its spiritual predecessor Robotron: 2084, developed by the same Eugene Jarvis. From the moment you start, Robotron throws waves of enemies at you from all directions, filling the screen with chaos and projectiles. Combine that relentless action with 40-year-old visuals that can blur what's actually happening, and you've got a game that was punishing back then — and nearly impossible for modern players used to cleaner design. The controls are complex, and in many emulated versions or console ports, they become even trickier to handle. Still, for those who enjoy pure arcade challenges, it's a nostalgic masterpiece. And for gamers seeking instant thrills and fast-paced action, there are modern alternatives too — from twin-stick shooters to bonus-based online games like those found at Richard Casino app download, which deliver quick, rewarding gameplay in a very different (but equally addictive) form. 9. Defender Side-scrolling shooters have always been known for their high difficulty. This was true of the very first game in the genre, Defender. In theory, it should have been a simple mission. Shoot the alien invaders and save the astronauts. But the enemies attack quickly and become increasingly unpredictable. And the hyperspace function does not guarantee safety. It can move you to a more advantageous part of the screen or lead to instant death. But for the most part, Defender is at least honest. Your first few attempts will most likely result in a quick defeat, but practice can lead to pretty good results. And death is usually the result of your own stupid mistakes, not unfair AI—kind of like playing a kenku DnD, where creative limitations force you to think more carefully rather than rely on brute force. 8. Zaxxon As we've seen, when games start experimenting with new ideas, they tend to become much more difficult than the games that inspired them. Zaxxon is actually one of the first games with an isometric perspective. This gave it a truly unique look that helped it stand out in crowded arcades (and which is still relevant today), but it also meant that players now had to keep track of their height and position to avoid certain obstacles. Add to that the fact that your ship is constantly moving forward at a speed that is impossible for you to comprehend (and that you can run out of fuel), and it's easy to see why so many playthroughs quickly end in disaster. Nevertheless, it's still a very fun and unusual game. 7. Storm Storm remains one of the most unique games ever offered by arcade machines. At a time when most developers were trying to replicate the success of Pac-Man or Space Invaders, its joystick controller and vector graphics (an early attempt at first-person gameplay) stood out as something completely new for the era. 'Storm' is more like a psychedelic experience than a traditional arcade game. The unique gameplay is one source of difficulty, but there is also a lot of content here, and it's easy to get lost if you try to complete all 99 levels (and even more). Of course, you can choose which level to start with, but that won't help much if you don't have the skills to take on the game's ruthless enemies. 6. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Fighting games have always been known for their short story modes. If you're good at them, you can get through most of them in 10-15 minutes. Therefore, early arcade fighting games had a solution that ensured most players would continue playing: absolutely brutal, blatantly unfair difficulty. Playing Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is like playing a slot machine. You only win when the AI randomly decides it's time for you to win. To be honest, you'll probably defeat the first couple of opponents without much trouble, but around the third match, the computer will turn into Agent Smith from The Matrix and resist everything you throw at it as soon as you make a move. It's silly and manipulative. Fortunately, such tricks are much less common now that fighting games have left arcades. 5. Missile Command Missile Command remains one of the most intense games despite its apparent simplicity. You control three anti-missile batteries. But the incoming missiles are unstoppable, and your ammunition is limited. Of course, you can stop some of these missiles, but not all of them. You will never be able to stop them all. A devastating defeat is inevitable. The only question is how soon it will come. A handful of experienced players have completed all 256 levels of Missile Command; it takes hours (a lifetime in arcade game terms). Most players don't even come close. After all, the goal of Missile Command is not to win, but to resist the inevitable for as long as possible. 4. Stargate Stargate is a sequel to Defender, also known as Defender II in some versions, so that should give you some idea of the difficulty level. While the basic gameplay remains the same, everything now happens even faster, and new enemies have more chaotic attack patterns and even homing attacks. But what really makes Stargate such a challenging game is that no matter how much time you spend learning the game, pattern recognition will only help you so much. This is one of those games that tries its hardest to push your hand-eye coordination to the limit. If you lack skills in this area, you will always struggle to get a high score. 3. Ghosts 'n Goblins What list of difficult games would be complete without Ghosts 'n Goblins? The NES port may be more well-known these days, but the franchise actually began with arcade machines. The original arcade game is just as incredibly difficult as its console version. In fact, it may even be more difficult, as there were no cheats for this version of the game back in the day. You were either good enough to beat the game or you died. A lot. And you just kept paying to keep playing. Although this game is more 'fair' than other arcade games, it is still designed to make you spend as much money as possible. Two hits kill you. Enemies appear randomly from all sides. Projectiles can fill the entire screen, and you have to perform many difficult jumps. And you have to go through all of this twice to see the real ending of the game. Good luck. 2. Gravitar The lead developers of Gravitar have publicly admitted that they cannot complete even the most difficult levels and certainly did not expect players to be able to do so. That alone should tell you almost everything you need to know about the incredibly high level of difficulty. Everything in this game is designed to test your patience. First, there's the engine controls. Yes, Asteroids was a pioneer in this area, and many gamers were familiar with this type of control when Gravitar came out, but it's still considered very sensitive. Then you have to consider how important gravity is to the gameplay. Wherever you go, it always pulls you somewhere, so you have to take that into account. But then Gravitar starts to mock you by adding reverse gravity and, eventually, invisible landscapes. In the end, you will experience the joys of reverse gravity in invisible landscapes. If it had a controller that could be thrown across the room, most players would have done so by that point. 1. Sinister 'Beware, I am alive.' These iconic words from Sinister have meant almost instant death for countless gamers over the years. In terms of gameplay, Sinister is actually one of the most innovative games of its time, although these innovations are what make it so challenging. You find yourself in an open space arena and must start collecting 'Sinibombs' by shooting at planetoid-like objects. This is the only weapon that can defeat Sinister when he awakens. Oh, and if you don't destroy it quickly enough, its minions will be able to regenerate. Although Sinister isn't actually on the playing field at the start of each level, it quickly assembles itself. When he's ready, he charges at you with the fury of an enraged grizzly bear. One hit and your ship is destroyed. Basically, everything works against you from the start to keep your score low and you keep putting quarters into the game. Rarely does a game last more than a few minutes.
Fast Company
20 minutes ago
- Fast Company
WordPress veterans launch FAIR project to tackle security and control concerns
The recent travails of WordPress have caused consternation among the web community that relies on the platform, which powers more than four in ten websites online today. Now, a coalition of prominent WordPress contributors and the Linux Foundation is unveiling a federated update and plugin-distribution network aimed at eliminating what they describe as a critical 'supply chain security' vulnerability at the core of the world's most widely used website system. The FAIR Package Manager project, to be announced at a conference in Switzerland later today, enables web-hosting companies and large organizations to run their own mirrors of WordPress's core update, plugin, theme, and translation servers. This setup would replace reliance on domain controlled by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. Supporters say the new system will strengthen security, reduce costs, and open new commercial opportunities for software that millions depend on for web hosting. The project emerged earlier this year in response to controversial moves by Mullenweg. In September, he cut off access to WP Engine—a popular WordPress hosting provider—accusing it of extracting hundreds of millions of dollars in value from the open-source platform without adequate contributions in return. He also alleged that the company breached WordPress trademarks, creating confusion. Amid the fallout, around 150 employees exited Automattic after Mullenweg offered buyouts to those who disagreed with his handling of the situation. 'In October, when Automattic took over the slug of WP Engine's product within the ecosystem, we received phone calls from the chief legal counsels of some of our clients—these are large corporations—saying, 'this is a supply chain security issue,'' says Karim Marucchi, CEO of enterprise agency Crowd Favorite and one of the project's initiators. Around the same time, Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast SEO, was attempting to communicate with Mullenweg. While de Valk shared the view that more equitable contributions to WordPress were needed, he disagreed with Mullenweg's methods. 'We stopped talking pretty much after that, because I didn't agree with him,' de Valk says. One central concern is that every WordPress site depends on for updates and extensions. 'When we started looking at this, we realized there's a lot of things in this whole ecosystem that we don't control,' de Valk says. 'One of the things that everybody's eyes were opened on was that was, in fact, not part of the WordPress Foundation, but owned by Matt privately, and that he used it as his private website in many ways.' WordPress executive director Mary Hubbard notes that users have always had control over how their sites are updated and where updates originate—flexibility that has existed since WordPress's early days. 'The beauty of WordPress and open source is that people have complete control to run it how they please and modify how it works,' she tells Fast Company. The FAIR system offers an alternative that remains fully compatible with WordPress but operates independently from 'It's still all WordPress,' says de Valk. 'It's just a different distribution.' Rather than forking WordPress, FAIR provides server components that anyone can run. Over 100 contributors from more than 10 organizations have been involved in building it over the past six months, according to Marucchi. The group has asked the Linux Foundation to provide neutral oversight. Hubbard pointed out that some large hosts like Newfold/Bluehost have implemented custom mirrors in the past, and emphasized that WordPress's update system has always allowed users to modify where their updates come from. 'The important thing is that users know where their updates are coming from and have a choice to change it, regardless of their host,' she says. 'WordPress is a critical piece of infrastructure for communication and for organizations that rely on it for their website, for content management, for blogs and media,' says Mike Dolan, SVP of legal and strategic programs at the Linux Foundation. 'And in order to sustain something like that, you need to have a reliable backend behind it.' To avoid centralization, the Linux Foundation has created a technical steering committee cochaired by long-time WordPress leaders Carrie Dils, Mika Epstein, and Ryan McCue. McCue, the architect of the WordPress REST API, called FAIR 'a platform to power the next decades of WordPress,' and noted that the community had 'fractured' and needed to be brought back together. Dolan echoed the sentiment. 'I think the interesting part about this is the organic nature of this,' he says. 'This is something that is coming out of the community. It's people who have lifelong and career-long engagement in the WordPress community who are saying we need to go and build this, and they want to work on it together.' Jory Burson, VP of standards at the Linux Foundation and a participant in the project, hopes it will lead to a 'reintroduction and reenergization of the community.' She adds that morale is currently low. 'I think this is going to be very exciting for people, and hopefully move some folks past this negativity and drama. We want to get people focused on the very positive future that we think WordPress still has.' Although FAIR was created out of frustration with Automattic's control over its backers insist it's not a competing fork. 'When we get up on stage on Friday, literally the words that are going to come out of our mouth are: 'We're offering this code to Automattic, WP Engine, GoDaddy, Newfold—everyone,'' says Marucchi. If widely adopted, the network could allow developers to ship both free and premium versions of plugins in a single signed package—something currently prohibited by the official WordPress repository. 'That opens up innovation,' de Valk says, 'making it easier to build businesses around plugins and to provide good user experiences.' Still, Hubbard emphasizes that fragmentation of WordPress's core infrastructure could create more problems than it solves—disrupting update processes, inflating server loads, and breaking plugin telemetry used for ensuring compatibility. 'If this work leads to improvements like signed updates or better fallback systems, we're open to that,' she says. 'But it has to be done with the same long-term care that got us here.' The FAIR repository is already live on GitHub and accepting contributions. Whether Automattic will participate remains uncertain; regardless, the project team plans to move forward. 'You're dealing with a community that has had some trust challenges in the past, and they're looking for stability,' says Dolan. 'They're looking for neutrality. They have business that they want to get done.'
New York Times
26 minutes ago
- New York Times
Paul Durcan, Irish Poet of Tortured and Tender Souls, Is Dead at 80
Paul Durcan, an Irish poet whose droll, sardonic and frequently tender poems about lads in dimly lit pubs, quotidian life in the countryside and the trauma of political violence made him one of Ireland's most popular writers of the 20th century, died on May 17 in Dublin. He was 80. His death, in a nursing home, was caused by age-related myocardial degeneration, his daughter Sarah Durcan said. In the annals of long-suffering poets, Mr. Durcan's hardships probably merit special distinction. After he set about becoming a writer in the 1960s, his father — a hidebound judge who called him a 'sissy' — apparently sent family members to remove him from a Dublin pub and then had him committed to a psychiatric hospital. Mr. Durcan suffered through several years of electroshock treatments. He feared he would be lobotomized. 'I was seen as going the way of a poet,' he once said, 'and that had to be stopped.' After running away the hospital, Mr. Durcan sought out fellow poets for assistance and mentorship, including Patrick Kavanagh, who helped him publish his work. Mr. Durcan channeled the trauma of his father's emotional abandonment and the horrors of psychiatric wards into an unmistakable voice on the page. 'Durcan's abundant imagination has indeed left us a universe of iconoclastic poems that combine art and everyday life, insight and originality,' the poet Gerard Smyth wrote in The Irish Times after Mr. Durcan's death. 'He was one of the great mavericks, a literary phenomenon with a commitment to poetry as a calling.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
