“A Normal Lost Phone.” That’s precisely what you think after launching this curious new indie game. The text messages, calendar app and music player — everything is made to look and feel like a smartphone. You’re free to poke around, but with no cre…
Source: Engadget – ‘A Normal Lost Phone’ is a game set entirely inside a smartphone
Monthly Archives: January 2017
Google Sales Poised to Overtake Microsoft in Changing of the Guard
The Financial Times is reporting that Google’s revenues are on track to exceed $100bn this year, and that this will likely be sufficient for the company to surpass Microsoft’s revenues for the year. They cite an upswing in ad revenue as a large part of the cause, also pointing out that the biggest area in which the two compete are in their cloud services. I’m not sure what all this “changing of the guard” stuff is all about though.
As always, we’d love your take on this in our forums!
At Alphabet, the cloud is on a “terrific upswing”, according to chief executive Sundar Pichai, who said the company had accelerated its product rollout and formed alliances with companies from Intel to workplace chat app Slack.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Google Sales Poised to Overtake Microsoft in Changing of the Guard
Google Translate Is About To Get a Lot Better, Thanks To Its Machine Learning Push
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is offering a big new update that should affect anyone who’s ever used Google’s translation services. From a report on CNBC: The new version will be rolling out in 2017 via Google Cloud, Pichai said. “We have improved our translation ability more in one single year than all our improvements over the last 10 years combined,” Pichai told investors in a quarterly call, after parent company Alphabet reported mixed results.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google Translate Is About To Get a Lot Better, Thanks To Its Machine Learning Push
A History Of The Bow & Arrow, Gaming's Premier Primitive Projectile
The bow and arrow is one of humanity’s most primitive weapon systems, right up there with stick attached to rock. Stuart Brown of YouTube’s Ahoy channel explores the history of the bow in reality and video games, from prehistoric hunters to modern-day marksmen.
Source: Kotaku – A History Of The Bow & Arrow, Gaming’s Premier Primitive Projectile
This Week's Most Popular Posts: January 20th to 27th
This week we talked with Alexa and learned the best skills you can add to an Amazon Echo, looked at the feature of Google Play Music you might not know about, opted out of people searching sites, and more. Here’s a look back.
Source: LifeHacker – This Week’s Most Popular Posts: January 20th to 27th
This plastic bag is edible, compostable, even drinkable
This company from Bali chose to address plastic pollution through better design, rather than waiting for a behavioral shift in consumers.
Source: TreeHugger – This plastic bag is edible, compostable, even drinkable
PAX Unplugged: Just boards, cards, minis, and dice, coming in November
The cartoon versions of PAX co-founders Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins argue over D&D. (credit: Penny Arcade)
The Penny Arcade webcomic team has operated PAX (formerly Penny Arcade Expo) since 2004, and Ars Technica covers its various events every year for a reason—they’re fun. More than that, PAX offers whatever fun you’re looking for (at least, in the games-related space). Penny Arcade writer and PAX co-founder Jerry Holkins tells Ars Technica that the expos are like a nerd “mitochondria,” with gaming subgenres (fighting, puzzles, FPSes, handheld, board gaming, and so on) existing as “organelles” that fans can flock to while attending.
PAX Unplugged, then, is the expo series’ first major mitosis.
The brand-new show will debut on November 17 and will operate for three days at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. Tickets are not yet on sale. (Penny Arcade typically announces sale dates and times a few days in advance at PAX’s home page and this Twitter feed.) As PAX has already accommodated a major board-, card-, and tabletop-gaming audience in the past, Holkins says much of the template of what to expect has already been built by fans at more traditional PAX events. (“I’ve looked down from [PAX East]’s skybridges and seen what would be an entire convention right there, just of tabletop games!”)
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Source: Ars Technica – PAX Unplugged: Just boards, cards, minis, and dice, coming in November
NASA studies astronaut twins to observe the rigors of space
When you spend nearly a year straight in space, you can expect NASA will want to conduct a good bit of research on you when you return to Earth. The space agency has been doing just that with astronaut Scott Kelly who was in orbit for 340 days. There…
Source: Engadget – NASA studies astronaut twins to observe the rigors of space
High School Student Builds And Installs Soda Vending Machine In His Locker
This is a short video demonstration of The Soda Locker, a soda vending machine that high school student Blake Hawkins built and installed in his locker at school. The coin accepter and control panel were all built from scratch and run on an Arduino microcontroller. Everything is powered by a 12 volt deep cycle battery, which, unfortunately, doesn’t have enough juice to run a refrigeration system, so the cans are dispensed at room temperature. Still, impressive, and a room temperature Mountain Dew never stopped me from drinking it. Man, and to think I never made anything in high school but C’s and naked lady sculptures in ceramics class.
Keep going for the video demonstration, and Blake wrote up an impressive Instructable in case you want to build your own HERE.
Source: Geekologie – High School Student Builds And Installs Soda Vending Machine In His Locker
Manage Your Photography Gear Like a Pro With MyGearVault
Whether you’re a professional or just a novice with new equipment, photography gear is expensive and it accumulates quickly. MyGearVault helps you keep tabs on all of your equipment in one place.
Source: LifeHacker – Manage Your Photography Gear Like a Pro With MyGearVault
'Flappy Bird' creator returns with another infuriating game
While game companies are spending millions developing and marketing addictive mobile games, every once in a while an indie hit appears out of nowhere and captures the public’s imagination. In 2013, that game was Flappy Bird, a notoriously difficult e…
Source: Engadget – ‘Flappy Bird’ creator returns with another infuriating game
Microsoft Says It Is Winning Its New War Against Macs
Windows PCs are starting to chip away at Apple’s strong grip of the high-end computer market, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said on an earnings call Thursday. From a report: Microsofts licensing business, which sells Windows to third-party PC makers, was up 5 percent last quarter, confirmed CFO Amy Hood during an earnings call on Thursday. The “non-pro” (consumer) market grew 5 percent, beating the overall decline of the PC industry. “Our partner ecosystem continued to see growth and share gains in the Windows premium device category,” Hood continued. Those gains would have eaten into Apple’s share of that market, which has been dominated by Macs until recently. There are other things that could have contributed to this, of course. Many long-time Mac users have been somewhat disappointed with Apple’s most recent releases, which come with big changes that not everyone is willing to embrace.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Says It Is Winning Its New War Against Macs
What the Hell Is the Opening Crawl for The Last Jedi Going to Be?
This week Star Wars fans finally found out the title of Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. It sparked mountains of speculation, including whether “Jedi” is singular or plural, whom it’s referring to, and more. Then, thanks to a photo from director Rian Johnson, the conversation turned to the opening crawl—and the problem it…
Source: Gizmodo – What the Hell Is the Opening Crawl for The Last Jedi Going to Be?
Why McDonald's Big Mac Sauce Tastes Like Ketchup
Burger fans recognize the power of the special sauce, whipping up their own custom batches to recreate the savory, delectable bite they know and love from their favorite burger chains. Usually, those sloppy creations mirror thousand island dressing: ketchup and mayonnaise, ketchup, relish and mayonnaise, ketchup,…
Source: Gizmodo – Why McDonald’s Big Mac Sauce Tastes Like Ketchup
Al Gore swoops in to save CDC’s climate and health conference
Enlarge (credit: Getty | Leigh Vogel)
Thanks to a push from former vice president Al Gore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s conference on the health effects of climate change is back on for next month in Atlanta.
The conference was abruptly canceled by the agency following the election of Donald Trump. Though the CDC has given no explanation for the cancellation, co-organizer Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called it a “strategic retreat,” the intention of which was to avoid upsetting the new administration and allow it to have input on the conference. The CDC said the conference may be rescheduled later in the year.
But Gore and others weren’t having that, apparently. In an interview with the Washington Post, Benjamin said, “He called me and we talked about it and we said, ‘There’s still a void and still a need.’ We said, ‘Let’s make this thing happen… It was a no-brainer.”
In a press release, Gore elaborated, writing:
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Source: Ars Technica – Al Gore swoops in to save CDC’s climate and health conference
Friday Late Open Thread
Hello, my fine feathered friends! Welcome to another weekly dose of the Hackerspace Open Thread, brought to you by Lifehacker, the best website owned by Univision, in conjunction with the great Orin-Henry dynamic duo.
Source: LifeHacker – Friday Late Open Thread
Kodi v17.0 "Krypton" Release Candidate 4
I know a bunch of you, like me, use Kodi for your media center needs. With today’s announcement of Release Candidate 4, Team Kodi is getting close to releasing their next v17 release.
Personally I’m both looking forward to, and dreading the next release of Kodi. While every new release brings exciting new features and fixes bugs, they also invariably break most of my Kodi plugins, like my MythTV PVR plugin. On top of that Kodi 17 is supposed to include a brand new completely reworked UI to replace the standard Confluence theme. This means I’m going to have to teach everyone how to use it again.
This is the fourth Release Candidate for our upcoming v17.0 “Krypton” which contains our continuous effort to further improve v17.0 before we make it final. Our team will certainly try to tackle as much of the reported problems as possible with the limited resources we have. We do want to note that since we are just a small team some of the reported bugs might not get fixed due to lack of developers or time. As such we would certainly welcome any developer who has the ability to help us out to try and fix the bugs he or she encounters and submit it to our code base for review. We sure would like to thank every one involved with either development, testing or simply helping out others with answering their questions.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Kodi v17.0 “Krypton” Release Candidate 4
Nvidia GeForce 378.49 Drivers Break In Home Streaming, Have Other Problems
Apparently there have been enough issues with the new 378.49 drivers we reported on here, that PC Perspective has updated their driver release story to point them out. Issues include breaking In-Home Streaming, as well as multiple applications crashing, and hardware acceleration problems.
I can’t say this is a surprise to me. I have personally had multiple problems with every driver release since 369.xx. I used to happily install every new Nvidia driver release, but now I only install drivers if I absolutely need support for a new title. The problems seem to have started at the same time as WDDM 2.1 support was added to the Windows 10 drivers. Coincidence? I’ll let you guys fight that one out in the forums. Thanks to Cageymaru for the link.
Update: There are multiple issues being raised in our comments, including a Steam post by Sam Lantinga (Valve) about this driver breaking In-Home Streaming. Other complaints include certain applications crashing and hardware acceleration issues.
Ongoing Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Nvidia GeForce 378.49 Drivers Break In Home Streaming, Have Other Problems
Netgear ReadyNAS 4312X Review: Slick 2U Storage
Here’s one for those of you who hang out in the Server/Storage/VM sections of our forums. Servethehome has a review up for Netgear’s new ReadyNAS 4312X, and it looks like they like it. It’s tough to blame them. Relatively low cost, 10G NIC’s, and lots of upgrade flexibility make this one a winner for sure. Personally I’m not too sure I’d be willing to trust the Marvell storage controllers though. Relying on a combination of on-board Intel SATA and Marvell controllers seems a bit like a “home consumer” build to me. I’d prefer a real LSI SAS HBA. What do you guys think?
We recently had the opportunity to test the Netgear ReadyNAS 4312X, which is a 2U NAS capable of replacing larger legacy NAS units that cost several times as much. With its 12 bays and 120TB capacity (we expect this to go higher with 12TB+ drives) the ReadyNAS 4312X would be an interesting option for companies looking to migrate from legacy filers such as a NetApp FAS2020, FAS2040 or FAS2220. Netgear has a solid hardware platform and a solid set of features that would allow a SMB organization to use a lower cost NAS rather than buy into a higher-end and higher-priced vendor’s entry solution.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Netgear ReadyNAS 4312X Review: Slick 2U Storage
The best bluetooth keyboard
By Kimber Streams
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its wor…
Source: Engadget – The best bluetooth keyboard