Source: Engadget – Uber is offloading its money-losing car lease business
Monthly Archives: December 2017
"Blade Runner 2049" VFX Reel Shows CG Tricks behind Bleak Landscapes
Rodeo FX has released a visual effects reel for their work on Blade Runner 2049, making it evident that even the seemingly mundane shots were draped in digital artwork. Some of the film’s big, environmental shots were completely digital, but there’s other instances of where the production enhanced used practical locations with some CGI.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – “Blade Runner 2049” VFX Reel Shows CG Tricks behind Bleak Landscapes
How to Launch Your Own Online Store With Shopify
In our new series Getting It, we’ll give you all you need to know to get started with and excel at a wide range of technology, both on and offline. Here, we’re walking you through the process of setting up your own shop with one of the most popular online retail platforms, Shopify.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Launch Your Own Online Store With Shopify
LLVM Continued In Its Quest For Innovative Compiler Dominance In 2017
LLVM had another successful year with in 2017 delivering the big LLVM 5.0 update and finishing up development of LLVM 6.0 right now while this open-source compiler stack continues to be adopted by new and interesting use-cases from tieing in LLVM IR to a wide variety of projects to the infrastructure being used heavily now by graphics drivers and other interesting purposes…
Source: Phoronix – LLVM Continued In Its Quest For Innovative Compiler Dominance In 2017
What Amazon's Alexa Economy Pays the People Building Its Skills
From a report on CNET: On a lark, Joel Wilson started developing skills for Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, this past January. After a few weeks of coding, he launched two skills — Amazon’s term for voice-controlled apps — called Question of the Day and Three Questions. Both quiz people on science, literature and pop culture trivia. In May, he got an email from Amazon telling him to expect a check in the mail as part of a new program that pays cash to makers of popular skills. That first month, Amazon sent him $2,000. It got better from there. He’s received checks for $9,000 over each of the past three months, he said. Wilson unexpectedly joined a new Alexa economy, a small but fast-growing network of independent developers, marketing companies and Alexa tools makers. Two years ago, there wasn’t nearly as much to do on Alexa and the market for making Alexa skills was worth a mere $500,000. Now, with more than 25,000 skills available, the market is expected to hit $50 million in 2018, according to analytics firm VoiceLabs.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – What Amazon’s Alexa Economy Pays the People Building Its Skills
DesignMake Studio shows how affordable housing can be beautiful and affordable
Waldo Duplex deserves its Residential Architect Design Award, and shows how we can have nice things.
Source: TreeHugger – DesignMake Studio shows how affordable housing can be beautiful and affordable
DesignMake Studio shows how affordable housing can be beautiful and affodable
Waldo Duplex deserves its Residential Architect Design Award, and shows how we can have nice things.
Source: TreeHugger – DesignMake Studio shows how affordable housing can be beautiful and affodable
Library of Congress Gives Up Collecting All Tweets Because Twitter Is Garbage
In 2010, the Library of Congress started archiving every single public tweet that was published on Twitter. It even retroactively acquired all tweets dating back to 2006. But the Library of Congress will stop archiving every tweet on December 31, 2017. Why is it stopping? Because tweets are trash now.
Source: Gizmodo – Library of Congress Gives Up Collecting All Tweets Because Twitter Is Garbage
Drug Company Allegedly Bribed Doctors to Sell Its Powerful Opioid Spray
The State of North Carolina is suing a pharmaceutical manufacturer for allegedly bribing doctors and defrauding insurers in order to sell more of its powerful fentanyl spray, fanning the flames of the opioid crisis that has millions addicted and is shortening lifespans.
Source: Gizmodo – Drug Company Allegedly Bribed Doctors to Sell Its Powerful Opioid Spray
Get Last Minute Health Insurance With These Extensions to ACA Open Enrollment
The deadline to buy insurance from healthcare.gov has passed, but millions of Americans qualify for extensions to buy insurance now. Some states set their own deadlines for January, and there are special provisions for people affected by this year’s hurricanes.
Source: LifeHacker – Get Last Minute Health Insurance With These Extensions to ACA Open Enrollment
UEFA secures UK court order to block illegal soccer streams
Tearing a leaf out of the English Premier League’s playbook, the Union of European Football Associations — better known as UEFA — has been granted the power to block illegal match streams by the UK’s highest court. UEFA won’t actually be doing any…
Source: Engadget – UEFA secures UK court order to block illegal soccer streams
Thunderbird Will Phase Out Legacy Add-Ons for WebExtensions
As part of its plan to modernize Thunderbird, Mozilla is phasing out old legacy add-ons that are built on the XUL and XPCOM APIs. While engineers have already started work on adding support for WebExtensions, there is no word on when this feature will land in a stable release, nor when Thunderbird will actually stop supporting legacy add-ons.
Mozilla engineers are currently providing information to add-on developers on how to migrate their add-ons to the new WebExtensions API, similar to how they’ve mentored Firefox add-on devs before the release of Firefox 57 (the first Firefox version that dropped legacy add-ons).
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Thunderbird Will Phase Out Legacy Add-Ons for WebExtensions
People Still Aren't Buying Smartwatches, and It's Only Going to Get Worse
Despite a year full of exciting new smartwatches, tech-enabled clothing and jewelry, and fitness-activity trackers galore, the growth of the wearables market is still on the decline, according to a new report from the research firm eMarketer. It predicts that use will grow only 11.9% in the next year, with that growth rate slowing to single digits in 2019.
“Other than early adopters, consumers have yet to find a reason to justify the cost of a smartwatch, which can sometimes cost as much as a smartphone,” the eMarketer forecasting analyst Cindy Liu wrote in the report. “Instead, for this holiday season, we expect smart speakers to be the gift of choice for many tech enthusiasts, because of their lower price points.”
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Source: [H]ardOCP – People Still Aren’t Buying Smartwatches, and It’s Only Going to Get Worse
Bitcoin Could Hit $60,000 in 2018 but Another Crash Is Coming, Says Startup Exec
Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Julian Hosp thinks that Bitcoin could reach a high of $60,000 next year but warns that we may also see its value drop to $5,000. The forecast would represent a $45,000 rally from the current price of bitcoin — or a $10,000 collapse, underscoring the volatility of the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
Hosp likened the current interest in bitcoin to the dotcom bubble that started about 20 years ago and warned that a consolidation of digital coins is likely to take place in the future. “I don’t think it’s going to be a bubble that’s just going to burst and everyone is going to lose their money, but I think it’s going to be that all the coins and all the assets with very little use or value are going to get sorted out,” he said.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Bitcoin Could Hit ,000 in 2018 but Another Crash Is Coming, Says Startup Exec
The Headphone Jack Will Live On in the Galaxy S9
Samsung appears to be listening to its customers: an image of the Galaxy S9’s PCB has leaked, and it suggests that the tech giant will keep the headphone jack on its upcoming flagship phones. It also confirms that the handset will feature a single rear camera.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – The Headphone Jack Will Live On in the Galaxy S9
Wait, Is the iPhone X Expensive?
While analysts are divided over the future demand for the latest iPhone, some are now prophesizing that hey, consumers might be turned off by a stupid expensive price tag. Like a $1,000 smartphone. Sinolink Securities analyst Zhang Bin walked back his iPhone X sales forecast on Monday, predicting in a report that…
Source: Gizmodo – Wait, Is the iPhone X Expensive?
Rethinking how the US grows beef
Enlarge / Watch out for that cow. (credit: Getty | Tim Graham)
How can we, as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) individuals, mitigate our catastrophic effects on the environment? Pretty much all recommendations start with this: eat less meat.
Like the other top recommendations—drive less and fly less—this is not super appealing to most of us. But beef production in the US uses more land, water, and fertilizer than any other form of agriculture, no matter which way you cut it. Whether you measure by calories or grams of protein generated, cows are the elephant in the room.
As of now, cattle eat not only local pasture, but also grains, hay, and grass that is grown elsewhere and stored. A recent analysis by an international team of researchers looked into what would change if the US switched to sustainable ranching, in which cattle eat only from local grasslands and agricultural byproducts.
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Source: Ars Technica – Rethinking how the US grows beef
Lifehacker's Best Rants of 2017
Look, sometimes life hacking is hard. All sorts of people get in our way: rude “friends,” unscrupulous companies, and sometimes, we must admit, even ourselves. So forgive us if every now and then we need to let loose and tell you all about it, even if our takes are controversial. Here are our best rants from 2017.
Source: LifeHacker – Lifehacker’s Best Rants of 2017
Thunderbird Will Phase Out Legacy Add-Ons, Will Support WebExtensions
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Mozilla announced last week plans to modernize Thunderbird’s codebase, plans that include fixing some “technical debt” by incorporating the recent changes in the Mozilla engine into Thunderbird, adding a new user interface (UI), and phasing out old legacy add-ons that are built on the XUL and XPCOM APIs. The changes are part of Mozilla’s new plan for Thunderbird development, a project that it left for dead in 2012, but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Thunderbird Will Phase Out Legacy Add-Ons, Will Support WebExtensions
Bitcoin Surges Over 14 Percent In Recovery After Last Week's Disaster Decline
To say bitcoin ins volatile would be an understatement. It seems to either be surging or crashing with little signs of overall stability. This is the reason that Valve recently stopped accepting bitcoin as a method of payment. Last week was a rough one for those into bitcoin, as the cryptocurrency took a beating with as much as a 30% decline
Source: Hot Hardware – Bitcoin Surges Over 14 Percent In Recovery After Last Week’s Disaster Decline