For the uninitiated, camping with small children may seem like a dramatic dinner party story waiting to happen. There are so many unknowns. Will a wad of burnt marshmallow get stuck in your kid’s hair? Will he faceplant in the dirt on the middle-of-the-night trudge to the bathroom? Will she beg to go home for the…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Go Camping With Little Kids
Microsoft has been distancing Cortana from Windows for months. First, it split the virtual assistant from search in Windows 10. Then, a beta version of a standalone Cortana app appeared on the Windows Store. And starting today, Windows 10 Insiders ar…
Source: Engadget – Standalone Cortana app available to Windows Insiders
Enlarge / You can still purchase and play the first three Doom games on Xbox One consoles. But this comes after certain Xbox One-compatible ports of the series were apparently delisted on Friday. (credit: Aurich Lawson / id Software)
As part of its annual QuakeCon festivities, id Software surprise-announced a launch of all three “original” Doom games on modern consoles on Friday, effective immediately. That was solid news for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch owners, who’ve yet to get ports of Doom, Doom II, or Doom 3: BFG Edition.
But the news was different on Xbox One, where all three games had already received digital-download ports thanks to that platform’s hearty Xbox 360 backwards-compatibility program. And on Friday, Bethesda gave those version’s holders a rude awakening: the company completely delisted those Xbox 360 versions.
As of press time, those games’ original SKUs can still be found in Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb’s definitive Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list, along with reminders that those games came back to life on Xbox One consoles in 2015 and 2016. Clicking any of the affected Doom games’ listings right now, however, leads to dead Xbox 360 content pages, the kind you might find for delisted Xbox games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
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Source: Ars Technica – Classic Doom games vanish, reappear on Xbox One with features missing
SpaceX has been doing very well with its contract missions to send satellites into Earth orbit and supplies to the International Space Station. This week SpaceX tested its strange-looking stainless-steel starship prototype called StarHopper. The test was the first time that StarHopper had flown without tethers holding it to the ground.
StarHopper
Source: Hot Hardware – SpaceX StarHopper Rocket Completes First Untethered Hover Test With Ferocious Raptor Engine
You don’t just scoop up metric buttloads of Emmy nominations and call it a day, after all. Not when there’s a sequel in the works!
Source: io9 – To the Surprise of No One, Handmaid’s Tale Will Return for a Fourth Season
Alcohol is not known for its sleep-promoting qualities. In fact, nothing ensures I have a terrible, unrestful night like a parade of high-proof cocktails. But a little bit of alcohol—a scoach—can calm the mind and relax the muscles. Pair that with melatonin-rich sour cherry juice (and maybe a glass or two of water),…
Source: LifeHacker – Relax Into the Weekend With a Sour Cherry Cocktail
Creatine is a rare thing in the world of workout supplements: It actually works, plus it’s cheap and safe. If you’re trying to build muscle or lift the heaviest things around, you might want to get into the habit of taking creatine every day—but there are, of course, some caveats.
Source: LifeHacker – What Lifters Should Know About Creatine
Quakecon 2019 is underway and one of the first big announcements from the event is that the first three Doom games are now available on PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. You’ll also be able to carry around the first two entries in the classic FPS se…
Source: Engadget – Original ‘Doom’ games hit PS4, Xbox One, Switch and mobile
Enlarge / US President Donald Trump speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on Saturday, March 2, 2019. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)
Donald Trump is threatening to retaliate after French President Emmanuel Macron signed legislation imposing a 3% tax on digital transactions.
“France just put a digital tax on our great American technology companies,” Trump tweeted. “If anybody taxes them, it should be their home Country, the USA.”
The new French tax isn’t specific to American companies, but it is designed to target big companies in general—and the world’s big technology companies are disproportionately based in the United States. Companies will need to pay the tax if they generate more than €25 million ($28 million) in French revenue and €750 million ($840 million) worldwide.
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Source: Ars Technica – Trump threatens retaliation against France over digital service tax
Back in 2017, credit rating agency Equifax suffered what those in the data security business call a “catastrophic fuckup” affecting in the neighborhood of 150 million Americans, all of whom are now eligible for, on average, $125—and up to $20,000 in very specific instances—in damages.
Source: Gizmodo – So, What Are You Spending Your Equifax Money On?
When Co-Op readers give you Lululemon, make a blog declaring them the winner of this race. The votes are in, and the brand’s T.H.E. Short With Nulux Liner won the gold medal when it comes to running shorts.
Source: LifeHacker – Our Readers’ Favorite Running Shorts: Lululemon T.H.E. Short With Nulux Liner
This is a video demonstration of PPEngine (links to downloads), a reverse-engineered version of Atari’s classic Pole Position arcade game (with the original game logic), but upgraded with sick 3-D lowpoly graphics. Some more info from the man behind the project, Jonathan Thomas. The man behind the curtain? That’s just a sleeping security guard.
I started back in 2013 reverse engineering the code from the original arcade ROM with the help of the MAME debugger and some primitive self-made tools to analyse instruction traces and create assembly source files that could be assembled back to the original arcade ROM.
Following this, I worked through the assembly source file to produce a portable C-based library containing the game logic for Pole Position. This library was used in two projects – the one you see here, and another project to convert Pole Position to the Atari ST – a 16-bit computer that was released in 1985.
Man, my brother used to kill at the Atari home console version of Pole Position. Me? I’ve always sucked at racing games. I’m not even good at any of the Mario Karts — how embarrassing is that? “Very.” Thanks for making me feel better. “You know you suck at real driving too.” Whatever, I drive the same way I live my life. “Poorly.” Hey you don’t happen to drive an SUV with a winch, do you?
Keep going for the video, as well as one of the original game for reference.
Source: Geekologie – Guy Reverse-Engineers Atari’s Classic ‘Pole Position’ With 3-D Lowpoly Graphics
This week, Marvel ushered in a bold new era for the X-Men and mutantkind at large with House of X—part of a new duology under the auspices of Secret Wars and Avengers writer Jonathan Hickman, where mutants have stepped onto the global stage in a major way. But my favorite thing about its debut issue is how tensely…
Source: io9 – I Feel Nothing From House of X’s Mutants, and That’s Great
We’ve come up with lots of unique ways to use drones—from scorching the earth to delivering food—but one of the most common is for reconnaissance or search and rescue missions where it’s unsafe for humans to venture. That can include the occasional cramped space where drones normally can’t fit, but a new design lets…
Source: Gizmodo – Watch This Flying Drone Shrink Like Ant-Man to Squeeze Through Small Spaces
Alex Hern, reporting for The Guardian: Apple contractors regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex, as part of their job providing quality control, or “grading,” the company’s Siri voice assistant, the Guardian has learned. Although Apple does not explicitly disclose it in its consumer-facing privacy documentation, a small proportion of Siri recordings are passed on to contractors working for the company around the world.
They are tasked with grading the responses on a variety of factors, including whether the activation of the voice assistant was deliberate or accidental, whether the query was something Siri could be expected to help with and whether Siri’s response was appropriate. Apple says the data “is used to help Siri and dictation … understand you better and recognise what you say.” […] Apple told the Guardian: “A small portion of Siri requests are analysed to improve Siri and dictation. User requests are not associated with the user’s Apple ID. Siri responses are analysed in secure facilities and all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements.” The company added that a very small random subset, less than 1% of daily Siri activations, are used for grading, and those used are typically only a few seconds long.” Further reading: Google Contractors Are Secretly Listening To Your Assistant Recordings; and Amazon Workers Are Listening To What You Tell Alexa.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Apple Contractors ‘Regularly Hear Confidential Details’ on Siri Recordings, Report Says
Google got a lot right with the Pixel 3a. It has excellent cameras, reliable performance, respectable battery life and clever software. Best of all, at $400, the Pixel 3a costs half the original price of the flagship Pixel 3. And this formula of comp…
Source: Engadget – It’s time to take Google’s Pixel phones more seriously
We’re so over the thrill of PreCheck or priority boarding. Now, the hottest new thing to do at the airport is to go to the lounge. No longer a haven only for weary business travelers or international flyers with long layovers, lounges are the key to saving money on expensive airport food and beverages for many…
Source: LifeHacker – What’s The Cheapest Way to Get Into an Airport Lounge?
Fast furniture is like fast food or fast fashion; here’s why you should go slow and how you do it.
Source: TreeHugger – 6 reasons you should buy “slow furniture”
Cats ask very little of us. They need to be fed, brushed, given water and toys to play with, and have their litter changed. In return, they provide love and companionship, tempered only with the annoyances of some occasional early morning meowing and ill-timed explosions of barf.
Source: Kotaku – Cat wrecks video game stream by barfing so hard it breaks a computer
McFly is a small utility a tiny utility that replaces the functionality offered by Bash’s ctrl-r with an intelligent search engine.
Source: LXer – Excellent Utilities: McFly – navigate through your shell history
