Nerdly News Curated from Interesting Sites
Netflix has been killing competitors with its original TV shows and movies. A Morgan Stanley survey released back in May had 39 percent of U.S. consumers naming Netflix as offering the “best original programming” among subscription video services, with everyone else eating its dust, including HBO, which nabbed 14 percent, Amazon Prime Video (5 percent) […]
Summer’s here, which brings not only warmer weather but also the unsettling realization that the year is more than halfway over. So, for those who weren’t as productive as they would have liked during the first half of 2018, we’ve rounded up 5 skill course bundles you can start learning today to help you finish the year strong and with some employable knowledge under your belt. Read on for details:
MSRP: $2,786
Sale Price: $49 (98% off)
While front-end developers focus on building the portion of the website viewers experience, back-end developers work behind the scenes, ensuring vital information makes it from the guts of the website to the front without issuea critical role that commands high-level pay. This 14-course collection will get you familiar with SQL, Bootstrap, and the other tools these experts use to keep websites running.
2. The Complete 2018 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle: Lifetime Access
MSRP: $4,329
Sale Price: $59 (98% off)
Virtually every sector needs IT professionals to keep their operations online, and they’re willing to pay a hefty sum for their services. However, demand alone isn’t quite enough to get your foot in the door to this field. This 12-course training will prepare you to ace a number of certification exams from CompTIA, so you can stand a head above the competition. Jump in, and you’ll start developing skills in a host of different IT disciplines from cloud computing to cybersecurity.
3. The Complete Adobe CC Training Bundle
MSRP: $673
Sale Price: $29 (95% off)
Whether you’re an aspiring photographer, illustrator, or animator, you’ll likely be using the Adobe Creative Cloud suite in your line of work. This 65-hour training covers the essentials of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and a host of other key Adobe tools, so you can start producing your own content as a creative professional.
4. The Complete Project Management Bundle
MSRP: $2,189
Sale Price: $29 (98% off)
Project management is undeniably one of the most versatile fields to break into, as virtually every company can use professionals skilled in cutting costs and boosting efficiency. Make your way through all 11 parts of this training, and you can join their ranks with knowledge in JIRA, Scrum, and other project management essentials
MSRP: $1,728
Sale Price: $39 (97% off)
From the cinematography essentials to editing with Final Cut Pro, this 8-course collection can help you elevate your videography skills and work toward making your own creative projects. Plus, it even includes a course on drone videography, so you can learn how to integrate some stunning aerial shots into your own work.
The Mandelbrot Set is a mathematical oddity where a simple function creates an infinitely complex landscape that you can literally zoom into forever. Like most people, I’ve downloaded Mandelbrot set viewers and marveled at the infinite whorls and spirals, and then waited while each frame took minutes or hours to render as I zoomed in. [Michael Henning], [Max Rademacher] and [Jonathan Plattner] decided to throw some modern computational muscle at this problem by building an interactive Mandelbrot set viewer using a laptop and two FPGA boards.
The three are students at Cornell, and this was their final project for the …read more
Motorola only announced its new Moto E5 Play and E5 Plus in April, but this week the company unveiled a new version of that E5 Play thatll run Android Oreo Go edition. Itll include fewer pre-installed apps, as well as apps that are optimized to run on devices with less storage. Its only available in the UK starting on July 14th and starts at £69 for pre-pay or £89 for SIM-only. (Thats between $91 and $117.) This is similar pricing to the E5 Play in the US currently.
The E5 Play is still one of the first Go devices. The first Go phone, the Alcatel 1X, launched in February. Nokia and ZTE also developed Go phones. All these phones are designed to create a more pleasant budget phone experience. The E5 includes some more premium features,…
For the last few years now, BMW has wrestled with the question of what it’ll mean to be a luxury car manufacturer in the age of electric cars, autonomous driving and rapidly changing — and increasing — customer expectations. What, after all, makes something the “ultimate driving machine” when the driver eventually stops driving? For BMW, […]
Its not a rational or responsible desire to dream of expensive looking sports cars. But still, the 20th century image of a curvaceous four-wheeled form continues to foster a culture of envy. The high price tag attached to these cars that made them a symbol of aspiration, greed, and everything in between, has endured, as the performance numbers and prices on supercar reach astronomical seven-figure levels. What has been lacking in the rare European supercar category are cars powered by electric powertrains. But the days of the rude gasoline-inhaling performance car may be dwindling.
Pininfarina is the newest Italiano brand to attach itself to the fast-growing list of luxury EV makers, but among the cult of Ferrari enthusiasts,…
During todays World Cup march, the BBC released its first teaser for its upcoming 11th season of its science fiction show Doctor Who, which will feature actress Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor.
The trailer shows off only a brief glimpse of Whittakers Doctor, who appears right at the end of the teaser. She is the first woman to play the role of Doctor, taking over for Peter Capaldi, who portrayed the Twelfth Doctor from 2014 to 2017. Fans of the show got their first glimpse of her during last years Christmas special, and her casting represents a new era for the show as Chris Chibnall (creator of the acclaimed crime drama Broadchurch) took over for Steven Moffat, the shows long-time showrunner. The season is expected to…
Last month, Nintendo announced a contest that tasked fans with creating musical instruments and games out of its Labo kit. Today, the Japanese developer revealed the winners of the contest, and, naturally, Nintendo fans went all out.
Released in April 2018, the Nintendo Labo is aimed at children to teach concepts such as programming and engineering. Players take kits to build things such as cardboard robots and toy fishing rods, though the Labo can also be used for experiments and new creations.
Take the Labo piano decked out with Zelda decorations up top, for example. Not only do the decorations include a Master Sword, but there are also tiny Koroks hiding in the landscape as well. Its creator, Chris Brazzell, says that various pieces…
We always think it is interesting that a regular DC motor and a generator are about the same thing. Sure, each is optimized for its purpose, but inefficiencies aside, you can use electricity to rotate a shaft or use a rotating shaft to generate electricity. [Andriyf1] has a slightly different trick. He shows how to use a stepper motor as an encoder. You can see a video of the setup below.
It makes sense. If the coils in the stepper can move the shaft, then moving the shaft should induce a current in the coils. He does note that at …read more
Now that hoverboards are quickly becoming toys of the past, it seems like Segway-Ninebot is busy reinventing the wheel on rideables. After Segway introduced e-skates last month, Ninebot (Segways parent company) is reportedly preparing to show off a new kit that attaches to its scooters to convert them into drivable go-karts.
According to a report by Abacus News, Ninebot teased the promotional photos on Weibo this week. The kit appears to add seating, brakes, front bumper, steering wheel, and rear wheels to a Segway miniPRO. The seat can apparently be adjusted to fit the drivers height, with photos showing both an adult and a child driving the retrofitted Segway. The company hasnt offered any further information on price and…
When I was younger, I had a soccer coach who stressed the importance of anticipation. An-tiiii-ciiiiiii-PAY-shun, hed yell at us, while we were diving around for the ball. If we did it right, he promised, wed be able to do in soccer what Neo does in The Matrix not, like, stop bullets, but be in the right place at the right time to stop an attack on our goal. I wasnt too great at it, at least not at first.
But the lesson stuck. I can hear coachs voice even now, when I navigate the crush of travelers during New York Citys all-too-frequent rush hours. This is all to say that prediction is key; its the difference between getting the ball in the back of the net and whiffing entirely, the gap between getting a seat on a crowded…
It’s good to be proactive, but when it comes to preparing for an emergency situation, one of the most important items you can pack is a flashlight. After all, whatever else you include in your kit won’t be of much use if you can’t see what you’re doing. The Viper 1000-Lumen Tactical Flashlights not only keep your surroundings illuminated when disaster strikes, but they’re also designed to help bail you out of a dangerous situation. Two-packs are available in the Boing Boing Store for $29.99.
Engineered with a titanium alloy shell and tactical breaker tip, the Viper 1000-Lumen Tactical Flashlights excel at smashing glass or even fending off violent threats. They’re small enough to stash inside your car’s glove box or under your seat, making them handy for shattering a window if you find yourself in an accident and need to escape from your vehicle. They’re also designed to be shockproof, weatherproof, and rated to shine for up to 100,000 hours before you need to replace the bulb.
Two packs of the Viper 1000-Lumen Tactical Flashlights are available in the Boing Boing Store for $29.99.
CNC machines of all types are a staple here at Hackaday, in that we have featured many CNC builds over the years. But the vast majority of those that we see are of relatively modest size and assembled in a home workshop, using small and readily available components such as small stepper motors. These drives are a world away from those used in industrial CNC machines, where you will find high-voltage servos packing a much greater punch. With good reason: driving a small low-voltage motor is easy while doing the same with a high-voltage servo requires electronics that have hitherto …read more
We’re getting to the point that seeing 3D printed parts in a project or hack isn’t as exciting as it was just a few years ago. The proliferation of low-cost desktop 3D printers means that finding a printer to squirt out a few parts for your build isn’t the adventure it once was. Gone are the days of heading to a local hackerspace or college hoping their janky Mendel felt like working that day. But all that really means is that hackers and makers now have the ability to utilize 3D printing even more. Forget printing one or two …read more
The Unity engine has been around since Apple started using Intel chips, and has made quite a splash in the gaming world. Unity allows developers to create 2D and 3D games, but there are some other interesting applications of this gaming engine as well. For example, [matthewhallberg] used it to build a robot that can map rooms in 3D.
The impetus for this project was a robotics company that used a series of robots around their business. The robots navigate using computer vision, but couldn’t map the rooms from scratch. They hired [matthewhallberg] to tackle this problem, and this robot …read more
Much of the advice you get regarding the addition of Redux to your React projects is to only do so once they reach a certain size, because of the extra complexity Redux adds. That’s certainly fair. But it will leave you with a bit of technical debt (refactoring to be done later) that you wouldn’t have if you just started out with React and Redux.
Consequently, I thought it might be nice to present an exercise where we do just that: build an app as simply as possible using React and ReactDOM alone (not even JSX since you need more dependencies and a build process to support that), and then refactor to use JSX and Redux.
A backyard swimming pool can be a great place to take a refreshing dip on a summer’s day. It can also be a place to freeze your giblets off if the sun has been hiding for even a few hours. That can make pools an iffy proposition unless they’re heated, and that starts to get really expensive in terms of upfront costs and ongoing charges for fuel or power. Unless you put the sun and the IoT to work for pool-heating needs.
Preferences vary, of course, but [Martin Harizanov] and his family clearly like their swims on the warm side. …read more
If you’ve ever seen the back end of a military jet, you’ve likely seen variable area nozzles. They’re used to adjust the exhaust flow out of the rear of a jet engine during supersonic flight and while the afterburner is engaged. Commercial aircraft, with the exception of the Concorde, don’t need such fancy hardware since a static exhaust nozzle works well enough for the types of flying they’ll be doing. For much the same reasons, RC aircraft don’t need variable area nozzles either, but it doesn’t keep builders from wanting them.
Which brings us to this utterly gorgeous design by …read more
When it was introduced in the late 90s, USB was the greatest achievement in all of computing. Gone were the PS/2 connectors for keyboards and mice, ADB ports, parallel ports, game ports, and serial ports. This was a Tower of Babel that would unite all ports under one standard universal bus.
Then more ports were introduced; micro, mini, that weird one that was a mini USB with more connectors off to the side. Then we started using phone chargers as power supplies. The Tower of Babel had crumbled. Now, though, there is a future. USB-C is everything stuffed into one …read more
Ruben Fleischers 2009 zombie film Zombieland is officially getting a sequel, with the director and original cast set to return, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The movie is expected to begin production in January, and hit theaters in October 2019.
Zombieland 2 will reunite Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin, and will reportedly take the group from the White House to the American heartland as they face off against new kinds of zombies that have evolved since the first movie, as well as some new human survivors.
The 2009 film was Fleischers first, following Columbus (played by Jesse Eisenberg) the survivors have taken on the names of cities to avoid becoming attached to one another as he…