Nerdly News Curated from Interesting Sites
Experts on cognition tell us that most people think they know more than they really do. One particular indicator for that is if someone is an expert in one field and they feel like all other fields relate to theirs (everything boils down to math or chemistry or physics, for …read more
Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge
Today is Tuesday. Yesterday was Monday. It has gotten confusing. My colleague Chaim Gartenberg made a Twitter account that can help. Otherwise, if you live in Cleveland, just watch your local news.
The biggest news yesterday was Quibis launch. We have a full slate of coverage, from the stake setting to the CEO profile to reviews of the app and the shows. Quibi also went down briefly, so you know it was a real launch.
It occurs to me that a lot of tech right now involves startup companies just utterly struggling with issues related to delivering streaming video to your home rather than the encoding and bandwidth issues we used to deal with. We have different answers to all of the following video streaming questions during the pandemic:…
The Bowsers Castle Boss Battle Expansion Set | Photo: Lego / Nintendo
After Lego and Nintendos surprise announcement in March that the two companies were working on interactive Super Mario Lego play sets, were finally getting details on the actual sets and how the interactive video-game-in-real-life elements will work. Lego and Nintendo also announced the prices and release dates for the sets, which will be out on August 1st.
The cornerstone of the Super Mario Lego sets is the Adventures with Mario Starter Course, which is set to cost $59.99 and include the interactive, Bluetooth-enabled Mario figure. In addition to the smartphone connectivity, the figure also features LCD displays on Marios eyes, mouth, and stomach to display reactions and gameplay elements, and a speaker for music and sound effects….
Over the last several years, delivery services have become a key component of how retailers, or anyone selling or distributing products and services, do business. Now, with a global health pandemic in full swing keeping people indoors (and away from physical storefronts), delivery has become an essential must-have if you want your business to stay […]
Hinge
A pandemic has taken over the world, but people are still dating. Today, Hinge is launching a new feature, called Date from Home, that the team thinks will make it easier to transition the texting chat into a video call.
From a chat, daters can tap whether theyre ready to have a video call outside of the app, and once both people agree to do so, the app will let them know theyre ready for a date. This might facilitate the discussion of moving off the app because theres a smaller chance of rejection. The app is also getting an update to the We Met feature to ask if people ended up having a phone or video chat and whether this is the type of person who theyd want to chat with again.
Video chat dating has become a popular way of…
Wearables are ubiquitous in todays society. Such devices have evolved in their capabilities from step counters to devices that measure calories burnt, sleep, and heart rate. Its pretty common to meet people using a wearable or two to track their fitness goals. However, a big question remains unanswered. How accurate …read more
The National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, UK, houses a unique collection celebrating all decades of video games and their culture, and as the lockdown has brought with it a crisis threatening its very existence, has launched a crowdfunding campaign with a video we’ve placed below the break. As a relatively …read more
If you have worked for a large company — or even a small one — it might seem that you spend more time writing PowerPoint charts than programming. [Tom Widenhain’s] video asks the question: Can we compile C into PowerPoint? Watch the video below to find out the answer. Would …read more
Yoga studios are closed nationwide. The irony is that between the anxieties of the outside world and those popping up inside your very own home with everyone trapped indoors, theres probably never been a time where yogas calming zen was more vital and needed.
Rather than just throwing in the yoga mat and subjecting family members to very un-zen-like displays, a one-year subscription to YogaDownload can help restore the relaxed, centered you that you need to be to survive all this.
Offering up everything from increased muscle strength and athleticism and improved energy and vitality to a more balanced metabolism and a more ordered, peaceful mind, the healthy benefits of yoga were established literally centuries ago.
With Yogadownload, you can achieve all those benefits right from home with access to over 1,5000 top-rated online yoga and fitness classes to help tone up your body and tune up your mind whenever you need the attention.
Whether youre a beginner or already an experienced practitioner, youll find a course that syncs with your skill level anytime you could use a session. And the sessions really do run the gamut, including courses in nearly 20 different disciplines.
You can choose from the synchronizing breathing and physical demands of Anusara yoga to the strength training of power yoga to the calm of restorative yoga to more specialized training like prenatal or beginners yoga. Heck, theres even kids yoga to help those tiny terrors burn off some of that excess energy with a hearty, kid-centric routine. Read the rest
Flexible steel sheets as the foundation for build platforms are used to great advantage in FDM 3D printers. These coated sheets are held flat by magnets during printing, and after printing is done the sheet (with print attached) can be removed and flexed to pop the prints free. This got …read more
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Google released an update for the Pixel 4 today requiring users to have their eyes open when using face unlock to open the phone.
The update introduces a require eyes to be open feature, which is enabled by default. It offers an extra security measure, but you have the option to disable it in the Pixel 4s face unlock settings.
The lack of an open-eye detection feature was one of the biggest criticisms of the Pixel 4 at launch. The feature is supposed to help ensure your phone isnt unlocked by people trying to open it while you are asleep. Google announced last October that it would roll out a feature to check whether your eyes are open in the coming months.
Apple has had a similar feature that requires open eyes in Face ID since…
Photo: 100 Thieves
Apparel drops from 100 Thieves, a lifestyle and esports organization, are notoriously hard to get in on. Whenever the company releases a new hoodie or jersey, it sells out almost immediately. But theres a new way to get some 100 Thieves gear, and its not only easy, but cheap: download it in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Today, the company released virtual versions of every single piece theyve released to date, spanning three years. As with all user-created items in New Horizons, you can download the designs for free by entering the proper creator code; the codes for all the gear can be found here, organized by the year the items were first released in the real world.
As a thank you to all our fans who have shown us immense support…
The Samsung PS-WTX500 subwoofer is designed to be used as part of a 5.1 channel home theater system, but not just any system. It contains the amplifiers for all the channels, but they’ll only function when the subwoofer is connected to the matching receiver. [Alejandro Zarate] figured there must be …read more
New York City is empty these days. The streets have quieted; the normal pedestrian bustle is nonexistent, and the noise of traffic has turned mostly into near-constant ambulance sirens. Most of us are hunkered down, hibernating until this season of plague shifts into something new. One person whos not is Miekii, a New York City bike messenger whos still out and about delivering food to people across Manhattan for Uber Eats.
I happened across his IRL stream this afternoon. Its refreshingly different than the other channels in the category because you get to see a portrait of New York as it changes over the course of a day. Miekii goes live every day around 11AM ET, according to the schedule posted on his channel page, and streams his…
The workers arent inside their physical business space anymore. So why should business technology still be under that roof either?
In fact, more and more businesses have been making this migration for a while now, moving all their digital infrastructure to the worlds two largest cloud services platforms, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsofts Azure.
In addition to the convenience of moving all that hardware off-site, an overwhelming 87 of companies have seen a major side benefit, reporting their businesses have accelerated after adapting to the cloud services model.
Being the person who knows exactly how a company, its staff, and their entire communication and service infrastructure can work in the cloud is a valuable talent right now — and with The Beginner Cloud Architect Professional Training Bundle ft. Azure and AWS training, you can be well on your way to being one of those valued IT pros.
Across seven courses with more than 30 hours of in-depth instruction, youll get a full introduction to how AWS and Azure work and what it takes to migrate, manage, secure and grow a companys entire digital system in those cloud-based environments.
After getting a feel for the basics with the Getting Started with Cloud Computing course, the remaining six courses focus on the two rival platforms.
With AWS Cloud Essentials, you get the Amazon-approved best practices for using and understanding everything, from AWS terminology and concepts, tips for navigating the AWS Management Console, key security measures, and how to use all of AWS primary foundational, database and management services. Read the rest
In the early 2010s, I wrote a play called True Believers that was kind of a send-up and a love letter to comic-con culture. The play had a full production in Boston in 2012 (closing on the weekend of San Diego Comic-Con, when they first announced the Guardians of the Galaxy, which totally ruined the meta-level “I Am Groot” gag in the script), as well as staged readings at fringe festivals across the country, from New York to Chicago to Valdez, Alaska.
I later tried to turn that script into a novel. It was an interesting writing experience trying to adapt your own work across mediums, from one that’s explicitly external to one that’s largely internal is a weird challenge, to say the least and ultimately, nothing really came of the manuscript.
But now that we’re all quarantine, and now that comic books themselves have also been quarantined for the foreseeable future, I’ve decided to serialize it on Medium, broken down into digestible chunks. The first 10 chapters are out now, and they each take (by Medium’s calculations) about 4-9 minutes to read. I’ll be adding new chapters every day through the end of the month. If you’re looking for some nerdy laughs and nostalgia, it could be a delightful way to pass the time right now.
Here’s a fuller synopsis of the story, in case you’re not convinced:
It’s the weekend of the big annual comic book convention, and Chad Mailer is a young professional comic book writer who hit his career peak five years ago with a series that he never actually finished, and he now wishes to re-ignite his career.
This footage was captured from a demo tape used by home entertainment dealers showing off the high quality of the new D-Theater (D-VHS) digital video recording. Enabling the recording and display of HD content, D-Theater/D-VHS was the VHS videocassette format’s last gasp. From Youtube Pedant:
In 2002 D-Theater launched in the US – the dealers needed a demo tape of HD footage. JVC reused some HD video that had been shot as a demo for the Japanese HD market back in 1993.
This footage would have most likely been originally used for a HiVision MUSE demo (an HD Broadcast, Tape & Laserdisc format).You can determine that the year is 1993 by the adverts in Times Square – The Radio 501 CD that’s advertised on a billboard came out in 1993 and Paper Moon is playing at the Marquis Theater.
(Thanks, UPSO!) Read the rest
As usual, TikTok is a bit ahead of the curve. I.e., this is how the younger people in your house are likely self-educating right now. (This vid is 14hrs old, w/6.7M views and 740K likes.) pic.twitter.com/J09RIgJyCR
— David Hobby (@strobist) April 3, 2020
While I have nothing against the classic cowboy robber bandana mask, this technique, while it does require two hair rubber bands, is genius.
“How to Fold a No-Sew Bandana Face Mask” (Make:) Read the rest
It’s great to see people are out there trying to find fun ways to exercise amid the current crisis. Although jumping up and down isn’t great for the knees, it does give decent cardio. But if you don’t have a rope or a puddle, we admit that jumping can lose …read more
Yesterday’s outing inspired me to make a more fashion-forward mask, with distance warnings and an equalizer effect responding to the sound of my voice. Also a goofy mouth graphic because why not? pic.twitter.com/URDfQhbovO
— Chelsea Klukas (@chelscore) April 6, 2020
Chelsea Klukas is a product design manager at Oculus and she made this cool facemask with a color LED display.
Here’s a tutorial!