Mike.goebel

There's a live-action Titanfall series coming . This is its second trailer. In case you couldn't tell from the lack of actual live-action action in many parts, it's the work of a VFX studio.

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Few sounds are as recognizable as the THX Deep Note. [Batuhan] did some research, and set about recreating the sound. The original Deep Note (mp3 link) was created in 1982 by [Dr. James A. Moorer]. [Dr. Moorer] used the Audio Signal Processor (ASP) (AKA SoundDroid) to create the sound. The ASP was a complex machine to program. The Deep Note took about 20,000 lines of C code to program. The C code was compiled to about 250,000 discrete statements to command the ASP.

Only one ASP was ever built, and LucasFilm owned it. Instead of recreating the hardware, [Batuhan] used SuperCollider to recreate the sound. Just like the ASP, SuperCollider is a tool for real-time audio synthesis. The difference is that SuperCollider is open source and runs on modern computers. [Batuhan] used his research and ears to perform an analysis of the Deep Note. He created two re-creations. The first is carefully constructed to replicate the sound. The second is a Twitter worthy 140 character version. Both versions are reasonable facsimiles of the original Deep Note, though they’re not quite perfect to our ears.

[Batuhan] isn’t the only person working on recreations. Deep Note in 1KB of JavaScript can be heard at  http://thx.onekb.net/. We’d love to hear other versions created by Hackaday readers!

[Via Reddit]

Filed under: musical hacks

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Standing desks seem to be all the rage today — but do you really want to commit fully to always standing? [Jeff Minton] didn’t, and when he found out how much convertible standing desks cost… he decided to make his own.

While brainstorming ways of accomplishing this he started browsing around eBay and found 18″ linear actuators for sale. They were $45 each, ran at 24V and could lift 600lbs each. Bingo. Actually, that’s kinda overkill…

He picked up a 24V power supply, an Arduino, and a 8-channel relay board.  The actuators are attached to the desk’s original legs using U-bolts which keep the legs straight and take the load of the desk. The untreated wood supports are there to reinforce the original desk, because they weren’t that sturdy in the first place.

It takes about a minute to fully actuate the legs, so while it’s not the prettiest nor the quickest solution — it does the trick and allows you to easily switch between standing and sitting.

Maybe he should try over-powering the actuators since the load is so small — could make it go a bit faster! And if you’re looking for a cheaper and more permanent solution, extended PVC legs do the trick too.

Filed under: home hacks

Blame the RPG's. After a generation of character building and class development in video games, quantifying our own personal stats has become as second nature as Second Life. And with these handy apps and gadgets at your disposal, you'll be power leveling through your days in no time.

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By J.F. Sargent  Published: January 23rd, 2014  Not to shatter your youthful idealism or anything, but the world is kind of a scary place. We at Cracked have done our best to make sure you know just how movies, the legal system, and even hospitals are trying to gut you and wear your skin as a crud

Apple and China Mobile have signed a deal to start selling iPhones in the region, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. China Mobile has secured licenses to operate a 4G LTE service in China, alongside other mobile operators, and will launch a new brand for its 4G network at a December 18th event. The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will then be available in China Mobile stores, although an actual iPhone launch for the carrier has not been confirmed. Recent reports have also suggested that China Mobile will finally start selling the iPhone later this month.

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The University of Iowa library has more than 4,000 miniature books in its collection. The smallest one of all, though, manages to stand out from the rest by measuring in at an itty-bitty 0.138 inches square and 0.04 inches thick. And as The Atlantic uncovered, researchers have only just found out what text this tiny tome is holding, thanks to a new microscope.

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Earlier today, Yelp announced that it is rolling out online ordering functionality for a handful of restaurants, obviously with the intention of making it available to more businesses on the crowd-sourced review site. But now that Yelp has a vested interest in the success of some of the businesses that users review, it makes us wonder if the site is ultimately doing damage to its own reputation as a source for honest reviews.

There are currently only a very small number of businesses involved in the launch of the service, but as more restaurants sign on — and as Yelp expands the program, dubbed Yelp Platform, to include online reservations at salons, spas, dentists, etc — one has to wonder if a conflict of interest will arise.

The post on Yelp’s blog about today’s announcement doesn’t mention any specifics of how Yelp benefits financially from the online ordering service, but a rep for the website tells Consumerist, “We share in the revenue that the restaurant pays to the ordering service for providing online ordering technology and offline distribution services, but the vast majority paid by consumers for food still goes to the restaurant.”

Right now, Yelp doesn’t really have any financial stake in the well-being of the businesses listed on the site. If a restaurant or nail salon is shuttered, it doesn’t really impact the company’s bottom line.

By charging fees for online orders and reservations, Yelp is put in a position in which it has a financial interest in seeing that participating restaurants are portrayed positively. Higher star ratings and more comments from happy customers could result in more orders being placed, which would in turn mean more money for Yelp. But does the fact that Yelp could make more by manipulating ratings mean that the site will secretly tweak ratings?

Yelp has long had to weather complaints from businesses who claim the site’s review-filtering system can hide scores of valid comments and result in an unfairly skewed public profile. Some businesses have alleged that Yelp provides preferential treatment to advertisers, but Yelp has repeatedly denied these claims.

You can be sure that some of these critics will be on the lookout for even the slightest hint that participating Yelp Platform businesses are being given an unfair boost, whether it’s by manipulation of star ratings and comments, or by improved placement in search results.

For its part, Yelp says the new services will not affect the ratings.

“Consumers are free to decide where they choose to spend their money, we are simply providing them with a streamlined way to transact with that business,” the Yelp rep tells Consumerist. “There has never been any amount of money that a business can pay Yelp to manipulate reviews, rating or placement in organic search and Yelp Platform is no exception.”

Yelp’s online-ordering system is obviously a direct challenge to existing services like GrubHub, which currently posts Yelp star-ratings side-by-side with its own users’ ratings. In light of today’s announcement, we asked GrubHub if it will continue to use Yelp ratings. A rep for the service tells Consumerist, that “We have no plans to change that feature.”

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When I think peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I think of paper bag lunches and my PB&J smashed beneath a soggy banana and a Ziploc bag filled with potato chips. However, no matter the state of my PB&J (courtesy of my dad’s culinary skills), it always tasted fantastic — with the perfect balance of chunky peanut butter and grape jelly.

Which, of course, makes Smashburger’s latest offering — a Peanut Butter & Jelly shake — a tasty, nostalgic treat. The new item is available at all locations nationwide now through September 30th. The hand-spun shake features Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream swirled with strawberry syrup and crushed Nutter Butter cookies for that “authentic peanut butter and jelly flavor.”

Ugh, Nutter Butter cookies in our milkshakes? Absolute genius.

The post Smashburger Offers PB&J Milkshake, Brings Back Memories of Paper Bag Lunches appeared first on Foodbeast.

Google planned to revolutionize the way we make payments with its mobile wallet service. Google Wallet has failed to find mainstream success, however, and has been downloaded from the Play store fewer than 10 million times since first launching in September 2011. According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, Google has invested more than $300 million to help develop the app and service, which remains a niche product that is actually losing money; Osama Bedier, the former head of Google Wallet, revealed that Google loses money on every transaction due to the high fees the company is forced to pay to credit card companies. All of the blame cannot be put on Google, though. Wallet has been blacklisted at Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, each of which have backed rival payment solution ISIS. Without support from the carriers, Google might never be able to turn Wallet around and its fate may already be decided.

Google's reputation for shady shenanigans hasn't hurt its image with the American public. A new poll from The Washington Post finds that 83% of American adults have a favorable opinion of Google, while 72% say the same for Apple and just 60% say the same for Facebook. One of the most intriguing findings from the survey showed a significant drop in Apple's favorability among adults under the age of 30, which dropped from 81% last year to 71% this year. Meanwhile, Facebook actually saw its overall popularity rise year over year, as its 60% favorability rating represented an increase of two percentage points from the 58% favorability it registered in last year's poll.

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