Watch the world champion of gymnastics Simone Biles stick the landing on a triple-double at yesterday's U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City. Incredible slow motion of that below. Biles won her sixth all-around title. This is two days after she made history with a double-double dismount off the balance beam. Video of that is also below. (ESPN)
Simone Biles, in extreme slow motion. pic.twitter.com/mjdYp0zwkv
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 12, 2019
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today I have an interesting take on the murder-mystery format, a creepy game about a frog surviving in a flooded forest, and the latest puzzler from Hamster On Coke Games. So without further ado, here are the most notable games released this week.
18 best new Android games released this week including The Black Widow, They Breathe, and OXXO was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Gideon Irving's fantastic video, "Woke Up Looking" was made without computer graphics in just one take. The video below shows how he did it.
Here's another wonderful one-take video of Gideon's. It only has 135 views!
Hosico Cat lives in Russia with a woman and man who care for him very much.
“I’m Hosico! Fluffy cheeks! Golden boy, Scottish straight. I like boxes, a bit shy.”
Subscribe to their YouTube, or enjoy their Instagram.
A million years ago, I bought a Crystal and the Wolves CD on impulse from a rack on the counter at Amoeba Records; I ripped it and tossed it into my shuffle. Now, about once a month, I am treated to "Old Oak Tree," the standout track on the disc, which makes me happy as a happy thing. It just happened. Thought you might wanna hear it, too.
The Royal Mint made no new 1p and 2p coins last year, saying there are enough in circulation. The nearly worthless denominations aren't being phased out, though.
Cash use has fallen across the UK, and some feared the end of copper coins when the government announced a consultation on the mix of cash in circulation earlier this year. But the Treasury concluded that the coins were still needed, and said they would continue to be used "for years to come". Over 2 million people are estimated to be almost entirely reliant on cash in their daily lives, with the elderly, vulnerable and those in rural communities likely to be hardest hit by any decline in cash availability.
Canada ceased production of its 1c coin five years ago, but it remains legal tender. Australia and New Zealand ditched their 1c coins about two decades back. But the increasingly pointless American penny remains in business, held aloft by the tide of hysteria that washes in whenever the Treasury suggests getting rid of it.
Shannon Byers was an investigator with the Gwinnett County (Georgia) Medical Examiner's office, until this week, when she resigned after news got out that a body whose death she had declared to be of "natural causes" had been found in a bloody murder-scene with a stab wound to the neck.
Ray Neal, 61, was found in a bedroom of his home, surrounded by blood, with blood throughout the scene. When Neal's body was released to a funeral home, they discovered a stab wound in Neal's neck. This triggered an autopsy that found the cause of death to be murder by stabbing.
Byers has since resigned. The County is advertising for a new medical examiner to take her place.
According to the police report, Byers examined Neal’s body and determined the cause of death to be natural. The report stated Byers released the body to Byrd and Flanagan Funeral home. But the report explained, once at the funeral home, an employee noticed a hole in Neal’s neck. That’s when the Neal’s body was returned to the morgue where a further autopsy determined he had been murdered, the medical examiner’s office confirmed to FOX 5 News.
Gwinnett County ME investigator resigns after misinterpreted autopsy [Fox 5 News]
(via Lowering the Bar)
Traffic disappears into a higher dimension, on this bridge. Witchcraft. https://t.co/9jXxSFjXv6 pic.twitter.com/yO9MaGokHy
— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) August 5, 2019
Where they're going, they don't need roads.
You're gonna want to unmute for the happycrys.
This video is pretty amazing.
“Daughter was with grandma for a month and we got the kitten a week ago I told her we have a gift for her and wanted to make sure she didn’t suspect it’s a kitten,” says IMGURian romansamurai.
My daughter’s reaction to our new kitten [IMGUR]
Here at Boing Boing, the PTSD triggers and nightmares are free! Don't forget to tip your blogger.
So, these images are from @threateningtoliet.
The hideous restroom curators at “Toilets with Threatening Auras” catalogues seriously bad loo design that seriously should not exist anywhere for any reason.
I had a good cackle or two, having recently completed a cross-country road trip and stopped at many a diner, roadside taco stand, and failing midwestern shopping mall.
Here are some of their recent picks, via an IMGUR image dump that went a little viral.
Wait for it.
TFW you encounter something you seriously did not anticipate.
BOX: [exists]
CAT: [figures shit out]
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today I have the very first Gundam title to reach mobile devices in the West, an adorable kung-fu rhythm game, not to mention a premium RPG port designed around the Battle Chasers comic book series. So without further ado, here are the most notable games released this week.
19 best new (and 1 WTF) Android games released this week including Gundam Battle: Gunpla Warfare, Hamsterdam, and Battle Chasers: Nightwar was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous three weeks or so. Today I have a Substratum-like theming app for Samsung Galaxy devices, a note app from Post-it, and a mobile remote app from AirDroid. So without further ado, here are the most notable Android apps released in the last two weeks.
10 new and notable Android apps from the last three weeks including Hex Installer, Post-it, and AirDroid Remote Support (7/13/19 - 8/3/19) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Media companies want you to consume their content. The more you watch, read, listen, the better it is for them, and it's even best if they can require no active decision on your part to shove content into your ears and eyeballs. That's why things like autoplay and automatic video previews exist, and YouTube is one of the practice's worst offenders. The Android app is now testing another place it can automatically play videos for you — in your subscriptions tab — but thankfully, you can disable the option.
Read MoreYouTube ruining your Subscriptions tab with auto-playing video previews, but you can disable them was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
The Decoy Effect is a simple but powerful trick that marketers use to influence you to buy something that is bigger or more expensive than you need or want. I fall for this every time I go to the movies and think I'm going to buy the medium popcorn but end up getting the large because it costs just a few cents more. The medium popcorn is the decoy that nudges you to buy the large. But social psychologists have also studied the Decoy Effect outside retail environments. From the BBC News:
The decoy effect might also influence our voting in elections, and recruitment decisions. In these kinds of situations, the “decoy” may appear by accident rather than having been deliberately placed in the selection, but if you do come across two candidates who are similar, but one is slightly superior to the other, it will heighten your regard for them compared to the other competitors...
On a more positive note, scientists in the UK have also started to consider whether the decoy effect might be used to encourage people to make healthier life choices. Christian Von Wagner, a reader in behavioural science and health at University College London, for instance, recently explored people’s intentions to undergo a vital – but unpleasant – screening for colorectal cancer. He found that given the choice between arranging an appointment for the screening or not having the procedure at all, many people chose not to go. But if he also presented them with a third option – an appointment at a less convenient hospital with a longer waiting time, ie, the decoy – the uptake was greater.
For more on the Decoy Effect and other fascinating cognitive biases, I highly recommend behavioral economist Dan Ariely's fantastic book Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
Penn State engineers have devised a circuit inspired by the way barn owls can so precisely determine where a sound is coming from and track their prey in the dark. Eventually, this fine example of biomimicry could lead to more accurate electronic navigation devices. Essentially, the owl's brain calculates the difference between when a sound arrives at the left ear compared to the right ear and uses that information to locate the source of the sound. After that is when things get interesting. From Penn State:
The speed of sound is faster than the owl's nerves can function so after the owl brain converts the sound to an electrical pulse, the pulse is slowed down. Then the brain's circuitry uses a lattice of nerves of different lengths with inputs from two ends, to determine which length is where the two signals coincide or arrive at the same time. This provides the direction.
Saptarshi Das and his team have created an electronic circuit that can slow down the input signals and determine the coincidence point, mimicking the working of the barn owl brain...
The team created a series of split-gate molybdenum sulfide transistors to mimic the coincidence nerve network in the owl's brain. Split-gate transistors only produce output when both sides of the gate match, so only the gate tuned to a specific length will register the sound. The biomimetic circuitry also uses a time-delay mechanism to slow down the signal...
"Millions of years of evolution in the animal kingdom have ensured that only the most efficient materials and structures have survived," said Sarbashis Das. "In effect, nature has done most of the work for us. All we have to do now is adapt these neurobiological architectures for our semiconductor devices."
"Barn owls may hold key to navigation and location" (Penn State)
It's a real life Corgi hamster wheel!
This behavior may be what the AKC calls “Frapping,” – corgi code for “frantic random acts of play,” which usually conclude with dramatic slides or fanciful choreography sequences.
Watch this truly wonderful iPhone video of Allycorinne's corgi and UNMUTE for maximum enjoyment.
It's hot everywhere, even in Burträsk, Sweden, where this very strange human-dog-mutant enjoys cooling down with a slice of watermelon.
Piece by piece, the Labrador Retriever appears to lift the juicy fruit to its mouth with their owner's hands.
The video was filmed on a hot day in Burträsk on July 24, 2019.
Hey, they're not the only dog who appears to feel very comfortable around watermelons and video cameras.
The sound of his tiny squeaking mews!
From the Kitten Lady's IG feed.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Hannah Shaw (@kittenxlady) on
Love this wonderful rendition of the Beatles 'Yellow Submarine' album cover, in string art, which was of course so very much of the era of this record's release.
From R/crafts, and by @meltsir -- who mounted it on a piece of spray-painted wood.
What a wonderful reminder that patience can result in truly surprising beauty.
This darling denizen of the deep is a Helicocranchia, aka a piglet squid. Scientists on the Ocean Exploration Trust's E/V Nautilus caught footage of the rarely seen creature at a depth of 4,544 feet near Palmyra Atoll in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The commenters' delightful descriptions really make the clip.
Today Post-it is revealing something you might have already assumed it had: an Android app. The new Post-it app will allow you to digitally import content written on real-world Post-its, supplement them with more created on-device, organize them into groups, and share them with others in multiple formats. None of this is really new since the company's iOS app has been around for half a decade, but now the more populated platform has reached Post-it parity.
Read MorePost-it releases Android app to scan and organize sticky notes, only five years after iOS was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
In West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, police are searching for a woman who evacuated the contents of her bladder on potatoes for sale in the produce section of the local Walmart. WPXI ran a video with photos of the suspect along with a statement from Walmart:
"This type of obscene conduct is outrageous and we immediately disposed of the affected products and sanitized the area to ensure its cleanliness and safety for our customers. We’re working with the West Mifflin Police Department to find the responsible party and have them prosecuted.”
Image of potato used to obscure suspect's face: Public Domain Pictures/CC0 Public Domain
Update: she turned herself in.
Sony is promising something I’ve wanted forever: a silent, wearable air-conditioner …
The post Sony promising silent, app-controlled, wearable air-conditioner next year appeared first on 9to5Google.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today I have the classic first-person shooters DOOM and DOOM II, plus I have the official release for Pavilion: Touch Edition, an updated version of the stylish puzzler that allows for touchscreen-based gameplay. So without further ado, here are the most notable games released this week.
18 best new Android games released this week including DOOM, DOOM II, and Pavilion: Touch Edition was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
As a fan of minimal word games, I thought it might be a good idea to round up a few of my favorites. I find that I often get annoyed by busy UIs, especially in word games, so I tend to lean more towards the titles that are built with a focus on gameplay instead of bright colors and shiny buttons. This is why I've hand-selected ten of the best Android word games that offer a minimalist theme.
Read More10 of the best minimalist word games available on Android in 2019 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
We're told that these French bulldogs made mischief with a bag of green food coloring but I suspect that an accidental overdose of gamma radiation altered their body chemistry.
Unless you own a Daydream-compatible device, you may not have known that a virtual reality version of the local co-op puzzle game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes has been available on Android since 2016. As of this morning, an official announcement trailer for a touchscreen update for Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes was released on YouTube, and apparently it's coming to the Play Store on August 1st.
The trailer above doesn't delve into the gameplay for Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, though it's been around since 2015, so it's not that difficult to find reviews and gameplay videos.
Read MoreLocal co-op game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes comes to Android phones and tablets on August 1 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
For the 466 million people in the world who have hearing loss, the inability to hear a conversation or the sounds around you can be isolating. Without clear sound, it’s challenging to connect to the people around you and fully experience the world. And simply asking others to speak louder (or turn up the TV volume) isn’t a helpful solution because people hear more clearly at different audio frequencies.
Sound Amplifier is an Android Accessibility app that helps people hear more clearly, and now it’s available on Android devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and above. Using machine learning, we sorted through thousands of publicly available hearing studies and data to understand how people hear in different environments and created a few simple controls.
Here’s how it works: When you plug in your headphones and use Sound Amplifier, you can customize frequencies to augment important sound, like the voices of the people you are with, and filter out background noise. It can help you hear conversations in noisy restaurants more clearly, amplify the sound coming from TV at personalized frequency levels without bothering others, or boost the voices of presenters at a lecture.
For some people, it may be hard to know when Sound Amplifier is detecting or enhancing sound. So we added an audio visualization feature that shows when sound is detected, helping you visualize the changes you’re making to it. Like a volume number on your TV, you know how much the sound is boosted even if you can’t hear it yet. There are a couple of new visual updates, too. You can launch the app directly from your phone’s home screen instead of tapping into Accessibility settings, and with the reorganized the control settings, you can easily tap between boosting your sound or filtering out the background noise.
Caption: Sound Amplifier has a new look and feel with an audio visualization feature.
Sound Amplifier is the latest step in our commitment to make audio clear and accessible for everyone. And we’ll continue to improve the app through new features that enhance sound for all types of hearing.
