Right now I'm listening to a mix of coffee shop chatter and tweeting birds. I'm using a website called A Soft Murmur, which lets you create an ambient mix of rain, thunder, waves, wind, fire, birds, crickets, coffee shop, singing bowl, and white noise. You can save your favorite mixes, too, or click a button for a random mix.
Want one? There are many different varieties on Etsy: Leather ones, fancy Jacquard fabric ones, and someone's even selling sewing patterns for them.
image via LeatherHeds
Thanks, Argyre!
When pianist James Rhodes uploaded a recording of his own performance of a Bach composition to Facebook, it was immediately blocked thanks to a match with a recording that Sony had claimed copyright in; Facebook uses an automated filter of the sort that the EU voted to make mandatory for all content types and services yesterday and it can't distinguish any competent rendition of Bach from any other competent rendition. (more…)
Spotify has solved a problem you've probably never encountered. Until recently, the limit on the number of tracks you could download for offline listening was 3,333 each on up to three computers, tablets, or phones. That seems like plenty to me, but now you can store significantly more music for Wi-Fi-free playback: up to 10,000 tracks per device on up to five devices.
The new number wasn't pulled out of a hat: your Spotify library can currently only hold 10,000 tracks, so now you can carry the whole thing everywhere you go.
Read MoreSpotify now lets you download up to 10,000 tracks per device was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Cheetahs in captivity still want to run and chase things, so the caretakers at Oregon Zoo made a custom-built a catapult that launches balls from one end of the cheetah habitat to the other. The cheetahs get a treat when they fetch a ball. (more…)
With the launch of the new Gmail earlier this year, many questioned the future of Inbox, the company’s experimental email client. Today, Google announced that Inbox by Gmail will be discontinued next year.
The post Google unsurprisingly killing Inbox next year, given overlap with Gmail appeared first on 9to5Google.
Europe’s controversial Copyright Directive has been approved after a previous version was rejected back in July.
Although intended to protect the rights of copyright owners, it’s likely to prove a headache for both Google’s search engine and its YouTube video platform …
The post Europe’s controversial copyright law approved, likely to hit Google and YouTube appeared first on 9to5Google.
A young snow leopard jumped from a rock and startled its mother, and the mother's startled reaction startled the cub.
Toilet snakes are reaching epidemic proportions in some parts of the world, but no more than in Mike Green's bathroom. (more…)
Welcome to our roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the last few days. This week, I have a super cute Kawaii-themed pinball game, the long awaited sequel to Alphabear, and a goofy game with an H3H3 theme. So without further ado, here are the most notable games released in the last week.
25 best new Android games released this week including Pinball Fantastic, and Alphabear 2, and H3H3: Ball Rider was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
A ‘sophisticated’ attack on British Airways’ mobile app and website has exposed the names, email addresses and full credit card details of 380,000 customers.
Of particular concern is the fact that the attackers captured the three-digit CVV security codes on the backs of cards, something that should not normally be possible …
The post British Airways app and website hack exposes full card details of 380,000 customers appeared first on 9to5Google.
Australian software engineer Sarah Spencer used a 1980s knitting machine to create a gorgeous equatorial star map in the form of a huge tapestry.
From Space.com:
The piece features all 88 constellations as seen from Earth, as well as the equatorial line with the zodiac constellations running along it, stars scaled according to their real-life brightness, the Milky Way galaxy, the sun, Earth's moon and all of the planets within our solar system. Spencer made sure to put the planets, sun and moon in specific, strategic positions so that the heavenly bodies indicate a specific date in time.
After 15kg of wool and over 💯 hrs of knitting, I’m finally ready to fly to the UK. Now I just need to pack the entire universe into my suitcase! I’ll see you all soon 🤗 pic.twitter.com/orBWAmi3bW
— Heart of Pluto (@HeartOfPluto_) August 26, 2018
gocivici made this amazing mechanical clock with a 3D printer and generously shared the plans on Instructables.
James Rhodes, a pianist, performed a Bach composition for his Youtube channel, but it didn't stay up -- Youtube's Content ID system pulled it down and accused him of copyright infringement because Sony Music Global had claimed that they owned 47 seconds' worth of his personal performance of a song whose composer has been dead for 300 years. (more…)
Matching the desktop counterpart, YouTube in March announced a dark theme for its mobile apps. iOS received the update immediately, while YouTube for Android has been testing for the past several months. Today, it now appears to be rolling out to more users.
The post YouTube is now widely rolling out a dark theme for Android appeared first on 9to5Google.
The Beauty of Science's "Microworld Unseen" project reveals the hidden beauty and weirdness of everyday objects through the "eye" of a scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). Capable of imaging at 1 nanometer resolution (one billionth of a meter) or less, SEMs scan the sample surface with a focused electron beam to generate topographic data that's used to produce the image. The first specimen in the Microworld Unseen series is a butterfly called the pale grass blue (Pseudozizeeria maha). Below is the butterfly's genitalia followed by an image of its compound eyes and proboscis.
Microsoft is once again redesigning Skype — in order to make Skype great again. Or as a Microsoft executive puts it too “focus on simplicity* to provide an overall better experience for you by making Skype faster to learn and easier to use.” What he is not saying — Microsoft messed up Skype so bad that what was a market leading product is now an afterthought in modern daily communication flow.
From its inception, Skype was a fairly straightforward and highly usable product. It also was disruptive because it did an end run around the hegemony of the large phone companies. It strived to serve one master — the Skype user. Being a peer-to-peer based network, it was not reliable and yet, the value proposition for the product was so high that most of us put up with the temperamental nature of the product.
It became so big and popular that eBay bought it for billions. The founders left, but the company and the product kept growing. After a stint as a standalone company, it was time for Skype to be sold again — to Microsoft for more billions. At the time of the sale, it was the king of the hill.
This was before WhatsApp, Slack, Zoom, and FaceTime. It was the software (and service) everyone used to make phone calls, do video conferencing and use as for chat. It was one of the top apps on Apple’s App Store. The beauty and power of Skype were that it was a product with a consumer-focus that spread like wildfire in the business environment. Even IBM was using it. This is what made it attractive to Microsoft, which wanted to make it part of its family of communication products, to be sold to businesses.
In order to do so, they had to give it a Microsoft makeover. In a world of apps where people wanted simple and easy to use products, Microsoft kept making the software more complex. It jettisoned the peer-to-peer model. It added features and used design principles that only Dr. Evil could love.
They even added Highlights — Snapchat Stories —to the mix. Why? It made no sense. But if Safeway can sell Kombucha, then Skype can do Stories. “It is like Tim Tebow trying to be a baseball player,” I told Bloomberg reporters. As I pointed out earlier, “it is a terrible interface, inhuman and difficult to use. It lacks any imagination — a fact that is repeatedly reinforced on social media every time you bring up Skype and its user experience.”
Of course, it didn’t work and Microsoft admits that in the blog post:
As Skype functionality has expanded, so too has its complexity. As with any feature-rich product, maintaining simplicity while enhancing functionality is critical to usability. This past year we explored some design changes and heard from customers that we overcomplicated some of our core scenarios. Calling became harder to execute and Highlights didn’t resonate with a majority of users. We needed to take a step back and simplify!
A few months ago, the same Microsoft was dismissing the grumpiness of users around software updates. I suspect that grumpy users know a thing or two. Here is a message from grumpy users to all companies — especially big and bigger — we now live in a world saturated with options. Well designed, simple and elegant software (apps, if you may) is all around us. You can’t assume that your market share will allow you to keep pushing a substandard and poor experience in your products.
We are all more grumpy. And remember — we all got grumpy about phone companies, and we got Skype — a simple, easy to use and highly useful (if not pretty) product that was worth billions, and beloved by millions.
September 3, 2018, San Francisco
Much has been made of the methane emissions of livestock, but these are lower in biodiverse pasture systems that include wild plants such as angelica, common fumitory, shepherd’s purse and bird’s-foot trefoil because they contain fumaric acid – a compound that, when added to the diet of lambs at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, reduced emissions of methane by 70%. In the vegan equation, by contrast, the carbon cost of ploughing is rarely considered. Since the industrial revolution, according to a 2017 report in the science journal Nature, up to 70% of the carbon in our cultivated soils has been lost to the atmosphere. So there’s a huge responsibility here: unless you’re sourcing your vegan products specifically from organic, “no-dig” systems, you are actively participating in the destruction of soil biota, promoting a system that deprives other species, including small mammals, birds and reptiles, of the conditions for life, and significantly contributing to climate change.Tree's opinion is grounded in good authority. In addition to being an author, travel writer and hand around the family farm that she owns with her husband, environmentalist Sir Charles Burrell, she's also put the hours in to understand the science behind what farming, be it of livestock or crops, does to our planet. His most recent book, Wilding - the Return of Nature to a British Farm, focuses on her and Burrell's attempts to include rewilded land use to their property. Image via Pixabay
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. This week I have a thrilling zombie apocalypse survival game, a medieval take on Ubisoft's Hungry Shark series, and a new NBA-themed collectible card game. So without further ado, here are the most notable games released in the last week.
25 best new Android games released this week including Escape from Chernobyl, Hungry Dragon, and MyNBA2K19 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. This week I have the official Play Store listing of Rootless Launcher, but that's not it for launchers, as I also have the POCO Launcher from Xiaomi that can even run on non-Xiaomi devices. You can also expect to find a fresh new video player called Nova Video Player that is both open-source and completely free to use.
11 new and notable Android apps and live wallpapers from the last week including Rootless Launcher, POCO Launcher, and Nova Video Player (8/25/18 - 9/1/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Chrome is easily one of the most important products Google has ever released. It started an evolutionary shift for web browsers by introducing sandboxing and rapid release schedules. Fast forward to today, and Chrome is the world's most popular web browser and serves as the operating system for a rapidly-growing ecosystem of laptops. Today marks the 10th anniversary of Google Chrome's initial announcement.
Google Chrome 3.0 running on Linux (source)
On September 1st, 2008, Google published a blog post announcing "a fresh take on the browser." It explained that the company wanted to develop a browser designed specifically for complex web applications, complete with operating system-like sandboxing:
Read MoreWe realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser.
Google Chrome was first announced 10 years ago today was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Maxine seems to represent the breed standard well.
Thanks, Lana.
Kids today. They understand a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, symbol when they see one.
Via CBS News:
A Union Mine High School student is facing battery charges after an altercation in her classroom over a Donald Trump "Make America Great Again" campaign hat, reports CBS Sacramento. In cellphone video, a teacher is seen trying to subdue fired-up 17-year-old senior Jo-Ann Butler after she became enraged at a classmate for wearing the MAGA hat.
She grabbed the hat off his head.
"That's a racist and hateful symbol," Butler said.
She is now facing two counts of battery, one on her classmate and one on her teacher, who deputies say she slapped as he escorted her from the room.
Butler says she made the scene to express her political feelings.
"Maybe just wake people up in some type of way, because it's not cool, the environment our classroom is in," Butler said.
Her father says he doesn't approve of the way she behaved in class. "Wasn't handled the way I'd like it," Chris Butler said.
Now he's faced with the legal impact of his daughter's alleged criminal act.
All centered around the political divide across the country.
"I don't agree with grabbing someone's hat and verbally talking to them in that way," Chris Butler said. "But as far as the issue being brought up, maybe this is something that needs to be brought up."
The El Dorado Union High School District's clothing policy allows students to wear political symbols.
Jeff Driscoll of Dubuque, Iowa makes and sells all kinds of other strange hummingbird feeders, including this one for $13.95. You can see them all over at his Etsy shop, Coppervine Feeders.
He writes:
This little feeder is made to attach to the beak of a hat or visor to give you a close up view of your hummingbirds. The end is shaped like a paperclip allowing you to easily slide it on the hat. It can also be used as a hand held feeder with the end providing an adequate handle. Three red berries were added to the feeder to help attract the birds and a perch for landing is on the end. The vial easily slides in and out of the copper coil for cleaning and filling. Please do not assume you will get hummingbirds to eat that closely if you don't have/feed hummingbirds. Those who feed hummingbirds and are outside when they eat know how close they can get and whether or not a feeder like this will work for them. It will not take long for birds to get comfortable and feed from your hand or hat. This 10 inch feeder is very practical and will provide an up close experience for you bird lovers. Hat needs to fit tight on your head to support this feeder.
(TIWIB)
This is another win for workers, as just this past July unions representing almost 10,000 Disneyland employees won their own fight for a $15 minimum wage. Disney’s revenue, generated in part by the labor of its parks and resorts workforce, increased by 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 to $4.7 billion.
Geese and swans are mean birds by nature, and enjoy picking fights with humans and other large animals. Here, we see an especially nasty goose who decided that it wanted possession of a juvenile elephant's zoo enclosure. The diminutive pachyderm tried to discourage the goose by flipping water with its trunk, but the goose insisted on escalating the confrontation, proving the goose was both mean and stupid.
Look at this rotating brush, called the Happycow. From the manufacturer's description:
Through automatic controls, the cows start up the machine by themselves by a slight lift of the brush. After the machine has been turned on, the brush is in operation for approx. 60 seconds. After it switches itself off, the cow cleaning machine can be immediately reused. The cows use the machine six times a day, on average. Uses the cow's natural behaviour of rubbing its body up against the feeding tree and activating the device.
I think my cats would go for a Happycat. If there isn't one already, someone should Kickstart it.
Aww yisss
Here's that one (the wishing well is a nice touch!):
Then someone requested he do architect Philip Johnson's historic Glass House next. He calls his creation "Philip Johnson's Glass Cottage," (emphasis mine) a nod to Kinkade's use of cottages in his paintings:
On this one, he writes, "Ok i really have to stop now. Merry Corbsmas:"
But he didn't stop. He then tackled the Farnsworth House (which I included as the lead image above).
A couple days later he was still at it. On this one, he writes, "Pack your bags for a rocky seaside getaway at the Gehryhaus! You'll love the *squints at copy* homey chain link fence & softly weathered *checks notes* corrugated steel siding while you eat a homemade breakfast in the soft glow of the *deep sigh* aggressively geometric sun room."
You can follow how it all went down in this thread: https://twitter.com/robyniko/status/1031000496608292872
images via @robyniko, used with permission