Google has been involved in a massive antitrust legal battle with the European Union for the past few months and recently, it was handed the largest fine ever for its “Google Shopping” services. Today, Bloomberg is reporting that Google will split off that service in order to meet demands from that case.
Back in July, Google took submissions for the best indie games of the year from US and Canadian developers. The company hosted a festival over the weekend in San Francisco where the public was able to play the games, as well as vote on finalists. Today, Google unveiled this year’s winners and listed those apps in the Play Store.
Rainier Schoeman apparently didn't receive the letter that Winston Churchill School in Woking, UK had sent to parents asking them not to drop off their children on school grounds. So it's understandable that when Schoeman was told by a teacher that he couldn't drive his car through the gate, Schoeman drove through the gate anyway, with the teacher on the hood of his car. Unfortunately, the court was less understanding and Mr. Schoeman was sentenced to 10 months in jail.
John Kobuki demonstrates the remarkable patience, dexterity, and craftsmanship required to spend 40 minutes shaping a clear glass sphere with a flower inside. (more…)
Try and try as she may, this little girl just can't figure out how to play her dad's Game Boy Color. She really can't be blamed though, as she was born into a world where touch screens are the norm.
This reminds me of two things.
1. When my now-12-year-old daughter was about seven, I got a new laptop. I opened it, booted it up, and she immediately pawed the screen like it was an iPad.
2. It also reminds me of this viral video from 2011 of a baby trying to use a magazine like an iPad.
(reddit)
The Velcro company has some news for us: they don't want us to call velcro, well, velcro anymore. It's important enough to them that their "legal team" made an amusing music video about it to tell us why.
Our Velcro Brand Companies legal team decided to clear a few things up about using the VELCRO® trademark correctly – because they’re lawyers and that’s what they do. When you use “velcro” as a noun or a verb (e.g., velcro shoes), you diminish the importance of our brand and our lawyers lose their *insert fastening sound.* So please, do not say “velcro shoes” (or “velcro wallet” or “velcro gloves”) - we repeat “velcro” is not a noun or a verb. VELCRO® is our brand. #dontsayvelcro
What do they want you to call velcro now? "Hook and loop."
I wish you luck with that, VELCRO®.
(reddit)
Within a Millennial's lifetime, depictions of dinosaurs have gone from leathery lizards to feathered floofbeasts as our understanding of ancient biology grew. But it's still speculation, reports Atlas Obscura's Eric Grundhauser, and shaky at that. Check out The Bad Hair, Incorrect Feathering, and Missing Skin Flaps of Dinosaur Art. Pictured above is what a swan would look like if a dino artist drew one based upon its skeletal remains, as brilliantly rendered by C. M. Kosemen. I am pretty sure that's how swans see themselves, so I'm cool with it (but not with swans closer to me than, say, 70 feet.)
Latest OxygenOS update brings a ton of new features to the OnePlus 3/3T.
The OxygenOS 4.5.0 OTA update is now rolling out to the OnePlus 3 and 3T, introducing features from the OnePlus 5 like lift up display and Gaming Do Not Disturb to last year's devices. Lift up display wakes the screen when you lift the phone, and Gaming DND mutes notifications and locks the navigation buttons when a particular app is running.
The update also lets you schedule night mode (finally!), brings the Slate font along with the new Dash Charge animation, and other stability fixes. Here's a look at all the new additions:
System
Launcher
Phone
Camera / Gallery
File Manager
As always, the rollout of the OTA update is incremental, so it'll be a few days before everyone makes the switch to OxygenOS 4.5.0.
Now you can ask Alexa to play you all sorts of things instead of just hoping you hit the right result.
Amazon has added the ability to search through the Amazon Music app using your voice with Alexa, instead of ... erm ... searching with your voice through whatever it was it was using before. The update is a good thing, really, prominently placing an Alexa button at the bottom of the app and making it easier to do voice searches. (Instead of searching and then hunting for the voice command mic button thing.)
Amazon's touting the contextual ability of the Alexa search. For example: "Just use the push-to-talk feature and say, 'Play the new song by Fifth Harmony,' and Alexa will play 'He Like That.' " (I'll have to take Amazon's word for it in this case, but contextual searches in music is a big deal.)
One caveat here: The Alexa search is available so far only in the U.S., UK, Germany and Austria.
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 week or so.
Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
Android Police coverage: LendingClub, a peer-to-peer loans platform, just launched its Android app for investors
LendingClub Invest is a newly launched peer-to-peer loan system app.
Read More16 new and notable (and 2 WTF) Android apps from the last week (9/19/17 - 9/25/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Some YouTube rabbit holes are worth the trip, like a foray into the genre of tunnel-cleaning trucks. It's next-level powerwashing porn. (more…)
Thắng Sói has released Vietnam From Above II. Unlike many similar drone films, this work mixes the mundane and urban with the country's more picturesque vistas. (more…)
As a personal project, designer Carmelo Barberá animated type with a pink and blue theme. The results of the experiment are pretty nice! (more…)
It's free of charge but you can donate to Alexander through PayPal.
If you're in Mexico, just say no to 7UP. In Mexicali, Meth has been found in some bottles of 7UP, which, among other symptoms, can cause vomiting, burning to the abdomen and esophagus, and can make it hard to breathe. The tainted soda has killed one person and made seven others sick.
According to Snopes:
The health department of Baja California also issued a statement noting that the meth was found in 2-liter bottles of 7Up and that all stores in the area had been instructed to remove the product from their shelves.
A spokesman for Dr Pepper Snapple Group, the distributors of 7Up in the United States, said that “None of the 7Up products sold in the U.S. are affected by the issue being reported in Mexico.”
Image: Mike Mozart
Making of 'The Dock' looks at the logistical challenges of constructing and towing a floating dock out into the Bali surf, as well and the challenges of surfing from it. (more…)
Four chaps needed to be rescued from the highest mountain in England over the weekend because they couldn't walk. No, they hadn't injured themselves in any way. They just got too stoned to hike back down the mountain.
Stranded on Scafell Pike’s 3,210-foot peak, the men called for help Saturday evening. A rescue team along with police helped the men hike safely down.
The Cumbria Police had something to say about it on Twitter:
Persons stuck on mountain, after taking cannabis. Having to deploy M'tain Rescue, Air support and Ambulance to rescue them.....
— Cumbria Police (@Cumbriapolice) September 23, 2017
And:
Persons rescued after becoming incapable of walking due to cannabis use. MRT volunteers putting themselves at risk to prevent harm.
— Cumbria Police (@Cumbriapolice) September 23, 2017
According to The Guardian:
The post provoked furious reactions on social media, with some users suggesting the group be asked to cover the cost of the rescue operation. The comments prompted Copeland’s local police force to respond that they “always ensure people are safe, regardless of choices they make that put them in a dangerous position”.
Image: Thorneh
Update: Make that four approaches … CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has also written a letter of apology to Londoners for the company’s failings.
We will appeal this decision on behalf of millions of Londoners, but we do so with the knowledge that we must also change […] We won’t be perfect, but we will listen to you; we will look to be long-term partners with the cities we serve; and we will run our business with humility, integrity and passion”.
Uber is trying three separate approaches to overturn a decision not to renew its operating license in London when it expires on Saturday …
Enrich served as the WSJ's European Banking Editor during the runup to the financial crisis of 2008 and in its aftermath, as bankers who'd brought the world's economy to its knees took home huge bonuses while their employers sucked up billions in taxpayer bailouts. He found himself a confidant of Tom Hayes, the only banker to do serious time for the LIBOR scandal, and recorded hours and hours of frank interviews with Hayes and his wife.
This affords Enrich a unique perspective on the LIBOR scandal, one that he fleshes out with admirable depth using court testimony and the astounding mountain of evidence drawn from the archived chats and voice-calls by the bankers who conspired together to rip off the entire planet.
What emerges from the story is a picture of mediocrity clothed in tailor-made suits. Buffoonish brokers bribe odious traders with overpriced Champagne to get their business, while the whole gang wheedles lazy, asleep-at-the-switch colleagues to falsify the data in the spreadsheet cells that are treated as empirical market benchmarks but are literally just made-up numbers. Regulators look the other way, compliance officers pretend they don't see anything, and when government lawyers finally take an interest, they get halfway through their investigations before quitting their jobs and going to work for the banks they've been prosecuting, with multi-million-dollar hiring bonuses.
Meanwhile, the crooked trading turns out to all be a socially useless casino, not "providing liquidity" or "allocating capital" or "discovering prices" but just spinning the wheel and throwing the dice with other peoples' money.
The (mostly) men involved in the scam are painted as a thoroughly dislikable lot, but without resorting to caricature. Rather, Enrich invites us to empathize with them -- understand their motives and the framework they live in -- without sympathizing (letting them off the hook for their shitty behavior).
Hayes is at the center of the book: on the autistic spectrum, often foolish, mathematically brilliant, personally deplorable at nearly every turn. But he is still a figure that Enrich finds empathy for, even managing the trick of getting us to root for him now and again as he bellows abuse at the people around him (it helps that most of them are no better).
Enrich is doing important work here, making one of the most significant, complicated and boring affairs of the past decade into something accessible, exciting, and salient. This is financial writing at its best.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History [David Enrich/Custom House]
Just look at it. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
This cat has trained its human to repeatedly push it across the floor.
HMC, while you curl me again. from holdmycatnip
Just a video of a dad and his son having a conversation. Why did dad record and share it? To help people understand the day-to-day experience of communicating with people who have autism.
“There are times when the autistic individual is very able to communicate and have a conversation in their own different way,” says dad.
He hopes it helps increase understanding.
Smartphones are truly indispensable given how they’ve subsumed all the other gadgets in our lives. They are used by many as buzzers to wake up, and as such a possible alarm bug on Android Oreo is quite worrying.
Late last year, Google started showing like and dislike buttons on movie and TV shows' search results card. That allowed it to add its own ratings next to IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. But it was only a percentage of likes based on how many people tapped the thumbs up or down icon, so it didn't provide any context or explanation to the rating, thus making users head elsewhere for a more detailed opinion.
Read MoreGoogle starts asking for audience reviews in movie search results was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
One of the biggest memes in the Android community has been the "check for update" button. Until now, pressing that button never actually did anything; if you were in the update's rollout group, it would obviously reveal a pending OTA, but if you weren't, hitting it did absolutely nothing. However, Googler Elliott Hughes has informed us that that elusive button is actually useful now.
In his Google+ post, Hughes notes that as long as you're running the current version of Google Play Services, you'll no longer need to sideload any OTA or factory images.
Read MoreMash no more: The 'check for update' button on Nexus/Pixel now always pulls the latest OTA was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
