So, you want an Apple Watch but you don’t have the cash. Hiné Mizushima has got you covered with this do-it-yourself felt version. It’s a simple blue strap with a watch face made up of brightly colored buttons. I bet Steve Jobs would have loved this thing.
Photoshop 1.0 came out in 1990 and didn't have layers, live preview, multiple levels of undo, or many other features. See some current Photoshop experts wax nostalgic and wrestle with the lack of features in this entertaining video.
Robert Downey Jr. continues to prove that he is an awesome human being in this video where he presents a 7-year-old boy with an Iron Man prosthetic arm. It’s all set up so that Alex, who was born with a partial right arm, has no idea what’s about to happen. He walks into the room and there’s Downey in character as Tony Stark. Imagine how you would react to that.
Then, he opens up two Stark Industries cases to reveal his Iron Man arm and one made with the help of Microsoft One Note’s Collective Project and Limbitless Solutions, a group led by Albert Manero who is an engineering doctoral student at University of Central Florida. Their goal is to provide affordable bionic, 3D limbs to those in need.
Naturally, Downey is a great sport, even wise-cracking that the boy’s limb is better since Downey’s has a malfunctioning light and Alex’s works just fine.
Google’s Android is on a lot of different form factors out there, including smartphones, tablets, cars, watches, and televisions. It can be tough for a developer to be on all of those devices at once, but Google wants to help.
Google today released a new app called Universal Music Player that’s meant to be a reference app to help developers learn how to get an app on all of Android’s form factors. It uses several features found in Android 5.0 to let devs add support for Android phones and tablets, Android Auto, Android Wear, and Google Cast devices, all in a single codebase. With Universal Music App, Google has made an app that easily lets you control music on all of those products.
Obviously it benefits Google to have apps on its various Android platforms, including the newer ones like Android Auto and Android Wear. And it benefits app developers to be on those platforms because it gets them more exposure. It can be a pain to have to develop apps and experiences that fit with each form factor, but using Google’s reference app, devs can learn how to take their existing app , make a few tweaks, and have it be compatible with all of the form factors that Google offers.
WOW! I'm sure every tabletop gamer would want this room in their home! This homeowner put together this epic gaming room inspired by a 13th-century European medieval tavern. The furniture is by Geoghagan Woodwork and you can read more about it at Off Beat Home. Just look at the incredible details...
We love that this Saturday is 3/14/15. It makes our irrational hearts flutter a little faster - the Perfect Pi day. In a display of brilliance, one of our clever monkeys suggested the day would be even more exciting at the extremely Perfect Pi Time: 3/14/15 9:26:53. If you place an eligible order at the Perfect Pi Time, you have a chance to get your order for FREE!
Massachusetts' ban on the private possession of stun guns—an "electrical weapon" under the statute—does not violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms, the state's top court has ruled.
The decision says (PDF) that the US Constitution's framers never envisioned the modern stun-gun device, first patented in 1972. The top court said stun guns are not suitable for military use, and that it did not matter whether state lawmakers have approved the possession of handguns outside the home.
Nevertheless, we note that stun guns deliver a charge of up to 50,000 volts. They are designed to incapacitate a target by causing disabling pain, uncontrolled muscular contractions, and general disruption of the central nervous system.... It is difficult to detect clear signs of use and misuse of stun guns, unlike handguns. Stun guns can deliver repeated or prolonged shocks without leaving marks. ...The Legislature rationally could ban their use in the interest of public health, safety, or welfare. Removing from public access devices that can incapacitate, injure, or kill a person by disrupting the central nervous system with minimal detection is a classic legislative basis supporting rationality. It is immaterial that the Legislature has not banned weapons that are more lethal. Mathematical precision by the Legislature is not constitutionally required.
The court, ruling in the case of a Massachusetts woman caught with stun gun, said the stun gun is a "thoroughly modern invention" not protected by the Second Amendment, although handguns are protected.
Moreover, although modern handguns were not in common use at the time of enactment of the Second Amendment, their basic function has not changed: many are readily adaptable to military use in the same way that their predecessors were used prior to the enactment. A stun gun, by contrast, is a thoroughly modern invention. Even were we to view stun guns through a contemporary lens for purposes of our analysis, there is nothing in the record to suggest that they are readily adaptable to use in the military. Indeed, the record indicates "they are ineffective for . . . hunting or target shooting." Because the stun gun that the defendant possessed is both dangerous per se at common law and unusual, but was not in common use at the time of the enactment of the Second Amendment, we conclude that stun guns fall outside the protection of the Second Amendment.
The decision, the most recent analysis of the Second Amendment by any top court, comes as all types of and manner of weapons are being constructed at home via 3D printing technology. The latest showdown about those weapons surfaced last month, when FedEx refused to ship a box that makes homemade metal semi-automatic rifles.
The Massachusetts case, decided last week, concerned Jaime Caetano, who lives in one of five states making it illegal for private citizens to posses stun guns. She appealed her 2013 conviction, on Second Amendment and self-defense grounds, claiming she had a right to the weapon to protect herself from what she said was an abusive father of her children. The penalty for breaching the law carries up to a 2.5-year maximum jail term. She was caught with the device outside a grocery store after allowing the authorities, who were looking for a shoplifter, to search her purse.
The law in question, the court said, forbids the private possession of a "portable device or weapon from which an electrical current, impulse, wave or beam may be directed, which current, impulse, wave or beam is designed to incapacitate temporarily, injure or kill" except by specified public officers or suppliers of such devices, if possession is "necessary to the supply or sale of the device or weapon" to agencies utilizing it.
In 2008, the US Supreme Court, in a decision known as Heller(PDF), overturned a District of Columbia statute and ruled that a ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense." Now, every state allows people to carry weapons of sorts, some with or without permits.
The Massachusetts top court concluded that the woman could have applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, like a handgun instead.
"Barring any cause for disqualification the defendant could have applied for a license to carry a firearm," the court ruled.
The court added that, "possession of mace or pepper spray for self-defense no longer requires a license."
That seems strange, according to Michael E. Rosman, general counsel for the Center for Individual Rights in Washington, D.C.
In Massachusetts, he told the Boston Globe, the public is "permitted with a license to have guns and carry guns. It makes no sense to say you shouldn’t be allowed to have a weapon that you can defend yourself with, but is less dangerous to the attacker."
The ban on stun guns, he told the Globe, is “perverse” because they are less lethal than other weapons.
The public, he said, is “being pushed into handgun possession by the ban on stun guns.”
Dr. Mae Jemison, MD, the first black woman in space and first actual astronaut to appear on a Star Trek show, one of the very few people on this planet of whom two pictures can be posted depicting them doing their job on a spaceship with entirely different contexts.
Holy shit this is a serious contender for the best post I’ve ever seen on tumblr.
I knew the first bit, but had no idea she was also on Star Trek. That’s Awesome!
Hot on the heels of the debut of the Samsung Gear VR for Galaxy S6 and the HTC Vive, a new report suggests that Google’s planning on getting into virtual reality in a big way too.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has a team consisting of “tens of engineers” that’s working on a version of Android for virtual reality devices. The team is reportedly being headed up by Clay Bavor and Jeremy Doig, the former of which helped to create Google Cardboard. Details on this Android VR OS are light, but it’s said that the software will be offered for free.
There’s a lot of interest in virtual reality lately, and while Google does have its Cardboard VR headset and app, the company has yet to really dive into the market. A version of Android for VR devices could be a way to get into VR, get into it early, and perhaps become a major player in VR just like it has in smartphones and tablets.
What do you think of virtual reality? Are you interested in headsets like the Gear VR and Vive?
The symbol in Sahaiʔa's name is the glottal stop, an important one in Chipewyan that signifies both pronunciation and meaning. If it were replaced with a different character, Sahaiʔa's name would both sound and mean something completely different.
When Catholique Valpy attempted to register her baby in February of last year, she received a phone call from the Northwest Territories government's vital statistics department, telling her it couldn't support the use of the traditional character. In an email to Catholique Valpy, a government representative explained that's because the glottal stop isn't part of the Roman alphabet.
Catholique Valpy, whose mother, Snookie Catholique, is N.W.T.'s official languages commissioner, had a choice to make: change her child's name, or fight for the traditional spelling.
"I figured I could either drop the glottal, or I could put a hyphen or leave it there," she says. "I wasn't really sure, so I decided to keep it and as a family, we're going to try and fight it."
Catholique Valpy went more than a year without legally registering her baby as her complaint was processed, paying Sahaiʔa's medical expenses out of pocket because of her inability to file for a territorial health card.
Earlier this week, though, the need for identification — for travel, medical, and tax purposes — became too much, and Catholique Valpy got a birth certificate for her daughter with a hyphen replacing the glottal stop.
However, she asserts this is a temporary situation and that she will continue to fight for her daughter's traditional name.
"I want to be able to fight this to be able to have my daughter's name written the right way, the way it's supposed to be," she says. "I don't want to sacrifice my language just because of this.
But it's not about the language, it's about a non-Roman character and the problems that might present.
Damien Healy, a spokesperson for N.W.T.'s health department, says the Roman alphabet-only rule is similar in most parts of Canada. Any letters and symbols used on birth certificates have to be recognized by the federal government for a passport or other documents, and using other symbols could create difficulties later in life.
"From a practical perspective, our current vital statistics database and printer do not accommodate glottal stops or other non-standard diacritics and significant resources would be needed to upgrade them," Healy writes.
I don't know the history of the ʔ character, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with Chipewyan. Chipewyan, also called Dënesųłiné, is a Na-Dené language. There seem to be a few orthographies for this language. Some use ʔ for the glottal stop, and some use an apostrophe. The obvious solution, it seems to me, is to spell the name Sahai'a.
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