All Things Tech

Life is full of tough decisions, such as deciding whether you want to go to the end of the drive to check if the mail has arrived. These questions are made even more arduous in the winter months, but [Catpin] has a solution. The Mail Box Alert uses an Electric Imp, a solar panel and a proximity sensor to let you know if you’ve got mail. It’s a neat build, with the brains provided by that Electric Imp which handles most of the heavy lifting. This wakes up every five minutes and checks whether the status of a small proximity sensor has changed. If it has, it pings a website. The unit sits at the bottom of the postbox, so if your friendly neighborhood post person has put in any letters, it will have changed. The Imp is powered by a small battery, which is in turn charged by a solar panel. That means that it doesn’t require any power cables or other wiring, as long as it is in the range of WiFi. With the addition of a 15-hours overnight deep sleep, [Catpin] found that the whole thin...

The No Man's Sky Synthesis update includes nearly 300 different bug fixes and feature updates, including a bunch that are just for VR. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2Y992OT

For poor [workshop from scratch], winter brings the joy of a cold workshop. Since the building is structurally made from tin, warming up the room is difficult. Naturally, the solution was to construct a homemade wood furnace . The build starts off with an angle grinder being taken to a compressed air tank. After sawing off the top and sanding down the edges, the builder slices out an opening and welds together some rods into a stand for the center. He then proceeds to weld some external frames for the furnace, as well as a chimney stack, some nifty covers joined by hinges, and a fan/temperature regulator to keep the fire going. Most of the pieces seem to come from scrap metal lying around the workshop, although the degree to which the entire project comes together is quite smooth. Some filter and spray paint do the trick for cleaning up the furnace and making it look less scrappy. The last step? A stack of wooden logs and a blow torch to start the fun. Outside of the furnace, an LCD ...

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order launched this week and what a relief it was. The Electronic Arts and Respawn project released to thunderous acclaim and was the Star Wars video game many had hoped for all along. EA has had a terrible track record with its Star Wars titles since Disney signed a 10-year video game licensing deal in 2013. … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2R7uOAY

Following swiftly on the heels of a Thanksgiving that broke records with $4.2 billion in online sales, Black Friday also hit a new high, although it just fell short of predictions. According to analytics from Adobe , consumers spent $7.4 billion online yesterday buying goods online via computers, tablets and smartphones. The figures were up by $1.2 billion on Black Friday 2018 , but they actually fell short of Adobe’s prediction for the day, which was $7.5 billion. Salesforce, meanwhile, said that its checks revealed $7.2 billion in sales (even further off the forecast). Popular products included toys on the themes of Frozen 2, L.O.L Surprise, and Paw Patrol. Best selling video games included FIFA 20, Madden 20, and Nintendo Switch. And top electronics, meanwhile, included Apple Laptops, Airpods, and Samsung TVs. A full $2.9 billion of Black Friday sales happened on smartphones. These conversions are growing faster than online shopping overall, so we are now approaching a tipping po...

Malware embedded in office documents has been a popular attack for years. Many of those attacks have been fixed, and essentially all the current attacks are unworkable when a document is opened in protected view. There are ways around this, like putting a notice at the top of a document, requesting that the user turn off protected view. [Curtis Brazzell] has been researching phishing, and how attacks can work around mitigations like protected view. He noticed that one of his booby-trapped documents phoned home before it was opened. How exactly? The preview pane. The Windows Explorer interface has a built-in preview pane, and it helpfully supports Microsoft Office formats. The problem is that the preview isn’t generated using protected view, at least when previewing Word documents. Generating the preview is enough to trigger loading of remote content, and could feasibly be used to trigger other vulnerabilities. [Curtis] notified Microsoft about the issue, and the response was slightly...

Here's a speedy, low-cost, scaleable way to estimate search intent for SEOs and content marketers. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2rCAoAX

Facebook added a correction notice to a post by a fringe news site that Singapore’s government said contained false information. It’s the first time the government has tried to enforce a new law against ‘fake news’ outside its borders. The post by fringe news site States Times Review (STR), contained “scurrilous accusations” according to the Singapore government. The States Times Review post contained accusations about the arrest of an alleged whistleblower and election-rigging. Singapore authorities had previously ordered STR editor Alex Tan to correct the post but the Australian citizen said he would “not comply with any order from a foreign government”. Mr Tan, who was born in Singapore, said he was an Australian citizen living in Australia and was not subject to the law. In a follow-up post, he said he would “defy and resist every unjust law”. He also posted the article on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Docs and challenged the government to order corrections there as well. On t...

Chinese regulators have announced new rules governing video and audio content online, including a ban on "fake news” created with AI and VR. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/33Gnf7i

When you zoom in on a fractal you find it is made of more fractals. Perhaps that helped inspire the Harvard 3D printers that have various arrays of mixing nozzles. In the video below you can see some of the interesting things you can do with an array of mixing nozzles. The coolest, we think, is a little multi-legged robot that uses vacuum to ambulate across the bench. The paper , however, is behind a paywall. There are really two ideas here. Mixing nozzles are nothing new. Usually, you use them to mimic a printer with two hot ends. That is, you print one material at a time and purge the old filament out when switching to the new filament. This is often simpler than using two heads because with a two head arrangement, both the heads have to be at the same height, you must know the precise offset between the heads, and you generally lose some print space since the right head can’t cross the left head and vice versa. Add more heads, and you multiply those problems. We’ve also seen mixin...

A study scheduled to be presented next week has found evidence of brain damage linked to obesity in teenagers. The damage impacts the parts of the brain responsible for cognitive functions, as well as emotions and appetite, and may be caused by the inflammation that results from obesity. The damage was identified using MRIs of both healthy and obese teenagers … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/33xo6qv

Since it’s a holiday week for those of us in the United States, we’ve put together an (even more) unstructured episode of the Original Content podcast . Among other things, this gives us a chance to update our initial review of “The Mandalorian” by acknowledging the Disney+ show’s breakout character, known unofficially as Baby Yoda — maybe that counts as a spoiler, but he’s all over social media already, and he’s even the subject of new Disney merchandise that seems to have been rushed into production . Beyond our “Mandalorian” catch-up, Star Wars comes up again during our discussion of things from the streaming and entertainment world that we’re thankful for. Despite some behind-the-scenes turmoil, the Disney era at Lucasfilm has brought us some delightful films, particularly “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi.” It might seem kind of redundant to praise two of the most commercially successful films of all time , but it’s also an opportunity to address the online backlash and c...

Dean Takahashi moderated a panel of industry veterans at The International Future Computing Association's conference at the Computer History Museum. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/35MRxq9

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. What are developers talking about? What do app publishers and marketers need to know? How are politics impacting the App Store and app businesses? And which apps are everyone using? This week, we’re discussing the impact of the CFIUS investigation into TikTok, the further fallout of Apple’s vaping app ban, updates to Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass subscription-based app stores, Apple’s breaking changes that rolled out without warning (thanks, Apple!) and a shady app that reached the top of the App Store thanks to a big Kardashians-led endorsement, among other things. Headlines TikTok separates further from its Chinese parent One of the world’s most downloaded and used apps, TikTok, is under a national security review in the U.S. because of its Chinese roots. TikTok parent company, ByteDance, is a China-based operation —...

Popular encrypted messaging app Signal has finally added support for the iPad, enabling Apple device users to link their tablet to their account. Until now, users were only able to access their messages through their iPhone, a minor annoyance for those who enjoy multitasking on the larger slates. The update also brings integrated video trimming capabilities and more. Signal joins … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2Ozdq6t

Using SPICE to simulate an electrical circuit is a common enough practice in engineering that “SPICEing a circuit” is a perfectly valid phrase in the lexicon. SPICE as a software tool has been around since the 70s, and its open source nature means there are more SPICE tools around now to count. It also means it is straightforward enough to use with other software as well, like integrating LTspice with Python for some interesting signal processing circuit simulation . [Michael]’s latest project involves simulating filters in LTspice (a SPICE derivative) and then using Python/NumPy to both provide the input signal for the filter and process the output data from it. Basically, it allows you to “plug in” a graphical analog circuit of any design into a Python script and manipulate it easily, in any way needed. SPICE programs aren’t without their clumsiness, and being able to write your own tools for manipulating circuits is a powerful tool. This project is definitely worth a look if you h...

As the Holiday Season approaches, new jobs for players in the tech ecosystem beckon. And this is no less true for investors. Two notable moves have recently happened that are worthy of note in the European scene. The first is that GR Capital , a pan-European VC, is opening an office in London and has lured Jason Ball , who, earlier this year, left Qualcomm Ventures where had been European Managing Director for over a decade. Bad spent ten years as a mentor at Seedcamp and individually invested in more than ten companies. He was understood to be looking for new challenges, either building a new fund or joining another – so now we have our answer as to what he decided. Founded in 2016 by Roma Ivaniuk in Ukraine, GR Capital specializes in late-stage VC investments. It has over $70M under management and has invested in Lime, Azimo, WeFox, McMakler, Glovo and Meero among others. The fund has traditionally been known for investing in Eastern Europe, but with a London office and the extreme...

PlayStation left all other gaming brands far behind, accounting for over 61% of TV ad impressions from October 15 to November 15. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/37U9epx

Renowned auction house Sotheby’s has launched a new online auction featuring incredibly rare items related to the Star Wars original trilogy. The auction packs a number of goodies for fans of the movie franchise, ones expected to sell for thousands of dollars. Items include incredibly rare posters and prints related to the series, as well as decals, figures, and more. … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2L9vGBl

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about Airbnb’s issues . Before that, I noted Uber’s new “money” team . Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter  @KateClarkTweets . If you’re new, you can subscribe to Startups Weekly here . China’s pivot to Africa Three African fintech startups; OPay , PalmPay and East African trucking logistics company Lori Systems , closed large fundraises this year. On their own, the deals aren’t particularly notable, but together, they expose a new trend within the African startup ecosystem. This year, those three companies brought in a total of $240 million in venture capital funding from 15 different Chinese investors, who’ve become increasingly active in Africa’s tech scene. TechCrunch reporter Jake Bright , who...

Amid all of the Black Friday deals comes Sony’s latest information on what you can get for free…assuming you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, of course. The company is about to drop its latest batch of free content for PS Plus customers, including hit game Titanfall 2 for the PlayStation 4. The company will also have a special treat for PS … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/35U1cLT

We know, we know – “Kirlian photography” is a term loaded with pseudoscientific baggage. Paranormal researchers have longed claimed that Kirlian photography can explore the mood or emotional state of a subject through the “aura”, an energy field said to surround and emanate from all living things. It’s straight-up nonsense, of course, but that doesn’t detract from the beauty of plasma aficionado [Jay Bowles]’ images produced by capacitive coupling and corona discharge . Technically, what [Jay] is doing here is not quite Kirlian photography. The classic setup for “electrophotography” is a sandwich of photographic film, a glass plate, and a metal ground plate. An object with a high-voltage, high-frequency power supply attached is placed on top of the sandwich, and the resulting corona discharge exposes the film. [Jay]’s version is a thin chamber made of two pieces of solvent-welded acrylic and filled with water. A bolt between the acrylic panes conducts current from a Tesla coil – perha...

Magic Leap and Insomniac Games announced a new game, Strangelets, for the Magic Leap One, and it could be its final launch as an independent studio. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2R5tyyz

FEATURE: Elevators of the future will have “virtual windows,” voice-activated controls, music-streaming, and more — that’s if Kone has its way, at least. The Finnish engineering giant, best known for autowalks, automatic doors, escalators, and — yes — elevators, unveiled its grand vision at an event in London yes… Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/34BDDqC

Working in a university or research laboratory on interesting, complicated problems in the sciences has a romanticized, glorified position in our culture. While the end results are certainly worth celebrating, often the process of new scientific discovery is underwhelming, if not outright tedious. That’s especially true in biology and chemistry, where scaling up sample sizes isn’t easy without a lot of human labor. A research group from Reading University was able to modify a 3D printer to take some of that labor out of the equation, though . This 3D printer was used essentially as a base, with the printing head removed and replaced with a Raspberry Pi camera. The printer X/Y axes move the camera around to all of the different sample stored in the print bed, which allows the computer attached to the printer to do most of the work that a normal human would have had to do. This allows them to scale up massively and cheaply, presumably with less tedious inputs from a large number of grad...

It seems that tensegrity structures are trending online, possibly due to the seemingly impossible nature of their construction. The strings appear to levitate without any sound reason, but if you bend them just the right way they’ll succumb to gravity.  The clue is in the name. Tensegrity is a pormanteau of “tension” and “integrity” . It’s easiest to understand if you have a model in your hand — cut the strings and the structure falls apart. We’re used to thinking of integrity in terms of compression. Most man-made structures rely on this concept of engineering, from the Empire State Building to the foundation of apartment building. Tensegrity allows strain to be distributed across a structure. While buildings built from continuous compression may not show this property, more elastic structures like our bodies do. These structures can be built on top of smaller units that continuously distribute strain. Additionally, these structures can be contracted and retracted in ways that “...

Chain sprockets are a key drivetrain component in a lot of builds. Unfortunately they can be difficult to source, particularly for those outside the reach of retailers like McMaster-Carr. In such situations, you might consider making your own. The toothed profile on a chain sprocket can be produced in a simple manner by drawing a base circle, along with a series of circles spaced appropriately for the chain in question. This involves measuring the pitch and roller diameter of the chain. With these measurements in hand, a template can be created to produce the sprocket. From there a series of holes are drilled to rough out the basic shape of the teeth, before the sprocket is then cut down to its appropriate outer diameter. The finishing work consists of chamfering the sprocket’s thickness, as well as the filing the sharp edges of the teeth for smooth engagement. It’s a quick and easy method for producing sprockets with well-defined, accurate profiles. We’ve featured other rough and r...

Olloclip, the company that offers high-quality lenses made specifically for smartphones, has announced a new clip system that brings some of the company’s new and existing mobile lenses to the iPhone 11 and Galaxy S10 lines of smartphones. The new system can be used with or without a smartphone case, offering mobile photographers access to wide-angle, fisheye, telephoto, and other … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/33zDN0C

There’s little that can compare to the sheer obnoxious thrill of mashing the DJ siren when its your turn behind the decks. We’ve certainly been guilty of abusing the privilege at local house parties, and unsurprisingly have not been invited back. If we ever get another shot, though, we’d be glad to have [lonesoulsurfer]’s dub siren at the ready. This is a build for the old-school purists. There’s no microcontrollers or digital hardware here. The synth relies on two 555 timer ICs as the oscillators and an LM741 op-amp. These parts harken right back to the dawn of the integrated circuit era, and still do a great job in this application. There’s also a cheap reverb/echo module added in to fatten up the sound. It’s all laced up in an old CB radio enclosure, with the classic woodgrain applique doing much to add to the aesthetic. It’s a build that’s simple enough for the electronics beginner, and would make a great tactile, analog addition to any DJ’s rig. If you need some wubwubs to go wi...

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is catching on, with its U.S. YouTube channel earning over 76 million cross-platform (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) views in October 2019. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2XWRVQn

If we look to the 1819 discovery of dinosaur fossils by William Buckland, we’ve got almost exactly 200 years of modern dinosaur bone hunting by humans. In that time, many assumptions have been made – as is necessary when it comes to putting together pieces of puzzles that are millions of years old, and long since dead. Remember today, because … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2DvNcMa