Check out this crazy, this stupidly cool door. It was created by one Warwick Turvey, who is, of course, an Aussie, because [Oz]. And yeah, sure, it has a hole in the door where the handle is, but who cares?!? That’s how cool it is! According to various sources who have mentioned Mr. Turvey’s work, he was inspired by video games. This YouTube incarnation of the video mentions unnamed art as an inspiration, too. All I want to know is how it’s possible that EVERY door doesn’t work this way now that we’ve seen it done!
Download Windows 95 On Your Mac As An App
It’s now possible to download Windows 95 on your Mac right now, as an app. You can run it on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Slack developer Felix Rieseberg has created the electron app, and published the source code and app installers on Github. Apps like Wordpad, MS Pain, and Minesweeper all run just fine, like they would on the actual operating system. However, it seems like Internet Explorer can’t load web pages. The app is 129MB and only uses about 200MB of RAM, even if you’re running it with multiple apps and programs running. If you run into problems, you can reset Windows 95 inside the app and start over.
PlugBug Duo Adds 2 USB Power Ports to Your MacBook Charger
Twelve South just expanded its PlugBug lineup with the new PlugBug Duo. It’s a replacement for the outlet plug on your MacBook and MacBook Pro MagSafe or USB C charger that includes two USB-A ports for powering up other devices like your iPhone and iPad. The USB ports offer 12 W for charging, and the PlugBug includes five adapters so you can use it in more than 150 countries. The PlugBug Duo is available on the Twelve South website for US$49.99.
Intel Power Gadget Monitors Your Mac's Energy Usage
Traditional methods to estimate power/energy usage of the processor has always been a cumbersome task that included special purpose tools or instrumentation on the platform along with third party equipment. Intel Power Gadget is supported on Windows and macOS and includes an application, driver, and libraries to monitor and estimate real-time processor package power information in watts using the energy counters in the processor. In version 3.0 there are more features that include estimation of power on multi-socket systems as well as externally callable APIs to extract power information within sections of code.
LEGO's Star Wars Cloud City is the Bespin Lando Deserves
LEGO just unveiled its Betrayal at Cloud City Master Builder Series kit that looks flat-out awesome. The kit includes 2,812 pieces and 18 mini figures such as Luke, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, Lando Calrissian, Darth Vader, and more. The set packs in the lounge and dining rooms, carbon freezing chamber, sensor balcony, interrogation room, garbage processing room, landing platform, and more. It also includes a twin-pod cloud car and Slave 1 with Boba Fett. The Betrayal at Cloud City kit costs US$349.99 and will be available on October 1st.
Tim Cook Donates More than 23,000 of His Apple Shares to Charity
Apple CEO Tim Cook has donated some 23,215 shares of Apple stock to an unnamed charity, according to an SEC filing uncovered by BusinessInsider. Shares of $AAPL closed at 215.04 on Tuesday, making the value of this donation worth some $4.99 million dollars today. Of course, that value will change over time, and the dividend for those shares will earn the charity $16,947 every quarter. That’s a gift of $67,788 per year that keeps on giving, and it could grow if Apple continues to increase that dividend. In other words, it’s a princely gift from a man who has already promised to give away all his wealth (after providing for the education of his young nephew).
Plugo is an AR STEM Gaming System for Kids
Plugo is an immersive AR STEM gaming system for kids, and right now it’s a Kickstarter project. Plugo comes with four gaming kits: Quest, Count, Link, and Steer. Designed for kids between the ages of 5 and 11 years, each kit comes with many exciting educational games that are conceptualized to make your child learn, play and have fun—all at the same time. The gamepad is compatible with multiple iOS and Android (Samsung) tablets and smartphones, iPad, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and more. No wires, no electronics or additional hardware; the gaming system requires minimum effort to set-up and play. The project has met its goal of US$25,000. Rewards start at US$35 and the estimated delivery is March 2019.
Dark Sky Just Got Its Biggest Update in Years
Dark Sky was just updated to version 6.0 and it’s the biggest update in years. It has been in development for over a year, incorporating user suggestions and the developers’ own experience gained over the years. On the blog they share that it’s the first major app version build by their new app team: Todd on iOS and Cailee on Android. The iOS app has been completely rewritten to make it more stable and responsive. The biggest change is the unified timeline. Current conditions and various forecasts are available in a single view, so you can find the forecast you need faster. You can also now save weather locations to see the weather in multiple places. App Store: Dark Sky – US$3.99
Philips Hue Adds Play, Signe Lamps to its Smart Light Lineup
Signify just announced two new additions to its Philips Hue smart light family: Philips Play and Philips Signe. Both are light strip-style lamps that add colored accent light to your rooms by trowing light on the walls. The Play sits on tables or TV stands, and the Signe sits on the floor and are designed to look good in places where the Philips Lightstrip isn’t a good fit. The Play will be available in October for US$69.95, or $129.95 for a two-pack. The Signe will be available in September for $169.99 or $269.99 for a two-pack.
How to Break Spaghetti in Half Like a Physicist
In 2005, scientists confirmed that dry spaghetti noodles never break cleanly in half. Instead they tend to split into three or more pieces. If you’ve ever cooked spaghetti you’re probably familiar with having little bits explode all over the kitchen. But it turns out that there is a way to break spaghetti cleanly in half. Famous physicist Richard Feynman once spent a night with a friend snapping pasta to figure out what was happening. He never solved it, but it inspired French researchers to try, which earned them a 2006 igNobel prize. The secret? Twist the noodles hard like you’re wringing out a washcloth. To understand why, they used a high speed camera that recorded the shattering pasta at a million frames per second. The twist prevented the two bent strands flexing back quite as forcefully as an untwisted strand, and the untwisting motion released some of the stored energy in the spaghetti, further reducing the likelihood of a second fracture.
Apple Commemorates Aretha Franklin's Life with Apple Music Playlists
The music world lost a pillar with the passing of Aretha Franklin. She was suffering from pancreatic cancer, as did Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. To commemorate her life Apple has several playlists on Apple Music celebrating her powerful contributions to soul, jazz, R&B, blues, and funk. Aretha’s influence crossed musical genres and that won’t likely change even though she’s gone. You can check out her Apple Music playlists in the Music app on your iPhone or iPad, or under the Browse tab in iTunes music section.
Check Out Apple's Giant Cafeteria Doors Opening
Apple’s new campus is pretty impressive, and even things like opening the cafeteria doors is something worth watching. In this case, it’s because the doors are multi-story tall glass panels that slide out of the way to expose the dining area to nature. Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a GIF on Twitter showing the doors in action. Check it out!
Lunchtime at Apple Park just got a whole lot more exciting 👀 pic.twitter.com/GJFcOsIB4C
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 16, 2018
YouPorn AI Generated a List of Future Porn Star Names (SFW)
Last year, YouPorn Foresights used AI to predict what the most popular search terms would be in porn. This year the company did something similar. The data science and machine learning teams trained a recurrent neural network to look at the current most popular performer names, and have now created what science has predicted that the next generation of stars will call themselves. There are 69 names, both male and female, and the results are hilarious. As you would expect from AI, the names sound weird and goofy. My favorite names from the list are Man Master, Al Gorr (obviously my future kid), Summer Sax, and Paris Buttomina. It’s a safe-for-work list that you can check out here.
Check Out Steve Jobs Unveiling the First iMac 20 Years Ago
The iMac is 20 years old, and it’s the computer that started Apple down the path to become the first company with a trillion dollar market cap. Then interim CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iMac on stage in May 1998, and the all-in-one computer shipped on August 15th. That computer shipped with a 233 MHz G3 processor, Mac OS 8.1, a 4 GB hard drive, and was the first Mac with USB. Check out Steve unveiling the original Bondi Blue iMac.
Found: Sony Patent For Contact Lens That Can Record Video
This is from 2016, but I just found it. It’s an article at Futurism about a Sony patent for a contact lens than can record video. Think Google Glass, but imperceptible to strangers. Unless the stranger is a Terminator. I don’t recall seeing anything about this since, and, of course, a patent is always easier than profitable mass production. But it does suggest enormous possibilities. I’ll keep an eye on this technology.
Astronomers Have Discovered a Massive Rogue Planet
A rogue planet is a planet that’s not in orbit around any star. It’s by itself, in orbit around the galactic center. It may have formed around a star and perhaps some severe gravitational perturbation ejected it into the space between stars. In any case, only a few are known. In this discovery, a very large one was detected via its radio emissions. Fascinating.
So, It Might Not Have Been an Asteroid that Killed the Dinosaurs
Most of have heard about the big asteroid (6 miles long) that smacked the Earth 66 million years ago and created a nuclear winter that killed the dinosaurs. It’s pretty accepted, though it remains a theory. Well…maybe not. Professor Gerta Keller is leading the charge gathering mounting evidence that the timeline doesn’t match up. According to her, the Chicxulub asteroid hit 200,000 years before the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs. And what she thinks did it is the same thing blamed for other extinction events, massive volcano eruptions that lasted—in this case—60,000 years. There in a part of India called the Deccan Traps today, though we don’t know what the dinosaurs called them. Those eruptions do line up with the extinction event nicely. Apparently, all this evidence is causing quite the hubbub in academia, and The Atlantic has a very long and detailed story about the whole thing. It’s fascinating. The image included is from the Deccan Traps.
This Watch Wants to Curb Ocean Plastic Pollution
There’s a watch that wants to help curb ocean plastic pollution. Awake Watch’s mission is to prove that there is a smarter and more sustainable way to consume goods. It wants to show that it can create objects with innovative design and very high quality, while still limiting its environmental impact as much as possible. And give people the opportunity to make a difference. The fabric the company uses for the strap is made from plastic waste, which has been collected from South East Asian seas and Japan. It turns the plastic into pellets, and then into nylon yarn. It creates the straps directly from rolls of this material, which is made using no chemical dyes, and is certified by the Global Recycled Standard label. The leather straps are made by a French company that uses Italian leather tanned in a vegetable tanning process. The Kickstarter was fully funded in an hour. To get a watch, rewards start at US$229.
An Artist Re-Envisions Modern U.S. Currency, and They're Works of Art
I love money. Wait, I don’t mean “money,” because of course, yeah money—w00t! I mean currency and coins. Fun fact: my favorite coin is a 1853-O Seated Liberty quarter with arrows and rays. Anyhoo…the Greenback is iconic, and the U.S. likes it that way. It helps makes the U.S. dollar the de facto global currency, and it’s a big reason it has looked largely the same for roughly a century. Paper made with rag cloth, the whole green thing, dead presidents. But other countries have been doing a lot with plastic and holograms and such in their own efforts to combat counterfeiting. Enter Belarusian artist Andrey Avgust (via The Next Web). Mr. Avgust did a project completely re-imagining U.S. currency using state of the art technologies. Specifically, he conceptualized layered polymers, with each layer of the plastic adding something to the overall bill. He also turned them sideways (the $10 bill would still be in landscape mode). I’m not advocating a change to U.S. currency, but his work is gorgeous, and his concept art is just amazing. Check it out.
Pandora Wants to Fix Podcast Discoverability with its Genome Project
Finding podcasts you’ll like is still mostly a word of mouth process and Pandora wants to change that. The streaming music service is working on what it calls the podcast genome project to help find shows you’ll like and enjoy, much like it already did for music. Pandora CEO Roger Lynch told The Verge, “We’re building for podcasts what we did for music, which is the podcast genome. So that we can present to you, as a Pandora listener, a personalized experience that will delight you just like we do with music.” Considering how poor podcast discoverability is right now, there’s a good chance anything Pandora comes up with will be better. You can check out more of Lynch’s comments on The Verge’s Converge podcast.
