Footage of a Texan lawyer denying he was a cat as he appeared with a feline filter on a live call was created using a decades-old piece of software pre-installed on some Dell laptops. The BBC reports: The Live Cam Avatar software was also available for people to download. It is not clear how the lawyer found himself speaking through the…
Tag: skype
Pebble Founder Says His New App Brings iMessage To Android With a Little ‘Trickery’
Beeper is a forthcoming app from the founder of Pebble that claims to be a hub for all your messaging services, including support for iMessage on Android. Gizmodo reports: Instead of managing half a dozen apps for keeping in touch with friends, family, and co-workers, Beeper allows you to funnel everything to one interface. According to its website, the app supports…
The FSF Is Looking To Update Its High Priority Free Software Projects List
AmiMoJo writes: As we roll into 2021 the Free Software Foundation is looking to update its high priority free software projects list. These are the software projects that should be incorporating “the most important threats, and most critical opportunities, that free software faces in the modern computing landscape.” For now the FSF is looking for help deciding what to include. The…
Metal-poor globular cluster forces astronomers to rethink theories
The discovery of the most metal-poor globular cluster recorded to date has forced scientists to rethink how both galaxies and globular clusters form. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/metal-poor-globular-cluster-ext8-found-in-andromeda-galaxy…
Microsoft Edge Gets Free 24-Hour Video Calls, Screenshot Tool, and Shopping Features
Microsoft today announced a slew of new features coming to its Chromium Edge browser. From a report: There are PDF improvements, a built-in screenshot tool, support for more themes, and new shopping features in time for the holiday season. But the most notable addition is the one powered by Skype because for better or for worse, 2020 is the year of…
Microsoft Surface Duo Review: Two Screens, Too Many Problems
Joanna Stern, reviewing the Surface Duo for the Wall Street Journal: It isn’t always clear when something is ready. Take my grilling. Sometimes I remove steak well before or after I should’ve. You might say it’s a “tough” call. But there’s nothing tough about stating this: The new two-screen Surface Duo is undercooked. Microsoft’s new $1,400 book-like phone-tablet thingy is not…
UK Mathematician Wins Richest Prize in Academia For His Work On Stochastic Analysis
Lanodonal writes: A mathematician who tamed a nightmarish family of equations that behave so badly they make no sense has won the most lucrative prize in academia. Martin Hairer, an Austrian-British researcher at Imperial College London, is the winner of the 2021 Breakthrough prize for mathematics, an annual $3m award that has come to rival the Nobels in terms of kudos…
How App Developers Manipulate Your Mood To Boost Ranking?
Higher ratings are the ‘lifeblood’ of the smartphone app world but what if they are inflated? From a report: Rating an iPhone app takes just a second, maybe two. “Enjoying Skype?” a prompt will ask, and you click on a 1-5 star rating. Millions of people respond to these requests, giving little thought to their fleeting whim. Behind the scenes, though,…
‘We Won’t Remember Much of What We Did in the Pandemic’
Tim Harford, writing for Financial Times (not paywalled): Last spring, I returned from the holiday of a lifetime in Japan, and reflected on the richness of the memories it had generated. Time flew by while I was there, but in hindsight 10 days somewhere vividly new had produced more memories than 10 weeks back home. I likened the effect to the…
As Colleges Move Classes Online, Families Rebel Against the Cost
“A rebellion against the high cost of a bachelor’s degree, already brewing around the nation before the coronavirus, has gathered fresh momentum as campuses have strained to operate in the pandemic,” reports the New York Times. “Who wants to pay $25,000 a year for glorified Skype?” one incoming freshman tells them: Incensed at paying face-to-face prices for education that is increasingly…