#had less than 3 hrs battery life

[oddlittlestories]

Not having a laptop is killing me I swear

[screechlikeasiren]

So, heres the starting chapter from my y/n insert book called 'Choices fem!reader x mha' you can find it on Wattpad.

First chapters are always so slow arnt they?

Y/N Quirk: ?? Age: 15

Close Friend: ??

The cool breeze across your face brings you back to reality. A deep breath you never realized you were holding comes out. Becoming aware of the noises from below you, cars driving along the darkened road, people with different quirks all walking along the sidewalk.

That’s how today’s world is, these powers called Quirks randomly appearing in people. From Quirks that can levitate objects to having multiple body parts, able to control wind or someone’s movements with just a simple look into their eyes. In short form, a Quirk is a superhuman ability that a person possesses. People seemed to randomly develop these Quirks; they can also appear any time before the age of four. Most of the time the type of Quirk you get depends on what your parents have, it’s rare to get something completely different, but it does happen. Sometimes you get nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The now freezing breeze bringing you out of your thoughts. You sit up from your laying position, turning slightly to let your right leg hang off the side. You bend your left leg up next to you, laying your arm off of the kneecap. Laying your head onto the empty flag pole behind you. The cold steel making you painfully aware of how cold you truly are up here. The what was once pitch-black night sky is now turning a slight brighter tint of orange. Signifying the start to another day.

You pick out your phone from your pocket. 3:00AM January 10th. Right. No wonder it's so cold. You remember back to when you celebrated New Years. Fireworks galore. It was so fun. Hanging out with your friends just so you could get away from all the new stresses that came with it being a new year.

You’ve just recently applied to another job. Looking back at your phone you check your emails on the roof top. Your Wi-Fi just barely able to reach your position.

Nope nothing yet. You’ve been hoping to hear back about the retail position you applied for back in late December. They said they would contact you... You close out your email and browse Tik Tok. You release small nose laughs at some of them, wasting as much time as humanly possible before realizing you are going to have to go back inside at some point. Oh well...

You look back down to the cars and people moving with a purpose. Much different than the people in the middle of the night. They never have a purpose.

Glancing back at your phone, pressing the lock button to awaken the metallic device. 5:00am Dam. You really shouldn’t be surprised you spent 2 hrs on Tik Tok but here we are. Blinking while viewing that app can cause a time jump to happen. In any case you’ve got to go back inside.

Spinning around you grab the pole from behind you and slide down the side of the ledge in a little jump. In doing so you dropped your phone. Bending down to pick up the offending item, you flip it over to examine it for any cracks. Nothing. Perfect. That makes you feel a bit better, sliding it into your jeans pocket.

Walking over to the stairwell door you notice the rock you had slid into the door frame has been taken out. You never understood why the building manager kept doing that. It's not like anyone wants to rob such a shitty building in this part of town, the most expensive item in everyone’s apartment would be the basic tv. Honestly. He knows it's just you up on the roof. You try the door handle. Its locked. Of course.

You shove your hand into your jean pocket, pulling out one of the key picks. Don’t question it. You picked up this lovely talent early on in life. “When one door opens another door closes... Unless you know how to pick locks.” You say to no one, but chuckle to yourself. *click* Wonderful. You open the door and close it behind you, locking it. Walking down the metal stairs, finally reaching your apartment.

Unlocking the door with the key you walk inside. Totally forgetting to close the windows your place is now just as cold as it was outside on the roof. Mentally scolding yourself for forgetting to close the damn windows, you lock the door behind you, placing your keys on a little hook by the door. Going around the small apartment and closing all available windows. Ending in your room you plop face down on your bed.

*Buzz buzz* Your phone starts buzzing away in your pocket. Confused as all hell you pull out the phone, just as it shuts off. “Low battery, yeah I hear ya.” You stretch out reaching over your little end table by your bed and grab the charging cord. Plugging in the metal object, you glance at your watch. 5:47am Shit. You really have to get a sleep schedule. You still have stuff to do tomorrow. “Ugh, I’ll just brush my teeth tomorrow. I really don’t care right about now.” You ponder the words coming out of your mouth. “I guess tomorrow is today now. Never mind." Right. Rolling yourself under the covers you drift off to sleep...

So now that’s out of the way. Hi! Welcome to your first day. Well, first night anyway. I know choices can be tough sometimes. BUT some choices have already been made for you haven’t they. Your name for example... (Y/N) Right? Your beautiful hair or maybe the lack there of? Not sure, this is your story after all. I’m just here while you sleep. That’s WAY more creepy than it needed to be, but it needed to be said…

So, here you are, making so many important choices. Choosing to get out of bed, choosing to pick the lock of the handle, so many choices you’ve already made. And so many more to make…

So (Y/N) … What type of Quirk will you have for your story this time?

A) Quirkless. You won't have any Quirks. Nothing. Doesn’t mean you won't have the ability to gain any during the story but you will have to struggle, you like a challenge though. Right?

B) DNA Splice. Everyone either has a quirk or not. With this you must consume blood almost every day to be able to survive. If you consume blood that has a quirk in it, you will gain that quirk and its abilities. You’ll automatically know how to use it, how it works, and how it might hurt you or others near you. You get sunburned VERY easily if you stay out for too long, and you gain a pair of fangs. You can only gain two Quirks at a time. You can gain physical quirks but they need to grow in. Painful stuff that is, depending on what it is, it can kill you.

C) Shadow manipulation. Able to control shadows with a wave of your hand. Your hands need to be in a shadow in order for your quirk to work properly. You cannot use this quirk if your hands are in direct sunlight. You can move small objects so long as they are connected to a shadow then you can move it. If you can't lift it normally then you cannot move it in the shadow form either. Weak spaghetti arms will get you in the long run.

D) Wings. You have wings. That’s it. Nothing more nothing less. You can't do anything with them. You can fly, but that’s it.

E) Unknown. This Quirk will be decided by comments.

So, Y/N…

What will your first choice be?

[singularityhacker]

7 Power Laws of the Technological Singularity

When people talk about the technological singularity they usually do so exclusively in the context of Moore’s Law. But there are several Moore’s Law-like laws at work in the world and each of them is equally baffling. I’m referring to this list of trends as “power laws” because of the nature of their incredible rate of growth and because they independently work as pistons driving the engine of the singularity. A few things to note about these power laws. Firstly they are just observations. There are no, known, deeper physical principles in the universe that would lead us to believe that they must hold true. Secondly, we’ve observed these trends long enough to warren their recognition as power laws and there is no evidence or signs of their stagnating. We’ll start with the most famous and well-known power law and work our way through the others.

1. Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law states that transistors on a chip double about every two years and that the cost of that doubling halves. This is a double-edged sword. It means that the next model computer will be way faster than the previous but it also means that the value of your existing computer is dropping rapidly. The end of Moore’s Law has been proclaimed for a long time but there seems to be no end to its progression.

As we reach the physical limits of transistor sizes, entirely new hardware architectures are developed that sustain the progression. Things like 3D chips, specialized chips, and non-silicon based chips like photonics, spintronics, and neuromorphic chips are being developed and will ensure that this law continues.

“Regular boosts to computing performance that used to come from Moore’s Law will continue, and will instead stem from changes to how chips are designed.” — Mike Muller, CTO at ARM

What this does not mean is that a user’s experience of computer speed will increase. We tend to be more sloppy with application development when it’s cheap to make up for it with hardware horsepower. There is a standing joke that the same amount of computing resources that were used to send astronauts to the moon in the ’60s is now accidentally used by a sluggish browser tab.

2. Kryder’s Law

The second law driving our propulsion into the technological singularity is Kryder’s Law. It states, loosely, that digital storage doubles every year. It specifically has to do with magnetic storage but the principle is applicable to all digital storage as you will see. While you may not see this law exactly played out in the price of external drives in your local Best Buy, you can see it if you consider the price of cloud storage services.

Let’s look at the current top cloud storage providers. Apple offers two terabytes of cloud storage for about $10 a month. Google offers the same space for the same price as well as 10 terabytes for about $100 a month. After that, users can get 20 terabytes for $200 a month, 30 terabytes for $300 a month, and so on. Dropbox offers yet a similar package but with extras like full-text search for $20 a month. Lastly and most competitive is Amazon offering an incredible $0.004 per gigabyte per month through its Glacier storage service. When you take these cloud providers into account and consider that they will only grow via economies of scale, you see that Kryder’s law is in full effect.

Note that this also doesn’t even take into consideration innovations like Filecoin that actually distribute Kryder’s Law by allowing anyone with storage capacity to rent that space out. You could look at it like Uber or Airbnb for digital storage. This highlights the idea that this digital power law, like the others, should not be strictly tied to a hardware implementation. Similar to how Moore’s Law continues but not strictly through cramming more transistors on a chip but through new engineering architectures. The same principle applies.

3. Nielsen’s Law

Thirdly, we have Nielsen’s Law. If the previous laws could be summarized as computation and storage, this one is summarized as throughput. It states that bandwidth grows by 50% a year. More precisely, it states that the bandwidth of high-end users grows by 50% a year. That’s just 10% less annual growth than Moore’s Law.

In practice, we don’t see this linear growth and there are three reasons for it. One, Telecom companies are conservative. It cost billions of dollars to update their sprawling hardware. Two. The immediate impact of the end-user is not a guaranteed faster experience if they do upgrade their infrastructure. You can have the fastest hardware in the world on your street but that doesn’t automatically make the rest of the countries hardware faster. That slow loading web page may only be imperceptible faster after your area’s hardware is upgraded. Lastly, as new people get online, it’s more likely they are using older slower devices so the average expected speed is kept pressed down by these newcomers.

Since 1G was introduced in the 1980s, new wireless technology has been released every ten years. The advent of 1G introduced mobile telephony. Than 2G in the ’90s brought about global roaming and SMS. The 200’s saw 3G and smartphones with data. 2010 introduced 4G and mobile broadband. The year 2020 will be the year of 5G and the realization of the fully ubiquitous cloud. To put this in perspective, let’s say you wanted to download the newest episode of your favorite television show. At 800MB it would have taken 8 hours hrs to download in 1998, 5 hrs in 2001, 45 minutes in 2009, and 1 second with the new wireless protocol.

The impact and roll out of 5G will be enormous. With current networks, it takes about 100 milliseconds for information to travel across a network. With 5G, that latency will be reduced to 1 millisecond. We are talking about downloading full-length 5k movies in less than a second, surgeons controlling surgical robots in real-time from across the country, smart cities, and smart car-to-car communications.

4. Koomey’s Law

Koomey’s law has to do with the efficient use of energy and states that the number of computations per joule of energy dissipated has been doubling approximately every 1.57 years. This trend has been stable since the 1950s and has been faster than Moore’s law. Jonathan Koomey reframed the trend as follows: “at a fixed computing load, the amount of battery you need will fall by a factor of two every year and a half”. You can see the effect of this law in today’s newest generation CPU’s (Apple’s M1 chip) that are pumping out incredible amounts of processing power at significantly reduced levels of energy consumption.

5. Metcalfe’s Law

This power law with its closely associated cousin, the network effect, asserts that the value of a network is proportional to how many users are a part of it and that the addition of a new member adds value to all the existing members. A good example of this power law at work are social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. These sites had no revenue model in the beginning and were very expensive to run but grew to have so many users that the value grew directly from the value of the size of the network itself. Not too many years ago, software products had to packaged on physical media and shipped through the mail to users. Now, the same products can be built and deployed to one of any number of app stores and have a global audience with little to no overhead.

6. Hendy’s Law

Next, consider Hendy’s Law. Hendy’s Law states that the number of pixels per dollar in a digital camera doubles every two years. We can generalize this trend to encompass the idea that our ability to capture images and video of the world is exponentially improving year over year. This improvement opens the door to such high-fidelity VR and lifelogging that our human senses begin to find synthetic media and real-life indistinguishable. This already exists in the form of gigapixel photography where images are used instead of real specimens in biological study where we can’t tell the difference even under a microscope. Imagine being able to photograph a group of people and then zoom in so close later that you can identify properties of their cellular biology.

7. Bell’s Law

Last on our list is Bell’s Law. It says a new class of smaller, cheaper computers comes along about every decade. With each new class, the volume shrinks by two orders of magnitude, and the number of systems per person increases. The law has held from 1960s’ mainframes through the ‘80s’ personal computers, the ‘90s’ notebooks, and the new millennium’s smart phones. This is likely manifesting in the realm of wearable right now with the wild success of smart watched and wireless intelligent earbuds.

To wrap this up and summarize, while there may be temporary or geographically isolated stalls in the progression of these laws, they are still holding steady. You might compare them to walking up a set of stairs. At various points in your travel up the stairs, you rise up very high and then drop low. You do not move at a constant linearly increasing height. You go up and down but the trend is a clear move upwards. Through that up and down, you are converging on a net increase. The same is true of these digital laws. The overarching result is that software is eating the world and eating itself, recursively accelerating the process even further. One doesn’t need to theorize about potential advances in machine intelligence to see that we are accelerating into an unimaginable future. A clear technological singularity.

If none of the above convinces I will leave you with this chart illustrating the grown of the global economy. Assuming the continuation of these power laws, where are we 50–100 years from now?

[motorizedbicy]

Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Around the country, bars, dining establishments, and also various other public spaces are shut or have actually restricted solution. Public transportation is becoming an extra iffy proposition, and cities are closing roads to provide pedestrians more room to move near their houses.

Go into: the electric bike. You do not require to be healthy to ride one. It gets you outside, lowers fossil fuels, decreases congestion, and also it's enjoyable. Over the past few years, we have actually attempted practically every type of ebike there is, from sturdy cargo bikes to premium mountain bicycle. Whether you're tooling around your neighborhood purchasing wood chips from the hardware shop or trying to trim a couple of miles off the trip for a socially distanced see, we have the very best ebike for you.

We will certainly be remaining to test and trip bikes throughout the summertime, so if you do not see one you like now, be sure to inspect back later. Once you get one, take a look at our favored biking accessories, too.

Have inquiries concerning electric bikes? Sign up with the conversation in the comments section below.

Updated for June 2020: We got rid of a number of older choices as well as included new ones, like the Propella 7-Speed.

The Very Best Bike

Specialized Turbo Vado SL Equipped

When I needed to return this electric bike (9/10, WIRED Recommends), I practically cried. The small, yet effective, customized motor as well as slim battery are integrated into the structure, so it doesn't even look like an ebike. The XS frame evaluates 33 extra pounds, just a couple of more than a normal steel bike. It has a hybrid structure with flat handlebars that make it simple to steer on a selection of surfaces, whether you're scooting along at 28 miles per hr or bumping through trees at your neighborhood park.

Specialized's Smart Control system suggests you don't need to readjust aid while you're riding, or bother with having sufficient battery to get house. A surprise shock in the head tube paddings the blow from any unforeseen fractures. Also the accessories are first-class, like long, adaptable custom-made fenders that sluice water down and also far from you in the rain. I place 40 miles on it in three days. It was so fun that it was hard to jump off.

The Very Best Affordable Bike

Propella 7-Speed (V3.4).

Who am I kidding? Unless you're already an ebike fanatic, you possibly desire one that's as close to $1,000 as feasible. That's a tough proposal if you want a dependable electric motor and also a frame that won't bend at 15 miles per hour. Propella's direct-to-consumer 7-speed (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is the very best low-cost bike we have actually located. Reviewer Parker Hall noted that it has trustworthy elements like a Samsung battery as well as Shimano disc brakes, and cool accessories like a trendy suspension seat. At 39 pounds, it's likewise pretty light for an ebike! It ships straight to you, too, which comes in handy if you would love to stay clear of a bike shop now.

Best Utility Bike.

Rad Power Bikes RadRunner.

Regardless of which bike I recommend, many people I recognize directly buy this one. It has an apparently magic mix of affordability and also effectiveness. Seattle-based Rad Power Bikes ships its bikes direct-to-consumer, and also rather than working solely with business like Bosch and Shimano, it likewise establishes its own custom hub-motor drivetrains with a variety of different suppliers. Additionals like light weight aluminum pedals and added equipments are stripped off in favor of a big 120-pound back rack as well as huge, steady, custom-made Kenda tires.

Nearly any person can utilize the RadRunner (7/10, WIRED Review)-- whether you want a comfortable cruiser for coastline rides, a steady seat for your 4-year-old, or you simply want to ditch your gas-powered Vespa. If you have actually never gotten on a bike before, the Elby S1 additionally has a very easy step-through frame as well as costs trimmings, like Tektro hydraulic brakes. It's much more expensive, though.

Best Freight Bike (and My Fave).

Tern GSD.

The Tern GSD S10 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is my favored freight bike (of those I have actually examined), as well as it's the one I would purchase if I had the ka-ching. Tern utilized a number of creative design tweaks to make the bike easy to ride-- for example, tiny 20-inch and fat motorcross tires assist maintain the bike's length equal to an average roadway bike. The rear rack is likewise reduced for much better stability, as well as the battery and motor are under the shelf, instead of placed on the downtube.

You can likewise keep it standing up on its end. That remains in enhancement to an adjustable Bosch electric motor, which you can update to a double-battery system. My regional bike shops have trouble keeping it in stock. If you do not require such a long tail, Tern likewise released a much shorter HSD that can suit one child seat.

A Light, Budget Friendly Cargo Bike.

Bike Friday Haul-A-Day.

Bike Friday's Haul-A-Day isn't for every person. The majority of parents that desire a longtail cargo bike will certainly choose something heavier as well as more secure, like a RadWagon or a Yuba Boda Boda. As a brief moms and dad that has to deliver 2 kids, this is the bike I in fact have. It has a special telescoping tube that can shorten the bike to fit riders as short as 4' 6", and also it considers 44 extra pounds-- practically 15 pounds less than the Tern. It's also much more inexpensive, though this is understood by replacing a reputable, effective Bosch drivetrain with a Tongsheng one.

Ideal Minivan Alternative.

Riese & M��ller Lots 60.

A year after checking it, my spouse and I still wistfully talk about how much far better our lives would be if we had our very own R&M Load 60 (8/10, WIRED Recommends). The full-suspension, double-battery Tons makes use of a Bosch system to power its bakfiets-style freight box around community.

You can customize the freight box with low sidewalls, harnesses, and a rainfall cover, or you can remove whatever off as well as get devices at the hardware store. It additionally comes with valuable additionals, like Tektro hydraulic disc brakes, an easily flexible seat, and also an integrated wheel lock that lets you lock the bike up while it's free-standing.

A Lot Of Versatile Bike.

Yamaha Wabash E-Bike.

A gravel bike is a functional choice for whatever from daily commuting to mild weekend bikepacking journeys. The Yamaha Wabash (7/10, WIRED Evaluation) is more budget friendly than the Turbo Vado SL, as well as I used it for every little thing from heading to my regional cafe to striking (some) routes on the weekends. Yamaha's custom motor and also absolutely no cadence trigger are effective enough to let me start up in the middle of extremely steep hillsides. It also has back shelf installs, an LED headlight, and a little bell. I did find its slim wheels as well as lack of shock absorption rather disconcerting on rougher roadways. Specialized additionally has an extremely wonderful gravel-ready electric bike.

Finest Electric Mountain Bike.

Specialized Males's Turbo Levo Comp.

While several communities have limitations on whether electrical bikes are also allowed on single-track (thin) tracks, reviewer Stephanie Pearson had a blast on Specialized's initial pedal-assisted mtb (8/10, WIRED Recommends). It has a rigid, crooked structure that's longer in the front to make pounding the downhills feel smooth and safe, along with a 500-watt electric motor with Smart Control, which means you don't need to adjust aid when riding. It really feels equally as enjoyable as a nonelectric bike.

Best Folding Ebike.

Gocycle GX.

Gocycle was founded by Mclaren Automotive designer Richard Thorpe, and also the GX (7/10, WIRED Testimonial) is its fast-folding bike. The streamlined light weight aluminum structure conceals a 300-Wh lithium-ion battery inside. As opposed to simply switching over from 4 fixed aid settings, Gocycle's application allows you play on a gliding range to call in various quantities useful in correlation with various degrees of pressure on the pedals, that makes it a dream to ride. You can rubber-band your phone to the handlebars to function as your console. It likewise has only 2 joints, that makes folding and unfolding very easy, as well as can be kept standing with the kickstand prolonged.

An Inexpensive Foldable Ebike.

Jetson City Foldable Electric Bike.

Ebikes are expensive, as well as we did review the Jetson City (6/10, WIRED Testimonial), which rings in at under a grand. It has most of the bells and also whistles that you need for a commuter ebike, like a 250-watt electric motor hidden in the crossbar, around 40 miles of variety, 3 levels of pedal help, a throttle, and also a horn. Nonetheless, in just a week of testing, I chipped off a part of the clamp that hooks the bike with each other, which doesn't bode well for the bike's long life over the long run.

Guidance to Bear In Mind.

Recognizing Electric Bike Specs.

Similar to any kind of bike, electrical bikes featured a ton of different technical specifications that you might or might not appreciate. Much more economical ebikes use hub motor drives, where the electric motor is in the center of the bike's wheel. A lot more costly mid-drive motors, like Bosch or Shimano systems, remain in the facility of the bike as well as transfer the power to the wheel by means of the chain. Mid-drive electric motors allow you move equipments and stabilize the bike's weight much better.

If you stay in an area that's wet or uneven, it's worth shelling out for an extra powerful 500-W or 750-W electric motor as well as a few extras, like hydraulic or mechanical disc brakes, which will help stop you as well as your freight from skidding right into website traffic. If you have a longer commute, you may also wish to search for a double-battery system, as the range on many ebike batteries is within 30 to 50 miles.

Ebike Classifications and Policies.

Examine Your Neighborhood Regulations.

Prior to you buy your electric bike, make sure you can really utilize it! Many cities as well as states have local laws managing when as well as where you can use an ebike. At least 22 states currently make use of the three-class system, and also may restrict when and also where different courses of ebikes might be made use of, depending upon if they have a throttle or can assist over 20 miles per hour. Cities might additionally have regulations about whether hill ebikes are enabled on single-track tracks. If your state identifies ebikes under the exact same regulations regulating motorbikes as well as mopeds, you might require a certificate to ride one. As well as regardless of what, always use a helmet.

[massacooramaan-blog2]

What are the best and  cheapest 1More ANC Noise Canceling True Wireless Earbuds in 2020?

We examine items individually, yet we might gain associate payments from getting web links on this web page. Regards to usage. Apple actually aced the mix of energetic sound termination (ANC) and also real cordless layout in the AirPods Pro, yet at $249, they're much from affordable. At $199.99, the 1More Real Wireless ANC In-Ear Earphones are substantially much less costly, yet they fall short to supply an audio experience that matches the pledge of their dual-hybrid-driver layout. The audio noises scooped and also squeezed sometimes, as if the high-frequency well balanced armature isn't fairly tuned to match the vibrant bass motorist's action. It refers preference, yet it's an oddly intense audio trademark, despite having respectable bass deepness. Include in this just respectable ANC efficiency, and also you're far better off investing a lot more on the AirPods Pro. Layout The earphones are readily available in black, with a carbon fiber outside on the earpieces and also a matte black, pill-shaped billing instance with a flip-top cover. The earpieces get on the beefy side, and also with factor-- not just does it aid for an extra safe fit, yet each earpiece houses a crossbreed dual-driver variety: a well balanced armature for the highs and also a vibrant motorist to supply low-frequency deepness. You additionally obtain a variety of eartip alternatives, 7 sets in all in numerous sizes and shapes, along with 4 sets of earfins/sleeves that aid with healthy safety. In screening, we located the fit to be comfy and also the earpieces remained in area over long paying attention sessions.

True Wireless Earbuds ANC in January of 2020

A touch-sensitive control board outside of either earpiece manages ANC, which we'll go over in the following area. For the remainder of the controls, there are little switches, one on top of each ear. A dual faucet on either plays or stops songs, while a solitary faucet on the left decreases quantity and also on the ideal elevates quantity. Pushing and also holding the ideal switch misses onward a track, while the left switch browses in reverse a track. It's weird that the only feature of the touch-sensitive panel is for ANC, yet odder still that a dual faucet controls playback (this normally misses onward a track on a lot of earphones) and also a hold regulates track navigating (this normally summons your voice aide). The guidelines claim that 3 clicks (when songs isn't playing) summons your tool's voice aide, yet we had irregular outcomes with this feature. Playback is instantly stopped when the earpieces are gotten rid of from your ears. Positioning the earpieces back in does not instantly shock you with whatever you were paying attention when you took them out, though if you desire it to, you can make it possible for automated playback in the application. The 1More Aide application (for Android and also iphone) permits ANC control, yet absolutely nothing you can not currently do simply by touching on the earpieces. There's no EQ in the application, which is a missed out on possibility. Inevitably, it appears rather unneeded for anything aside from firmware updates.

What kind of magnets ANC Wireless Earbuds  Have?

The instance has magnets that get hold of at earpieces in numerous various placements, and also the earpieces resemble they could suit a selection of means in the beginning look, which can make points irritating. Along with the eartips, a USB-C billing cord of charitable size and also a drawstring lugging bag are consisted of. 1More approximates battery life to be about 5 hrs, or 6 hrs with the ANC off, yet your outcomes will certainly additionally differ with your quantity degrees. The battery instance lugs an approximated 18 added hrs of battery life. Efficiency The earphones supply satisfactory energetic sound termination.

The earpieces do an excellent work of removing low-frequency roll like you listen to on aircrafts and also trains, yet they include a really obvious high-frequency hiss, and also do little to shut out higher-frequency sound like individuals chatting or keying close by in a workplace. There are 2 ANC settings you can switch over in between making use of the touch panel on either earpiece. The initial is exceptional at removing the lows yet mainly ineffective for removing any kind of greater regularities. The 2nd setting tamps down mids somewhat, yet permits the lows to travel through. The ANC does not appear to transform the audio trademark visibly. For audio efficiency, on course with extreme sub-bass web content, like

The Blade's "Quiet Yell," the earphones supply strong bass visibility with a lot of high-mids and also highs in the mix too. It's a bass-forward, yet reasonably well balanced, audio trademark. Costs Callahan's "Drover," a track with much much less deep bass in the mix, offers us a much much better feeling of the TWS ANC's basic audio trademark and also points are, well, odd. The drums on this track audio all-natural and also complete, not greatly improved neither slim. Callahan's baritone vocals, remarkably, appear even more intense than abundant or improved in the lows. We additionally listen to a lot more tape hiss than we normally do, and also the acoustic strums have an added high-mid visibility to them. To put it simply, this is an intense audio trademark on course that do not include a severe deep bass visibility. On Jay-Z and also Kanye West's "No Church in bush," the kick drum loophole obtains a lot of forming in the highs.

This presses the plastic snap and also hiss, normally behind-the-scenes, especially onward. The drum loophole's strike is punchy, and also this is an intense, in-depth audio. The sub-bass synth strikes that stress the beat are supplied with strong deepness-- absolutely nothing that bewilders the mix, yet sufficient press to offer the track a little rumbling. The vocals are supplied with strong quality yet some especially included sibilance. Put simply, there's solid bass, yet also more powerful highs-- and also the high-mids and also highs can appear formed to an unusual level sometimes, stressing the incorrect arrays and also advancing hiss and also sibilance. Component of this is the nature of a well balanced armature motorist-- it can supply a lot more high-frequency information.

Yet that calls for mindful adjusting to make sure that points do not appear pinched, toned, or scooped. Instrumental tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams' The Scripture According to the Various other Mary, audio crisp, intense, and also have a charming splendor to them below. This is maybe one of the most clear, all-natural style via the earphones, yet forming in the highs is still evident. Actually, it's clear that there's a motorist for the bass, a motorist for the highs, and also the mids really feel a little bit dug. The crossbreed motorists are an excellent suggestion, yet the implementation has actually caused an odd audio audio trademark doing not have in the mids. The mic deals inadequate intelligibility. Making Use Of the Voice Memos application on an apple iphone 8, we can hardly listen to the recording. The mic signal is weak, and also past that experiences normal Bluetooth distortion. It's not tough to envision customers not having the ability to recognize you, specifically if your mobile signal goes to all endangered. Verdicts We like the suggestion of twin crossbreed motorists, yet a rather odd audio trademark and also just respectable ANC make it tough to offer the

Real Wireless ANC In-Ear Headphones high marks

For $50 even more, the AirPods Pro prosper in nearly every location these earphones battle-- the sound really feels a lot more well balanced, the ANC is substantially more powerful, and also the on-ear controls are even more instinctive. And also if ANC isn't an essential, there are numerous exceptional alternatives to take into consideration, from the $180 Jabra Elite 75t to the $80 Soundcore Freedom Air. So whether you  want to invest essentially than 1More's asking rate, the lower line is that you can do far better. 1More Real Wireless ANC In-Ear Earphones (EHD9001TA) reasonable Profits: The 1More Real Wireless ANC In-Ear Earphones make use of twin crossbreed motorists in each ear, yet the audio outcomes and also sound termination are much less excellent than the rate needs. Leading Comparisons1MORE has actually introduced its brand-new Real Wireless ANC In-Ear Earphones including twin motorists, 2 degrees of noise cancellation, pass-through mode and wireless charging are now ready to start shipping to customers. The True Wireless ANC earbuds from 1MORE are the first of its type to be pending THX certification which proves the company's commitment to provide affordable high-end audio products to consumers, with features such as dual drivers and active noise cancellation, inside a luxurious package. "The 1MORE team is thrilled to be expanding not only our true wireless headphone line up, but also our Dual Driver ANC series of products as well," says Patrice Chen, 1MORE USA CEO. "Combining premium sound and a competitive price point makes this product appealing to not only audiophiles, but anyone looking for a best-in-class true wireless headphone."

1MORE's True Wireless ANC company's third product

1MORE's True Wireless ANC earbuds are the company's third product pending THX certification, that offer customers an entertainment experience designed to match their needs.

The True Wireless ANC headphones are equipped with one dynamic driver and a balanced armature to produce full range audio detail in a compact earbud package. Pass-through mode allows ambient noise to filter through to the user, meaning they stay aware of their surroundings, while hybrid active noise cancelling provides comprehensive microphone noise cancellation over a broad range of frequencies. The 1MORE True Wireless ANC earbuds also include Bluetooth 5 technology for seamless aptX and AAC transmission via Android and iOS devices. Six hours battery life (ANC on) or 22 hours total from a full charge and can be recharged to provide 2 hours playback in just 15 minutes. The 1MORE True Wireless ANC earbuds are available to purchase from the 1MORE website store and via Amazon now for $199.99. Discuss on our Facebook page HERE. KitGuru says: The appearance of the 1MORE True Wireless earbuds certainly look high-quality. What do you guys think of these new wireless earbuds from 1MORE? Would you be tempted to splash the cash on these? Become a Patron!Using a multi driver design, the 1More True Wireless ANC earbuds include one dynamic driver and one balanced armature to produce "stunning detail and full sound in a compact package" say their creators. The 1 More True Wireless ANC headphones are now available to purchase directly from the official website and official online retailers worldwide

"The 1MORE team is thrilled to be expanding not only our true wireless headphone line up, but also our Dual Driver ANC series of products as well," says Patrice Chen, 1MORE USA CEO. "Combining premium sound and a competitive price point makes this product appealing to not only audiophiles, but anyone looking for a best-in-class true wireless headphone." Features of the 1More active noise cancelling in-ear headphones include-- Hybrid active noise cancellation with one feedforward mic and one feedback mic that allows the end user to have much more comprehensive noise cancellation through a broader range of frequencies.-- Surrounding Awareness via Pass-through mode lets in ambient noise, so users are able to stay aware of their surroundings while walking down a crowded city street.-- Latest Qualcomm chipset and Bluetooth 5 technology allows seamless aptX and AAC transmission compatible with Android and iOS devices.-- Headphones can be charged via type-c port or wirelessly using a Qi compatible wireless charging pad. A multi-functional button is also included on each earbud along with G sensors for touch controls that allows for control over ANC, song selection, volume, phone calls, and voice assistance.-- Battery Life + Fast Charging: Users can enjoy 6 hours of battery life (5 with ANC on) on a full charge, and 22 hours of total battery life with the included portable charging case that provides three additional full-length charges. Fast charge capabilities are also included, where users can charge for only 15 minutes to get an additional 2 hours of use.-- Pending THX Certification: THX engineers conduct hundreds of scientifically-formulated tests to ensure the highest audio standards are met. These tests include frequency response, channel balance, cross-talk, THD, and polarity. Source: TPU Filed Under: Gadgets News, Top News Latest Geeky Gadgets Deals

[thisblackwitch]

One day, I should talk about how I got a thief at an old library job fired.

Today should be that day because it’s been something. Also, I am being a touch petty, please note forewarning. Also, this is stream of thought as well so if I am glossing some details, lemme know because I wanna be clear. 

So, I have dealt with discriminatory harassment at my old library job at U Mustn’t B Conscious, a college library (If you knew American college sports news last summer/fall, you know exactly what uni it is, not difficult to pick). This has popped up two new EEOC’s even (now totaling to three EEOC’s I have filed in my life). But that’s a different thing. And one that got a lawyer involved. (This now brings my lawyers count to I think 2 or 3). But the thieving! Let’s talk about that.

So, thanks to having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I have a work journal that I need to keep track of things. Well, had, because it got lifted after I left from work. And that was item #3. Two 3D prints I made already were stolen roughly before I was sent to a hospital for my DID.

Told higher ups, they didn’t listen because the EEOC was going on and some of them were named on it so obviously they are not interested in upholding rules, including theft.

So, I went to the uni police. The uni police were better than the library higher ups, they were interested in figuring out the theft. Buuuuuuuuuuut they went “we dunno where to start in terms of subjects”. My stuff got stolen so often, I could literally spot a pattern. (Always on my off days, gone before I come in at 4 PM).

I have a strong background in technology (I worked at NIST, the nerd part of the US government.) so I suggested, “Hey, if I can record this person in the act, would you be okay with it? Like, I want to film this person so you can just book them.” The police were okay with that. So I used my smartphone to create a motion sensor to record only interactions with my items (so I don’t burn battery or storage - that and it’s a library. Who wants to watch 7+ hours of literally nothing?)

Guess what? By the fifth item stolen, I got them on camera. Clear face and everything. If I was eviler/pettier, I’d post the video as well, it’s less than 40 seconds of someone literally blowing their entire career. The kicker? I knew this person for years. I knew them since we were both undergrad in college. They weren’t a stranger, they were someone who I thought was nice and kind for almost a decade. Come to find out, they’re sticky-fingered and because others were picking on me, they thought this was a great way to “fit in”. Yeah, I’ve been bullied since I was a child (part of how I got the DID), that’s a big reason why I got my tech skill to Level: 1984

As soon as I got a notification ping, I reviewed footage and sent straight to the fuzz. The fuzz decided to yink up thief, Kat-Nabber, and question them. Police told Kat-Nabber to not blab to the world because it could muddy the investigation. So Kat-Nabber tells uni HR (who the EEOC is also against). HR has a fit - not over the serial theft, but because I filmed someone commit theft after being dismissed and not believed. I got wrote up for “filming people without permission” as if I was filming Librarians Gone Wild.

Speed up the clock and I went from uni police to the actual police. Actual police directed me to the court house, court house sped me a prosecutor once I showed them the tape. The prosecutor wasted no time slapping charges on Kat-Nabber. U Mustn’t B Conscious may not care about serial theft but turns out the Maryland Judicial System gave some sort of a sh*t. At least when you have very damming proof.

Then Kat-Nabber gave up her job. Like, she quit roughly around the time the charges hit. And I made sure the charges were sent to her work desk. Kat-Nabber leaped over to a new state HR job, a nice paying one. 

Lolz. As soon as Kat-Nabber accepted the charges and I got all the proper paperwork that dings her, I used my “Persistent” personality trait, found Kat-Nabber’s supervisor at new job as well as the head of HR at the new job. The supervisor was emailed every thing I had. The dude was astonished I had so much, Kat-Nabber was let go quick. So now, she can’t get hired in state jobs, federal jobs and she went from a clean slate to having a record.

I am posting this partly because A) I want to, Kat-Nabber isn’t the only person I fried B) I noticed my actions are having a ripple effect where some folks who follow me and knows both Kat-Nabber and me and those folks are very up in their feelings because of Kat-Nabber’s White Girl Tears. I get not wanting to believe a bad person is actually bad but Kat-Nabber didn’t get yinked on false stuff, but hard core proof. 

[gaming-handheld]

Sony PSP - A Multipurpose Gaming Console

The Sony PSP is a handheld gaming console released on 11 May 2004. The PlayStation Portable (PSP) from Sony can playing back music & video clips in an efficient fashion. Its controls are still very much video gaming oriented. The default battery life of the PSP varies throughout applications  Onexplayer 1S. It is much less than 3 hours when you accessibility cordless network with the display brightness readied to highest, as well as more than 11 hrs when you playback MP3 with the screen light switched off. You can utilize sleep mode where least battery power is utilized, to make sure that the battery life is extended. Besides a longer battery life, the XMB or XrossMediaBar is the main-menu user interface of the PlayStation Portable from Sony. Sony had just recently utilized this interface in its TVs, PlayStation 3, as well as PSX equipment. Consisting of menu symbols arranged flat like Photo, Settings, Music, Network Game, as well as Video, the primary menu choices of this interface in turn show a sequence of sub icons prepared vertically. The XMB lets the users adjust settings, surf the Web, play sound, video & games, and link it to a personal computer. The interface is conveniently available. All you need to do is simply press the 'Home' switch. The PSP requires to leave all applications that are running presently due to the memory restrictions. Default history tones of the PSP change according to every month. You can set the colour manually or specify a picture as the history. Currently, there are about ten official themes; particularly "Wipeout", "Lemmings", "Pink" "Cookies," as well as 6 added styles. From interface to controls and also other functions, the Sony PSP is probably one of the most sophisticated yet straightforward gaming console available on the market today. At present the PSP is available in black, pink, ceramic white, silver, champagne gold, Simpsons yellow, as well as metal blue. You can pick the one that you like one of the most; nonetheless, the Sony PSP looks simply AWESOME in all the 7 colours and is a joy to video gaming addicts all over the world. The Sony PSP is a handheld gaming console launched on 11 May 2004. The PlayStation Portable (PSP) from Sony is qualified of playing back songs & video clips in an effective way. From interface to controls and various other features, the Sony PSP is probably the most advanced yet user-friendly pc gaming console available on the market today. You can select the one that you like the most; nevertheless, the Sony PSP looks just AWESOME in all the 7 colours and also is a delight to gaming addicts all over the globe.

[practicingmedicine]

Practicing Medicine: Chapter Three

(+)3

COPYRIGHT 2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

16213 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: “THE-CARAVAN”

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

> STATUS

Battery Level: 97%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 82F

> HEALTH

BP: 120/90

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 15

HR: 70

> TIME

Day: 23 SEP. 2279

Time: 15:00

> CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 69F

Atmospheric Pressure: 753 mm

Background Radiation: 0.231 RAD

“Oh, that’s terrible! I mean, I had known that Penny was sick, but I didn’t know that she had cancer !” said Mrs. McBain. She gave my hand a tight squeeze, and then released it. “If there’s anything we can do…”

“There’s one thing,” I said. Both Mrs. McBain and her recovering husband looked up at me. “Look after my momma. Make her nice meals, give her hugs, and send a letter to the followers if anything happens. I hope I won’t be gone for long, but if I don’t come back…” I thought for a moment. “Look for help. If you can’t find any, at least make her comfortable.”

Mr. and Mrs. McBain shared a look that suggested they were worried about me. “Of course, I’m sure that ain’t gonna happen. I just like to plan for the worst!” Mr. McBain smiled at me from his bed.

“I appreciate that kind of thinking, son. Things can go to hell in a handbasket pretty quick,” said the Sheriff. His wife glared at him.

“He’s not going to die, Kurt! Don’t you suggest that kind of thing!”

“I wasn’t suggesting nothin! Just saying that it’s good to have a plan- it’s a staple of being a good doctor, or so I hear,” said Mr. McBain, looking at me again. I forced a laugh.

“Yeah, I guess it is! Now, you two, can you do that? Can you look after my mom for a few weeks?” Immediately, Mrs. McBain nodded. Mr. McBain gave a thumbs up.

“Of course, Isaac! It’s the least we can do, really,” said Mrs. McBain. I smiled.

“Thank you,” I replied, and headed for the door. Mom might come looking for me soon, and this’d be one of the first places she’d check.

“Wait, Isaac- do you want to call your mom before you leave?” suggested Mrs. McBain, putting a hand on my shoulder. I shook my head.

“No. Well, yes, but I’m afraid that she’ll change my mind.” I hung my head. I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity, but I needed to do this. I suspected that I was going to have to make a lot of these kinds of choices in the near future. “Thank you though. I’ll try to repay you somehow when I get back.”

“Isaac, dear, you already have.”

I smiled at that. “If you say so.” A cloud of dust blew in around my legs as I opened the door. “See you folks soon- tell Mom I said goodbye, and that I love her!”

And just like that, I left behind everything I knew, and strode into unknown territory.

-Break-

Well, not really, “ Unknown territor y,” not yet. The next place I went was the town square, which was quiet and empty today. I was thankful for that. I strode past mom’s Casino, which was my next destination, and crouched down next to a little patch of brown grass and concrete between the sidewalk and Bison Steve’s. That was where Father had been shot. After that, he backpedaled for a while, and then ran into the side of the Casino, where he fell down and bled out.

I walked over to the wall. Me and mom had painted it together, before he died and after. I usually left him something; The first time it had been the snow globe he was going to give me, then it had been cactus flowers, and it kept changing after that. Whenever it stormed, the items got swept away, which I was okay with. He wasn’t even buried there, and it wasn’t like he was in any state to need the stuff. I would just start over, leaving something new every time.

But not this time. Not only was that in the past that I was trying to leave behind, but it was also kind of stupid, as I was starting to realize. Instead, I just crouched down next to the spot, put down my bag, and tried to make myself look presentable.

“Howdy, Father- I’m going on a little adventure, out in the wastes. I’d be real grateful if you could watch over Momma til I get back.” I didn’t know much about communing with spirits- still don’t, but it felt like a nice thing to do. After all, I was going to be gone for a while.

And after that, I stood up, wiped away the tears that had been gathering in my eyes, and walked into mom’s bustling Casino. The mysterious new city of New Vegas had taken a toll on business, but Primm still had the most convenient Casino on this side of the Mojave.

“Good evening, Mr. Saller! How you doing- I heard you saved the Sheriff’s life today!” said Johnson Nash, an old, wrinkly-skinned man and the overseer of the Mojave Express mail delivery here in Primm. I smiled as I approached him.

“Howdy Mr. Nash. My mom is dying of cancer. Are there any caravans passing through here?”

Mr. Nash looked surprised. His gaze shifted to the window. “Well, I… Really, Penny? I’m so sorry, boy, she’s always seemed so strong to me! I never would have guessed that she…” he turned his head to look at me again. “Sorry. I’m reminiscing. You just missed an NCR caravan heading up to Nipton. If the schedule keeps going like it has been, another caravan should show up next month…”

“Crud,” I muttered. I thought about saying something less polite, but Mr. Nash didn’t like me swearing.

“Sorry,” said Mr. Nash. Then, his expression changed. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Oh, I almost forgot! There’s an unsponsored one preparing to leave right now, bound straight for New Vegas. It’s a little caravan, three people, a couple of brahmin and a wagon. They’ve run the route a few times, but they don’t usually pass through here. The leader- Gram, I think it was, says he’s with the NCR. He’s got a ranger with him, so normally, I’d be inclined to believe him. But, the NCR never told me about them like they do with the rest of their caravans, and only the ranger wears a uniform.”

I started to walk away. “Thanks, Mr. Nash--where can I find them?”

“They’re out back behind the Casino, sort of over by the hitching posts, but I wouldn’t mess with them. They seem kind of shady to me,” he said. I turned my head to grin at him.

“Oh, I’ll be fine, Mr. Nash. I’m sure they’ll jump at the opportunity to get a doctor on board!”

-Break-

“Hands behind your head! That’s right, don’t move an inch!”

I shouted out in pain and surprise as the great-big person with the ranger uniform pushed their boot even harder against the small of my back, no doubt leaving a bruise. Without even registering it, I had moved both of my hands behind my head.

“Good. Hoplite, search him!”

A stout, bespectacled ghoul wearing a plaid three-piece suit with a tan cowboy-hat sauntered into my field of view. I hadn’t met many ghouls before, but I could tell by his demeanor that he was no spring chicken. Maybe pre war, maybe not, but definitely vintage. Maybe even antique. He stared at me for a while, then took off his hat, and tilted his head in my direction.

“He’s got nothin, Tandi. If he had a gat, he would have tried to reach for it when you spotted him,” said the ghoul. My ribcage felt like it was going to crack open as the ranger put even more weight onto their one foot.

“That’s not what I’m worried about. I bet he’s a legion slave, check his collar, look for brands on his skin!”  

“I ain’t a slave,” I said, and instantly regretted speaking. The ranger laughed, a strange, hollow sound once it got passed through the helmet.

“Well, the kid ain’t a slave! What a goddamn relief!” The cheery Texan twang didn’t mesh with the deep, slavic voice. Every word that the ranger spoke sent chills down my spine.

“Look!” I shouted. I reached for my coat collar, and the ranger raised their foot and jammed their heel into my back again, harder than before. I screamed out something incomprehensible.

“Try it again, slave-boy-“ I could hear the ranger pull the bolt back on their submachine-gun, and I’m pretty sure I pissed my pants a little. “…And I put a round in your kidney! Maybe death don’t scare you, but pain like that’ll make a tough man cry. Ain’t that right Hoplite?”

The ghoul let out a tired sigh. “I’m not about to play good-cop bad-cop with you, Tandi. Let the poor kid go.” The Ranger kept their foot on my back for a few more seconds, pressing just hard enough to give me a sharp pain in my ribcage. Finally, they released me, leaving me aching in the sand.

As soon as I had recovered enough to breath, I flipped myself onto my back and started coughing. My whole goddamn chest was aching, which was an unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling. Of course, that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I was instead thinking about how I almost got shot, how I almost died less than an hour into my journey, how I almost failed my momma…

I started crying. I knew immediately that it was a bad idea, so I kept it silent, but I couldn’t help but let a few tears leak down my face. No one seemed to notice it, probably because they were still talking amongst themselves.

“…we do with him? Like, I’d feel kind of bad leaving him here…”

“Whoa, big friggin’ idea right here: why don’t we ask him what he was doing? He don’t look like a bad guy to me…”

“Leave him here. He’s a runt and a coward, and the only thing I-“

“Buzz off, Tandi! No one invited you to this conversation!”

“Yeah, shut up, the adults are talking!”

“What? I am thirty years your senior, Savvy! ”

“… Ladies, please. If we don’t make a decision soon, I think the suspense might kill him.”

“Still time for me to kill him.”

“Hush! I think he’s listening to us!”

All eyes turned to me. After a few seconds of feeling like a bug in a magnifying glass, I threw my arms into the air and craned my neck in what I can only describe as a full-body shrug. The ghoul laughed as my arms and legs thumped against the sand.

“Did that hurt? That looked like it hurt,” said the person who I hadn’t seen yet. I could hear her walking closer to me. I didn’t look up.

“Little bit,” I admitted. She was standing behind my head now, and, not wanting to lift my neck, I strained my eyes to look up at her. I couldn’t see her so well against the glare of the sun, but I could make out the general look; she was a young, heavy-ish woman with a bob of black hair and what I recognized to be some-kind-of-Asian features, wearing a faded floral sundress and a floppy hat. I smiled up at her, and she smiled back.

“Howdy there!” I said, and then regretted speaking so loud. My chest still ached.

“Hi! I’m sorry about our ranger. She’s kind of aggressive,” said the girl. I snorted. “Anyways, what’s your name? And, uh, would you like to stand?”

“Isaac, and no, not really,” I replied. Still smiling, she withdrew her hand.

“That’s okay. What were you doing back here? Was this just bad luck, or were you trying to find us?” I nodded absently.

“Both, I think.” I saw the ghoul cast a sidelong glance at the ranger.

“A wise guy? Oh, this’ll be fun. Maybe we should kill him after all,” said the ghoul, and I laughed a laugh that was really just a thinly veiled prayer to God that he was joking. The girl gave him a look.

“Gram, hush. Why were you looking for us? And don’t beat around the bush anymore, I hate it when people do that.”

Normally I would agree with her on that, but I felt like I had a little bit of a right to be insufferable. Given the circumstances.

Don’t push your luck, I thought to myself, you want to join up with these folks. You can still spin this to your advantage! Except, I didn’t really know how I was gonna do that. None of them were taking any sort of pity on me, so I doubted I could play the poor, innocent boy card, and I wouldn’t press the dying momma thing. Past that… well, I wasn’t really sure what to say.

First though, I decided to stand up. I couldn’t have looked very impressive, lying in the dirt like I was. Trying to appear as though I weren’t in incredible pain, I stood and dusted myself off. I turned to face the girl in the dress, who was looking awful unimpressed with me.

“Well, since you asked me so nice, I’ll keep it simple- I need to get to New Vegas as soon as possible. Someone at the casino told me about y’all, so I came to see if you might take me on.” I turned my head to look at the ghoul. “You’re Gram, right? Nash told me about you. Said you were kinda shady, but I trusted that I’d be alright.”

The Ghoul nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. Sorry, but we ain’t taking any new members. We run a taut ship here, and to be honest, I don’t think we need anyone else gumming up the works.” I started to talk, but the ghoul raised a hand to silence me. “And, forget about paying to come along, because this job here is paying enough for my retirement! Don’t think I didn’t see that look in your eyes, kid.”

There went that avenue. I tried not to look defeated.

“That’s alright! I don’t got much money anyways,” I said, which was technically true- I wasn’t very liquid right now. “I was thinking about offering my services. I’m a doctor, see!”

“Nah, see, I already told you, we don’t- wait!” I could see the look on his face change as he registered what I said. “Wait, a doctor? Ah, I should’ve guessed by the coat! You roll with the Followers?”

“No. I’m looking to see them, actually. My aunt Julie leads this here chapter, and my father was a big shot there. Taught me a thing or two, before he died.” I said. I showed him the badge on my coat, which was a little metal circle with a stenciled-on cross with forked ends and a circle at the point where the two lines crossed. He examined it for a moment, then nodded.

“Badge seems genuine, so I don’t think you’re lying about your pops. But, how do I know you’re any good as a doctor? We can’t exactly have you perform a demonstration.”

I had a solution to this one!

“That’s easy! I saved a man’s life this morning, and I can prove it! Name’s Kurt McBain- he’s the Sheriff of this town. Ask anyone in that Casino, and they’ll tell you that I’m not lying. Mrs. McBain shared the news with everyone , so there’s no shortage of people who know,” I said, grumbling the last part like I was disappointed. I was secretly thrilled that she’d told so many people, but I was pretending to be disappointed because it seemed more in-character.

“Cook, why don’t you go check up on that story? Tandi, go check the perimeter, make sure this isn’t some sort of distraction. I think I’d like to talk to the kid alone.”

The other two members of the group departed wordlessly, leaving me alone behind the Casino with Gram, the weird ghoul who spoke like a gangster from one of the pre-war crime novels that my father would read me sometimes. He scared me less than the ranger, but more than the other person- Cook, he had called her. I couldn’t really put a finger on why.

“So, Isaac, let’s assume you’re telling me the truth, for a moment. Just how good of a doctor are you?” asked Gram, walking past me to lean against the peeling Casino wall. I thought for a moment. That was a hard question.

“Well I’m more of a medic, really- general physician in a pinch, but I studied for trauma. Given enough supplies, I can patch up most folks who haven’t got irreversible organ damage,” I replied, thinking back to how I’d repaired the Sheriff’s leaky artery with a stimpack. I might’ve been able to fix it without one, too, if I knew going in what exactly I’d be doing, but I wasn’t sure if I trusted my emergency sutures to hold on their own just yet...

We talked for some time about what I’d done, and what I could do if I absolutely had to. I explained to him that if I set up a pip-boy profile for everyone in advance, I’d be able to get all sorts of information that I’d otherwise have to find out the old-fashioned way. All the while, Gram was scratching the back of his neck, looking over at the back door to the Casino like a deathclaw might come bursting out at any moment. He always kept one hand in his coat.

“Well, Cook’ll be getting back pretty soon, and I’ll call Tandi over the radio once Cook gets back. Assuming you ain’t lying or holding anything back, then you’re on. I’ll give you ten minutes to pack up, and then we’re leaving.”

Despite everything, I smiled- I just couldn’t help it! The sun hadn’t even set, and I was already starting my journey to save my mom. No one could tell me it was just an idea now, because I was taking actions- taking risks, I realized, and it was already paying off. I was elated!

Suddenly, the back door to the Casino opened up. Cook stepped out, her expression unreadable.

“Hey, Gram? So, I asked around, and I’m pretty sure that he’s for real. There were some people who hadn’t heard about the incident, but most of the people who I talked to confirmed that the story was true,” she said. Gram raised one of his bushy eyebrows.

“Hm. How many is, “most?” How was your sample size?”

“Eight out of the Ten people who I asked answered in the affirmative. No one actually denied the story, they just denied knowledge of it. The details didn’t deviate much between accounts, either.”

Gram turned his whole upper body to look at me. He whistled. “Damn, Isaac! Either you’re the fifth best conman I’ve ever met, or you ain’t kidding about the whole doctor thing. I’m gonna go with the latter, because I’ve usually got a pretty good eye for cons.”

“Are you sure, Gram? Not knowing about it is what makes a good con. What if you’ve been getting tricked all the time, and you’re so bad at spotting cons that  you didn’t see most of them- even in retrospect!” suggested Cook. Gram scoffed.

“Please- when you’re alive for as long as me, you learn a thing or two about people and their tricks.” He sounded cross, but I could tell that he was smiling. Cook made a dramatic gesture.

“That’s what they want you to think! It’s how they’ve tricked you for so long!”

“Who’s tricked who?” asked the ranger, emerging around the corner with their barking-iron drawn. Every muscle in my body tensed as I tried not to jump out of my skin.

“Cook was telling me about all the cons I’ve apparently missed. I got a pretty good eye for cons, right, Tandi?”

“How do you know you can trust my answer?”

Cook grinned from ear to ear, and I found myself smiling too- her grin was infectious. “I told you! You’ve been blind this whole time, Gram! I guess living so long has given you some sort of complex…”

Could I wedge my way into this conversation? Did I even want to? The group seemed to run on an awful lot of unspoken rules and agreements, and I definitely didn’t get the impression that I had been invited to this particular conversation just yet.

“Et Tu, Isaac? Has this all been some sort of set up?” Gram asked, throwing his arms out and contriving to look betrayed. I took my invitation and tried real hard to look menacing.

“I’m sorry brother, but you shouldn’t have crossed the mob. You saw what happened to Sunny, didn’t you?” I said, making a little finger gun and calling desperately on my vague knowledge of “The Godfather.” Gram raised an eyebrow.

“First off, that’s not what Pacino sounds like and Michael didn’t kill Sonny. Second, you’ve seen The Godfather?” He sounded more intrigued than surprised. I shook my head.

“Read it, actually. My father read me a lot of books when I was younger. Are you from New York?” I stopped. That was a weird place to end the sentence, since they couldn’t understand the train of thought that led there. “Sorry. It’s just, we were talking about The Godfather, and you sound a lot like the voice my father would put on when he was playing New York mobsters.” Gram looked at me strangely, or at least I imagined he did, then nodded.

“Yeah, yeah I lived in Brooklyn before the war. I’ve been a lot of places since then…” He seemed to think for a moment. “Have you seen what New York looks like nowadays? It’s worse than the Capital Waste. If I hadn’t gotten outta there, I’m sure I would’ve gotten killed by now.”

“Well, I haven’t been, but-“ I started, getting ready to recount one of my many stories about father’s adventures with the Followers. Before I could finish, the ranger stepped between us.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Hoplite, but the sun’s setting, and I don’t want to spend another night in this shithole. Are we taking him or not?”

Gram shrugged. “Depends. Are you sure you wanna come…”

“Isaac,” I said. Gram nodded.

“Right. Now, Isaac, before you agree to anything, I feel like I’m obligated to warn you about the dangers of this run. There are raiders out there, there are legion assassins, mutants, and because of these things there will probably be death. We haven’t had a casualty in years, but you’re still probably going to watch someone die.” That last one hit me like a punch in the gut, but I think I managed to keep my reaction under wraps. I just nodded. “You ever seen someone die, Isaac? Are you gonna shut down on us as soon as someone gets shot?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied, and left it that. Gram looked satisfied.

“Good. Let’s get going. Isaac- as of this moment, you’re hired. I’ll give you ten minutes to pack. Be quick,” he said, shooing me away. I shook my head.

“Actually, I’m already packed.” In retrospect, I probably should have taken a few choice magazines with me, but those weren’t particularly vital. I had my jump bag with me, and I had the clothes on my back.

It was kind of sad, actually, to think that I didn’t own a single item worth taking with me that I wasn’t already carrying. Maybe I just wasn’t thinking hard enough.

“Well, in that case, we’ve got no time to waste- let’s hit the road!”

Under normal circumstances, I’d have felt awful sad, leaving home like this, not knowing if I was ever gonna return. But today, I was satisfied. I’d made a decision, and I was finding a way to carry it out!

“Cya soon, momma,” I mumbled, and loaded my bag onto the back of the wagon. I was leaving all-standing, and the journey ahead of me would surely be long, dangerous, and full of unpleasant surprises. I might even die a horrible death, end up face down in a pool of radioactive waste...

I’d never been more thrilled in my entire life!

[+]

[fumpkins]

Fossil Gen 5 Review: The Best Smartwatches To Buy

The Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle HR doesn’t scream out smartwatch. Its round face sports a trio of tactile crowns on the right-hand side. Combine that with one of Fossil’s classic bands and it could almost pass for analog. Despite its classic look, this Wear OS by Google-powered device does everything you’d expect from a full-featured smartwatch. 

The Fossil Gen 5 helps you keep track of way more than time.

The Fossil Gen 5 adds a speaker, which allows a user with a smartphone to answer tethered calls and hear what Google Assistant has to say. Erin Behan

Pros Cons – Attractive design – Battery drain with standard to heavy use – Uses Wear OS by Google – Occasional tech hiccups – Built-in GPS – May be heavy on the wrist for some – Speaker allows tethered calls – Quick to recharge

Some timely considerations.

What is the Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle HR?

At about $199, The Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle HR promises a robust set of features in an understated package. As the Fossil watch’s name suggests, this is the fifth iteration of the wearable. The generational upgrades include an improved battery life, which can reach more than a full day in one of the watch’s low-power modes. It also recharges quickly, gaining a nearly full charge in less than an hour. 

Unlike previous Fossil watch hybrid models, there’s a speaker, which allows a user with a smartphone to answer tethered calls and hear what Google Assistant has to say. It also comes with a larger 8GB of storage, good for those interested in downloading compatible apps. 

What makes it tick, of course, is Wear OS by Google, which currently allows for life and fitness tracking, calendar syncing, access to Google Assistant and Google Pay, notifications from your smartphone apps, GPS tracker, and more.

The Fossil Gen 5’s design

Right out of its classic watch-style box, the Fossil Gen 5 smartwatch is easy to set up and simple to use. Visually, it’s a good-looking smartwatch, one that hews close to analog watches. I had multiple friends express surprise that it was a smartwatch due to its more traditional round clock face. 

Like many of today’s smartwatches, it’s water-resistant up to 3 ATM and I showered while wearing it several times without incident—and, taking things beyond the bathroom, it counts swim-tracking among its talents. Its 8GB of memory makes it comparable to the Apple Watch Series 3 and the best Fossil smartwatch for memory. However, it feels slightly outdated compared to other models like the Apple Watch 6, which offers 32GB storage.

The handiest features of the Fossil Gen 5 smartwatch are the seamless feeding of the info you likely use most often on your smartphone right to your wrist—with updates signaled via a gentle vibration. Any calendar updates, text messages, app updates, the weather, mapping info, and phone calls show up with a flick of your wrist via Wear OS by Google. The 1.28-inch AMOLED screen that displays all this data is bright and colorful; its 416 x 416, 328ppi resolution is high enough to render graphics with crsp definition.

The Fossil Gen 5’s key features

Fossil has combined the look of a classic timepiece with connected device features. Erin Behan

On the connectivity front, you get Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS, NFC, and WiFi. The touchscreen includes seemingly intuitive swiping up, down, left, and right. The three crowns/buttons on the right of the watch allow easy access to all your apps, including Google Pay, your agenda, and alarm, etc.

There’s a lot going for the Fossil Gen 5 smartwatch, and it’s not all smooth sailing. It took me a while to get acquainted with the interface and I’d often find myself swiping and clicking around to remember where settings and items were located (or simply googling how to do something if I felt truly lost). 

For those tracking movements and workouts, the untethered, internal GPS tracker comes in handy. And the heart rate monitor helps give a better look at your health through its fitness tracker. You can track your fitness and goals either with the Wear OS by Google options or through a third-party downloaded workout app, which will appeal to anyone who wants to exercise and leave their phone behind. I took my watch on a walk through the woods in Upstate New York where it recorded similar stats as a friend’s Apple Watch, also on the hike.

The included fitness apps did a solid job tracking my activity, from steps to indoor and outdoor workouts, but dedicated fitness gurus may want to download a different app for greater access to data crunching. The step tracker is automatic and accessible right from the home screen—it proved an extra fun addition to my trip to NYC, where it’s easy to take 10,000 steps before lunch. 

Heavy watch use resulted in needing to charge midday, but most days I sailed through to mid-evening before the watch automatically went into battery-saving mode. That’s fine for passive users, but slightly disappointing if you plan on regularly using the smartwatch features a lot every day.

The biggest downside for me, since I paired it with an iPhone running iOS, is that while I can read text messages sent to my phone, I can’t reply to them on the watch itself.

Easy setup with a little hiccup 

Initial setup was fairly easy, but it requires multiple steps and demands your attention during the process. If you’ve ever gone through the seamless Apple Watch setup, it will feel arduous. 

After successfully pairing with my phone, I had a day of smooth sailing until I disconnected the watch from my phone to connect with my car’s Bluetooth (another hassle of multiple devices with connectivity). For reasons I still don’t understand, in order to reconnect my watch to the phone, I had to do a hard restart of the watch and re-pair it with my phone. That said, once it paired for a second time, it worked without a hitch. 

Good look and durability, too

The Fossil Gen 5 is a smart-looking watch that by all accounts feels like it could take some abuse (or simply a shower) without any signs of wear and full functionality. The screen itself is big enough to get a good read on the data coming in. On a slim wrist, it looks a touch oversized, but nothing out of the ordinary in today’s larger smartwatch landscape. And when it’s time to recharge, the watch easily snaps to the USB magnetic charger and even rotates while juicing back up. 

The rest of the specs

Wear OS by Google works with both Android 6.0+ and iOS 12.0+, meaning most smartphone users will be able to use the Fossil Gen 5. The available 1GB RAM and 8GB storage should be sufficient for most users, but don’t expect it to provide the speediest smartwatch experience around. 

The loudspeaker and microphone mean you can conduct phone calls and use Google Assistant, though you shouldn’t expect to rely on it all the time. Google Assistant didn’t always pick up on my voice or exactly what I was saying when it did hear me. The built-in speaker is a nice touch for when you’re not wearing headphones, but its tiny size limits how loud and clear it can really be. 

Vibration alerts are unobtrusive. In addition, I used Theater Mode to keep the screen off when I didn’t want to be disturbed (including during an actual movie outing) and found it an easy-to-use helpful feature. 

So, who should buy the Fossil Gen 5?

The Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle HR works well for those looking for a mid-priced smartwatch that does most of what you want a smartwatch to do. The display is easy to read (with the brightness adjustable) and the interface is generally intuitive after a bit of messing around. It will likely please those looking to quickly access important data on their wrist without having to open and mess with their phone.

Likewise, those interested in using a smartwatch to track fitness and activity levels won’t have any complaints about the ease of use, although they may want to go beyond the basic Wear OS by Google fitness apps and download an external app via the Google Play store. Extensive watch use may wear the battery down, but making smart use of its battery-saving options will likely keep it operational for a full day of use. Or just charge it up for an hour and get back to using it full tilt. Plus, this Fossil Gen 5 smartwatch is attractive—and when you’re wearing your computer on the wrist that’s no small thing.

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2021/06/26/fossil-gen-5-review-the-best-smartwatches-to-buy/

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 040421

4 April, 2021

Dear Dad--

Happy Easter to y’all! If I hadn’t known it was Easter, I’d have found out when Zach tried to go to the store for groceries, and the store was closed. We needed toilet paper, so he stopped at a convenience store to see if they could help, and the convenience store was closed too. (Fortunately, our friend, the plant scientist guy, was keen to help out, and actually drove the 1/8th of a mile to our place to bring us some. Who knew science guys were so selfless?) Oh, I should point out something else he recently did for me. He learned that Wal-Mart had openings for vaccination appointments for those over 50, and he signed me up. In order to sign up, you need a Wal-Mart login and password, and I don’t have either, because fuck Wal-Mart. But he offered, and then, when I chafed at asking him to go to all that trouble for me, he suggested I really should let him do it, so I did. I gave him my info, he set up the appointment, and I should get my first shot on Tuesday at 6:00 a.m. (I took the earliest slot available, just to avoid a crowd.)

By the way, I had to consult the internet to find out what exactly Easter is a celebration of. I didn’t happen to know with specificity. I knew Jesus was in there somewhere, but TV doesn’t show Jesus movies on Easter, it shows The Ten Commandments, which isn’t a Jesus movie; it’s a Moses movie. So I asked myself what I thought Easter was for, and all that came to mind was Jesus coming out of a cave and seeing his shadow, six more weeks of winter, ha ha. (Perhaps I should know this, but what can I say? My parents were kind enough not to make me go to Catholic church every Sunday of my childhood.) The internet educated me about the holiday. It’s also called Resurrection Sunday, and it’s hard not to hear that in my monster truck commercial voice: “Resurrection sunday, Sunday, SUNDAYYY!” It commemorates Jesus’ resurrection, three days after he died from the crucifixion by the Romans. Easter is also called Pascha, although I do not know by whom, so I checked. “Pascha” is the transliteration of a Greek word, which is a transliteration of an Aramaic word, coming from a Hebrew word for Passover. So...I still don’t know who calls it that. Greek Aramaic Hebrews?

Anyway, no store means no groceries until tomorrow and borrowed emergency toilet paper. No stress! We got it sorted out. Guess I’m ordering us a pizza for dinner. And I will be getting an income tax refund that will prevent us having to eat cat food for a little while longer. That’s good, because the amount we owe in state taxes is about $850, and the state of Maine is going to suck that amount out of my checking account on April 15th, so...hopefully the federal refund will have arrived in time to cover the state tax bill. I don’t mind paying taxes. I like having roads and schools and shit.

So...I’m just waiting for the casino job to start. I haven’t heard from them since a couple of days after they offered me the job. They said they wanted to move forward with the process (in other words, you got the job!) and they started the background check process, I had to get a pee test to make sure I’m not on heroin or cocaine or anything really fun, and I started filling out the 30-page gaming license application thingy. Had all that done in 48 hours. Then I emailed the HR person and said I was ready to bring in my shit and get it notarized, and was told to just hang tight while they do their thing, and they’d contact me. That was March 18, so...two and a half weeks ago, roughly, and I haven’t heard back. This has now become, for the second time in a row (Penquis did this, too.) a Schrodinger’s job. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t, but the only way to find out which is to ask, and that may affect the outcome in a direction I don’t like. It’s hard to maintain aloof and cool and enigmatic when you’re sending an email saying, “Are y’all still hiring me or what?” My better course of action is to assume they’re working on it, because they usually are, it’s just that they’re doing lots of other stuff too, and it doesn’t behoove me to pester them about it. I’m thinking I’ll give it until the 3-week (since I last heard from them) mark, then I’ll email. Surely they didn’t find anything incriminating in my background or in my pee…? I haven’t experienced enough excitement in my life to have anything incriminating in my background or my urine.

All this means that, despite the fact that nothing is really happening yet, it’s a much busier and more eventful state of boredom than ever before. Not vaccinated yet, but I’m about to be. About to get a bill for $850, should probably be able to cover it. Got a job, but...only kinda, and I don’t know when it starts yet. Our most exciting recent purchases were: Zach got a blender so we could make smoothies, and I got an electric can opener, because the manual, hand-crank can opener we were using stopped working. Then the battery powered can opener I got to replace it didn’t work worth a shit. Now we have one that plugs in, like the real grownups use, and we can resume our lives as test pilots, with broad shoulders and big balls, living life in the fast lane. Actually, the can opener is nice, because Zach’s hands don’t work very well (we’re thinking he’s got carpal tunnel pretty bad) and mine are starting to work less well. (I assume because I’m OLD and I’m entering the arthritic period of my life.) Seems like modern can openers recognize when they’ve opened the can completely, and stop automatically. I expect this will come in handy in case I begin to open a can and fall asleep before it’s through.

So, for the next week, I’m going to formulate a plan to contact the casino, to ask them if I’m still to be employed by them, while retaining my suave, enigmatic idiom. I’ll get my first vaccination shot on Tuesday morning, after which I assume...nothing will change, because I still need the second shot, and Zach still needs both of his, and we still need face masks. It’s okay, though, because it seems like the shit’s actually happening now. We might actually be able to start seeing our friends again within the next month or so, and maybe eat at a restaurant again, or see a movie in a theater. I, for one, could use a professional haircut.

Oh, you’d mentioned sending a six-part movie? Yes, I’d certainly love to watch it! And thank you in advance!

I will surely have more news by next week, whether it’s about the job, or my trip to Wal-Mart for my Fauci Ouchie. In the meantime, I hope y’all have a very good Easter, and I hope you got your grocery shopping done yesterday, like we should have! All my love to you both!

[purplepints]

As a Gen X, I have lived in a world where I have used rotary phones, push-button phones, brick-size mobiles, pagers, cellphones that flipped open, cellphones with keyboards and fully touchscreen cellphones.

I first typed on a typewriter, then computers like Apple II & IIe, all they way through to SSD laptops with different OS.

I played video games in arcades, had an Atari 2600 as a child, then a NES, an original Gameboy, then a Super NES and as an adult had a PlayStation (1-3), not to mention the stepped process of going through computer-based gaming from Apple II games on disk through present-day MMORPG.

I learned how to write, print, then D'Nealian (aka denealian) and then cursive. Everything was done by hand, and then only printers everyone had access to were dot-matrix, so even through high school most assignments were done by hand, in ink, in cursive.

I rode in cars without seat belts, or just lap belts, or in the bed of pickup trucks with no safety measures at all.

I learned how to drive in cars with manual transmission (aka standard aka stick) so I could drive any vehicle I encountered. I only started driving an automatic regularly once I mastered manual. Half of the cars that I have owned in my life were stick shift, and I still enjoy driving stick, preferring it over automatic just because I like the feeling that I am doing something rather than just pointing a vehicle in a direction. I also learned how to change a tire, jump a car and check fluid levels before I was allowed to drive regularly.

I watched TV as a child when there were only a handful of stations available and TVs were big, tubed electronics that were made to be furniture, with wooden enclosures, legs and cover screens that rolled out to hide the TV when not in use. Stations signed off after the late night news or after the late show (like Johnny Carson) with a test signal, color bars, a hold screen or just static. When cable came around, TVs had to be set to Channel 3 then the cable box controlled the channels, of which there were maybe a dozen, with more added over time. We bought a VCR and would watch/record with it, and I remember getting really excited about us getting a laser disc player, even though you had to flip the large thing over like a vinyl record for full-length movies.

I remember having a child version of a vinyl record player than had thick plastic records, and the actual stereo system with a real turntable. I remember putting 8-tracks into the player, especially around Christmas, because for whatever reason we had more Christmas music 8-tracks than other types of music. I had a little brown cassette player/recorder that was battery operated and used it ad nauseum.

I got a robot as a gift one year that was radio-controlled, held a little tray in its "hands", played cassettes and acted as a speaker so you could "talk" through it. It was roughly R2-D2 shaped but had a smoky dome over glowing eyes. Now I have a BB-8 Sphereo I can control through my phone.

I grew up in a cash & cheque heavy world, where credit cards were often store-limited and much rarely less used than today. I was raised to use coupons, shop wisely and had a chores-dependent allowance (also behavior and grade dependent tbh) that I usually blew at the arcade, candy and other nonsense as did most of my peers. I watched my fellow University classmates and my other 18-20 year olds get offers for credit cards on a ridiculously repeated timeline (offers mailed weekly at minimum) and those who accepted often ended up thousands of dollars in debt because they didn't have jobs or only had minimum wage jobs, which at the time paid $4.25/hr. A full week's pay cheque after taxes was roughly $130. A basic, small 2bdrm/1ba apartment (without utilities) included ran about $350 average. Apartment + electric could easily run over $400, and you still had to pay for your food, gas & insurance for your vehicle, coin-op laundry, and a hard-line phone (because mobile phones were basically non-existent and/or beyond affordability), so a compromise was a pager you could be pinged at, then find a phone to return a call. Most people my age I knew didn't have car insurance (which is illegal) because it cost $80+/month even on shitty beaters from the 70s, so it was too expensive, but the cities I lived in had crap public transit, so if you had a job you almost had to have a vehicle. Especially if you worked night shift or varying shifts, because the busses ran from about 6am to 8pm, as well as taking extremely weird routes that could make a 2 mile commute take 45 minutes and at least one transfer.

I grew up with health insurance because of my parents having good jobs. When I turned 18, I lost insurance and my jobs did not offer health as an option until after 1+ years, and even then it was usually a horrible bare bones plan that was too expensive to really consider, but as a full-time worker I made too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Most FT minimum wage people made less than $60 "too much" to qualify for Medicaid, but private insurance companies outside of employers usually charged $150+ per month for their cheapest plans, which also came with very large deductibles and low cap for payouts. Every single person I knew at that time racked up thousands of dollars of debt to hospitals and walk-in clinics and we all avoided going to doctors whenever possible because of the cost.

As a side effect of these financial issues, many of us were forced to (or just decided to) learn a myriad of skills: we became our own mechanics, our own handyman, our own doctors, the whole nine. We learned to replace alternators and belts on our cars, how to snake pipes and drain water heaters, how to shim cabinets and install fixtures, how to wrap sprains and lance boils and set broken fingers.

Our grandparents often grew up during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl and WWII, so they had chains of safety pins everywhere and cabinets full of empty butter tubs they used as Tupperware. They knew how to fix things and grow things and reuse things, then after the War came prosperity and a shift in perception. As a result, our parents (the Boomers) were taught that Doing Stuff was for other people: if you have money, you pay others to do the jobs you don't want to do. Call a plumber, call a house painter, call a landscaper/gardener, call a mechanic. It was a show of success and status to Call Someone Else rather than do it yourself. Suddenly, physical and blue-collar work became something that was beneath you. The GI Bill ushered in an opportunity for higher education and led to college becoming the norm of education rather than an option. Trades like carpentry, plumbing, etc, they all started to be looked down on. College degrees became the passport to success rather than a cherry on top of a candidate. The first recipients of the GI Bill encouraged their children (again Boomers) to attend college, which at the time was expensive but still affordable, and getting loans to pay for college didn't toss you into a hellhole of debt you'd be yoked to for decades. A home could be priced at a year or two of a decent salary, a car at a few months. Those amounts were reasonable and could be paid off with manageable monthly payments while still having enough left over for all other bills & expenses plus leave some to save. You could be born to dirt-poor parents but end up solidly in the middle class by your 30s. That is simply not possible in today's America. College is no longer a reasonable debt trade off, nor can a decent family home be found priced around 1-2 years of salary, nor can a decent reliable car be found for a few months of pay. There is not a single state in the U.S. where a person working minimum wage can afford a 2bdrm apartment.

We and the generations who have come after us have had to constant adjust and adapt in almost every way possible in order to survive and stay relevant in the job market. Arguably, Gen X moreso than other, because we are the last to have had to transition between an analog and a digital world, while the Millenials and Gen Z have had to make steady adjustments to technology as it grows (is it as hard to go from an iPhone 1 to iPhone 9 as it was from push-button hardlines to Nokia?) but now have to find their own way in a world that purposefully taught them that certain skills are beneath them, or useless, or something they can buy.

Gen X and Millenials have been a driving force behind maker spaces, DIY revivals, crafts as survival and fostering attitudes of knowledge, not just education, as important. We crochet our own hats, build our own bookshelves, install greywater captures for gardens. We sew buttons on our shirts when the fall off, we encourage the sharing of information, we embrace the new while respecting the old. I can drive stick and plot a route on a paper map, and I can also drive an automatic that tells me directions through GPS-enabled tech with a pleasant voice. I have lived in small homes, learned to texture walls from DIY TV, grown my own vegetables in a postage stamp sized yard, amassed a library of over 2,000 books on every subject imaginable, installed solar panels to mitigate coal/gas-burning electricity, destumped & cleared yards full of dying trees, laid tile, built furniture, changed parts on my vehicles....I've done too many things to list, and many of them were done because I couldn't afford an arborist or mechanic or contractor.

It is mind-blowing to see how a bit of change financially has caused so much change in mind and ability. Boomers had parents who did everything themselves out of necessity and no small amount of pride. Then they turned around and snubbed their nose at learning how or doing things themselves, dug in their heels when faced with changes, and gave up on things like sharing, friendly neighbors, helpful communities and so much more. It's no wonder why the generations after them are so into things like Escape Rooms and board games: we have been thrown into a world where you do it any way you can or die in the attempt. We've discovered the best way is to try it ourselves, then ask for help from our peers if we don't know. They lived in a world where if they couldn't do it, it was something they could buy their way out of.

When you don't have hard currency, knowledge and care become valuable commodities. We've learned not to hoard what we know and have seen that a rising tide lifts all boats, so we are much more willing to work together toward a goal and the success of the goal becomes the reward. That type of group thinking is abhorrent to most Boomers, because their entire lives have been built on winning, not just succeeding. In their minds, you're either winning or you're losing. In our minds, success is the goal. We may not always "win", but we can succeed and be pleased: we may not have gotten out of the room in the shortest time, but Joe remembered an algebra thing (which is awesome because he was horrible at math), Sue squashed down get fear of snakes to reach for the widget (fake snakes, but still!) and then Sam busted into song (they hate karaoke and singing with a passion) that ended up all together solving the puzzle, so fuck yeah we are AWESOME let's celebrate with ice creams and alcohol yeah!! We don't need someone else to be beneath us for us to feel elevated, we can acknowledge our individual, personal triumphs as victories for the ages because everybody dies, there is no ultimate winner in this global game of life.

We win by living, truly living, and celebrating our successes and lifting up each other when we see us overcoming our fears, frustrations and difficulties. We recognize and acknowledge our shortcomings and weaknesses, but as importantly, we recognize the strengths and abilities of others and don't see the gap between us as anything more than a distance easily crossed by a handshake or a question. That's why we love things like escape rooms, as that's why we, as groups, will succeed when faced with multi-faceted, complicated challenges like we see today.

Boomers have given birth to and created a world in which they raised their own worst enemies: people who adapt, people who learn, people who improvise, and work together for overall success as a group. Our world is one where we keep striving for more for everyone, a world where all voices are heard, all people respected, all have safety and security and support. We are the rising tide to raise all boats, while they're clutching individual floats refusing to get onboard because they'd rather have their own floaty than share a ship with others.

OK, Boomer. It's your choice.

I recently saw a meme on Facebook that said something along the lines of “how to make a millennial panic: lock them in a room with only a phone book and a rotary phone and write the instructions in cursive!” It had this smug “aha, gotcha” vibe oozing out of it, and it…just sort of made me laugh. Like, really? Really? But it also made me think…

Beyond the fact that I know how to use both a phone book and a rotary phone and can read cursive (as long as it’s not too horrifically messy), I think it was the attitude of “Oh no, we’ve got you because you couldn’t possibly figure out how to use something that’s new to you” that really made me snort. But I think that’s the key to this and similar memes that I’ve seen.

They don’t think we could figure out how to use something new to us, because they can’t do it. 

Like, if you presented a millennial with a rotary phone or a phone book and they had never, ever used one or seen one used before, I can guarantee pretty much any millennial could figure out how to use it. Because that’s what we do: we adapt. We’ve been through so many variations of technology and seen so many new forms of technology emerge that we’ve had to learn to adapt swiftly and fluidly. It’s second nature to us.

Put a boomer in a room with a smartphone, laptop, and tablet however, and well…different story.

I’m not sure if they literally don’t understand that presenting a millennial with something they haven’t encountered before would not be an obstacle and certainly not a panic-inducing one, or if they just say things like that to make themselves feel better that they couldn’t do the equivalent, or if it’s a combination of the above.

[deafaningphysicalcomputing]

Floor Crawler

As part of the experiments portfolio assignment I will be documenting the progress of constructing and coding a floor crawler bot.

Equipment used:

1 x Arduino Leonardo

1 x CNC shield 

2 x Two Phase Stepper motors (Jumper Cables)

2 x 8 cm Diameter wheels

1 x 3.7 V Series Battery Tray

4 x Samsung INR18650-25R Lithium Ion Batteries

1 x Ultrasonic Rangefinder HR-SR04 w/ jumper cables

2 x Sheets Midwest White Styrene .040 x 7.6″ x 11″

4 x Strips of Sprue sourced from Games Workshop sprues 

10 x Mixed size clamps

1 x Revel Contact Cement

1 x Hobby Knife

1 x Pair of Scissors

Constructing the Crawler:

Part of the challenge with building the crawler was creating a chassis capable of bearing the weight of all the components. The biggest concern was the motors, as these weighed 250g (0.55lb) each. This meant that the chassis had to bear a weight in excess of 500g (1.10lb) to hold two motors, Arduino, shield, ping sensor, battery tray and batteries. 

In addition to this, suitable materials for the chassis were fairly limited. This was because they had to be large enough to form the base and stiff or sturdy enough to bear the weight. This immediately ruled out materials like card as, whilst easy to acquire in large sections, they were far too flimsy to bear the weight. The only suitable materials available were styrene plasticard and model sprue.

However, like card they were too flexible for use so had to be stiffened through engineering tricks and simple reinforcement. The first attempt got off to a poor start, as the base was far too small to hold all of the components. With this initial set back in mind, I set about creating a new, much larger one with excess room for components to be added as necessary. In order to stiffen the base a method of diagonal strips of material was used. This involved placing two strips of sprue inside the base and a series of styrene strips placed on the bottom. This massively helped stiffen the base of the crawler allowing it to bear the weight of all components on the board, without flexing excessively.

For holding everything together I used Revel Contact adhesive as this would ensure a firm bond to hold the chassis together. To ensure a flat surface and to prevent air bubbles compromising the structure by forcing the styrene apart, I used small modelling clamps to hold components down whilst the glue cured.

The next step was to create housing for the individual components with the first being the battery tray. It was formed from four pieces of styrene attached to the base with a small hole added in front of the wires where they protrude from the battery tray. This would allow the battery tray to fit snugly into the housing without needing to flex the wires over the housing.  

Next was the housing for the Arduino and shield which was formed the same way as the battery tray housing. However, this was slightly higher to account for added height of the shield, with a section cut out for the cable which connects the power cables to the Arduino and Shield.

To finish the base of the crawler I added two plastic bottle caps to each end of the base. This served two purposes; to prevent the crawler from grinding wither end of it’s chassis into the floor and the other being to reduce the extremes of highs and lows that would drastically throw the sensor off. The only complication with this was that the caps proved to be unaffected by the glue, this resulted in one incident where a cap popped clean off of the chassis. 

The ping sensor was the final component to be attached, after connecting the jumper cables the last problem was to attach it to the chassis facing forwards. This was done by simply blue tacking the sensor to the front.  

Motors and rubber bands:

With the chassis completed it was then that the real problem of creating the crawler raised it’s head. The attachment of motors to the chassis was the biggest problem as there was no concrete method. To ensure they were even and central, several layers of styrene squares were layered together to form a sort of bracing block that would be sandwiched in between the two motors to ensure enough clearance between the wheels and the chassis. The block also featured a gap between the two sides so as to allow the wiring to go through unobstructed.

The initial method, which was really more on paper than in practice, was building a cage of styrene around the motors and then boxing them in with strips of plasticard, like door bars to keep them in. After much discussion with other people, however, the idea was ultimately scrapped.

The second method was the use of brass wire bent to form braces that would hold the motors on the chassis. However, this method was also scrapped due to the difficulty in forming a perfect fit around the motors and the realisation of a better solution. 

The third and final method was the use of rubber bands as I thankfully had a small bag full of them. This was to prove the simplest and most effective method of getting the motors fixed on the chassis.

Of Code and Complications: 

After the success of getting motors onto the chassis, I then encountered the next big problem of this project, programming the Arduino. Because I have not had much experience with coding an Arduino, let alone coding stepper motors, tinkering with the code proved more problematic than expected. 

The easiest parts were accessing the accelStepper Library which can be found in the Arduino coder and finding code for running the echo sensor as both were online and accessed from the Arduino Forums, courtesy of Isaac100 who wrote the base code for the ping sensor to work found at https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/Isaac100/getting-started-with-the-hc-sr04-ultrasonic-sensor-036380.

Modifying the code for the motors and the ping sensor to work together proved to incredibly finicky, the code also proved to be frustratingly temperamental with the crawler often racing in random directions. This is aptly shown in the demonstration video as the crawler appears to take on a life of it’s own.

Video of it running:

Self reflection:

Things I did well:

Built a frame that was easy to construct for fairly cheap and could bear the weight of all components easily.

Was able to work around physical issues fairly well such as attaching the motors to the chassis and work with unusual solutions such as the use plastic bottle caps as skis. 

Things I could improve:

Organise the wiring so that it is less messy and less likely to interfere with the wheels. This could be done with the use of rubber bands to tie the cables together as a substitute for actual cable ties.

Spend less time on the physical aspects of the crawler and instead focus more on the coding of the crawler. This would be possible with more practice at coding and gaining a better understanding of how the code interacts. 

Conclusion:

Ultimately the idea itself was almost turned into reality but suffered at the last hurdle with a major roadblock which could have been overcome with enough time and experimentation to work out the kinks in the code.

Final Code: 

#include <AccelStepper.h>

// ENABLE pin, inverted #define NOT_ENABLE_PIN 8

// The X Stepper pins #define STEPPER_X_DIR_PIN 5 #define STEPPER_X_STEP_PIN 2

// The Y stepper pins #define STEPPER_Y_DIR_PIN 6 #define STEPPER_Y_STEP_PIN 3

// Define some steppers and the pins the will use AccelStepper stepperX(AccelStepper::DRIVER, STEPPER_X_STEP_PIN, STEPPER_X_DIR_PIN); AccelStepper stepperY(AccelStepper::DRIVER, STEPPER_Y_STEP_PIN, STEPPER_Y_DIR_PIN);

const int trigPin = 12; const int echoPin = 13; float duration, distance;

void setup() {  pinMode(trigPin, OUTPUT);  pinMode(echoPin, INPUT);  Serial.begin(9600);

 // Enable drivers  pinMode(NOT_ENABLE_PIN, OUTPUT);  digitalWrite(NOT_ENABLE_PIN, LOW);

 stepperX.setMaxSpeed(800.0);  stepperX.setAcceleration(400.0);  stepperX.moveTo(200);

 stepperY.setMaxSpeed(800.0);  stepperY.setAcceleration(400.0);  stepperY.moveTo(200);

}

void loop() {   int stepsToObs;   digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);   delayMicroseconds(2);   digitalWrite(trigPin, HIGH);   delayMicroseconds(10);   digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);

  duration = pulseIn(echoPin, HIGH);

  distance = (duration*0.0343)/2;   stepsToObs = distance/8;   Serial.print("stepsToObs ");   Serial.println(stepsToObs);   Serial.print("Distance: ");   Serial.println(distance);   Serial.print(" X ");   Serial.println(stepperX.distanceToGo());   Serial.print(" Y ");   Serial.println(stepperY.distanceToGo());

   // Change direction at the limits   if (stepperX.distanceToGo() == 0 ){    if(stepperX.currentPosition() > 0){      //stepperX.moveTo(-stepperX.currentPosition()+stepsToObs/2);      stepperX.moveTo(-200+stepsToObs/2);    }else{       stepperX.moveTo(200);    }   }   if (stepperY.distanceToGo() == 0){    if(stepperY.currentPosition() > 0){      //stepperY.moveTo(-stepperY.currentPosition()+stepsToObs/2);      stepperY.moveTo(-200+stepsToObs/2);    }else{       stepperY.moveTo(200);    }   }

  while (stepperX.distanceToGo() != 0 && stepperY.distanceToGo() != 0){     stepperX.run();     stepperY.run();   } }

Bibliography:

Arduino (2020) Arduino Available at: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/Isaac100/getting-started-with-the-hc-sr04-ultrasonic-sensor-036380 (Accessed: 20th May 2020)

Arduino (2020) Info Protoneer Available at: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/Isaac100/getting-started-with-the-hc-sr04-ultrasonic-sensor-036380 (Accessed: 18th May 2020)

Arduino (2020) Arduino Available at: https://www.arduino.cc/en/tutorial/stepperSpeedControl  (Accessed: 24th May 2020)  

Arduino (2020)  Arduino Available at: https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=563007.0  (Accessed: 28th May 2020)