Stereo Adventures features the original cast and crew, including the return of Aldo Mignone, who played cocktail-obsessed Pierre only in the first series. It’s not clear how the show will work in an audio-only format, given that much of the jokes were serviced by the intentionally crummy production design, visual effects and (badly) overdubbed sound. But, you know what? We’re here for it.
This isn’t the first property that has been revived in audio-only form. A number of British shows, including Doctor Who, Blake’s 7 and The Prisoner have been revived by Big Finish productions. And even Marvel has experimented with the form, producing Wolverine: The Long Night for Stitcher Premium.
On April 22nd, SpaceX launched its eighth payload of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Shortly thereafter, the satellites could be seen from the ground, appearing to be dots of light traversing the night sky. According to Elon Musk, the company is working on reducing the glare that these cubesats create. The founder and CEO says that “sunshades” — which are made of a dark foam that barely affects radio transmissions — could help the satellites keep a low profile. This is good news for astronomers, who fear that Starlink’s growing constellation could disrupt their view of space. The company was approved to launch 12,000 satellites, and has applied to launch 30,000 more. (422 are currently orbiting Earth right now.) Space.com helps put those numbers into perspective by pointing out that all of humanity has launched just 9,400 objects into space thus far.
SpaceX has been consistently launching new payloads since late last year, and another launch is penciled in for next month. The company plans to equip the satellites in the following launch with the sunshades, and hopes to be able to provide internet service via Starlink by the middle of the year.
Convincing the public of the project’s privacy is crucial as this form of contact tracing essentially requires the majority of a population to opt in to having their every person-to-person encounter logged via smartphone. When up and running, the system will notify opted-in Android and iOS users if they’ve been near someone with COVID-19 — if that other person has also opted into the Bluetooth tracking. Perhaps the need to win the public’s trust is also part of the thinking behind the companies’ new shift to calling their system “exposure notification” instead of “contact tracing.”
The rollout of this system will come in phases.Google and Apple are targeting a pre-release for public-health app developers as soon as next week. This wouldn’t mean the functionality is available to users yet. But it would mean that developers can start to test the seed version of the OS update supporting their new APIs. Apple and Google noted new functions in the API would allow developers to decide for themselves how physically close two phones would have to be to register an interaction, as well as for how long.
Public health authorities, such as the UK’s National Health Service, are ultimately going to create the apps that users will download and opt into, not Apple and Google. A full launch of the API is still slated for mid-May, which allows for broader testing and the ultimate launch of health authority apps. The next phase will add interfaces directly into Android and iOS to allow users to activate and disable beaconing on a system-wide level. This, the companies say, will take months.
These are all still the early stages of developinga mammoth infrastructure to help countries trace the spread of COVID-19, paving the way to a reopening of society.
While much of the country is under orders to shelter at home, rescue groups across the country have reported skyrocketing interest in adoption and fostering. But considering that in most cities pounds and rescue groups are deemed nonessential businesses, the organizations have had to get creative about how they introduce their animals to the public while making sure the homes they do go to are the right fit.
In South Dakota, Alaska, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, California and beyond, many rescue groups have pivoted to virtual meet and greets and adoptions.
Rocket Dog Rescue in Oakland, California, is just one of the many groups who have taken their efforts online. Each Saturday at noon, the group posts a collection of 30-second to two-minute long clips on its Facebook page. Each video starts off listing that dog’s stats (like their name, age, breed and weight) before switching to more intangibles that could encourage or deter potential pet parents, like personality traits, likes and dislikes, health needs, and assorted quirks (like Rex’s hoarding tendency or another dog’s need to bark at passersby).
From there, those interested can follow the accompanying link to the application site.
Pali Boucher, the manager at Rocket Dog Rescue, said the demand has been astounding.
“We’ll put the videos up at noon, and within five minutes we will have more than 10 applications for each dog,” Boucher said. “It’s been incredible. It’s the most demand we’ve ever seen. We almost don’t have enough dogs for the number of people who want them. The first day we had an unprecedented 500 applications.”
Usually, when the country isn’t in the grips of a pandemic, Rocket Dog Rescue will hold weekend meet and greet days at various staging areas around the San Francisco Bay. It’s much more casual: People can wander in, meet some dogs and, if they want to, fill out an application. There might be a few people who apply for the same dog, but the appetite is nowhere near what it’s seeing now.
Now the rescue group will sort through the applications submitted online and pick out which one they consider the strongest. That applicant is then invited to do a one-on-one FaceTime or Zoom interview with the foster. It allows them to ask questions and see how the pup interacts with the foster family as well as allows the foster to get a sense of the home and whether it would be a good fit for the dog’s energy level.
Like a first date, the virtual meeting allows both parties to determine if there are any dealbreakers, like if the dog needs a fenced yard and an active home, maybe isn’t good with cats and kids, or they have separation anxiety that manifests in destructive behavior.
Maranda Weathermon at West Valley City Animal Shelter in West Valley City, Utah, is operating her pet adoptions in a similar fashion. Weathermon said the one-on-one video interviews cover the same content as would be under normal circumstances, ranging from prior experience to an understanding of the commitment required to raise a pet.
“We talk about their household and we talk about expectations; it’s the same counseling experience as usual, with the same questions and same suggestions, just socially distant,” Weathermon said.
If everyone is on board, adoption paperwork is sent over digitally and a (socially distant) in-person meet and greet is scheduled where the potential adopters can introduce their existing pets (if they have any) and decide if they still want to take the new dog home.
Weathermon said she thinks the added hoops involved with going virtual mean those who do go through the process are more serious about adding to their family.
“I think it takes a lot of impulse out of an adoption,” Weathermon explained.
She added that while she’ll be happy when those interested in adopting can stroll through the kennels and meet a bunch of dogs at once again, elements of virtual adoptions will be something they’ll continue to utilize in a post-coronavirus world.
“Sometimes we’ll get a highly adoptable dog, like a English bulldog, and we’ll get people that want to adopt as far away as Kansas or Washington,” Weathermon said. “Now we know we can do virtual meetings and they can decide if they actually want to drive across state lines to meet the dog.”
Project Second Chance
Boucher echoed that sentiment, saying, “I think we’ve learned a lot in this process that we can add to our tool set going forward.”
Considering Rocket Dog Rescue is funded entirely by donations (which Boucher said dropped to zero overnight) and adoption fees, finding a way to continue to place dogs with their forever homes was paramount to keeping the rescue group afloat.
Tara Zurawski of Project Second Chance in Alexandria, Virginia, a group that specializes in rescuing former street animals in Puerto Rico, said her rescue also lives or dies by the cost of adoptions, so creativity was key.
While Project Second Chance has always had a strong social media presence and frequently does virtual interviews, it’s recently started asking hopeful families to submit supplemental materials showing their home, as actual home visits aren’t possible right now.
“We’ve gotten some really adorable videos, you know, like a five-year-old giving a tour of his home or a dad playing newscaster and interviewing the kids as to why they want a dog and who’s going to pick up the poop,” Zurawski said.
Zurawski said her group is also using Zoom and FaceTime to help council new pet parents and make sure everything is going well with their newest addition. It wants to make sure its adopters are set up to have a properly socialized dog in a socially distant time as well as mitigate the separation anxiety their new pet might feel when their parents transition back to working outside the home.
“We want families to understand that it’s important for a dog not to get ‘snowglobe syndrome,’ where the dog’s environment is so limited due to quarantine that when we all get our freedom back, that the dog is terrified of new environments or change and is not well socialized,” Zurawski said. “We discuss ways to do that safely during these times.”
This quarantine has left me incredibly overwhelmed and anxious — so if you give me an open world map to explore right now, like in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or HZD, I’m going to end up wasting my time puttering around on sidequests and searching for secrets, with nothing but a few achievement baubles to show for it. But with this game, there’s always a goal; somewhere to go, some switch to activate, some baddie to shoot. Unlike our real lives, there’s forever a light at the end of the tunnel in Uncharted.
What’s more, these games act as a window onto the world for me. While I’ve been staring at the same set of walls for the past however many weeks, Drake has the freedom to hop from the steamy jungles of Borneo to secret South Pacific Nazi bases in the blink of an eye. One minute he’s infiltrating the National Gallery of Turkey, the next he’s fighting car to car on a train plowing through the mountains of Nepal. He gets to fight zombies and abominable snowmen. I have a cat that generally ignores me.
The only time Nathan Drake is wearing a face mask is when he’s keeping the sand out of his mouth while adventuring in the Sahara. He’s constantly surrounded by people, none of whom are in any way practicing social distancing. He even shakes hands. Oh I am so envious.
The cellular connectivity of these models allows you to leave your iPhone at home when you want to go workout outside and still make calls, as well as send and receive text messages. With the Series 5, Apple also added an internationally emergency calling feature in case you need help while traveling abroad.
Engadget’s Dana Wollman gave the Apple Watch Series 5 a score of 88 when she reviewed the wearable last year. An obvious highlight of the Series 5 is its new always-on display. Apple tweaked most of its watch faces to optimize them for the always-on display. The result is that the new screen is useful but won’t drain the wearable’s battery before the end of the workday. One other new is feature a built-in compass that’s particularly handy if you like to hike. You also get all the features Apple built into previous models, including fall detection, heart rate tracking and ECG analysis.
Unfortunately, Apple didn’t introduce any new fitness features. It also didn’t add any battery life enhancements. For better and worse, you can still expect to get about 18 hours of use from the new model on a single charge.
If you want something more affordable, the Garmin Forerunner 35 GPS watch we highlighted yesterday is still on sale for $90. Note though that it’s an entry-level smartwatch without cellular connectivity. The Apple Watch also offers more robust tracking for a variety of activities, making it one of the best all-around smartwatches you can buy.
The AT&T board had been considering candidates to take over from Stephenson since 2017 but ultimately opted for a man who’s held a variety of roles at the company over the last 35 years. Before becoming COO and WarnerMedia chief, Stankey acted as the CEO of the Entertainment Group, Operations and Business Solutions divisions, chief strategy officer and chief technology officer.
AT&T is in the midst of some key transitions, including the rollout of 5G and its big bet on streaming, HBO Max. Given his background, Stankey seems to have the chops to oversee all of those moves effectively. However, he faced some scrutiny in 2018 after he reportedly called on HBO to create more TV in order to bump up viewing time, despite the network’s longstanding emphasis on quality over quantity.
The Apple Watch was expensive and lacked some key features — kind of like other first-generation Apple products like the iPhone and iPad. But perhaps a bigger problem was that the company failed to make a coherent sales pitch for the Watch. Everyone remembers the introduction of the iPhone, a device Jobs pitched as a phone, an iPod and an internet communications device rolled into one. It was clear what you’d get if you bought one.
On the other hand, the Apple Watch lacked that clear focus. When Apple introduced the device in the fall of 2014, a sprawling presentation covered a confusing mix of features. Perhaps the strangest were the “digital touch” communication features that you could only send to friends who also had an Apple Watch. Apple also showed off third-party apps like Instagram and Twitter that just didn’t make sense, along with a UI that offered too many ways to do the same thing. We also saw a variety of fitness and health-tracking features, and much more. It was a dizzying presentation that left me confused as to why exactly I’d want an Apple Watch.
But starting with the Series 2 in the fall of 2016, Apple methodically started fixing the Watch’s initial problems and the company quickly began to dominate the market. And we’re not just talking about smartwatches — by the end of 2017, analysts estimated that Apple was the number one watchmaker in the world.
Here are some of the most important changes Apple has made since the first Watch launched:
Performance: Put simply, the first Apple Watch was underpowered. Apps took way too long to launch, which meant that it was usually faster just to use your phone. But since then, Apple has vastly improved performance, a crucial change that is felt across the entire experience.
Focus on fitness: With the Watch Series 2, Apple outlined a clear direction for its wearable: health and fitness. Most importantly, the Series 2 Watch had built-in GPS for more accurate workout tracking without your phone. The activity and workout tracking apps have gotten more features over time, you can compete with friends to be the most active, and Apple made the Series 2 Watch waterproof for swimming workouts. Beyond just workouts, there are other general well-being features like deep breathing exercises, heart-rate tracking, an EKG sensor and more. In combination with Apple’s HealthKit SDK, it also lets people participate in health studies, like one from Johns Hopkins University to find a way to predict seizures.
More attainable luxury: Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about the first Apple Watch was the 18-karat solid gold “Edition” watch that started at $10,000. Apple was obviously selling more affordable options; the basic aluminum model started at $350. But the audacity of a $10,000 gadget that would be obsolete within years was easy to mock. Apple quickly gave up on gold models with the series 2 and has since offered relatively affordable luxury with materials like ceramic, titanium and stainless steel. All of these cost a premium over the basic aluminum model, but they’re in the $800 to $1300 range instead of $10,000.
Broader price points: Alongside the Series 2, Apple introduced a cheaper “Series 1” watch that lowered the cost to get in on the Apple Watch. Since then, Apple has kept an older model on sale alongside the newer ones — the excellent Series 3 has been on sale for more than two and a half years. After the Series 4 launch in 2018, it has served as an excellent way to get most of the key Apple Watch features for only $200.
Always-on screen: People were requesting this feature for years, and Apple finally delivered last year with the Series 5. The company came up with an elegant way to keep the screen on at all times, giving each watch face its own “dimmed” version that still keeps the style and information readily visible. Battery life isn’t quite as good with this feature on, but the fact that it can still get the same 18-hour battery life it has promised since the first Watch is impressive.
All these improvements meant that Apple has largely pushed other smartwatches to the fringe, much as the iPod did with music players and the iPad did to other tablets. It’s not a runaway success like the iPhone, which still makes up the majority of Apple’s profits, but its “wearables, home and accessories” segment brings in more money than both the Mac and iPad segments. AirPods are a big part of that equation, too, but the Apple Watch has clearly rebounded from a rough start to resonate with lots of people, even if it’s still not an essential tool like the iPhone.
While Telegram didn’t release many details about the feature, it appears to be taking a dig at Zoom, which is facing pressure to fix several privacy issues. In response, Zoom has created a security council and promised upgrades, but that won’t stop competitors from taking advantage of its blunders.
Telegram does have a solid track record. It’s one of our most trusted messaging apps. It lets users retroactively delete messages, and during the Hong Kong protests it added a feature to better protect users’ identities. The service says it now has 400 million monthly users, up from 300 million a year ago. That’s not insignificant, but compared to Zoom, which just reached 300 million daily users, it’s a much smaller slice of the pie.
We don’t know yet how many users will be able to join Telegram’s group video calls at once. For reference, WhatsApp just increased the number of people its video chats can support from four to eight. We also don’t know exactly when the service will be ready, but chances are the need for secure group video calls is only going to become more pressing.
Blizzard Entertainment has rolled out an Overwatch PTR patch that includes new voiced options for the game’s Communications Wheel, so you don’t have to use the same lines again and again. The wheel gives you a way to talk to other players even if you don’t have or don’t want to use a mic. When the new lines become available to the public, you’ll have 26 options to choose from for all Overwatch heroes — just swap out anything currently on the wheel for ones you think will get more use.
The upcoming voice commands include “Press the Attack!,” “Fall Back,” “3—2—1” countdown and “On My Way,” which sounds especially helpful for if you’re a healer making your way back to the game while teammates are spamming you with “I Need Healing.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you’ll be able to add a “Sorry” voice command. It’s been a popular request for quite a while now and will make apologizing possible when you mess up and want to stay in everybody’s good graces.
