Miscellaneous Tech News
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Dad builds Nintendo video game controller for disabled girl
A man has hand-built a custom controller for his disabled daughter so she is able to play video games.
Rory Steel said the Nintendo Switch controller was built for nine-year-old Ava with a Microsoft device and components from eBay for about £110. A video on Twitter of Ava, who is from Jersey, using the device has had more than 800,000 views. Mr Steel said she had given the device a "big thumbs-up" and the attention had been "a little bit surreal". He said Ava, who has hereditary spastic paraplegia which affects her motor controls and speech, made the suggestion after seeing videos online. Teacher Mr Steel, head of the Digital Jersey Academy, built the device with two joysticks and arcade game-style flashing buttons hooked up to a Microsoft Xbox adaptive controller. -
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Disney+ to launch a week earlier than planned in the UK
The new streaming service Disney+ is to launch on 24 March in the UK, a week earlier than originally planned.
Pricing has also been revealed - it will cost £5.99 per month or £59.99 a year, making it more expensive than the earlier DisneyLife platform.Disney+ launched in the US and Canada in November, where it became the most downloaded app.The new launch date may be an attempt to tackle piracy of shows like The Mandalorian, suggested one expert. The other European countries that will receive Disney+ at the same time as the UK are Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. The Netherlands already has access as it was used as a testing ground for the platform. -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Disney+ to launch a week earlier than planned in the UK
The new streaming service Disney+ is to launch on 24 March in the UK, a week earlier than originally planned.
Pricing has also been revealed - it will cost £5.99 per month or £59.99 a year, making it more expensive than the earlier DisneyLife platform.Disney+ launched in the US and Canada in November, where it became the most downloaded app.The new launch date may be an attempt to tackle piracy of shows like The Mandalorian, suggested one expert. The other European countries that will receive Disney+ at the same time as the UK are Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. The Netherlands already has access as it was used as a testing ground for the platform.Anyone know why it wasn't launched globally to begin with?
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Disney+ to launch a week earlier than planned in the UK
The new streaming service Disney+ is to launch on 24 March in the UK, a week earlier than originally planned.
Pricing has also been revealed - it will cost £5.99 per month or £59.99 a year, making it more expensive than the earlier DisneyLife platform.Disney+ launched in the US and Canada in November, where it became the most downloaded app.The new launch date may be an attempt to tackle piracy of shows like The Mandalorian, suggested one expert. The other European countries that will receive Disney+ at the same time as the UK are Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. The Netherlands already has access as it was used as a testing ground for the platform.Anyone know why it wasn't launched globally to begin with?
@scottalanmiller says something about Disney and modern tech not going together in the same sentence.
Maybe they didn't know it was an option.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Dad builds Nintendo video game controller for disabled girl
A man has hand-built a custom controller for his disabled daughter so she is able to play video games.
Rory Steel said the Nintendo Switch controller was built for nine-year-old Ava with a Microsoft device and components from eBay for about £110. A video on Twitter of Ava, who is from Jersey, using the device has had more than 800,000 views. Mr Steel said she had given the device a "big thumbs-up" and the attention had been "a little bit surreal". He said Ava, who has hereditary spastic paraplegia which affects her motor controls and speech, made the suggestion after seeing videos online. Teacher Mr Steel, head of the Digital Jersey Academy, built the device with two joysticks and arcade game-style flashing buttons hooked up to a Microsoft Xbox adaptive controller.thats awesome!
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GM's Cruise unveils its first driverless vehicle
Cruise, the self-driving car start-up, majority owned by General Motors, has unveiled its first vehicle designed to be driverless.
The electric-powered Cruise Origin was developed by Honda, which also has a stake in the company. The launch of the vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, had been delayed from last year. Cruise said it was designed for shared ownership: "It's not a product you buy, it's an experience you share." Chief executive Dan Ammann wants drivers to move away from individual ownership to a sharing model, to help reduce emissions, accidents and congestion. Speaking at the launch in San Francisco, he said the Cruise Origin was not a concept vehicle: "It is self-driven. It is all electric. It is shared." -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
GM's Cruise unveils its first driverless vehicle
Cruise, the self-driving car start-up, majority owned by General Motors, has unveiled its first vehicle designed to be driverless.
The electric-powered Cruise Origin was developed by Honda, which also has a stake in the company. The launch of the vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, had been delayed from last year. Cruise said it was designed for shared ownership: "It's not a product you buy, it's an experience you share." Chief executive Dan Ammann wants drivers to move away from individual ownership to a sharing model, to help reduce emissions, accidents and congestion. Speaking at the launch in San Francisco, he said the Cruise Origin was not a concept vehicle: "It is self-driven. It is all electric. It is shared."I like the idea of shared vehicles - but in the midwest - the whole mass transit system is definitely not something most are used to, which this basically becomes another form of.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
GM's Cruise unveils its first driverless vehicle
Cruise, the self-driving car start-up, majority owned by General Motors, has unveiled its first vehicle designed to be driverless.
The electric-powered Cruise Origin was developed by Honda, which also has a stake in the company. The launch of the vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, had been delayed from last year. Cruise said it was designed for shared ownership: "It's not a product you buy, it's an experience you share." Chief executive Dan Ammann wants drivers to move away from individual ownership to a sharing model, to help reduce emissions, accidents and congestion. Speaking at the launch in San Francisco, he said the Cruise Origin was not a concept vehicle: "It is self-driven. It is all electric. It is shared."I like the idea of shared vehicles - but in the midwest - the whole mass transit system is definitely not something most are used to, which this basically becomes another form of.
This will be the first form of mass transit they will really work, potentially, in the Midwest
Because it is actually individual mass transit
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Because it is actually individual mass transit
Basically a taxi, not public transit, aka mass transit.
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@Obsolesce said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Because it is actually individual mass transit
Basically a taxi, not public transit, aka mass transit.
What makes it not public? Because it's not owned by the municipality? OK fine - though, there is no reason the city couldn't own it. Hell this could be huge for cities in the midwest. Just like municipalities owning the last mile for internet access could be hugely beneficial to both the cities and the residents.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
GM's Cruise unveils its first driverless vehicle
Cruise, the self-driving car start-up, majority owned by General Motors, has unveiled its first vehicle designed to be driverless.
The electric-powered Cruise Origin was developed by Honda, which also has a stake in the company. The launch of the vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, had been delayed from last year. Cruise said it was designed for shared ownership: "It's not a product you buy, it's an experience you share." Chief executive Dan Ammann wants drivers to move away from individual ownership to a sharing model, to help reduce emissions, accidents and congestion. Speaking at the launch in San Francisco, he said the Cruise Origin was not a concept vehicle: "It is self-driven. It is all electric. It is shared."Will they use a Cruze to make it? The Cruise Cruze?
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Microsoft Security Shocker As 250 Million Customer Records Exposed Online
A new report reveals that 250 million Microsoft customer records, spanning 14 years, have been exposed online without password protection.
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@DustinB3403 rough month for MS!
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@DustinB3403 rough month for MS!
Yeah, so is MS going to have to pay those GDPR fines of 25% of its gross income per incident? . . . lol MS is now closed.
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Apple says losing Lightning port will create waste
Apple says being forced to abandon the Lightning connector used on its iPhones would create an "unprecedented amount of electronic waste".
While the latest Android phones have a USB-C port, Apple's iPhones still use the proprietary Lightning port. Some members of the European Parliament want all phone-makers to adopt a universal port, to reduce waste. But Apple says the move would create more waste by making Lightning-compatible accessories obsolete. European politicians have been campaigning for a single charging port for the past decade. The European Commission estimates that obsolete cables generate more than 51,000 tonnes of waste per year. -
Killer plague game tops charts amid coronavirus
An app that tasks users with spreading a deadly virus around the world has skyrocketed in popularity in China amid the coronavirus outbreak.
On Wednesday, eight years after its release, the game became the bestselling app in China.
Some players have suggested people were downloading the game as a way to cope with fears surrounding the virus. The coronavirus has so far killed at least 17 people in the country and infected more than 500 others. Developed by UK-based Ndemic Creations, the strategy game, Plague Inc, puts the user in control of a disease they must develop into a global pandemic before the scientific community can develop a cure. The overall aim is to "bring about the end of human history". -
LastPass not listed in Chrome web store
LastPass customers and new users searching for password managers on Google's Chrome Web Store may have noticed that the LastPass extension for Google Chrome is currently no longer listed on the store.
A search for LastPass returns other extensions but not LastPass which is not listed in the Store at the time of writing; this comes days after some LastPass customers experienced issues when they tried to log into their accounts.
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LogMeIn to be acquired by private equity firm
LogMeIn Inc. LOGM +0.23% is selling itself to two private-equity companies in an all-cash deal that values the technology company at about $4.3 billion.
Affiliates of Elliott Management Corp. and Francisco Partners are buying LogMeIn for $86.05 a share in cash, a 4.4% premium to the company’s closing price Monday. The stock had risen 25% since October through Monday, amid reports of a possible deal.
Boston-based LogMeIn provides software and services that help people connect with each other remotely, such as GoToMeeting. Through the first nine months of 2019, LogMeIn had a loss of $10.5 million on revenue of $937.7 million. For the full year, the company expects earnings excluding certain costs between $256 million and $257 million on revenue of about $1.26 billion.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
LastPass not listed in Chrome web store
LastPass customers and new users searching for password managers on Google's Chrome Web Store may have noticed that the LastPass extension for Google Chrome is currently no longer listed on the store.
A search for LastPass returns other extensions but not LastPass which is not listed in the Store at the time of writing; this comes days after some LastPass customers experienced issues when they tried to log into their accounts.
My web browser has it in the Extensions store:
