Month: September 2018

Posted on

A $1,500 smart mirror brings live fitness classes to your home

https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/06/mirror-fitness/


Mirror

Fitness apps aren’t anything new, but none of them can really replicate how it is to be in a class, with the instructor encouraging you in real-time or helping you out if you can’t quite do those push ups. Mirror, however, aims to do for fitness classes what Peloton did with the cycling class: bring a live instructor into your home. And it does all this with a full-size mirror.

Gallery: Mirror photos | 7 Photos




7

Of course, Mirror isn’t an ordinary mirror. It looks just like one when it’s turned off, measuring 22 inches wide, 52 inches high and a little over an inch deep. But embedded inside its large frame is actually a vertical LCD panel and stereo speakers, which come to life when it’s switched on. You can then control what’s on the Mirror via a companion app.

I took a peek at an early prototype of Mirror with founder and CEO Brynn Putnam, and an assistant outfitted in workout clothes was there to demonstrate it for me. On Mirror’s screen was a video of the instructor, streamed live from a studio in New York City. She talked through a variety of different moves, like squats, burpees and lunges, in what was a high-intensity interval training class.

Because the assistant had a heart rate monitor on, we could see her beats-per-minute on screen, as well as her target heart rate zone. You have the option of pairing your Apple Watch to track your heart rate if you so desire. Also on the display were calories burned, the amount of time left in the workout, and the names of a few people who were taking the class at the same time. During the class, the instructor occasionally offered personal shout-outs or encouragement.

Interestingly, because it’s a mirror, you can still see a reflection of yourself while the class is taking place. This is intentional. Putnam, a professional dancer by training, says that it’s actually really helpful to see yourself doing the workout while it’s happening. “Sometimes you don’t know your shoulders are hunched until you actually see it,” she said. It also helps for making sure you have the right posture and form.

One of Mirror’s features that sets it apart from normal fitness apps is personalization. You can specify in your profile that you have a bad knee, for instance, so instead of doing the jumps on screen, you’re offered an alternate workout, such as squats, that appears off to the side.

Once you’re in the swing of things, Mirror will recommend other classes to try out depending on your performance. Classes at launch include cardio, strength, yoga, Pilates, barre, boxing and stretch, with about five difficulty levels. So if you frequently hit your target goal, you might be encouraged to try out a more challenging class. Or if you didn’t hit your goals at an expert level, it would recommend you try an intermediate or beginner class instead. Beginner classes tend to be slower and more deliberate, said Putnam, while expert classes are more fast-paced.

Though Mirror didn’t mention Peloton specifically in its release, the model is similar. One of the reasons Peloton took off is that it brought the cycling class to the home. No longer need you spend hundreds of dollars a month to go for a spin on a studio’s schedule; you could now do so in your own living room and on your own time. Yet, not everyone wants a bike — or even a large treadmill — taking up space in their abode. Plus, cardio machines effectively offer a limited kind of workout, and you might tire of cycling or running eventually. With Mirror, Putnam said, there’s more variety in the kinds of classes you can take.

Another bonus with Mirror is an option for personal training. There’re a microphone and camera built-in to the hardware, which allow for one-on-one training sessions with a certified personal trainer, where they can see you and guide you through customized workouts. They cost anywhere from $40 to $75 per session, depending on the expertise level of the trainer.

Yet, there’s a cost to all of this. The Mirror hardware is priced at a whopping $1,495 and the subscription cost is $39 a month. I asked Putnam if there were plans to sell an option that didn’t require the hardware, but there are none at this time. Which is a shame, because I think Mirror is actually a pretty good idea, and I love that it can personalize workouts for you. But as I mentioned earlier, fitness class apps are a dime a dozen these days. Even Peloton offers optional floor exercise classes like yoga and bootcamp in addition to the cycling. DailyBurn has a similar live streaming workout plan for only $20 a month, no hardware required. Sure, it’s not quite as personalized and there’s no option for personal training, but not everyone has a spare $1,495 to burn either.

But hey, if you do, then you might want to give Mirror a shot. It’s making its public debut today at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco if you want to take a look at it, or you can order it right now from Mirror’s website.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

September 6, 2018 at 07:03AM

Posted on

Scientist who thinks more CO? is great joins National Security Council

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1369237

Article intro image

For the many months preceding the appointment of Kevin Droegemeir to finally fulfill the role of White House Science Advisor, there was a bit of a “will they/won’t they” storyline with retired Princeton physicist William Happer. Happer—who also served at the Department of Energy during the George H.W. Bush administration—is better known these days as a climate contrarian willing to publicly claim that CO2 emissions are a boon rather than an existential threat.

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

September 6, 2018 at 10:31AM

Posted on

Deaf-Owned Eateries Forge Path To Fight Joblessness Among Those With Hearing Loss

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/09/06/640893326/deaf-owned-eateries-forge-path-to-fight-joblessness-among-those-with-hearing-los?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news

Mozzeria is one of the most talked-about pizzerias in the heart of a vibrant San Francisco neighborhood. Every staff member employed at the restaurant identifies as deaf or hard of hearing.

Courtesy of Mozzeria, San Francisco


hide caption

toggle caption

Courtesy of Mozzeria, San Francisco

Mozzeria is one of the most talked-about pizzerias in the heart of a vibrant San Francisco neighborhood. Every staff member employed at the restaurant identifies as deaf or hard of hearing.

Courtesy of Mozzeria, San Francisco

I can feel the warmth from the wood-burning oven just over my shoulder and catch myself intermittently gazing off into a heat-induced trance from the blaze.

Despite the place feeling crowded (probably another reason for the heat), it’s eerily quiet inside: My table of five occasionally lowers our voices as if we were in the library. But a library this is not: Mozzeria is one of the most talked-about pizzerias in the heart of a vibrant San Francisco neighborhood, where wait times on Saturday nights can extend as long as two hours.

The reason for the unnaturally reserved ambiance might be because every staff member employed at Mozzeria identifies as deaf or partially deaf. For the roughly 95 percent of hearing guests who aren’t fluent in American Sign Language (ASL), putting in an order means either pointing to the pizza of choice from the menu or writing it down on a piece of paper.

Melody and Russ Stein, owners and founders of the 50-seat restaurant, have done more than open an authentic, Neapolitan-style pizza joint (it’s one of only two Neapolitan pizzerias in San Francisco that’s a member of the international organization Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana.) They also are only two of a few restaurateurs in the country using innovative technology that allows them to entirely employ deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals — like the deaf-owned video relay system Convo, which allows hearing guests to call and speak to a staff member over the phone via an interpreter.

Mozzeria isn’t the first restaurant in the nation to be entirely owned and operated by a deaf and hard-of-hearing staff — that title might go to Crepe Crazy in Austin, Texas, which was opened as a stall in 2007 by Vladimir and Inna Giterman — but it’s one of the most successful. Not only does the 7-year-old Mozzeria have a brick-and-mortar storefront, food truck and catering business, but in December it was selected as the first business partner of the Communication Service for the Deaf (CSD) Social Venture Fund (SVF).

There are few employment opportunities for individuals who identify as deaf. According to a study by the National Deaf Center (NDC) in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin, only about 48 percent of the deaf community is employed in the United States (compared with 72 percent of hearing individuals). Mozzeria’s partnership with the CSD has the potential to change that.

The social-impact fund, which was created to address unemployment rates among the deaf and those with partial hearing loss, will create ASL-centered training programs, resources and mentoring support for the roughly 48 million people living in the United States who identify as having severe hearing loss.

The partnership will also allow Mozzeria to franchise. The Steins are currently set to expand their West Coast empire, with an Austin location in the works for later this year. “We envision that each Mozzeria location will be looked at as a source of both local and national pride,” Melody Stein wrote in February for Upserve.

Not only does Mozzeria have a brick-and-mortar storefront, food truck and catering business, it was recently selected as the first business partner of the Communication Service for the Deaf.

Courtesy of Mozzeria, San Francisco


hide caption

toggle caption

Courtesy of Mozzeria, San Francisco

Not only does Mozzeria have a brick-and-mortar storefront, food truck and catering business, it was recently selected as the first business partner of the Communication Service for the Deaf.

Courtesy of Mozzeria, San Francisco

For many deaf and hard-of-hearing entrepreneurs, like Melissa Greenlee, CEO and founder of deaffriendly.com, and Crepe Crazy CEO Sergei Giterman (who took over from his parents), unemployment is an issue in their community that has long needed to be addressed.

Greenlee explains that her growing frustration with people’s lack of understanding of how to serve her, and her own inability to find meaningful work, lead to deaffriendly.com, a consumer review site for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. “There were times when people refused to serve me at all,” she wrote to me in an email. “No one should be turned away in a place of business due to their disability.”

Giterman, who four years ago had just six employees and now operates two locations and two food trucks with 30 employees, adds: “Finding employment as a deaf individual can be difficult. Out there, [employers] are less inclined to hire [deaf individuals], which sends all of us flocking to deaf-focused establishments. We started [Crepe Crazy] to provide a working opportunity where others wouldn’t.”

But deaf-focused restaurants are few and far between. While there’s no way of knowing the exact numbers, Deafdigest lists just eight restaurants currently operating in the U.S.

Perhaps the case for hiring and serving deaf individuals might no longer seem like such an issue, thanks in part to Starbucks. In July, the global coffee chain announced plans to launch its first ever deaf-friendly store in the United States. Set to open in Washington, D.C., in October, the “Signing Store Project” will be the company’s second, modeled after their first in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Unlike the Malaysian store, which puts partners — or employees — through a 10-week sign language course, the D.C. location will hire individuals who identify as deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing but fluent in ASL. Starbucks also plans to hire an additional 20 to 25 deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing partners proficient in ASL in other stores across the country later this year.

But of the more than 350,000 Starbucks employees who wear the green apron globally, only about 200 currently self-identity as deaf or with partial hearing loss.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction, says Nick Buchanan, who co-owns Austin’s Pepperbox Coffee, a deaf-owned and operated business. “It is so nice seeing other businesses showing how communication is possible,” he says about Starbucks’ plans. Like Mozzeria, Buchanan has tried a variety of methods for ease of communication with the hearing community, including a generic point-of-sale touchscreen system.

“This Signing [Store Project] is a great exercise in forcing people to think outside the box in how they will communicate effectively with someone who doesn’t hear,” says Greenlee.

With Mozzeria’s franchise plans and Starbucks’ “Signing Store Project,” the hope is that the deaf and those with partial hearing loss will soon be served just like the hearing population.

And as anyone lucky enough to have tried the pizza at Mozzeria knows, sometimes simply producing a great product is all one needs to attract an audience. My recommendation would be Mozzeria’s Peking Duck pizza — you’ll forget about the paper-and-pad ordering system with your first bite.

Meaghan Clark Tiernan is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in Munchies, ExtraCrispy, Racked, and Atlas Obscura. Follow her on Twitter: @meaghanclark.

via NPR Topics: News https://ift.tt/2m0CM10

September 6, 2018 at 07:07AM

Posted on

How to Create a YouTube Channel and Make Money (2018)

https://www.wired.com/story/creator-support-youtube-stars

For anyone who doesn’t work in the vast world of online videos, the idea of “YouTube stars” is baffling. What’s even more astounding is that so many of those YouTubers can make a living simply from viral videos. An entire career just based on posting funny things on the internet, where so many people do it for free? How does that work? How does someone make producing online videos their full-time job?

For the most part, the answers are straightforward. “Advertisers pay to have their ads shown in front of YouTube videos,” says Markiplier, who currently has 21 million subscribers for his gaming videos. “You get a share of that.” Determining that share, however, is a little more complex. “It’s like this: You have a fraction of an amount. There’s a bunch of factors outside of that, that have nothing to do with you, that affect whether that fraction is bigger or smaller,” adds Hannah Hart, whose longstanding channel has some 2.5 million subs. Beyond that there are merch deals, collaborations with brands, and other promotions YouTubers can use to bring in cash from their channels.

“I don’t think you get paid for subscribers [though],” says Rhett, one half of Rhett and Link, the team behind Good Mythical Morning—a fact that his cohost calls “sad.”

But that’s just one of the tricks of the trade revealed in this episode of Creator Support, wherein we asked a host of YouTubers questions that fans and aspiring viral video creators posted on Twitter. Want to know what kind of gear Hart uses or how Liza Koshy came up with her popular character Helga? It’s all in the video above. So, surprisingly, is the method with which Rhett and Link settle arguments. Short version: It involves something called “slapth”-ing. Don’t ask. Just watch.

More Great WIRED Stories

via Wired Top Stories https://ift.tt/2uc60ci

September 5, 2018 at 03:21PM

Posted on

Charted: Here’s how much your food waste hurts the environment

https://www.popsci.com/wasted-food-environment-impact?dom=rss-default&src=syn

Our species is pretty good at wasting food. Some we discard at the farm for being undersized or oddly shaped. Others we allow to decay in their shipping containers, thrown away before they even reach shelves. We leave even more foodstuffs wasting away in grocery stores, often by letting it sit there until it reaches its sell-by date. As consumers, we don’t have much control over most of the process that brings our food to the grocery store, but we do have control over how much food we personally waste.

Let’s face it: We’ve all found liquified lettuce in our veggie drawers. Don’t fret. It’s arguably impossible to consume 100 percent of the food we buy. But a healthy reminder of the effect food waste has on the environment might help us all to be more conscious of the amount of food we eat—and don’t eat.

Consumer food waste varies extensively depending on the area. In South and Southeast Asia, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that only around 5 percent of total wastage comes from consumers. Most, instead, comes from the agricultural and handling/storage phases of production. But in America, as in Europe and “Industrialized Asia” (that’s China, Japan, and South Korea), consumers are responsible for about a third of all food wastage. Agriculture also accounts for about a third, and the remaining third is split evenly between the handling/storage, processing, and distribution phases.

That’s no small amount for consumers to be wasting. Globally, we fail to use about a third of all food produced for human consumption. The FAO cites both bad “purchase planning” and “exaggerated concern over ‘best-before dates’” as reasons for the significant wastage on the consumer ends in affluent countries. That is, we buy too much food and let it rot in our homes before we get around to eating it, or we throw out perfectly good food because a printed date says it’s expired. Historically, it’s been difficult to figure out just how much impact any specific food has on the environment.

To estimate a number like that, you have to do what’s called a life cycle analysis. For example, to calculate that amount for a tomato, you’d have to work out which agricultural processes go into farming that fruit. How much fuel does the tractor use? How much energy goes into the fertilizer? And when it comes to meat, how much does a cow burp? How much energy do you need to make the feed for chickens? Interestingly, life cycle analysis doesn’t include the emissions involved in transporting food from farm to market. As Martin Heller, a chemical engineer at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems, previously told Popular Science, “The whole local food movement has really emphasized the impact of food miles, but most of the research points out that that’s not really a huge part of the total. What goes on at the farm is a much bigger piece.”

Engineers and other researchers like Heller have put an enormous amount of collective time into calculating exactly how much greenhouse gas emissions are a tomato or a steak embodies. It’s mostly other researchers who use this kind of data, but we here at Popular Science used it to figure out how wasteful we’re really being when we fail to eat the food in our fridges.

This is just a small sampling of the database, but there’s a trend that jumps out pretty quickly: Meat is extremely polluting; beef most of all. That’s because animals require a lot of feed, which itself must be grown, and that extra step of growing mostly grain-based chow really adds up. Cows also burp methane, which is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas.

Cheese also places pretty high, since it requires a lot of milk to make. Depending on the cheese variety, and assuming you’re using cow’s milk, you need around 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese—that’s 10 pounds of milk coming from a burpin’, grain-consumin’ bovine.

You may also notice that oils rank fairly high. Like trendy nut milks, oils have inordinate environmental impacts because they’re purified. A liter of olive oil requires five kilograms of olives (a tree only makes between 15 and 20 in a whole year). That’s why a kilo of the oil represents 3.206 CO2 equivalents, but a kilo of actual olives only represents 0.482 CO2 equivalents.

So the next time you throw out food, think back to this chart. Think about all the fertilizer and tractor fuel that went into making it. And then think about how easy it would be to buy a little less food than you think you might need, or how you could search for recipes to use up that leftover cheese. There’s even a website where you can choose which ingredients you have on hand and it will give you a list of dishes you can make. (Consuming less meat—especially beef—would also help, a lot.) And at the very least, you should make an effort to compost the food you end up throwing away. Otherwise it will continue to produce greenhouse gases as it slowly decomposes in a landfill.

The bottom line is, a third of the food we waste in America gets wasted in our homes, but we have the power to change that.

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://ift.tt/2k2uJQn

September 5, 2018 at 07:09AM

Posted on

Didi to spend $20 million on customer service after passenger murders

https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/05/didi-20-million-investment-passenger-murders/


Getty

Didi Chuxing will spend $20 million on measures meant to fortify its customer service, according to Reuters. The Chinese ride-hailing firm’s founder, Cheng Wei, announced the investment to a group of government regulators who visited Didi’s offices for a nationwide inspection triggered by a harrowing incident wherein one of its drivers raped and killed a female passenger. Didi halted its carpooling service across the country after authorities confirmed the event, which occurred on August 24th, and after an investigation revealed that it could’ve been prevented if the company has better customer service.

Apparently, the victim sent in a complaint about the same driver on the 23rd, reporting that he exhibited threatening behavior, including following her after he dropped her off. Didi failed to respond to her concerns within its promised two-hour window and to kick off the offending driver from its platform in time. The ride-hailing firm, which gobbled up Uber’s business in the region, will use its $20 million investment to build an 8,000-strong customer service team by the end of the year.

Didi is facing intense scrutiny, not only because the incident could’ve been prevented, but because it’s the second murder linked to the platform within the span of a few months. Back in May, a Didi driver’s son who used his father’s credentials allegedly murdered a 21-year-old flight attendant. That prompted the platform to require drivers to verify their identities using facial recognition before each shift. It also upgraded its emergency button to give passengers a way to call the cops or friends and family in one click. Plus, it started testing a feature that gave customers a way to record audio.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

September 5, 2018 at 08:27AM

Posted on

Lawyer For Homeless Man Says $400,000 Raised To Help Him Is Gone

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/04/644674692/lawyer-for-homeless-man-says-400-000-raised-to-help-him-is-gone?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news

Mark D’Amico (left) and Kate McClure (center) speak with Megyn Kelly on Megyn Kelly Today. The couple set up a GoFundMe page for homeless man Johnny Bobbitt, but his lawyer says the money is gone and little of it went to Bobbitt.

Nathan Congleton/AP


hide caption

toggle caption

Nathan Congleton/AP

Mark D’Amico (left) and Kate McClure (center) speak with Megyn Kelly on Megyn Kelly Today. The couple set up a GoFundMe page for homeless man Johnny Bobbitt, but his lawyer says the money is gone and little of it went to Bobbitt.

Nathan Congleton/AP

When Johnny Bobbitt first met Kate McClure and their feel-good story about a chance encounter that changed both their lives hit the daytime TV circuit, he said her generosity inspired an “indescribable” feeling in him. But less than a year later, that feeling has become devastation, according to his lawyer.

Bobbitt and his attorney claim that more $400,000 raised by McClure and her boyfriend in a GoFundMe campaign intended to lift him out of homelessness, has vanished without ever reaching him.

Bobbitt and McClure crossed paths in October 2017, when McClure ran out of gas on Interstate 95. Using his last $20, Bobbitt, who was homeless at the time, offered help. He walked to a gas station and safely got McClure back on her way home to New Jersey. In gratitude, McClure and Mark D’Amico launched a GoFundMe campaign that went viral and received more than 14,000 donations totaling $402,706.

In McClure’s pitch to the public, she pledged to use the money to buy Bobbitt a home and his dream car — a 1999 Ford Ranger. “There will also be 2 trusts set up in his name, one essentially giving him the ability to collect a small ‘salary’ each year and another retirement trust which will be wisely invested by a financial planner which he will have access to in a time frame he feels comfortable with so when the time comes he can live his retirement dream of owning a piece of land and a cabin in the country,” she wrote.

But Bobbitt’s lawyer, Chris Fallon, argues the couple failed to deliver on any of their promises. They didn’t buy Bobbitt a house, they bought him a trailer, registered it under McClure’s name and parked it on her family’s land. They didn’t buy Bobbitt’s dream car, they bought him different used car, also registered under McClure’s name. It has since broken down. The salary never materialized and neither did the investments. And now, all of the money is apparently gone.

Fallon said he learned of the dried-up account during a call with the couple’s lawyer on Tuesday.

“It completely shocked me when I heard,” Fallon told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It came as a complete surprise to me.”

He described Bobbitt as “completely devastated” by the revelation, according NJ.com.

In an interview with CNN Fallon said by his accounting “there should be close to another $300,000 available to Johnny.”

Bobbitt has filed a lawsuit against McClure, who works as a secretary for the New Jersey Department of Transportation, and D’Amico, a carpenter, accusing the couple of mismanaging the money raised on his behalf. And last week, a judge ordered the couple to wire the remaining funds into a trust account and provide a full accounting of what has been spent.

The Inquirer reported the couple missed the Friday deadline.

On Tuesday, Fallon asked the judge to hold the couple in contempt of court and to relinquish what is left of the donations within 24 hours.

Both McClure and D’Amico have repeatedly denied the allegations that they’ve dipped into Bobbitt’s funds. They argue they’ve maintained control of the donations to protect the former Marine veteran, who is drug addict.

“I don’t want him to do anything stupid,” D’Amico told the Inquirer. “He’s a drug addict. That’s like me handing him a loaded gun. He has to do what he has to do to get his life together.”

In an interview on Megyn Kelly Today, on Aug. 27, they said they’ve given Bobbitt close to $350,000. Much of it went toward buying the camper trailer, the used car, Bobbitt’s prior outstanding legal fees, and a $25,000 cash deposit into Bobbitt’s account, which they say he spent mostly on drugs over 13 days. The pair also said Bobbitt gave a significant portion of the sum to family members.

Bobbitt now claims he never wanted the SolAire camper the couple bought. But in an April interview with the Inquirer, he said, “I want to experience life. That’s why I bought a camper — so I could go hunting and fishing.”

He has also raised questions about how the couple has been able to afford a new BMW and recent trips to Las Vegas. They say they’ve paid for the expenses out of their own pocket.

“I hate that it came to this,” Bobbitt told ABC 6, adding that he is back to being homeless and living on the streets.

The network reported that GoFundMe released a statement on Tuesday saying that “any money that was misspent will be guaranteed by the company.”

The Associated Press reported the New Jersey judge overseeing the case has given McClure and D’Amico 10 days to hire an accountant to review the financial records.

via NPR Topics: News https://ift.tt/2m0CM10

September 4, 2018 at 08:10PM