Stop Motion Floor Fighting with Master Ken [Video]

https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2019/04/26/stop-motion-floor-fighting-with-master-ken-video/

Watch as Master Ken and Todd demonstrate a method of fighting that is far more dangerous than any form of ground fighting. It is called: Floor Fighting!

[EnterTheDojoShow]

The post Stop Motion Floor Fighting with Master Ken [Video] appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

via [Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News http://bit.ly/23BIq6h

April 26, 2019 at 07:28AM

Epic Games throws down an ultimatum for Steam

https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/25/steam-epic-games-store-revenue-share-sweeney-challenge/

Epic Games threw a grenade into the world of digital distribution when it revealed its own storefront late last year, complete with a better deal for developers than anything offered by Steam, the longstanding king of PC gaming. The Epic Games Store has a revenue-share model of 88 percent for developers and 12 percent for Epic, handily outpacing Steam’s standard split of 70/30.

This has given Epic an edge, and the company has lured a slew of high-profile developers away from Steam, complete with plans to launch their titles exclusively on the Epic Games Store. The list includes Super Meat Boy Forever, Metro: Exodus, The Division 2, Borderlands 3, Detroit: Become Human, Afterparty and the final season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead. Many of these games will eventually hit Steam and other platforms, but they’ll be exclusive to the Epic store for a long while first.

However, this could all change. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted a challenge to Steam on Wednesday night, and it reads as follows: "If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam."

Epic is the proprietor of Gears of War and, most notably in today’s gaming climate, Fortnite, a title that has turned the company into a $15 billion business. Neither of these franchises are currently available on Steam.

Valve, the company behind Steam, has long been unchallenged in the digital marketplace and its revenue split is a testament to this fact. The company’s 70/30 model has been the norm across the industry for at least a decade, and Valve hasn’t been forced to update that figure until recently. Just before the Epic Games Store was announced, Valve revealed a new revenue ratio for Steam — but it only affects a handful of ultra-successful developers.

Today on Steam, any game that makes more than $10 million earns developers 75 percent of its revenue, while titles that earn more than $50 million net its creators 80 percent of all subsequent earnings. Of course, this move doesn’t do much to appease independent and mid-tier developers, who can earn 88 percent of all revenue on the Epic Games Store. Even the new Discord store offers a split of 90/10.

Steam is still a clear leader in digital distribution, offering more games than any other PC platform and serving as an entrenched, trusted service for millions of players worldwide. However, the Epic Games Store’s existence has already pushed Valve to update its revenue-sharing policies, if only slightly, and Sweeney’s challenge could look appealing as Steam attempts to stay on top.

"Such a move would be a glorious moment in the history of PC gaming, and would have a sweeping impact on other platforms for generations to come," Sweeney wrote in a follow-up tweet. "Then stores could go back to just being nice places to buy stuff, rather than the Game Developer IRS."

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

April 25, 2019 at 01:39PM

Google Earth Timelapse Now Available for Mobile and It’s Awesome

https://www.droid-life.com/2019/04/25/google-earth-timelapse-now-available-for-mobile-and-its-awesome/

Ever wonder what your favorite area looked like in the mid-80s? With Google Earth’s Timelapse feature, you can see a complete breakdown of how areas have changed, spanning from 1984 to 2018. This week, Google announced that the feature is now available for mobile devices.

Just from the few areas I’ve looked at, such as Portland, OR and San Francisco, CA, not much has changed, though, you can clearly see in the year 2000 when Oracle Park was built in SF. Back then, when I was a wee lad, it was called Pac-Bell Park. As for Portland, yeah, hardly anything has changed.

However, just look at human civilization spread across the Nevada desert like a disease. Agent Smith may have been right (Matrix reference).

This Timelapse feature is available for both desktop and mobile users, so go check it out. It’s fun!

Google Earth Timelapse

// Google

via Droid Life: A Droid Community Blog http://bit.ly/2dLq79c

April 25, 2019 at 04:27PM

Epic Store Will Stop Going After Exclusives If Steam Makes A Big Change

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/epic-store-will-stop-going-after-exclusives-if-ste/1100-6466479/

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has laid out an ultimatum in regards to securing further exclusive titles for the Epic Games Store. If Valve offers a revenue share for developers on Steam that matches Epic’s, Sweeney tweeted out, then the Epic Games Store will stop signing exclusivity agreements that keep games off of Steam.

"If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam," Sweeney wrote. "Such a move would be a glorious moment in the history of PC gaming, and would have a sweeping impact on other platforms for generations to come."

The Epic Games Store has made a habit of securing major triple-A and high-profile indie games away from Steam. The Souls-like game Ashen was one of the first to leave Steam for an exclusive offering on Epic, but it was followed by more prominent titles like Metro Exodus and Borderlands 3. Ubisoft has entered into a partnership with the Epic Games Store and moved most of its PC releases over from Steam to Epic, starting with The Division 2 and extending to Anno 1800 as well.

There’s been plenty of discontent for the Epic Games Store, especially when games that have been sold on Steam are moved to Epic during the pre-order phase. In most cases, this has caused outrage on Twitter and Reddit, as well as Steam users review bombing games that have sequels launching on Epic. Both Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light were hit hard in the aftermath of Metro Exodus’ move to Epic. The same happened to Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel after the reveal that Borderlands 3 would be launching on the Epic Games Store.

Steam users’ harsh reactions to games leaving Steam for Epic and Valve’s slow response on some of the review bombings have rubbed some developers the wrong way. "Ironically, that this misuse is possible and that Steam has no interest in correcting this misuse makes me kind of happy about 2K’s decision and makes me want to reconsider Gearbox Publishing’s current posture on the platform," Gearbox studio head Randy Pitchford wrote.

via GameSpot’s PC Reviews http://bit.ly/2mVXxXH

April 25, 2019 at 12:51PM

The Emergency Launch Abort Systems of SpaceX and Boeing Explained

https://www.space.com/launch-abort-systems-of-spacex-boeing.html

If anything goes wrong when a crew of astronauts launches into space, their spacecraft always has a built-in abort system to help them return to Earth safely. But not all abort systems work the same way. 

In October of 2018, the Soyuz launch-abort system flawlessly brought two International Space Station-bound crewmembers back to Earth after their rocket malfunctioned. In much the same way, the new commercial crew vehicles built by SpaceX and Boeing are designed to safely separate from their rockets and float back down to Earth in case of an emergency. 

Neither of these two companies has fully tested the abort system on its new commercial crew vehicle yet. However, both have run into trouble with initial tests of the escape engines that are designed to propel the astronauts to safety. On Saturday (April 20), SpaceX’s Crew Dragon suffered a major anomaly during a test fire of the SuperDraco escape engines at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and smoke could be seen from miles away. Last July, Boeing similarly reported an “anomaly” during a test of the company’s launch-abort engines, although there were no reports of dramatic explosions or clouds of smoke. 

Watching something designed to save lives go up in smoke may not be very reassuring, especially for the astronauts who plan to fly in those spacecraft. But these “anomalies” will ultimately make the spacecraft safer for astronauts, by helping engineers find and solve any problems before they turn life-threatening. 

Related: How Risky Spacecraft Launch Aborts Work (Infographic)

There are two ways that a crewed launch can be aborted: the older, tried-and-tested “pull” method and the newer “push” method. In the older abort mechanism, a small set of rocket boosters is installed on the tip of the crew capsule, giving the rocket’s nose a pointy, elongated shape. When the mission is aborted, these downward-facing thrusters “pull” the capsule up to safety after it has separated from the rocket. 

NASA first used this type of escape system with Project Mercury, the agency’s first crewed space program, as well as the Apollo program that put astronauts on the moon. This is also the kind of escape system on Russia’s Soyuz rocket-capsule combo, which NASA has relied on to get astronauts to and from the space station for almost a decade. 

Artist's concept of SpaceX's Dragon capsule putting its launch abort system into action.

Artist’s concept of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule putting its launch abort system into action.

(Image: © SpaceX)

The idea for a new kind of launch escape system was introduced by Boeing in 2010, but SpaceX was the first to bring that idea to fruition, with the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Instead of mounting an escape tower on top of the capsule, SpaceX has built the thrusters into the capsule’s outer walls. Eight SuperDraco engines are embedded in the hull and will “push” the capsule away from the rocket in an emergency. 

Those SuperDracos were the engines that SpaceX was testing when the explosion happened on April 20. In 2015, SpaceX successfully completed the first test flight of the Crew Dragon’s abort system. The company has not yet given a reason for this recent accident, but it could have to do with a change that was implemented since that first test.

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner uses a similar launch escape system as the one on the Crew Dragon, but instead of eight SuperDraco engines, it uses four RS-88 engines, which are built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The Starliner also had problems with its launch-abort engines during a similar hot-fire test in July 2018, when Boeing reported that engine valves were leaking propellant. There was no dramatic explosion that time, but the first Starliner test flight was subsequently delayed. It is now scheduled to launch in August. 

While the two commercial spaceflight companies are rolling with the newer design for a launch escape system, NASA is actually sticking with the old “pull” method with the agency’s new Orion crew capsule. NASA will use that spacecraft to launch astronauts to the moon as early as 2024. The agency plans to test Orion’s abort system for a second time on June 12. The first test was successfully completed back in 2010. NASA has since made improvements to the system’s design using the data the agency gathered during that first test. 

All three vehicles would use parachutes to safely bring crews back to Earth, but SpaceX’s Crew Dragon could rely on its thrusters as a backup landing capability, Elon Musk tweeted in March. Although SpaceX appeared to be on track to beat Boeing with a first crewed flight to the International Space Station, SpaceX’s recent accident likely means that Boeing will get there first. SpaceX has not yet said what caused Saturday’s explosion or how it will affect the Crew Dragon’s schedule. Its first crewed test flight, Crew Dragon Demo-2, is technically still scheduled for July 25, but that is likely to change.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

via Space.com http://bit.ly/2WPkkGi

April 24, 2019 at 04:16PM

Caffeine Peps Up Solar Energy

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/caffeine-peps-up-solar-energy/

Inspiration struck during one of the most critical rituals of university life: a coffee break. “We need coffee to boost our energy,” Rui Wang told Jingjing Xue, a fellow graduate student in the engineering department of the University of California, Los Angeles. Maybe, Wang suggested jokingly, we should caffeinate our experimental solar cells to make them work better, too.

Xue’s response: That might actually work.

It was a moment of “pure luck,” says U.C.L.A. engineer Yang Yang, Wang and Xue’s graduate advisor. Yang’s lab has been trying to improve the lifespan of a promising but unstable type of solar panel, made from a material called perovskite, by lacing panels with certain stabilizing compounds. “We needed some kind of molecule with lone electron pairs,” Yang says. Such isolated duos of electrons at a molecule’s edge (a feature caffeine actually has) could interact with or bind to other materials like perovskite.

The term perovskite in this case refers to any crystal with a specific kind of structure. It is often composed of cheap, common elements such as iodine, lead and bromine, and has been the darling of solar energy research for the past 10 years. “This material is considered to be a miracle,” Yang says. In the last decade, perovskite research panels have greatly improved in efficiency, going from harvesting 1 percent of available solar energy to 20 percent. And unlike silicon (the material at the heart of most commercial solar panels today), perovskite is easy to grow into active layers that generate electricity when light touches them. “A high school kid could make a good perovskite solar cell in our lab,” Yang says.

A caffeine-treated perovskite solar cell in the lab. Credit: Jingjing Xue

But this material is also notoriously finicky. Between each individual perovskite crystal in a solar cell exists a miniscule border called a “grain boundary.” “Those are the troublemakers,” Yang says. If the crystals are exposed to air, moisture and oxygen attack the boundaries and destroy the solar cell. As a result, Yang says, the solar cell “can degrade in one day.” If perovskite is to provide future solar energy, researchers will need a way to stabilize the cells for the long term.

This is where caffeine comes in. The world’s most widely used psychoactive drug just happens to have two carbon-oxygen groups that carry lone electron pairs. “That can lock onto the lead in perovskite,” Yang says. “When [the caffeine] locks onto the perovskite crystal, it stabilizes the grain boundaries and prevents the material from degrading—and the solar cell has much better stability.”

To test this idea, Yang and his students built a perovskite solar panel with caffeine added to the crystals. “For perovskite, we just buy chemicals and blend them in our lab in a beaker. It’s like cooking,” Yang says. “Then we put a little bit of caffeine into the liquid, and blend it all evenly.” Finally, the scientific baristas pour the liquid over glass to form a layer of perovskite crystal, the foundation for a thumbnail-sized solar cell.

The researchers ran a molecular analysis on that cell, and found caffeine bound to the perovskite’s lead atoms. They tested it and found it was able to run stably for over 1,300 hours—and had better efficiency than the decaf panel to boot. “It has run for several thousand hours now, and it’s still going,” Yang says. “And [the caffeine] increased the efficiency from around 16 percent to 20 percent.” The team reported the findings in Joule on Thursday.

While 20 percent is not the highest efficiency ever achieved for perovskite solar panels, the findings suggest the compound might help stabilize other perovskite systems that have reached much higher efficiencies, Yang says. Tandem or hybrid solar cells, made with two different types of perovskite, have been able to reach nearly 30 percent efficiency before any caffeine boost. “Tandem solar cells are just like a double-decker bus,” Yang says. “Anything that helps the single-layer bus can help the double-decker.”

Caffeine seems to enable perovskite crystals to form without as much “disorder” as those grown without the drug, says Joseph Berry, a physicist at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, who did not work on the study. “Generally, the perspective is, ‘If you make the material more perfect, you get one that does better.’ The caffeine, at the local level, ensures you get a material that’s a bit more well-structured,” he says. “That results in a more stable device.”

The study is impressive, says Jinsong Huang, a physicist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who also was not involved with the work. He suggests it might push perovskite solar cells closer to commercial sale. “Stability is the last hurdle we need to overcome [for perovskite cells] to enter the market,” Huang says. “You can make solar cells more efficient and more stable in other ways. But this is a very good result, and it opens our minds about different materials that you never thought would work.”

Berry thinks the study could also help researchers figure out how to manipulate and engineer perovskite in ways that might guide future research. “Fundamentally, these perovskite materials offer a functionality that can’t be matched. We are only just beginning to understand them well enough to begin engineering them,” he says. “That’s why these results from Yang are so compelling.” Insights from the new research might help scientists discover or design new molecules that stabilize perovskite solar cells even better than caffeine does.

Then again, Berry suggests, maybe there is simply nothing better out there. “Is it the best solution? That’s hard to tell. There’s still so much more to know,” he says. “But I mean, we all love caffeine—so there’s that, too.”

via Scientific American http://bit.ly/n8vNiX

April 25, 2019 at 10:01AM

How to Use Google Assistant’s ‘Tell Me a Story’ Feature on Your Smartphone

https://offspring.lifehacker.com/how-to-use-google-assistants-tell-me-a-story-feature-on-1834289768

Starting today, you can take Google Assistant’s “Tell Me a Story” feature on the road with you.

The feature rolled out for Google Home last year and allows you to say “Hey Google, tell me a story” to trigger your Google Home, Mini, Hub, or Max to tell your child a quick tale. Now, that same feature is available for iOS and Android devices.

To get it, you’ll just want to make sure your device has the latest version of Google Assistant installed.

Once you have the latest version, hearing a story is as easy as just telling your phone, “Hey Google, tell me a story” or “Hey Google, tell me a bedtime story,” if you’re trying to get the kids to go to sleep already.

Google is rolling the feature out this week in anticipation of National Tell a Story Day on April 27.

You can still ask your Google Home to tell you a story, of course. Google Home also has a feature called “read along” that will play sound effects for some books while you read them. It originally launched in October of last year, but hasn’t gotten a ton of attention.

In order for the sound effects feature to work, you need to have one of the supported books, which are all Disney-related Little Golden Books. Sounds are synched up as you read and can skip forward and backward with you, or even take a pause while you chat about what you just read. While simple in concept, I think if this was around when I was a kid it would have blown my mind. Here’s a video of it in action:

Once you have one of the supported books, you activate the feature by saying “Hey Google, let’s read along with Disney.”

The feature only works on Google Home devices, not smartphones, but it works for a slew of Disney titles including classics like Peter Pan, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as new favorites like Frozen, Coco, and Moana.

If nothing else, that “Tell Me a Story” feature on mobile might help you entertain the kiddos for a few extra minutes during your next shopping trip.

via Lifehacker https://lifehacker.com

April 25, 2019 at 09:05AM