The University of the Highlands and Islands is looking to deploy drones to locate suitable sites for future marine renewable energy sites. The unmanned aerial vehicles will be used to film ocean movements to determine where it would be most suitable to build an energy plant.
Apple is facing yet another investigation over alleged unfair practices. UK’s competitions watchdog is investigating claims that Apple’s terms of service in the App Store are uncompetitive. Developers are unhappy that they have to distribute their apps to iPads and iPhones via the App Store. They are also questioning Apple’s commissions.
Call of Duty: Warzone enjoyed record download on 25 February when its latest patch was published. An average user downloaded approximately 20GB of data, according to Virgin Media.
Google products are back online!
Google products are down 14-12-2020 from about 1200 GMT.
Users have reported difficulty accessing YouTube, Gmail, Google Sheets, and Meets.
There have been reports across Ghana and the UK at least.
It is still unclear what caused the Google apps to crash.
Meanwhile, Google search is still working fine.
The funny thing is when you search for “Google is down” on Google search, it tells you no.
Check out the first 6 minutes of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet on YouTube.
Disney+ is taking the long game in its rivalry with Netflix. The streaming site has added enough film franchises to its roster to keep you glued to their channel for the whole of 2021 at least.
Just as Warner Bros announced its 2021 film releases will go straight to streaming, Disney doesn’t seem to trust theatres that much. As such, Tom Hanks’ Pinocchio as well as Peter Pan & Wendy will go straight to Disney+ instead of cinemas.
This means the streaming model would have to rake in more money to make up for cinema losses. As such, Disney+ subscription packages increase from £5.99 to £7.99 from February.
Disney+ has 86.8 million subscribers. Netflix has 200 million subscribers.
Electronic Arts is just getting bigger and more powerful. News making the rounds is that EA is acquiring Codematers for a reported £1 billion ($1.2b). This adds another lap to its arcade collection which is dominated by the Need For Speed franchise.
Codemasters is a British video game developer famous for racing games like Formula 1 and the Dirt Rally series.
In agreeing to his deal, EA beats off New York-based rival Take-Two Interactive who had bid $973m.
Scientists are using smartphone batteries from allover the world to power covid19 research. Over 100,000 volunteers around the world are doing this through the DreamLab app.
The DreamLab app goes through simulations of food molecules to determine which nutrient combinations would offer the best medical benefits to fight covid19 or long covid symptoms.
Volunteering smartphones to be used in research has done in three months what normal computers would use 300 years to do. These volunteer smartphones have contributed to more than 53 million calculations.
Scientists continue to gush at the effort volunteers are bringing to the table. 100,000 smartphones are more powerful than supercomputers at the Imperial College of London’s Faculty of Medicine, for example.
Most people volunteer their smartphones when they are asleep during the night. You can plug in your phone’s charger before you go to bed. Then you turn on the DreamLab app. While you sleep, your phone comes alive and provides invaluable computing resource that could help fight the covid19 pandemic.
Cinema chains will not like it but Warner Bros doesn’t seem to bother. Warner Bros just announced that its upcoming films, Dune and the Matrix sequel, will both go straight to streaming platforms at the same time as they hit cinemas.
This new move goes against the grain of allowing movies to show in cinemas for months before they go to streaming sites. It allows cinemas to rake in more revenue through tickets sales. With the coronavirus pandemic forcing these cinemas to close, however, content studious are realising big returns via streaming sites as well.
All 2021 film releases by Warner Bros will go straight to HBO Max soon after releases. That means subscribers can access films like Mortal Kombat, Godzilla vs Kong, and The Suicide Squad soon after they hit the big screen. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman 1984 will be available for streaming on HBO Max upon release this Christmas.
When Universal decided to publish all films to streaming sites at the same time as they hit the cinemas, cinema chain AMC had banned all Universal films. They reached a compromise in the end, though, and AMC got a 17-day show period before the films went to streaming sites.
Pubs apps are perfect for making orders. They are also perfect for coordinating donation offers from other people interested in helping out the homeless. For Chris Fareham and his Facebook Group, pub apps are helping them access more food donations to help the rough sleepers.
Chris and his team decide beforehand which pubs to visit. When they arrive, they ask group members and friends for “pizzas, easy to eat foods, sealed soft drinks.” These orders are then delivered in takeaway boxes to their table at the selected pubs.
After collecting the donations, Fareham and his group use local charities to distribute the food to the homeless.
Chris Fareham was homeless for a time in 2017. He split with his wife and was diagnosed with cancer at the same time. Chris was sleeping in his car while getting treatment. After surgery, he ended up sleeping on someone’s floor.
Since then, Chris has been trying to help people he thinks are in need. While he tried out different schemes, using pub apps to collect donations has been the most successful so far.
Chris remembers a time before the coronavirus lockdown during a donation drive in Southampton. After delivering a trolley of donation items to the Society of St. James, the officers were really excited. They thought that was all. Then Chris told them “This is only a third maybe a quarter of what we’ve got to come. And they were like, ‘Oh, Okay.'”
Chris is happy to help people. The happiness he gets comes from knowing the people he helps are happy to see him. He hopes to continue his efforts when coronavirus lockdown restrictions are lifted.
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