Real-life ‘Pong’ table is available as a crowdfunding project

Remember that real-world Pong table that was supposed to become a product you could buy if everything went smoothly? Well, it’s here… almost. The creators have launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to launch a production-grade, coffee table-sized version of the design. If you’re willing to pledge at least $1,100 ($990 if you were referred by an existing backer), you can get living room furniture that uses magnets, motors and optical sensors to recreate the classic 1972 game. You can hide the controls when you aren’t using them, and the table even throws in USB charging ports, Bluetooth music streaming and a coin-op mode to recoup your investment.

And before you ask: no, you don’t need that gigantic “PONG” branding on the side. Despite the official Atari license, you can choose a more subdued look that won’t seem quite so out of place next to your couch.

Provided the campaign meets its funding target, tables should start arriving in December. This is unquestionably a lot of money to drop to rekindle memories of one game, but look at it this way: it could easily be more of a conversation starter than pricier traditional decor.

Via: The Verge

Source: Kickstarter

Hack sets off all of Dallas’ emergency sirens

Some hacks are clearly worse than others, but Dallas can at least lay claim to facing one of the loudest hacks to date. The city reports that attackers managed to set off all 156 of its emergency sirens for roughly an hour and a half between late Friday and early Saturday — no mean feat when siren hacks usually trigger just one or two devices. Workers had to disable the sirens entirely to stop the incessant noise, and they only expect the emergency system to return to normal later on April 9th.

It’s not certain who launched the attack, let alone why. Dallas emergency director Rocky Vaz would only tell the media that there was a “good deal of confidence” that the attack came from someone “outside of our system,” and city spokeswoman Sana Syed indicated that the intrusion happened somewhere in the area.

No matter who’s responsible, the incident underscores the importance of locking down public infrastructure. There are certainly alternatives to the sirens (such as mobile alerts and radio), but knocking them out could still put many people at risk if a tornado occurs while the system is down. It also undermines the trustworthiness of these sirens. Why believe them if there’s a good chance of a false alarm? Until Dallas and other cities can promise that they’re reasonably secure against hacks, it’ll be all too easy to second-guess public alerts.

Source: Reuters

Everything you need to know about the 2017 total solar eclipse

August 21 is a big day in the American celestial calendar. For the first time in 23 years, the entire continental United States will have the opportunity to see the sun disappear for a few minutes — in some places, completely — behind the moon. It’s called a solar eclipse, and it’s something that’s pretty rare around here.

What makes the August eclipse all the more special is it’s a total eclipse, which blocks out the sun more completely than a more common annular eclipse. Such a thing hasn’t been viewable from American soil in 38 years! So why should you be excited about this event? Read on and we’ll explain.

Why do solar eclipses happen?

Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes in front of the Sun, blocking out its light. While the moon is only a minuscule fraction of the size of the Sun, the Sun is 94 million miles away from us, and this allows the moon to block out the Sun’s rays across a small fraction of the Earth’s surface.

You might be wondering why solar eclipses are so rare. This is due to two factors. First, the moon must be in the “new moon” phase, which means it is between the Earth and the Sun. Because of this, we see the “dark side of the moon,” and the moon appears invisible. But with new moon phases happening every 29.5 days or so, why aren’t eclipses happening just as frequently? You can thank the tilt of the moon’s orbit with respect to Earth for that.

There’s about a five degree difference at play, which also explains why the moon’s position in the sky seems to change daily (although this also has to do with Earth’s seasonal orbital wobbles, too, which explains why we have seasons). This means that during most new moons, the Moon’s shadow either falls above or below the Earth’s surface.

But generally, two times a year these two orbits line up just right, and an eclipse occurs. If you’re lucky enough to see it, it’s a beautiful sight.

Postepic lets you take your favorite book quotes and turn them into art

Why it matters to you

Words can make some pretty beautiful art (aside from being works of art themselves), and Postepic is here to help you make some of your own.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the return on a picture of words? A new app called Postepic is here to help you find out, describing itself as a way to capture quotes from the books you read and turn them into elegant images. So the next time inspiration strikes (or rather, you find inspiration in someone else’s words), just grab your phone, snap a photo, and turn those words into works of art.

At its heart, Postepic is a way to organize visual information in a way that is easily digestible and visually pleasing. Given the frequency with which we see words adorning walls on large canvases, it seems like Postepic will find an eager audience in modern home decorators.

“We started this project as we wanted to build something together,” co-founder Łukasz Konofalski told TechCrunch. “We all share a passion for books and were used to sharing quotes and books recommendations between each other. We came across some reports that showed that in Poland in 2016 only half a book will be read on average, so we also wanted to support readership in general by building a bridge between traditional books and mobile world.”

More: The best free books for Kindle (and other ebook stores)

And that’s precisely what the Postepic team has done. Since first launching last June, Konofalski noted that he’s been surprised by the number of new books he’s discovered, simply by reading a passage. Now that the team has launched the second version of the week, Postepic comes with optical character recognition, which means that you can now capture words on a page without capturing the page itself, simply taking the text and superimposing it on your own choice of background using your own choice of font.

In the end, you’ll have a quote within a square frame, looking an awful lot like an Instagram post.

Currently, your quotes will be capped at 600 characters so that they’re both readable and avoid copyright concerns, and the OCR technology supports an impressive 10 languages (with more to come). They are: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

So if you’re looking for a way to add some inspiration to your life (or your walls), Postepic may be a good place to start.

Payments company Stripe isn’t close to going public, CEO says

Why it matters to you

While tech companies seem to be going public left and right these days, there are some that are still taking their time, like Stripe.

The tech industry has been abuzz with initial public offerings as of late, with Snap and MuleSoft recently going public to great fanfare and varying degrees of success. But not all companies in Silicon Valley are chomping at the bit to begin transactions on Wall Street, one of which is already in the business of helping its customers make transactions every day. Stripe is a San Francisco-based payments company that has a $9.2 billion valuation. And Patrick Collison, the CEO of the seven-year-old firm said, there are no plans for an IPO in the near future.

As initially reported by TechCrunch, Collison said at the Launch conference in San Francisco this weekend that the company does not plan on going public any time soon. Using Amazon as an example, Collison recalled struggles that many tech companies have had upon first going public.

“If you look at the Amazon daily history [as a public company], they had an incredibly turbulent time for their first couple of years,” he told Launch founder Jason Calacanis in an interview. “Now in 2017 … it all looks great. But they had a tough time at the beginning and I think this is a broader structural challenge across the industry.”

More: Mastercard to bring Qkr! payments app to the U.S. and five other countries

Collison also pointed out that an IPO could make it more difficult for a company like Stripe to take calculated risks and moving at its own pace.

“Being a public company certainly doesn’t stop you from taking a really long-term time horizon, but it does make it more difficult,” he said. “From our standpoint, becoming a public company makes sense when you’ve reached some point of stability, some plateau — [when] you’ve done the stuff that you at least initially set out to. And we haven’t. We’re still very early in this trajectory that we first established. And because we work with startups, they themselves have lengthy trajectories, so this is just going to have to be — when you’re building infrastructure — long time horizons are involved.”

 So if you’re hoping to buy Stripe stock, don’t hold your breath. It could be a while yet.

5 songs you need to stream this week: Conor Oberst, Gorillaz, and more

Every week, there are thousands of new songs hitting the airwaves — and it’s just too much for your two ears to handle. With all those options, you can’t be wasting your time on tracks that deserve a thumbs-down click.

But don’t worry, we’re going to save you the hassle. We listen to some of the most-hyped and interesting songs each week, and tell you which are worthy of your precious listening time.

More: Spotify vs. Apple Music: Which service is the streaming king?

Here are our top five songs to stream this week. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our Spotify page for a playlist of our weekly picks, which can also be found at the bottom of this post.

Conor Oberst — Barbary Coast (Later)

Bright Eyes songwriter Conor Oberst is famed for his gorgeous and wordy ballads, and Barbary Coast (Later), a single off his Salutations album is no exception. A simple guitar melody and drumbeat join with image-heavy lyrics like, “Try to lose myself/in the primitive/in Yosemite/like John Muir did/but his eyes were blue/and mine are red and raw.” It’s a combination of words and music that grabs your ears and refuses to let go.

Gorillaz — Let Me Out (Feat. Pusha T and Mavis Staples)

This week marked the release of the fourth song from famed electronic band Gorillaz’ upcoming album Humanz, and so far each new one seems to boast an entirely different set of musical influences. On the latest single, Let Me Out, there’s an awesome mid-2000s Kanye West vibe going on, with slow-paced lyrics from West collaborator Pusha T and a soul-influenced hook from vocalist Mavis Staples.

Big Thief — Mythological Beauty

We’ve been fans of Brooklyn-based band Big Thief ever since we first heard their fantastic album Masterpiece last year, and were extremely happy to hear the recent news that the band has another LP, called Capacity, coming soon. The first new single from that record, Mythological Beauty, showcases the same use of musical layers we loved on Masterpiece, with Fender Rhodes, guitars and the smooth, round vocal tone of songwriter Adrianne Lenker transporting you to a land far away.

Middle Kids — Edge of Town (and More)

Australian rockers Middle Kids nailed their recent appearance on Seattle’s KEXP radio, performing their hit single Edge of Town live with a raucous and upbeat energy. Though they’re a newer band to the world stage, this live video shows just why they’ve seen such a quick rise to popularity around the globe. This clean and poised performance  seems sure to grab them more fans.

Nite Jewel — The Answer

Your night driving cut of the week comes via songwriter Ramona Gonzalez, whose Nite Jewel project has been putting out fantastic electronic songs for years. On The Answer, a four-on-the-floor beat supports the ethereal synthesizer lines above, with Gonzalez’s shimmering vocals putting a bow on the whole musical package.

That’s it for now, but tune in next week for more tunes — and check out the playlist loaded with our recent selections below:

Your shoelaces will thank you — Chainless is a new kind of bike sans chains

Why it matters to you

Chains on bikes can be frustrating — they rust, they break, and more. But the Chainless wants to do away with the headache once and for all.

Take a closer look at this bike. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. This is indeed a chainless bicycle known as Chainless, powered instead by tungsten gears and RTS technology. And without chains, that means no worries about rusting parts, caught shoelaces, or snapping hardware — really, your bike riding experience may never be the same.

“I was sick of bicycle chain maintenance and wanted to develop a chainless bicycle,” Chainless creator Sean Chan said. “After several years of prototypes and engineering help from my father the Chainless was born and ready to be shown to the world.” Chan is preparing to launch the Chainless via a Kickstarter campaign in the next few days, in which he hopes to raise $75,000.

In designing the bike, Chan noted that he wanted to satisfy four key metrics — comfort, versatility, portability, and of course, chainless-ness. The bicycle is fully adjustable, making rider optimization a breeze, and the lightweight and compact design of the Chainless means that city riders can easily carry the bike up and down stairs or store it in a closet. And finally, without the presence of chains, Chan says, there’s no need to worry about links breaking or loosening — bike maintenance is almost too easy.

More: Propella introduces a lighter, more agile e-bike to attract more traditional cyclists

So how exactly does the chainless technology work? As Chan explains, the Chainless replaces the traditional bike mechanism with a series of tungsten gears, which won’t rust and never have to be oiled. But just because there are no chains doesn’t mean this bike can’t compete with the best of them — the wheels of Chainless are constructed from a high density magnesium alloy, and come in three sizes: 20-inch, 24-inch, and 26-inch.

And thanks to both front and rear disc brakes, the Chainless claims to be able to stop on a dime. Finally, with the Chainless’ Lock-N-Go mechanism, you can fold your bike in half for storage in just 15 seconds, so you can take it anywhere you need to go.

Once launched on Kickstarter, you’ll be able to pre-order a Chainless for the early bird price of $799, with an estimated delivery date of November.

Android feeds my constant yearning for something better

Constant change is music for my soul. Android’s frenetic pace of change fuels that.

Grado’s SR125e, a newer version of the classic.

When I was a teenager, I bought headphones. As many internet-addled 15 year-olds do, I found gaming (Diablo 2) and I found forums, one of which was head-fi.org. It’s still running today — it’s great, you should go! — but back in the early 2000’s it was home to a few thousand people really obsessed with pairing great music with equipment that evoked its Platonic ideal, its highest fidelity.

I got hooked. I started small, as obsessions often do, but at my peak — and remember, I was 15 or 16 years old, with very little disposable income — I had seven or eight pairs of very good, carefully-picked headphones to pair with music tastes that, in retrospect, were not that discerning. I wasn’t particularly interested in listening to Brahm’s Violin Concerto on my Sennheiser HD600s, nor test the soundstage of a deluxe pressing of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue on a pair of Grado SR125s. My musical world was small and fragile, but I kept yearning to find ways to eke the best possible sound from Radiohead’s OK Computer and Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick (I inherited my dad’s taste for weird, early 70’s prog rock). I would replace one set of headphones with another, constantly trying to contrive the perfect three-minute window to whatever profound truth was awaiting me on the other side.

Being dissatisfied with what you have isn’t good, but trying to improve what you have is empowering.

Today, that same quest for perfection continues to propel me forward, but my canvas has changed: the perfect cup of coffee; the right watch; the ideal phone. In fact, I turned that longing for something better into a career (I’m a lucky guy), and the disorder that is my office will attest to that fact that I don’t remain contented for long. Part of that is the job itself — I’m always testing a new phone — but part is something else, a driving need to find the right phone, the right experience to fit into my life.

What I didn’t realize until now, though, was that with every new Android phone I now immediately try to recreate the same experience. Call it the minimalist in me — really, call it getting older — but I’ve pared down my digital life to 20 or so apps and services, and now use the same home screen layout (a saved Nova Launcher backup) on every phone.

You’d think that would be where creativity goes to die, but of course, being me, I’ve found a new canvas to obsess over. Because I have unified the look and feel of my homescreen across all devices, I have turned to wallpapers and icon packs as a new outlet. I’ve spent more money on icon packs that I have on apps this month as I, predictably, try to find the perfect combination of 15 icons that, without speaking, says everything about me. Here’s the thing, though: minimalism is hard, and it takes a lot of work. A finished canvas is as much about the silence, the empty space, as it is about the music or the paint. I keep thinking I’m finished with this little project only to find that I have just started, and am far less satisfied than I was at the beginning. (My favorite icon packs right now: Dives, Pixel Icon Pack, Glim, Orbit UI, and Polycon.)

And I’m fine with that, because playing with headphones, with phones, with the minutiae of icon packs, all fulfil the same psychological purpose: to strive, to tweak, and to discover something better. I know enough about myself to channel that nervous energy into small projects, so the big ones — building a good life, raising a family — feel a little more manageable.

A few other thoughts for this Sunday:

• You may have caught a Galaxy S8 post that was taken down. I’m happy to explain exactly what happened once the phone is more widely available, but it’s pretty easy to read between the lines: Samsung is very excited about this phone.
• We recorded a really great podcast this week all about the Galaxy S8 and what it means for Samsung’s future products, including the Note 8.
• I got some pushback over the article I wrote about how OnePlus is doing everything right lately. Namely, that I didn’t address in detail the company’s propensity to discard its old phones as soon as its newer ones are released. I’ve spoken to the company about this numerous times, and while the OnePlus One is likely dead in the water due to the complicated relationship with Cyanogen, the OnePlus 2 is very much alive, and the newly-consolidated software team is working to make Nougat happen. After that — who knows.
• This phone is ridiculous. I got to play with it briefly when the AC team converged in New York, and my goodness — the excess is real.
• I don’t really know what to make of Comcast’s opening salvo into wireless. The company will never take on the Big Four directly — even if it buys spectrum in the 600MHz auction, it will never have enough to launch a wireless network of its own — but the move feels inevitable, if only because when you’re a bloated, vertically-integrated, pseudo-monopoly like Comcast, you have to offer the proper connectivity bundle of internet, TV and wireless or you can’t call yourself a true enemy of Net Neutrality.
• I’m kind of bummed this isn’t coming to the U.S. I’ve been using the Huawei P10 Plus for the past few days, and I really like it.
• Jerry has a very smart take on the future of Android, why its open-source nature is becoming less and less aligned with Google’s business goals.
• Feels good to write about the Canadian wireless market every once in a while. It’s so different (and less exciting) than the American equivalent, but it’s home, and home feels good.

Hope you’re all comfortable in your home today. Have a great Sunday!

-Daniel

After Math: Flying high

It’s been a big week for aviation achievements. DARPA successfully flew a model of its next VTOL aircraft, Dr. Peggy Whitson is tacking on three more months to her ISS stay (and breaking another record along the way), and SpaceX is saving big on its reusable rocket costs. Numbers, because how else would you join the 1.60934 kilometer-high club?

GameStop looks into a potentially serious credit card breach

Did you shop at GameStop’s online store for the holidays, or take advantage of its post-holiday clearance sales? You might want to check your credit card statement. GameStop has confirmed to security guru Brian Krebs that it’s looking into a possible data breach that compromised credit card info between September 2016 and February 2017. Krebs’ financial industry sources claim that the intruders not only took card numbers, expiration dates and cardholder addresses, but the three-digit security number that’s ordinarily hard to get (as it’s not usually stored online). This suggests the attackers planted malware on the site to harvest the info before it was transmitted — this was clearly not a run-of-the-mill breach if so.

GameStop isn’t providing much official detail at this point, but it understands that the payment data may have been “offered for sale on a website.” The company adds that it hired a “leading security firm” to investigate on the same day it caught word of the intrusion.

There are still quite a few unknowns, provided the breach report is accurate. How many people are affected? How did the perpetrators get in and operate for months? The one consolation is that GameStop is acting relatively quickly — there have certainly been incidents where companies took their sweet time discovering that something was amiss.

Via: Kotaku

Source: Krebs on Security