Tag Archives: Technology

Why Spatial Audio Is Such a Big Deal for Google Cardboard | WIRED

As someone who’s tried Google Cardboard, I am pretty keen to see this happening.

FOR ALL THERE is to love about Google Cardboard, it’s still a bare-bones experience. It’s barely even VR, really. But the cheap, smartphone-based viewer offers the VR-curious an easy window into 360-degree video. Pricier headsets like the Oculus Rift and Sony PlayStation VR, designed for gaming, deliver more than a cool stereoscopic viewing experience. In addition to the immersive visual eye-candy—users can explore virtual spaces, peek around corners, and, using hand-held controllers, interact with digital objects—these sophisticated VR rigs offer truly lifelike audio.

When a monster sneaks up on your left in a VR game, you’ll hear its slobbering tongue lashing at your left ear. When a shot comes at you from above you and slightly to the right, you know exactly where to return fire. When The Edge tears through the opening riff of “Mysterious Ways,” it reverberates around the stadium.

The high-priced headsets from Oculus, Sony, and HTC pack the processing punch to deliver “spatially oriented” audio experiences that consider direction, distance, and environmental factors when creating the soundtrack. Cardboard, powered by your smartphone, can’t do that yet. But earlier this week, the Cardboard team made it a little easier to give the audio in these apps a bit more realism. Asthis blog post from Google Cardboard product manager Nathan Martz outlines, the Cardboard software development kit for Android and the Unity game engine now support spatial audio. This platform update paves the way for Google Cardboard to become something more than a gateway drug to true VR.

Source: Why Spatial Audio Is Such a Big Deal for Google Cardboard | WIRED

Phone Flashing

Tried to flash my phone over the weekend — failed miserably and I had to restore from my backup in November. Which meant a lost a lot of settings and apps :(

I really need to keep my backups up to date :/

My mother-in-law was confused by this obituary, so she read it to me… – Imgur

 

Probably the best obit I’ve read in a long time. And the funniest too.

https://imgur.com/kO5VrYQ

Hacker Scripts

I just gotta share these :)

https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts

 

Hacker Scripts

Based on a true story:

xxx: OK, so, our build engineer has left for another company. The dude was literally living inside the terminal. You know, that type of a guy who loves Vim, creates diagrams in Dot and writes wiki-posts in Markdown… If something – anything – requires more than 90 seconds of his time, he writes a script to automate that.

xxx: So we’re sitting here, looking through his, uhm, “legacy”

xxx: You’re gonna love this

xxx: smack-my-bitch-up.sh – sends a text message “late at work” to his wife (apparently). Automatically picks reasons from an array of strings, randomly. Runs inside a cron-job. The job fires if there are active SSH-sessions on the server after 9pm with his login.

xxx: kumar-asshole.sh – scans the inbox for emails from “Kumar” (a DBA at our clients). Looks for keywords like “help”, “trouble”, “sorry” etc. If keywords are found – the script SSHes into the clients server and rolls back the staging database to the latest backup. Then sends a reply “no worries mate, be careful next time”.

xxx: hangover.sh – another cron-job that is set to specific dates. Sends automated emails like “not feeling well/gonna work from home” etc. Adds a random “reason” from another predefined array of strings. Fires if there are no interactive sessions on the server at 8:45am.

xxx: (and the oscar goes to) fucking-coffee.sh – this one waits exactly 17 seconds (!), then opens an SSH session to our coffee-machine (we had no frikin idea the coffee machine is on the network, runs linux and has SSHD up and running) and sends some weird gibberish to it. Looks binary. Turns out this thing starts brewing a mid-sized half-caf latte and waits another 24 (!) seconds before pouring it into a cup. The timing is exactly how long it takes to walk to the machine from the dudes desk.

xxx: holy sh*t I’m keeping those

Original: http://bash.im/quote/436725 (in Russian)
Pull requests with other implementations (Python, Perl, Shell, etc) are welcome.

A photo is shaped more by the person behind the camera than by what is in front of it

“A photo is shaped more by the person behind the camera than by what is in front of it”

Having a preconception of the subject affects how a photographer takes the photo, including having no preconception at all.

RPHM App

Just got an email from the RPHM organisers. There’s an app in the Google Play store that allows you to track the runners (including me) during the race, and also provides split times as they run over the timing mats. For runners, it also shows you where you are on the course at that time. Although I wouldn’t recommend it — you need to make sure you’re not running into the barriers :D

Google Play: http://royalparksfoundationemail.org.uk/1L97-3PL8Z-ERXF5H-1SKAD2-1/c.aspx

Spotify just got a lot more creepy….

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/cant-squat-spotifys-eerie-new-privacy-policy/

SPOTIFY RELEASED A new privacy policy that is now in effect, and it turns out that the company wants to learn a lot more about you and there’s not much you can do about it.

We encourage everyone to read the whole privacy policy before downloading the update or checking off the “Accept” box, but in case you have better things to do, here are some highlights from it.

…

“With your permission, we may collect information stored on your mobile device, such as contacts, photos, or media files. Local law may require that you seek the consent of your contacts to provide their personal information to Spotify, which may use that information for the purposes specified in this Privacy Policy.” – Spotify

Like a jealous ex, Spotify wants to see (and collect) your photos and see who you’re talking to. What kind of media files Spotify will collect from you is vague, and why the company needs it is unclear, but it’s doing it regardless. Also, the fact that Spotify expects you to go through your contact list and ask everyone for their consent in sharing their data with Spotify is–what’s the word? Oh yes: it’s ridiculous.

…

“You may integrate your Spotify account with Third Party Applications. If you do, we may receive similar information related to your interactions with the Service on the Third Party Application, as well as information about your publicly available activity on the Third Party Application. This includes, for example, your “Like”s and posts on Facebook.” – Spotify

It shouldn’t surprise you that if you connect your Spotify account to Facebook, Spotify will be able to see the information you post there. If this bothers you, we suggest that you log into your Spotify preferences and disconnect Spotify from your Facebook account (more information on how to do this can be found here). After all, Facebook isn’t all that necessary to use Spotify (unless, of course, you want your friends to know you’re listening to Owl City).

…

“If you don’t agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, then please don’t use the Service.” – Spotify

…
I value my privacy, so I’ll stop using Spotify. Bye Spotify, I won’t miss you.

Related articles

Google Drive FUSE

Found this tool which exposes your Google Drive as a FUSE mount, allowing you to copy to and from your drive as if it was a directory on your desktop. It is slow, though.

https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse

Installation instructions for Debian (Wheezy):

http://xmodulo.com/mount-google-drive-linux.html

Richard Branson on Turning a Disadvantage to Your Advantage

Richard’s insightful look at living with a problem and using it to turn it to your advantage

Whenever something goes wrong or you find yourself at a disadvantage, often the best way to handle it is to turn a negative into a positive. I learned this early on as I struggled with dyslexia, a learning disability that affects reading comprehension.

Richard Branson on Turning a Disadvantage to Your Advantage.