This week’s For All Mankind’s alternative universe gives us a color Newton with video conferencing capabilities. Looks like they modified a real Newton 120.
Best SpaceX Barge Landing Video to Date
Elon Musk says Starlink was what delivered this uninterrupted video of a Falcon 9 rocket landing for the 13th time on a barge in the ocean:
This is rocket was launching more Starlink satellites to orbit.
Today’s Links
The biggest corporate holder of bitcoin is facing a reckoning – Quartz
USB-C iPhone could become mandatory in the US as senators push for common charger law – 9to5 Mac
Apple Just Wrecked 15+ Startups In Less Than 1 Hour – Medium – Jano Le Roux
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars – NASA JPL
Interesting Nugget from the NHTSA Report on Automated Driving
The National Highway Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA) put out a much talked about study on crashes involving cars equipped with driver assist and self driving automation technologies. One of the reports shows that an Apple vehicle was involved with an accident over the time period the report looked at:
Apple has long been rumored to be developing a vehicle of its own. Surprising that nobody seems to be talking about this item in the NHTSA report.
New Livestream: Checking out TMNT Shredder’s Revenge!
Here’s the deal: if you were a fan of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game you’re going to love the new reincarnation called Shredder’s Revenge. It captures the original’s vibe perfectly yet adds modern gameplay elements. It has beautiful retro graphics that are true to the original but new at the same time. The best part is that it’s already on Xbox Game Pass on the console and PC.
On the PC the system specifications are pretty minimal and the game itself takes up less than a gigabyte on your hard drive. It ran great on the Surface Laptop Go 2 we reviewed the other day.
Check out the livestream I did playing through the first five or six levels here.
The game supports couch co-op and online co-op, allowing six players in at a time. With a full complement it gets pretty crazy and I’ll admit it’s hard to keep track of where your character is when that many people are playing at once. During the stream I opened my game up to the world and we had quite a brawl going on with Shredder’s agents.
The game adds some new moves and each character has unique attributes. And like the console version there are skateboard levels to break up the repetitive nature of the gameplay a bit.
It’s not overly difficult. I played it on the middle difficulty setting and I breezed through the first third of the game in about an hour. It was even easier when other players came in to help. If you die in a co-op game there’s a short window where your teammates can revive your character. Losing all of your lives will take you back to the beginning of the level similar to other modern beat ’em ups.
My favorite recent beat ’em up by far is River City Girls. My daughters and I had a blast playing through the game. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is a close second to it.
Why Aren’t NFTs Being Used for Software Licenses?
I am surprised that the most obvious, legitimate and profitable use for NFTs is not currently being explored : transferrable and resellable media licenses with royalties.
One of the more interesting features of NFTs is the ability for the original artist to receive a share of future re-sells of the token.
This would be a real winner for indie game developers in particular who I think would like to offer gamers the flexibility of re-selling their licenses when they’re done with a game – something that none of the major platforms allow for now.
Today’s Links
“Chili’s Baby Back Ribs” behind-the-scenes recording session from 1998. – Todd Spence, Twitter
Convicted scammer Anna Sorokin says she is now selling NFTs – NBC News
Prime Day 2022 will be July 12 & 13, with deals starting as early as June 21 – AFTVNews
Elon Musk Tells Staff Twitter Should Allow ‘Pretty Outrageous’ Tweets but that the platform doesn’t have to give those posts reach. – Bloomberg
The Media’s Tesla Hit Job
I am annoyed by all of the negative headlines about Tesla’s autopilot crash numbers. This comes after a government report was issued about accidents involving vehicles that were driving autonomously before a crash.
Tesla has the most number of autonomous vehicles on the road by far so of course they will have a higher number of reported incidents vs. other manufacturers. The data does not indicate who was at fault in those incidents, the attention level of the driver, etc.
Meanwhile Tesla’s data shows that vehicles running with their autonomous features are far less likely to crash vs. a human controlled vehicle.
I’ll talk more about this on Monday’s wrapup.
New Video: Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 Review
Full confession: I have a thing for 12″ laptops. I was a huge fan of Apple’s 12″ Macbook that remains one of my favorite laptops of all time. The fact that Apple hasn’t made an M1/M2 version of it is downright malpractice at this point.
I liked that Mac for its convenience. It wasn’t pretty slow and didn’t have the best keyboard, but it made up for those shortfalls in its extremely light weight, portability and battery life.
I have not found many computers on the Windows side that come close to that Macbook except the Microsoft Surface Go laptops. I bought it for review a year or so ago and ended up keeping it because it’s become my go-to Windows device for the times when I need a Windows device. Like the Macbook it comes with some compromises: The Surface Go has relatively short battery life, no backlit keyboard, lackluster graphics performance, a low resolution display and a noisy cooling fan.
But the convenience and utility of an affordable fully featured (and well built) Windows laptop outweighed all of it for me.
The second iteration of the Surface Laptop Go, called the Go 2, brings a substantial performance boost in its graphical performance. While not a gaming powerhouse by any means it is able to run many modern games at 720p at or around 30 fps. In my review we were able to get Red Dead Redemption 2, No Man’s Sky, and the Witcher 3 running at decent frame rates. The cooling fan is also noticeably quieter vs. the original too.
Physically it’s the same high quality piece of hardware as before, right down to the non-backlit keyboard and low res display. But it has a fit and finish that few laptops at this price point have – it is engineered with the same attention to detail as Microsoft’s considerably more expensive devices in the Surface lineup.
Bottom line it’s not for everyone. But for those looking for a full featured Windows PC that’s small, lightweight, and functional there are not many other choices at this price point.
Today’s Links
US Patent and Trademark Office Filing its Own Trademark – Erik Leton/Twitter
M2 MacBook Air smokes the M1 in leaked benchmark tests – iMore
Europe cracks down on data cap exemptions in update to net neutrality rules – Ars Technica
“Tough to forge” digital driver’s license is… easy to forge – Ars Technica
New Extra’s Channel Video: Surface Laptop Go 2 Unboxing
Yesterday on the Extra’s channel I unboxed the new Surface Laptop Go 2 (affiliate link) which I will be working on reviewing today. Physically it feels a lot like the old one but they made some major improvements to its graphics performance and fan noise.
You can get a sneak peek at its performance in the livestream I did yesterday testing it out. I’m sure I’ll get lots of price vs. features discussion in the comment stream on the review but I think there’s a well established place in the market for this device and it’s priced right for it.
In the meantime check out the unboxing here!
SpaceX Gets Approvals for Texas Space Port
SpaceX got the go-ahead from the FAA to operate its Texas “Starbase” facility for orbital flights following an environmental impact study. But they put a few conditions in place.
In addition to environmental safeguards the FAA is requiring SpaceX to write a “historical narrative” report on the Mexican War and Civil War events that took place on or around the property.
Like the Kennedy Space Center, which in addition to being a space port is also a national wildlife refuge, SpaceX will be required to coordinate with the US Fish and Wildlife Service on operating a similar refuge at Starbase. This includes opportunities for wildlife photography and monitoring critters via Starlink.
Read more at CNBC. Orbital flights are not that far away!
New Video: Comcast Doubles “Gigabit Pro” Speeds to 6 Gigabits Per Second
About a year and a half ago I installed Comcast’s fiber optic Gigabit Pro service at my home. I documented the process over the course of several weeks that you can see on this playlist.
When the service was first installed in October of 2020 it offered a 2 gigabit connection over an SFP+ circuit along with a second 1 gigabit RJ45 circuit. A few months later they increased the SFP+ speed to 3 gigabits.
This past week Comcast announced they were upping the speed again, this time doubling it to a full 6 gigabits per second over the SFP+ while still maintaining the 1 gig circuit for a total of 7.
But what can you do with that amount of bandwidth realistically? Well, it largely depends on what you’re looking to do along with network conditions and interoperability agreements.
As you’ll see in this week’s Weekly Wrapup, it’s relatively easy to hit the full speed when running a speed test to one of Comcast’s servers, but it’s harder to reach those speeds when testing servers on networks outside of Comcast’s infrastructure. For example when I upload YouTube videos rarely do I see the connection hit 1 gigabit, let alone 6.
Still having a multigigabit connection has been a real game changer for my workflow. I’m very happy with the service reliability and the dramatic reduction in upload times for my videos.
My Apple //c Circa 1987ish
I was playing the “Halley Project” – a game that taught the basics of space navigation. It involved using an included paper star map to find planets that you needed to navigate to. I was very proud of myself for reaching whatever planet I landed on and took a picture (with film!) to mark the achievement.
The Halley Project also had about 20-30 seconds of full speech when the game first booted up! A rarity for sure on the Apple II.
You can play the game here on the Internet Archive, the audio sequence starts right when it boots up.
Today’s Links
Is LaMDA Sentient? An Interview – Medium
The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life – Washington Post
Telegram CEO hopes for ‘regulatory action’ over iPhone browser tech block – iMore
MiSTer FPGA News & Updates – PSX Accuracy, GUN4IR, Dragon’s Lair & More – RetroRGB / Lu
The best demos to play during this week’s Steam Next Fest – PC Gamer
Credentials for thousands of open source projects free for the taking—again! – Ars Technica
The Week Ahead for June 13, 2022
Another Monday is here! I actually had a pretty productive weekend doing some upgrades/changes to my production machine. I swapped in a more powerful GPU in preparation for finally going to 4k and making some camera upgrades. At some point I’ll get there :).
I also got rid of a problematic 10 gig ethernet adapter and upgraded to an Intel powered SFP+ adapter. I then ran a fiber patch cable from my equipment room over to the new card for a more reliable connection over the Cat 5e that was going to it previously. I was having some odd problems with this PC locking up my entire network when it was doing heavy volumes of network traffic. It was either the NIC, the cabling, or both. This should fix it once and for all!
You can see what I got and how it’s working in this video. It’ll be published on the YouTube channel later this week.
On the docket for this week are reviews of the new Synology RT6600ax router (affiliate link), a Mele “Quieter 3” fanless Mini PC, and if it arrives the new Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2. As usual whatever other shiny objects come in will also get some coverage :).
Be on the look out for livestreams! Set your notifications! Here’s the latest one I did shooting an extra’s channel video and a portion of the network adapter one.
Have a great week!
Today’s Links
New Video : HAM Radio Update!
The last time we talked about my amateur radio adventure I had just passed my technician license exam but didn’t yet have the license! In this latest video I fill you in on all of the things I’ve been doing on the air. Here’s what I’ve managed to figure out:
Contacting the Space Station
The International Space Station has a pair of amateur radios on board and it’s possible with just a handheld radio to communicate through it! Most of the time the astronauts aren’t available but the radio is set in repeater mode so people on the ground can communicate with each other over great distances. In the video I demonstrate how I was able to talk with some 300 miles away using the station as a repeater!
Digital Voice Communications
The Anytone 878UVII Plus radio I purchased works in analog and digital modes. I was able to connect to a local repeater and communicate with the Connecticut ARES group digitally. I’ve found so far that experienced Hams have been very welcoming and helpful with this newbie :).
Packet Radio
I am very interested in sending data through the air without having to use phone lines or Internet connections to do it. In the video I demonstrate how I was able to send an email through a local Winlink server using my handheld radio and a laptop.
What’s next? I need to get a proper antenna mounted on my roof for VHF & UHF communications along with a more powerful base station radio. That’s my next project although I’ll probably hire a professional to install it. I welcome any tips, recommendations and advice !
Newton Makes a Cameo in For All Mankind
I love the Apple TV+ show For All Mankind. It’s an alternative history sci-fi drama where the Soviets landed on the moon ahead of the United States. There’s something for everyone with this show which is helmed by Ronald Moore who previously worked on Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica.
Season 3, which just launched this week, takes place during an alternative 90’s where the Soviets and Americans are racing to get to Mars. And being an Apple show they are of course using Newtons as their personal digital assistants!
Unfortunately the Newton’s screen never looked this good. The best they could do was a green “indiglo” that was popular on some watches back in the day.
Perhaps all of the space age tech that developed out of the alternative space race in For All Mankind made for better displays!
Read and watch more about Newton in this recent blog post.
New Extra’s Channel Video: Unboxing the Wyze Cam Floodlight
As many of you know I use a bunch of Wyze IOT stuff because it’s convenient, cheap, and can work without a subscription fee. I have a long dead motion detector floodlight on my garage and recently came across this Wyze floodlight that has a Wyze Cam Version 3 attached to it.
I haven’t hooked it up just yet (I am having an electrician friend do the work for me) but thought I would unbox it so people who are more handy can see what’s in the box for hardware. The TLDR is not much.
Watch the unboxing here! And see some of my prior Wyze reviews here.