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I love mapping software, and the Google Maps teams has done some amazing work. It’s not just mapping and route-finding to more incredible things like Google Earth and Google Earth VR. They’ve got features that auto-update store hours, update street speed limits by reading the road signs, how crowded transit routes are, and trips. Now they’re adding a new immersive view.

Say you’re planning a trip to London and want to figure out the best sights to see and places to eat. With a quick search, you can virtually soar over Westminster to see the neighborhood and stunning architecture of places, like Big Ben, up close. With Google Maps’ helpful information layered on top, you can use the time slider to check out what the area looks like at different times of day and in various weather conditions, and see where the busy spots are. Looking for a spot for lunch? Glide down to street level to explore nearby restaurants and see helpful information, like live busyness and nearby traffic. You can even look inside them to quickly get a feel for the vibe of the place before you book your reservation.

It starts rolling out in Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo later this year with more cities coming soon.

There’s also a new Live View that has AR elements to help you orient yourself to destinations. What’s interesting is that people with vision problems are now finding it very helpful.

It’s a reminder that really innovative things can come from helping those with disabilities and re-affirming the value of their lives. That’s a fundamentally different approach than the alternative.

Links:

• Google announcement https://blog.google/products/maps/three-maps-updates-io-2022/
• Google planets: https://blog.google/products/maps/space-out-planets-google-maps/
• https://www.oxo.com/blog/behind-the-scenes/behind-design-oxos-iconic-good-grips-handles
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/

Scalping on tech items has been going on since people lined up outside stores for the first gaming consoles. It is not much different than ticket scalpers. But having the audacity to try and scalp items that are not even out of stock and available for immediate pickup is pretty out there. But here’s exactly one of these craigslist sales happening here in even lowly Portland.

I know, they’re probably counting on people not checking. I know they’re likely banking on the particular model selling out and grabbing a sale from a desperate person needing one that day. You only need to get one person to make money after all…

I’m not great a cutting onions – but man this guy sure is.

Senpai Kai walks you through all the different kinds of ways to make Michelin Star rated cuts and when you might use them. His other videos show you how to make other Michelin star versions of various dishes. It’s interesting to see how it is all made.

Gregory Cannon like’s Tetris. He recently wrote an AI that plays NES Tetris extremely well. It’s not perfect as it uses a search & heuristic approach, but boy can it play some Tetris.

Source code here: https://github.com/GregoryCannon/StackRabbit

He also wrote a Tetris trainer that lets you draw a particular Tetris board layout and then get an AI recommendation about the best play.

William Shatner played some big roles. Everyone knows him as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, or the panicky passenger in the Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20000 Feet, or his bizarre foray into cover songs. He also had some offbeat roles like Incubus – filmed entirely in the dead-on-arrival created language of Esperanto.

I recently watch The Outer Limits season 2 episode 2 titled “Cold Hands, Warm Heart”. He plays an astronaut – which is some real-life foreshadowing of his later roles. It’s also got some really good Shatner over-acting in it and definitely worth a watch for people wanting to see some of his early ultra-cheese.

Shopping on Black Friday is not as simple as “Buy it because it’s the cheapest price all year!” You have to actually do your homework to figure out which items are actually a good buy.

Here’s some great resources to help you figure it out.

Check out the Black Friday ads to make your plan:

The first thing you should do is be prepared for Black Friday before it comes. You’ll do this by starting a few weeks in advance by reading through the ‘leaked’ Black Friday ad scans and seeing if there is any deals you’re interested in.

• Slickdeals Black Friday page – Not only does it have all the ad scans, it also has the normal Slickdeals voting system so you can tell what deals are actually deals.
  • Black Friday sub-category

Check the reviews:

Sadly, it’s all too common for review sites to be purchased and largely just paid advertising. Anything endorsed by Twitch streamers, celebrities, or any online personality through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc – are almost 100% guaranteed to be paid advertising. Websites that are reliable and accurate one year turn into paid promotion sites with shocking regularity. You need to check who owns the sites and see if the founders are still standing behind their reviews.

• Hardware Unboxed – Good rating site that’s probably best for its gaming monitor reviews
  • Monitors Unboxed – A dedicated subchannel of Hardware Unboxed that is just monitors.
• RTings – good for TV’s and monitors

Tools for reviews:

• CamelCamelCamel – check this historical price of any item on Amazon and see if it’s really on sale, or not. Just be aware that Amazon often changes the product links, serial numbers, and other tricks so you can’t get a long-term historical price on some items.
• FakeSpot – a website that uses AI to determine how fake the reviews of a product are. Sadly, too many products are subject to very easily manipulated fake reviews. Some utilize very sophisticated methods, other markets like the mattress review industry are almost fully controlled or owned by the mattress companies themselves.
  • Interesting article from Fast Company on how mattress companies bullied, coerced with lawsuits, and bought out review sites. This was from 2016, so you can be assured it’s become more standard practice.

¹ When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all assembled together in one place. ² Suddenly, there came from heaven a sound similar to that of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were sitting. ³ Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages,^[c] as the Spirit enabled them to do so.

⁵ Now staying in Jerusalem there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ At this sound, a large crowd of them gathered, and they were bewildered because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

⁷ They were astounded and asked in amazement, “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ How is it then that each of us hears them in his own native language? 

So many things happen around the octave of Easter that it’s easy to be overwhelmed and miss the important and deeply rich events.

Pentecost (Hebrew Shavuot, Greek pentekoste fiftieth) was an annual Jewish festival marking the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat. It is also called “the day of the first ripe fruits” (Numbers 28:26), and in the Greek Scriptures is the name used for the Feast of Harvest (Exodus 11:16) or Feast of Weeks (Exodus 34:22). Shavuot unfolded ‘seven full weeks after Passover from 16 Nisan, the day when they offered a sheaf of barley (Leviticus 11:15).

According to Jewish tradition, the day of Pentecost correspond to when the law was given to Moses at Sinai and Israel became a people apart. The apostle Paul draws a comparison of this event by saying that the Christians are a ‘holy nation’ (1 Peter 2: 9) a kind of first fruits to God (John 1:18), met on a heavenly Mount Zion as part of a new covenant (Hebrews 12: 18-24; Luke 22:20).

Jean Restout II’s Pentecost is currently housed in the Louvre (room 924, Sully Wing, Level 2), but was originally painted for the Abbey of Saint-Denis which is outside of Paris and is definitely a painting you should see if you get a chance. Click below for a bigger image.

Links:

• https://louvrebible.org.uk/oeuvre/213/annexes
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_II_Restout_-Pentecost-_WGA19318.jpg

The Old Church downtown is a concert hall and has a number of cool things. One of the fun things is their free lunchtime concerts. They have started live casting them on YouTube, which is even more convenient.

The October concert for the last 2 years has usually an organ concert by Michael Barnes in which he plays classic spooky organ music like the ones below. Plus a guest performer with some more folk classics.

• Funeral March of a Marionette (Charles Gounod)
• Toccata and Fuge in D Minor (Bach)
• Scherzo from Grand Sonata in E Flat (Dudley Buck)
• March of the Dwarves
• Have you seen the Ghost of John?
• Addams Family Theme
• Rondo Alla Turca (Mozart)

Anybody remember hypercolor shirts – the ones that changed color based on heat?

Project Primrose, displayed here as an interactive dress, uses wearable and somewhat flexible non-emissive light-diffuser modules that change state electronically. They can display source content from various Adobe products.

Here’s the demo from Adobe MAX Sneaks 2023 or read the research paper.

Reminds me of similar efforts being tried out by BMW on their color changing cars.

Valve is paying open source developers

The Steam Deck is a wonderful bit of hardware. The software that underpins it uses open-source packages like the Mesa graphics driver, the Vulkan graphics API, and Valve’s own Proton compatibility layer. This means the Steam Deck only runs thanks to open-source developers.

In a recent chat with the Verge, Steam Deck designer Pierre-Loup Griffais mentioned that the company is paying over a hundred open-source devs to work on the various bits of software for the Steam Deck. Valve has them working on stuff like Steam for ChromeOS and Linux, too.

Griffais said Valve’s corralling of open-source devs is part of “a larger strategy to coordinate all these projects and set up kind of an overall architecture” for gaming on Linux.

This also means the Steam Deck may never be “stable” like a traditional console. “I don’t think you should expect that,” says Griffais. “Stable in terms of having a great experience for people? Yeah, absolutely. But I think we are always going to be pushing updates as long as there’s people playing.”

For updates, the team is primarily working off two big lists, says Yang: “things we want to fix, and things we still want to make.”

It’s a fascinating and different way to develop a gaming platform. One I’m happy to play with since I own a Steam deck myself.

The Verge article also has more information from Griffais about hardware fixes, future plans, and other great tidbits of information and insights as to what Valve is planning. It’s worth a read.

Installing Epic Games Store on Stream Deck

Windows Central gives you instructions to show it’s possible to install the Epic Games store and it’s games on the Steam Deck. You use the Heroic Games Launcher to access and install games from not only Epic, but Good Old Games as well. It takes some work and jumping through a number of hoops but seems like a great way to get even more games on your Steam Deck.

Articles

• https://www.theverge.com/23499215/valve-steam-deck-interview-late-2022
• https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-paying-a-whole-lot-of-developers-to-keep-the-steam-decks-open-source-software-going/
• https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/pc-gaming/how-to-install-epic-games-on-steam-deck