Real life paperboy
The arcade game Paperboy has nothing on this guy. Wonder if you could make a new version of paperboy in 3D that captures this kind of feel…
Self-discipline predicted final grades about twice as strongly as IQ did
Psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman studied 140 eighth graders and published this study in Psychological Science.
Self-discipline, measured months before the school year ended through self-report, parent report, teacher report, and a task in which students chose between a smaller reward now or a larger one later, predicted final grades, school attendance, and selection into a competitive high school programme the following spring. A replication with 164 more students added a behavioural delay-of-gratification test and a group IQ test. Self-discipline accounted for more than twice the variance in final grades that IQ did, and the effect held even after controlling for the students’ grades from earlier in the year.
MakeMyMove finds places that pay
The website makemymove helps digital nomads find a spot to move – by listing locations that are offering incentives for people to move there. Some places offer free local club memberships, business assistance, housing incentives, and even cash. There’s a surprising number of them in Indiana.
AI Arnold
What if Arnold Schwarzenegger was in Napoleon Dynamite? Now you can know – and see how far AI replacement has gone.
And that’s how you get the terminator
CES Innovation awards
Every year CES issues a number of awards for new and innovative products. You can check out winners over the years at their page.
Martin Sheen picked his name from the now Blessed Fulton Sheen
Did you know the actor Martin Sheen’s real name is Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estéve? When he picked his acting name, he saw now Blessed Fulton Sheen and was thoroughly impressed. He picked his new name from Fulton Sheen.
He then shares a story in which he got to meet Fulton Sheen and spend an hour with him.
Audi ZERØ
First the Delorean’s stainless steel body. Then the boxy silver cybertruck. Now the shiny Audi ZERØ concept car. I’m not sure it’s tag line of “one sphere and four tubes” is very flattering.
Memories of Green – best edition
This kid absolutely nails Vangelis’ Memories of Green (from the movie Blade Runner) – even with the sound of passing vehicles.
Microsoft’s new UI – WinUI3
WinUI 3 is the recommended native UI framework for building new Windows desktop applications. It brings the Fluent Design System, high-performance rendering, and a powerful XAML-based programming model to both C# and C++ developers.
Delivered as part of the Windows App SDK, WinUI enables you to create modern, polished, and responsive desktop experiences that run on Windows 10, version 1809 (build 17763) and later, including Windows 11.
That’s the promise anyway. You can program in .NET (C#) or C++ with XAML markup to build apps that run across x86, x64, and ARM devices.
While I applaud the effort, one has to wonder the logic. OS lockin to Windows is largely a thing of the past with most apps being web-based. Almost no company wants single-platform solutions. The cases that need a truly native application are very limited – things like games (which don’t need native UIs), and performance/productivity tools that directly access hardware. I worked on one such app for many years, but those kinds of apps are growing fewer and farther between.
What would be more amazing is if such a framework could also sit as a shim under old Win32 and older native/.NET apps and automatically update them to the new look and feel as well as provide this new UI interface. I realize that may not be possible without breaking lots of apps, but it could be amazing for those apps it does work for. Maybe something for Microsoft to think about…