#but never had the patience for manually doing it every time on mobile

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Bucky somehow gets frozen again but only for a very short time cause its Tony to the rescue. When he wakes the only thing he can do is ask what year it is while trying not to panic. Tony goes into mother hen mode.

You Wanna Build a Snowman?

A/N: Gore warning here for those sensitive to that sort of thing. (severed limbs)

“So much fuss,” the man said, and he really wasn’t a man at all,but a boy in his late teens, someone who should never have drawn theunfavorable attention of the Avengers, “for so small a thing.” He reached forthe band of alien metal hanging off the tree-limb. Tony eyeballed the scene;they didn’t have much longer and the waves of ice-golems that the temple hadunleashed as guardians were slowing the Avengers down. Cap went down in a waveof them, then burst up, spinning like a red-white-blue pinwheel, knockinganimated snowmen in all directions.

“Great,” Clint said, climbing up to a better vantage point. Tonywasn’t watching him, mind you, but the HUD was keeping track of where all theAvengers were, mapping out their relative positions on the combat grid. “We’vegot ourselves an old-fashioned Tolkien human wanna-be here.”

“Only a Tolkien geek would be able to pass the Mandarin’s templetrials,” Natasha said. “I am telling you, censorship is not such a bad thing.Or at least, make sure to give them the wrong answers.”

Hulk smashed into the melee and opened up a good third of thebattlespace in a single swipe. Atta boy, Tony thought, darting into thespace left behind by the Hulk and repulsing a good half dozen; where were theycoming from? If he could just close off the spawn point, that would make thisbattle a lot easier. His boots were losing traction on the icy floor; thecreatures bled some sort of slurry ice-water that froze almost as soon as ithit the stone.

“No, what we need to do is make sure the next Mandarin has moreobscure taste in literature,” Sam said. His guns barely made a dent in the iceand snow monsters, and he would have been the perfect person to zip ahead,except the temple was guarded against fliers. Both Sam and Tony were forced to fighttheir way through on foot. It was that or learn to maneuver in space, somethingSam couldn’t do, and Tony would not.

“What we need to do right now is make sure that Frosty the Snowmandoesn’t put a ring on it,” Tony snapped. He was tired of Ten Rings; the oldMandarin had been old, and while not a good man, he’d been mostly retired. Buthe’d gone and done the whole setting up of Makluan temples and tests to claimthe rings. Which would have been fine, maybe, except that this particularMandarin fuckwit had sent out advertisements, telling people the Ten Rings werein play and fucking daring someone to try to claim them.

The Avengers had been chasing over the globe for weeks now,grabbing the would-be Ring Bearers. The biggest problem seemed to be that therings themselves refused to be contained. If a potential Mandarin solved thepuzzles and obtained the ring, he or she could wield it, but if an Avengerplucked it off their smoking corpse, the ring would vanish and reappear in adifferent temple.

Tony scanned the HUD again. A single red star glinted, totally outof the expected path. “Bucky, baby, sweetheart, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Linin’ up th’ shot, kitten,” the Winter Soldier said.

(mobile users, there is a readmore line here)

Tony finally found him, perched high in the ruins, the rip-tear ofvacuum only inches above his head. Had Bucky crab-crawled the whole way, mereseconds away from being suffocated, frozen solid in space? Tony’s HUD indictedan accelerated heart-rate and rapidly rising blood pressure before Friday sentanother cooling wave of chemicals into the pharmaceutical suite. “Boss, head inthe game,” she scolded.

Just what he needed, a babysitting momma duck AI.

Tony found the spawn point, finally, the shimmering faint tracesof extradimensional energy that was letting the ambulatory popsicles in fromwhatever dimensional disaster they’d come from. “William Tell,” Tony snapped.“I need you over here; sticky up this portal before we get more snowpocalypsereinforcements.”

Clint was so good with his aim that Tony didn’t even bother tostop moving in order to let him get the shots in, he just waited until theexternal mics picked up the gentle thrum of Clint’s bowstring and Tony lit upthe sticky substance as soon as it came in. Together, Tony’s flame-thrower andClint’s arrows worked like a sort of double adhering napalm, grabbing thecreatures and melting them to steam. The battlefield was obscured in the thickmists.

Thor whirled his hammer, clearing the fog.

The Mandarin candidate slid the ring onto his finger. He turned,raised his hand, the white Zero band glittering and catching all the light likea fallen star.

“Ha, gotcha,” Bucky said, soft. A second later, Tony heard the boygasp as Bucky’s bullet went right through the kid’s wrist, nearly severing thehand that bore the ring.

A blast of frost, glittering and deadly, shot from the ring as theboy fell to his knees, screaming.

The frost touched the Winter Soldier and for just a moment,everything was fine.

Then Bucky was captured in an icy shell like a diamond, frozen ina moment of perfect horror. The block teetered on the wall.

Tony had seen this, seen it a dozen times or more. If that blocktouched the ground and shattered, there was no hope. Bucky would be broken,irrevocably and unrecoverable.

“No!”

“Tony!” Steve was running, flat out, toward the far side of thecompound, where Bucky was falling; falling.

Steve threw the shield down in front of him, jumped on it like itwas a fucking snowboard, and Tony gritted his jaw, tracing vector angles; firedthe repulsors to give Steve an extra burst of speed.

Steve caught the Winter Soldier just before the ice block hit theground.

“That has got to be the grossest use of a severed hand I’ve evereven heard of,” Clint said.

They’d made that mistake before, taking the ring off the finger ofa Mandarin contender. So this wasn’t the best idea they’d ever had, but it wasthe only one. They took the severed hand, injected it with some of Tony’snanobot suit controllers and Tony was pretending it was just a… very fleshyversion of the gauntlet in order to manipulate the Zero ring in order to thawout the Winter Soldier.

“Man,” Sam said, shoving at Clint’s shoulder, “here I was sure youhad at least a half-dozen uses for a severed hand.”

Clint licked his lips, looking faintly green around the gills. “Ido. This. Still the grossest.”

“Shut up,” Tony snapped. “And back off, One Direction, you are alltoo up in my space here.”

The problem was, he didn’t have any sort of telepathic connectionto the ring itself. From what Tony understood, the very act of putting the ringon did a download of the instruction manual for the wielder.

Natasha was practicing her best interrogation techniques on theOnce and Future Jack Frost, but the kid was still so fucking traumatized aboutlosing the hand (and the fact that Tony had used the unibeam to sear the woundshut so that he wouldn’t die!) that he was barely coherent. Tony was aboutready to start wiggling fingers randomly, just to see what happened, but that…could have unintended consequences, including sending them into another IceAge, so Tony was trying, very hard, to keep hold of his patience. And hopedthat his boyfriend didn’t fucking melt before they could get him out ofthere.

“So help me,” Tony finally snapped, listening to the kid whimperand moan and complain, “if you don’t tell me how to fix this right the fucknow, I will turn you upside down and feed you to the vacuum of space slowlywhere you can feel yourself die an inch at a time. We clear?”

Every single one of the Avengers turned to gape at him; they allknew Tony’s feelings about space, how he’d almost died alone, out there. Thepanic attacks, the sense of dread.

“I’d um… do what he says,” Steve said. “Because none of us aregoing to stop him.”

The boy, eyes eating up his face, made a simple gesture with hisother hand, like catching a ball and twisting his wrist. Friday zoomed in,recorded it, replayed it.

“Do it again,” Tony said. He and Friday analyzed it. The motionwas identical. “You got it Fri? Help me out here, babygirl.”

“You got it, boss,” the AI chirped.

Please work, please work, please work.

Friday grabbed hold of Tony’s nanobots; she’d done it a few timeswhen he was out of commission; the control was part of the Avalon protocols, whichTony had never bothered to explain to the team. He grimaced. At least Buckycouldn’t see what he was doing, because Bucky always noticed stupid shit likethat, and Tony really wanted to put that reckoning off as long as possible.

His brain twitched as Friday ran the protocols up though hisfingers, into his brain, and out through the nanobots.

The severed hand twisted, caught, manipulated the Zero ring’senergy.

Bucky fell to his knees, gasping, soaking wet and shivering.

“Oh god,” Bucky said. He couldn’t seem to move, hands planted onthe cold rock floor, staring at the puddles of water than formed under him.“Oh, god. What… what year is it?”

Tony handed off the hand to Natasha, who cringed away, but tookit, holding it out and away from her by one finger. “Oh, baby, Bucky, hey, hey,hey,” Tony said, the suit peeling back as fast as he could get Friday to shedit. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s only been a few hours, honey.” Freezing watersoaked up into his flight suit as he slid to the ground, pulling Bucky into hisarms.

“Oh, god,” Bucky said, again. He was so cold, his skin was likeice, his muscles moving slow and uncertain. Tony rubbed at his skin, tryingfrantically to warm him. “Tony, I… oh, god.”

“It’s all right, honey,” Tony said. Bruce was there, suddenly,shirtless and holding one of his multiple blankets that they stored on theQuinjet. “Thank you.”

“Give me a hand, here,” Clint said to Natasha, holding out asample bin. “Let’s get our would-be Mandarin off to a nice toasty prison cell.This whole severed hand thing, that might be the way to go. This ring hasn’tvanished yet.”

“Man, I heard of eight heads in a duffle bag, but 10 hands in aring box just seems a bit much,” Sam complained.

“Come on, honey, can you get -- Steve, help me out here,” Tonysaid. Between Steve carrying most of Bucky’s weight and Tony providingemotional support and warmth, they got the Winter Soldier back on the Quinjet.

Bucky was shivering, clinging to Tony with both hands. “Thought…didn’t know. Time passes different, when you’re frozen,” he said. Tonyshuddered. “Your brain don’t slow down none, an’ there’s nothing to tell timewith, no heartbeat, no breathin’, just time and time and more time. I… didn’tknow if’d been an hour or another twenty years. If I’d lost you…”

“I’m right here,” Tony said, squeezing Bucky’s hand tighter. “Iwon’t leave you behind, I promise.”

Bucky tucked his face against Tony’s neck, still cold, stillshivering, seeking Tony’s warmth and comfort. When Tony looked over Bucky’sshoulder, he saw Steve, solemn and stern. “Yeah, don’t you worry, pal,” Stevesaid, acknowledging Tony with a quick nod. “Tony won’t let you fall.”

“Don’t listen to this asshole,” Tony said as Bucky flinched. Stevewas never going to forgive himself for the train. Tony rolled his eyes atSteve; Bucky was back with them, and it was time to let those things stay inthe past where they belonged. “He’s the one that caught you, acting like Disneyon Ice, I swear. I’ll have Friday play the logs when we get back. It was prettyamazing.”

“Wouldn’t have made it there without Tony’s help,” Steve said.

“It was a team effort,” Natasha said. She held a mug of cheapcoffee between her hands. “Here, Yasha, have something warm to drink. It willhelp.”

Yeah, Tony thought, keeping one arm around Bucky’s shoulders whilehe cradled the cup, letting the heat soothe. “We make a great team. I mean, I amthe boss, but…” Tony kissed Bucky’s hair, letting the razzing of the teamgo over his head. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had Bucky in hisarms and one of the Ten Rings on lockdown.

He was going to count it as a win.

#winteriron #tony x bucky #tony stark #bucky barnes #frozen #ten rings #mild gore #unauthorized use of severed limbs #prompts #tisfan #Anonymous

[superfamigos]

los juegos de 2016 de oli

My inaugural post on el Super Famigos punto com! Cool beans! :D

So here's my 2016 games list. These are the games I liked most in 2016. In lieu of ranking, I'll list them in alphabetical order. I'll also add some honorable mentions, since I did enjoy them and don't want them to be left out. ;)

The List

Breath of Fire III

(heartthrob credit: BoF wikia)

Fitting that the first on my list would be a SuperFamigos classic!

I picked up Bofee ("Breath of Fire III" -> "BoF III" -> "BoF3" -> "Bofee") after some prodding from my friend Chris. I’ve wanted it for a while, and even played it once, but… I don't have as much patience for JRPGs as I used to, even ones as good as Bofee or Chrono Cross. This time, though, ♪ I had a little help from my friends ♫.

Since SuperFamigos was just starting up, I downloaded OBS and gave streaming Bofee a whirl. And sure enough, broadcasting and interacting with friends via chat is way better than grinding alone. Chris shared all his expert secrets, and I flew through the slogs that stopped me before. And we spawned a whole slew of inside jokes too (oh man Teepo's flowing locks *o*). I haven't played/streamed much recently, due to a combination of old hardware and busy schedules, but with luck I can fire it back up in 2017.

As for the game itself: it's great! Top notch pixel art, animations, and music. Story's a bit slow, though Chris assures me it gets better. Definitely more fun with friends. ...smells burnt

rating: "9/molotov"

Chrono Cross

(stunning opassa credit: Chrono wikia)

Frickin' Chrono Cross! What a sweet game. Beautiful scenery, amazing music, and a genuinely enthralling and mysterious story. I'm still not fully sure what's going on! The battle system can be intense too: trying to fend off the Fire Dragon with only two Revives? Are you kidding me??

I must confess, I got Chrono Cross three Christmases ago. The game has a couple of the same JRPG issues that Bofee has. So my tactic is to whittle away at it, every once in a while. And it's a bit like turning down the lights and sitting back and listening to Kind of Blue on vinyl; you come away feeling well fed.

So why is Chrono Cross on my games of 2016 list? Partly because the OSSC got me hyped to play it on my new HDTV (it was disgusting before) (and it handles the 240p <-> 480i switch quite well), partly because Chris again got me through some tough parts (he’s a boss, seriously), and partly because it's an awesome game and it won't come off my "games of <year>" list until it's beaten. So there.

rating: "poshul4mayor"

Downwell

I finally beat Downwell (normal mode) and unlocked all the palettes in 2016. Even then, I haven't stopped playing.

Downwell is the one mobile game I actually enjoy. For all the critically acclaimed mobile games I own, none have kept my attention like console and handheld games do. Except Downwell.

The mobile qualifier is important. Often I was chilling in a café, or waiting in line for a sandwich, or unable to sleep on a redeye flight, or trapped on a god-forsaken Snowpiercer Amtrak to Portland that was 6 hours behind schedule because snow somehow broke the signals and freight trains rule the rails and "we can't tell you if it'll be 30 minutes or 3 hours"

…Anyway. Downwell kept me sane in 2016. I don't even mind the touch controls.*

By the way, here's my fav strat: Floaty. Attract gems + popping gems + gem recharge. Laser if possible, or machine gun / burst / puncher. Combo as much as possible, but only to 25 each.

rating: "10/10/10"

Open Source Scan Converter

(razor sharp credit: Rex Warden)

I know, I know, it's not a game. But it counts as one, because it gave my PS1 a new lease on life.

And what a lease it is! I kid you not, I had serious goosebumps whenever I first fired up wipE'out" XL with this puppy. It was ｂｅａｕｔｉｆｕｌ. I noticed background textures I had never noticed before. Colors popped, not bled. I could read the menu text in wip3out! And no noticeable lag! Game after game, I was amazed at the difference. A major reason these old PS1 games are on my list is the OSSC.

Granted, YMMV; the results aren't nearly as drastic on other TVs I tried. But on mine… There's no going back.

rating: "I could cut my veggies with that PS logo"

Pokémon Sun

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (I really like this game.) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (A lot.) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (There's too much to say.) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (Do yourself a favor and give Pokémon Sun/Moon a try.) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

rating: "AAAAAAAAAA/AAAAAAAAAA"

Pokkén Tournament

(sassy credit: chipsprites)

Taking a step back for a sec.

Moving to Seattle was hard. It’s still hard. I live by myself, it's my first time working out of college, and sometimes even cooking food is a chore. My life has certainly gotten better now, but those first few months were…hard.

Pokkén was what I played when I wasn't at work. It's a great game, with bumpin' music and satisfying mechanics that I could really get into. But more than that, it was a game that helped me get through a rough time. For that reason alone, I would definitely recommend.

rating: "Weavile's playmate? HECK YES"

Splatoon

(manual or automatic credit: Syfy Games)

"But Oli, Splatoon came out in—"

Whoa there. Listen up. If you haven't already guessed, this is MY list o' 2016. It doesn't matter when such-and-such game came out. If I played it in 2016, it counts.

…but you do have a point. I didn't get Splatoon until Christmas 2015, which led to me missing a good amount of the summer unveils and hype and such. And online games stress me out, so I had the most fun when I stuck to my niche: off in the corner with my paintbrush, flinging paint errywhere, firin' off torpedoes to the other side, occasionally ninja-ing peeps.

In any case, still played it enough and had fun enough to include it! Very refreshing to see some color and friendly competition in a shooter. Good music and 1P campaign too. I even picked up my first pair of Vans Slip-ons because of this game. Fashion help 10/10.

Splatoon is also one of the Famigos' go-to online games! Several times we'd host a private match and not even battle, but just hang out on the stage, swim around, go explore, etc. Kinda like what we do in real life…except as squid kids.

rating: "18/12 overture"

wip3out

(let’s be friends credit: infoxicated via wipeoutzone)

Until I got the OSSC, this game was literally unplayable on my new HDTV.

Okay, not literally. Seriously though, wip3out** has some of the most succulent graphic design in the industry, and that stinkin' yellow composite cable rendes it muddy, meh, and unreadable. Yuck. wip3out was the second game I tested with the OSSC, and it's easily the best demonstration of the power of upscaling.

But enough about that. wipE'out" (the series) is the beez kneez. What's not to like? Cream-of-the-crop electronic soundtrack, mouthwatering tDR design, spicy-smooth tracks, and rich chocolatey weaponry. That feeling when you tear down the track, barely grazing the wall as you unleash a Quake Disruptor…

wip3out makes my list this year, not just because of the OSSC, not just because it's a filet mignon of a game, but because I freakin' beat Venom Tournament mode for the first time. Even with unfair AI in Sampa Run! ( *｀∇ ´ ) And I plan to keep playing for a long time.

Interestingly, although XL/2097 and 3 have very different physics and handling, I can maneuver them both just fine…as long as I don't play them both in the same night. I get so used to one game, that I can't immediately swap discs and play the other without crashing into everything.

rating: "Excuse me, I think I need to return this steak, it's too delicious"

Honorable Mentions

Digimon World 3 I inherited this from a neighbor. Popped it in to admire the pixel art with the OSSC. The battle system is confusing, the FMVs are loltastic, but it has some surprisingly good music.

Hyper Light Drifter I really want to like this game more.

I love the music. And the art and atmosphere seriously gave me chills. Absolutely beautiful. But I just couldn't get into the combat: too visceral. I felt...almost dirty playing it. I understand that's kind of the point, but…

Maybe with time I'll get into it.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime Had a ball playing this at a work game night. Don't have many others to play with though.

Nuclear Throne Lol both Sam and I got the Humble Indie Bundle this year, so we both played lots of Nuclear Throne. Fun (3D glasses Eyes is my man), but a bit too stressful/addictive for me. Had to stop playing for my health.

Pokémon Black 2 I grabbed Black 2 as a birthday gift for myself (I did the same for White in 2015), and to tide me over until Pokémon Sun. To try and mix it up this time around, I played with only three Pokémon for the entirety of my run: an Ice Punch Weavile (bred in White), a Dewott, and a Growlithe. I only caught maybe another five. In the end, though, I didn't level enough and I ground to a halt at the seventh gym.

I think one of the many, many reasons I loved Pokémon Sun was that I dived in headfirst, catching Pokémon, playing minigames, getting invested. Guess I didn't do that as much with Black 2. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

That being said, Black 2 definitely has its moments. There's schweet music, and I still, still prefer the animated sprites to 3D models. (Some of the new Pokémon's models are great, but some are horrible.) Super satisfying to wreck newbs with a Ice Punch to the face. Just sadly overshadowed by Sun.***

Pokémon Emerald Lots of Pokémon on this list, huh? ;)

Got this along with a Game Boy Micro from my friend Cole. Similar with Black 2, I only used a party of four. Again, the music is top notch, and some great battle animations. Unfortunately petered out at Ever Grande City when I stopped taking the bus to/from work (my main time to play).

River City Ransom Lolololololol

Seriously, so silly and fun. Didn't play it much though (maybe an hour when Sam was in town).

* That much. ** Yes, I'm going to do this for the whole article. I don't care. tDR 4 LYFE *** See what I did there?!? ;)

#superfamigos #goty 2016 #breath of fire 3 #bof3 #teepo so beautiful #chrono cross #poshul 2016 #downwell #amtrak == snowpiercer #ossc #pokémon #pokémon sun #i <3 grubbin #pokken tournament #i <3 weavile #splatoon #daytona usa #wipeout #wip3out #tdr #hi-fumii ughhh #hyper light drifter #nuclear throne #digimon world 3 #lovers in a dangerous spacetime #river city ransom #pee wee's playhouse

[ladystylestores]

I used the Huawei Mate Xs and now I don’t want to go back to a normal smartphone

Does your phone turn into a tablet?

Some say all phones kind of look alike these days. Their features might be different, but overall, we’re stuck with the glass slab design. The push towards maximizing the feature set has more or less lead to standardizing the smartphone design robbing us of the variety we enjoyed in the past.

But these phones, all of them, have one huge downside that no one talks about – they don’t turn into tablets. I’m only half joking there – smartphones have now gotten to a place where their looks and general feature set are commoditized. That’s great if you enjoy slow iterative changes year to year, but can also be slightly boring.

Enter foldables. Because foldable handsets had been rumored to be just around the corner for many, many years I had practically given up on this ever actually becoming a thing, prior to that fateful February of 2019, when both Samsung and Huawei announced the first consumer-ready devices.

Huawei is now on its second-generation foldable with minor improvements compared to the first, and after using the Mate Xs for a few weeks I have to say – it’s incredibly hard to go back to any traditional smartphone. It feels like the Mate Xs is just straight up from another world – or from another more advanced time, if you will.

Of course it’s not the only foldable that turns into a tablet, the Galaxy Fold also does that, but, in my opinion, the Mate Xs has by far the better design. You can feel that a ton of small details have been carefully considered, whereas the Galaxy Fold seems like it was designed in a time when Samsung did not expect to have any real competition in this space and then was taken by surprise by Huawei’s announcement of the Mate X.

The Mate Xs has no awkward side-notch when opened, and it doesn’t need a laughably bezel-endowed small and cramped external screen, because the internal screen is also the external one. That’s a very smart design, which also means you’ll be taking selfies with the main camera array. The cameras fit very nicely the elongated slab of glass on top of the frame, this side of the phone makes it very easy to hold in one hand when in tablet mode, and the bottom fits the USB-C port for charging. The stereo speakers are as far away from each other as possible when the Mate Xs is opened up, and they’re ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ when you use it like a phone. See, it’s the little things – and they do add up.

The complaints about this device are obvious: people assume the Mate Xs is more fragile than the Galaxy Fold because of the exposed screen. However, while scratches might be an issue the fact that Mate Xs’ screen is plastic, not glass, means that even if you drop it, it won’t shatter – you know, like every traditional flagship device out there. I will confess to not having tried intentionally dropping it just to see what would happen, but I also don’t see that happening a lot.

When closed, it’s hefty but not unwieldy, and because of the 11mm thickness it’s actually one of the phones that are easiest to grip securely. The chunkiness was never an issue for me, but the weight… is a lot for the size, when it’s closed. I wish it was lighter, then again that problem goes away when you open it up because now the same weight is spread out over far larger surface area.

The Mate Xs is definitely not all rainbows and sunshine. Aside from the weight (which isn’t that bad), there’s also the fact that the screen is mounted sideways (the bottom of the display panel is in the side that houses the power and volume buttons), which means scrolling when you use the phone with the earpiece up is quite janky, because of the way the panel refreshes. You do get used to this eventually, but it did take me over a week.

The issue is gone if, when opened up, you rotate it such that the side with the buttons is the bottom one, and in ‘tablet mode’ the device works in all possible orientations so that’s easy to achieve if you leave auto-rotation on. I usually turn that off the second I set up a new phone, but in this case I left it on and thankfully it wasn’t too trigger happy when jumping from one orientation to the next.

The auto-brightness also needs constant tweaking, at least for my liking, which is weird because the P40 Pro I long-term reviewed here is one of a very small number of phones that required essentially no manual intervention when it comes to brightness. Then there’s the fact that, if you hold the Mate Xs closed as a phone, because of where the software is programmed to make the phone screen “end”, you get a small curve on the left side, but no such thing on the right side, where the side bezel is actually quite prominent.

On the flip side, as a tablet there are no notches, no hole-punches, just uninterrupted 8-inch goodness, which is great. The crease is there in the middle and you can feel it, but it’s rarely actually visible. As for the feeling it part, you get used to it in a few days.

You’re not touching glass, though, at any point when using the Mate Xs, but if you’ve ever used a phone with a pre-installed plastic screen protector you’ll know exactly what it feels like. It’s not in any way worse than that, and while bare naked glass just feels better to touch, it just doesn’t fold. At least not yet.

Battery life on the Mate Xs has been surprisingly good, but then again all Huawei and Honor phones have this in common – numbers greater than what the capacity would suggest, compared to the Android competition. I’m going to assume EMUI has something to do with that, as well as Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon’s Kirin 990 chipset, which has 5G on the chip and not in a separate modem like the Snapdragon 865.

And then there’s the software. First off, as this is (inherently, because of its price) a niche device, it seems to get less update love from Huawei than classic-looking flagships like the P40 series. The Mate Xs is still running EMUI 10, although the P40 handsets launched with EMUI 10.1. The improvements are minor, but this just goes to show that the Mate Xs is more of a hobby product than a main money maker for the Chinese company, and that may be reflected in how fast (or rather, slow) it gets subsequent updates. I hope I’m wrong about this one, because if you’re a techie who spends over 2,000 euros on this, you’re going to be quite disappointed if it is forgotten in the first wave of the Android 11 rollout.

Speaking of Android, the Mate Xs is devoid of any Google apps and services, which creates a ton of issues, most of which are fixable, but require some patience. Some apps will just not work at all because they depend on the missing Google Mobile Services, and for most apps you’ll need to do some hunting in at least two different app stores. The situation is detailed in full in this page of my P40 Pro long-term review, if you’re interested.

In the meantime, Huawei has released a new app called Petal Search in its App Gallery, which you can use as a meta search engine for apps – it will point you to the specific app store you can grab an app from, or to the app maker’s website if you can download it straight from there. It’s a kludge, this, but a very necessary one, given the political situation. If you’ve ever used Huawei’s MoreApps for the same purpose, think of Petal Search as a more refined version of that – since it also handles updates, as in, you can see which of your installed apps have new versions available across different app stores and websites.

Clearly then, the Huawei Mate Xs is not perfect. But it is a showcase of where the future of smartphones is headed, and it also doesn’t feel like a beta product at all. You are paying a lot of money for it, but the experience is very polished and it feels like Huawei gave some real thought to a lot of things here, including various ways of interacting with the device. It’s a mature smartphone (if crippled somewhat by the lack of Google services, although this isn’t Huawei’s fault), it’s a joy to use in day to day life. Oh, and did I mention it also turns into a tablet.

The amazingness of that can’t be overstated. Sure, you can buy another flagship smartphone plus an iPad Pro for around the same money, or even less. I’ve heard that argument before, except it misses the point entirely, because then you end up carrying two different devices with you. And how often are you really going to do that? Yes, an iPad Mini is around the same size as the opened up Mate Xs, and yes, it’s cheap. But the convenience of having one product that is both a phone and a tablet is just impossible to replicate.

I’ve been doing the mobile thing for a while now, and I was there when phone cameras were starting to first get adequate for casual shooting, and I’ve heard a similar argument then. Something along the lines of “but this can’t match my DSLR for quality, why would I need a camera in a phone?”. In response to that, the phrase “the best camera is the one you have in your pocket” was coined, and I think this can be easily repurposed as “the best tablet is the one you have in your pocket, as your smartphone”, or something similar.

Overall my time with the Mate Xs has proven that after years of incremental advances in the smartphone world, we’re now standing at the precipice of a huge shift in usability, triggered by the advent of foldable screens. These will only get better with time, as foldable smartphones will become more and more affordable for more and more people. It’s a very exciting future that the Mate Xs has revealed for me, and I can’t wait for the time when everyone can afford a foldable – be that of the ‘phone turns into tablet’ variety like the Mate Xs or Galaxy Fold, or the ‘phone becomes easily pocketable’ option pioneered by the Motorola Razr and the Galaxy Z Flip.

I’m ready for even more craziness to come, as LG is now rumored to bring to market a rollable smartphone early next year. The flexible display panels will hopefully enable a lot of experimentation with form factors, which will be very interesting to see. It’s not that we haven’t had any experimentation lately, we have – but it was still confined to the glass sandwich slab footprint. From now on, though, the sky seems to be the limit.

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[shandyblogs-blog]

FEW STEPS AWAY

Building startup is difficult because you start from scratch and nothing. But what makes you keep pushing forward is the motivation of reaching your goal which is a successful startup. As one of the founders of our startup, I know how tough it is to produce a product especially through technology. Creating a product virtually is harder than making it hand on hand. Though it is not that physically exhausting because it focuses more on programming, it’s still hard because it really requires a skill in programming in order to produce a successful output. As a hacker, I’ve been through a lot of struggles and difficulties in building our mobile application. I feel really pressured every week because learning android studio requires more time to learn/master. I had to rush because I had to make progress in our app. I had to make improvement every week so that during the pitching our app is completely functional. Learning by myself with the help of internet as my guide was a big help. It was so hard to find resources because I don’t have a book manual and the resources in the internet was quite limited. I really had to study the syntax and algorithms just to make it work and I had to understand everything to get the output that I want. It’s okay as long as I could finish our app, all the struggles will be replaced with happiness, fulfillment and of course another achievement.

 Last week we continued our lecture during the class schedule and we also presented our progress report about our project. We just presented our app that time because we didn’t prepare our power point presentation. We showed to him the progress of our application. It was less stressful already because we were almost done and according to the feedback from our instructor, few validations and improvement of our app were needed and we could also answer all his questions. We also had the continuation of Python lecture series on Saturday. Another speakers were invited and the topics that they discussed were interesting for me because Django was another new learning opportunity for me. It was fun afterall although the lecture was quite boring. We also had our third customer last week. We were recommended to her by our previous customer. We were happy because we got another customer. We also produced more flyers and distributed them to different areas. I improved our app because it the previous one was lagging and crashing. I fixed it and improved the UI(User Interfacing) of our app so that it could have more functions and features. Since we had a lot of competitors and our startup was common, I added something that can make our app unique from others wherein customers can personalize everything according to their preference.

 I learned more about python. I learned how to code using python. I learned more about android studio, app development. I learned more about technopreneurship especially during the progress report. I learned from my team and from other team as well. It was also helpful to seek help and suggestions from other teams because there were other things that they might know as well that could be beneficial to our project. I learned how to manage my time especially in app development because of the milestone. Milestone was one of my motivations to make our app work. It gave me mindset of finishing tasks every week. I learned how useful it was. I learned to give priority in this subject even if I don’t like much entrepreneurship because I am not into business field person. I learned to be an entrepreneur even in a simple/small way by providing service to other people through technology. I learned that even if app development was very hard at first, if you were determined and dedicated to your project, you can make it done and you could do things that you thought were impossible.

 In two months of app development, little by little I found it quite easy and understanding. I realized that programming isn’t about how good you are. It is about how passionate and determined you are to get your desired output. That no matter how hard it is, if you want it, if you are really passionate about it, you’ll be surprised that you can also do it. And now were are few steps away from our success. Our product is almost ready, almost complete. Even if our application is simple to look at based on its appearance, the back end of it makes you crazy, for a beginner like me. But even if there were a lot of obstacles and struggles, I was still able to manage it. I was able to prove to myself that, “Patience is a virtue” because I encountered a lot of debugging, trial and errors, testing, and fixing crash. Patience was you’re only strength to make it work. Programming will really test you. Well, that’s my personal opinion. So, no matter how hard it is, move forward, because you’ll never know what you are capable of until you try it yourself. You’ll be surprised that you’re almost there, that your are just few steps away from your success. Work hard!

[reviewape-blog]

RMAX Primal Stress

https://www.reviewape.com/?p=15831 RMAX Primal Stress - Product Name: RMAX Primal Stress Click here to get RMAX Primal Stress at discounted price while it’s still available… All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. RMAX Primal Stress is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked. (function ($) { var $self = $('.adace-loader-5c350fb7e1146'); var $wrapper = $self.closest('.adace-slot-wrapper'); "use strict"; var adace_load_5c350fb7e1146 = function(){ var viewport = $(window).width(); var tabletStart = 601; var landscapeStart = 801; var tabletEnd = 961; var content = ''; var unpack = true; if(viewport=tabletStart && viewport=landscapeStart && viewport=tabletStart && viewport=tabletEnd){ if ($wrapper.hasClass('.adace-hide-on-desktop')){ $wrapper.remove(); } } if(unpack) { $self.replaceWith(decodeURIComponent(content)); } } if($wrapper.css('visibility') === 'visible' ) { adace_load_5c350fb7e1146(); } else { //fire when visible. var refreshIntervalId = setInterval(function(){ if($wrapper.css('visibility') === 'visible' ) { adace_load_5c350fb7e1146(); clearInterval(refreshIntervalId); } }, 999); } })(jQuery); Description: “Scott Sonnon’s revolutionary new work Primal Stress clearly and comprehensively explains the impact of stress on the body, and how not only to offset but to optimize it in order to build the best possible life that you can. If you suffer any symptoms due to excessive stress from your job or your lifestyle (and who doesn’t?) you need this book. Even if you don’t think that you suffer due to inordinate stress, you need this book. Basically, if you have a body, you need this book. What you learn from it can change everything. Working in film and TV production comes with a unique set of challenges – punishingly long hours, often unpredictable conditions, and a lot of heavy lifting, both physical and mental – it’s the worst and best job in the world. Nearly 20 years in the business had taken it’s toll on my body – chronic pain from recurring injuries, adrenal exhaustion, and a host of other miseries – and I was sadly considering another way of life, which felt like the end of the world to me. Then I found Scott Sonnon. Using principles I learned through his programs Intu-Flow, Prasara and TACFIT, now crystallized in his groundbreaking book Primal Stress, I’ve been able to regain the inner and outer strength and resilience I need, in order to keep doing the job that I love. I truly can’t thank Scott enough, and I can’t think of any better way of paying my gratitude forward than to recommend his book to everyone I can, so that they may reap the life-changing benefits that I have.” ~ Tanya Lemke, Tooshea Media “Primal Stress is hands-down, the single-best bodyweight training program available today, and I’ve tried almost all of them!” ~ John Sifferman, Professional Online Fitness Reviewer “This is Scott Sonnon’s Magnus Opus! It is his life! Fantastic Coach, fascinating read. Incredible to see all your work weave together like a huge tapestry.” “This is now my #1 recommendation. Condensed joint mobility, power core workout, metabolic waving protocols in bodyweight, and compensatory yoga that flows. It is the TOTAL PACKAGE! The massive knowledge base on stress response and psychological performance = Magnum opus!” “Primal Stress may well be the most complete and intelligent body-weight exercise program ever created. Emphasizing health but taking fitness to an edge FAR beyond the casual needs of any normal citizen, by the time you’ve outgrown and absorbed this you will understand your body and mind at a level absurdly beyond the human norm in a modern society.” ~ Steven Barnes, Best-Selling Author, Screenwriter and Speaker “I truly appreciate your generosity to divulge such useful information to help anyone caring enough and willing enough to thrive in life, regardless of circumstances. Consistently elevating one’s quality of life, you are helping many to be successful as well. This is a GREAT GIFT!” “Primal Stress will take care of ALL of my REHAB as well as STRENGTH GAINS! Highly recommended!” “When I saw the amount of material you’ve been working on I thought I could never afford it even with a discount because it is thousands of dollars of worth of value! So when I saw the price, I couldn’t believe it! You’re still giving it away!!! OMG! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!” “I am in awe of the Work Coach Sonnon has put together. The Revive and the Thrive videos are for EVERYONE, excellent, excellent resource for decreasig tension in the body, even if you never get into the workouts, which are extensive and multi-layered. I STRONGLY recommend you get this program, NOW! It is superb!” ~ Peter Ryan As a practicing Doctor of Chiropractic, a Husband and Father “I finally got done reading the manual. WOW. The workouts are always changing. This is much more refined and very different from your earlier work Scott. I am glad I bought it.Great job on this Scott!” “Inward calm cannot be maintained unless physical strength is constantly and intelligently replenished”, advised Prince Siddhartha. Our physical movement cannot guarantee that we can attain “inward calm” but throughout our history as a species, ancient movement disciplines and modern bodywork have offered a bodily path to develop the inner state of grace. • Why do we not live in a continual state of flow? • What interrupts our natural condition of relaxed readiness and energized vigor? I’ve invested my life asking this question, due to early violent experiences. When my father returned from the Korean War, my family began to disintegrate. My social conflict accelerated as childhood learning disabilities and obesity conflated my already volatile environment. Like many of us, I couldn’t comprehend the “rusting armor” I had adorned. I only felt weighed down more and more with each advancing year. The British novelist Anne Brontë wrote: “All of our talents increase with usage; and every faculty, both good and bad, strengthen by exercise.” Thankfully, persistence is indiscriminate. Whatever we repeat most often, we become. We can harbor regrets of where blind nature of adaptation has unwittingly carried us, or we can revel in the opportunity to deliberately carve our own path. It’s never too late to plot a new course, for, as Napoleon Hill explained: “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.” Yet, as Brontë alludes, if we will not choose change, change will choose us. If we repeatedly hold trauma, anxiety, desperation, fear, frustration and pain, then, like anything else, we will adapt and strengthen it. It becomes “rusted armor” that only moving differently can heal. The most dramatic influence in our lives, stress, primarily determines our health and fitness, not anything we do. Insufficient sleep, poor nutrition, inadequate hydration, and most relevant to this message, lack of mobility, are not individually the problem, but merely contributors. They are each stressors, which accumulate. Like a tsunami, once stress crests over a particular threshold, it floods devastation throughout our lives. This flood metaphor held great insight for me. Unlike others in the birthing field of stress physiology, I didn’t ask how to build higher levees to protect against the swollen waters. I asked, how we recover when our levees break and are overrun. Where others sought to become tougher (able to resist higher floods), I sought to become more resilient (able to recover when the levees broke no matter how high or strongly we build them). And this became my research filter for one simple reason… Unless we know how to recover from failure, we cannot resist it. We cannot become tougher, until we become more resilient. Like a tree, the depth of our resilient roots determines the strength of our tough trunk and limbs. To stay with the flood metaphor, if we do not know our emergency plan for recovering from our levees breaking and devastating the town, then we cannot effectively build levees to properly protect us. “Fall down seven times. Get up eight.” Martial art gave me a unique opportunity to observe high stress within a controlled and timed crucible. Unlike the chaos of emotional and psychological violence where you may inadvertently become stronger from the experience, martial arts intentionally aim to develop the virtues of resilience and toughness. You learn how to bounce back when you make errors, when you get surprised, or when you do not succeed immediately. Errors, surprise and failure are guarantees, so when they happened, I was given an opportunity to observe a predictable pattern arise. As a national coach and international competitor, I noticed that whenever a fighter would reach their threshold, the stress they were experiencing throughout their lives caused them to be over-whelmed. This event would elicit very specific behaviors: common denominators which coalesced into a method I observed throughout my career. Teaching tactical fitness for the federal government, I noticed the phenomenon from the opposite end of the spectrum: even these veteran trainers were not able to “enter” drills due to common aches, pains and injuries. The pattern emerged: these impediments to their health and performance were adaptations from the stresses of their job. They had become “stress-shaped.”The #1 killer in their world was neither bullets nor knives, but stress-related heart disease. Excessive stress cannibalizes our bodies, erodes our minds, and literally breaks our hearts. Providing these agents with solutions to their occupational stress was not merely changing lives. It was potentially saving them. For the past twenty years, I’ve kept my head down working with government agencies, military outfits, air and marine offices, fire rescue departments, and of course my own discipline of martial arts. The revelations they provided galvanized me to look at the health statistics outside of the tactical community. You can imagine my shock when I learned that the #1 killer in the world outside of the high-stress world of tactical response was also stress-related heart disease. So, looking back through my archives, and studying new subjects, I observed the same set of predictable behavioral patterns when beset by excessive stress: the same common aches, pains and injuries (as well as the same set of stress-induced attitudes.) Implementing my discoveries with the general public, across a broad demographic sample, I found identical relief and empowered physical potential in each of them.Stress affects us all in the same unless we become aware of: 1. the genetically encoded mechanisms to Revive our relaxed readiness from the reflexes stress induces, 2. the powerful biomechanics that give us our optimal strength and condition to Survive stress, and 3. the unique neurological elegance that causes us to Thrive under positive stress, like no other creature on the planet. Primal Stress represents the culmination of the above lifetime of experiences, study, research and development.” Scott Sonnon, World Champion, Master of Sport, USA National Team Coach, Fitness Consultant for Federal Government Agencies www.rmaxinternational.comwww.flowcoach.tv * The above is a symbolic depiction of the product’s content. For illustration purposes only. The complete product’s content comes in a digital/downloadable format. ** iPhone and Audio player are not included. *** PLEASE NOTE *** >>> YOUR BROWSER COOKIES MUST BE ENABLED >> YOUR BROWSER COOKIES MUST BE ENABLED

[msdoctorwho]

Fire Meet Gasoline, Ch. 4

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13461255/chapters/32828067

The new normal was...nice. There was a new mutual understanding, a gap bridged between them. A slight benefit of the doubt where before misunderstanding would have sparked a raging argument. Even Bulma’s mother commented that they were “getting along so much better these days!”

At first Bulma only spoke in Saiyan after he did, wary of being too familiar with what was clearly still precious to him. Gradually Vegeta sought her out to talk more and more, unable to resist the draw of his own language, until they conversed in it as easily as her own. Moreso, even, as in some darker moods he would respond to Saiyan when she was certain he’d have ignored her, before.

He rarely allowed himself downtime, but she found him reading once or twice, lost in one of the books for a short midday break under a tree, or while he ate alone at night before bed. He even messaged her once, from the tablet, with improved Saiyan translations for a few passages.

He wasn’t as reluctant to be around her as before, but he still held her at arms’ length, refusing to talk about his planet or people beyond answering simple questions for the research she was still pursuing, with his unspoken permission.

He wasn’t her adversary, but he wasn’t her friend yet, either. Bulma was at a loss as to why he resisted her attempts so much, and why she wanted so badly to make it happen. It wasn’t for knowledge, anymore; she’d learned more than she’d dreamed possible, and was still moving forward, though she'd had to split time with her other work obligations.

It was him . He was fascinating, this destroyer of worlds who lived in her home and occasionally asked her to pass the salt. She knew she should fear him. Instead, she wanted to climb inside him, to know every aspect of him and make him hers.

She supposed her attraction wasn’t all that surprising given she’d made no attempt at dating since Yamcha. It wasn’t because of the breakup; she just couldn’t be bothered with trivial men when the end of the world was coming. That was why she’d ended the relationship in the first place -- she’d realized if there might only be a few years left of her life, she didn’t want to spend them with Yamcha . There was nothing wrong with him. He just wasn’t who she wanted at her side to face the end of all things. And he deserved to maybe find that with someone else.

Given that it had been a while , it was not that surprising she’d started thinking about Vegeta that way. Whatever else he might be, he was far from trivial.

She knew he wasn’t un -interested in her. He had eyes, and she occasionally caught them on her with an intensity made all the more obvious by how quickly he looked away. But he was driven, he had plans, and there was no room in his schedule for anything that didn’t get him closer to ascending.

Bulma wasn’t a genius for nothing. The way to his... heart... was going to be through his goals. She’d already built him a facility, she already supplied him with bots. It was time to attack with data .

It’s not like he’d never read before -- one didn’t rise in the military without reading manuals, briefings, training texts, technical specs. He even vaguely remembered reading Saiyan fables and histories as a child. But it was entirely foreign to find himself reading of his own volition, for no reason other than diversion.

Contrary to what Bulma would have guessed, he’d begun with the fiction. It was an unexpected escape, a rare experience for him. It was even pleasant, until he had the unwelcome realization that he identified more with the orcs and Nazgûl than the group of heroes.

A subjugated army forced into war and conquest? Sounded a lot more like him than oblivious immortal elves living in treehouses or hairy little creatures digging houses into hillsides and eating all day. Did the fiction even explain why the orcs fought for this conqueror, or was it just assumed that they loved war? How could that have been enough? Even for a warlike people, what glory is there in service to a tyrant? What glory can be found without freedom?

The inside of his head had never been a pleasant place, not since the day his father bargained him away, but for the first time he began to grasp the the outside edges of the enormity of his sins. He’d done what he’d done to survive, all of it, but that didn’t make his hands any less bloody.

Combat, violence, and the pursuit of victory were in his bones, in whatever was left of his soul. It was how the world made sense. But so much of what they’d done under Frieza’s orders had been outright slaughter. There was no honor in obliterating the weak. How low had he fallen, that he’d allowed himself to enjoy it?

It was either that, or die, he supposed, under the weight of an otherwise joyless existence. The more time he spent away from that life, on this space-ignorant rock with its weak little inhabitants and one exasperating scientist, he wondered how he could ever have thought those years under Frieza held any joy at all.

Bulma lay in wait for him in the kitchen one evening, having already warmed up his dinner, knowing he would be more receptive after finishing his training for the day. In the mornings he had too much pent-up energy and no patience for conversation or anything that delayed him longer than necessary.

He eyed her with suspicion but no animosity as she served them both dinner and sat, saying nothing. She sipped her wine and waited, the imprint of her lips left behind on the glass, a half-moon of color that kept stealing his gaze.

“Out with it, woman.”

She smiled, and he felt as though he’d lost a point in a contest he was unaware of entering. “Well, Vegeta, I’ve been doing some research.”

“That’s a surprise.”

Was that sarcasm? She was delighted.

“You’ve trained every day since the chamber went online, and when it’s down for repairs you go off and blast shit elsewhere. You haven’t taken a single day off, have you?”

He shrugged. “Why would I waste time I could be training?”

She spoke casually, too casually. “That’s the thing -- I don’t think it would be a waste of time.”

“What the fuck do you know about it? You avoid physical activity like it might kill you.”

She huffed, sitting up straight, eyes flashing. “I’ll have you know I do plenty of-- you know what, never mind, this isn’t about me. I’m trying to help you, you ungrateful prick.”

The insult lacked venom so he ignored it. But still, “I’m not in need of your help.”

She switched tactics. Data, Bulma. “I’ve been studying peak human performers, professional athletes in various sports. How they train, what they eat.”

His grunt of irritation dismissed that as irrelevant. “I care about that, why?”

She waved a hand, “Yeah, I know humans and Saiyans are so different, Saiyans get stronger every time they’re beaten near to death, et cetera, et cetera.”

She leaned forward, uncrossing her legs. “But the mere existence of Gohan proves we’re way more similar than different, so you can’t throw out all of my data that easily.” Her lab coat parted with her movement, revealing the low neckline of the blouse underneath. Entirely unwillingly he was forced to contemplate exactly how compatible their races were whether he wanted to or not.

Seemingly oblivious, she carried on, “Human physiology benefits from a period of rest after a period of strenuous activity, giving the body time to repair and strengthen.” Eyes like a bird of prey watched him from behind her wineglass as she drank.

“Bah.” He began to rise, and she pulled an entire pie out of the fridge, putting it in front of him. He frowned at it but sat back down. It was pie, after all.

She drug a knife through it slowly, insolently, putting a slice on a plate he ignored by sticking his fork in the middle of the rest. “Have you ever wondered if one of the differences between you and Goku might be how you approach your training?”

He growled around a giant mouthful of pie, latent childhood manners still too regal to say what he really thought of her bringing up Kakarot with his mouth full.

She licked the edge of the knife, a quick flash of tongue like a wink. “Goku has always taken time off, now and then. He goes fishing with Gohan, takes Chichi to the city.”

He finished chewing. “Like I care what that third-class--”

“My point is,” she interrupted, daring to swipe a bite of his pie, “You can’t argue that it hasn’t been working for him.”

He looked furious. Bulma was going to lose him if she didn't act fast.

Vegeta felt a stab of betrayal at the implied comparison, and then surprise at the betrayal. When had he started thinking of her as anything other than his adversary's ally?

She broke into his thoughts with a hand on his arm, freezing him with a touch while fire ran over his skin.

Her voice was low, almost primal, challenging. “I’ll make a bet with you. It’s one day -- what do you have to lose?”

In Saiyan the literal phrase was more like “Do you have balls, or not?”  And his were tightening, at the challenge, at the touch. His blood sang under her fingers, as though sparked by her ki, which was impossible, as she had basically none.

He swallowed, jerking his arm away. “What are your terms?”

Her smile had too many teeth, like a well-fed predator. “You take one rest day, following the itinerary I plan, exactly. No training. We track your peak and average power levels the week before the rest day, and then the week after.”

She dug out her mobile to show him a graph, all business again. “Your progress so far has been fairly linear. I bet that during the first 48 hours after a rest day you’ll see a bigger jump than would be projected by the previous week’s data with no rest.”

She looked him dead in the eye, and he'd be damned if he looked away first. “If I’m wrong, I’ll make you a new set of training bots with enhanced AI.”

Neither of them blinked. She went on, “If I’m right, you take one day off at least every 10 days. Or work with me to find the ideal ratio of rest to work days.” Another sip of wine, still locking eyes. "Up to you."

She dropped her gaze, and he exhaled. “What does this rest day entail?”

She brushed invisible crumbs off of her garment with a lazy, ineffective gesture. “Sleeping. Eating. Massage. Maybe some active recovery, like walking or stretching. Diverting yourself mentally with something completely unrelated to training.”

He sighed. The part of him that had kept him alive for so long insisted it was a waste of time he couldn’t afford, but he was beginning to trust in her and her logic , and honestly it sounded rather...pleasant.

“I’ll do it, but you’re going to make me the new bots either way.” He felt smug about that stipulation, somehow coming out ahead after this shipwreck of a conversation.

“Done,” she said with a smooth, tiny smile, and he had the sudden feeling that a squad of new bots already awaited him somewhere, and he hadn’t won anything at all.

#vegebul #vegebul fanfiction #vegeta x bulma #bulma #vegeta

[technato]

Misty Robotics Builds on Developer Platform With New Personal Robot

The Misty II personal robot is designed to do whatever you can program it to do, and more

Image: Misty Robotics

Misty Robotics announced their developer platform, Misty I, just a few months ago. Misty I was a hand-built prototype, with similar essential functionality in hardware and software to a more refined production robot that the company planned to release later in the year. Later in the year has now arrived, and today Misty Robotics is launching a crowdfunding campaign for a much more polished personal robot, Misty II, which can be yours to program starting at $1,500.

In theory, I can definitely appreciate this idea of a platform being what’s holding useful personal robotics back. It’s very appealing to think about, and it would be wonderful if true, with legions of independent developers who can’t wait to work with something capable and accessible enough for them to program to do what they want it to do without any special training. Whether or not it’s true in practice remains to be seen, though— I’d love to be more optimistic, but one thing robotics has definitely taught me is that being optimistic is usually just leads to disappointment.

Misty Robotics, fortunately, seems to have a compelling combination of optimism, experience, and patience. They’re not expecting Misty to take off right away, and they have a timeline that’s about a decade long. From the sound of things, it’s fully expected that despite its consumer look, Misty won’t actually become “useful” to most consumers for many, many years. And Misty Robotics (and their investors, presumably) are totally fine with that. So really, we’re not going to be able to judge how successful the Misty Robotics approach is for quite a while. We’ll watch with interest, and hope that they’re on to something.

At 14 inches high and six pounds, the Misty II personal robot has an advanced 3D Occipital sensor for mapping, a 4K Sony camera for facial and object recognition, eight time-of-flight sensors for obstacle avoidance, and is equipped with two smartphone-level QualcommⓇ SnapDragon processors running Windows IoT Core and Android 7 operating systems. The robot is fully capable of running Tensorflow, Caffe, and WindowsML within hardware optimized runtimes. Owners can physically expand Misty II to add functionality and fun with several hardware accessories, created by Misty Robotics and the community of makers and inventors at large.

One of the things that should set Misty apart is that it’s been designed specifically to be able to perform advanced behaviors without requiring advanced knowledge of robotics. Out of the box, Misty II can:

Move autonomously as well as dynamically respond to her environment

Recognize faces

Create a 3D map of her surroundings

Perform seeing, hearing, and speaking capabilities 

Receive and respond to commands

Locate her charger to charge herself

Display emotive eyes and other emotional characteristics

All of this stuff can be accessed and leveraged if you know how to code, even a little bit. Or even not at all, since Misty can be programmed through Blockly:

The Misty II personal robot is easy for non-technical owners to program using the Misty Blockly client, a visual block-based programming interface, to create new skills for the robot that can make it move, talk, roar, and more. Pre-set blocks, or skills, will come installed on Misty II to quickly get started. Those owners with programming experience, can utilize JavaScript APIs to create more sophisticated skills and modifications, like integrating with third party services such as Alexa, Microsoft Cognitive Services, Google Assistant, and Cloud APIs.

If you’re quick, you can snag a “Founder Edition” Misty II for $1,500, and after that, the crowdfunding price is $1,600. The press release says that this price is “a 50% discount,” making the robots quite expensive. If they’re as fun and as useful as Misty Robotics hopes they’ll be, maybe the price won’t be too much of an obstacle. Again, we’ll be following closely, and hoping that this strategy pays off both for Misty Robotics itself and the larger personal robotics industry as well.

For more details on Misty II, we spoke with Misty Robotics Head of Company Tim Enwall.

IEEE Spectrum: Misty I has been out for several months now. Can you give us some examples of useful applications that Misty I developers have come up with? What kind of feedback have you gotten from those folks on the overall experience of developing applications on Misty, and did that result in any changes in design or philosophy between Misty I and Misty II?

Tim Enwall: Our goal of developing Misty I is to get dozens of lessons every week from early customers and community, and they have shared what features they want, and precisely how they expect to use them. Through our focus on making programming Misty easy, we’ve had the chance to meaningfully engage with people who had never thought about where a robot might be useful to them. Here are few examples: 

The HVAC repair specialist who wants to use Misty to ensure his repairs were effective by checking different locations and temperatures over time.

The Sound Engineer who has to manually roam a venue to calibrate the speaker system wants to utilize Misty to take those readings for him so he can stay in the booth to configure the system. 

The two students at Galvanize who used in Misty I in their JavaScript class. They integrated Alexa and had Misty read text messages to its owners.

The pair of developers at our most recent Robothon who, within a few hours, trained Misty to recognize each of them individually and say things like ‘Ian, you’re a great boss’ or ‘Shane, would you like a snack?’

One of our earliest users who is interested in using Misty as an informational tool at conferences.

The users who have also integrated Misty’s output to externals services like Slack, Twilio, and Google Translate and Dominos to notify them of when their pizza will arrive. 

By having Misty I, we’ve been able to focus on the building the tools to suit our users instead of guessing such as: on-board SDKs are vital to really extending the power of the robot; dust covers are important for time-of-flight sensors; battery power indicators in the companion mobile app are valuable; continue working on personality, because it’s a pleasant delight; Python may be even more appealing than Javascript; access to machine learning engines and microphones are a higher priority than we thought, and dozens more.

The $1,500 price for a crowdfunded Misty II may be a significant investment for many developers. How much of an obstacle do you believe that cost will be for adoption of Misty II?

We feel that $1,500 is the most affordable price for such an advanced robot; several others in the market are more expensive with less capability. We believe, by including a sufficient number of developers, entrepreneurs, students, and makers in our plans early, the result will be better personal robots in the future because they will do hundreds of useful things— not one or two— which increases the value regular consumers are willing to pay. There has already been a lot of excitement from people who are interested in AI, machine learning, or robots, and developers who are dedicated will embrace the opportunity to participate in creating skills for the Misty II. We’re confident that for software developers with business problems to solve, students who want an AI and robotic future, and hackers/makers who love building novel creations, $1,599 is a floor price, not a max price.

We’ve learned from other platforms, like cell phones and computers, that as the uses for the device go up, consumers’ willingness to pay increases as well. What value will a consumer ascribe to a robot that can act as security guard, nanny, remote eyes, and entertainment pal not to mention other skills all in the same package? Laptops and TVs teach us that such general purpose tools are often quite valuable.

By crowdfunding, rather than pre-sale, we are able to launch Misty on her journey and build a community around Misty. Crowdfunding aligns with our early mission of building a community of developers and makers. It’s about inviting people to support our community in this early stage as we embark on this 10 year road to putting a robot in every home and office. We also believe the crowdfunding campaign will serve as a channel for getting feedback and will help to reinforce our assumption that the target market is ready for an easily programmable robot at a consumer price point.  

The press release says “owners can physically expand Misty II to add functionality and fun with several hardware accessories, created by Misty Robotics and the community of makers and inventors at large.” Can you describe some of these accessories?

Misty can be expanded with hardware accessories that are serial or USB enabled (backpack), attached to the head (headpiece), non-powered attachments to the arm motors (arms), and non-powered items carried behind (via “trailer hitch”) to make her more useful for daily tasks. During the crowdfunding campaign and after, we’ve made an Arduino backpack capable of plugging in most Arduino shields. Some of the ideas that have circulated are: 

Backpack: Carry temperature and humidity sensors for the HVAC technician to leave while the robot monitors the environment after installation/repair

Backpack: Smart home (Z Wave or Zigbee) addition for robot to interact with homes

Arms: Projector arms (powered via backpack) to project an image on a wall/screen

Arms: Laser pointer (powered by backpack) to play with cats

Earpiece: night-vision camera (powered by backpack)

Trailer hitch: pull a beer cart at a party

What was the thinking behind making Misty explicitly female?

When originally deciding what to name the robot, we thought ‘Misty’ was a friendly name that’s easy to remember, spell, and say. We want to encourage people to feel comfortable bringing a robot into their home, and we believed making Misty female would give her an approachable, friendly connotation. In practice, many of our customers assign a male gender to “their robot” and many, a female one.

Misty II is described as “the second robot in a series of robots… over the course of the next 10 years.” What is the general trajectory that you expect the Misty series to take over the next several years? 

The Misty II is primarily for software developers, STEM students, and makers. This community will invent thousands of uses, which, we predict, will take about three to five years. During this three to five year timeframe, there will be advances in processing speed to enable general object recognition, advances in motor life, manipulation, as well as finding ways to make the battery last longer. After truly homing in on improving the extensibility and depth of APIs, it will then be early adopters who will utilize robots in the home and office. Five years following that, we feel that Misty will be ready for mass adoption (i.e. greater than 20% penetration) consumers. A robot will not appeal to a regular consumer unless it is comfortable to interact with and multi-purpose (capable of hundreds of tasks), which is where developers come in to create these skills. Nevertheless, the robotics market could accelerate based on market shifts and our goal is to be ready when that happens. Our product release cycles will be somewhere between a highly-competitive smartphone market (typically one year) and an industrial upgrade market like thermostats (usually 7-10 years) with a weighting towards the former rather than the latter.

[ Kickstarter ] via [ Misty Robotics ]

Misty Robotics Builds on Developer Platform With New Personal Robot syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[car-loanz]

A collection of first-car experiences

  First cars tend to make a big impression and live long in the memory.

Whatever shape they take, and however many bumps in the road we may encounter with them, the independence they embody often means other cars just can’t come close.

With that in mind, here’s a collection of first-car experiences that spans decades, and in which all of the cars are special in their own ways.

Like the Ford Crown Victoria that made college crowds scatter because it looked like a police car arriving, yet became a firm campus favorite.

And the “rolling science experiment” Chevrolet Cavalier that would only travel for nine miles before needing a rest, but still felt like a gateway to freedom.

  First car. Ahhh, the memories

For James Mayfield, his 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit, “Speedy,” was synonymous with good times and milestone moments, from prom night to first job to unforgettable road trips.

  Minimalist motoring in a modern-day Model T

Although it was not a first car of choice, the simple Ford Fiesta Mark III had hidden charms that, once discovered, made it priceless.

  The days of jamming to Lady Gaga in my beloved grandma-mobile

Myrtle, “the kids’ car,” may have been a hand-me-down from an older time that handled like a boat, but the 1998 Buick Park Avenue was full of life lessons for Candace Brand.

  My gateway to freedom for a whole nine miles

Depending on speed, temperature and idle time, this particular 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier was inclined to suddenly stop every nine miles or so. And that meant mastering the art of breakdown preparedness, and the restart.

  The Chevy Trailblazer that could do no wrong

Passing her driving test and taking the wheel of the family Trailblazer enabled Tara Stein to finally be the one to drive her friends around. Listening to music, hanging out, going to school – the big white SUV was there for the entire high school experience.

  My first car: A Royal entrance with billows of smoke

A 1983 Ford Crown Victoria that belched smoke felt anything but regal. But despite its many flaws, LaQuenda Jackson’s college friends looked forward to a spin in “Lucinda,” and no other vehicle has brought a smile to her face like that first car.

  A learning experience: Standards, stalling, and never going back

“If you can drive a standard you can drive anything,” said Andy Odom’s father as he handed him the keys to the Toyota Corolla Tercel. There was still the process of learning to handle it, and a stalling meltdown ahead, however.

  My first car – I couldn’t drive it, but I loved it!

Linda Steil’s Ford Escort represented the perfect car, even if its manual gearbox meant finding a driving teacher with great levels of patience.

  My first car: Red, sleek and fast, it made a lasting impression

Sitting in the 1984 Toyota Supra was like sitting atop a rocket, and the two-door, now-classic performance car looked like it was moving fast even when parked on the driveway.

  My first car and the birthday blues

Having parents in the car industry would undoubtedly result in a dream car arriving for his birthday, or so Brent Battle thought. It didn’t quite work out that way.

  The 1996 Silver Nissan Altima: Greatest car on Earth

If you could have any car in the world, what would it be? Josh Myatt’s answer to that question is always the same. To him, the 1996 Altima is genuinely the very best car on the planet.

  from RoadLoans Auto Blog | RoadLoans http://ift.tt/2yfpHDr via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RoadLoans Auto Blog | RoadLoans

[touristguidebuzz]

OPPO Factory Tour: Visiting the Shenzhen OPPO Facilities Using My OPPO F3 Plus

Out of Town Blog OPPO Factory Tour: Visiting the Shenzhen OPPO Facilities Using My OPPO F3 Plus

How do OPPO smartphones get built? Heres what I discovered from our recent OPPO Factory Tour in Shenzhen China

Together with around 30 tech and lifestyle bloggers, I recently went to Shenzhen, China to visit the Oppo factory.

Off to Shenzhen China to visit the OPPO Factory

Shenzhen, a simple fishing settlement turned into a mega city where the reputable tech corporations and other rising businesses are located is also home to OPPO. This part of China is where the factory of the OPPO smartphones reside.

So, would you like to know how the OPPO smartphones are made? This is what I have discovered from our recent trip to Shenzhen, China during the group’s OPPO Factory Tour.

Oppo, being the top 4 international smartphone company in the world headlines the leading innovation in both front and rear camera by presenting the most fashion-forward and lustrous smartphone units today.

Welcome to China

Being one of the front runners in technology, Oppo, we learned has come up with high-quality beautification and customized sensors to get the best image results each time. They have several factories located in Indonesia, China and India. Oppo was founded in 2001 and was internationally registered in 2004 and has been globally successful in the smartphone revolution ever since as proven by their rapid expansions.

Massive Assembly Line for OPPO R11 units

OPPO Shenzhen Factory Tour

We were asked to wear a lab gown since the assembly line is a dust free environment.

We toured the OPPO factory in Shenzen as a team to learn about the ins and outs of the OPPO manufacturing processes and to witness first-hand how they manage to stay on top of their game in delivering quality smartphones.

Evolution of OPPO mobile phones

Inside OPPO Assembly Line

Here are some of the things I learned about OPPO and I was truly amazed by how outstanding and very detailed their workmanship is.

Quality Check at the Assembly Line

Oppo has a contemporary factory where step by step procedures to produce the finest quality smartphones are being made. In 2012, Oppo had jump-started the “beautification revolution” with their U701 smartphone. Today, their most recent beautification, 4.0 embarked on the thriving F1 series and to this date, it still prospers in their latest OPPO R11 smartphone. I admire how clean and systematized their settings are. No wonder they are one of the top smartphone brands in the world.

Because OPPO continues to dedicate their knowledge in innovation, their journey to bring the best quality camera for their smartphones never stops. OPPO has also developed better algorithm software, camera module, and sensor, co-development with sensors and ISP (Image signal processing) customization for superior quality in modern camera phones.

Used Microchip Containers

OPPO also wants all their clients to be very satisfied with their smartphones which is why they make certain that all their phones go through rigorous stress test to make sure that what comes out of the factory and into the stores from which clients will buy are of top-notch quality.

Testing the Camera at the assembly line

These tests include battery charging, hot and cold environmental condition test, button test, camera test, cosmetic test, drop test (10cm, 1m and 1.8m), ear phone plugging test, Flash test, twist and bend test, pocket bend test, VOOC charging and rain test. And by these tests, we can all be sure that OPPO phones can endure all kinds of conditions and temperament.OPPO also boasts of a “green” and ecological office evident in the plants throughout their office. They also have a huge provision which comprise of their own canteen, gym, and recreation spaces for their employees.

OPPO also boasts of a “green” and ecological office evident in the plants throughout their office. They also have a huge provision which comprise of their own canteen, gym, and recreation spaces for their employees.

Static Electricity Test

Here are the outline of my tour which proved to be very educational and deserving of an applause for good craftsmanship and effort.

The QE lab is where they scrutinize each handset to ensure that from the start to mass production, the quality is superb and spotless.These lab tests are separated based on their categories which consist of electrical performance tests, structural tests(destructive, structure-plug), environment aging test(continuous aging functional components, adaptability in various environments). I also learned that the total number of tests they do is more than 150 so that’s really a WOW!

OPPO Battery Charging Test

Another test they did was the micro drop test where they toss the front and back parts of the handset from 7cm height for 20,000. They also did the same thing on the other side so each handset was pitched to a total of 42,000 times which is wild but they only do it so we’ll be satisfied with their phones so it’s alright.

micro drop test

After that test, button click test came in next. They tap each side key using a 1 kg force and punch the fingerprint key 1 million times and this makes sure that our OPPO phones can really survive wear and tear.

button click test

OPPO’s smartphones durability is being examined bit by bit. The other tests they showed us include the drop test where each handset is thrown on various heights starting from 1.0m in six surfaces, eight corners and 12 edges.

Drop Test

The press test is another test that re-acts a scene where you as a user may press the phone against a small object like a key for instance and see if the unit is damaged.

press test

The next test is the tumble test to determine if the phone can handle falls without it being damaged. They showed us how they put the handset in a roller and had it rotate 75 times at a turning speed of 305 minutes; this is like throwing it from a 1m height 150x. They allow very minimal bruising on the four corners but its ability to function well cannot be put at risk so after the test, they examine the handset for signs of internal structural damage.

Rain Test

One of the last of these series of tests done is the Rain Test; IPX2 waterproofing grade (rainfall 60L/hour which is called moderate rain), they fling the handset at a 75 ° to all the four sides and after doing so, they clean the handset thoroughly to check if all functions are normal. They let the handset dry for three days to make sure the water inside the handset dissolves then they dismantle the handset to confirm that the main board BTB and display screen have no damages.

twist and bend test

Next to this is the Salt Spray Test where they drench the surface of the handset and place it in a hot and humid environment of 55°C and 95%H. They then the handset out and put it in a normal temperature to expose it to air and inspect it thoroughly after that.

Environmental Work Test

The second to the last test is the Environmental Work Test where they put the phones in a severe high-temperature environment of 85? for 500 hours. The phone should function well after this test and the RF index parameters must be within the target range

Additionally, they also tested the handsets in different conditions such as coffee, other drinks and floral water which imitates daily surroundings.

OPPO Factory Tour in Shenzhen China

Presently, the company has 38 motherboard production lines and 25 small plate production lines. Their production capacity each month is 7.5 million motherboards and 25 million sub-boards.

To make sure of the superb functionality of all motherboards being manufactured, they make 3 key efforts at their SMT workshop. The first SMT equipment is from the best-in-class manufacturers globally, the second is the 18 quality inspections processes in total to guarantee that all their motherboards are working very well and the third is where the quality standard OPPO place in their workshop is at par in the technology industry.

Evolution of OPPO Smartphones

After every machine testing, they use another machine to ensure the products they produce are not only working properly but a smartphone that the consumer actually wants and are thankful for buying.Their production faculty is about 10,000 a day which amounts to 2.5 of the production capacity of a manual test line.

And lastly the Assembly Line Workshop for each handset is where the particles of the phones are collected to be the end products. There are 26 total assembly line workshop.

Their Assembly Line Workshops on the third floor are all producing R11 and each of the production line is divided into 2 segments; assembly segment and testing segment.

Screen Test

As an OPPO user, I have to say that I was thrilled to be invited to tour their facilities. Their modern factory together with their remarkable skills in being the leader in modern technology can really make any rival company so scared right now.

Bloggers from the Philippines photo by Eason de Guzman

And to think it’s amazing that all handsets they manufacture undergo these tests is an understatement. The long processes, the detailed testing and all the patience with each handset is admirable; no wonder their company is really reaching its peak year after year.

To be able to give what the consumers need and to give them value for their money is simply outstanding and as a consumer myself, I’m thankful that there is a brand that really put their consumers’ welfare first.

Scenic View from OPPO Headquarters in Shenzhen China

OPPO (offical website) is today and always and that I can honestly say.

With this being said, there is no doubt that the stigma attached to China –made products is completely unreal as proven by the recently introduced OPPO F3, F3 Plus and R11.

OPPO Shenzhen HQ

Back in Manila photo by Eason de Guzman

Also Read:

Travel Gadgets: OPPO F3 Plus Price, Specifications and Features

The new OPPO F3 Red Limited Edition to be Available Starting August 12, 2017

OPPO Factory Tour: Visiting the Shenzhen OPPO Facilities Using My OPPO F3 Plus Melo Villareal

[technato]

Misty Robotics Builds on Developer Platform With New Personal Robot

The Misty II personal robot is designed to do whatever you can program it to do, and more

Image: Misty Robotics

Misty Robotics announced their developer platform, Misty I, just a few months ago. Misty I was a hand-built prototype, with similar essential functionality in hardware and software to a more refined production robot that the company planned to release later in the year. Later in the year has now arrived, and today Misty Robotics is launching a crowdfunding campaign for a much more polished personal robot, Misty II, which can be yours to program starting at $1,500.

In theory, I can definitely appreciate this idea of a platform being what’s holding useful personal robotics back. It’s very appealing to think about, and it would be wonderful if true, with legions of independent developers who can’t wait to work with something capable and accessible enough for them to program to do what they want it to do without any special training. Whether or not it’s true in practice remains to be seen, though— I’d love to be more optimistic, but one thing robotics has definitely taught me is that being optimistic is usually just leads to disappointment.

Misty Robotics, fortunately, seems to have a compelling combination of optimism, experience, and patience. They’re not expecting Misty to take off right away, and they have a timeline that’s about a decade long. From the sound of things, it’s fully expected that despite its consumer look, Misty won’t actually become “useful” to most consumers for many, many years. And Misty Robotics (and their investors, presumably) are totally fine with that. So really, we’re not going to be able to judge how successful the Misty Robotics approach is for quite a while. We’ll watch with interest, and hope that they’re on to something.

At 14 inches high and six pounds, the Misty II personal robot has an advanced 3D Occipital sensor for mapping, a 4K Sony camera for facial and object recognition, eight time-of-flight sensors for obstacle avoidance, and is equipped with two smartphone-level QualcommⓇ SnapDragon processors running Windows IoT Core and Android 7 operating systems. The robot is fully capable of running Tensorflow, Caffe, and WindowsML within hardware optimized runtimes. Owners can physically expand Misty II to add functionality and fun with several hardware accessories, created by Misty Robotics and the community of makers and inventors at large.

One of the things that should set Misty apart is that it’s been designed specifically to be able to perform advanced behaviors without requiring advanced knowledge of robotics. Out of the box, Misty II can:

Move autonomously as well as dynamically respond to her environment

Recognize faces

Create a 3D map of her surroundings

Perform seeing, hearing, and speaking capabilities 

Receive and respond to commands

Locate her charger to charge herself

Display emotive eyes and other emotional characteristics

All of this stuff can be accessed and leveraged if you know how to code, even a little bit. Or even not at all, since Misty can be programmed through Blockly:

The Misty II personal robot is easy for non-technical owners to program using the Misty Blockly client, a visual block-based programming interface, to create new skills for the robot that can make it move, talk, roar, and more. Pre-set blocks, or skills, will come installed on Misty II to quickly get started. Those owners with programming experience, can utilize JavaScript APIs to create more sophisticated skills and modifications, like integrating with third party services such as Alexa, Microsoft Cognitive Services, Google Assistant, and Cloud APIs.

If you’re quick, you can snag a “Founder Edition” Misty II for $1,500, and after that, the crowdfunding price is $1,600. The press release says that this price is “a 50% discount,” making the robots quite expensive. If they’re as fun and as useful as Misty Robotics hopes they’ll be, maybe the price won’t be too much of an obstacle. Again, we’ll be following closely, and hoping that this strategy pays off both for Misty Robotics itself and the larger personal robotics industry as well.

For more details on Misty II, we spoke with Misty Robotics Head of Company Tim Enwall.

IEEE Spectrum: Misty I has been out for several months now. Can you give us some examples of useful applications that Misty I developers have come up with? What kind of feedback have you gotten from those folks on the overall experience of developing applications on Misty, and did that result in any changes in design or philosophy between Misty I and Misty II?

Tim Enwall: Our goal of developing Misty I is to get dozens of lessons every week from early customers and community, and they have shared what features they want, and precisely how they expect to use them. Through our focus on making programming Misty easy, we’ve had the chance to meaningfully engage with people who had never thought about where a robot might be useful to them. Here are few examples: 

The HVAC repair specialist who wants to use Misty to ensure his repairs were effective by checking different locations and temperatures over time.

The Sound Engineer who has to manually roam a venue to calibrate the speaker system wants to utilize Misty to take those readings for him so he can stay in the booth to configure the system. 

The two students at Galvanize who used in Misty I in their JavaScript class. They integrated Alexa and had Misty read text messages to its owners.

The pair of developers at our most recent Robothon who, within a few hours, trained Misty to recognize each of them individually and say things like ‘Ian, you’re a great boss’ or ‘Shane, would you like a snack?’

One of our earliest users who is interested in using Misty as an informational tool at conferences.

The users who have also integrated Misty’s output to externals services like Slack, Twilio, and Google Translate and Dominos to notify them of when their pizza will arrive. 

By having Misty I, we’ve been able to focus on the building the tools to suit our users instead of guessing such as: on-board SDKs are vital to really extending the power of the robot; dust covers are important for time-of-flight sensors; battery power indicators in the companion mobile app are valuable; continue working on personality, because it’s a pleasant delight; Python may be even more appealing than Javascript; access to machine learning engines and microphones are a higher priority than we thought, and dozens more.

The $1,500 price for a crowdfunded Misty II may be a significant investment for many developers. How much of an obstacle do you believe that cost will be for adoption of Misty II?

We feel that $1,500 is the most affordable price for such an advanced robot; several others in the market are more expensive with less capability. We believe, by including a sufficient number of developers, entrepreneurs, students, and makers in our plans early, the result will be better personal robots in the future because they will do hundreds of useful things— not one or two— which increases the value regular consumers are willing to pay. There has already been a lot of excitement from people who are interested in AI, machine learning, or robots, and developers who are dedicated will embrace the opportunity to participate in creating skills for the Misty II. We’re confident that for software developers with business problems to solve, students who want an AI and robotic future, and hackers/makers who love building novel creations, $1,599 is a floor price, not a max price.

We’ve learned from other platforms, like cell phones and computers, that as the uses for the device go up, consumers’ willingness to pay increases as well. What value will a consumer ascribe to a robot that can act as security guard, nanny, remote eyes, and entertainment pal not to mention other skills all in the same package? Laptops and TVs teach us that such general purpose tools are often quite valuable.

By crowdfunding, rather than pre-sale, we are able to launch Misty on her journey and build a community around Misty. Crowdfunding aligns with our early mission of building a community of developers and makers. It’s about inviting people to support our community in this early stage as we embark on this 10 year road to putting a robot in every home and office. We also believe the crowdfunding campaign will serve as a channel for getting feedback and will help to reinforce our assumption that the target market is ready for an easily programmable robot at a consumer price point.  

The press release says “owners can physically expand Misty II to add functionality and fun with several hardware accessories, created by Misty Robotics and the community of makers and inventors at large.” Can you describe some of these accessories?

Misty can be expanded with hardware accessories that are serial or USB enabled (backpack), attached to the head (headpiece), non-powered attachments to the arm motors (arms), and non-powered items carried behind (via “trailer hitch”) to make her more useful for daily tasks. During the crowdfunding campaign and after, we’ve made an Arduino backpack capable of plugging in most Arduino shields. Some of the ideas that have circulated are: 

Backpack: Carry temperature and humidity sensors for the HVAC technician to leave while the robot monitors the environment after installation/repair

Backpack: Smart home (Z Wave or Zigbee) addition for robot to interact with homes

Arms: Projector arms (powered via backpack) to project an image on a wall/screen

Arms: Laser pointer (powered by backpack) to play with cats

Earpiece: night-vision camera (powered by backpack)

Trailer hitch: pull a beer cart at a party

What was the thinking behind making Misty explicitly female?

When originally deciding what to name the robot, we thought ‘Misty’ was a friendly name that’s easy to remember, spell, and say. We want to encourage people to feel comfortable bringing a robot into their home, and we believed making Misty female would give her an approachable, friendly connotation. In practice, many of our customers assign a male gender to “their robot” and many, a female one.

Misty II is described as “the second robot in a series of robots… over the course of the next 10 years.” What is the general trajectory that you expect the Misty series to take over the next several years? 

The Misty II is primarily for software developers, STEM students, and makers. This community will invent thousands of uses, which, we predict, will take about three to five years. During this three to five year timeframe, there will be advances in processing speed to enable general object recognition, advances in motor life, manipulation, as well as finding ways to make the battery last longer. After truly homing in on improving the extensibility and depth of APIs, it will then be early adopters who will utilize robots in the home and office. Five years following that, we feel that Misty will be ready for mass adoption (i.e. greater than 20% penetration) consumers. A robot will not appeal to a regular consumer unless it is comfortable to interact with and multi-purpose (capable of hundreds of tasks), which is where developers come in to create these skills. Nevertheless, the robotics market could accelerate based on market shifts and our goal is to be ready when that happens. Our product release cycles will be somewhere between a highly-competitive smartphone market (typically one year) and an industrial upgrade market like thermostats (usually 7-10 years) with a weighting towards the former rather than the latter.

[ Kickstarter ] via [ Misty Robotics ]

Misty Robotics Builds on Developer Platform With New Personal Robot syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com