When someone mentions “VR filmmaking,” they’re usually referring to 360-degree video, or some kind of video game environment where the story unfolds around you. One developer in Japan, however, has taken the concept in a vastly different direction. ‘…
Tesla is working hard to make it easier for its customers to charge their electric cars on the go. Back in February, the company revealed that it’ll be doubling its Supercharger network in 2017. It doubled down on that claim this morning, with the an…
Two years ago, Google introduced Jump, a VR platform that uses cloud-based software and smart stitching algorithms to make 360-video creation easier than ever before. It also partnered with GoPro to make the Odyssey, a 16-camera rig that was the firs…
A new hardware/app device called Revolar aims to make it safe to walk the streets. This tiny button will notify your friends and family if you’re scared, the authorities if you’re in trouble, and will even simulate a phone call if you need to get out of a sticky situation. It works with iOs and Android and ships in May. The idea for Revolar came about when co-foudner Jacqueline… Read More
There’s a memorable gag from the (unfortunately revived) Arrested Development that goes like this: A character sees a brown paper bag labeled “dead dove, do not eat,” opens the bag anyway, reacts in disgust, and then remarks, “I don’t know what I expected.” It’s a pretty good approximation of how the bone hurting…
Joerg Sprave, the internet’s most famous slingshot-loving amateur super villain, has found ways to weaponize everything from foam Nerf darts, to those tiny Ikea pencils. His latest troubling achievement is a custom elastic-powered blaster that can turn Lego bricks into tiny projectiles.
Target is going crazy for Nintendo. The company has started giving more than 650 stores across the country a Mario Kart-themed makeover. This is all to promote the launch of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Nintendo Switch on April 28th.
This theme will include things like Mario-themed bollards outside the store, a countdown timer sound when you cross the start line at the entrance, and shopping carts decorated to look like karts.
Better stock upon shells and banana peels so you can climb in that cart and wage war inside of a Target near you. Not sure they would appreciate that, but give me a Mario Kart themed cart and that’s what’s gonna happen.
[via Polygon via Nerd Approved]
New Orleans has taken a first major step in fulfilling its 2015 promise to tear down four prominent Confederate statues, an attempt to scrub the city’s public spaces of what many see as white supremacist symbols.
City workers began removing the Battle of Liberty Place statue at 1:25 a.m. Monday in an effort to avoid disruption by protesters who want the monuments to stay, reported The Associated Press. Erected in 1891, the obelisk honors members of the Crescent City White League, a group of all-white Confederate veterans who killed members of the city’s post-Civil War integrated police force.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) tweeted that the statues “do not represent the diversity” of New Orleans.
Statues commemorating Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard as well as Jefferson Davis (the first ― and only ― president of the Confederate States of America) will be removed in the coming days. All four of the structures will be relocated to a museum or another “place where they can be put in historical context,” according to a press release issued by the mayor’s office
The city’s decision to tear down the statues was prompted by the 2015 massacre at historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine black churchgoers. Nearly six months after the attack, the New Orleans City Council voted 6-1 in favor of removing the monuments.
The decision sparked outrage from some members of the community who saw the removal of the monuments as an attack on the city’s heritage. A couple dozen protesters gathered in front of the Jefferson Davis and Battle of Liberty Place statues around midnight before city workers began removing the obelisk.
“I think it’s a terrible thing,” Richard Bonner, 63, told the AP this week. “When you start removing the history of the city, you start losing money. You start losing where you came from and where you’ve been.”
Many residents of New Orleans, a predominantly African-American city, have spoken out in support of the move. Landrieu first proposed the idea and it gained momentous support from the city’s black residents, though legal backlash prevented the structures from being removed sooner.
“This is not about politics, blame or retaliation,” Landrieu said in the press release. “This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once. This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile ― and most importantly― choose a better future.”
New Orleans is the latest Southern institution to push back against public monuments honoring their Confederate roots, a movement that gained force following the 2015 church shooting.
Soon after, South Carolina passed legislation to remove Confederate flags from its State House grounds. Alabama and Mississippi also decided to remove the banners.
Still, those hoping to rid the U.S. of its Confederate paraphernalia have a long way to go. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified at least 700 Confederate statues or monuments in public spaces across the country, with nearly 300 in Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina alone.
As New Orleans’ Battle of Liberty Place statue lay in pieces Monday, state offices in Mississippi and Alabama remained closed for Confederate Memorial Day, a holiday celebrated by a handful of Southern states to remember those who died fighting for the Confederacy.
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Ghana, Kenya and Malawi will pilot the world’s first malaria vaccine from 2018, offering it for babies and children in high-risk areas as part of real-life trials, the World Health Organization said on Monday.
The injectable vaccine, called RTS,S or Mosquirix, was developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline to protect children from the most deadly form of malaria in Africa.
In clinical trials it proved only partially effective, and it needs to be given in a four-dose schedule, but is the first regulator-approved vaccine against the mosquito-borne disease.
The WHO, which is in the process of assessing whether to add the shot to core package of WHO-recommended measures for malaria prevention, has said it first wants to see the results of on-the-ground testing in a pilot program.
“Information gathered in the pilot will help us make decisions on the wider use of this vaccine,” Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s African regional director, said in a statement as the three pilot countries were announced.
“Combined with existing malaria interventions, such a vaccine would have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives in Africa.”
Malaria kills around 430,000 people a year, the vast majority of them babies and young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Global efforts in the last 15 years cut the malaria death toll by 62 percent between 2000 and 2015.
The WHO pilot program will assess whether the Mosquirix’s protective effect in children aged 5 to 17 months can be replicated in real-life.
It will also assess the feasibility of delivering the four doses needed, and explore the vaccine’s potential role in reducing the number of children killed by the disease.
The WHO said Malawi, Kenya and Ghana were chosen for the pilot due to several factors, including having high rates of malaria as well as good malaria programs, wide use of bed-nets, and well-functioning immunization programs.
Each of the three countries will decide on the districts and regions to be included in the pilots, the WHO said, with high malaria areas getting priority since these are where experts expect to see most benefit from the use of the vaccine.
RTS,S was developed by GSK in partnership with the non-profit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative and part-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The WHO said in November it had secured full funding for the first phase of the RTS,S pilots, with $15 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and up to $27.5 million and $9.6 million respectively from the GAVI Vaccine Alliance and UNITAID for the first four years of the program.
(Editing by Jane Merriman)
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