My Science School

The total number of people who have played Call of Duty is larger than the population of some countries in the world. To put that into context, the population of Germany is only 80.4 million!

It also took 25 billion hours of play time to fire them all, which is longer than humans have actually existed!

Warzone’s overwhelming success is no surprise, with over 100 million players in the game. However, it’s only gotten bigger. In an earnings document published by Activision, Warzone is currently sitting at a monthly 111 million players. While most of that playerbase is brought in because of Warzone being free-to-play, Warzone is also one of the biggest battle royale games out there because of its heritage. Holding the Call of Duty brand is one of the key factors in Warzone’s success. Combine that with the engine and gameplay of Modern Warfare 2019, which received critical acclaim for its back-to-basics gameplay, and Warzone is the best-case scenario for Call of Duty. 

Warzone has proven to be one of the biggest titles in the franchise. Combining the numbers between Cold War, Warzone, and Modern Warfare, there are more than 113 million players enjoying what Call of Duty has offered over the past two years. More players are also enjoying the entire library of Call of Duty titles, with each game holding a small yet active playerbase. Not many game franchises can keep that kind of player commitment, which touts Call of Duty as the only first-person shooter franchise to go to.

Credit : Esports Talk

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American astronaut Steven R. Swanson is the first astronaut residing in the International Space Station to take and post the first Instagram photo from outer space, and that photo, naturally, is a selfie. Swanson accompanied the space selfie with the caption, "Back on ISS, life is good."

The image, posted to the official ISS Instagram account is—befitting of our times—a selfie. The photo shows American astronaut Steven R. Swanson in the station’s scenic seven-window observatory module. Swanson, who has flown one previous mission to the station, captioned the photo with, “Back on ISS, life is good.” Obviously, no filter was needed.

Swanson launched with two Russian cosmonauts, Aleksandr Skvortsov, and Oleg Artemyev, on March 25 aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, becoming the 39th crew to journey to the station. Expedition 39 started the Instagram account back in January as a way of documenting the last few months of their training and preparation.

In recent years, NASA and the ISS program have garnered a lot of public attention from savvy social media use. In 2009, astronaut Mike Massimino became the first person to Tweet from space. Massimino has since attracted more than 1.28 million Twitter followers. And if the backdrop of the first space Instagram looks familiar, that’s because it was one of backdrops used Chris Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” music video last year. The video, shot aboard the ISS, became a viral sensation garnering more than 21 million views on YouTube.

Credit : Daily Dot

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Skulpt's Aim is the world's first wireless device that determines the health of your muscles. It uses electrical impedance myography (EMI) developed by Skulpt co founder Dr Seward Rutkove of Harvard Medical School. The device, which is smaller than a smartphone, is pressed against the skin where key muscles are located (specifically the biceps, triceps, abs and thigh). The Aim sends an undetectable current through the body wherever it makes contact; its sensors can distinguish both muscle from fat, and weaker muscles from stronger ones. Algorithms then convert the data into fat percentage and muscle quality that are shown on the screen. Priced at $149, the Aim can help users improve their overall fitness.

The underside of the Aim consists of 12 electrodes that measure how current moves through the target muscles. It is recommended that the user take measurements at four sites (biceps, triceps, abs, and thighs) to obtain a snapshot of the total body fat percentage and muscle quality, with each measurement taking less than a second. The measurements are instantly displayed on the device’s LED screen. The Aim also includes Bluetooth communication to allow the user to monitor his or her fitness through an online dashboard. The online companion tool allows the user to set workout goals to reach a certain muscle quality target and also provides active fitness advice to the user. The Aim is water resistant, allowing for it to be used in a wide range of environments and the rechargeable battery can last up to two months at a time.

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 Inspired by an aviation theme, the Kisai Blade watch features a turbine-style lens with digital tube LEDs that seem to rotate like a propeller. The watch has two time settings. In Turning Mode, the blades spin and three blades light up in turn to indicate the hours and minutes. In Flashing Mode, one blade lights up to indicate the hour, and another flashes to indicate a five minute interval. Four LED dots by the 12 o'clock blade indicate up to four additional minutes to show the exact time. To keep things fun, there's also an animation mode where the LED blades light up and rotate "like a jet engine" at 15-minute intervals between 6 p.m. and midnight. Priced at US$169, the black, silver or gold sandblasted stainless steel case comes with a choice of blue, green or red LEDs. The battery is rechargeable via USB.

To keep things fun, there’s also a selectable Animation mode, where the LED blades light up and seem to rotate “like a jet engine” at 15-minute intervals between the hours of 6 PM and Midnight.

The casing of the Kisai Blade is a unisex design that fits both small and large wrists. The black, silver or gold sandblasted stainless steel case with brushed detail comes with a choice of blue, green or red LEDs, and a stainless steel or leather strap. The PL301517 battery is rechargeable by connecting via USB cable to a computer. A three and a half hour charge is said to be good for up to 30 days. The watch is rated water resistant to 3 ATM.

Credit : New Atlas 

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Digital studio Hello Velocity has created a typeface using the trademarks of popular brands including Netflix, Amazon, McDonald's , Google and Facebook. The 52-letter font is a spoof of the widely-used Times New Roman typeface.

The studio used logos of some of the world's biggest companies to create each letter in the alphabet, both in uppercase and lowercase. In total, 76 corporate logos were used to create the typeface; some letters are represented with multiple logos - the s is represented by the Skype logo and by the Suzuki logo.

The font is intended as a comic take on the global power and influence of these brands. "When you smash so many of these brands together, they start to lose their brand connotations," says the studio.

When designing the font, the design team tried to only use certain logos that act, or can act, as standalone branding elements – avoiding extracting one letter from a logo that is normally composed of multiple characters.

They trialled numerous trademarks to find the set that worked best with each other, and that would make the font as easy to read as possible.

They also tried to restrict each letter to the logos that they considered to be the most recognisable and current. However they had to make a few exceptions.

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Jumbo is a privacy assistant for iOS that cleans up your social profiles. The app currently manages privacy on Twitter, Facebook, Google Search and Amazon's Alexa with plans for Instagram in the future. For Twitter, it deletes tweets older than a day, a week, a month, or three months and save them to your phone or cloud. Similarly, the app can delete Google Search history with options: All, Older than a day, Older than a week, and Older than a month. Delete all voice commands to Amazon Alexa with a single tap, but without any options. Jumbo can control 30 aspects of your Facebook profile including ad settings, visibility of posts, facial recognition, likes and pages you follow. It offers three levels of control: Weak, Medium and Strong each of which affects your profile differently.

Jumbo Privacy covers a slew of services including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Messenger, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Alexa. It can also scan the web for data breaches, as well as block in-app and online trackers. The various networks and options are separated by different paid tiers—Plus and Pro. The Plus plan covers most networks and data breach scans. The Pro plan adds dark web scanning for credit card numbers, your social security number, LinkedIn coverage, and in-app/online tracker blocking.

Jumbo uses a unique “pay what you think is fair” method for these pricing tiers, with the Plus plan ranging from $3.99 to $8.99 monthly, and the Pro plan from $9.99 to $15.99 monthly. There’s also a free trial so you can see what it’s really about before subscribing.

Credit : review geek

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Pinterest has a cool feature called Secret Boards. These Boards are not visible publicly and all the Pins inside them are private as well. They are only visible to the creator and any collaborators the creator may invite. There are two ways to create a Secret Board:

1. When you create a new Board, toggle on the option to make it 'Secret'.

2. For an existing Board, open it and tap the pencil icon. Toggle on 'Keep board secret'.

For extra privacy, you can change your name or use secret boards to keep your Pins hidden from others. Your secret boards can only be viewed by you and anyone you choose to invite to the board.

You can turn a public board into a secret board at any time. You can also move or copy a Pin to a secret board.

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The Nubia Alpha Wearable Smartphone blurs the line between phones and watches. The device's flexible 4-inch OLED screen with a 36 : 9 aspect ratio sits inside a metal band, with a 5MP front-facing camera in the middle. It can be wrapped around the wrist for use as a smartwatch and when unwrapped, adopts a flat shape for use as a smartphone with a tall aspect ratio display. It features a Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB of onboard storage and 500mAh battery plus a heart rate monitor, sleep tracker and pedometer. Its gesture control allows users to scroll or swipe by waving a finger over the device. Nubia Alpha comes with Bluetooth and a version with eSIM support. It runs a custom version of Android (Alpha OS) that supports everything from photos and phone calls to texts and movie watching.

One of the more interesting features of the smartwatch is gesture control, which allows you to wave your finger over the device to get it to scroll up and down, or left and right. We had to physically go into a settings menu to activate the functionality — which was clearly labeled as being an “alpha” feature — on our demo unit. To be fair to the device, we were in a dark room filled with occasional bright spotlights, but the functionality was buggy, and clearly wasn’t ready for public use.

So what can the wearable smartphone do? Lots of things, as it turns out. There’s all the standard smartwatch functionality such as fitness tracking, mobile payments (though only the Chinese QR code payment service AliPay was mentioned), and voice calls either through its built-in speaker or a connected Bluetooth headset.

Credit : The Verge

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The 'Your Time on Facebook' dashboard displays a bar graph of the week, with your usage time displayed by hours and minutes per day, and the average amount of time you spent each day. To access it, launch the Facebook app on your Android or iOS device, tap the hamburger icon on the top right corner, and head to 'Settings & Privacy'. Then, tap 'Your time on Facebook.' You can also set a reminder to alert you after you've crossed a daily time limit that you specify.

If you use Facebook or Instagram on iOS or a Pixel, you can compare your Facebook's reporting numbers with those of your Screen Time and Digital Well Being reports, which track how long you spend on individual apps. Before these native tools, apps like Moment tracked your phone use for you.

The jury is still out on whether knowledge is really sufficient to encourage you to action. Will knowing you spend two hours a day looking at Facebook on your phone be shameful enough to get you to stop? With the tools buried deep in your app’s settings, and giving only a partial look at your total Facebook time sink, it could easily become just another uncomfortable truth to ignore.

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Open up canvas.apps.chrome you'll be taken to Canvas, which lets you draw and make handwritten notes within the browser. A simple app, it has four different pen/brush options, an eraser, a colour picker, and the ability to export your drawing as a PNG file to your computer. You can also import an existing image from your computer and draw over it.

Drawings will automatically store on your Google Account. The app can be used across different browsers like Firefox and Safari, plus on mobile, too.

As far as drawing tools go, Chrome Canvas is pretty straightforward and free of major bells and whistles. The app allows you to select a pencil, ink pen, marker or chalk as your drawing utensil. As for colors, you can choose from a handful of pre-selected options or pull up the custom menu and select basically any hex color. Of course, there is an eraser to undo any of the mistakes you make while doodling.

Chrome Canvas isn't tied to just Chrome. It can be used in any browser that supports WebAssembly, including Firefox. Drawings can be done with a mouse or touchpad, though you'll probably have better luck with a stylus and a touchscreen. Chrome Canvas isn't Google's first crack at a drawing tool. The company previously released an AR drawing app for mobile devices and a 3D MS Paint-style app to draw in virtual reality. Google Keep, Google's notetaking app, also supports drawing in Chrome and within its mobile apps.

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Whenever you install a new app via Play Store, the app's icon shows up as a shortcut on your device's home screen, which can lead to a lot of clutter if you've installed many apps. Head to the Play Store settings where you'll find a toggle option 'Add icon to Home Screen' - which - if toggled off disables new apps from creating a shortcut on the home screen.

With this turned off, you should no longer have icons automatically added to your home screens. Disabling this will in no way affect the app from being placed in your app drawer. If you do want to re-enable it in the future, all you need to do is follow the above steps again and merely toggle it back on.

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To celebrate G-Shock and Transformers' 35th anniversary, this year, watch company Casio and toymaker Takara Tomy have collaborated to create a limited edition Optimus Prime watch. The Transformers G-Shock DW6900-IV has a red bezel, blue bands, and a silver face with the iconic Transformers logo. When the backlight is activated, the legendary Autobot emblem appears. The set also includes a fully-transforming Optimus Prime figure that uses the watch as its Matrix of Leadership chest piece. When the watch is transformed, Optimus Prime into a watch stand to display your heroic timepiece. The figure also comes with an extra Matrix of Leadership insert to fill in the gap when the watch is on your wrist and a couple of blasters to help the big bad bot protect your G-Shock.

The Transformers toy line was launched in the U.S. market in 1984 and was followed by a hit animated television series and comic book series. The Transformers toy line and animated television series were later released in Japan in 1985. The Transformers live action movie directed by Michael Bay and produced by Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg was released in 2007 and became a big hit, launching a movie franchise. More than 500 million Transformers figures have been sold to date worldwide in over 130 countries and regions, a testament to the massive global popularity of the Transformers franchise.

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Want your photos to look stunning in your social media feed? Enlight Photofox handles everything from quick tweaks to creating a double-exposure masterpiece. Make a photo look like a watercolour, oil painting, street art or sketch. Its Photo Mixer lets you add layers, superimpose images, create photo montages and seamlessly merge photos with various blending modes. Its Heal tool allows for removal of defects while its crop options allow for straightening crooked photos. Turn your photos into black and white using darkroom techniques or reproduce the style of classic cameras and vintage film. Free for iOS.

Photofox includes sophisticated painterly and collage capabilities designed to transform your images into works of art. Technically, Photofox is an update of the original Enlight app, but it looks and feels more like a related standalone app targeting a pro level audience. It’s similar to its predecessor and is available alongside it on the App Store

Photofox is primarily a photo editing tool, but it kicks the software’s capabilities up a notch, emphasizing creative compositing with a new focus on layering, blending images, and special effects.

Unlike the original app, Photofox works with raw files and allows multiple layers instead of just two. An interface overhaul keeps the app fairly simple, but using Photofox to its best advantage requires a more imaginative vision of composited images coupled with a sleight of hand. The less-cramped iPad version is slightly easier to use, because in addition to the extra screen space, you can use the app in landscape mode, while Photofox’s iPhone app only operates in portrait orientation.

Credit : Macworld 

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Dots & Co is the third game from the maker of the addictive Two Dots and Dots. The game play is simple connect dots of the same colour to make them disappear. Each level has an objective to be accomplished in limited moves. New to Dots & Co are companions who provide valuable power-ups that help you reach your goals. One of the least stressful puzzle games out there, Dots & Co has colourful graphics and a cool soundtrack. Free for iOS and Android.

The most noticeable change is the new "companions" that help you in each level. Fortunately, these helpers are very subtle. You'll see them at the top of your screen as you play through a level -- a big penguin or eskimo smiling down on you as you play through the level. Throughout the playing field are companion dots; clearing those helps fill up an energy bar at the top of the screen. When it's full, your companion drops a special move in the screen to help you progress.

Probably the other biggest change is to the game's economy. Instead of starting with five lives that slowly regenerate after you've lost them, you use "energy" to start a level. Your meter goes to 15, and each level drops your level three points. Finishing a level regenerates energy -- but you'll only get all three energy points back if you "ace" the level and get three stars. So even if you keep successfully finishing levels, you'll run out of energy unless you consistently get three stars, something that could be tough as the difficulty ramps up.

Crucially, Dots & Co. retails the excellent, unique atmosphere and mood of the previous game. It's one of the least stressful puzzle games out there, with gorgeous graphics and an extremely chill soundtrack. It looks unique and feels like it's been put together with more care and love than just about any other mobile game out there.

Credit :  Engadget 

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The moon will get its first mobile phone network next year, enabling high definition streaming from the lunar surface back to earth. Together with Berlin-based PTScientists, Vodafone Germany, Nokia and Audi are working on the project, Mission to the Moon, 50 years after the first NASA astronauts walked on the moon.

Vodafone will use its network technology to enable 4G coverage that will connect two Audi Quattro lunar rovers to a base station while Nokia is making space-grade networking gear that will weigh less than 1 kg. The launch is scheduled for 2019 from Cape Canaveral (Florida) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

“This project involves a radically innovative approach to the development of mobile network infrastructure,” Vodafone Germany Chief Executive Hannes Ametsreiter said.

One executive involved said the decision to build a 4G network rather a state-of-the-art 5G network was taken because the next generation networks remain in the testing and trial stage and are not stable enough to ensure they would work from the lunar surface.

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