Tag Archive for: How To Kill An Hour

Sky Q levels up

Sky Q levels up!

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We love Sky Q here at the office and Sky has recently announced that is going to get much better! So in other words, Sky Q levels up!

Sky Q levels up!

Beginning in March Sky are rolling out a range of updates to it’s customers that will make their experience even better.

Not only that, the world’s most popular music streaming service, Spotify will be available to customers.  As the perfect companion to Sky’s recently released Sky Soundbox, the introductoin of Spotify to Sky’s ecosystem will allow for a top of the range high quality home music solution!

Personalisation is a big part of Sky’s initiative with Sky Q and a households viewing habits are going to be enhanced with this update. Via deeper machine learning your Sky Q box will now be able to suggest you things to watch based detailed algorithms that are learned over time.

With this update, the box will suggest things to watch that reflect the times of day that you watch content, rather than taking in to account what type of content you watch. The sports section is also getting refined thanks to machine learning. So, a customers favourite sport and teams will be shown to them more prominently. Working alongside the Sky Sports app, so a user is always aware of what’s happening in the world of their favourite sport.

Alongside greater personalisation, Sky’s voice functionality is getting a boost. Customers will be able to ask for personalised recommendations by simply saying, “show movies for me”

Sky Q levels up: User interface

To create this amazing enhanced viewing experience, Sky will be updating their UI. In this upgrade the UI will see a wide-screen interface introduced. Plus the amount of Ultra HD content available to it’s customers will double. Offering over 1,000 hours of content!!

A new ‘Kids’ mode is being introduced, giving parents peace of mind over what their children are consuming. Whilst remaining as entertaining as possible for them!

Furthermore, the reach of Sky Q is getting a little boost! The ability to stream content to more than one device is being introduced. As well as a Sky Q app being available to download on Smart Tv’s and third party devices.

 

To listen to the latest podcast please click here!

 

Facebook Lists

Facebook Lists

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Facebook are trying to find out more about you in a way that looks less obtrusive. It’s called Facebook Lists and they’re totally customizable to make them whatever you wish them to be. For example you can have, ‘My 2018 Goals’ or ‘Things to do before I’m 30’ or even ‘Who inspires me the most’

Like with customizable status updates, you can change the background colour, or even add emojis to it to spruce it up a little.

To make things interesting you can copy someone else’s and make it better (or worse) or even straight up copy and see who achieves the most.

Why Facebook Lists?

The whole idea behind this relates to Facebook pushing down company pages content and promoting users content. They want their users to make more original content and thus making people engage more and more with one another. Therefore engaging less with company ‘engagement’ bait style posts.

This alongside Facebook’s recent update at the end of last year (gradually rolling out to more and more users) is the “Did you know” status or “Fun fact about me” style updates. Whereby users would write a question for example “My favourtie food is” and then listing it.  Is Facebook’s push to make each other more friendly and interact more.

This is getting a huge push with Facebook allegedly promoting posts from friends and family as well as prioritising local news in the news feed. Even pushing to including a dedicated local news and events section on their site. (Though this is limited to 6 cities in the US)

Facebook Lists is currently only available to Android users. If you’re on iOS you can see lists but you cannot create them just yet. (No news on when it will arrive to iOS either)

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

To download Facebook please click here Apple / Android

 

 

 

 

police facial recognition

Police facial recognition in China!?

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China are using police facial recognition tech to find criminals on the run and those using fake ID’s!

While using this technology there has been some success with the tech leading to 7 arrests. All of whom were related to major criminal cases. Furthermore they’ve caught 26 people using fake ID’s, according to  People’s Daily

Wall Street Journal are reporting that this tech is from a Beijing based company called LLVision. They produce (unsurprisingly) wearable video cameras to sell to the everyday man. Super cool ones like the police use? You’re going to have to be vetted. Still, if you’re a regular joe, you’re still not getting them.

Police facial recognition: Impressive

LLVision revealed in tests that their system was incredibly good! It was able to pick out people from a database of 10,000 people in 100milliseconds. (This is some Minority Report type ish!) While this is very impressive, the CEO, Wu Fei, informed the Wall Street Journal that it would probably drop. The reason behind it’s impressive speed is due to the fact that all the information is stored locally. Via a handheld device rather than the cloud. Thus saving huge amounts of time.

With all this tech, yet impressive, it comes with some huge privacy concerns. William Nee of Amnesty International told the WSJ:

“The potential to give individual police officers facial recognition technology in sunglasses could eventually make China’s surveillance state all the more ubiquitous.”

Engadget reported recently that China was using facial recognition technology to geo-fence residents of the Xinjiang region. A muslim dominated area.  Allegedly China are looking at using facial recognition to build a database of every single one of its 1.3 billion citizens!

Let us know what you think about this via our socials platforms! @howtokillanhour

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Last Seen Online

A book that’s not a book? Last Seen Online

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Books in the 21st century are changing and they’re becoming a lot more than just an e-book on an Amazon Kindle! As seen online and many different apps, books are becoming a lot more interactive and more like a movie or a tv show! Last Seen Online is just that, an interactive book on just your phone. It takes place over 7 days and is in the form of a WhatsApp style chat log.

Last Seen Online is developed and created by unrd, the BookTech company of the year 2016, it’s award winning and best of all it’s free to download!

The fictional chat style story allows users to read through messages of a missing girl. We are then introduced, in real time, messages from her friends and family as you and her friends and family discover what happened to her.

In an almost cluedo style game, the app replicates a group chat messenger experience. It is here where you can delve into relationships between each of the characters. Understand how they fit into the story of a woman’s disappearance. It can get quite thrilling and sometimes scary so, you’ll most likely be gripped to your phone!

Last Seen Online: Plot

Amy Morris was out with friends celebrating her 26th birthday. However it is the day after and she never made it home. You have access to her text messages.

Read all of her conversations she had with her friends and family before she went missing. Then start receiving messages in real time as they realise she never returned home.

Over the next 7 days you’ll receive texts, audio messages, images and even videos as you delve into the life of Amy Morris and experience a mystery thriller, in a manner which is unlike no other.

To download Last Seen Online please click here Apple / Android

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

Big Mouth

Big Mouth

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Nick Bright has been killing time this week checking out a super interesting cartoon from Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg. It’s called ‘Big Mouth’ and is available to watch Netflix. Check out the trailer below:

The show is an adult cartoon so we will warn you not to watch this around any small children or maybe not a good idea to watch in public. As there some scenes in there which are quite naughty. Nick Bright said in the show that there is a scene where one of the main characters is playing basketball and then all the opponents change into giant d*cks. So, yeah, maybe not the best idea to watch around other people.

Big Mouth: Plot

Big Mouth follows 7th grade best friends Nick Birch and Andrew Glouberman as they try to figure out themselves in the world of adulthood. Figuring out what life is like while trying to figure out life while going through Puberty, Masturbation and Sexual Arousal.

The characters, both male and female, are things called ‘hormone monsters’ they act as Shoulder Angels. Maurice has a hormone monster called guides Andrew. Sometimes Nick and Jay in the story are also visited by Maurice. Yet we see a lot of Maurice hanging around with Andrew. Connie is Jessi and Missy’s hormone monster.

The series has the kids interacting with people and other objects in their world, of whom are personified. The objects and people in the story are there to give the kids helpful, sometimes confusing advice. Furthermore, the things and people that give the kids advice are ghost of Duke Ellington, Statue of Liberty, there’s even a pillow that’s capable of getting pregnant! There’s also something quite rude that gives Jessi advice, but that’s too rude to say here!

Let us know what you think of ‘Big Mouth’ by connecting with us on our socials, we’re @howtokillanhour across all of our socials.

To listen to the guys chatting about ‘Big Mouth’ please click here!

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Download Netflix by clicking here Apple / Android

 

Stupid ways we break our phones

4 Stupid ways we break our phones

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4 stupid ways we break our phones!

As most of you are reading this are more than likely tech lovers, we’d say that it’s also a betting mans guess that you have owned a smartphone in the past, or currently. According to a survey by Switched On Insurance there’s a staggering amount of us Brits that manage to break their smartphones. (Luckily I’m not one of them!) Our phones aren’t even safe within our own homes and we’re all to blame.  Check out the crazy list below of the 4 stupid ways we break our phones. Expensive ones at that.

Children Dropping Them.

If you ever let your child or a nephew hold your phone, you better have a real good screen cover and case on it. Stats from Switched On reveal that 28% of British parents have had their child drop and break their smartphone. Furthermore, the little devils dont just break phones! An incredible 62% of British parents surveyed have had their child drop another expensive gadget in the home. The gadgets listed were things such as laptops tablets and cameras!

Pets Chewing Them.

An amazing 20% of Britons have had their chew on their gadget and damage it. So maybe it’s time for those included in that 20% to purchase a chew toy for their pets. It’s a pretty expensive bill to keep replacing your precious gadgets! What we’d like to know is how the pets got ahold of them? Plus how long was it before the owners found their pets having an electronic meal and how much damage was caused!

Loo Droppage

Admit it we all like to have a nose at our phones while going to the toilet. Be that whilst doing a number 1 or a two, for males or females. But we’d hazard a guess that a fair amount of you reading this are guilty of dropping your phone in the bog. 18% so still quite low on the stupid phone damage scale, but still pretty popular. Whilst a lot of them survive this horror fall, 10% of all phones dropped are gone for good. Most prolific of taking their phones for a swim in the bog? 18-34 year olds. 34% of the 18% of us that’s accounted for. The most conservative bog swimmers? The over 55 with just 5%.

 

Roof droppers

This one we think is a bit silly, but we can see how the mistake can be made. 10% of Brits surveyed have left their phone on the roof of their car and driven off. The most common of these errors? Males, with 13% of them and just 5% of females making this ridiculous mistake. Why are your phones on the roof of the car in the first place? Don’t you do the old pat down ‘keys, phone, wallet’ once in the car? Before you go anywhere? Place your phone in the glove compartment or in the cubby hole under the controls? What monster leaves their phone in their pocket when they drive?!

So, that’s 4 stupid ways we break our phones, let us know how you’ve damaged your phone by getting in touch via our socials! @howtokillanhour

Listen to our latest podcast here!

Camera shock

Camera shocks: positive conditioning?

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The Prosthetic Photographer is designed by artist Peter Buczkowski and it’s designed to shock you into taking better photos. The AI device recognizes well composed photos and then forces (literally) the photographer to press the shutter. Camera shocks. Via a electrical shock. But it’s a mild one, don’t worry!

Buczkowski explains why the camera shocks you, it’s down to being able to control “muscles and nerves with these SENS [subcutaneous electric nerve stimulation] units.” In this sense the human becomes the interface” and the AI does all the work. So essentially switching roles of camera and human.

But how does it know what’s a good photo? The AI uses the CUHKPQ data set, this data set contains 17,000 internet photos. Photos of which have been rated by humans. The camera can detect when you’ve composed a scene to the standards set by the photos. Then it fires a jolt of electricity into your hand to take the picture.

Sounds cool enough but Buczkowski himself has stated that people’s opinons of the photos were ‘meriocre/not creative enough’ – it is just an algorithm afterall.

Deeper than camera shocks

However, the shock training is much more deeper than algorithms. Humans by design, like to copy things they like. For example an artist may develop his own aesthetic. Another artist may feel inspired by this aesthetic and copy it. While some may copy it and make it their own. Therefore the original artists aesthetics has trickled down 3 people.

So, in effect, you can teach the human mind to take photo’s based on what the camera deems as ‘photogenic’ Byczkowski echoes this to Engadget:

“I really like that my specific trained algorithms create its own aesthetic, and it depends on what data set and what neural network you use.Something similar is possible with this device, you can train people to establish a certain aesthetic.”

Buczkowski was interested in how machines can train humans. He states to Engadget that there are so many uses for Prosthetic Photographer. It could be a ‘training device’ or a ‘conditioning device’ mainly for the beginner photographer.

He was amazed at how Prosthetic Photographer changed his skills and in effect controlled him:

I saw it when I was running around taking pictures with this device, that, yeah it kind of conditioned me. I’m seeing the world how the device sees it.”

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Uber trip

Would you pay for an Uber Trip costing $1,600?

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A man in the USA has been hit with a $1,600 charge for an Uber trip home, after he passed out in the vehicle – to make it just that bit worse. It was an Uber XL. Why did it cost so much? He selected his home in New Jersey whilst he visited friends 350 miles away at West Virginia University.

Yet speaking to BBC’s Newsbeat he informed them that the home he was due to be staying at was only four blocks away! He took his mammoth journey at 2:51am and he arrived at the end of his $1600 trip 5 or six hours later.

Partying + Uber trip

Kenny was enjoying a night out with friends and started to drink at 6pm. He hit a frat party where he continued to drink before finishing up the night at a club. Speaking to Newsbeat, Kenny says that he proceeded to black out. He doesn’t even remember ordering an Uber, but he certainly woke up in one! Whilst speaking to the BBC, Kenny says that he was mad and shocked, but ultimately as he was in so much shock he didn’t really know how to react.

He, like all of us would, disputed the journey with Uber. But as he set the address and took the ride he had to pay, regardless of his mistake. Whilst he is going to have to pay the Uber trip cost, he is questioning why his driver took someone so intoxicated and decided it was a ‘good idea’ to take him across the country.

Whilst this is somewhat funny for the rest of us, he’s still got to make the return journey back.

Kenny upon realising his mistake went ahead and looked at various other methods of travel back to West Virginia University. It would cost $35 to take a bus or $115 to take a plane.

So we’re assuming, he’ll leave Uber this time round.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

 

Episode 270 Wiping Standing Up?

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Google maps Mario

Google Maps Mario!

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Next week all of us will be able to celebrate Mario day (we weren’t even aware that there was a Mario Day, but we’re so glad there is!) Google are allowing you to drive as Mario! Well atleast look like you are. To celebrate MAR10 Day, Google have collaborated with the guys over at Nintendo to transform your car on Google Maps to look just like Mario in his go-kart. Don’t go racing on the roads though! No throwing bananas out the window either! Introducing Google maps Mario!

All you have to do is to update your Google Maps from the Google Play or App store. Or download the latest version from the appropriate app store if you don’t have it already. Then Simply click the yellow ‘?’ icon that’s found in the bottom right hand side of the Google Maps app. This is exactly the same if you are on either Google or iPhone. You’ll be presented with a prompt to enable Mario Time! (Of course you’re going to click yes!)

Now this has been enabled you’ll see that the navigation arrow that you normally see has been transformed to everyone’s favourite plumber!

The Mario function will start rolling out globally, the incentive has already begun and you’ll be able to use Mario for this week only! So make sure you get your Mario on and have some fun whilst driving! But remember always pay attention to the rules of the road and pay more attention to the road than your phone!

Google Maps Mario Destinations

We’d love to see where Google maps Mario has taken you, so why not, take a screenshot and send it into us at and Google, our username is @howtokillanhour as we’d love to see them too! We’re the same username across all platforms.  Please please please remember to avoid sharing any personal details like your place of work or your home address. Make sure you crop it real good before sending!!

To download Google Maps please click here Apple / Android