October 21st, 2015 was Back To The Future Day. The day in which Marty travels into the future in the Delorean. Countless articles have focused on the lack of hoverboards, flying vehicles or ability to time travel.
Why isn’t anyone talking about dehydrated pizza?
In Back To The Future: Part II there is a scene where Marty McFly’s mother rehydrates a Pizza Hut Pizza in a Black and Decker Hydrater. The pizza expands from 4 inches in diameter to 15 inches in diameter in about 12 seconds.
Youtube has announced a new subscription program called Youtube Red. This subscription will cost $10 per month and allow you to use Youtube without seeing any ads.
Firstly, why would anyone with even just the tiniest shred of intelligence pay for something like this? Are there really people out there who can’t be bothered sitting through a 10 second ad, are you watching Youtube that much?
Ebb and Flow is a great Internet marketing company and they say the second part is a doozy. Youtube supposedly made its top video creators (Youtube partners) an offer they couldn’t refuse, or their content would disappear. Apparently Youtube is being run by a 1930s mobster with a tommy gun and pinstripe suit.
There comes a time in most applications where you will want to loop through an array of data on the front-end. In Aurelia we have the repeat.for attribute which allows us to use Aurelia’s repeater functionality in our view templates.
Lets run through some examples and common scenarios when working with the repeater functionality.
Accessing the first item in the loop Sometimes you want to style the first element differently or do something with the data, using the $first conditional variable, we can determine whether or not the current item is the first in our loop of items. This value will either be true or false, making it a great candidate for the if functionality for conditionally showing items.
Grand Theft Auto V is a game that just keeps on giving. Originally release in 2013 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, then released in November 2014 for Playstation 4 and Xbox One (current-gen), I have been consistently playing.
Thanks to Rockstar’s commitment to producing fresh online content for GTA V: Online the game has been able to evolve from something awesome to a truly awesome game.
After the recent freeroam updates, Rockstar will not be producing any new content for last-gen consoles. While this might suck for owners of the PS3 or Xbox 360, it is good news for PS4, X1 and PC players of the game.
It is time to uninstall Flash.
The notoriously insecure multimedia plugin is causing more issues than it is worth. Of late there have been numerous major security issues posted online, in yet more ways attackers can come in and touch your junk. Some of my SEO friends especially one that lives near Honolulu, Hawaii is done with Adobe Flash and all it’s problems.
Not long after releasing a plethora of bandaid patches for Adobe software products (including Flash), Adobe have confirmed another major security vulnerability and it is a doozie: it affects all versions of Flash; Windows, Mac and Linux.
Depending on what part of the world you are from you might be familiar with the concept of a Magic Eraser. In Australia we have the Chux brand Magic Erasers and in the US they have those I believe and also the Mr. Clean Magic Erasers (amongst tonnes of other competitors).
What most people don’t realise is these magical sponges are something called Melamine Foam. This foam has been used for soundproofing recording studios and things like trains for years.
Recently metadata retention laws came into effect in Australia and your activities both online and offline are being tracked and stored for up to two years all under the guise of terrorism.
Ironically the very law that is supposedly meant to protect Australian citizens might end up doing the opposite. Every call, text, web search or activity you do that can be tracked most likely will be tracked and stored. Depending on who you are or what you do, you might come up as a person of interest in a criminal case and not even know it.
As much as I like Windows 10 there is a new feature that annoys the absolute crap out of me: quick access in Explorer.
By default quick access will show you your recently used files and folders. Sounds great, right? Well not really. As a result you get junk folders and files clogging up the sidebar of your File Explorer windows. Fortunately, you can disable the annoying behaviour.
Open File Explorer Right click on Quick Access and select “Options” In Folder Options, the Privacy options group at the bottom is where you can disable the Quick Access feature. I also recommend you click the “Clear” button as well. Uncheck both or desired checkboxes and click “Ok” That’s all there is. Quick Access is now disabled.
What happens if and when the newly introduced metadata retention scheme in Australia encounters its first leak?
Effective today October 13th, 2015 the scheme is active. Although, comically there supposedly are a lot of companies still awaiting for approval on their data retention implementations. You can rest assured telcos like Telstra and Optus are already compliant and ready to store your calls and internet details.
The sheer amount of data that will be logged per second (probably tens of gigs) is also going to undoubtedly show some stress fractures in the infrastructure. Australian telcos can barely keep their networks congestion free and stable, I don’t know how a retention scheme is going to fare any better for them.
Update January 2020: I did not have high hopes for this thing given it was a cheap Bunnings purchase. I managed to do a couple of cooks with this before it started acting up on me. The thin wire that connects to the probe eventually discoloured and then I started experiencing inaccurate temperatures.
I have vowed to never buy cheap essential items ever again. Instead, I bought the ThermoPro TP20 Wireless Remote Digital Cooking Food Meat Thermometer with Dual Probe for Smoker Grill BBQ ThermometerThermoPro TP20 which has been incredibly reliable. It cost way more than the Bunnings probe but has elevated my smoking game considerably.