Tag: basic
Assistive Access Will Turn Your iPhone Into a Basic Phone
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is coming up on May 18, and Apple is marking the occasion by showing off future updates to iPhones, iPads, and Macs aimed at improving accessibility. From AI-generated voices to simplified home screens, there are some great features on the way.
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How son’s disability leaves family fighting for ‘basic right’ to access his funds
Google’s AI Bard Update Makes Coding Super BASIC
It still needs a lot of work, but the Google Bard AI chatbot is slowly catching up with ChatGPT. And the newest addition to Google Bard shows how, in some ways, Google could stand up to the competition—Google Bard can now write, repair, or explain code, and it can export Python script directly to Colab.
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You Can Finally Get Disney Plus Basic on Roku – CNET
Bing shows off two new AI features that make Google Bard look basic
Something Pretty Right: a History of Visual Basic
Visual Basic (or VB) burst onto the scene at a magical, transitional moment, presenting a radically simpler alternative for Windows 3.0 development. Bill Gates’ genuine enthusiasm for VB is evident in an accompanying 1991 video in which BillG personally and playfully demonstrates Visual Basic 1.0 at its launch event, as well as in a 1994 video in which Gates thanks Alan Cooper, the
“Father of Visual Basic,” with the Windows Pioneer Award.
For Gates, VB was love at first sight. “It blew his mind, he had never seen anything like it,” recalls Cooper of Gates’s reaction to his 1988 demo of a prototype. “At one point he turned to his retinue and asked ‘Why can’t we do stuff like this?'” Gates even came up with the idea of taking Cooper’s visual programming frontend and replacing its small custom internal language with BASIC.
After seeing what Microsoft had done to his baby, Cooper reportedly sat frustrated in the front row at the launch event. But it’s hard to argue with success, and Cooper eventually came to appreciate VB’s impact. “Had Ruby [Cooper’s creation] gone to the market as a shell construction set,” Cooper said, “it would have made millions of people happier, but then Visual Basic made hundreds of millions of people happier. I was not right, or rather, I was right enough, had a modicum of rightness. Same for Bill Gates, but the two of us together did something pretty right.”
At its peak, Visual Basic had nearly 3.5 million developers worldwide. Many of the innovations that Alan Cooper and Scott Ferguson’s teams introduced 30 years ago with VB are nowhere to be found in modern development, fueling a nostalgic fondness for the ease and magic VB delivered that we have yet to rekindle.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ring limits more of its basic security features to its subscription plan
Amazon’s Ring smart home division will start charging users for more features that had been available to all customers at no extra cost. Starting on March 29th, you’ll need to be on a Ring Protect plan to use Home and Away Modes for the company’s cameras and video doorbells. This feature enables users to switch Live View and recording on or off in the Ring app whether they’re away or at home.
Those who buy a Ring Alarm system on or after March 29th will need to pay extra to access several freshly paywalled features too. You’ll need a subscription to arm or disarm it from the Ring app or an Alexa-enabled device. Otherwise, you’ll only be able to do so from the Ring Keypad. Other features, such as real-time app and email notifications and the ability to connect your cameras and doorbell to the system, are moving behind the subscription. Those without a Protect membership will also be limited to 24 hours of Alarm event history, rather than 60 days.
These changes don’t apply to those who already own a Ring Alarm system. Ring notes on a support page that those who buy a Ring Alarm before March 29th but don’t activate it until on or after that day will still have access to these features without a paid subscription “for the expected life of the device.”
Ring Protect plans start at $4 per month or $40 per year after prices went up last summer. The newly paywalled features will all be available on the basic tier, as The Verge points out.
In any case, those who buy a Ring Alarm after the end of March will have to subscribe to access some basic features. Not getting a notification when you’re away from home and the system is triggered, for instance, kind of defeats the purpose of having a smart alarm setup.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ring-limits-more-of-its-basic-security-features-to-its-subscription-plan-171011907.html?src=rss
This basic monitor arm is down to $22.79 after two coupon codes
It’s rare to see a double discount deal on Amazon, but today that’s exactly what’s happened with this promotion on the Irongear Single Monitor Arm. It normally retails for $75.99, but you can tick a 50% off coupon on the product page and use code 2YXE4T73 to knock the price down to just $22.79 – an incredibly low asking price for a solid budget option that can handle even ultrawide monitors up to 26.4lbs/12kg.