Tag: making
Is your phone addiction making you sick? Here are the 8 signs to watch out for, from Tinder finger to tech neck
SPENDING too long on your smartphone may not be so smart for your health.
Taking calls for as little as 30 minutes a week can raise your chances of developing high blood pressure by 12 per cent, a study at China’s Southern Medical University found.
Spending too long on your smartphone may be bad for your health[/caption]
Four hours a week may increase that danger by 16 per cent, and six hours by 25 per cent.
Here, we reveal other ways your handset can affect body and mind — and how to stay well.
NOMO NOT FOMO: If you cannot bear being parted from your handset, this may be “no mobile phone phobia” — dubbed nomophobia.
Leave your phone behind, or well away from you, and gradually increase your time apart from it[/caption]
A YouGov study found 53 per cent of smartphone users feel anxious when they misplace their phone, the battery dies or they have no signal.
Face the fear. Start by leaving the phone behind, or well away from you, and gradually increase your time apart from it.
TINDER FINGER: If you are a non-stop swiper or cannot refrain from texting and have pain in your fingers, this may be a condition known as Tinder Finger, or Texting Thumb.
‘Tinder finger’ can lead to tendonitis if left untreated, and even long-term disability[/caption]
A 2019 study in the Journal of Public Health found that while discomfort may be short-term, it can lead to tendonitis if left untreated, and even long-term disability.
So curb the habit — take breaks from heavy texting or typing every 20 minutes.
PHANTOM PHONE POCKET SYN-DROME: This is when you reckon you had an alert but there are no new messages.
Research in the US, at the Georgia Institute of Technology, found 90 per cent of people suffer from this, when the phone becomes an extension of “you”.
Keeping it on your desk or a nearby table can ease symptoms. If not, cognitive behavioural therapy may help.
NIGHT SCROLLING DAMAGES EYES: We check our phone on average 150 times a day, and a study in Texas found using it late at night raises the risk of long-term eye issues such as macular degeneration — when the centre of the retina, the macula, deteriorates and vision is distorted or lost.
Using your phone late at night raises the risk of long-term eye issues such as macular degeneration[/caption]
For every 20 minutes on the phone, look away for 20 seconds.
Scrolling before bed also affects sleep hormone melatonin, making it hard to nod off — so best not do it.
PILING ON THE POUNDS: Being glued to your phone increases the risk of obesity by 43 per cent, cardio-vascular trouble and even death, say researchers in Colombia from the Simon Bolivar University.
Being glued to your phone increases the risk of obesity by 43 per cent[/caption]
Another study, in 2018 in the journal Physiology and Behaviour, found using a phone while eating increases calorie intake by 15 per cent. All the more reason for no handsets at dinner.
TECH NECK: Smartphones are a pain in the neck — because of the strain caused to this part of the body by constantly eyeing your screen.
Constantly eyeing your phone screen can cause pain in your neck[/caption]
Specialist clinic New York Spine Surgery & Rehabilitation Medicine found that at a 15-degree angle, the head weighs 27lb — and at 60 degrees, more than twice that.
Tilting your head from side to side, or up and down, can help.
SCREEN TIME CAN GIVE YOU SPOTS: While more research is needed into the link between phone radiation and skin, a University of Arizona study found handsets are ten times dirtier than a toilet seat.
Cleaning your phone screen regularly should ward off pimple-inducing bacteria[/caption]
Using headsets or simply putting your phone on loudspeaker will limit phone-face contact, and cleaning the screen regularly should ward off pimple-inducing bacteria.
SCROLL LESS TO STAY SHARP: If you often look to your phone for answers to questions you already know, it could make you mentally lazy.
A study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found awareness and understanding are reduced if a smartphone is within reach — even if turned off
Meta is making life even harder for its metaverse creators
Meta will no longer let creators using its Horizon Worlds social VR playscape make dedicated events, the company announced as part of the platform’s v109 update notes on Tuesday. It’s a surprising shutdown of a feature that some creators hoped would someday see improvements.
In March, I published a story about Horizon Worlds creators who run an in-VR comedy club, the Unknown Theater, and how they organized a VR protest over Meta’s treatment of events on the platform. The protestors took issue with changes that made community-organized events much more challenging to find, which poses a problem for the club’s regularly-scheduled shows, and the way Meta gave more prominence to high-profile events featuring big name stars like Carrie…
WhatsApp bug is making some Android phones falsely report microphone access
Google and WhatsApp have confirmed they are aware of a bug that makes it appear as if WhatsApp is accessing phones’ microphones unnecessarily on some Android devices. The issue first cropped up a month ago, but gained new attention after a Twitter engineer tweeted about it in a post that was boosted by Elon Musk.
An image shared by Twitter engineer Foad Dabiri appeared to show that the microphone had been repeatedly running in the background while he wasn’t using the app. He tweeted a screenshot from Android’s Privacy Dashboard, which tracks how often apps access a device’s microphone and camera.
WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6AM (and that’s just a part of the timeline!) What’s going on? pic.twitter.com/pNIfe4VlHV
— Foad Dabiri (@foaddabiri) May 6, 2023
Musk retweeted Dabiri’s post, saying “WhatsApp cannot be trusted.” Incidentally, Musk is known to be a fan of Signal, and has said encrypted direct messages on Twitter could roll out as soon as this month. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In a statement shared on Twitter, WhatsApp suggested it was an Android-related issue, and not a result of inappropriate microphone access by the messaging app “We believe this is a bug on Android that mis-attributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate,” the company said.
Dabiri is not the first to notice the issue. WhatsApp blogwabetainfohighlighted the bug a month ago, describing it at the time as “a false positive” affecting owners of some Pixel and Samsung devices. They added that restarting the phone may be a possible fix. Meanwhile, Google has said little about what could be causing the discrepancy, but confirmed it’s looking into the matter. “We are aware of the issue and are working closely with WhatsApp to investigate,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/whatsapp-bug-is-making-some-android-phones-falsely-report-microphone-access-220213592.html?src=rss
Pokémon studio Game Freak is making an action-adventure game codenamed Project Bloom
Game Freak is best known as the studio behind the mainline Pokémon games, including recent releases like Sword / Shield, Legends: Arceus, and Scarlet / Violet. But the developer is expanding its repertoire for a new release currently codenamed Project Bloom. There isn’t much detail on the game, but it’s described as “a brand-new action-adventure IP.” The studio released a single piece of concept art, which you can see above.
To release the game, the studio has partnered with Private Division, a publishing label under the Take-Two umbrella, which previously published titles ranging from The Outer Worlds to OlliOlli World. “We’re ready to help Game Freak unleash their potential and we’re honored to be the first Western publisher to work…
Girlfriend slammed for making her boyfriend pay for her leftover pizza after complaining on Reddit
Activision Is Making More Money On PC Than Consoles For the First Time
Activision’s latest financial report marks the third quarter in a row that PC outsold console, and there’s reason to believe the trend will continue throughout 2023. Activision attributes its 74% increase in PC revenue since this time last year to the success of Call of Duty and Overwatch 2, but it also specifically highlights higher revenues for WoW: Dragonflight and Diablo Immortal (two games that aren’t on console). Blizzard is currently the largest factor in the PC’s growth within Activision. While Blizzard games are only making about half as much as Call of Duty, 72% of that revenue is on PC and just 8% is on console. Call of Duty’s revenue is more evenly split: 59% console, 26% PC, and 15% mobile. Blizzard’s console audience could grow significantly when Diablo 4 launches in June simultaneously on PC and consoles (a first for the series).
Zoom out on Activision’s numbers, and you can see the PC is gaining ground in Activision’s yearly reports, too. Last year, the company recorded the smallest gap between console and PC revenue in recent history: just $100 million. That’s several hundred million less than 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017. If the year goes on like this, 2023 could be the year that the PC becomes Activision’s second-biggest platform behind mobile (Candy Crush continues to crush).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Terraform Industries wants to solve climate change by making more hydrocarbons
Casey Handmer is not intimidated by very large quantities. Billions of acres. Thousands of gigawatts of solar power. A billion metric tons of carbon. His startup, Terraform Industries, aims to operate at these ambitious scales. The company wants to turn hydrogen and atmospheric carbon into synthetic natural gas at scale. It’s more than a little […]
Terraform Industries wants to solve climate change by making more hydrocarbons by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch
This app, backed by Marissa Mayer and Peter Thiel, is making texts more expressive
“The medium is the message” is the common phrase, but entrepreneur Alexis Traina believes that messages, themselves — text messages to be exact — deserve attention, too. Traina is the CEO and co-founder of HiNOTE, an app that helps people create messages, set over personalized backdrops of anything from a tipped-over wineglass to a branded […]
This app, backed by Marissa Mayer and Peter Thiel, is making texts more expressive by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch