Basecamp, GitHub, Shopify, Airbnb, Twitch, SoundCloud and Hulu. Sure, that sounds like a laundry list of some of the most visible tech startups of the past decades. It’s also a list of forward-thinking companies who decided to build their soon-to-be industry-shifting platforms using Ruby on Rails. Long known for its adaptability, scalability and unflappable consistency, Ruby on Rails has become one of the most respected methods for programming looking to build visually and structurally daring, yet soundly functional websites. With the training in the (), students coming to Ruby for the first time will get a thorough look at the advantages of this powerful creative discipline.
Four brands stand at the top of the annual Consumer Reports car issue. Three of them, Porsche, Genesis, and Subaru all received brand rankings of 80 or more. The magazine gives a recommended rating to every model sold by Porsche, Genesis, and the fourth-highest-scoring brand, Mazda, while every Subaru is recommended except for the WRX. Two vehicles earned the highest overall scores: the Toyota Avalon family sedan (main photo) and the Kia Telluride SUV that won several car/truck of the year awards. Each received 93 of 100 possible points. The details are in the magazine’s April 2020 issue.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on an incredible mission to study the asteroid Bennu and send samples back to Earth. The team didn’t expect that OSIRIS-REx would also contribute to our understanding of black holes. No, Bennu doesn’t have anything to do with black holes, but an X-ray instrument on OSIRIS-REx during a routine sweep. The primary mission of OSIRIS-REx is to pick up a tiny sample of regolith from Bennu and return it to Earth, much the same as Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe. It’s not like we get out to orbit asteroids all the time, so NASA wanted to make the most of the trip by scanning Bennu with various scientific instruments.
Google started rolling out its , which includes new capabilities exclusive to Google’s Pixel phones. The headlining additions include scheduled dark them and new emoji, but Google also slipped an interesting machine learning accomplishment into the new update. Pixel phones now have Apple-style 3D Touch capabilities, but they . Apple launched 3D Touch (initially called Force Touch) back in 2014 on the iPhone 6S. 3D Touch allows Apple (and developers) to trigger different actions based on how hard the user presses the screen. Apple accomplishes this with a network of actuators on the back of the touchscreen. The piezoelectric effect from pressing on the screen tells the system when someone is tapping versus pressing harder, and Apple’s software turns that into different inputs.
How I wish my smartphone had a microSDXC slot. With less than 6GB out of 128GB of storage space free on my Xiaomi Mi6 smartphone, I will soon have to start carefully combing through my files to make extra space. If you are fortunate to have a microSDXC slot on your phone, however, you can avoid this fate by picking up one of SanDisk’s Ultra 256GB microSDXC cards, which should provide ample storage space for years to come. If you are lucky enough to have a microSDXC slot on your smartphone, this tiny chip can give you more storage space on your mobile device than you will know what to do with.
Astronomers observing the universe have detected some massive bursts of energy over the years, but nothing compares with the blast recently spotted by scientists at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. The explosion some 390 million light-years away is . The epicenter of the eruption appears to be a supermassive , but the team is still puzzling over why it was so gigantic. The explosion came from the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Like most large galaxies (including our own), the one at the epicenter of the blast has a supermassive black hole in the center. Astronomers have seen energy bursts from black holes in the past, some of which were staggeringly powerful even from millions of light-years distant.
Samsung is always at the forefront of OLED display technology — every flagship smartphone it launches sets new records in brightness, color accuracy, and more. Now, Samsung has announced a that emit less blue light. Oh, they’re also optimized for 5G, whatever that means. And as near as we can tell, it means literally nothing. We’ve been warned of the dangers of blue light from displays for years, but the research on that was always questionable at best. We’re now starting to hear that the “night modes” employed by most smartphones to improve sleep . Still, most smartphone makers are still in the “blue light bad” mindset, and Samsung says its new OLED panels emit 70 percent less blue light than the previous ones.
Looking for a gaming desktop? You’re in luck! Dell’s powerful Aurora R8 gaming desktop is currently on sale and has all the power you need to run modern games with high graphics settings. With a hexa-core Intel Core i5-9400 clocked at up to 4.1GHz and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660, this system’s ready to tackle the graphically challenging games on the market today. Gamers will also appreciate the edgy Alienware case that features LED lights on the side panels. By using promo code EXTRA17 at checkout on Dell’s website, you can get this system marked down from $999.99 to just $829.99.
Back in the day, we all used to get our games on discs to install with an old-fashioned optical drive. The move to digital downloads offered some clear convenience advantages, but there are also more restrictions without that physical copy. GOG recently announced a that lets players get their money back up to 30 days after buying a game. However, it turns out the storefront before it made this change, and some of them are worried it could affect their bottom lines. GOG (formerly known as Good Old Games) is a Steam competitor operated by CD Projekt Red (CDPR).
