Posted by: xSicKxBot - 04-12-2020, 12:28 AM - Forum: Python
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How to Use Generator Expressions in Python Dictionaries
Imagine the following scenario:
You work in law enforcement for the US Department of Labor, finding companies that pay below minimum wage so you can initiate further investigations. Like hungry dogs on the back of a meat truck, your Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) officers are already waiting for the list of companies that violated the minimum wage law. Can you give it to them?
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Following hot on the heels of our LMMS overview we continue our journey into the world of Digital Audio Workstations with the highly recommended Reaper.
Key Reaper features:
Efficient, fast to load, and tightly coded. Can be installed and run from a portable or network drive.
Powerful audio and MIDI routing with multichannel support throughout.
64-bit internal audio processing. Import, record to, and render to many media formats, at almost any bit depth and sample rate.
Thorough MIDI hardware and software support.
Support for thousands of third-party plug-in effects and virtual instruments, including VST, VST3, AU, DX, and JS.
Hundreds of studio-quality effects for processing audio and MIDI, and built-in tools for creating new effects.
Automation, modulation, grouping, VCA, surround, macros, OSC, scripting, control surfaces, custom skins and layouts.
Reaper is not free software, but has a general 2 month non-expiring fully functional trial for Windows, Linux and OS/X. Unlike LMMS, Reaper doesn’t come out of the box loaded with instruments (which explains the 20mb download size!). In the video below, the VSTs demonstrated are from the Humble Music Producer Bundle expiring April 15th.
The best films about Apple to watch while stuck at home
From the very funny to the occasionally accurate, there are some excellent movies for Apple fans to catch up on during our self-isolation.
Left: Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs. Right: Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs. Center: Steve Jobs himself.
If there is a movie or feature-length documentary about Apple that is entirely, completely accurate, then still someone depicted will say it isn’t. There’s a lot of ego involved in the history of Apple, but then that’s part of why there is so much drama in it. Maybe you could make a drama out of any company’s history, but it has to be a very special corporation before anyone would watch it.
Since movie makers are as aware of the interest in Apple as anyone else, though, there are a lot —a lot —of very poor documentary films attempting to catch your eye. We watched so you don’t have to: here are the movies about Apple that are more than worth your time.
Dramas about Apple
Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography is a very long wasted opportunity, but it did give us one excellent thing. That book was the start for Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs movie and —bear with us for a second —that is easily the best drama about Apple to date.
No, really, it is. The trouble with biopics is that they either have to chart a whole life, or they pick one big incident in it. Sorkin chose instead to portray Jobs through concentrating on three of his most famous keynote speeches.
[embedded content]
To do it, he did contrive to have incidents happen around those events which in reality took much longer. And he did leave out details, he does skip over people. Plus there’s a famous scene in the film where Jobs shouts at Andy Hertzfeld that the universe was made in seven days. “Well,” replies Hertzfeld, “someday you’ll have to tell us how you did it.”
That never happened. But we know it didn’t because Sorkin has been upfront about how and why he wrote what he did. And in his Masterclass series about writing, he explains that this scene came about because he asked Hertzfeld what Steve Jobs would say in that scene. It’s genuine, personal insight —not a Hollywood invention.
Speaking in Masterclass about his partly related film, The Social Network (2010), Sorkin explains that he will never portray someone doing something they didn’t or wouldn’t. And he reveals that there are people who wouldn’t speak to Walter Isaacson who did to him.
Watch Steve Jobs, the movie, for how it captures the man few of us knew, and the whole world of Apple that has meant so much to us all.
And then, if you can track it down, watch “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” Screenwriter and director Martyn Burke had a background in documentaries, but this is a drama and if it’s very of its time, it has at least one very big merit. Noah Wyle is startling good as a young Steve Jobs in it.
So good that Steve Jobs, who shunned Burke after it, hired Wyle to portray him at Macworld in 1999.
[embedded content]
According to Wyle, Steve Jobs took him shopping before the presentation and bought him jeans, round glasses, and a turtleneck sweater.
“The first few rows [of the Macworld audience], I think, could obviously tell it wasn’t him, but most others didn’t know at all,” said Wyle. “And there was this growing ripple of laughter throughout the auditorium when people got what was happening. I honestly had had no idea what to expect: I thought the whole thing might be an ambush — that he’d get me to his event and that what he said we were going to do in fact wasn’t what we were going to do, and I would somehow be humiliated. But he stayed on script and was very kind to me.”
Pirates of Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs are the two key dramas about Apple, but for capturing how the industry was in the early days, do watch the TV series Halt and Catch Fire. It’s more about PCs, but even those of us who lived and worked through this time couldn’t have expected that a drama about it would be this good —and this accurate.
[embedded content]
Films about the Apple community
Macheads (2009) available to rent or buy at Amazon
Welcome to Macintosh (2008) currently available to stream through Amazon Prime US
These are two documentary films that came out close on each other’s heels and are both about us, people who use and, frankly, love Apple. It’s not as if we’re blind to its faults, but once you start using Apple gear, something does happen and you do get immersed in this community.
[embedded content]
Both of these documentaries have insight from people within Apple, and both of them have historical detail that’s interesting. Welcome to Macintosh has much more from Apple staff, but you can probably best gauge the differences between these movies by two quotes from them.
Welcome to Macintosh features quite sour ex-Apple people, including Jim Reekes. “People on the outside think that it’s like this wonderful world of Oz or Disney going on, and all of us are just all these brilliant, amazing, happy people,” says Reekes, “and it’s not, it’s like a sausage factory. You really don’t want to know how this stuff happens.”
Whereas Macheads includes an interview with an Apple user who explains just how much this ecosystem means to her. “I have never knowingly slept with a Windows user,” she says. “That would never ever happen.”
Considering that actually both films feature some quite dour people, the two are equally joyous. Even if you will recognize yourself in both of them.
Films about Apple and related products
It’s a curious thing that these two documentaries about topics that hugely overlap, came out so close together —and their subjects came out at the same time too. In reality, the Newton’s launch, and its failure, destroyed the work of rival General Magic, but these two movies are superb companion pieces.
They’re about the 1990s time in Apple’s history when it spun off a firm called General Magic which was, basically, inventing the future that we live in today. And when Apple CEO John Sculley, having had Apple spin off this new firm, simultaneously decided Apple should develop a product to destroy it.
[embedded content]
Sculley is interviewed in these films and you won’t come away fathoming why he did it. That’s one of the weaker parts of the General Magic documentary, in that it’s as hard to believe the people in that firm knew nothing of Newton, as it is that Sculley would do this. You’ll wish it delved more into what happened on this.
But otherwise, it and Love Notes to Newton are both utterly engrossing films that are ostensibly about products and companies, but are really about the people involved.
Films about the industry
Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (2012) available to rent on iTunes, Amazon
Among the sea of Steve Jobs documentaries that were rushed out after his death in 2011, there is one that stands apart. Released in 2012, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, is a 70-minute interview with Steve Jobs that was filmed in 1995.
It was filmed for a documentary called Triumph of the Nerds, which is a short series by PBS and the UK’s Channel 4, about the development of the PC. That series is worth looking out for, but the Lost Interview is much more fascinating because it was filmed during the time Jobs was away from Apple.
Jobs is asked about this then-current project, NeXT, but he also reflects on the origins of Apple. It’s not his usual bluster about how great things are, it’s a more reflective piece where he displays that famous prescient awareness of what people need from technology.
[embedded content]
There’s a similar sense to how Jony Ive speaks in Gary Hustwit’s 2009 documentary about design, Objectified. Ive is filmed inside Apple and just as interesting as his thoughts about design and people, is his own body language as he cleans the screen of his own iPhone before showing it to us.
Ive is a major part of Objectified and so is one of his design heroes, Dieter Rams, who was later the sole subject of Hustwit’s 2018 documentary, Rams. At the time of writing, Rams is available to stream for free on Hustwit’s website where he’s been releasing one of his films every week during the coronavirus outbreak.
Whenever you can, do check out which of his documentary films is streaming, but also take a deep dive into all of the movies about Apple. The ones we’ve picked are tremendous examples of filmmaking, they are intensely dramatic —whether they’re dramas or documentaries —and they are all-absorbing.
Mojang Delayed Minecraft Dungeons To Deliver “A Better End Product”
Next month on 26th May, Minecraft Dungeons will finally be released on the Nintendo Switch and multiple other platforms including Xbox Game Pass. It was actually due to arrive this month but was delayed at the last minute.
Why was this? Speaking to Eurogamer recently, Mojang’s executive producer David Nisshagen explained how it was due to a combination of factors including cross-platform implementation, the impact of the coronavirus outbreak (and the concerns regarding the health and safety of staff) and the fact the team just wanted to deliver a better end product to the players.
We don’t want to stress the teams during this time. We could probably have made [the old date] but that probably felt uncomfortable – partially for the team and also for the players, who we couldn’t guarantee would get a good, fun game. So by taking this little extra end time, we’ll have a better end product and happier team which can take pride in it.
As noted by Nisshagen, the team could have made the old date (presumably he’s referring to the April launch) but chose not to – which will hopefully result in a better game.
If you hadn’t heard about this Minecraft spin-off before, it’s inspired by classic dungeon crawlers of yesteryear – allowing you to team up with three other players (online or via local play) to take down nasty mobs. At the same time, you must power up your weapons and items, and collect treasure.
According to the same interview, Mojang got the UK Studio Double Eleven to help out with the console versions of the game. Nisshagen also mentioned how his team was now focused on post-launch content.
Will you be trying out Minecraft Dungeons when it arrives next month? Tell us below.
PixelJunk Studio Q-Games Surprise-Releases New Game Scrappers On Apple Arcade
Q-Games, the studio behind the PixelJunk series, has just surprise-released its newest game on Apple Arcade. The game is called Scrappers, and like all Apple Arcade titles it's included with a subscription to the service.
According to the App Store description, Scrapprs is a throwdown between dueling robot garbage collectors for 1-4 players. You'll have to work fast and cooperate to pass and stack trash and boost your rewards. Other teams will try to interfere with your civic duties, so you'll have to dispatch them quickly to stick to your trash pickup schedule.
You can equip a variety of weapons and Scrappers, and customize your garbage truck. It also includes support for DualShock, Xbox wireless, and MFi controllers.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 04-11-2020, 08:03 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Essential Things Final Fantasy 7 Remake Doesn't Tell You Straight Away
Final Fantasy 7 Remake has a lot of moving parts and, as such, carefully dishes out information as and when it's necessary. But if you're familiar with the franchise, or RPGs as a whole, there may be specific things you're looking for from the outset. As a result, you'll probably be asking a lot of questions long before the game is ready to give you answers. We don't want you sweating the small stuff instead of enjoying FF7, so here's a bunch of spoiler-free heads-ups that'll save you a bit of stress.
Around Midgar you'll often find destructible boxes, and you should make a point of smashing them. Firstly, because they're puny and pathetic little wooden constructs that deserve to be crushed under the might of Cloud's buster sword, but also because they can sometimes recover your MP and drop potions or antidotes. More importantly, they reward you with an item called Moogle Medals.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 04-11-2020, 12:49 AM - Forum: Windows
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How research can enable more effective remote work
Due to recent events, millions of office workers have needed to rapidly adjust to working from home—learning new collaboration tools and best practices, re-thinking how to stay connected with colleagues outside the office, and adapting to new social norms around meetings. Working remotely presents both technical and social challenges, and researchers at Microsoft have been working across disciplines to understand and support both aspects of this challenge for decades.
Below is just a small sample of the work researchers at Microsoft and their colleagues have produced to improve the remote work experience. For those seeking to build better remote work products and services—or for anyone who wants to be more productive at home—we hope this research can provide some guidance, insight, and inspiration.
Although these are truly challenging times, we can benefit from a strong foundation of interdisciplinary research that can help us all stay productive and connected—with the hope of emerging from this crisis better-equipped to work together.
Paying attention can be harder in remote meetings. Sean Rintel at Microsoft Research Cambridge recently published two papers that can inform the design of features to support remote participants’ attention. One paper models how we ‘see’ attention in meetings. It suggests that machine perception may help us gather, signal, and follow attention when remote. The second paper suggests that low engagement in meetings may not always be a problem. Not every meeting requires our full engagement, but until we develop technological support for more nuanced roles, it is good practice to be up front about your engagement level. Together, these papers suggest that AI supported attention personalization could make future remote meetings more inclusive and effective by helping us overcome constraints and assumptions.
One benefit to everyone attending a meeting virtually is that it can be easier to review missed content if you show up to a meeting late or have to step out for a moment. For instance, Kori Inkpen, Sasa Junuzovic, and John Tang from Microsoft Research Redmond have explored using “accelerated instant replay” (AIR) to help people catch up quickly and then jump (back) into the real-time meeting.
In a world without business travel, negotiating time zone constraints becomes even more important. John Tang at Microsoft Research Redmond and Kori Inkpen at the Microsoft Research AI Lab have catalogued strategies for mitigating time zone-related obstacles to productivity and provided guidelines to help overcome these obstacles. Tang and Inkpen also worked with Asta Roseway, Mary Czerwinski, and Paul Johns from Microsoft Research Redmond to explore novel uses of asynchronous video to support collaboration across time zones and developed two prototype systems, Time Travel Proxy and Video Threads.
Looking forward, there will be an unprecedented opportunity for researchers to learn from the current situation to figure out not only how to manage future disruption, but also to incorporate new ways of working at home or in the office. Microsoft is committed to investing in research internally and externally to make this happen. For example, in more typical times, remote work often involves meetings with both remote and co-located colleagues. Better understanding and supporting productivity in these hybrid meetings is the subject of one of the academic projects Microsoft funds through the Microsoft Productivity Research program in collaboration with Dr. Mirjam Augstein and Dr. Thomas Neumayr at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.
If you’d like to do a deeper dive into the literature on remote work, below is a selection of additional papers from Microsoft researchers on the subject.
Researchers at Microsoft have been working across disciplines to address the unique and complex challenges of meeting remotely, such as improving the quality, fidelity, and utility of meetings; addressing design issues; merging physical and virtual collaboration; and exploring the use of avatars:
“Hybrid meetings” (meetings with remote and co-located participants)
Spatialized audio and video for video calling
“Accelerated instant replay” during a video call
Avatars in remote meetings
Remotely collaborating when completing tasks in the physical world
Researchers are also addressing the challenges of remote team building by helping people maintain connections across time zones, welcome new remote team members, and e engage in shared experiences:
Working across time zones
Remote employee onboarding
Co-watching video
Long before remote work became a way of life, researchers at Microsoft exploring the social and technical aspects of collaborating remotely. Below is a selection of work on the subject dating back nearly thirty years:
Microsoft researchers have also made substantial contributions to researcher areas adjacent to remote work that are increasingly relevant in today’s context—in how remote work technologies can support family life and play. For instance:
Connecting family across distance
Remote Play
Video Communication for First Responders
Thanks to Kori Inkpen, Sean Rintel, Abi Sellen, and John Tang, who also contributed to this post.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 04-11-2020, 12:49 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Community Focus: Niris
Tuesdays. You know them well. The days where your pursuit of loot and power begins anew. Depending on the status of Daylight Saving, our internal alarm clocks go off around 10 AM Pacific, sending us on a search for what’s going on in Destiny. Without fail, the subject of this week’s Community Focus has been quick on the draw, providing infographics with pinpoint accuracy.
You may have heard the legends about this Guardian. Today, we’ll spend a little time getting to know them. Join me in welcoming Niris to center stage.
So, Niris, tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you, where did you come from, and what do you do out there in the “real world?”
Niris: Hello everyone! The name is Nic, but you can call me Niris. Or Nic. Whichever you like. Some of you may already know me as “the Destiny infographic guy.” Out here in the “real world” I design user interfaces and experiences, which is kind of what led me to creating all of the infographics I’ve designed for Destiny.
My story starts out a little sad, but I promise it has a happy ending. When Destiny 2 launched in 2017, I was taking care of my mother in hospice. It was an incredibly emotional and tough time and video games with friends were the only thing keeping me together. I needed something consistent to keep me busy during that time in my life. Something that I could count on doing every day or week without fail. Based on my experience with Destiny 1, I knew I wanted to do something within the community, I just didn’t know what yet. I knew I was good at presenting a lot of information in an easily digestible format, so in October 2017 I designed my first Weekly Reset infographic. If I’m being honest, the graphics started as a coping mechanism for myself, but grew into something much more along the way.
Since then, I’ve gone on to design an infographic for just about anything you can imagine in Destiny. Heroic public event activations? I got you. Need a refresher on how the Gambit UI and strategy works? Got you there too. Oh, you don’t know what times to shoot for in Master Nightmare Hunt Time Trials? Look no further. I love being able to gather detailed information surrounding specific activities in-game and make them super easy for players to understand.
Now, in the two and a half years since starting, the infographics have been featured in Forbes, Kotaku, and Gamerant. We built a Discord Bot (Servant of Niris) that services 2,500+ servers with the infographics and I haven’t missed a Weekly Reset since October 3rd, 2017. Needless to say, Mom would be proud. =)
(P.S. “Consistency kills competition.” To anyone out there who needs to hear this: if you find yourself going through a tough time, find something that you can do consistently to feel good about yourself. Keep doing it. Keep moving forward no matter what. You’ve got this.)
It’s inspiring to look back at the choices you made to get you to where you are today. Let’s dive deeper, what got you into Graphic Design?
Niris: I started doing graphic design about 12 years ago when I was a turntablist/DJ and putting out mixtapes left and right. It wasn’t very cost viable for me to keep paying to have artwork done for every single cover on everything I put out, so I decided that I’d give it a shot myself. Shortly after that I began to create posters, flyers, and all sorts of things which then led me to a marketing job. These days however, I’ve found my love and passion in UI/UX design and I’m hoping to maybe lend those skills to the Bungie team someday.
I’ve always had a bit of jealousy towards those who have an artistic touch. Twelve years of progress really shows in your work! How about Destiny? What led you here?
Niris: I’ve always been a fan of Bungie. Sometimes without even knowing it. I have memories of playing Oni on one of my very first PC builds after high school. The time I spent huddled around an Xbox with three of my friends playing Halo into the wee hours of the morning is something I’ll never forget either. So when a friend hit me up in the summer of 2014 talking about a beta for Bungie’s next project (shoutout to you Pebey!), I knew I had to get in on it.
Let’s be honest… There’s no better shooter than Destiny. The guns and the space magic really fulfilled that power fantasy for me that other games couldn’t. I played the ever-loving crap out of D1, but for some reason, I never got into the lore much or even “building” up my Guardian to its max potential. I mean, I never even raided in D1. It was a really cool shooter that I got to play with my friends and that’s all I really cared about at the time.
Fast forward to now and I’m completely enveloped in everything. I’m obsessed with other creators’ content. I watch lore videos, read all of the books, and farm activities for hours looking for that one perfect roll on a gun. I’ve even done three day-one raids at this point and I don’t see it stopping any time soon.
Let’s get down to business. This is one of the most important questions you could ever answer while having the spotlight on you. What class do you call home, and why is it a Hunter?
Niris: ‘Lock life all day, baby!
For me, it’s the utility and diversity that a Warlock brings to a fireteam. I love that I can throw down a Well of Radiance or switch it up and chuck a Nova Bomb whenever I feel like it. Pair that with some of my favorite class Exotics in the game and it’s a recipe for fun. Who doesn’t love running around with Devour, a Recluse, and Nezarec’s Sin?
I’m also a Hunter on my days off and am warming back up to my Titan after we’ve had some time away from each other.
Alright, I’ll give you a pass. Without Warlocks, space magic wouldn’t feel as… magical. Anyway, thanks for stopping by! It’s always fun getting to know our community a bit better. Want to give a shout-out to the community before we wrap up?
Niris: I would just like to send a resounding “thank you!” to the entire community. I’ve made so many friendships and shared experiences I never would’ve imagined all because of this game. The Destiny community truly is the best community. <3
Lastly, please be kind to yourself and each other. Patience is a rare currency we could all use a little more of right now as we navigate through these ultra-weird times.
That’s a wrap! Thanks for stopping by. If you have any recommendations for our next Community Focus, feel free to drop us a line. Cozmo and I are always on the lookout for the next Guardian to spotlight.
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