Author Archives: Chris Burns

During the outbreak of COVID-19, novel coronavirus, the global pandemic, and the quarantine therein, Niantic's made Pokemon GO fun again. At the start, the game held great potential. It was the closest a gamer could get to the feeling of finding, capturing, and battling Pokemon in the real world. Then it got complicated. Now, here amid massive changes made by its creator to make the game playable during quarantine, Pokemon GO's become fun once again.

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Colin Trevorrow wrote a script for Star Wars 9, aka Star Wars IX, that never happened. This movie script was abandoned and a new script was written, that script became Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The abandoned, rumored, mythical script was meant to be used by Trevorrow to direct a film that would have been called Star Wars Duel of the Fates. This was lovingly interpreted, translated, and compacted into a 10-minute animated clip for your consumption.

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The FDA announced expansions of clinical trials and potential for expanded access programs for two treatments for COVID-19. The FDA announced this latest national effort to bring blood-related therapies for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic this afternoon. The two potential treatment products are called convalescent plasma and hyperimmune globulin.

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A middle-aged man under observation for COVID-19 proved active for 49 days in an early (preprint) report from China. The signs were not severe - his immune cell indicators remained stable. It was his COVID-19 viral load that remained high for a previously unseen amount of time. NOTE: At the point at which this article was published, the original data had not been peer-reviewed - we will be keeping an eye on the original report and will update as necessary.

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The folks at Estimote created a set of devices and software that'll allow a business owner to keep track of their workers remotely. With a "contact tracing dashboard" and Bluetooth devices (worn by each employee), a business owner can keep track of the location and relative health of their workforce. Each wearable device scans for other wearable devices in the area and "registers close interactions."

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Developer Preview build 2.1 for Android 11 was released this afternoon by Google for the masses. This new update was officially released on April 2nd, 2020, and is build RPP2.200227.014, with Google Play Services 20.06.15 and x86 (32/64-bit) emulator support. This is a relatively minor update to the otherwise most-recent release for developers, that being Android 11 Developer Preview 2, released March 18, 2020.

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After claiming they'd received FDA authorization for a 2-minute coronavirus antibody test earlier this week, a company called Bodysphere just changed their tune. They made clear in their press release released at the tail end of March, 2020, that the Food and Drug Administration had approved their coronavirus (COVID-19) testing kit. It all seemed too good to be true. Turns out, it was.

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Just in time for our realization that this COVID-19 quarantine is really, truly real, the Nintendo Switch eShop has a brand new sale for multiple games. Some games are half their original price, some are discounted even deeper. There are a few Nintendo 3DS games in the mix as well - like the always strange card game Culdcept Revolt!

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A Facebook Messenger app was released this week for group chats between Facebook users. Users could've done video chat before now, with Messenger from Facebook, but this app makes the entire process feel a bit more official. This release comes just as the app Zoom sees a massive increase in use thanks to quarantine for global pandemic thanks to COVID-19.*

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A total of ten laptops were revealed today newly fitted with NVIDIA GeForce RTX SUPER GPUs and 10th Gen Intel Core processors. NVIDIA says that these graphics processors are "the industry's fastest, most power-efficient available today." NVIDIA's claimed that these GPUs are able to render 3D graphics up to 13x faster than a CPU, and up to 10x faster than a CPU for video editing. In other words, these laptops are made for more than gaming.

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The video chat app Zoom isn't private by default. You've got to do a few things before your Zoom meeting is secure. You'll need to make sure you're not downloading a malicious bit of software. You need to make sure you're not sharing your room name. You've got to tap a few buttons and follow a few rules - and it CAN BE relatively easy to make certain you're entirely safe from negative elements like "zoombombing" or "zoom-bombing".

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The latest update to iPhone and iPad devices seems to have broken a crucial component of the video chat system FaceTime. Reports have shown the update to iOS 13.4 for iPhone and iPad caused an issue with FaceTime audio and video calls. The bit that doesn't work seems to be the connection between these newly-updated devices and those still running iOS 9.3.5 or iOS 9.3.6 - the newest software some older devices can get.

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