The morning after – Engadget

Today we have stories of Apple’s ‘ultra’ security measures, someone squeezing entire movies onto floppy disks, and an in-depth analysis of ways we might connect, without touching, in a post world. -pandemic. But for that opening salvo, let’s go in a family of dancing robots.

Watch the Atlas robot and the entire Boston Dynamics family, including the dog-shaped Spot and stacking boxes Manipulate, dance to “Do You Love Me” by The Contours, and you will feel either affection or repulsion. Boston Dynamics may be 80% owned by automaker Hyundai, but it keeps its sense of humor.

-Mat Smith

You can get the $ 400 smart speaker for as low as $ 159.

Although Google Home Max was officially retired and withdrawn from sale a few weeks ago, the Google Store is once again offering the speaker for sale. While flashing a message saying the device is sold out and inviting customers to try a pair of new Nest Audio devices instead, it will still let you discover a charcoal-colored Home Max speaker for $ 179.

All we said in our review still stands, in that this voice-activated speaker offers excellent sound quality and plugs directly into the Google Assistant ecosystem. The best part now being that it doesn’t cost $ 400 anymore – at least while supplies last.
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They can watch their low resolution version of “Shrek” on a custom VCR.

A Redditor compresses full length movies at a resolution of 120 x 96 pixels at a silky speed of four frames per second. As such, they were able to cram Shrek onto media with a storage size of 1.44MB, or roughly 0.03% of the 4.7GB capacity of a DVD. In fact, u / GreedyPaint reduced Shrek to 1.37MB, so there was even room to spare.

To read the thing, you can hook up a floppy drive to a Raspberry Pi as part of a custom VCR system affectionately called the LimaTek Diskmaster. When the device turns on, it displays a homemade animation that asks the Redditor to insert a disc. When they do, the movie plays automatically. Don’t expect it to be good looking, at all.
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And the ways we might connect in a post-pandemic world.

What will the post-pandemic world look like? Either way, technology will be at the heart of it all. The memories of this year are still vivid and the conditioning – wash your hands for two “Happy Birthday” songs! Don’t touch your face! – is always instinctive.

In 2020, the tech industry pushed for products focused on minimizing, disinfecting, or tracking physical touch. Think: wearable devices that keep you from touching your face, or touch screens and touchless buttons. Which of these will we reject as society fully reopens and what might become permanent? Chris Ip reports on what happened in 2020 and what we might expect to see next year.
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