Category: technology

Posted on

This Is Why You Should Never Buy Batteries from Dollar Stores

There are some things that you should simply never buy at dollar stores — like batteries. Batteries from the dollar store are much lower-quality, according to experts.

Walk into any dollar store, and you’ll likely find a rack of batteries sold in bulk packages for just $1 per package. At such a low price, those batteries are definitely tempting (just like everything else at the dollar store).

But before you throw these $1 packages into your cart, you should know that they may not be worth the savings.

Photo Credit: iStock

Dollar stores typically sell carbon-zinc batteries, whereas most name brand batteries (like Duracell or Energizer) are alkaline batteries. Carbon-zinc batteries carry way less energy and therefore last for less time than alkaline batteries.

For example, a AA battery from Energizer carries 10,798 joules, while a battery from Duracell from 9398 joules. A battery from Dollar General? Only 2983 joules. That’s a huge downgrade.

Dollar store batteries are also more likely to leak. Reader’s Digest reports that battery packages from brands like Sunbeam and Panasonic were stamped with warnings that they should be used only in “low-drain” devices, like clock radios.

Photo Credit: iStock

Frankly, it’s a huge pain when batteries run out over and over. It’s also impractical for emergency scenarios, when you need your battery-operated devices to work.

For those reasons, it’s best to just pay the full price for batteries that will provide more power and last longer.

The post This Is Why You Should Never Buy Batteries from Dollar Stores appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity

Deepfakes are pretty creepy, if we’re being honest. Though they don’t seem to be especially helpful to anyone, deepfakes nonetheless look like they’ll be around for awhile.

Now, it’s easier than ever to produce your own deepfake (yay) with an app called Zao, created by Chinese developer MoMo.

According to Insider, the app topped Chinese iOS download charts after its recent unleashing.

If you didn’t know, deepfakes are bizarrely realistic CGI videos created by an algorithm. Deepfakes can be silly, like putting Nick Offerman’s face on every character in the Full House opening credits. But the scary thing about deepfakes is that they could also be used to falsify the words or deeds of an innocent person.

Now, with the touch of a button.

On your phone…

Indie game developer, Allan Xia, created a video of  a deepfake of himself as Leonardo DiCaprio in some of his movies. He shared the video to Twitter, where it quickly went viral because of how realistic it was. The program read one photo of Xia and paired it with DiCaprio’s facial expressions and mouth movements. Xia noted he only needed one image of himself and about eight seconds to create the deepfake.

Despite Xia’s achievement with the app, he also noted its potential dangers.

Is the intent purely to entertain?

Will it be used to bombard us with images of ourselves for marketing purposes?

Others on Twitter posted deepfakes of themselves as cast members of TV shows and movies.

The app’s developer, MoMo, is also a large social media platform in China. They have already been banned on WeChat due to a line buried in their usage terms that retains “free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able” access to all content it is used to generate.

So, they can own your face.

China’s expansive surveillance network already uses manipulated images of people, for which it has received criticism from both inside and outside the country.

Thankfully, you must have a Chinese phone number to download Zao, and if you don’t live in China, Zao having ownership of your face is not necessarily going to mean anything practical to you. After all, Facebook can use any of the content you’ve uploaded for whatever they want, too.

Xia has been microblogging about the app and disturbing impacts, both real and imagined on Twitter.

The future, it turns out, is creepy.

The post Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity

Deepfakes are pretty creepy, if we’re being honest. Though they don’t seem to be especially helpful to anyone, deepfakes nonetheless look like they’ll be around for awhile.

Now, it’s easier than ever to produce your own deepfake (yay) with an app called Zao, created by Chinese developer MoMo.

According to Insider, the app topped Chinese iOS download charts after its recent unleashing.

If you didn’t know, deepfakes are bizarrely realistic CGI videos created by an algorithm. Deepfakes can be silly, like putting Nick Offerman’s face on every character in the Full House opening credits. But the scary thing about deepfakes is that they could also be used to falsify the words or deeds of an innocent person.

Now, with the touch of a button.

On your phone…

Indie game developer, Allan Xia, created a video of  a deepfake of himself as Leonardo DiCaprio in some of his movies. He shared the video to Twitter, where it quickly went viral because of how realistic it was. The program read one photo of Xia and paired it with DiCaprio’s facial expressions and mouth movements. Xia noted he only needed one image of himself and about eight seconds to create the deepfake.

Despite Xia’s achievement with the app, he also noted its potential dangers.

Is the intent purely to entertain?

Will it be used to bombard us with images of ourselves for marketing purposes?

Others on Twitter posted deepfakes of themselves as cast members of TV shows and movies.

The app’s developer, MoMo, is also a large social media platform in China. They have already been banned on WeChat due to a line buried in their usage terms that retains “free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able” access to all content it is used to generate.

So, they can own your face.

China’s expansive surveillance network already uses manipulated images of people, for which it has received criticism from both inside and outside the country.

Thankfully, you must have a Chinese phone number to download Zao, and if you don’t live in China, Zao having ownership of your face is not necessarily going to mean anything practical to you. After all, Facebook can use any of the content you’ve uploaded for whatever they want, too.

Xia has been microblogging about the app and disturbing impacts, both real and imagined on Twitter.

The future, it turns out, is creepy.

The post Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

A Study Says Frequently Attending Concerts Makes You Happier

Nothing brings people together like seeing a live band perform. Singing along with a few thousand of your best friends to a great song makes for a positive outlook and other warm, fuzzy emotions that carry over to the next day and beyond. We’ve all been there.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Research validates those good vibrations.

Psychologists, Melissa K. Weinberg and Dawn Joseph, studied the connection between “music engagement and subjective wellbeing,” or SWB. The study focused solely on the good feelings concert-goers get when they see performances live.

For their study, one thousand random participants were polled via phone. They found that “engaging with music by dancing or attending musical events was associated with higher SWB.” They concluded that people who socialized with others at concerts experienced SWB higher than people who didn’t.

Music bonded people with others in a community-like atmosphere. The good feelings generated by hanging out with others who like the same music and performers appeared to last for some time after the event ended. This was true across all ages.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

But going to concerts is certainly not the only way to boost your mood and get happier. Plenty of other research points to increasing happiness levels by simply listening to music. So, stream that new Taylor Swift album and sing into your hairbrush as loud as you can.

You’ll be happy you did.

The post A Study Says Frequently Attending Concerts Makes You Happier appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

A Study Says Frequently Attending Concerts Makes You Happier

Nothing brings people together like seeing a live band perform. Singing along with a few thousand of your best friends to a great song makes for a positive outlook and other warm, fuzzy emotions that carry over to the next day and beyond. We’ve all been there.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Research validates those good vibrations.

Psychologists, Melissa K. Weinberg and Dawn Joseph, studied the connection between “music engagement and subjective wellbeing,” or SWB. The study focused solely on the good feelings concert-goers get when they see performances live.

For their study, one thousand random participants were polled via phone. They found that “engaging with music by dancing or attending musical events was associated with higher SWB.” They concluded that people who socialized with others at concerts experienced SWB higher than people who didn’t.

Music bonded people with others in a community-like atmosphere. The good feelings generated by hanging out with others who like the same music and performers appeared to last for some time after the event ended. This was true across all ages.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

But going to concerts is certainly not the only way to boost your mood and get happier. Plenty of other research points to increasing happiness levels by simply listening to music. So, stream that new Taylor Swift album and sing into your hairbrush as loud as you can.

You’ll be happy you did.

The post A Study Says Frequently Attending Concerts Makes You Happier appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

You Can Buy a Tiny House on Amazon for $37,000 That Expands by Remote Control

If you and your family have put in any time house hunting, you know it’s very difficult to find what you’re looking for and not pay a fortune for it. In backlash, the tiny house has arisen.

The tiny house craze doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon, and now there’s a new addition to the market that you can actually buy on Amazon. And why not? You can buy almost every single you’ll ever need in life on Amazon, so might as well throw a house into the mix as well.

This tiny house is designed by a Chinese company called WHZ Group and costs just $36,800, plus $1,000 for shipping. Just FYI, the average home price in the United States right now is $227,700.

Photo Credit: Amazon/WZH Group

The house can also be expanded with a hydraulic system by using a remote control. How’s that for 21st-century technology?

The house has wind and solar-power systems, a small living space, kitchenette, and a bathroom with a sink, shower, and toilet. If owners are so inclined, they can also have the house wired for electricity. WHZ Group also sells a slightly different version of the house, also on Amazon.

Here are a few photos of the interior.

Photo Credit: Amazon/WZH Group

Photo Credit: Amazon/WZH Group

Photo Credit: Amazon/WZH Group

The house also features a folding deck and a canopy. Take a look at the floor plan:

Photo Credit: Amazon/WZH Group

And this is what the floor plan looks like when the house is compactly folded using the remote control.

Photo Credit: Amazon/WZH Group

Are tiny houses the future? Or just a passing fad that is overhyped at the moment?

What do you think of this idea? I say the smaller, the better. Sign me up!

The post You Can Buy a Tiny House on Amazon for $37,000 That Expands by Remote Control appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

A Huge Underwater Observatory Mysteriously Vanished from the Ocean Floor

Let’s just dive right in to this story: a large underwater observatory has mysteriously gone missing. It was on the seafloor, and now it’s not. Nobody knows why.

The Boknis Eck Observatory has been on the seafloor off the northern coast of Germany since December 2016. It’s managed by GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel and the Helmholtz Center Geesthacht.

For almost three years, the observatory collected information about water temperature, nutrients, salinity, the speed of water flow, and concentrations of chlorophyll and methane.

But on August 21, transmissions from the observatory suddenly stopped. Divers went down to the site to investigate what went wrong, and they discovered that the entire structure had disappeared except for a shredded transmission cable, Gizmodo reports.

Sure, it could be an accident. But officials think it’s more likely that someone intentionally removed the observatory, because the structure is so large and heavy that natural causes (such as a storm or animals) couldn’t possibly move it.

But who would steal an underwater observatory? And why?! For now, it remains a mystery. German police are now investigating the incident, and the scientists have asked anyone who knows anything to come forward.

“[At] first we thought of a transmission error,” Hermann Bange, project coordinator for the Boknis Eck Observatory, said in a GEOMAR statement. Then the diving mission revealed that the problem was much larger. “The devices were gone, the divers could not find them anymore. When the divers reached the bottom of the sea last week at the observatory’s location, they found only the torn off land cable. It was completely shredded,” Hermann said.

The $330,000 structure weighed about 770 pounds.

The post A Huge Underwater Observatory Mysteriously Vanished from the Ocean Floor appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Here Are Some Quick Tips for Capturing Those Cool Blurred Background Photos on Your iPhone

All of us want to take that perfect photo with our iPhone, especially those super-sharp portraits with the blurred background where your subject appears to be professionally shot. For all you budding photographers out there, here are three easy ways to make your photo skills the envy of your friends (even if you don’t own a new phone with a great camera).

Photo Credit: Pexels, Element5 Digital

3. Portrait Mode

This is the simplest method. If you have an iPhone X, XR, XS, or XS Max or an iPhone 7 or 8 Plus, you should have a Portrait Mode feature.

Open up your handy camera app, swipe until you find “Portrait” and simply position your subject within the limits of the lens. It will tell you if you need to move closer or farther away. When the words “Natural Light” appear, then you are set to snap at your heart’s content!

Photo Credit: Pexels, Oleg Magni

2. Position your subject just right – For older iPhones

Place your subject within a few feet of the lens. A yellow box should appear, tap it and the lens will be forced to focus on the object, leaving the background out of focus. Just move closer or farther away until the background fully blurs. You can also tap an object and hold on it to force the camera to lock into focus on it. Then it will keep the same focus, even if you or your subject moves.

1. Third-Party Apps

Sometimes, older iPhones just aren’t capable of capturing that desired blur. Therefore, we recommend trying out a third-party app that performs this feature. There are free apps available (like Blur Photo Background) or paid ones with better features (like AfterFocus). Either way, try some out!

The post Here Are Some Quick Tips for Capturing Those Cool Blurred Background Photos on Your iPhone appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Doctors Attributed a Death to Vaping for the First Time

After many mysterious respiratory illnesses that seem to be linked to vaping, health officials in Illinois are ready to say the e-cigarettes are the cause of death in at least one case.

The Department of Public Health Director Ngozi Ezike issued a statement:

“The severity of illness people are experiencing is alarming and we must get the word out that using e-cigarettes and vaping can be dangerous. We requested a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help us investigate these cases and they arrived in Illinois on Tuesday.”

Earlier this month, the CDC began an investigation into several reports of the unidentified lung disease that has affected almost 100 people across a dozen U.S. states. No information about the victim in this case has been provided, except that they were an adult person living in Illinois.

The reported number of people suffering from respiratory issues related to vaping has doubled in just a week, and now 22 people between the ages of 17 and 38 have been hospitalized due to the condition. People who have shown symptoms of the illness only share one commonality: vaping. People have grown sick after vaping THC products, nicotine products, and a combination of the two.

The CDC, along with state health officials and the USDA, are looking into the names, brands, types of products and kinds of devices the patients used in order to try to pin down a more specific culprit, but right now the risky behavior seems to be vaping at all.

While the CDC admits that e-cigs can be helpful to those who hope to quit smoking, the potential risks outweigh the possible benefits for many others – and they advise that teens, young adults, and pregnant women avoid them at all costs.

Right now, the cause behind the illnesses remains a mystery, and health officials urge anyone who vapes and experiences chest pains or has difficulty breathing to seek medical attention right away.

If you haven’t started vaping, this information should be more than enough reason to steer clear…and if you have, it might be time to quit.

The post Doctors Attributed a Death to Vaping for the First Time appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Steve Jobs Made Some Accurate Predictions About the Future of Technology in the 1980s and ’90s

Steve Jobs was truly a one-of-kind businessman. The co-founder of Apple was a visionary who helped change the way we work, play, and live. And Jobs made some predictions in the 1980s and 1990s that may have seemed far-fetched at the time, but it turns out he absolutely nailed it.

Here are some examples of the foresight that Jobs had years before these things became a reality.

Tablets

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The iPad wasn’t launched by Apple until 2010, but all the way back in 1983 at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Jobs talked about “an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you that you can learn in five minutes.”

Virtual Assistants

Photo Credit: Pexels

Before Siri and Alexa became household items, Jobs said this…in 1984: “The next stage is going to be computers as ‘agents. In other words, it will be as if there’s a little person inside that box who starts to anticipate what you want. Rather than help you, it will start to guide you through large amounts of information. It will almost be like you have a little friend inside that box.”

Sound familiar?

iPhones

Photo Credit: Pexels

Those “agents” Jobs talked about? Jobs said they would evolve. “I’ve always thought it would be really wonderful to have a little box, a sort of slate that you could carry along with you.”

Sounds like an iPhone to me.

Young people and devices

Photo Credit: pxhere

Jobs really nailed this prediction. In 1984, he said, “You’d get one of these things maybe when you were 10 years old, and somehow you’d turn it on and it would say, you know, ‘Where am I?’ And you’d somehow tell it you were in California and it would say, ‘Oh, who are you?’”

The online marketplace

Photo Credit: Flickr,Elaine Smith

In 1995, Steve Jobs predicted that the newly-flourishing Internet would allow startup companies to compete with established companies because they’d be able to sell directly to consumers. He said, “it’s very exciting because it is going to destroy vast layers of our economy and make available a presence in the marketplace for very small companies, one that is equal to very large companies.”

Sadly, Jobs passed away in 2011 at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer, but he sure did accomplish a lot while he was alive.

The post Steve Jobs Made Some Accurate Predictions About the Future of Technology in the 1980s and ’90s appeared first on UberFacts.