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Jaguar Land Rover is developing the 360 Virtual Urban Windscreen, which allows drivers to get a complete, unhindered view of the road. Watch the video to see the transparent pillars, Heads-Up display and ‘Follow Me’ Ghost Car Navigation.
Source: Jaguar
There’s an invariable amount of knowledge to be had when you amass the thousands upon thousands of hours of gaming in a gamer’s life. For years, there have been a number of attempts, both successful and not, to brand forms of gaming as particularly educational and market them to kids, particularly those who have parents who are more stringent about the way their children spend their time in front of a computer or console. Here’s my short list of five skills that have been ingrained in me through gaming — mostly through indirect subsidiary parts of major franchise titles.
This list is presented by Ian Khadan at Black Nerd Problems.
How to Read a Map
Maps are a basic part of games across countless genres. Maps are used in games to relay landscape, resource, quest, story line and territorial claims among countless other variations that cater to what a game designer may feel necessary to convey to the gamer. Though there’s precedent for reading maps, particularly in urban areas, via Google Maps or something of the like, there aren’t many people I’ve met who can truly read a topographical map. Just consider you’re dropped into the middle of nowhere and you’re given nothing but a map of the immediate 10-mile radius around you. I don’t imagine there are many folks in both urban and suburban areas who can even locate where they are on that map given the context of the landscape, topography and direction they’re placed in. Through gaming, I’ve honed this skill solely because that’s exactly what many games do, they drop you in the middle of nowhere and you have to figure out the best route to loot, food or shelter. Many games even incorporate nature as a compass in that you can use the sun in game (because in-game time and the passage of it is synchronized with real-world time) to determine what direction you’re heading. Now I’m not saying that I’ve been transformed into some sort of survivor-man because of what I’ve learned about map reading via gaming, as I certainly am not about swallowing any bugs for small amounts of protein, but I can confidently say that if I’m dropped in the wild and I’ve got an accurate map of the area, I’m most certainly capable of finding the nearest Chinese food buffet.
David Rose, the author of “Enchanted Objects,” sees a future where we can all live like wizards.
Source: NY Times.
This year, I happily discovered Black fantasy fiction authors like Balogun Ojetade and Jennifer Fisch Ferguson. While I have enjoyed everything that I have read, there are certain books that have become my favorites.
This list is presented by Latonya Pennington from Blackgirlnerds.
‘Once Upon a Time in Afrika’ by Balogun Ojetade
This book was an awesome introduction to sword and soul, the genre that has stories set in alternate versions of Africa and Black men and women armed with magic and steel. It was a fast-paced story with action, adventure, a little romance and kick-ass Black men and women. I loved how the author weaved Yoruba mythology into the story. Also, Mistress Oyabakin has become one of my favorite Black female fictional characters.
Tech communities are booming all over Africa, says Nairobi-based Juliana Rotich, co-founder of the open-source software Ushahidi. But it remains challenging to get and stay connected in a region with frequent blackouts and spotty Internet hookups. So Rotich and friends developed BRCK, offering resilient connectivity for the developing world.
Source: Ted
This probably sounds like I’m reaching, but reach with me.
The Harry Potter franchise has enough fans to gross over twenty-four billion dollars worth of revenue. I know that millions of kids across the country were waiting for their letter to Hogwarts and that many of those kids grew into adults dedicatedly waiting in line or online for the final books of the series. Harry Potter told a whole generation that anything is possible, that hard work pays off and friendships are valuable and last lifetimes. It was a story about the underdog, about privilege, about choosing the person you become. Harry Potter taught a generation that magic was real.
Harry Potter’s popularity paved the way for the Young Adult literature craze. Thanks to Harry Potter, Twilight took off, Hunger Games took off and thanks to those books, Vampire Diaries and Divergent are thriving on the shelves and on screen. It brought tremendous visibility to Speculative Fiction and YA Fantasy is now a genre that both children and adults are voraciously consuming. JK Rowling and her characters are household names.
Now imagine if Harry, Ron or Hermione was a child of color (and nothing particularly significant about the story changes). Then brown kids and non-brown kids would have spent their childhoods understanding that you don’t need blue eyes and blonde hair to save the day. They would’ve learned that it’s okay to form friendships with people who don’t look exactly like you.
It may have inspired a Black or Latino main character in Twilight. It may have meant the Black kids in Hunger Games could’ve lived. It might even mean that Divergent’s main character Beatrice could’ve been dark skinned. If JK Rowling had dared to write the other more boldly than just Dean Thomas or Padma and Parvati Patil, her readers could’ve grown up and fought the adults twitter slamming Hunger Games for making Rue Black. This generation could’ve avoided the xenophobia running rampant behind the Michael Brown case.
Children are a blank slate. The more we expose them, the more diverse they become. We could expose them with textbooks, conferences and lectures, or we could write more books with Dominican dragon riders, gender non-conforming aliens and asexual sword wielding princesses.
Let’s be honest about which one sounds more awesome.
Currently, there are colleges teaching Harry Potter, which is amazing. Fantasy fiction holds one of the many keys to shutting down racism.
Read more from Cairo Amani at blackgirlnerds.com
Movie trailers are an art and a science, and they’ve been used to sell science fiction movies for decades. The greatest movies of all time started out as trailers. You probably don’t need to be convinced to watch movies like E.T. and Star Wars, but they all had to sell themselves to audiences for the first time. Let’s travel back in time and watch the original trailers for ten classics of sci-fi.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Released in 2001, starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood and William Sylvester, humanity finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, object buried beneath the Lunar surface and, with the intelligent computer H.A.L. 9000, sets off on a quest.
Alien
Released in 1979, starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt and John Hurt, the commercial vessel Nostromo receives a distress call from an unexplored planet. After searching for survivors, the crew heads home only to realize that a deadly bioform has joined them.
Margaret Keane’s life and artwork is so extraordinary that she is the focus of the Tim Burton film Big Eyes. The rich and famous had to have an original Keane painting on their walls. Burton, the director of Big Eyes, had a Keane portrait done of his girlfriend, actress Lisa Marie. Keane paintings of most celebrities are a good likeness of them, but the one of Michael Jackson with huge tearful eyes on the pop star’s celebrity paintings are not what Keane is known for. Millions of people around the world are more familiar with Keane paintings of big-eyed children. These paintings became internationally famous, and you didn’t have to be rich to own one. Priced for the average person, there were Keane postcards and prints that could be purchased at local stores. This brilliant marketing strategy was due to Keane’s husband, Walter.
Why did the world fall in love with paintings of sad-looking, big-eyed children in the 1960s? Miss Keane stated that the appeal of the paintings was that many people, including herself, wondered why the world was so evil and searched for answers. The eyes of the children reflected this confusion and yearning for peace the artist felt.
The popularity of big-eyed paintings produced imitators and influenced the artwork in cartoons and comic books. For example, the big-eyed Powerpuff Girls had a teacher named Miss Keane, which was, of course, an acknowledgment of Margaret Keane’s paintings.
Keane painted big-eyed children of every race and color, and her paintings of African-American females are eye-catching. One painting, titled Black Lavender, features a playful, big-eyed little Black girl in a lavender sweater. The Black girl in Sunday Best is the opposite. An angelic, serious-looking Black girl sits in a wooden chair. The child’s dress is a colorful mix of bright orange and red polka dots and stripes. It’s her most elegant dress, so she’s wearing it to church. One painting of an African or African-American woman titled Afro-Keane simply looks beautiful. That the painting of the Black woman is titled Afro-Keane is amusing since, in the 1960s and beyond, young Blacks sprayed a product called Afro Sheen on their hair before combing. The Afro-Keane painting captures the dignity and beauty of its Black subject, and the deep-brown skin color is realistic-looking.
Read more from Demetrius Sherman at blackgirlsnerds.com
Pepper is a humanoid robot by Aldebaran Robotics and SoftBank Mobile designed with the ability to read emotions. It was introduced in a conference on June 5 and has been showcased to the public at Softbank Mobile stores in Japan since June 6. It will be available in February 2015 at a base price of JPY 198,000 ($1,931) at Softbank Mobile stores. Pepper’s emotion comes from the ability to analyze expressions and voice tones.
Source: Conscious AI
I find that people are familiar with the more commonly used terms such as functionality testing, non-functional testing, usability testing, unit testing and regression testing. However, here are three terms that can stump you during an interview if you’ve never heard them used.
This list is presented by Aqueelah Grant at Blacksintechnology
Smoke Testing
Smoke testing is also referred to as a build verification testing, confidence testing and sanity testing. This test is solely for testing the major functional components of the software to ensure that a build is stable. Smoke testing should NOT be confused with regression testing as regression testing is an extensive test of major and non-major components. When the term regression is used that means full coverage testing has occurred. Full coverage consists of functional, cosmetic, new requirements, existing requirements testing and more. When it comes down to smoke test vs. regression test, be sure to use the correct terminology in regards to testing coverage.
Black Box Testing
Black box testing is a type of functional testing that mainly tests client requirements and specifications. Test cases for black box testing usually consist of valid vs. invalid input of something. This is an analysis of the software and does not often focus on the internal system structures. Black box testing is most often referenced in manual testing. So if you are a manual tester and an interviewer says, “Are you a white box tester or a black box tester”? let the interviewer know you are more of a black box tester.
White Box Testing
White box testing is the opposite of black box testing as it mainly tests the internal system structure. This type of testing is not necessarily designed to test client requirements and specifications, however, it does check for code weaknesses. Test cases for white box testing usually consist of viewing the system’s source code. White box testing is most often referenced in automation testing, so if you are an automated tester and an interviewer says, “Are you a black box tester or a white box tester?” let the interviewer know you are more of a white box tester.
In Summary:
Smoke testing can be done in a black box or white box structure. If you perform manual and automation testing, you can consider yourself a black box and a white box tester. You will often hear people say that even though an automation test is done, a manual test may still be needed. That’s because of the differences between what is considered white box vs. black box testing.
When it comes to overall software testing terminology, most of these terms are interchangeable. Depending on the way your organization is structured, you may use one term and not the other. However, as a testing professional, you should be able to speak to all industry testing terms. I’d personally never count someone out for not knowing these terms as long as they can explain to me what they do in full detail simply because it was not until later in my career that I began hearing a few of them myself.
Please note that this article does not cover every “test” term used in the industry. One thing I recommend is that if you’re going on an interview, learn about the company’s testing structure. This will help you know which key terms and buzz words to use during the interview.
Source: Aqueelah Grant at blacksintechnology.com