Daily Archives: February 11, 2022

(WTNH) There is a pretty good chance the car you are driving right now could be the last gas car you ever own. Carmakers are scrambling right now to get hundreds of thousands of electric cars on the road soon.

Is Connecticut ready? The answer is: not yet.

Naveed Tahir of Glastonbury is loving his first electric car.

I love that I dont ever have to get out into the cold and put gas in it, Tahir said.

His electric Porsche is the high end, but every major car manufacturer right now is transitioning to electric cars.

Bradley Hoffman is the co-chair of Hoffman Auto Group. He says the demand for electric cars is already big and going to get bigger.

Over the course of the next decade, its going to be heavy, heavy electric, Hoffman said.

Right now, there are pros and cons to owning an electric car. They are better for the environment, the electric grid here is cleaner than most, and getting greener. Electric cars are cheaper to drive too.

Electric will save you between $6,000 and $10,000 over the life of the car. About half of that from using electricity instead of gas and the rest of the savings is maintenance.

If you hate the hassle and cost of things like oil changes, radiator flushing, belts and hoses, electric vehicles have none of that stuff. No drips, no leaks, and very little maintenance cost.

There is no maintenance. The app on the phone tells me that its going to be May of 2023 before it gets an inspection, Hoffman said.

There are downsides, including electric cars costing more. New electric cars cost 10 to 40 percent more than gas competitors. There are some tax incentives to bring that number down, but the biggest reason people are reluctant to get an electric car is something called range anxiety. People are worried about where they are going to charge their cars.

More than 90 percent of current electric car owners do most or all of their charging at home, and the average driver only drives about 49 miles a day.

Its more like charging your iPhone. You want to be plugging it in at night when you arent using it, topping up the battery so its ready to go the next day, said Katie Dykes.

Katie Dykes is the Commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Its her job to build out the states car charging infrastructure and there is a long way to go.

Right now, there are only about 450 charging stations in our state, not nearly enough to handle the 150,000 electric cars the state wants on the roads by 2025. But help is coming.

About $53 million from the federal government as part of the infrastructure bill is coming to Connecticut to install electric car chargers.

Right now, it takes at least 20 minutes and sometimes longer to get rolling. Businesses see that time to kill as an opportunity.

I hear from business owners all the time about how eager they are to get electric vehicle chargers in that strip mall, near that restaurant, because its a real draw for customers, Dykes said.

Tahir says worrying about charging is something you get over quickly.

Ive driven it all morning. It says there is about a 170-mile range left. If I had a gasoline-powered car and it had half a tank in it, I wouldnt worry about it, Tahir said.

Look for another battle in the state legislature this session over the king of electric cars: Tesla. You cant buy a Tesla in Connecticut because they dont use dealerships and thats against the law in this state. Tesla has tried to change the law and failed.

If they dont win this time, look for them to try to cut a deal to sell Teslas on one of the tribal reservations in Connecticut.

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Electric Evolution: Is CT ready to have electric cars on the roads? - WTNH.com

A couple of years ago, right before the pandemic began, a friend told me an unsettling story of an interaction he had with a tech titan in Silicon Valley. My friend had been invited to a high-end dinner in Palo Alto, with a couple dozen or so tech founders, CEOs, and investors.Its not quite as cabal-like as it sounds: These kinds of elbow-rubbing dinners, often held in the back room of a fancy restaurant, are a regular occurrence in the tech world. At them, invitees (often CEOs, V.C.s, and sometimes tech journalists) might share like-minded ideas or debate some esoteric new technology.

At this particular meal, by chance, my friend wound up sitting next to a multibillionaire tech CEO. Their conversation veered onto the topic of robots and artificial intelligence, a field this tech titan had invested in. The CEO launched into a long explanation of how our future planet will someday, perhaps very soon, be inhabited by millions, if not billions, of robots. They will live among us, walking our dogs, driving our cars, serving and protecting our families, and operating our infrastructure, he predicted. My friend, naturally, was curious what would happen to us humans in that future.

Who is going to program the A.I.? my friend asked.

Well, at first, we will, the tech titan responded. But it wont be long before the A.I. is smarter than us, and it will start to program itself.

What happens if the A.I. and these robots decide they dont need humans anymore?

Then they get rid of us, the tech titan said with a shrug.

My friend was taken aback by this comment. Thats terrifying.

No, its not, the tech titan said, setting down his knife and fork to really focus on the point he wanted to make. If the robots decide to get rid of us, if were no longer necessary on this planet, then thats just the next step in evolution.

There are, of course, plenty of billionaires and tech gurus who have been warning about the existential threat to humanity that A.I. might poseand dont want a future where robots rid the planet of us dumb humans. Jaan Tallinn, one of the cofounders of Skype, recently cautioned that Humanity does not have anything to protect it from the potential risks of artificial intelligence. Elon Musk put his viewpoint in a slightly more alarming way: For an A.I., there would be no death. It would live forever. And then youd have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape, he said. So you can see why, even after hearing the story of the tech titan shrugging off robot overlords as the next step in the evolutionary process, I assumed most people were in the camp of wanting to ensure humanity does, indeed, survive.

The problem is that lately Ive been hearing more and more people talk about this evolution idea when it comes to robots, and its not just one-off conversations with peculiar billionaires. Over the past year, Ive heard (and even participated in a few) variations of this conversation with people in Silicon Valley working in the robotic and general A.I. space who have echoed similar sentiments. While their predictions about timing varysome say 10 years, others 100, a few believe weve got at least a thousand years leftmany of them have started to use that same word when referring to humans potentially being replaced by their robotic overlords: evolution. While this isnt actual biological evolution, as the robot- and A.I.-makers presumably will not carry our genes, its akin to survival of the fittest, where the robots survive, and we dont.

Another CEO who owns a robotics company suggested to me that its almost not worth worrying about the terrifying prospect of robots replacing us for a different reason: Namely, if they dont, well only end up killing ourselves off via some other human-created tragedy. Climate change, overpopulation, a more advanced COVID variant, nuclear war, quantum computing, or biotech manipulation gone awry. Really, the CEO said, were actually ensuring that humanity lives on after were dead by creating a new species modeled after usone that can arguably survive for a lot longer than we can. While there was a tinge of comedy in the way he delivered this prediction, it was clear that he believed it was true.

People in Silicon Valley are correct to point out that its not a question of if humans will eventually die out and be eviscerated from the face of the planet (or the universe), but a question of when. There are the best-case scenarios, where our endand that of our shared ecosystemcomes in millions if not billions of years from now, when the sun grows cold. And there is the grimmest future, unlikely but not impossible, where in a few decades, robots eye our children and wonder if they need them. Were the only species (as far as we know) to invent transistors and computers and communication tools and possibly soon, robots and A.I. If were smart enough to do that, we should probably ask ourselves if what were building could kill us, and maybejust maybewe should start thinking about how to ensure that doesnt happen. These are conversations we need to begin having now, as these technologies are being built, not after the fact, when we can only wish that we had.

A few years ago, Nick Bostrom, who runs the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, a rare philosopher with a background in theoretical physics and artificial intelligence, wrote a paper detailing how humans could find themselves wiped off the face of the planet.He concluded that there are really only two ways the future plays out. The first is that we evolve and transform into one or more new species or life forms, sufficiently different from what came before so as no longer to count as Homo sapiens; the other, by simply dying out, without any meaningful replacement or continuation.

The rest is here:

Silicon Valley Is Ready for Robots To Kill Us All - Vanity Fair

Over the last several decades, the development of technology for camera and projection modules has changed considerably. The modernization of optical alignment and advanced manufacturing automation systems has also transformed due to consumer demands for more immersive experiences on their devices. Lets take a dive into the evolution of optoelectronics and explore why its vital for these devices and future technologies to be aligned and assembled with high precision.

In the early 2000s, action cameras entered the mainstream market with companies like GoPro introducing miniaturized cameras that were easy-to-use, incredibly rugged, and captured remarkable visuals. Now, the company has morphed into an international enterprise that has sold over 26 million GoPro cameras in more than 100 countries. As we see newer models and brands enter the market that can do more with less bulk and better price points, there continues to be massive interest in and demand for manufacturers to continue designing these devices with increasing optimal clarity.

Related: Nanocavity Paves Way for Thinner Solar Panels, Optoelectronic Devices

As technology continues to advance, being able to simply see a powerful moment is no longer enough. People want to experience powerful moments and become part of them. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) use technology and digital elements to create immersive experiences used in nearly every industrial sector including entertainment and gaming, search and rescue, education and architecture, construction and design, and much more.

Related: Researchers Discover New Potential in Light Harvesting, Optoelectronics

One of the interesting things many people dont realize is that this technology has actually been around for quite some time. For example, one of the first AR systems was developed nearly 30 years ago whereas the first recorded VR machine patent goes back even further to 1960. Today, these optical innovations continue to grow and we are seeing a redefinition in the way people work, play, and connect- with companies like Facebook and Google even jumping on board with new device introductions.

If one industry stands above the rest to demonstrate the importance of imaging technology, its the medical field. Market analysis reports suggest that the demand for technologically sophisticated medical cameras has progressively grown since 2014 with the increasing need to capture high-resolution digital images with clarity and precision. Imaging applications are utilized in fields ranging from dentistry to ophthalmology for diagnosis and monitoring of medical conditions. New technological advances will be necessary to drive image quality and production efficiency as innovations expand which will require absolute precision in optical manufacturing.

From facial to object recognition, three-dimensional sensing is no longer a technology of the future. People are using this capability in a variety of applications for day-to-day activities. 3D sensing augments camera capabilities to enables object recognition, object placement and depth data. Companies like Microsoft have started embedding advanced facial recognition into apps that have built-in security and are easy to use. We also see this technology entrusted and used for security purposes like mobile banking, so the need for accuracy in its design is paramount. These devices require the precise relative positioning of optical elements for both projecting accurate patterns onto the face and receiving the image back, during the devices manufacturing process.

Vehicles have evolved greatly over last several decades. Applications that were once considered extravagant are now standard in many of the cars on the road today. Optical modules and active alignment plays an important role in enabling the next generation of automotive safety and performance. Heads-up displays, touchless dashboard controls, laser depth sensing, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) require optical design and production that is highly precise. The fact that these are safety systems designed to save lives, necessitates this high precision, and the manufacturing quality assurance that goes along with it. The continued advancement in this vertical market will be one of the key areas we will undoubtedly see substantial technological growth and increasing optical precision in the coming years.

Over time, ideas have gone from illustrations to manufacturable products with speed and scale as weve never seen before. As devices started getting smaller, so do optical devices cameras and projectors. The optical assembly thats required to take a concept from lab to mass production requires active alignment precision mechanics, high-resolution positioning, and cost-effective solutions for optimal clarity and ultimately a better consumer product.

Thanks to automation, advanced manufacturing algorithms, and many of the current innovative systems that continue to enhance the quality and optical performance for applications across a variety of technologies, consumer products like AR and VR headsets, LiDAR systems, laptops, cell phones, cameras, automotive displays, medical devices and more will continue to evolve. By using active alignment, the resulting optical modules will have the most uniform clarity available and help drive the enhanced development of next-generation capabilities of electronic devices to transform the marketplace as we know it.

Justin Roe is the co-founder and president of Kasalis. With more than 20 years of industry experience, Justin has a wide depth of knowledge and education around optical alignment and advanced manufacturing automation systems. Over the years, he has led teams of highly skilled engineers, design experts, and material scientists to drive modernization in active alignment, automation, and innovation management. Justin has a BSc in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

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What's Next in the Evolution of Optelectronic Devices? - DesignNews

Emma Hayes says Chelsea Women are enjoying chasing down Arsenal ahead of their title showdown on Friday with her side in "another stage of evolution".

The Blues aren't where they'd like to be - top of the Women's Super League which they have won for the last two seasons - but that could all change when the Sky Sports cameras head to Kingsmeadow this Friday for a title showdown with leaders Arsenal, who sit two points and one place above them in the table.

Ask Hayes if there is any hunger for revenge in her squad and she'll give you short shrift. But there must be some remnant of a surprise opening-day defeat to the Gunners still lingering within her players' psyche. Or some sense of poetry were they to finally top the table, for the first time this season, by beating the very side who have forced them to play catch-up since that September loss.

Really, no one knows what it takes to win in the English game better than the 45-year-old. She freely admits that to label Friday's game must-win or must-not-lose would only add pressure to her dressing room that they could do without. But is less reserved about how it has served them to bounce back from that early disappointment and remain on Arsenal's coat tails into the second half of the season.

"My job is to put this team in a position to perform on Friday, that's something they're already doing really well," she tells Sky Sports. "Everybody has played their part and contributed to where we're at.

"If we're to come through this period, we have to keep finding goals from across the squad. That's been a big focus of ours from the turn of Christmas and with back-to-back clean sheets, I think we're in a good place.

"I never think being at the top of our game is a permanent place, it's cyclical, I think it's game-to-game. But what I have realised is that we've been able to play with our some of our top top players in this recent period, who've produced performances for Chelsea over the years.

"And we've not only ground out results, but I think we're finding another level to our play. So it's a real testament to the strength in depth and shows what what a fantastic squad we really do have.

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"We're playing well, we're defending well, we're scoring goals from different positions on the pitch. I think we found something else to us that reminds me that we're in another stage of our evolution, our team's going to another place."

Chelsea certainly are playing well, in spite of a small blip of dropped points against Reading and Brighton around Christmas as well as crashing out of the Champions League to Wolfsburg. Seven clean sheets in their last eight WSL games have kept things tight at the back, with that focus on sharing the attacking burden paying dividends.

Five players scored three or more goals for the Blues in last season's WSL, and with 10 games still to go, Chelsea have already reached that tally this time around. Seven different scorers have found the back of the net across the club's last six WSL games alone.

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That said, Chelsea have also found ways to win ugly. Last weekend's 1-0 win over Man City, who had held Arsenal in their previous game, owed as much to guts as it did style. That mentality is something Hayes admires in Jonas Eidevall's Gunners, too, and may dominate what Hayes expects to be an "emotional" London derby.

She says: "I've always said I think London derbies play out much differently than other games. I don't know what to expect on Friday, but I do know you've got two fantastic teams on show.

"It's the same in any game where there's rivalry, it plays on the emotion than other games. Coaches would prefer less emotion in the game, but I know Arsenal are a team who've led from the front for the entire season and I know they'll do everything they can to hang onto that.

"I won't change as a manager, though. I don't do anything different from week to week regardless of the opponent. I think that's crucial - We can't have all, 'let's get up for this one, and tone it down for the next one.' It's all about consistent behaviours."

With that in mind Hayes maintains, publicly at least, that there is no extra spice coming into Friday's game on the back of the opening-day defeat. Chelsea arguably don't need it, this is familiar territory. Last season, they overtook Manchester City with 11 games left and went on to keep top spot all season. If they win on Friday, they will leapfrog Arsenal for the first time - and have nine left to hold on this time around.

"We're coming from a chasing position that we're really enjoying," says Hayes. "Ask anybody who's being chased what it feels like, and it's a totally different feeling being the leader or being in a second position.

"When you're chasing someone, you have to find something different. Psychologically, you're not in control, in terms of the team that's always leading is in their hands. So you know, if Arsenal win every game this season, they'll be league champions. So we know that and for us, we just have to focus on applying as much pressure as we can on them.

"The team has got great experience of being in this position. I think it showed on Sunday, that experience, the ability to deliver the result, deliver the performance, no matter the circumstances. I think that's what Chelsea have done really, really well over the years. But I still feel there'll be more turns in the season yet."

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By the time the WSL trophy is delivered in May, most likely to either Kingsmeadow or Meadow Park, Hayes will have already been awarded one personal title in the form of an OBE she was awarded in the New Year's honours.

At the time of the announcement the Chelsea boss wondered if there had been some mistake. Now it has sunk in, the award should sit nicely among her four WSL, three FA Cup and two League Cup medals on what must be approaching one of Surrey's largest mantle pieces.

"I've had some amazing experiences in my life already and I don't know how many more I'm going to have," she says. "What I've achieved in my time at Chelsea, it'll be really difficult to surpass that in the rest of my life."

Saving the all-important question until the end - has she practiced what she will say to the Queen? Hayes smiles. "No, I just hope I can curtsey without tripping over. I did it once before when I got my MBE, but I did buckle when I got to the backwards steps."

Watch Chelsea Women vs Arsenal Women in the WSL from 7pm on Friday on Sky Showcase, Sky Sports Premier League and Sky Sports Football; kick-off 7.45pm.

Don't have Sky? Stream the game with a NOW pass or follow it live with our dedicated live blog across all Sky Sports digital platforms.

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WSL: Emma Hayes on Chelsea Women's evolution and 'enjoying' playing catch-up to Arsenal - Sky Sports

Fathoms Gareth Dunlop reflects on the history of the web over the past three decades and where things could be heading next.

It has been more than 10,000 days since the greatest invention of our lifetime, the world wide web, emerged from the labs of CERN and into the mainstream.

This provides us with an opportunity to pause and reflect, and consider if there is anything about the last 10,000 days which might help us understand the next 10,000.

The life of the world wide web has evolved through four distinguishable phases.

In 1989, while working for CERN, Tim Berners-Lee developed a mark-up language and later published the worlds first web page. This sparked a surge of innovation, leading to the building of the first web servers and the development of early browsers.

The era was one of great excitement, as those closest to the project recognised the ability of the web to organise and manage huge amounts of information. No clear commercial opportunity had yet emerged. However, even from an academic perspective, it was clear that the protocol developed by Berners-Lee made the worlds information much easier to understand, structure and navigate.

The read-only web was born and early web pages were designed and built. The early years encompassed a range of attributes:

While some of these characteristics appear to contradict, that in itself is indicative of the novelty of the medium and societys varied response.

The web evolved from a predominantly read-only medium to become a read-write, two-way medium.

While Berners-Lee invented Web 1.0, no one invented Web 2.0. Rather, the term refers to how the web evolved in the noughties as the second wave of applications became mainstream.

During this period, the web democratised with increasing numbers of platforms developed where the value in the platform lay not with its leadership or technology, but rather with its community.

Early adopters such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Bebo, Craigslist, MySpace and Skype gained their market share by putting their users in charge of the platform. Users around that time were given genuine agency, influencing the internet and contributing to its content as well as benefitting from content provided by others.

These platforms set the foundation for the behemoths that were to follow in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.

It is difficult to imagine in an era of misinformation, online bullying and fake news, but the early years of Web 2.0 were a time of great optimism. There was hope that this evolution of the web would amplify the voice of each individual, contribute to big societal discussions, and ultimately positively impact democracy and equality.

Recent and current developments on the internet have focused on the semantic web and the search for meaning. By using contextual and environmental data, the web seeks to provide personalised and relevant information.

Some of the ways the internet tries to apply meaning by exploring context include:

The big trends in Web 3.0 are around bringing meaning to content using personal, contextual and geographical clues.

Other longer-established design disciplines are highly effective at discerning principles from trends, for example architecture.

Even though the style of buildings has varied across the ages, architects always design them with a careful interest in their relationship with light, their environment and the flow of interactions in the space that humans will use the building for. The style of architecture is fluid but its principles are immovable.

When we explore more than 10,000 days of the world wide web, and move beyond the year-on-year trends to the decade-on-decade evolution, there are three constant trends that winners in the digital experience economy have embraced:

The winners in the next 10,000 days will embrace the principles of the ages as well as the trends of the day.

ByGareth Dunlop

Gareth Dunlop runsFathom, a UX consultancy that helps organisations get the most from their digital products. Specialist areas include UX strategy, usability testing, customer journey planning and accessibility. Clients include BBC, Kingspan, AIB and Tesco Mobile.

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From trends to principles: What we can learn from the evolution of the web - Siliconrepublic.com

"The Fellowship of the Ring" isa clear favorite for Mortensen when it comes to "The Lord of the Rings" movies.He continued:

"The second movie ['The Two Towers'] already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one ['Return of the King'], there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose, and all that, but whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with 'The Hobbit,' one and two, it's like that to the power of 10."

It's important to consider the context of these comments: Mortensen was sharing them between "The Desolation of Smaug" and "The Battle of the Five Armies," the second and third films in Jackson's "Hobbit" trilogy, which was heavy on CGI and stretched out a single J.R.R. Tolkien book to three movies ("ballooning," indeed).By that time,Jackson had somewhat fallen out of critical favor, with some regarding his continued stint in Middle-earth as a symptom of Hollywood's overall, franchise-obsessed prequel-itis and sequel-itis.

Among other things, "The Return of the King" does contain a scene where Aragorn is completely surrounded by green ghosts reminiscent of the blue ones Jackson put on screen with Michael J. Fox in "The Frighteners." When you think about moments like that and contrast them with the simple forced perspective and other practical effects Jackson used in "The Fellowship of the Ring" it's maybe not so hard to see what Mortensen is talking about whenhe speaks of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy shifting more toward CGI.

Read more:

Viggo Mortensen Had One Big Problem With The Evolution Of The Lord Of The Rings And The Hobbit - /Film

In the video for melancholy pop banger Escalante Street, singer-songwriter Jaime Nanci moves through the eerily empty streets of the Cabanyal Barrio in high heels, a white smock and a wide-brimmed black hat. As both a song and a film its a beautiful explosion of bitter-sweet joy amid the loneliness and terror of the pandemic. Its the first in a series of releases from Nanci, who music fans might know as the soulfully voiced singer with Irish bands Cuckoo Savante and Jaime Nanci and the Blueboys.

Nanci and his husband, Michael Barron, moved to Valencia three years ago, largely for the good of his health. Nanci was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 15 years ago. A year after moving, the pandemic started. We moved here because it was so vibrant and full of noise and music and street markets ... And then it was just gone overnight. And since then, weve been trying to find it again.

Nanci remembers exactly when he knew he could sing. It was on a road trip to Donegal when I was seven or eight, he says. We were singing along in the back of the car to whatever tape my dad had Hed be listening to Ry Cooder or JJ Cale but then hed be listening to Bette Midler, which I thought was amazing. I remember one day in the car we were singing along and my dad let a roar and just said Shut up! I remember saying, I thought I could sing, and he said You can but your sister cant.

He never stopped. He cycled through punk and grunge bands until discovering jazz when he was at college in Galway. I fell in love with a trumpet player and he encouraged me quite a lot. He always had eclectic tastes. When I was a kid I went into a shop and got Bananarama and the Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks at the same time. I wanted to be a punk but I was a disco queen as well.

Although he loves the people he played music with, he never felt he fitted in well in the Irish music scene. I was always made feel I was on the outskirts, he says. I think thats just because Im queer and the time that was in it, but I internalised it to the point that I just never let myself become a part of a scene. I did have a fairly significant jazz musician in Ireland tell me that I could be successful, but I should try and be less gay. That was only three years ago. You can see it in the pop scene in Ireland: we never had a Prince or a Madonna. We had a wealth of talent in Ireland but the things that kept getting platformed were really homogenous. This piece of music, and especially the video, was like, Im fuckin Irish. And this is what Ive always been. And this is who I am. I think younger, visible queer artists internationally and at home have opened doors, artists like Lil NAS X or Anhoni who are really amazing, unusual, unashamed and unapologetic.

After years of touring and gigging, and a year doing a masters in jazz vocal performance, Nanci fell out of love with performing for a while (though he performs now with an ensemble called QTF). Id given up on music as something that gave me any joy. And then I started therapy and rediscovered a lot of things and answered a lot of questions about what I did and how I did it.

He had been ground down by a certain notion of commercial success. Now, my level of successes is: Im healthy, I have a roof over my head, I have food on my table, I have love and I get to go out and perform sometimes and its fucking killer.

He also contended with the repressive homophobia he grew up with. I absolutely, definitely, internalised shit from my youth growing up, things Id heard. As a queer man in Dundalk whos told by part of your life that youre exceptional and by another part of your life that youre a freak and disgusting and you shouldnt exist and should hide everything about yourself that takes its toll. He sighs. I fell in love with Michael when he told me what he did for a living.

In the early noughties, Barron founded BeLonG To, the ground-breaking organisation for LGBT young people. I might have cried that night when he told me that. The kids that have come through there, how theyre excelling, how good they are for the world in general. Its such a shame that people were not allowed shine unobstructed. I do think, that if I hadnt been told to suppress those things, Id be a lot more free. I think the gender fluidity thats emerging now and coming to the fore, its the natural evolution of humanity.

The video for Escalante Street celebrates Nancis sexuality but also his physicality. In it, he strides and runs through the empty streets and then he eats and drinks ravenously. Before he was diagnosed with MS, he had been having health issues for years: periods of blindness and pain issues that meant he had to walk with crutches. Ive had hospitalisations where I had to be treated with a steroid transfusion for a week maybe, and then a month or two of recovery ... Each time you have something it leaves scars and you become more disabled as time goes on. At the minute I just have problems with my eyes and my levels of energy.

Does singing and performing allow him to have a different relationship with his body than the one he grapples with as someone with MS? No matter how shitty I feel, as soon as I step on stage its almost like Im not there. I dont ever remember a concert, really. Its all so instinctive or instinctual. I have gone onstage with an eyepatch and a crutch and its the same. Then I might come offstage and collapse and go to bed for two days. Its very strange. Its an unconscious thing that I dont fully understand. I dont particularly want to understand it. Its magical.

He sings without realising it, he says. Barron sometimes taps him on the shoulder when theyre shopping to say: Youre singing.

Theres nothing else at all when Im singing, he says. I feel my body is doing exactly what its supposed to do at that moment. I said this in the past and I always feel cringey about it, but I consider it kind of like praying. To me its a song to the universe.

He wanted to work with Tim Howarth, his co-writer and producer, when he saw his Instagram handle was 7.83 hertz. Thats the vibration of the universe, and Ive always been quietly obsessed about that and what that means. I feel like the purest way I can give back to that vibration is by singing.

The video for Escalante Street was directed by Jean-Marc Sanchez, a neighbour, who approached Nanci and Barron out of the blue one day because he wanted to photograph their dog. They became friends. I sent him a song and he said, Id love to make a video. I didnt know he was a film-maker. He came out of retirement and organised the shoot. He got a little crew together. We did a guerrilla shoot. He used an iPhone and a drone. Michael was doing lighting. I did the costumes. It was very guerrilla and very low budget.

Those high heels look hard to run in. He laughs. Theyre awful cheap shoes. Theyre so uncomfortable. I got them at the market for The Rocky Horror Show three years ago I definitely have female energy, I think. Again, that goes back to internalising things as a child. To me, Im undeniably feminine. So I was embracing that.

Whats Escalante Street about? I think everybody, at some point over the last two years, has found themselves on Escalante Street, he says. You could change the lines to Take me dancing on Clonliffe Avenue. Its that moment you have, where youre standing on a street that was where you got all your stimuli and all your joy and daily energy and you took it for granted and then you find yourself standing in the middle of the street at midnight looking at the sky going, What the fuck is going on? And you have to try to make your own joy however you can, dancing with your lover or by yourself or with your dog in a park at night. Just try and feel something other than terror. Id love if for four minutes, 40 seconds, somebody didnt feel any of those shitty feelings that weve had. That was really the point of it.

Read more here:

Jaime Nanci: 'I think gender fluidity is the natural evolution of humanity' - The Irish Times

DevOps has become the mainstream development culture in recent years, but like other areas of the tech world it continues to evolve.

Add in changes brought about by the pandemic, the Great Resignation, automation and more, and it's clear that the evolution is set to continue. We spoke to Shanea Leven, CEO of CodeSee to find out what changes have already taken place and what the future might hold.

BN: What effect has the Great Resignation had on the role of DevOps?

SL: The market demand for DevOps professionals was already high. In the midst of the Great Resignation, that demand is likely to skyrocket. A recent assessment of The Bureau of Labor Statistics by Harvard Business Review suggests resignation rates have been higher among those working in fields 'that had experienced extreme increases in demand due to the pandemic.' Tech-centric roles clocked in at a 4.5 percent increase in turnover compared to the following year -- one of the highest rates of mass exit across industries. For the DevOps engineers who are confident enough or just completely fed up with the way they've been treated by companies -- they will prosper, leaving behind those who can't exit their current companies to take the brunt of the work. And where does this leave companies? Companies need to sit up and take notice in order to pivot and make developer experience a top priority. Otherwise, the folks who are remaining will leave and new people wont be retained either, creating a vicious cycle.

BN: What effect has remote working had on DevOps and developer culture?

SL: The numbers speak for themselves -- tech-sector roles are at high risk of being caught up in the current of the Great Resignation, and this is due in large part to the impact of remote working. Given many DevOps professionals were already embracing the connected virtual workplace, their effort and time on the job only increased as the bounds of the physical office space and time zones melted away. Pair this with a multi-year pandemic that forced time for self-reflection and job and soul searching, alike. Remote working has inspired many developers to truly consider what they need and want in an organization and role. In other words, there's no reason any more to put up with a company's bad culture or being treated 'as a resource' rather than a human being.

BN: How is the 'shift left' movement affecting DevOps teams now, and in the future?

SL: DevOps is going through a re-imagining -- we're witnessing a 'shift-left' similar to that we've seen in information technology and security operations. I predict this trend will continue in full force in 2022. The practice of DevOps has been drawing closer to developers for years. What was once a focused role on a team now spans teams -- integrated into everyday practices and responsibilities of many individual developers. Considering many developers are writing more code than ever before, it's likely their sway in organizations will continue to increase alongside their accountability to the success of the software.

BN: What can businesses do to enhance the developer experience and happiness at work while resisting employee burnout?

SL: Businesses committed to enhancing the developers' experience should double-down on identifying opportunities to automate development and operations that make it hard for the developer to write good code. The single best thing you can do is to simply ask them. The next best thing is to do what they ask. When businesses listen to, respect, support and invest in the entire DevOps lifecycle they're ultimately protecting the interests and needs of their dev talent. When developers are able to focus on the core areas of development knowing that their testing, monitoring, and deployment structures are actually reliable, they're able to reduce daily friction, responding to potential issues and identifying solutions with greater ease and efficiency.

BN: As DevOps has evolved, what has been the impact on developers' day-to-day experience?

SL: Any given developer only has so many hours in their workday, and organizations are struggling to expand their engineering teams. We expect a lot from devs today, with many carrying responsibilities spanning the SDLC. With this increased responsibility comes both benefits and challenges. Working in a DevOps model, developers are often able to progress and pivot with greater ease than ever before; it's an invigorated approach to development that can positively impact one's day-to-day experience, but also lead to ambiguity and overwhelm. So, while we've improved in some ways, we still have a long way to go to provide developers the ideal working environment.

BN: How can automation improve the developer experience and DevOps practices?

SL: As we're able to offload effort- and time-consuming tasks from the developer workload, they'll be positioned to focus on what they do best: writing great code. This said, it's likely toolchain consolidation or even tool replacement will be required of many development organizations in 2022. Today, many devs deploy their preferred tools to take on different parts of the DevOps lifecycle, resulting in fragmented data and metrics between tools and across workflows. It's a lot, and it has the potential to hinder innovation. Automation and orchestration offer a solution that spans the DevOps lifecycle. As we move into the future, smart organizations will look to platforms and standards that enable the seamless integration of task automation. The next level organizations will seek out tools to solve problems that have historically been considered unsolvable. A new generation of dev tools are out there attacking problems that have been around so long that they've been ingrained in how we build software and have been accepted but slow down every developer. These tools are meant to exponentially improve the developer experience.

Image credit: tkemot / depositphotos.com

Excerpt from:

The evolution of the DevOps corporate culture and where 'shift left' takes it next [Q&A] - BetaNews

For a moment, four games into the 2014 season, it seemed that Tom Bradys Patriots career may be nearing its end.

The team got off to a sour 2-2 start, and to make matters worse, rookie QB Jimmy Garoppolo, a second-round pick from that years draft, played well in garbage time in the Kansas City Chiefs 41-14 shellacking of the Patriots in Arrowhead Stadium on national television in Week 4.

You know what comes next.

On to Cincinnati, the AFC Divisional Playoff win over Baltimore, Malcolm Butler and Super Bowl 49, 28-3 in Super Bowl 51, Super Bows 52 and 53, and then Bradys two-season run in Tampa Bay where he went out on the top of his game.

With the ascension of Twitter and other social media channels into our everyday lives in the mid-2010s, Bradys historic run from 2014 and on is still widely discussed, and social media posts on NFL, Patriots and other Twitter accounts look back on those games quite often.

So the point of this piece was to uncover some Brady games that you might have forgotten, that help tell the story of his ascension into the greatest quarterback of all-time.

One game that stood out in 2014 was Bradys last loss as a full-game starter that season. A 26-21 defeat to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers in Lambeau Field.

Brady battled back and forth with Rodgers in the frozen tundra, hitting Brandon LaFell for two impressive touchdown throws, before Rodgers eventually ran out the clock on New England late with a first-down throw that sent Brady into a cussing frenzy on the sideline.

The loss showed Bradys fiery, competitive edge that fueled him his entire career, including the rest of this 2014 season, and all that much-discussed success that came after it.

After this game, Brady would face Rodgers three more times, and Brady would win all three contests, including the 2020 NFC Championship Game in Green Bay when Brady was a member of the Bucs.

Brady only won two of his seven Super Bowl rings from the time period discussed in this piece from 2003 to late 2014. But those years, with all of those wins and defeats, helped set the stage for the greatest late-career act this sport, or possible any team sport in North America, has ever seen.

Read the original:

The evolution of Tom Brady through 12 under-appreciated performances - Patriots Wire

Ruben Fleischer may have been the seventh man to take the reins of the Uncharted movie (the likes of David O. Russell, Travis Knight, and Dan Trachtenberg were attached to direct at different points), but he certainly wasnt a last-resort pick.

The Zombieland filmmakers knack for buddy comedies and fizzing banter and his close relationship with Sony made him a snug fit to adapt Naughty Dogs classic PlayStation series about swashbuckling treasure hunters Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) and Victor Sully Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg).

However, video game movies have been here before and have too often fallen flat at the cinema. Why is that? And how can Uncharted reverse that trend?

We put those questions to Fleischer. Speaking over the phone from Rome, the director revealed how heavily Naughty Dog was involved in production, how Tom Holland grew as a performer during Uncharted, and how Nathan Drakes video game actor Nolan North influenced the finished product. Plus, we touched on a certain Jak and Daxter movie. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

GR: The history of Uncharted is a long and winding one, with various names attached to it. When you came in, what was the stamp you wanted to put on the project? What did Ruben Fleischers version of Uncharted look like?

Ruben Fleischer: The thing I'm most proud of about this movie is, when I read the script, it honestly had all these incredible action sequences that had the spirit of Uncharted. But what I feel like I focused on was the relationship between Nate and Sully and the dynamic between them. The dynamic that was created is so great. And thats what makes the game so special.

[Sully actor] Mark [Wahlberg] and Tom were both cast before I was involved. But I really wanted to cultivate that relationship and lean into the comedy. I mean, I can't help it. I just love the combination of comedy and action. And that's apparent from everything I've done going back to Zombieland.

So I would say the thing that I really focused on and that I'm most proud of contributing to the film, was that buddy dynamic between the two and all the comedy that we were able to manufacture on the day. Mark and Tom are both incredible improvisers. And they brought so much to it. And I think collectively, we really made that relationship feel real.

You mention Tom Holland as a great improviser. Its easy to forget hes only 25. Hes been around for so long as a lead already. You get the impression that his ceiling is so high hes still learning and developing. In that respect, how did he grow as a performer during Uncharted?

I hope this doesn't sound too patronizing, but I really think this character was Tom's evolution from playing a boy to playing a man.

You can tell by his physique, his physicality, the way he walks, the way he holds himself, that this is very clearly not Peter Parker. The Nathan Drake of the video games is a cocky kind of swaggering character. While we wanted to show his evolution he's certainly not at that full Nathan Drake level yet this is the beginning of that character.

I feel like Tom brought that swagger and that confidence to his performance that really evokes the spirit of Nathan Drake. And I think for audience members, they're not watching a high school kid anymore. They're watching a man on screen. Tom really stepped it up here.

Its always an odd curiosity to me that video game movies haven't exploded in the same way that comic book movies have, for example. Why do you think that is?

I think a mistake of some video game movies past is just trying to recreate the video game, one for one.

Because the experience of playing a video game is so immersive and so active, especially on the newer consoles, it feels like you're starring in your own movie. And if you want to go left to go left, you want to go right, you go right; youre in control. Whereas a movie it is an inherently passive experience. You're sitting there for two hours watching something that somebody else just made for you to consume.

So it doesn't matter how much it looks like the video game. If the story at the center of it is not compelling and you're not invested in the characters, then no matter how authentic it is, it doesn't matter.

I was really focused on making sure that the movie could stand on its own two feet. Whether you're the biggest fan of Uncharted or you've never even heard of it, it has to be a compelling story with a great emotional center and a real relationship to invest in.

A decision that was made prior to my involvement is that they chose to tell a chapter of the Nathan Drake story that hadn't been featured in the games, so it didn't feel like we're just reliving the experience of the games. We're actually telling a different story and getting greater insight into this character we love, but seeing a different moment in time for him.

I'd love to know more about the working relationship between yourself and Naughty Dog on this movie. I don't know whether it was a case of them handing you like a bible of do's and don'ts with the franchise, or did you have a bit more free rein with that?

Naughty Dog, [executive producer] Neil Druckmann, and PlayStation were all incredible partners on this film. They really were like our godfathers who were shepherding us through the experience. Obviously, their history with the game is much longer than ours and there's no greater fans of the material than them because they created their baby.

They had to sign off on all aspects of the movie. We weren't doing anything that they didn't approve. It wasnt a bible of do's and don'ts. There were certain watch outs or please feature this and there's Easter eggs scattered throughout the film that they helped contribute to.

At the same time, they gave us the freedom because we were telling a chapter of the story that was different from the games. They were both kind of the safe keepers, as well as giving us the license to really just make a great movie. Because that's what we're here to do. And they were supportive every step of the way, whether it was the script, they watched dailies, they saw cuts of the film along the way, and gave us feedback every step. Their insight was really helpful, honestly.

You had Nathan Drakes game actor Nolan North on set. How did his presence shape your understanding of the Drake character?

Something I was really excited to learn was that so much of the dialogue from the games is improvised. Nolan and [Sully video game actor Richard McGonagle], a lot of their back and forth in the games is all improvised. Its really true to their spirit as actors.

We took a similar approach with Mark and Tom. So much of their dialogue is improvised, because it allows the performer to really make it their own. And I think that's why, in the video game, it feels so real and natural. In our film, their relationship feels so real and natural, because the performers are really able to make it their own.

So, Nolan North, just offered so much insight into the process and the experience. But he also was so pumped that it was Tom who was going to be taking on the movie version of Nathan Drake. It really felt like a passing the baton when he and Tom were together, which was super, super cool.

You have spoken about making a Jak and Daxter movie. I know its very early stages, but I did want to know what sold you on that idea what aspect of the franchise? Because it has been dormant for so long, almost 15 years now, and its a bit of a surprise to see that being brought to the big screen.

My heyday as a gamer and playing PlayStation was really the [PS1]. I cant say that Ive evolved with all the titles, so Im a little bit stuck in the past. [Jak and Daxter] was always a game that I just loved.

Similar to Uncharted, what makes Jak Jak and Daxter so special is the buddy relationship at the center of it. They are a team and they help each other out and they make sacrifices for one another. And that is I think the key to a great comedy.

Its a little funny to hear, but the two movies for that kind of inspired the film adaptation of Jak and Daxter are Midnight Run and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Because we have this kind of pairing of these two guys who are stuck together on a journey, not by choice but more out of necessity. And I think that's a classic genre of buddy action movies. These kinds of adversarial pairs that, over the course of the film, develops an appreciation for one another. And that's, that's how we've approached Jak and Daxter.

The landscape of the world, the ether, all the specifics of it. Ive always wanted to make a movie that didnt take place on Earth, like more of a world-building experience.

Having such a great experience working on Uncharted with Playstation and Naughty Dog, I was excited to find another project to work together and they were too. So when we're just talking about different things, Jak and Daxter was always a game I really loved and I was excited that they were willing to let me take a crack at it. Weve hired writers who are in the process of writing the script and partnered with Naughty Dog in PlayStation in the development of it.

I cant wait for that. Im a huge Jak and Daxter fan and Im excited to see that come to fruition

I think it's a really cool version. This is so bizarre to me Just by coincidence, somebody forwarded me an article where Tom Holland was asked if he could make any video game a movie, which would it be. He said Jak and Daxter and so, when I saw him earlier this week on this tour, I said, You know, Tom, someone told me that you want to make that movie. I'm actually trying to make it So there's the possibility that we could partner again on that one.

Uncharted is exclusively in cinemas on February 11 in the UK and February 18 in the US.For more on what's still to come this year, check out ourmovie release datesguide.

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Uncharted director talks Tom Holland's "evolution" and the biggest mistakes that video game movies make - Gamesradar