Head bangs, body rolls, foot lifts, and down shakes—this bird can even vogue.
Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo shows off 14 different dance moves to the beat of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." The movements come from different video segments of the study, with a single music track overlaid for illustrative purposes.
Chances are you've stumbled across YouTube videos of Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo grooving to his favorite tunes and keeping reasonably good time to the beat. Now the same researchers who demonstrated Snowball's unusual flair for dance are back with a new paper in Current Biology, showing that Snowball has quite a broad range of distinct moves—14 in all.
Snowball is a male Eleonora cockatoo who came to national attention around 2008, when his owner, co-author Irene Schulz, posted a video of him moving to the beat on YouTube. (She runs the bird shelter where Snowball lives in Schererville, Indiana.) The Internet went crazy, and Snowball made numerous TV appearances, even appearing in several TV commercials—most notably a 2009 Taco Bell spot where he grooved to "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." And he's not the only bird species to show a flair for dance. In 2009, Harvard scientists surveyed a large swath of YouTube videos, looking for those featuring animals moving in time to the music. They found 33, all featuring birds.
Co-author Aniruddh Patel, then with the Neuroscience Institute in La Jolla, California, had previously theorized that perhaps only certain kinds of animals had the type of specialized brain circuitry capable of responding to rhythm and beat. Notably, he considered those with complex vocal learning—that is, the ability to imitate complex sounds, an unusual ability in the animal kingdom. "We're the only primate with that ability," said Patel, now at Tufts University. "So I made some predictions that if we ever saw this, it would only be in vocal learning species. Building these strong auditory motor connections may be an important prerequisite for rhythm and beat perception."
HP is updating its EliteDesk line of business computers with new models powered by up to a 9th-gen Intel Core processors. They come in a range of shapes and sizes including all-in-one desktops, “micro tower,” and “small form factor,&#…
HP is updating its EliteDesk line of business computers with new models powered by up to a 9th-gen Intel Core processors. They come in a range of shapes and sizes including all-in-one desktops, “micro tower,” and “small form factor,” but the tiniest of the bunch are the Desktop Mini models and there are two of […]
Rund um das Rennspiel Descenders eskaliert der Streit zwischen dessen Publisher und dem Key-Reseller G2A. Inzwischen hat einer der Beteiligten eine Onlinepetition eröffnet, die fordert, dass über G2A keine Indiegames mehr gehandelt werden. (G2A, Steam)
Rund um das Rennspiel Descenders eskaliert der Streit zwischen dessen Publisher und dem Key-Reseller G2A. Inzwischen hat einer der Beteiligten eine Onlinepetition eröffnet, die fordert, dass über G2A keine Indiegames mehr gehandelt werden. (G2A, Steam)
The Festival of Speed went electric, autonomous, and remote control in 2019.
The VW ID R is fast becoming my favorite race car. [credit:
VW Motorsport ]
After smashing records at Pikes Peak and the Nüburgring with the ID R electric vehicle, Volkswagen and Romain Dumas added a third notch to their belts this past weekend. The setting couldn't have been more different from Colorado's high-speed, high-altitude mountain or the racetrack they call the Green Hell: the team went to Goodwood in England, a genteel country estate that's home to the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Part garden party, part car show, the Festival of Speed is also a competitive event, with a 1.15-mile (1.87km) hillclimb up past Goodwood House. In 1999, the McLaren Formula 1 team and driver Nick Heidfeld ran the course in just 41.6 seconds. That was fast enough to make Lord Charles March, the organizer, decide it was time to stop timing F1 cars up the hill. That record stood for two decades.
VW and Dumas took the ID R to Goodwood in 2018, hoping to beat Heidfeld's record. They managed to set the fastest time of the day but were more than a second adrift. This year, fresh with success at the Nürburgring, it was time to try again. The car was modified a little from when I saw it in June. The Goodwood course covers less than a tenth the distance of either Pikes Peak or the Nürburgring, so the team stripped out some batteries to bring the overall weight (including Dumas) down below 2,204lbs (1,000kg). The active aerodynamic system on the rear wing was also left at home, and tire partner Bridgestone brought along a particularly sticky rubber compound.
BT Sport is the current home for UFC events in the UK. However, a recent surprise decision to charge subscribers additional fees to watch big events saw many turn to piracy this weekend. It’s a move that has the potential to not only affect UFC and BT Sport, but all premium broadcasters.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the world’s leading mixed martial arts promotion in the world.
It is based in the United States and as a result, the majority of its events take place there, meaning that fans in Europe face having to stay awake all night if they are to watch live UFC events.
Since 2013, this has been possible for subscribers to BT Sport, who have enjoyed all live shows as part of their regular subscriptions. However, that all changed on Saturday night with UFC 239, which BT Sport recently decided shouldn’t be included in customers’ packages after all.
Instead, people were told they’d have to pay out an extra £19.95 to view the admittedly-stacked card on BT Sport Box Office, a decision that went down like a lead balloon with fans, especially those who’d taken out a subscription solely for UFC events.
In the weeks leading up to the fight, there were long discussion threads on various forums (including BT Sport’s own) complaining about the move and suggesting a boycott.
Whether this took place at scale on Sunday morning UK/Ireland time isn’t yet known but fan outrage was clear to see on social media, including in a poll conducted by MMA reporter Niall McGrath.
?? & ?? fans! Will you be buying the #UFC239 PPV on BT Sport?! (Share & RT)
Of course, a boycott of PPV buying doesn’t necessarily mean a boycott on watching the event. Indeed, if fans’ claims leading up to the event were anything to go by, many would be hitting the pirate high seas Saturday/Sunday to express their displeasure at BT Sport’s decision.
Widely circulated ‘boycott’ poster
Since live events are mainly streamed from ‘pirate’ websites, obtaining viewing figures is not as easy as tracking users in torrent swarms, for example. However, we spoke to a seller of ‘pirate’ IPTV services before and after the event to see if there had been any greater uptake than usual.
“No more orders than we usually get on a Friday/Saturday/Sunday but more people definitely asked if we could get BT Sport Box Office for the fights. We couldn’t promise that channel in advance but we have others that give the same thing. Good enough,” the seller explained.
A long thread on Reddit, which appeared after the fights finished on Sunday, patted everyone on the back who took part in the boycott. As expected, it’s littered with comments about BT Sport screwing over dedicated fans and, of course, people turning to piracy.
“It literally took me 40 seconds on my first duckduckgo search (because google censors a lot of this kind of stuff) to find a site where I was able to watch the entire event live in HD with no interruptions. Hard for a pathetic business model to compete with that,” one commenter wrote.
“Cancelled my bt sports and got an IPTV set up,” said another. “Probably the smoothest viewing experience I’ve had watching any UFC event. No commercials and no cutting the sound on interviews every time someone swears.”
And then things descended to the bottom, quickly.
With another fan declaring that this is the first time “in years” he’d pirated an event, the discussions continued with how that’s possible, where to do it, and the inevitable private messages where one can only guess at the content but draw an obvious conclusion. And this isn’t even a piracy-focused sub-Reddit, it’s /r/mma with close to 780K members.
While people will rightly point that this is a mere subset of BT Sport’s customers not paying an extra £19.95, the people who turned to a pirate IPTV service on Saturday/Sunday will have immediately discovered that ALL of BT Sport’s live content is also available for less than £10 per month.
If pirate IPTV gains traction with them (and their friends, and their friends’ friends), £30 to £40 per month regular subscriptions to BT Sports could get boycotted too, along with those paid to Sky Sports and other companies.
Bloody Elbow’s piece on why BT Sport’s decision to go PPV with UFC 239 was wrong really hits the spot but only time will tell if the PPV model in the UK will persist – or if it will go down with a huge headache quicker than previously undefeated Ben Askren did during the red-eye hours of Sunday morning.
The Microsoft Store pretty much always has at least a few laptops on sale at any given time, but the latest deals include some pretty nice discounts on select Lenovo and HP portables. For example, you can snag a Lenovo Flex 14 with an Intel Core i5 Whi…
The Microsoft Store pretty much always has at least a few laptops on sale at any given time, but the latest deals include some pretty nice discounts on select Lenovo and HP portables. For example, you can snag a Lenovo Flex 14 with an Intel Core i5 Whiskey Lake processor, 8GB of RAM, and a […]
Every now and again, real-life archaeology sounds a little like an Indiana Jones movie. Allied bombers dropped 165 bombs on the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, and at least seven of them may still lie buried and unexploded amid the ruins. The bombs, scattered over 22 hectares of the site that haven’t been surveyed or excavated, don’t pose a danger to tourists, but they’re a challenge for future excavations.
Bombing the ruins
The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius entombed the city of Pompeii in ash in 79 CE. Fire rained down on the ruined city again in August 1943, when US and British bombers began pounding German encampments and supply lines in southern Italy. The US 5th Army had launched Operation Avalanche, a campaign to seize the nearby port of Naples, and the 12th Air Force Bomber Command dropped ordnance on anything that could support Nazi forces in the area.
Naples was the second-most heavily bombed city in Italy. In 1943, the city weathered 181 bombing raids—nine of which struck the ruins of Pompeii. “Those were the months in which the anti-aircraft alarm sounded in Naples every day,” reported Il Fatto Quotidiano. Between 20,000 and 25,000 people died. In the middle of it all, Archaeological Superintendent Amedeo Maiuri and his colleagues moved several statues and artifacts from Pompeii underground for safekeeping.
Wer die aktuellen Betaversionen von iOS 13, iPad OS oder MacOS Catalina installiert hat, kann sich auf der Beta-Webseite von iCloud mit Gesichtsscan oder Fingerabdruck einloggen. Dabei kommt wohl kein Webauthn zum Einsatz. (Apple, Datenschutz)
Wer die aktuellen Betaversionen von iOS 13, iPad OS oder MacOS Catalina installiert hat, kann sich auf der Beta-Webseite von iCloud mit Gesichtsscan oder Fingerabdruck einloggen. Dabei kommt wohl kein Webauthn zum Einsatz. (Apple, Datenschutz)
30 Millionen US-Dollar zahlt Argentinien für ein regionales Videoüberwachungssystem, das vom chinesischen Unternehmen ZTE stammt. Die Chinesen wollen dies als Ausgangspunkt für eine Expansion auf dem südamerikanischen Markt nutzen. Kritik kommt aus den…
30 Millionen US-Dollar zahlt Argentinien für ein regionales Videoüberwachungssystem, das vom chinesischen Unternehmen ZTE stammt. Die Chinesen wollen dies als Ausgangspunkt für eine Expansion auf dem südamerikanischen Markt nutzen. Kritik kommt aus den USA. (ZTE, Rechtsstreitigkeiten)
Google is once again going with a, uh, “unique” design for the Pixel line.
OnLeaks' Pixel 4 XL render. The notch is gone, and so the is bottom front speaker. [credit:
@OnLeaks x Pricebaba
]
When we last checked in on the Pixel 4, Google itself was leaking the device by posting renders of the back design to Twitter. Today, we're getting a better look at the front of the Pixel 4 XL thanks to a new set of renders from OnLeaks and Pricebaba. OnLeaks has nailed the design of several devices in the past, so these are worth paying attention to.
With the Pixel 3 XL design, Google chose to embrace the notched display design trend with what was probably the biggest notch ever fitted to a smartphone. It was twice as tall as other notch designs, and Google used that space for two front-facing cameras (the extra one was wide-angle) and an earpiece/speaker. That notch design was not very popular or good looking. This year, according to the render, it looks like Google is going back to a traditional top bezel.
Despite the extra space reserved at the top of the phone for components, this render doesn't show any additional hardware compared to the Pixel 3. There are still two front cameras, an earpiece, and two front sensors, which are typically a proximity sensor and an auto-brightness sensor.
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