Dying Phones Get ‘Art Project’ App

If your phone battery is about to run out, a new app lets you share the experience. Die With Me is a text chat room that’s only accessible when your battery level is below five percent.

The creators describe it as an art project rather than a genuinely useful tool. It was inspired by the experience of feeling helpless when a phone died while visiting an unfamiliar city.

Other than the battery requirement, it’s an unspectacular set-up: a plain text chat window where each user selects a temporary username that’s displayed along with their current battery level.

The five percent level is designed to be the sweet spot of the app being functional but inducing stress about how long the conversation will last. While it varies depending on the handset, users usually only get a few minutes.

The fact that users know the conversation will be fleeting and that they will almost certainly never talk to one another again (or have an opportunity to say goodbye) apparently creates a range of approaches. Besides the inevitable folk unleashing abuse, there’s a mix of panicked smalltalk and philosophy about reliance on technology.



This Elder Scrolls Tavern Group Cosplay is Perfect! [Pics]

This amazing Elder Scrolls Tavern group cosplay took place at the Excalibur Witten tavern and features the Lightning Cosplay duo as the Khajiit and Nord and Monono Cosplay as the Dunmer. Photography by eosAndy.

“Full Elder Scrolls themed tavern photoshoot <3 This project was so cool, especially decorating the location was so much fun. Now one question: which is YOUR favorite race in The Elder Scrolls?”

If you’re reading this from the front page, there’s plenty of other pics after the “read more” link below!

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Twitch To Users: Behave Yourself Across The Net

Twitch says it may suspend users for hateful or harassing behavior on other sites and services. It’s also introducing a dress code for users who stream video of themselves.

It’s part of a toughening up of the site’s community guidelines that will now involve an “immediate indefinite suspension” for conduct Twitch deems to be hateful.

It also says actions elsewhere will affect a user’s Twitch status in two ways. Firstly, if somebody uses another service to “direct hate of harassment towards someone on Twitch”, it will now be treated as a Twitch policy violation.

Secondly, so long as Twitch can verify it’s the same person, then any “hateful or harassing conduct” that takes place elsewhere will now be taken into account when making decisions about Twitch behavior that’s not so clear-cut.

Another change is that Twitch will now put more attention on “context and intent” when moderating rather than just going by the literal words.

There’ll also be more emphasis on context when deciding if a user’s behavior is “sexual in nature” against the site’s rules. Twitch warns that the clothing people wear, in both streams and on profiles, “should be appropriate for a public street, mall or restaurant.” (Presumably not Bourbon Street.) However, it warns that users shouldn’t harass streamers that they think are breaching the dress code.

This “Blue Marble” Rube Goldberg Machine will Mesmerize You! [Video]

From Kaplamino:

After 3 months of work and probably more than 500 fails, I’m happy to present you my best video ever.
Since magnets and marbles I’ve always wanted to make a big chain reaction in one take with this 2D style !

It’s also a “one marble path” which means you have to follow the same marble for all the tricks (in that case the little blue one.) Because everything is in a tilted plane, the hard part was to find different ways of having the marble riding up along the table (magnets, falling weight, catapult …). To do that, the marble has to be light. And because everything has to be triggered by this little marble, all the tricks are very unstable. Most fails happened when an element fall down earlier than expected.

I learned a lot about chain reaction, and I discovered the amazing power of the hot glue gun!

[Kaplamino]