Microsoft shuts down Surface Support Twitter account

It’s not the first time Microsoft has shut down a support account on Twitter. The company shut down @LumiaHelp before when the Lumia brand went away. And now the brand is doing something similar with @SurfaceSupport, but it doesn’t mean they are shutting down Surface, despite its recent controversy. Instead, Microsoft looks like they want to consolidate their support account under one handle. The company is urging users to reach out to @MicrosoftHelps for any device or service inquiry.

Source: MS Power User

Dyson engineers take on Global Rapid Development Challenge

Dyson sent over a press release asking the question: “What can be achieved in just 24-hours when you set Dyson engineers on a rapid development challenge?” A lot, apparently. Two hundred Dyson hardware, mechanical, software, and electronics engineers from the UK and Singapore had to team up to design and build an intelligent machine that follows one of the themes: The Connected Home, Gamification of Dyson Products, and Accessibility through Usability. They had to accomplish this within 24 hours. And with that short amount of time, the participants on average were only able to sleep for two hours during the event, they wrote over 6,000 lines of code, and downed over 500 energy drinks and coffee.

The winning group came from the UK. They modified a Jake Dyson CSYS task light by augmenting its motors drive mechanism and hooking these up to an Arduino electronics board. With computer programming it transfers data to the light and having the machine draw highly detailed images. As you see at the end of the video above, it shows the machine drawing a portrait of Jake Dyson himself.

PayPal is now a payment option for Nintendo eShop accounts

If you own a Nintendo Switch and use the Nintendo eShop, there’s now one more payment method you can use. PayPal just announced that the option will be available in select countries (including Canada) for funding Nintendo eShop accounts and buying games and other content on the Nintendo Switch. Aside from that, it can also be used on Nintendo’s official website to add funds for buying software for Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch.

The other countries the PayPal payment option will be available for include: Japan, USA, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, UK, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Slovenia, and Slovakia.

New Android 8.0 Oreo feature will help save your phone from bootlooping

Bootlooping, or having your phone stuck in reboot loops, isn’t an uncommon experience. And while certain phones and models are more prone to this, when you’re it with bootlooping, it can be very frustrating and a hassle if you’d have to contact the manufacturer or carrier. That’s why Google is including a feature it calls “Rescue Party” in Android 8.0 Oreo to help you get out of crash loops. Google explains the feature as: “Android 8.0 includes a feature that sends out a ‘rescue party’ when it notices core system components stuck in crash loops. Rescue Party then escalates through a series of actions to recover the device. As a last resort, Rescue Party reboots the device into recovery mode and prompts the user to perform a factory reset.”

There won’t be any activation from your end, Rescue Party will activate itself if its sees that there’s an issue. It’s turned on by default and won’t need any special hardware to work. Each rescue level it goes through will take around five minutes and Google hopes your device will self-recover instead of you needing to get in touch with the phone’s manufacturer or your carrier.

Source: Android Authority