Issue 107

Bizarro Devs is a curated collection of weird and wonderful things from all over the web.

Apr 22, 2020

🤔 FREE COMPUTER SCIENCE COURSES & STUDIO GHIBLI BACKGROUNDS FOR WEB CONFERENCING

Heya,

My home office now has an actual office chair thanks to my awesome wife. We've been married for five years but we never faced the true test of a marriage: IKEA. I'm happy to say we passed.

This week:
🤔 Free computer science courses.
🚖 Uber offerings from Uber.
🧗‍♀️ More productivity apps (28!).
📺 Better web conferencing backgrounds from Studio Ghibli.

Enjoy,

Chris.

📰 From the Newsroom

The things that kept me busy this week. 🕴️

Won't someone think of the teachers? Yep. Netflix did. A lengthy playlist of Netflix documentaries available on YouTube. It includes full episodes of Our Planet, Explained, and Abstract.

Reading Storyline Online is my way of cheating on screentime. All of these kids' stories are read by actors and the animation is simple, so it doesn't feel like screentime. We heartily recommend "Arnie the Doughnut" read by Chris O'Dowd.

Work out start the day right and watch the kids work out for a change. I like PE with Joe.

Watch parties Focus Features have a weekly watch party on their Facebook page. Last week, they watched Mallrats and had a Q and A with Kevin Smith. This week it is My Summer of Love.

Learning Over 500 free computer science courses from introductions to HTML to statistics with Python.

Recipes I love this subreddit with gif recipes. The odd miscreant will slip in a video recipe but there are rebels everywhere why should Reddit be any different?

Pivot or perish: Uber launches a courier service. 📦

Two lines are better than one Uber's new services come in two flavors, Direct and Connect, to help users, drivers, and some businesses navigate the economic downturn.

Expanding the bottom line Each of the services builds on their existing services. Uber Direct is kind of like a jacked-up Uber Eats. Drivers can now stop by non-food stores to collect a wider range of products. Uber Connect is the standard Uber experience with a heart. Users can use it as a courier to deliver things to loved ones and family.

Here to stay or gone tomorrow? Uber is not really in a position to reject revenue streams, so this could stick around. My wife and I have used standard taxis in this way before (we haven't had a car for years) and we'd love this to stay. The press release didn't commit but did hint that the pivot was about "unlocking new opportunities in the future".

Trialling now across 25 cities in Australia, Mexico, and the US.

thenextweb.com

⛓️ Ten Must See Links of the Month

If I could only have one guilty pleasure, it would be a productivity app listicle. This one from writer and musician Luke Leighfield has 28 of 'em.
How to come across as cool in a Switch game? Try the Animal Crossing Art Generator from Getty. Add masterpieces to shirts, walls, and floors without leaving the couch.
The conference call "look" can be devastating to the ego. Misdirection is the solution. Use the Studio Ghibli backgrounds to impress your colleagues instead. The site is in Japanese but worth a visit using Chrome.
Love this rapid layers animation for a website. Applying it effectively would be difficult, but it does look great.
Six tips for building an eCommerce marketing strategy.
Stress reduction and gear reduction. Watch the world's biggest gear reduction. Oddly satisfying.
Academics steal data from air-gapped systems using PC fan vibrations. It still requires malware to be installed on the host computer, but some Cold War vibes with this one.
Don't get misty-eyed when your cloud data evaporates. Permanent.org is a nonprofit cloud storage service aiming to provide perpetual cloud storage.
I feel a need, a need for sustainability (the speed is nice too of course). Why you should use a CDN for sustainability.
Only ropes shouldn't have kinks. I've had this one in the queue for some time because it's adults-only but amusing. The BDSM test is a kinkiness tester.