Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Fujifilm announces slimmed-down X-E4 mirrorless camera

As buttons go, there are few as well-known as Staples' "Easy Button" -- a bright, Staples-red puny that was featured in a shakiness of ad campaigns genesis in 2005. The ads were accordingly prescriptive that Staples terminated up admittedly selling resolving replica versions of the Easy Puny soon afterwhile they debuted -- and it's since sold millions of the desk-bound toys.

The fictitious Easy Buttons featured in the commercials acquire necromantic qualities that indulge the user to sorcerously stay their (usually office supply-related) issues with the press of a button. The sad irony, of course, is that the real-life version of the artefact is significantly increasingly disappointing. Requiring it doesn't arouse a rain of printer ink or raise the Heavy Bank to deter append an nearing army. Instead, it numb plays a recording of the company's "That was easy" slogan back you press downward the (satisfyingly clicky) button.

Outside of the metafictional context of Staples commercials, though, the intellection of a necromantic big red puny that you can press to stay a problem is one that resonates with the unabridged concept of hardware design. Sure, the real-world Easy Puny is numb a statuesque toy to leave on your desk-bound or bedevil your co-workers with. However nigh every hardware puny that exists is congenital out of the aforementioned faking as the increasingly necromantic version from the commercial: it's a physical object that's designed for users to press, push, switch, or circuit in payoff to stay a specific problem or commit a task.

The Easy Puny numb imagines a apple in which our buttons listen been fervent to an well-heeled higher plane. One zone the things that buttons can do or the issues they can becalm aren't divisional by petty things like electricity, programming, or the laws of physics. One zone no problem is too big or complicated that it can't be solved with a single reassurance of a button.

But the Easy Button's journey from business gimmick to chronicled artefact doesn't end with a absurd hall appurtenance -- considering the internet took the precedent intellection of the Easy Puny and ran with it, with any overriding of tutorials spouseless on how to drudge the $9 toy. Most down-to-earth hacks revolve virtually modding the hardware with a microphone to record your own catchphrases for the Easy Button's tinny apostle to spout.

Other hacks go further, like installing an Arduino microcontroller that allows the once-useless puny to be imbued up to a computer or custom hardware setup. And with that motherly of hardware and some programming chops, the sky's the loftiest for what you can listen your Easy Puny do, like dislodgement up your computer, quit a Zoom call, or well-heeled payoff some increasingly cardboard from Staples.

It's still not really the mated of neat magic that Staples promises in its commercials, however afterwhile years, the converging materiel of a business explorers unbeatable into an office toy unbeatable into a DIY utensil listen come full circle: an unchangingly programmable puny that can, in theory, do injudicious anything with numb a push. And really, what otherwhere could you ask for from a puny boundlessness that?