Graphics: Andrii Vodolazhskyi (Shutterstock)

Delta Plus, a variant of a variant, is the latest strain of the COVID-causing coronavirus to hit the news. (A previously known variant, Lambda, is also making headlines today.) However, there is no longer any reason to panic: Delta is scary enough.

What is the difference between Delta and Delta Plus?

Delta is the most transmissible strain of the coronavirus, which is rapidly becoming the dominant strain around the world. It is as contagious as chickenpox and far more contagious than common colds or flu. Because it’s so contagious, measures enough to slow the spread of the original strain of COVID don’t seem enough to stop Delta. More people need to be vaccinated to defeat a more contagious virus, so masks and other safety measures need to be used more carefully.

Delta Plus is the nickname of a Delta variant with an additional mutation. This mutation was also found in the alpha variant, which spread earlier this year. according to the Washington Post. Reuters reported in June that this new mutation could make it more difficult for our immune system to track down and destroy the virus.

we don’t yet know if vaccines are less effective against Delta Plus than against Delta. We know that a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine is less effective against Delta than against the original COVID virus, but that a double dose is still protective.

G / O Media can receive a commission

Okay what is lambda?

Lambda is still categorized Classified as “interesting variant” by the World Health Organization, less worrying than “worrying variants” such as Delta.

It seems to be on the news this week for riding the skirt laps of the Delta Plus panic, but there’s nothing new or unusually worrying about. A recent study showed that a Chinese vaccine (Sinovac / CoronaVac) may not protect against this very well, but that the same vaccine is already less effective against some variants than the vaccines currently available in the USA

Why do we keep hearing about new variations?

As long as vaccination rates are still low, the virus has plenty of room to live and grow, to reproduce and develop – every unvaccinated person is a potential home and playground for the virus. (Most people who are vaccinated are initially immune to the virus.)

If we had managed to contain COVID-19 with masks and distancing in early 2020, it may not have had enough time or opportunity to expand into all of these flavors. If we had managed to get more people vaccinated faster – around the world, not just in the US – the virus would have had fewer opportunities to develop.

But the nature of evolution is that the more successful variants tend to crowd out their less communicable cousins. When Alpha got going, it took over and became the dominant variant; now Delta is doing the same. And as long as we give the virus many people to multiply and opportunities to travel from person to person, this will continue to happen.

Vaccination is still our best bet Build population immunity to the virus, but other measures such as masking and avoiding crowds indoors are also important. The vaccine is likely to offer more robust, longer-lasting immunity than the kind you get after surviving a COVID attack yourself, which makes getting your syringe extra important.

Machine learning has helped solve many of our biggest technical problems, and now it can help you find and create automatically generated, royalty-free music to play in your videos and live streams so you don’t face copyright infringement become.

Mubert is a royalty-free music streaming service available on the web, iOS, and Android that uses crowd-sourced and machine learning to automatically generate “an infinite soundtrack” that you can add to your videos, podcasts, or even just background music help you focus or relax. Auto-generated music may seem like a strange idea at first, but it has one major benefit: it can help you avoid the aforementioned copyright claims from record labels, the DCMA, and other large corporations.

Copyright claims and warnings are a serious problem for content creators. If a copyrighted song is played in the background of a video or during a live stream and the algorithm detects it, the user’s content could be dismantled or removed, their accounts blocked or their channels deleted. It doesn’t have to be just background music either; Corporations can claim copyrighted music, video, or even gameplay clips even if the content creator uses the infringing content in a manner that is fair use law.

Copyright claims are now especially often on Twitch and YouTube, forcing users to find royalty-free or open source music to play in the background of their videos. There are plenty of “stream-safe” playlists in apps like Spotify and plenty of places to find royalty-free music, but those tunes can still be claimed – Twitch’s own Soundtrack from Twitch Service even saw copyright issues.

However, Mubert sidesteps many of these concerns because the music and ambient noise it produces does not belong to anyone and are theoretically unique compositions. And the music is actually pretty good too. I admit that I was skeptical at first, but the “auto-generation” effect is not that noticeable and the results never sound too artificial. Granted, it doesn’t move you like an intentionally composed piece of music, but that’s not the point of the app.

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

G / O Media can receive a commission

Mubert offers free and paid services. “Mubert for streamers” is a free web radio site that has a selection of different genres and moods of music, and all music is DMCA friendly. Everything from lo-fi hip-hop, trap beats, techno, and piano music is available for free, but you can unlock more choices by signing up for $ 5 a month. (Premium channels are indie rock, jazz, electronica and classical.)

There is also a “Mubert for companies” Package that includes even more music and ambient sounds such as forests, ocean waves and more. The free Mubert Business Stations are limited, but you can unlock full service for $ 10 per month or $ 100 per year.

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

There are other supporting services, including a studio app that lets you create and upload your own songs by simply choosing genre, mood, and length, as well as a library of custom tracks. You can test the studio app here, but note that a “Made with Mubert” watermark will play every few seconds for free titles. To remove the watermark, you can pay $ 10 for each title used in unbranded content (unlimited downloads are available for $ 35 per month or $ 350 per year). This should work for most content creators who post on YouTube personal channels or social media, but it costs up to $ 250 per track to use for branded content.

Mubert’s premium services are admittedly quite expensive, especially if there are any many other sources for free open source music out there– Music composed entirely by professional human musicians, no less – but it’s a new idea and worth considering.

Photo: Primakov (Shutterstock)

Your smartphone’s operating system has many great accessibility features designed to improve the lives of people with low vision, mobility, or hearing problems. If you have any of these issues, or know someone who is facing them, it is good to keep track of useful accessibility features that could help you – although they are worth knowing even if you don’t, there they can help you find new ways to do common tasks on your phone. Below we’ve rounded up the best of these features for Android and iPhone in one handy list.

Where are the accessibility settings on Android and iPhone?

Almost all functions for people with disabilities are in the Settings> Accessibility Menu on both Android and iPhone. While we’re going to discuss the best of these features, we can’t possibly cover every single option out there. For this reason, we encourage you to explore this settings page and look for other specific features that you may find helpful. Note, however, that some of them only work when you plug in an accessibility accessory such as a braille keyboard.

The best accessibility features for the visually impaired

There are some useful features on both platforms for visually impaired users. The most important of these is a Screen reader represent. As the name suggests, it configures your phone before it reads what is written on the screen. From the text in articles to the text used throughout the operating system, the screen reader feature is immensely useful for people with visual impairment.

G / O Media can receive a commission

You can activate this option on the iPhone under Settings> Accessibility> VoiceOver. On Android go to Settings> Accessibility> TalkBack.

That Magnifying glass is another excellent iPhone feature in this regard. It uses your phone’s camera to zoom in on things around you and get a close look at them, a kind of magnifying glass. You can quickly adjust colors and contrast to optimize the image so it’s easier to see what you want to see. To enable this feature in iOS, go to Settings> Accessibility> Magnifier.

Unfortunately, Android didn’t have a similar feature built in, but you can use the camera app to zoom in manually or try a third-party magnifying glass app, e.g. Magnifying glass + flashlight.

It is also helpful to globally adjust the text size and colors on the screen of your smartphone to suit your needs. Go to on an iPhone Settings> Accessibility> Display and text size to make these optimizations; You can also find useful options here for people with color impairment, such as color filters that help you distinguish colors more easily. On Android, you can find similar options in Settings> Accessibility under the advertisement Under head.

The best accessibility features for the deaf or hard of hearing

If you are deaf or hard of hearing, your smartphone has many useful accessibility features to help you.

The most important of these is Live Transcribe, which is integrated in Google’s pixel smartphones and also as an app. is available Google Play Store for other Android smartphones. Live Transcribe automatically detects sounds around you and converts them to text. It supports multiple languages ​​and most importantly, it can alert you to certain non-language noises around you, like a crying baby or a smoke or fire alarm. The notifications appear either in the form of a flashing light or a vibration, which makes it easy to avoid important warnings.

While the iPhone doesn’t have a similar built-in app, you can try third-party options such as: Hearing aid and Live transcription. Some of these features are available through the iPhone’s sound detection feature, which you can configure by tapping. walk Settings> Accessibility> Sound detection. If you want an LED flash for warnings, you can configure this under Audiovisual in your accessibility settings.

If you have hearing loss in one ear, you should try activating it Mono audio on your smartphone. Stereo audio sometimes places part of the recorded sound in the left channel and another part in the right. Switching to mono audio ensures that all of the audio is available on a single channel, so you can put your headphones in one ear and not miss a thing.

On the iPhone, you can do this at. activate Settings> Accessibility> Audio / Visual> Mono Audio. On Android, this option is in the Audio & Onscreen Text in section Settings> Accessibility.

The best accessibility features for people with motor problems

If you are facing physical difficulties like motor impairment, there are some great options on both Android and iPhone that can make your phone easier to use. The AssistiveTouch button became very popular when people were concerned about sticky iPhone home buttons, and even in the era of the buttonless iPhone, it remains a great accessibility feature that lets you map useful functions – like taking screenshots with the pinch -Gesture, or starting the camera – on a single button on the screen.

You can activate this function by clicking Settings> Accessibility> Touch> AssistiveTouch on the iPhone. Go to the same page Customize top level menu to add or remove actions associated with this button. You can also configure what happens when you tap the AssistiveTouch button once, twice, or long-press it on the AssistiveTouch Page under the following menus: Single tap, Double tap, and Long press.

On Android, you can use the Accessibility menu to get similar functions. Go to Settings> Accessibility and choose Accessibility menu under the Interaction control Under head.

You should also consider enabling a shortcut to automatically answer phone calls after a pre-configured duration. Go to on the iPhone Settings> Accessibility> Touch> Audio routing for calls. Here you can choose which device should play audio from a call. So if you’d rather use a bluetooth headset or speaker, you can route the call audio right there. On this settings page you can also set a duration for the automatic acceptance of calls.

A similar option is available on some Android smartphones, but not all. You can search for it by the Dialer App, press the Three point symbol in the upper right corner and select settings. If the feature is available on your phone, it can be found under Call Settings.

After all, dictation is a great feature that lets you talk instead of typing. On the iPhone, you can activate it under Settings> General> Keyboard> Activate dictation. ON Microphone icon appears on both the keyboard and in text boxes, and you can tap it and start speaking. The phone then converts your speech to text.

Dictation is enabled by default on Android. You can beat that Microphone icon in the text field or directly above the keyboard to use the speech-to-text function.

Photo: By Alexander Zamaraev (Shutterstock)

Sure, the way your home looks inside is a big deal when preparing to sell – but what happens outside also matters. The curb appeal of your home (or lack of) is one of the first impressions your home makes on a potential buyer – and if you don’t want your landscaping to spoil that impression, there are a few plants and trees to avoid.

Do not plant invasive species

Invasive plants are species that are not native to the region and have properties that can overwhelm the local ecosystem. This type of plant grows quickly and creates a difficult environment for the native plants try to grow around them. The Bradford pear tree, for example, produces beautiful white flowers during flowering and creates a picturesque scene – but it easily spreads its seeds and suffocates the flora around it.

Environmental location Closing the gap offers an alternative: the “down berry”, a native tree that produces a small red fruit that is edible for humans and animals and has striking white flowers in April. The Japanese barberry is another invasive species that is aggressive enough even pests hate it. An invasive plant will cause a number of headaches for a new homeowner, so avoid planting it, especially if you know you will be selling your home soon.

Too many trees are a turnoff for a homebuyer

We all like a little shade, but too many trees can make a home less attractive. An overload of trees can make the house look closed and make the curb less attractive. Landscape architect Gregg Spadaro said Kristen Mosier at BobVila.com that “too many trees near the floor plan of the house pose a storm damage risk, while a lack of open space is a disadvantage for families with young children.”

G / O Media can receive a commission

So if your choice is yours, plant a few bushes and a few trees for privacy and shade and leave it at that.

Thorny plants can put families off

Aside from plants that take up the physical space of your garden, there are a few that are particularly of concern to families. Plants with sharp edges and spikes can be difficult for families with young children, who are likely to spend endless hours walking around the yard.

Big cacti like that Prickly pear, can grow 5 feet tall by 10 inches wide with spikes that can injure any child or curious pet (not to mention adults). Avoiding cacti is difficult for homeowners who love desert-style landscaping, but softer options like that silky thread grass, a large bushy desert shrub, or Helen von Stein lamb’s earthat have “big, flaky silver leaves” are all nice alternatives.