Internet Archive Blog: A Calculated Move: Calculators Now Emulated at Internet Archive. “While we have an excellent family of emulators assisting MAME in making programs work in the browser, the vast majority of the items in our Internet Arcade (and Turbo Edition), Console Living Room, and Handheld History collections mostly have MAME to thank. And now another can as well: The Calculator Drawer.”
Mainichi: Unique 2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for retired engineer in Japan . “The double calculator app allows users to move the computation results of one calculator onto the other by tapping arrow keys displayed on the middle of the screen. For example, if a user calculates ’89 x 15 = 1335′ on one calculator and taps the arrow key, the result ‘1335’ will be displayed on the other calculator, allowing the user to continue a problem while the previous equations are still shown on the screen. This makes it easy to notice errors. It is also possible to perform different computations on each calculator.”
Mental Floss: How Many Danny DeVitos High Is Mount Everest? The Omni Calculator Can Tell You That, and Other Weird Measurements. “Mount Everest is officially 29,032 feet tall, but that figure only goes so far to capture the peak’s magnitude. It’s much easier to picture 26 Eiffel Towers stacked on top of one another, or 5696 Danny DeVitos. That’s why the scientists and researchers at the Omni Calculator Project developed the Weird Units Converter. Plug a measurement in a standard unit into the tool and it will tell you what it is in Empire State Buildings, spaghetti strands, blue whales, and more.”
Consumer Reports: Meet NumWorks, the Modern Graphing Calculator. “Most of the graphing calculators in students’ backpacks are made by Texas Instruments, and they look a lot like models going back to when these gadgets were introduced in the 1980s. But as the school year gains steam, NumWorks, a calculator startup launched a few years ago, is expanding on a cult following among high school teachers, along with a slice of tech innovators who say they like the company’s consumer-friendly approach to repairs and tinkering.”
ArtNet: An Envoy of Eco-Conscious Art Dealers and Insiders Have Created a Simple Tool to Help the Industry Reduce Its Carbon Footprint. “A group of art-industry leaders has teamed up with Frieze and other organizations to create a new tool to help galleries and fair organizers reduce their carbon footprints. The Gallery Climate Coalition, as the group is known, launches its website today with a free-to-use carbon calculator that has been tailored to the needs of the commercial art sector.”
Lifehacker: How to Unlock Microsoft’s Free Graphing Calculator in Windows 10. “While your math teacher (or your kid’s math teacher) might not let them lug a laptop into their calculus class, I still think it’s awesome that Microsoft is finally giving the good ol’ Windows Calculator a boost of geekiness. If you thought ‘Scientific’ mode was fun, you haven’t seen anything yet—coming soon, to Windows 10, is a full-fledged graphing calculator.”
Search Engine Journal: Google Upgrades Its Built-In Mortgage Calculator With New Features. “Google has upgraded the built-in tool that shows up in search results for the query ‘mortgage calculator.’ Now, the tool has many of the key features that were missing from the previous version of Google’s mortgage calculator.”
Lifehacker: Calculate How Many Books You Could Read If You Quit Social Media. “A new calculator from Omni Calculator shows you how many books you could read in one year, if you checked them instead of checking social media. Enter how often you check social media (or any time-wasting sites that you’re willing to give up), and how long you spend there each time you visit. Omni Calculator will turn that into a count of books, based on a typical page count and reading speed.” I don’t know if this should go into Useful or maybe I need a new category called Argh.
Ars Technica: calc.exe is now open source; there’s surprising depth in its ancient code. “Microsoft’s embrace and adoption of open source software has continued with the surprising decision to publish the code for Windows Calculator and release it on GitHub under the permissive MIT license.”
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