Daring Fireball: Fox’s New Scorebug Graphic Design, and Our Innate Resistance to Change
A scorebug is industry jargon for the sub-genre of chyron (itself jargon) that shows ever-present information about a televised sporting event while you’re watching. These graphics display the teams, the score, the time remaining, and other metadata pertaining to the current situation. The current ball/strike count in baseball. The down and yards-to-go in football. The shot clock in basketball. That sort of thing.
Fox was the broadcast network for Super Bowl 59 yesterday, in which the Philadelphia Eagles utterly embarrassed the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 (but which felt like a score of 114-0). The NFL rotates the Super Bowl annually between the networks that broadcast games. Fox has a tradition of unveiling updated on-screen graphics packages when it has the Super Bowl. This year, they didn’t just tweak the design, they completely re-thought it and redesigned it.
CBC: Former Olympian decries ‘fire hose’ of gambling ads during Super Bowl [video]
University of Toronto professor Bruce Kidd, a former track and field athlete and chair of a campaign to ban gambling advertisements, told CBC’s On The Coast Monday that the advertisements poison the idea of sport and are addicting a growing number of people into very serious forms of psychological harm.
Daring Fireball: Nike’s ‘So Win’ Won the Super Bowl
Well, the Philadelphia Eagles, of course, won the actual Super Bowl, winning in a romp so one-sided that they would have embarrassed the Chiefs less if they had pantsed Patrick Mahomes at the 50-yard line. But the second contest is for best commercial. And my vote goes to Nike.
The problem with modern Super Bowl commercials is they’re bland. Offensively bland. It really makes no sense to me. The commercial time is famously expensive — Fox was supposedly selling 30-second spots for last night’s game for $8 million — but the sponsors who buy that time tend to squander it with absolute mindless pap.
Gruber liked some of them though.
Tom’s Guide: Synthesia just launched the most realistic Selfie Avatars I’ve ever seen — here’s how to try it
To try Selfie Avatars, visit the official landing page at Synthesia.io. From there you’ll be asked to set up an account and upload several selfies. I recommend uploading at least ten images of yourself using a variety of angles and include full body shots. The better the lighting and clarity of your selfies, the better the outcome of your Selfie Avatars.
While the innovation is exciting, the company has been upfront about technical limitations. Some users may notice that avatars don’t always perfectly capture their likeness, and minor discrepancies in facial expressions or proportions may occur.
Tom’s Guide: Asus Zenbook A14 hands-on: MacBook Air’s WORST nightmare [video]
The Asus Zenbook A14 is likely going to be my favorite laptop of 2025 — packing Snapdragon power and 32 hours of battery life into a shell that is smaller, slimmer and lighter than the MacBook Air.
Totally over-the-top headline, but an interesting machine which I hope will host Linux well.
Last Updated: 11.Feb.2025 17:28 EST
