As capable as Chromebooks have become , there are times when you might need to load up Photoshop, iTunes or something else that relies on Windows or macOS. Not only can Chrome OS do this, it’s not that difficult to set up…if you know the right plug-ins to use. Here’s how to get started. Read more…
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How to Get Windows and macOS Apps on Your Chromebook
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: Annoying pauses in your streaming movies are going to become less common, thanks to a new trick Netflix is rolling out. It’s using artificial intelligence techniques to analyze each shot in a video and compress it without affecting the image quality, thus reducing the amount of data it uses. The new encoding method is aimed at the growing contingent of viewers in emerging economies who watch video on phones and tablets. “We’re allergic to rebuffering, ” said Todd Yellin, a vice president of innovation at Netflix. “No one wants to be interrupted in the middle of Bojack Horseman or Stranger Things.” Yellin hopes the new system, called Dynamic Optimizer, will keep those Netflix binges free of interruption when it’s introduced sometime in the next “couple of months.” He was demonstrating the system’s results at “Netflix House, ” a mansion in the hills overlooking Barcelona that the company has outfitted for the Mobile World Congress trade show. In one case, the image quality from a 555 kilobits per second (kbps) stream looked identical to one on a data link with half the bandwidth. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Netflix Uses AI in Its New Codec To Compress Video Scene By Scene
Ever wished you could access your Raspberry Pi when you’re on the road? Perhaps you’ve set up a home security camera, you’re running a private Minecraft server, or you’re using your Pi for some crazy hacked together internet appliance of your own making. Whatever your reasons, it’s easy than you think to access that… Read more…
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How to Control a Raspberry Pi Remotely From Anywhere In the World
Kotaku recently contacted Nintendo to ask them why Nintendo Switch cartridges taste so awful. Nintendo replied: “To avoid the possibility of accidental ingestion, keep the game card away from young children. A bittering agent (Denatonium Benzoate) has also been applied to the game card. This bittering agent is non-toxic.” Snip: According to Wikipedia, denatonium benzoate is the most bitter chemical compound known, commonly used as an aversion agent to prevent accidental ingestion, which is why the Switch cards are coated in it. It’s also used in animal repellent, shampoos, soaps and nail-biting prevention. I put that Switch cart in my mouth and I’m not sure what those things are made of but I can still taste it. Do not try this at home. — Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann) February 25, 2017
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Nintendo puts a "bittering agent" on game cards so people don’t stick them in their mouths
This picture has NO red pixels. Great demo of color constancy (ht Akiyoshi Kitaoka) pic.twitter.com/pZHvbB6QHE — Matt Lieberman (@social_brains) February 27, 2017 My daughter send this photo to me. I put it in Photoshop to check. The “reddest” part I could find using the eyedropper had an RGB value of 153/181/182. So technically there is some red in the image, but here is what 153/181/182 looks like: Not very red!
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The strawberries in this photo are blue
An international team of researchers say they’ve found fossils dating back to at least 3.77 billion years ago, making them the oldest fossils ever found on our planet. The discovery, though sure to attract scrutiny, has implications for our understanding of how life got started on Earth—and how it may have emerged… Read more…
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Scientists Claim to Have Found Our Planet’s Oldest Fossils
Enlarge (credit: Palo Alto Networks ) It’s a mystery that left researchers scratching their heads: 132 Android apps in the official Google Play market attempted to infect users with… Windows malware. The apps, which were spawned by seven different developers, mostly contained carefully concealed HTML-based iframe tags that connected to two heavily obfuscated malicious domains. In one case, an app didn’t use iframes but instead used Microsoft’s Visual Basic language to inject an entire obfuscated Windows executable into the HTML. The apps were equipped with two capabilities. One was to load interstitial ads, and the other was to load the main app. The main apps loaded WebView components that were configured to allow loaded JavaScript code to access the app’s native functionality. An example of one infected app’s user interface and underlying code. (credit: Palo Alto Networks ) That was a lot of work considering that the Windows-based malware was incapable of executing on an Android device. On top of that, the two malicious domains in the iframes—brenz.pl and chura.pl—were taken over by Polish security authorities in 2013. So what, precisely, was going on? Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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132 Google Play apps tried to infect Android users with… Windows malware
Tidal’s lossless-quality music streaming was its original selling point over big name rivals, but it might not have that advantage for much longer. Both The Verge sources and Reddit members have discovered that Spotify is prepping its own lossless offering, Spotify Hi-Fi. Much like with Tidal, paying $20 per month would give you audio befitting your premium headphones . There’s no word as to when Hi-Fi would arrive — Spotify isn’t commenting beyond acknowledging that it’s “always testing new products.” However, it certainly appears to be getting close. A higher-quality tier makes sense for Spotify in more than a few ways. On top of negating one of Tidal’s advantages, it’d give listeners a reason to choose Spotify over Apple Music and other rivals that (currently) make do with lossy tracks. Also, this could be important in Spotify’s continuing struggle to turn a profit . It’s safe to say that it doesn’t cost twice as much to deliver higher-bitrate music, so converting even a fraction of Spotify’s 40 million-plus Premium customers to lossless could prove to be very lucrative. Source: The Verge , Reddit (1) , (2)
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Spotify is close to offering lossless-quality music
Enlarge (credit: aling_ ) Everything from solar power panels to everyday electronics relies on advanced materials and manufacturing processes. But some interesting things are also being made with some old-school tech: plants. Recently, researchers have demonstrated the ability to create electronic plants, or e-Plants, which made their own localized analog and digital circuits. These technologically savvy plants were produced using the existing plant vascular system, so first-generation models are limited by the nature of their leafy hosts. Now, a team of researchers has developed a new method to produce e-Plants, in this case getting a rose ( Rosa floribunda ) to produce its own wiring and even supercapacitors. Energy transport Eleni Stavrinidoua, Roger Gabrielsson, et al Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Researchers grow electronic rose complete with wires and supercapacitors
Last year we called NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 “the upgrade you’ve been waiting for, ” and now PC gamers have another high-end graphics card to drool over. Now, at GDC 2017 CEO Jen-Hsun Huang presented its successor, the GTX 1080 Ti, which promises “35 percent more performance, ” packs 11GB of GDDR5X memory and will go on sale March 10th for $700. In fact, NVIDIA even claims this new card is faster than its $1, 200 Titan X that launched late last year. At the same time, the company announced the 1080 is getting a price cut and will now start at $500. Developing… Watch live video from NVIDIA on www.twitch.tv The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti – faster than TITAN X – will be $699 and available next week. #UltimateGeForce pic.twitter.com/aW6XIv0Cyv — NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) March 1, 2017 Click here to catch up on the latest news from GDC 2017! Source: NVIDIA (Twitter)
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NVIDIA reveals its $700 top of the line GTX 1080 Ti