Google pushed out a big update to Google Earth for Chrome and Android today. Alongside a snazzy new look, the new version adds guided tours, 3D maps, a random button, and lots more. Read more…
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Google Earth Gets a Huge Redesign with Guided Tours, 3D View, and More
It’s been just about a month since Pandora unveiled its attempt at building full-fledged, on-demand streaming music service. Aside from a handful of bugs, the big problem with Pandora Premium was that it was invite only. That’s changing today: Pandora Premium is now available for anyone to try. Like just about every other streaming music service, it’ll run you $9.99 per month and the app is available for Android and iOS (a web version of Pandora’s on-demand service is coming soon). If you didn’t catch the news in March, Pandora Premium has a few notable features that set it apart from the competition. If you put a few songs into a playlist, the app will use Pandora’s Music Genome Project to automatically add sonically similar tunes. If you’ve been using Pandora for a long time, it’ll draw on your listening history and “thumbs-up” songs to build you custom playlists and recommend new releases that are tailored specifically to your music history. And from a design perspective, Pandora is one of the simplest and best-looking streaming music services I’ve tried. There are a number of kinks that need to be worked out, but there’s enough good stuff going on in Pandora Premium that I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see how the service improves over time. Pandora’s also putting some cash and big names behind its new service to make sure it doesn’t get lost amidst Spotify, Apple Music and all the rest. The company’s “Sounds Like You” campaign will feature 18 different artists including Big Sean, Gorillaz , Questlove, 2 Chainz, Halsey, Keith Urban, Maggie Rogers, Pitbull, Ziggy Marley and a bunch more. That’s a lot of star power to throw behind its new service — here’s hoping that all the artists involved don’t pull their music from other streaming services. While an ad campaign isn’t generally all that exciting, Pandora did confirm that they’ll be hosting exclusive “mixtapes” from each of the 18 artists involved in the campaign that feature the songs that have inspired them the most over the years. So if you want to know what drove Gorillaz to get as weird as they are, you’ll want to tune in to these mixes. If you’re ready to give Pandora Premium a try, the company is offering either 30 or 60 days for free, depending on where you sign up. Signing up on Pandora’s site will net you the longer free trial and lower monthly price, as the company charges more when you sign up inside the app itself — thank Apple and its 30 percent cut from subscriptions for that. And if you’ve been paying for the $5 Pandora Plus service, you’ll get a whopping six months of Premium at that same price point. Considering how much more you get with Premium, doing that is basically a no-brainer. Pandora hasn’t tweaked anything else over the last month, but we should see the app get some tweaks and improvements in the coming months, as well.
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Pandora’s on-demand streaming service is available to everyone
New species are discovered frequently, but this creature is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Called the giant shipworm, it lives inside a long shell where it consumes noxious chemicals at the bottom of muddy lagoons. An international team of scientists are now the first to study this elusive animal in the flesh, but… Read more…
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This Alien Worm-Creature Will Haunt Your Nightmares
New submitter nyman19 writes: Ars Technica reports how security vendor Cylance has been distributing non-functioning malware samples to prospective customers in order to “close the sale[s] by providing files that other products wouldn’t detect” According to the report: “A systems engineer at a large company was evaluating security software products when he discovered something suspicious. One of the vendors [Cylance] had provided a set of malware samples to test — 48 files in an archive stored in the vendor’s Box cloud storage account. The vendor providing those samples was Cylance, the information security company behind Protect, a ‘next generation’ endpoint protection system built on machine learning. In testing, Protect identified all 48 of the samples as malicious, while competing products flagged most but not all of them. Curious, the engineer took a closer look at the files in question — and found that seven weren’t malware at all.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Cylance Accused of Distributing Fake Malware Samples To Customers To Close Deals
Coachella is always full of surprises (like when Radiohead quit earlier this week after audio problems), but this year’s biggest surprise seems to have happened far away from the main stage. On Friday, a New York man was arrested after allegedly stealing more than 100 cell phones from concert attendees in one of the… Read more…
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Coachella Bandit Nabbed by ‘Find My Phone’ Feature After Allegedly Stealing 100 Smartphones
While we patiently wait for the network to finally deliver Star Trek: Discovery , CBS has been slowly growing its in-house All Access streaming service. In the past few months, CBS has added live TV , NFL games and the Grammies to its event lineup, but now its on-demand selection is getting its own upgrade with the addition of full-length movies. As TechCrunch notes , CBS quietly rolled out the new section last week and only offers a small selection of 18 films licensed from Paramount Studios at the moment. Although the company plans to grow the lineup in the near future, current choices include Election , Rosemary’s Baby and Up in the Air . Anyone who needs a classic Star Trek fix will probably be delighted to learn a number of those films are included, even as they’ve suddenly disappeared from Netflix in the US. For now, CBS is hoping the latest entry to the Star Trek franchise, as well as its Good Wife spinoff The Good Fight , will be enough to start luring more users to the service. The president of CBS Interactive Marc DeBevoise recently told New York Magazine that the company plans to branch out into even more original content this year, but they’re still trying to find the sweet spot that will drive users to pay for “a premium version of CBS.” As for the release date for Discovery , DeBevoise says production is “going great, ” but wouldn’t commit to a fall premiere. Via: TechCrunch Source: Cord Cutters News
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CBS adds movies to its All Access streaming library
Stealing phones at Coachella is nothing new. My daughter had hers stolen a few years ago, and when I mentioned it to someone I ran into at the supermarket, she said her son’s phone had been stolen that year as well. And then a stranger who overheard us piped in that her son had also lost his phone to an “Apple picker,” as she referred to the thief. But this year, when a gentleman from New York swept through the festival picking phones from oblivious Coachella goers, a few people turned to Find My iPhone for help. The app led them to 36-year-old Reinaldo De Jesus Henao with a backpack stuffed with phones. According to NBC San Diego : The crime spree was discovered when several people noticed their phones were missing and activated the “Find My Phone” feature, police said. Those signals led the victims to Henao. Security guards detained him and when Indio police arrived they found more than 100 phones in Henao’s backpack, according to police. Some of the phones were returned to the victims that day or the next. Image by iphonedigital
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Man steals over 100 phones at Coachella, busted by Find My iPhone
Netflix’s earnings report is out ( PDF ), and the nearly-worldwide video streaming company has seen its subscriber count creep up to 98.75 million. To close the letter to investors, execs said they expect to cross the 100 million customer barrier this weekend, as they reorganized their data to deemphasize subscriber count in favor of revenue. the company also reported that Dave Chappelle: Collection 1 is its most-viewed comedy special ever. The company also shed light on its growing plans for movie production . By Netflix’s measure, flicks like Adam Sandler’s movies and The Siege of Jadotville were successes, while Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny was not. As usual, it did not release any numbers, but said its formula for success is if a movie “will attract and delight members at better economics relative to licensing movies under traditional windowing.” Developing… Source: Netflix Q1 2017 Letter to Shareholders (PDF)
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Netflix expects to sign up its 100 millionth subscriber this weekend
During renovations at the former site of a medieval church in London, England, construction workers uncovered the entranceway to a hidden crypt. Inside lay 30 lead coffins, including the remains of five former Archbishops of Canterbury. It’s a completely unexpected archaeological finding—showing that even London’s… Read more…
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Secret Medieval Tomb Reveals Resting Site of Five Lost Archbishops
Just because Tesla is ditching the Model S 60 and 60D doesn’t mean that you’ll be paying dramatically more to own the luxury electric sedan. Tesla has cut the price on its current entry-level models, the 75 and 75D, by $7, 500. It’s still $1, 500 more expensive than the outgoing model at $69, 500, but not so much so that you might balk if you were seriously considering the 60 before. It’s certainly a better value if you were already looking at a 75 for the extra range. On top of that, Tesla is sweetening the pot by making key features standard. All Model S variants now come with the glass roof (previously a $1, 500 option) and an automatic rear power liftgate. The 90D has also received a price cut to $87, 500, we’d add. And if you bought an upgradeable 60 or 70 car, the bump to a 75kWh battery capacity is cheaper. Unlocking the full battery on the Model S 60 now costs ‘just’ $2, 000 versus the previously steep $9, 000, while Model S 70 owners just have to spend $500 instead of $3, 500. There are some gotchas in the lineup, however. The price of the 100D and P100D is going up by a few thousand dollars on April 24th to $97, 500 and $140, 000 respectively (Model X owners are seeing similar price hikes to $99, 500 and $145, 000). Also, certain upgrades are now off-limits on some models. You can’t get smart air suspension on the 75 and 75D, for example, while you have to go with a 100 or 100D to get the high amperage charger. Why all the tweaks? Tesla is likely harmonizing its EV range so that there are clear incentives for people to step up to the Model S instead of ‘settling’ for the Model 3 , whose battery capacity will stop at the 75kWh where the Model S starts. The 100 and 100D price hikes are merely a way of balancing things out — Tesla gets to maintain its average selling prices by asking for more from those customers that can most likely afford to pay a bit more. We wouldn’t count on these prices lasting forever, but it’s easy to see them sticking around through the Model 3 launch later this year. Via: Electrek , TechCrunch Source: Tesla
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Tesla cuts the price on its entry-level Model S by $7,500