Category: reader

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ overtakes ‘Avatar’ as highest-grossing film in US history

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” just pushed James Cameron’s “Avatar” aside as the top-grossing film in North America. In just 20 days of release, the seventh installment in the space opera saga has earned more than “Avatar’s” $760.5 million lifetime gross. From Variety : One important caveat is that this massive haul does not account for inflation. When pricing increases are factored in, “Gone With the Wind” remains the highest-grossing film in history with $1.7 billion and the first “Star Wars” is runner-up with $1.5 billion. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is in 21st place behind classics such as “The Sound of Music,” “E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial” and “Titanic.” Globally, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ranks as the fourth highest-grossing pic in history, having earned $1.5 billion worldwide. It opens this weekend in China, the world’s second-biggest market for film. Depending on how enthusiastically it is received in the People’s Republic, “The Force Awakens” could shoot past “Avatar’s” record $2.8 billion global haul.

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‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ overtakes ‘Avatar’ as highest-grossing film in US history

T-Mobile added another 8.3 million customers in 2015

T-Mobile USA added 8.3 million customers last year, including 2.1 million in the fourth quarter, solidifying its position as the country’s number three wireless carrier ahead of Sprint and behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T. T-Mobile had 63.3 million customers as of December 31, 2015, up from 55 million customers at the end of 2014, the company announced today  in a preliminary earnings report. In total, T-Mobile now has 29.4 million postpaid phone customers, 2.3 million postpaid mobile broadband customers, 17.6 million prepaid customers, and 14 million wholesale customers. This was the second consecutive year that T-Mobile boosted its customer total by more than 8 million. (credit: T-Mobile) T-Mobile has also improved its churn rate—the percentage of subscribers who discontinued service—meaning that fewer customers are leaving for other carriers. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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T-Mobile added another 8.3 million customers in 2015

Snapchat closes its lens filter store despite decent sales

You probably wouldn’t give up hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue a month, but then you’re not Snapchat . The social app will close down its popular lens store this Friday after opening it just a couple of months ago. As a reminder, with the camera in selfie mode, you can add a variety of free or 99 cent filters that make you a snowball target (above) or let you puke out rainbows, for example. The company will let you keep the lenses you’ve already bought, of course, and will eventually offer many of the paid lenses for free. Snapchat told Business Insider that it shut down the store in order to focus on its advertising business, despite the fact that it was selling tens of thousands of filters per day. However, the company will still sell sponsored lenses to businesses like Beats for hundreds of thousands of dollars, reportedly. Snapchat has been trying to monetize its millions of users of late, but has run into to trouble due to a lack of data on how many people actually interact with the app. We’re sure the $10 billion company will figure it out, but in the meantime, if you want to get some lens filters, grab them by January 8th. Via: Business Insider Source: Snapchat

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Snapchat closes its lens filter store despite decent sales

Netflix launches in 130 new countries, but not in China, Syria, or North Korea

Big streaming content news out of CES this morning: Netflix is now live in 130 additional countries , which makes its service available to billions of new users. The most notable exception: China. CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement at the annual Consumer Electronics Forum in Las Vegas today. “You are witnessing the birth of a global TV network,” he said. Netflix “won’t be available in Crimea, North Korea and Syria due to U.S. government restrictions on American companies,” the company said. Countries where Netflix will now be available include Azerbaijan, India, Vietnam, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Saudia Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Turkey and Indonesia can now use Netflix–but presumably with certain restrictions, in certain nations. ” Netflix Is Now Available Around the World ” [netflix press release] [ CNN via @ brianstelter ]

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Netflix launches in 130 new countries, but not in China, Syria, or North Korea

Here’s a fun way to browse the 187,000 digital items in the NY library’s public domain collection

I could get lost on this page for weeks. The stereoscopic views are great, if you know how to see them with your eyes. On January 6th, 2016, The New York Public Library made over 187K digital items in the public domain available for high resolution download. This is one of many experiments by the NYPL Labs to help patrons understand and explore what was contained in that release.

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Here’s a fun way to browse the 187,000 digital items in the NY library’s public domain collection

Heads-up displays come to paintball goggles

Recon Instruments , the Canadian wearables outfit purchased by Intel last year, has released a heads-up display for paintball enthusiasts. Much in the same way Recon partnered with Oakley to produce its Airwave sports goggles , the firm has teamed up with Empire Paintball to create the Empire EVS. The device uses the game guts as the Airwave — a technology known as Snow2 — albeit in a new mask that’s designed to withstand the rigors of paint-based conflict. According to the firm, the heads-up display will be able to show battle-critical information like ammo counts, field maps and teammate locations. The device itself is running a version of Android and is packing a 1GHz dual-core processor, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFI as well as GPS. The mask, meanwhile, comes with dual-pane lenses that prevent internal fogging and a lower skirt that encourages ball bouncing. We don’t know yet how much the device will set you back, and the company has also been a little tight-lipped about when we can expect shipments to begin. For the former, Oakley’s Airwave retails for around $649, while the Snow2 smart glass insert on its own is $399, so we’d guess $500 is a reasonable amount of cash to start saving.

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Heads-up displays come to paintball goggles

MSI’s flagship gaming laptop gets an eye-tracking upgrade

If you’re looking for a big, powerful gaming laptop, the MSI’s GT72 Dominator has always been a solid choice — but it’s never been really interesting . The Dominator is known for a strong build, powerful internals, good speakers and a superb keyboard, but it never offered anything unexpected. Now it does. Later this month, MSI will be updating the Dominator with a fancy new gimmick: an integrated eye-tracking camera. Technically, we’ve seen this machine before: MSI showed off a prototype eye-tracking Dominator in Taiwan last year . It… sort of worked. Eye-controlled gaming can be finicky if not implemented correctly. At the time, we had trouble controlling the Assassin’s Creed in-game camera by just looking at the screen, but logging into Windows with the camera was relatively easy. The technology has potential, even if it only has limited support at the moment. Now that it’s officially available, that support could be on its way. MSI says the GT72S Tobii will be available for purchase later this month, and will ship with a Tobii-enabled copy of Tom Clancy’s The Division.

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MSI’s flagship gaming laptop gets an eye-tracking upgrade

Microsoft readies kill switch for Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10

Microsoft has reminded Internet Explorer users that it will imminently end support for older versions of its browser from next week. The software giant plans to hit the kill switch on IE 8, 9, and 10 on January 12, and it has been advising users to upgrade to Internet Explorer 11, or its new Edge browser , to avoid being exposed to potential security risks after that date. From next Tuesday, Microsoft will end updates for the aged browsers and the nudge brigade from the Redmond camp is in full, sharp elbow mode to encourage users to swiftly upgrade to IE 11 or Edge. There will be one last patch on January 12 that will include an “End of Life” notification, asking users to upgrade. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft readies kill switch for Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10