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It takes $1500, 6 months, and a lot of farming to truly make a sandwich at home from scratch

How do you make a sandwich at home? Grab some bread, slap together some mustard and mayo, throw in some turkey, add some cheese, lettuce, tomato and onions, and then eat it right? That’s what normal people do but that’s a total shortcut. How do you truly make a sandwich at home and from scratch? It involves farming vegetables, milking cows, killing a chicken and so much more. Read more…

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It takes $1500, 6 months, and a lot of farming to truly make a sandwich at home from scratch

iOS 9, thoroughly reviewed

Andrew Cunningham iOS 8 wasn’t the smoothest operating system rollout in Apple’s history. It’s true, any other ecosystem would kill for Apple’s OS adoption figures—as of this writing, 87 percent of the userbase is running some version of iOS 8. But it had a slower start than past versions of iOS, it required a ton of free space to install, and it had a few unfortunate bugs early in its life cycle that gave it a bad reputation. Like  iOS 7  this was a big release, and with any big change comes the potential for big bugs. Viewed from that lens, iOS 9 feels kind of like iOS 6 did. This is a necessary spit-and-polish release that followed two bigger, transformative releases. There’s some good stuff here, but nothing that’s quite as all-encompassing as iOS 7’s complete redesign or iOS 8’s introduction for Handoff and Continuity and Extensions. Read 180 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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iOS 9, thoroughly reviewed

EPIX enables mobile downloads for offline movie watching

Joining the likes of Google Play Movies and iTunes, streaming content provider EPIX announced on Tuesday that it will allow subscribers to download movies onto their mobile devices for later playback, whether or not there’s an available internet connection. The feature will reportedly be available on iOS and Android devices as well as Amazon’s Kindle, beginning this month. Available titles will include The Hunger Games , James Bond and Star Trek . There’s no word on limits to how many titles subscribers will be able to concurrently download or how long they’ll be able to keep each one. Filed under: Internet Comments Source: Business Wire Tags: Amazon, Comparison of Android devices, downloads, hungergames, iOS, iTunes, jamesbond, Kindle, Star Trek, streaming

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EPIX enables mobile downloads for offline movie watching

New Android lockscreen hack gives attackers full access to locked devices

Software bugs that allow attackers to bypass smartphone lockscreens are common enough for both Android and iOS devices, but like a fender bender on the highway, many of us can’t resist the urge to gawk anyway. There’s a  newly disclosed way  for someone who has a few uninterrupted moments with a handset running most versions of Android 5.x to gain complete control of the device and all the data stored on it. The hack involves dumping an extremely long string into the password field after swiping open the camera from a locked phone. Unless updated in the past few days, devices running 5.0 to 5.1.1 will choke on the unwieldy number of characters and unlock, even though the password is incorrect. From there, the attacker can do anything with the phone the rightful owner can do. The following video demonstrates the attack in action. The technique begins by adding a large number of characters to the emergency call window and then copying them to the Android clipboard. (Presumably, there are other ways besides the emergency number screen to buffer a sufficiently large number of characters.) The hacker then swipes open the camera from the locked phone, accesses the options menu, and pastes the characters into the resulting password prompt. Instead of returning an error message, vulnerable handsets unlock. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Android lockscreen hack gives attackers full access to locked devices

Chicago citizens sue to halt new “Netflix tax,” an increase of 9 percent

michel Six Chicagoans have sued the Windy City over its new 9 percent tax levied as part of the “Amusement Tax Ruling ” that went into effect on September 1. The tax, which the city of Chicago maintains is “not an expansion of the laws,” imposes an additional surcharge on various online services, including Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, Xbox Live, and others. “We will be adding it to the cost we charge subscribers,” Anne Marie Squeo, a Netflix spokeswoman, previously told Ars in a statement. “Jurisdictions around the world, including the US, are trying to figure out ways to tax online services. This is one approach.” Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Chicago citizens sue to halt new “Netflix tax,” an increase of 9 percent

Here’s why you can’t delete native iOS apps from your iPhone

Megan Geuss If you’re an iOS user, you may have a junk folder on your device full of rarely used, native apps from Apple. Banishing them to their own cluster is just about the only course of action since these apps cannot be deleted. Now, we know more about why that’s the case: in an interview with Buzzfeed, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that deleting native apps would essentially cause a domino effect in other programs on the device, possibly breaking things elsewhere in iOS. “There are some apps that are linked to something else on the iPhone,” Cook told Buzzfeed . “If they were to be removed, they might cause issues elsewhere on the phone.” While Cook didn’t detail which preinstalled apps were linked to other functions, he went on to say that not every app is connected in this way. Eventually, Apple may allow some native apps to be deleted. “Over time, I think with the ones that aren’t like that, we’ll figure out a way [for you to remove them]. … It’s not that we want to suck up your real estate.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Here’s why you can’t delete native iOS apps from your iPhone

Zuckerberg confirms a form of “dislike” button coming to Facebook

Facebook In recent interviews, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has addressed the social network’s “like” button, which users can use to quickly acknowledge posts or messages—but which also lacks a certain amount of nuance for more sensitive or sad content. As recently as December, Zuckerberg said that he wasn’t interested in a “dislike” button, but a Tuesday “town hall” Q&A saw the cofounder change his tune. “People have asked about the dislike button for many years,” Zuckerberg told a crowd on Tuesday at Facebook’s Menlo Park office (and a livestream crowd at the event’s official site ). “We’ve finally heard you, and we’re working on this.” Like in prior interviews, Zuckerberg commented on fears that a form of “dislike” button would be used to “downvote” posts à la Reddit, but on Tuesday, he acknowledged growing interest in a simple interaction that better fits sad posts—he mentioned topics ranging from personal trauma to international tragedies—that offers “the ability to express empathy.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Zuckerberg confirms a form of “dislike” button coming to Facebook

‘Sleepy Hollow’ for Oculus wins first virtual reality Emmy

Virtual reality has officially become mainstream, as an Emmy has been awarded to a work created for a VR headset (the Oculus Rift DK2 ) for the first time. The Sleepy Hollow Virtual Reality Experience (below), co-produced by Fox and Toronto-based Secret Location, won in the “Interactive Media, User Experience and Visual Design” category. It debuted at Comic-Con, and gave thousands of Oculus Rift users the unique gift of seeing what it would be like to have their heads cut off and held aloft by the Headless Horseman. You can view it yourself on Oculus Share if you have a Rift DK2. Another Emmy was handed to the team behind the AMEX Unstaged: Taylor Swift Experience app , a 360-degree video based on the singer’s Blank Space music video, which has been viewed over a billion times. The experience lets users look around the entire scene, follow Swift and look for hidden clues. However, it was designed for a smartphone or tablet and not a headset, so falls outside what most folks would call virtual reality. Nevertheless, Swift was clearly well pleased , and the awards will no doubt motivate producers and artists to create similar side projects and keep the VR snowball rolling. [Thanks, Felipe!] Filed under: Wearables , Facebook Comments Source: Fox Tags: Emmy, facebook, OculusRift, SecretLocation, SleepyHollow, video, VR, VRExperience

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‘Sleepy Hollow’ for Oculus wins first virtual reality Emmy

TomTom’s RoadDNA system helps anyone build a self-driving car

TomTom has launched RoadDNA , a product aimed at bringing self-driving car tech to more potential developers. The system captures 3D roadside data from depth sensing cameras and compares it to a database of images, letting vehicles know their exact position on the road, even at high speeds. The mapping company said it takes “vehicle data storage and processing limitations in mind, ” by converting the mass of 3D data it collects into a manageable, optimized 2D view of the road. TomTom said earlier that the RoadDNA database takes up just 25 Kb per kilometer of road. The company said the system also works despite changes in the environment, meaning it can adapt to fresh snowfall, leaves falling off of trees or new road signs. It would have to be paired with GPS systems, obstacle detection and other tech to be used in autonomous systems. Nevertheless, it’s a key piece: “We know that the future of automated driving hinges on the ability of a vehicle to continuously know exactly where it is on the road, ” said TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn. Filed under: Transportation Comments Source: TomTom Tags: AutomatedDriving, mapping, RoadDNA, SelfDrivingCar, software, TomTom

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TomTom’s RoadDNA system helps anyone build a self-driving car