Pocket is one of our favorite services for saving articles to read later , but the iOS app was missing a killer feature Android users have had for a while: Text-to-Speech. That changes today with an update for the Pocket app on iPhones and iPads. http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-poc… Read more…
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Pocket on iOS Finally Lets You Listen to Articles with Text-to-Speech
Angry Birds revolutionized the mobile gaming market after its launch in 2009, and developer Rovio has since released numerous off-shoots , follow-up games and bits of retail merchandise , plus it’s working on an animated film due in theaters next April, starring Peter Dinklage and Maya Rudolph. Now, six years and 3 billion series downloads later, Angry Birds 2 is officially on its way. The sequel is due to hit app stores worldwide on July 30th and, yes, it seems the game will still feature exploding crates, a bunch of pigs and some deeply upset birds. Rovio doesn’t specify which app stores Angry Birds 2 is coming to, but it’s safe to expect a fairly comprehensive, simultaneous launch across iOS, Android, Amazon and Windows app stores. While Angry Birds remains a ubiquitous name in mainstream mobile-gaming conversations, it now operates in a crowded marketplace filled with fresh experiences such as Monument Valley , Device 6, Minecraft, Crossy Road, Goat Simulator, Five Nights at Freddy’s and thousands more. Surely Rovio wants excitement for Angry Birds to remain high ahead of its theatrical debut in April, so expect more announcements from the company after the launch of this month’s full-fledged sequel. Filed under: Gaming , HD Comments Source: Rovio
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Surely someone cares about the official ‘Angry Birds’ sequel
Scientists in Antarctica have come across one of the rarest specimens on record: ancient, fossilized worm sperm. “Because sperm cells are so short-lived and fragile, they are vanishingly rare in the fossil record, ” explains Benjamin Bomfleur, one of the palaeontologists who discovered the preserved cells. In fact, the find itself was an accident: Bomfleur’s college, Thomas Mörs, came across the ancient sperm while examining a fossilized worm cocoon. According to the a paper published in the latest edition of Biology Letters, the preserved sperm is very similar to the sperm of modern-day crayfish worms, but its location suggests that the prehistoric animal lived in a wider geographic area than its modern counterpart. Perhaps more important than this specific find itself is where it was found–in an annelid cocoon that takes several days to harden. The team believes this environment is ideal for trapping micro-organisms, and hopes to find more rare specimens by specifically targeting similarly fossilized cocoons. [Image credit: Swedish Museum of Natural History] Filed under: Science Comments Source: National Geographic
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This 50 million year old worm sperm is a scientific treasure
A California administrative judge ruled that Uber’s license to operate in California will be suspended in 30 days if it doesn’t appeal or start complying with state laws. Read the rest
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Judge says Uber should be suspended in California and fined $7.3 million
In the future, hopping on a plane from LA to Honolulu might take a minute longer than it does today. You probably won’t miss that lost moment, but the airline industry will: The tiny additional flight time could amount to thousands of extra hours and millions of dollars of additional jet fuel each year. Read more…
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Why Airplane Flights Are Taking Slightly Longer Every Year
If you’ve connected to a Wi-Fi network, your computer usually saves that password so you don’t have to enter it in every time. But sometimes you forget that password. To figure out what it is, Digital Inspiration points out that all you need to do is enter in a simple command in the command line. Read more…
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Find the Wi-Fi Password for Your Current Network with the Command Line
It’s supposed to be easier to email Congresspeople than it is to pick up the phone, but that’s not always how it works in practice. Just ask anyone who has navigated convoluted web forms just to voice opposition to a bill , for starters. You won’t have to put up with those technical hurdles after today, though. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s new Democracy.io site helps you email House and Senate representatives without having to dig around their sites. You can even email all of your politicians at once, if there’s a concern that stretches across both legislative branches. There’s no guarantees that officials will listen when you fire off your messages, but you’ll at least get to say that you exercised your civic responsibility. [Image credit: TTarasiuk, Flickr ] Filed under: Internet Comments Via: EFF Source: Democracy.io
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Emailing your members of Congress just got much easier
Graphene seems to be the new millennium’s wonder material: it can be used to build more powerful processors , more efficient solar cells, better sounding headphones and, apparently, can even be deep-fried to create long-lasting batteries. Now, researchers at Rice University think that a “3D” variant of the material could change the way we cool our gadgets. Normal graphene is already a pretty good heat conductor, but it has limitations–heat moves easily across the surface of stacked graphene, but not so well across the material’s multiple layers. That problem, however, can be solved: according to simulations at Rice, creating 3D structures of white graphene with boron nitrade nanotubes can overcome these thermal limitations, allowing for unimpeded heat transfer in all directions. In laymen’s terms, that all means that this research could eventually lead to new, smaller, more efficient thermal solutions–making it possible for us to cool smaller and more powerful electronics in the future. Sounds good to me. [Image Credit: Sharsavari, Rice University] Filed under: Science Comments Via: Eureka Alert Source: ACS Publications
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‘3D’ white graphene could revolutionize gadget cooling
The new iPods that Apple announced this morning were outed a couple of weeks ago, but the insides of the new iPod Touch were still a surprise: Apple put an A8 in the new Touch, the same SoC that powers the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The iPod Touch is quite a bit smaller than either iPhone, though, and preliminary benchmarks suggest that the chip’s speed has been reduced somewhat to keep the temperature down and the battery life up. Geekbench tests run by TechCrunch say the A8 in the Touch is running at about 1.1GHz, down from 1.3GHz in both iPhones. They also confirm that the A8 includes 1GB of RAM, the same amount as the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The scores in that Geekbench run suggest that the slowed-down A8 is roughly equivalent to the 1.3GHz Apple A7 chip in the iPhone 5S , which if accurate still represents a substantial improvement over the A5 in the fifth-generation Touch (Primate Labs’ John Poole told us that he believes the listed clock speed to be accurate). What we don’t know is whether the GPU’s speed has been similarly reduced and how aggressively the A8 in the Touch will throttle its speed as it warms up. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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New iPod Touch’s A8 CPU running at 1.1GHz, includes 1GB of RAM
The 1980s are back again! The guys who bought the Commodore name are releasing an Android smartphone for about $300. The price includes some bog standard specs but, most important, includes two emulators so you can play classic 1980s games right on your screen. The phone will appear in Europe first – including Italy and Poland – but if you remember programming guessing games in… Read More
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The Commodore PET Has Been Reincarnated As A Phone