Last.fm is killing off subscription radio, will focus on music-discovery app Scrobbler

Today, music-streaming service Last.fm announced plans to end its subscription service across all platforms. In place of its curated, ad-free radio for $3 a month, the company will focus on its Scrobbler app, which logs every song you listen to on your Last.fm profile and helps with music discovery. You’ll still be able to listen to your personal stations and library via the Youtube-powered Last.fm player on the desktop (currently in beta), and users can still play their Last.fm tracks on Spotify . In other words, Last.fm will now rely on third-party providers rather than streaming from its own servers. Users have a few reasons to be disappointed: for one, the Scrobbler app is only available for iOS, and streaming on the Android app will end along with the subscription service on April 28th. And for our friends in Canada, this means Last.fm will join Spotify, Pandora and other biggies in not supporting streaming in the Great White North. We’ve reached out to Last.fm for some clarification on what this means for users on all platforms — we’ll have an update once we hear back. Filed under: Internet , Software Comments Source: Last.fm

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Last.fm is killing off subscription radio, will focus on music-discovery app Scrobbler

Doctors Are About to Start Human Trials for Suspended Animation

After years of sci-fi-inspired fantasies about the technique, a team of doctors in Pittsburgh are finally ready to start testing out a procedure that involves putting patients in a state of “suspended animation” while they repair their injuries. Put bluntly, they’re going to kill people and bring them back to life. Read more…        

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Doctors Are About to Start Human Trials for Suspended Animation

HTC Will Fix Your Busted Screen For Free in the First Six Months

Everyone breaks a phone every once in a while. But if you break your new HTC One it’s a little less soul-crushing. HTC says it will fix your cracked display for free in the first six months, even if it’s your fault. Read more…        

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HTC Will Fix Your Busted Screen For Free in the First Six Months

Hackers Can Force ATMs to Spit Out Money With a Text Message

It’s getting remarkably easy to hack ATMs these days, and security researchers say that Microsoft’s aging Windows XP is making the problem worse. This week, security analysts at Symantec blogged about a new technique popping up in Mexico that uses text messages to give hackers access. It’s as wild as it sounds. Read more…        

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Hackers Can Force ATMs to Spit Out Money With a Text Message

Both Halves Of A Giant Sea Turtle Fossil Found 160 Years Apart

More than 160 years ago, paleontologists found a partial fossil of a 70-million-year-old giant sea turtle, the only known example of its particular species. This week, they found the other half. Read more…        

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Both Halves Of A Giant Sea Turtle Fossil Found 160 Years Apart

HTC Dodges Carrier Update Lag By Separating Sense 6 Features Across Multiple Google Play Apps

HTC is hardly unique in facing challenges updating its software for its Android smartphones – carriers must approve OS updates, including those for the UI skins that Android OEMs make for their devices, but it is trying something different to make it less of an issue. Sense 6 (which HTC annoyingly refers to constantly as ‘Sixth Sense, ’ too) will have many of its core components… Read More

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HTC Dodges Carrier Update Lag By Separating Sense 6 Features Across Multiple Google Play Apps

These Absolutely Huge Pharaoh Statues Were Just Unveiled In Egypt

Two recently restored statues of Amenhotep III were recently unveiled in Luxor, Egypt, along with a carved alabaster head from another Amenhotep III statue. Chunks of these artifacts had lain about for centuries, but they’ve finally been restored to give us a sense of their former glory. Read more…        

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These Absolutely Huge Pharaoh Statues Were Just Unveiled In Egypt

Mazda Says Its Upcoming Gas-Powered Cars Will Emit Less CO2 Than Electric Cars

cartechboy writes: “One of the arguments for electric cars is that we are reducing greenhouse gases and emitting less CO2 than vehicles with an internal combustion engine. But Mazda says its next-generation SkyActiv engines will be so efficient, they’ll emit less CO2 than an electric car. In fact, the automaker goes so far as to say these new engines will be cleaner to run than electric cars. Is it possible? Yes, but it’s all about the details. It’ll depend on the test cycles for each region. Vehicles are tested differently in Europe than in the U.S., and that variation could make all the difference when it comes to these types of claims. At the end of the day whether future Mazdas with gasoline-powered engines are cleaner than electric cars or not, every little bit in the effort to reduce our carbon emissions per mile is a step in the right direction, right?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mazda Says Its Upcoming Gas-Powered Cars Will Emit Less CO2 Than Electric Cars

Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate

An anonymous reader writes “An article at FiveThirtyEight looks at the likelihood of various occupations being replaced by automation. It mentions President Obama’s proposed increase to the federal minimum wage, saying big leaps in automation could reshape that debate. ‘[The wage increase] from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour could make it worthwhile for employers to adopt emerging technologies to do the work of their low-wage workers. But can a robot really do a janitor’s job? Can software fully replace a fast-food worker? Economists have long considered these low-skilled, non-routine jobs as less vulnerable to technological replacement, but until now, quantitative estimates of a job’s vulnerability have been missing from the debate.’ Many minimum-wage jobs are reportedly at high risk, including restaurant workers, cashiers, and telemarketers. A study rated the probability of computerization within 20 years (PDF): 92% for retail salespeople, 97% for cashiers, and 94% for waitstaff. There are other jobs with a high likelihood, but they employ fewer people and generally have a higher pay rate: tax preparers (99%), freight workers (99%), and legal secretaries (98%).” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate

NVIDIA Unveils Next Gen Pascal GPU With Stacked 3D DRAM and GeForce GTX Titan Z

MojoKid (1002251) writes “NVIDIA’s 2014 GTC (GPU Technology Conference) kicked off today in San Jose California, with NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang offering up a healthy dose of new information on next generation NVIDIA GPU technologies. Two new NVIDIA innovations will be employed in their next-gen GPU technology, now know by its code named ‘Pascal.” First, there’s a new serial interconnect known as NVLink for GPU-to-CPU and GPU-to-GPU communication. Though details were sparse, apparently NVLink is a serial interconnect that employs differential signaling with embedded clock and it allows for unified memory architectures and eventually cache coherency. It’s similar to PCI Express in terms of command set and programming model but NVLink will offer a massive 5 — 12X boost in bandwidth up to 80GB/sec. The second technology to power NVIDIA’s forthcoming Pascal GPU is 3D stacked DRAM technology.The technique employs through-silicon vias that allow the ability to stack DRAM die on top of each other and thus provide much more density in the same PCB footprint for the DRAM package. Jen-Hsun also used his opening keynote to show off NVIDIA’s most powerful graphics card to date, the absolutely monstrous GeForce GTX Titan Z. The upcoming GeForce GTX Titan Z is powered by a pair of GK110 GPUs, the same chips that power the GeForce GTX Titan Black and GTX 780 Ti. All told, the card features 5, 760 CUDA cores (2, 880 per GPU) and 12GB of frame buffer memory—6GB per GPU. NVIDIA also said that the Titan Z’s GPUs are tuned to run at the same clock speed, and feature dynamic power balancing so neither GPU creates a performance bottleneck.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NVIDIA Unveils Next Gen Pascal GPU With Stacked 3D DRAM and GeForce GTX Titan Z