“How can ride-app outfits like Lyft, Uber and Sidecar operate in a town with strict rules about how and where taxis can do business?,” asks Dennis Romero at the LA Weekly . “Los Angeles Department of Transportation taxicab administrator Thomas Drischler this week came up with an answer. They can’t.”
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LA issues cease-and-desist to Uber and other car ride apps
Late last year, Canadian astronomer Philip Gregory made the controversial claim that there are three habitable zone super-Earths orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 667C. Now, in a separate study, a group of European astronomers are saying he was right. Read more…
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Confirmed: A Star System with Three Potentially Habitable Planets!
The latest version of Firefox (22) is full of big new features. Most notably, the latest update adds support for 3D gaming ( care of Epic Games ), for video and voice calls as well as file sharing “without the need to install additional software or use third-party plugins,” and for a new version of JavaScript that Mozilla’s calling, “supercharged.” Mozilla’s even got a 3D game for you to play called BananaBread , so you may put the company’s claims through the wringer. Should that not be enough for you diehard Firefox devotees, there’s also a thrilling update that’ll show download progress on OS X directly in the Dock icon. Take a breath and a seat, and maybe download the latest Firefox build right here when you’ve cooled down. Filed under: Internet , Software Comments Via: The Next Web Source: Mozilla Blog , Release Notes
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Firefox updated to support 3D games, video calls and more
In iOS 7, Siri’s voice is becoming less robotic and more human (we’ll have to wait and see if she’s more useful). One of those improvements will be how she pronounces names. Instead of butchering your name or choppily spelling out letters of your friends’ names, she’ll be able to be ‘taught’ what the correct pronunciation is. Read more…
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Siri Actually Cares How Names Are Pronounced in iOS 7
A million of anything is pretty much always an insanely impossible number. Winning a million dollars, having a million Twitter followers, selling a million products—anything done a million times is something to be proud of. But maybe not getting your song streamed on Pandora a million times. All you get sometimes is 16 measly dollars. Or $16.89 to be exact. Read more…
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An Artist Got 16 Bucks for a Song That Pandora Streamed a Million Times
Just over a month has passed since CyanogenMod 10.1 went into a release candidate phase , and now it’s getting ready to emerge from its development cocoon as a stable release. The code isn’t available for most gadgets just yet, but it’s set to arrive on the project’s servers sometime tonight. Support for all Tegra 2-infused hardware and some Samsung devices with Exynos chips has been left out of this distro, but a “status report” for those machines is due later in the week. Now that the the Cyanogen Mod team has reached the 10.1 milestone, it’ll focus on monthly releases to bake in other features and functionality. Click the second source link to check if your device’s build has gone stable. Filed under: Cellphones , Software , Mobile Comments Source: CyanogenMod (1) , (2)
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CyanogenMod 10.1 goes stable, set for release tonight
Adidas has another new running shoe, this one even more divergent than its Boost shoe and its new foam . It’s a bunch of springs, basically, strapped to your foot. And it sort of makes a lot of sense. Read more…
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Adidas Springblade: Shoes with Actual Springs Might Be a Good Idea?
We first heard about Rust-Oleum’s liquid-repelling product, NeverWet almost two years ago . It looked absolutely magical, and now you can finally buy it. Read more…
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You Can Finally Buy the Magical Spray That Waterproofs Everything
Apple’s 2013 MacBook Air and new Airport Extreme Base Station are the company’s first 802.11ac products, and there are some bugs that need to be worked out. Apple Apple’s 2013 MacBook Air doesn’t look like much of an upgrade from the outside, but the story is different on the inside. We’ve spent the better part of a week using the new Air and measuring just how Intel’s new Haswell processors , the PCI Express-based SSD , and the 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter change the laptop compared to last year’s model. The new Wi-Fi chip was the change that I was the most eager to get my hands on. I’m always looking to boost my network speeds, but I’ve been waiting for hardware based on the new 802.11ac standard to become more widely available before upgrading everything on my network. Reviewing both the new Air and Apple’s new 802.11ac-capable Airport Express Base Station simultaneously would give me a chance to see just how close the lauded “Gigabit Wi-Fi” would come to fulfilling its promises. I was unpleasantly surprised by the results. Both the 2012 and 2013 MacBook Airs use four antennas to transmit data—two to send data and two to receive it. Each set of antennas can theoretically send and receive 150Mbps (or 18.75MBps) using 5GHz 802.11n for a total of 300Mbps (37.5MBps). Under 802.11ac, the size of each stream is increased to 433Mbps, making for a maximum theoretical link speed of 866Mbps (108.25MBps) in the 2013 MacBook Air. Actual network transfer speeds rarely (if ever) come within spitting distance of these theoretical maximums, but we would at least expect the actual 802.11ac transfer speeds to increase by a similar percentage compared to 802.11n. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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OS X is holding back the 2013 MacBook Air’s 802.11ac Wi-Fi speeds
Rich Lee, a “grinder” (someone who has surgical enhancements and/or modifications conducted upon their person), implanted a magnet in his ear that he can use as a speaker; he wears a coil on a necklace that he can use to transmit to it (he was inspired by this Instructable ), and is now branching out into some serious experimentation: Listening to music is nice and probably the most obvious answer, but I intend to do some very creative things with it. The implant itself is completely undetectable to the naked eye. The device & coil necklace are are easily concealed under my shirt so nobody can really see it. I can see myself using it with the gps on my smartphone to navigate city streets on foot. I plan to hook it up to a directional mic of some sort (possibly disguised as a shirt button or something) so I can hear conversations across a room. Having a mic hooked up to it and routed through my phone would be handy. You could use a simple voice stress analysis app to detect when people might be lying to you. Not to say that is a hard science, but I’m sure it could come in handy at the poker table or to pre-screen business clients. I have a contact mic that allows you to hear through walls. That might be my next implant actually. He also wants to hook it up to an ultrasonic rangefinder and learn to echolocate. He’s going blind, so being able to use his hearing for physical nav is going to be important to him. He also wants to hook it up to a Geiger counter. DIY Headphone Implant ( via M1k3y )
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Implanted invisible headphone