Apple’s Activation Lock Leads To Big Drops In Smartphone Theft Worldwide

 The temptation of a smartphone for a thief is dropping, thanks to Apple’s decision to implement a remote kill switch via Find My Phone that can erase and disable a phone once it’s been stolen or gone missing. A new report from Reuters found that iPhone theft dropped by 50 percent in London, 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York. The drops represent theft activity… Read More

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Apple’s Activation Lock Leads To Big Drops In Smartphone Theft Worldwide

Wi-Fi Issues Continue For OS X Users Despite Updates

itwbennett writes: Although Apple has never officially acknowledged issues surrounding Yosemite and Wi-Fi connectivity, the company is clearly aware of the problem: Leading off the improvements offered in the update 10.10.2 update released Tuesday was ‘resolves an issue that might cause Wi-Fi to disconnect, ‘ according to the release notes. Despite this, Apple’s support forum was filled with tales of frustrated users. And Mac owners aren’t the only Apple users experiencing wireless connection failures after updating their OS. Wi-Fi connectivity issues have also dogged iOS 8 since Apple released the mobile OS on Sept. 17. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wi-Fi Issues Continue For OS X Users Despite Updates

Know Your Type: Five Mechanical Keyboards Compared

MojoKid writes As a power user, you notice certain things that the average person might not. One of those is the difference between typing on a sweet mechanical keyboard with luxurious key action, versus pounding away on a run-of-the-mill squishy plank that relies on membrane switches to register your keystrokes. The difference may seem subtle to the uninitiated, though even casual typists can recognize that there’s something inherently superior about a mechanical keyboard. Of course, it’s the mechanical key switches that are responsible for elevating the typing experience. These are better than the rubber domes found in membrane keyboards in a number of ways, including feel, responsiveness, and durability. Mechanical keyboards are growing in popularity, as word is spreading about how good they are. In turn, keyboard manufacturers have responded by feeding more mechanical models into what was once a niche market. If you go out in search of a mechanical keyboard, you’ll now find a mountain of options. This roundup further reinforced something we’ve known for a long time, which is that mechanical keyboards are the superior choice for both gaming and daily typing chores. That doesn’t mean they’re all created equal — there are different key switches to choose from, and features vary from one plank to the next. The choice of key switch type is highly subjective but we can say that Cherry MX key switches are indeed of higher quality than knock-offs like the Kailh switch. That’s not to say Kailh switches are bad, just that you can discern a difference when going from one to the other. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Know Your Type: Five Mechanical Keyboards Compared

Human Eye’s Oscillation Rate Determines Smooth Frame Rate

jones_supa writes: It should be safe to conclude that humans can see frame rates greater than 24 fps. The next question is: why do movies at 48 fps look “video-y, ” and why do movies at 24 fps look “dreamy” and “cinematic.” Why are games more realistic at 60 fps than 30 fps? Simon Cooke from Microsoft (Xbox) Advanced Technology Group has an interesting theory to explain this all. Your eyes oscillate a tiny amount, ranging from 70 to 103 Hz (on average 83.68 Hz). So here’s the hypothesis: The ocular microtremors wiggle the retina, allowing it to sample at approximately 2x the resolution of the sensors. Showing someone pictures that vary at less than half the rate of the oscillation means we’re no longer receiving a signal that changes fast enough to allow the supersampling operation to happen. So we’re throwing away a lot of perceived-motion data, and a lot of detail as well. Some of the detail can be restored with temporal antialiasing and simulating real noise, but ideally Cooke suggests going with a high enough frame rate (over 43 fps) and if possible, a high resolution. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Human Eye’s Oscillation Rate Determines Smooth Frame Rate

Telepresence Store Staffed Remotely Using Robots

Molly McHugh writes: What better way to sell telepresence technologies than having the store employees themselves appear via robot? At the Beam store in Palo Alto, Calif., no human salespeople physically appear, only robots. Users appear on the 17-inch display and control the robot via keyboard, mouse, or Xbox controller. Beam can roll as fast as two miles per hour. People behind the screen control the Beam through their computers, and two wide-angle cameras attached to the top of the bot lets them see everything happening around the store. It’s a bit eerie, watching floating heads tool around and talk to people in this video, and the customers’ react to the Beam with confusion and wonder. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Telepresence Store Staffed Remotely Using Robots

Millions of Spiders Seen In Mass Dispersal Event In Nova Scotia

Freshly Exhumed writes A bizarre and oddly beautiful display of spider webs have been woven across a large field along a walking trail in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. “Well it’s acres and acres; it’s a sea of web, ” said Allen McCormick. Prof. Rob Bennett, an expert on spiders who works at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC, Canada, said tiny, sheet-web weaver spiders known as Erigoninae linyphiidae most likely left the webs. Bennett said the spiders cast a web net to catch the wind and float away in a process known as ballooning. The webs in the field are the spiders’ drag lines, left behind as they climb to the top of long grass to be whisked away by the wind. Bennett said it’s a mystery why these spiders take off en masse. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Millions of Spiders Seen In Mass Dispersal Event In Nova Scotia

BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox

An anonymous reader writes Now that its file synchronization tool has received a few updates, BitTorrent is going on the offensive against cloud-based storage services by showing off just how fast BitTorrent Sync can be. More specifically, the company conducted a test that shows Sync destroys Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and Dropbox. The company transferred a 1.36 GB MP4 video clip between two Apple MacBook Pros using two Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the Time.gov site as a real-time clock, and the Internet connection at its headquarters (1 Gbps up/down). The timer started when the file transfer was initiated and then stopped once the file was fully synced and downloaded onto the receiving machine. Sync performed 8x faster than Google Drive, 11x faster than OneDrive, and 16x faster than Dropbox. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox

Google’s Inbox App Wants To Read Your Email So You Don’t Have To

Today, Google revealed a project two years in the making. At first glance it looks just like a redesign of Gmail, and that’s sort of half true. It’s actually a completely new system called “Inbox” and it wants to reimagine your email. Read more…

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Google’s Inbox App Wants To Read Your Email So You Don’t Have To

How to Tap Your Network and See Everything That Happens On It

Your home network is your fortress. Inside it lies tons of valuable information—unencrypted files, personal, private data, and perhaps most importantly, computers that can be hijacked and used for any purpose. Let’s talk about how you can, with the power of evil, sniff around your home network to make sure you don’t have any uninvited guests. Read more…

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How to Tap Your Network and See Everything That Happens On It