The Entire Run Of IF Magazine Is Now Freely Available Online!

IF Magazine was a monthly science fiction magazine that was first published in 1952, and ran through 1974, before it was merged into its sister publication, Galaxy Science Fiction . Now, you can read the entire run online over on Internet Archive . Read more…

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The Entire Run Of IF Magazine Is Now Freely Available Online!

Turn-by-Turn Navigation Showdown: Google Maps vs. Waze

You wouldn’t really think there could be that much difference between turn-by-turn navigation apps, but even just a glance at Google Maps and Waze shows how different they are. They might both be owned by the same company, but they work completely differently. Read more…

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Turn-by-Turn Navigation Showdown: Google Maps vs. Waze

The Los Angeles County Health Department Is The Latest Victim Of A Ransomware Attack

The Los Angeles County Health Department is the latest victim of a ransomware attack, just days after a Los Angeles hospital coughed up $17, 000 to unlock their files. Read more…

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The Los Angeles County Health Department Is The Latest Victim Of A Ransomware Attack

CheapAir’s “When to Buy” Tool Tells You the Prime Booking Window for Cheap Flights

Flight prices fluctuate quite a bit, so if you want to grab a good deal, you have to swoop in at the right time. CheapAir.com’s “when to buy” tool reveals the prime booking window for cheap flights between two cities. Read more…

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CheapAir’s “When to Buy” Tool Tells You the Prime Booking Window for Cheap Flights

Your Next Phone Might Have 256GB of Storage Thanks to Samsung’s New Chip

I love high capacity things. So when Samsung announced it’s producing 256 GB flash storage that can be used in mobile devices, I swooned. The memory is two times faster than the previous generation of Universal Flash Storage (UFS) memory, meaning that phones will not only have greater storage capacities, but also breeze reading and writing operations. Read more…

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Your Next Phone Might Have 256GB of Storage Thanks to Samsung’s New Chip

Report: Major Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Has Bought Sharp For $6.2 Billion

Foxconn is best known as the sometimes-controversial Taiwanese manufacturer used by Apple to assemble iPhones. Sharp is an ailing Japanese company that used to make plasma TVs, and now makes iPhone displays. Read more…

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Report: Major Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Has Bought Sharp For $6.2 Billion

Facebook officially expands beyond the Like with Reactions

While the “Like” button on Facebook has traditionally been a quick and fun way to respond to a post, the truth is that it’s not always appropriate. “Liking” certain posts — say, the news of a pet’s death or a post about global warming — just feels wrong. Thankfully, starting today, that’s about to change. The social network has just announced a brand new feature called Reactions (which we’ve already heard about a few times ), which is essentially an extension of the Like button. Now, in addition to the thumbs-up Like we’re all familiar with, there’s Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry. Love is signified by a heart symbol while the rest are animated emoji. To see them, simply press and hold on the Reactions button — it’s where the thumbs-up Like button is currently — select which one you want, and release. If the post has a slew of different reactions to it, you’ll see a summary of the three most frequent reaction icons. On the other end, the person receiving them will get notifications saying someone “reacted” to the post. Introducing Reactions from Facebook on Vimeo . “People come to Facebook and share all kinds of things, ” says Sammi Krug, the product manager behind Reactions. “And we kept hearing feedback from people that there wasn’t an easy way to express empathy for these different kinds of posts.” Zuckerberg in particular took the user feedback to heart and pulled a bunch of people together to start work on a solution about a year or so ago. From there, the team did a ton of research — from conducting surveys to analysis of the most popular stickers — to figure out just what reactions to add. When they whittled it down to about six, Facebook then began testing it — you can see we saw a sneak peek of Reactions as early as last October — in about seven different countries. “One of the things we really wanted to be careful of, is will this translate well” says Krug. “We wanted these reactions to be globally understood.” That’s one of the reasons Reactions is launching with just five additional icons instead of the original six that we saw in October. That’s because the “Yay” reaction just didn’t test well globally and was a little too vague in some markets. The rest, however, proved to be popular enough, with Love being the most popular out of all the new Reactions (The Like button, however, still reigned supreme). So does that mean we’re stuck with the six or so Reactions we have now? Not at all. “Once this actually rolls out, we’ll learn more about how people use the feature, ” says Krug. “We’ll continue to iterate it over time, based on user feedback.” Reactions will roll out globally starting today on iOS , Android , the desktop as well as the mobile browser. You’ll start to see the change occur over the next couple of days, though bear in mind that you do need to be on the latest version of the Facebook app to get the feature. Still, we had to ask, why isn’t there a “dislike” button? “It would have been too binary, ” says Krug. “This way, though, you’ll have more ways to express yourself. That’s the goal.” Source: Facebook

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Facebook officially expands beyond the Like with Reactions

How to Choose Your Next Android Phone: 2016 Edition

Mobile World Congress , the biggest smartphone trade show of the year, is this week, and companies like Samsung and LG are there showing off the hot new handsets they want you to buy. All of this gives us a glimpse into how Android phones will evolve in 2016, and what you should look for before you go shopping for your next smartphone. Read more…

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How to Choose Your Next Android Phone: 2016 Edition

Netflix is going all in on HDR and more original content

After revealing an ambitious plan for global expansion earlier this year , Netflix is now looking to focus on what’s arguably the most important part of its business: content. In a recent meeting at Mobile World Congress 2016 , the video giant shared more details about what subscribers should expect next. And that mostly revolves around making a bigger push for original shows, improving the Netflix mobile apps on iOS and Android, as well as bringing support for high dynamic range (HDR) programming. The company hasn’t been shy to divulge its appreciation for HDR, but it’s going all out on the technology in 2016. “We started exploring HDR content about one year ago, ” says Chris Jaffe, vice president of user interface innovation at Netflix, “it is the [obvious] next-level resolution in the playback experience.” Over the coming months, there will be many HDR shows available on the platform, including Marco Polo season one and the highly anticipated second season of Daredevil . But Jaffe knows it won’t be easy, particularly due to the amount of internet bandwidth required by this type of content. As such, he says, Netflix has already worked out various compression algorithms , which adjust the quality of the video based on its complexity and still serve it up at a high resolution. So long as you have 16-20 Mbps connection, the experience should suffer from a minimum buffering woes. Of course, Ultra HD content plays a major role in Netflix’s strategy too, and there are more than 600 hours of 4K programming expected to hit the streaming service in 2016. Additionally, Jaffe says Netflix is launching 30 shows this year, including new seasons for existing series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black , plus 10 original movies and a number of documentaries and exclusive content for kids . “[We have] 75 million members around the world; essentially that means 75 million different experiences, ” he says about the challenge Netflix faces to have something for everyone, from movies and TV shows to the algorithm used to recommend what you should watch. On the mobile side, Netflix is expected to rollout a revamped iOS app tomorrow, featuring support for Arabic and auto-play episodes. Later this year, both the iOS and Android applications will let also you manage your data usage, in case you have a cap on your smartphone or tablet plan and want to limit streams to a certain quality. Meanwhile, if you have a Chromecast, you can expect a second-screen experience for to arrive “shortly, ” which is going to give you access to IMDB-like metadata from your iOS or Android device. It’ll come in handy during those times when you don’t know who an actor is, or want to know what other movies they are in — the benefit here is you’re able to do it directly from the app. You have to give it to Netflix for its appetite to keep growing across the board, but you also have to ask yourself if it’s trying to do too much all at once. As always, however, only time will tell. For now, if you’re a Netflix buff , there’s no reason you shouldn’t be excited about the company’s plans for the near future. [Image credits: Netflix, Getty Images]

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Netflix is going all in on HDR and more original content