Tag: newsletters

Don’t cry for the Google Play edition program; it was already dead

Earlier this week, the last of the Google Play edition Android phones in Google’s online storefront were listed as ” no longer available for sale .” When contacted for comment, Google had nothing to say, but it’s not hard to read between the lines here. The last new Google Play phone was introduced in the spring of 2014. Plans for a Galaxy S5 GPe phone made it far enough that official press photos leaked out into the wild , but the phone never materialized. The program hit its peak early last year, when a full half-dozen devices were listed all at once: the Galaxy S4 , the HTC Ones M7 and M8 , the first-generation Moto G , the Sony Z Ultra , and the LG G Pad 8.3 . Like doomed kids making their way through Willy Wonka’s factory, they silently dropped out one by one. Now they’re all gone, and it looks a whole lot like the program has wrapped up. If so, it’s a quiet, inconspicuous end to a quiet, inconspicuous program. Normally we’d say that fewer choices for Android shoppers would be a bad thing, but the changes Google has made to Android since the GPe program was introduced had already rendered it mostly irrelevant. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the original:
Don’t cry for the Google Play edition program; it was already dead

PlayStation Now review: Sony finally proves streaming gaming is viable

When Sony launched its PlayStation Now service as a beta last year, the ridiculous per-game rental pricing structure stopped us from giving it any serious consideration almost immediately. Last week, though, the service graduated from beta with a more feasible all-you-can-play subscription plan . Suddenly this was an opportunity. Has the idea of running games on remote servers advanced at all since OnLive’s ahead-of-its-time launch back in 2010 ? We’ve been kicking the tires on the service for about a week now, and what we’ve found is a surprisingly compelling addition to the pay-per-game ownership model of retail discs and downloads. If you have the bandwidth and a yearning to sample some PS3 classics among the service’s somewhat limited initial selection on your PlayStation 4, PlayStation Now is well worth checking out. Performance When initially reviewing OnLive back in 2010 , running a game through the offering’s remote servers was a noticeably worse experience than running that same game locally. Even with a 20Mbps FiOS connection, our reviewer “could tell that the game was not running natively” thanks to “framerate bumps, sudden resolution drops, and gameplay blips.” Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Link:
PlayStation Now review: Sony finally proves streaming gaming is viable

4chan founder Chris “moot” Poole steps down

On Wednesday, 4chan founder Christopher Poole, better known by the moniker “moot,” announced his retirement from running the site. moot started 4chan 11 and a half years ago when he was 15, and the image-based bulletin board has grown into a staunch supporter of anonymity for its posters since. That notoriety has drawn some of the best and also a lot of the very, very worst to its 63 boards. In his post today, moot explained the decision: 4chan has faced numerous challenges over the years, including how to continuously satisfy a community of millions, and ensure the site has the human, technical, and financial resources to continue operating. But the biggest hurdle it’s had to overcome is myself. As 4chan’s sole administrator, decision maker, and keeper of most of its institutional knowledge, I’ve come to represent an uncomfortably large single point of failure. moot continued to say that he has made sure the site will be financially secure in the foreseeable future and has delegated the tasks of running the site to “a few senior volunteers.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
4chan founder Chris “moot” Poole steps down

British spy agency captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British sister agency of the National Security Agency, captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes during a November 2008 test. According to The Guardian , which on Monday cited some of its Snowden documents as its source (but did not publish them), the e-mails were scooped up as part of the intelligence agency’s direct fiber taps . Journalists from the BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Sun , NBC, and The Washington Post were apparently targeted. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More here:
British spy agency captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes

Pirates defeating watermarks, releasing torrents of Oscar movie screeners

When an incomplete and early version of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked to torrent sites in 2009, Twentieth Century Fox announced that the uploader “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” “We forensically mark our content so we can identify sources that make it available or download it,” the studio said in a statement. Nabbed by a watermark, a New York man subsequently pleaded guilty to making the movie available on Megaupload. Gilberto Sanchez was sentenced to a year in prison in 2011. A triumphant US Attorney Andre Birotte Jr . said  that  “sentence handed down in this case sends a strong message of deterrence to would-be Internet pirates.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
Pirates defeating watermarks, releasing torrents of Oscar movie screeners

Hatred gets Adults Only rating, making console, Steam release unlikely

Third person spree-killing simulator Hatred has been given an Adults only (AO) rating from ESRB, the video game ratings board in the US and Canada. The rating was disclosed by one of the game’s developers on its official forum , which expressed surprise that the title did not get the more lenient Mature (M) rating, writing “Well, I’m not quite convinced why Hatred got AO rating while it lacks any sexual content, but it’s still some kind of achievement to have the second game in history getting AO rating for violence and harsh language only.” Hatred is in fact the third game to receive an AO rating for violence alone, with both Thrill Kill and Manhunt 2 also receiving that evaluation. Thrill Kill , however, had its release cancelled after Electronic Arts bought its publisher and objected to its content. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See more here:
Hatred gets Adults Only rating, making console, Steam release unlikely

Marriott tentatively backs off Wi-Fi blocking plans

In a brief statement on Wednesday evening , hotel chain Marriott International said that it would not block any personal Wi-Fi devices belonging to its customers. Marriott International listens to its customers, and we will not block guests from using their personal Wi-Fi devices at any of our managed hotels. Marriott remains committed to protecting the security of Wi-Fi access in meeting and conference areas at our hotels. We will continue to look to the FCC to clarify appropriate security measures network operators can take to protect customer data, and will continue to work with the industry and others to find appropriate market solutions that do not involve the blocking of Wi-Fi devices. Despite that pledge, Re/Code reports that the company is not rescinding a request for rulemaking that it submitted to the Federal Communications Commission late last year, in which it asked for the Commission’s blessing to block personal hotspots. In October, Marriott was fined $600,000 by the FCC following a complaint that one of its Nashville, Tennessee branches was interfering with and disabling personal Wi-Fi hotspots set up by its customers. Marriott agreed to pay the fine but remained defiant, asking the FCC to allow it to resume its practice. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read More:
Marriott tentatively backs off Wi-Fi blocking plans

Man gets 10 years in prison after perpetrating website sales scam

A California man was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison after engaging in a years-long scheme to defraud people who responded to his ads selling domain names and websites that he claimed continually generated revenue. Federal prosecutors alleged that John Winston Boone scammed 18 people for approximately $1.3 million—providing false PayPal records to his victims to illustrate this profitability. Initially, Boone plead not guilty, but later changed his plea in late 2013. United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II, who was the same judge in a 2013 Los Angeles Prenda hearing , called the defendant’s conduct “cruel and callous.” Judge Wright also noted that Boone “showed a lack of humanity that was so base and so depraved.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue reading here:
Man gets 10 years in prison after perpetrating website sales scam

Red light camera vendor Redflex freaked out it may lose contracts

In a new Friday filing with the Australian Securities Exchange, Redflex, a prominent red light camera vendor, said that it could be facing an immediate net book value loss of $3.2 million if it permanently loses contracts in New Jersey and Ohio. In November 2014, the company told investors that the North American market is a “low/no-growth market.” Since 2009, the Garden State has operated a pilot program with Redflex cameras, but that program expired on December 16, 2014. The New Jersey Department of Transportation is now set to analyze its five years’ worth of data, write a report, and recommend whether to permanently halt the program or resurrect it. Meanwhile, in Ohio, even after the state’s Supreme Court upheld their use, Governor John Kasich signed into law in December 2014 a new bill that requires a police officer’s physical presence for tickets that are issued from traffic cameras. The law takes effect 90 days after the governor’s signature, and it could mean that cities will have less of a reason to maintain their camera systems. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the original article here:
Red light camera vendor Redflex freaked out it may lose contracts

The 100 billion frames per second camera that can image light itself

High-speed cameras produce some of the most fascinating imagery in the world. They reveal hidden details and turn the everyday into the extraordinary. But these cameras, which generally top out at around 100,000 frames per second, have nothing on a camera reported last month in Nature . This beast can manage a massive 100 billion frames per second . If you want a high frame rate, you generally use stroboscopic imaging. In normal filming, the illumination is always on, and the camera shutter is operated as fast as possible. However, as the frame rate increases, the shutter time reduces and less light falls on the sensor. The result is a noisy image. In the embedded video, you can see the difference between normal filming and stroboscopic imaging. Stroboscopic imaging builds up an image by pulsing the light source while the camera shutter remains open. Using it, you can capture single images from an event that repeats periodically. The temporal resolution is now given by the duration and timing of the light pulse. Light pulses can be less than a femtosecond (10 -15 s) in duration, while timing can be controlled with femtosecond precision. This allows stop-motion photography with frame rates of trillions per second. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See more here:
The 100 billion frames per second camera that can image light itself