windows – Page 259 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Tesla Is So Sure Its Cars Are Safe That It Now Offers Insurance For Life

In the self-driving future envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, car owners might be saying “goodbye” to a whole lot more than steering wheels. From a Mashable report: Musk is so sure of the safety features bundled into Tesla vehicles that his company has begun offering some customers a lifetime insurance and maintenance package at the time of purchase. No more monthly insurance bills. No more unexpected repair costs. “We’ve been doing it quietly, ” Tesla President of Global Sales and Service Jonathan McNeill explained on the call, “but in Asia in particular where we started this, now the majority of Tesla cars are sold with an insurance product that is customized to Tesla, that takes into account not only the Autopilot safety features but also the maintenance costs of the car.” “It’s our vision in the future that we’ll be able to offer a single price for the car, maintenance and insurance in a really compelling offering for the consumer, ” added McNeill. “And we’re currently doing that today.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tesla Is So Sure Its Cars Are Safe That It Now Offers Insurance For Life

MAME Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

After years of work, a fan has finally completed a MAME version of Atari’s unreleased game Primal Rage II this week, one more example of the emulator preserving digital history. Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes MAME.net: Way back in 1997, Nicola Salmoria merged a few stand-alone arcade machine emulators into the first Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Could he have possibly imagined the significance of what he’d built? Over the past two decades, MAME has brought together over a thousand contributors to build a system that emulates more machines than any other program. But MAME is more than that: MAME represents the idea that our digital heritage is important and should be preserved for future generations. MAME strives to accurately represent original systems, allowing unmodified software to run as intended. Today, MAME documents over thirty thousand systems, and usably emulates over ten thousand. MAME meets the definitions of Open Source and Free Software, and works with Windows, macOS, Linux and BSD running on any CPU from x86-64 to ARM to IBM zSeries. A 20th-anniversary blog post thanked MAME’s 1, 600 contributors — more than triple the number after its 10th anniversary — and also thanks MAME’s uncredited contributors. “if you’ve filed a bug report, distributed binaries, run a community site, or just put in a good word for MAME, we appreciate it.” I’ve seen MAME resurrect everything from a rare East German arcade game to a Sonic the Hedgehog popcorn machine. Anybody else have a favorite MAME experience to share? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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MAME Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

99.6% of new smartphones run iOS or Android; RIP Windows and Blackberry

Enlarge (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) Remember those crazy days in 2011 and 12 when we thought that the mobile market might become a three-horse race between Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile, with Blackberry bringing up the rear? Well, I have bad if unsurprising news: by the end of last year, 99.6 percent of all new smartphones ran either Android or iOS—a return to the status quo that Ars first wrote about way back in 2009 . According to the latest figures from Gartner , both Android and iOS expanded their share of the market in 2016, while sales of Windows and Blackberry continued their free fall to the base of the cliff. Gartner, a research company that derives its figures from a range of sources, says that just 1.1 million Windows smartphones were sold in Q4 2016, down from 4.4 million in Q4 2015. Similarly, Blackberry device sales fell from 906,000 to 208,000. The action at the top of the sales table, between Apple and Samsung, was a little more exciting. For the first time since Q4 2014 Apple has apparently retaken pole position from Samsung, with 77 million iPhones shifted last quarter versus 76.8 million units for the Korean chaebol. Samsung still shipped the most smartphones over the course of 2016, but its share of the market decreased from 22.5 percent to 20.5. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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99.6% of new smartphones run iOS or Android; RIP Windows and Blackberry

The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows

“The prestigious FOSS project replacing the entire city’s administration IT with FOSS based systems, is about to be cancelled and decommissioned, ” writes long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino. TechRepublic reports: Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021. The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client. If the city leaders back the proposition it would be a notable U-turn by the council, which spent years migrating about 15, 000 staff from Windows to LiMux, a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS, and only completed the move in 2013… The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using “market standard products” that offer the “highest possible compatibility” with external and internal software… The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority. The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose “many millions of euros” if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows

Kaspersky Lab Promises New Backup Tool To Help Unhappy Social Media Users Quit

Kaspersky Lab surveyed 16, 750 people and concluded that often negative experiences on social experience overpower their positive effects — and they’re doing something about it. JustAnotherOldGuy pointed us to their latest announcement. 59% have felt unhappy when they have seen friends’ posts from a party they were not invited to, and 45% revealed that their friends’ happy holiday pictures have had a negative influence on them. Furthermore, 37% also admitted that looking at past happy posts of their own can leave them with the feeling that their own past was better than their present life. Previous research has also demonstrated peoples’ frustration with social media as 78% admitted that they have considered leaving social networks altogether. The only thing that makes people stay on social media is the fear of losing their digital memories, such as photos, and contacts with their friends. To help people decide more freely if they want to stay in social media or leave without losing their digital memories, Kaspersky Lab is developing a new app — FFForget will allow people to back up all of their memories from the social networks they use and keep them in a safe, encrypted memory container and will give people the freedom to leave any network whenever they want, without losing what belongs to them — their digital lives. The FFForget app will be released in 2017, but there’s already a web page where you can sign up for early access. Kaspersky plans to monetize this by creating both a free version of the app — limited to one social network — and a $1.99-per-month version which automatically backs up social content from Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Instagram in real-time with a fancier interface and more powerful encryption. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kaspersky Lab Promises New Backup Tool To Help Unhappy Social Media Users Quit

Gmail will stop working on Chrome for XP and Vista this year

If it’s been some time since you’ve updated your Chrome browser, you might see a banner at the top of Gmail’s interface on February 8th. It’ll contain a reminder to update to Chrome version 55 from 53 and below, since the newer iteration comes with several big security updates. That banner will go away after you update — unless you’re still using Windows XP or Vista. Google stopped releasing Chrome updates for those two after version 49, since Microsoft no longer supports its older Windows platforms. So, what will happen if you don’t — or can’t — update Chrome? Well, Gmail will work like usual throughout 2017. Sometime in December, though, you’ll start being redirected to the basic HTML version of the email service and will be more vulnerable to security risks. Google says the best thing you can do is upgrade and ditch XP or Vista ASAP. Source: Google Suite Updates

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Gmail will stop working on Chrome for XP and Vista this year

How to Live Stream Super Bowl 51 on Any Device, Even If You Don’t Have Cable

It’s Super Bowl weekend, which means snacks, beer and, of course, football. If you don’t have cable and you want to stream the game on you might be wondering how to stream the game. Not to worry—we’ve got you covered. Read more…

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How to Live Stream Super Bowl 51 on Any Device, Even If You Don’t Have Cable

Dropbox SmartSync lets you collaborate across Mac and Windows PCs

Last year, Dropbox introduced an interesting new feature called Project Infinite , which promised to let you view and access all of your files, whether they’re on your hard drive or in the cloud. The idea here is that all your files will appear right there in your desktop, and you can view and make changes to them without having to launch Dropbox’s web interface. Several months later and Project Infinite has left its beta state. Now, it’s called SmartSync, and it’ll be available to all Dropbox Business users starting today. A particularly useful highlight of SmartSync is that it’ll work on both Windows and Mac (backwards compatible with Windows 7 and up, or Mac OS X 10.9 and higher). Rob Baesman, Dropbox’s head of product, says that this cross-platform and backwards compatible system is an “industry first.” “You’re free to collaborate with whoever you want, ” he said. “You don’t have to think about space the same way you did in the past.” Another Dropbox product that’s finally making its public debut is Paper , which has been in beta for almost two years. A Google Docs replacement of sorts, Paper is touted as an online collaboration tool with several other office-centric features thrown in. You can create a to-do list and assign them to team members, set due dates, organize content by projects, and of course do all the usual writing and editing too. A few months ago, Dropbox released mobile app versions of Paper for Android and iOS , which lets you do all of this on-the-go. As part of its general launch, Dropbox is introducing a few new features to Paper too. There’s Presentation Mode, a “Smart Meeting Notes” feature that sends everyone at a meeting the same document (provided you hooked Paper up to your Google Calendar), plus general usability improvements like improved search and better accessibility for screen readers. The company is also working on mobile offline capability in the coming months. While SmartSync won’t be available to general users just yet, Paper is open to everyone with a Dropbox account starting today. It’ll be available in 21 different languages.

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Dropbox SmartSync lets you collaborate across Mac and Windows PCs

Google Translate Is About To Get a Lot Better, Thanks To Its Machine Learning Push

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is offering a big new update that should affect anyone who’s ever used Google’s translation services. From a report on CNBC: The new version will be rolling out in 2017 via Google Cloud, Pichai said. “We have improved our translation ability more in one single year than all our improvements over the last 10 years combined, ” Pichai told investors in a quarterly call, after parent company Alphabet reported mixed results. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HP Recalls Over 100,000 Laptop Batteries, Here’s How to Check Yours

HP is recalling batteries used in a variety of the company’s laptops because of fire concerns. The affected models include the HP ProBook, HP ENVY, Compaq Presario, and HP Pavillion laptops sold between March 2013 and October 2016. Read more…

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HP Recalls Over 100,000 Laptop Batteries, Here’s How to Check Yours