I stumbled upon this lovely set of stemless wine glasses decorated with night sky star charts. They come in sets of two with one glass depicting the summer sky and the other depicting the winter one. You can buy the set for $40 over on Cognitive Surplus.
We've shown you a lot of wallpapers these last few months.
While there will never be enough time to show you all the wonderful wallpapers I come across, I believe in making the time to see and showcase the wallpapers that my readers show me. In that spirit, this week is the first of what I hope to be a periodic Wallpaper Weekly episode featuring reader wallpapers. All the wallpapers showcased today come from reader suggestions via social media and email.
A recurring theme in the wallpapers I've been sent is photos that the users took themselves. When you come across beauty in the world around you, it's only natural to snap a pic with the stellar cameras many of our phones have built in. While landscapes and kids are obvious targets, this shot by Pseu 42 is both unique and beautiful. Being a lifelong Texan, I don't often get to see snow or ice, and during our hellacious summers, a snowy wallpaper helps us stay cool, at least in spirit. We also have some excellent background colors thanks to the sunrise behind this frosty car window.
This monochrome majesty was another reader photo, this one taken on a Google Pixel by Richard Colon. Lens flares are easy to get wrong, but this one is so right, and the tight focus on the chains in the foreground give the photo detail while allowing the background to blur and blend behind it.
Monochrome Chains by Richard Colon
IFTTT applets like these are awesome for mixing things up daily, but they put wallpaper searchers like me out of a job! That said, this one is too good not to feature, and Joey Riz knows it. This IFTTT applet puts NASA's Image of the Day on your Android phone or tablet as a daily wallpaper. The images are gorgeous and the resolution is usually enough to make even a 4K home screen happy.
IFTTT NASA Wallpaper of the Day Applet
This coastline is picturesque — I'm just waiting for the castle to come into view just down the shoreline. The caption with it on Unsplash is also a wonderful reminder that we need to change up our perspective every now and again. Thanks to icon maker Kevin Aguilar for suggesting it!
Perspective Matters by Will van Wingerden
We'll wrap up this week with another viewer photo that resonates with me. This photo was taken by Hugh Richardson the first time he reached the Pacific Ocean after getting out of the military. It's a sunny wallpaper of hope, promise, and waves. It invites us to explore the horizon, it reminds us to cleanse ourselves in the water, it beckons us back to the shore and beyond.
Or in my case, it reminds me that it's going to be awhile before I get to see the ocean again, but I can always dream.
Pacific Waves by Hugh Richardson
If you want to be featured in the next ones, whenever they may be, feel free to contact me on email, Twitter, or Google+, sing out in the comments below, or in our theming forum!
Malicious emails often attach various forms of executable programs and trick users into running them. These include standard Windows executables (.exe), batch files (.bat), and even JavaScript files (.js). Starting February 13, 2017, Google will not allow JS files to be sent as an attachment, including JS files detected within archives.
If you're not familiar with web development, JavaScript is a common language used when developing web applications, and JS files are often loaded as part of web pages.
Read MoreGmail won't allow JavaScript file attachments starting February 13 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
“How will you make it on your own?,” the theme song asked a “girl,” played by Mary Tyler Moore. “This world is awfully big.” She made it, after all.
"Today, beloved icon, Mary Tyler Moore, passed away at the age of 80 in the company of friends and her loving husband of over 33 years, Dr. S. Robert Levine," her rep said in a statement.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Joohoon David Lee led a human trafficking investigation against the owners of a Las Vegas Korean supper club, while dining for free at a rival's club, running up bills of $1,000-$2,500/night which he never had to pay. (more…)
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
Android Police coverage: Action shooter Towaga from the makers of The Firm is visually stunning
From the character design to the backgrounds to the 2D weapon effects, every bit of Towaga is a treat to look at.
Read More44 new and notable (and 7 WTF) Android games from the last 3 weeks (1/3/17 - 1/24/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
LG has announced that it lost KRW 258.80 billion ($223.98M) in Q4 of last year, its first loss in six years. The company admitted that poor sales of its modular G5 smartphone and subsequent marketing costs were a significant factor. The company restructured its mobile division last year as the company struggled to sell the handset.
Due to losses from mobile communications and vehicle components, LG reported a fourth-quarter net loss of KRW 258.80 billion (USD 223.98 million) […] Profitability was hampered by weak sales of the G5 smartphone and higher marketing investments.
One item in LG’s report was notable by its absence …
In a somewhat non-traditional manner, Google has today made official the dates and location for Google I/O 2017. This year’s developer conference will take place, once again, at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, and will be three days: May 17, 18, and 19.
We want to know what games you're playing!
Update May 27: In this week's roundup, we take a look at the FPS offerings on Android.
First-person shooters are a staple within the gaming world. We all love to play them no matter if you prefer to play with a keyboard and mouse or a gamepad in your hands. Whether you love Battlefield, Call of Duty, Doom or any of the other countless AAA titles, you can play them across all the major gaming platforms — except Android.
I guess that's fair, to a point — there's a clear divide in strategy between the mobile gaming industry space and the larger gaming industry. For example, a major console game will come out priced at $60, and then try to upsell you with DLC content or a "season pass". Mobile gamers aren't going to pay nearly that much for a game like that — even if the phones might be capable of offering a fairly similar experience at this point.
Instead, mobile game developers trend towards the free-to-play model wherein the real game is constantly vying for your attention with notifications and unlockable crates for weapon upgrades and in-game currency to collect.
Because of this, so many first-person shooters on mobile feel like the off-brand, hand-me-down versions of our PC favorites. Don't get me wrong, the games are still pretty good, and even derivative franchises like Modern Combat have really managed to build a substantial audience, and even treading into E-Sports territory.
But the freemium model taints the experience. They're just not quite the pure FPS experience (whatever you consider that to be), but we're free to play them on the go which rules so we love them all the same. Without further ado, here are the AC community's favorite first-person shooters.
Critical Ops is still in Alpha phase so the only modes available are deathmatch and bomb defuse. But given this game is in early development and constantly being updated, it's going to be really good when it's finished.
It's kind of got that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare vibe to it, mixed with a healthy dose of CounterStrike to create a best-of-both-worlds scenario that offers great graphics and really solid controls.
Spencer Schenk recommended it in the comments, calling it "a skill based shooter that's basically a noble poppy of cargo done well" — which is some mix of slang I don't think I've come across before... but somehow sums it up quite well.
This game is really fun to play and hasn't yet gotten too bogged down by the free-to-play model, although all the pieces are there. Like I get how the whole system of opening crates or cases to unlock new guns is designed to give us that quick slot machine hit of endorphins — that rush to keep you coming back for more — but I'd much rather just pay some money outright to finally play a game unrestrained by these bizarre restrictions. A boy can dream.
Either way, Critical Ops is definitely a game to watch if you're into FPS on mobile.
Download: Critical Ops (Free w/IAPs)
CounterStrike. In my circle of friends, CounterStrike was king. Unfortunately, I was always mostly a console gamer so any time I'd get a chance to play at a LAN party, I'd get my ass handed to me in short order.
That's why I consider Modern Strike to be the great equalizer. It's essentially a CounterStrike clone on a touchscreen, meaning the twitchy muscle memory from years of keyboard and mouse play don't factor in (although Bluetooth controller support would be amazing).
Modern Strike was mentioned by segag1 in the comments, who says he still plays it practically every day. I used to be a regular player but sort of burnt out on it as you do. Still, I consider Modern Strike to be my favorite FPS for Android. I gave it high praise and I stand by it. It's a fun game that offers a pure multiplayer experience exactly how you'd expect from CounterStrike. Stupid time-delayed chest openings aside, it's a great shooter for gaming on the go.
Download: Modern Strike Online (Free w/IAPs)
Ok, so before Modern Strike, for me, there was Pixel Gun 3D. I hate to brag, but I was absolutely ruthless in this game, playing it religiously every day for months during college. There weren't any global leaderboards that I recall, but I would have been in the top 10 for sure.
I fell in love with it shortly after its initial release. Here was this great shooter with Minecraft-inspired graphics and great controls. Not only was there a full single-player campaign and survival mode, but robust multiplayer as well with great modes like Deadly Games, which mimicked the Hunger Games, where you all start in the middle with no weapons and a package in front of you. You all take off into the woods and proceed to hunt each other down one by one. Just EPIC. King of the Hill maps, Capture The Flag, Team Deathmatch… It felt really complete and I sunk a bunch of hours into it.
But that was just the beginning, apparently. The developers continued to flesh this game out with updates and new maps, and modes, and features, and skins and an in-app currency system and… it kind of lost itself. When I revisited the game a few months later (mobile game burnout is real), the game was still fun and popular but all the menus made things feel a bit cluttered and the new weapons and features felt like distractions from actually playing the game.
It's still worth checking out, but I'll always remember the Pixel Gun 3D glory days.
Download: Pixel Gun 3D (Free w/IAPs)
We want to know what Android games you're playing — even if you're still addicted to Candy Crush or Clash of Clans. Let us know in the comments below or you can join the conversation in our recently revamped forums!
Submit your gaming reviews and opinions!
Google Play Music is an underrated music service that combines a Spotify-like subscription with Pandora-style radio stations and your own music library. Even if you’ve used it from day one, here are some excellent features you might have overlooked.
Shazam is awesome at finding out what song is playing over the stereo at the restaurant, but why download a separate app just for that when Google Play Music is already on your phone? Open it up and tap the search bar. The first search suggestion will read “Identify what’s playing.” Tap this and the app will start listening to the music playing in the room. Once it identifies the song, it will pull it up in search results. From there, you can play the song, save it to your library, or add it to a playlist.
Google Play Music has one huge advantage over other music services: YouTube, and specifically, a companion subscription to YouTube Red (more on that later) if you’re a paying Google Music subscriber.
If you want to watch the music video for the song you’re listening to, it’s probably on YouTube. Google conveniently adds video links to any song that has an official video counterpart uploaded by the artist or hosted by VEVO. Tap the YouTube-shaped icon in the player window on the mobile or web apps and the video will start playing. When you’re done watching it, you can continue with your playlist like normal.
If you like to listen to music while you sleep, you can set a timer to automatically pause your music after a little while—presumably after you’ve fallen asleep and don’t need the tunes anymore. Open up the Settings section on the Google Play Music app and scroll down to Sleep Timer. You can set a timer for up to 12 hours and 59 minutes. Once the timer is up, your music will pause. This works even if you’re casting music to another speaker or sound system in your house.
Google Play Music uses smart recommendations to build its curated playlists and Pandora-style radio stations. If your recommendations aren’t quite good enough, head to Settings in the mobile app’s left-hand menu. Under General, click Improve Your Recommendations (or you can click this link if you’re on the web). This will run you through a couple questions where you can choose genres and artists that you like. Google uses machine learning to learn your musical tastes, so giving it a primer can go a long way towards getting suggestions you actually like.
If Google Play Music has just dropped the ball entirely on your playlist suggestions and streaming radio stations, you can take the nuclear option: wipe out your entire recommendation history. This handy feature (in the Settings section of the mobile app) will force Play Music to forget everything it knows about your musical tastes. All your personal ratings, metadata, and library uploads will stay in place, but Google will start learning how to give you suggestions from scratch. It may take some time to get better suggestions again, but at least Google won’t keep holding that weekend where you listened to nothing but the Spice Girls against you.
Google Play Music handles playlists and radio stations in a somewhat counterintuitive way. When you hit play on a playlist, the app copies that entire playlist into a separate list called your Queue. You can reorder your Queue or add and remove songs however you like and your original playlist will stay the way you left it. Tap the Queue icon (the orange musical note icon in the image above) and you can see and re-arrange everything that’s been added to your list.
The Play Next feature also makes it easy to add songs to your queue. For example, say you’re in the car playing your Road Trip Music playlist. If someone in the back seat wants to hear a particular song, search for it and tap the three-dot menu button on the search result. Tap Play Next and the song will be added to your queue after the one you’re currently listening to. The app will then go right back to your playlist when that song is over. The Queue concept isn’t totally intuitive at first glance, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really flexible.
Like most Google products, Play Music comes with a bunch of built-in keyboard shortcuts you can use to manage your music without touching the mouse. Here are some of the most useful ones:
The Play Music tab needs to be in focus for these shortcuts to work, of course. This is extra helpful if your keyboard’s media keys don’t work natively with Play Music. If they don’t, you can use the Google Play Music extension to map your keys properly to Chrome like this:
Depending on your keyboard, this process may not work entirely. It’s frustrating that you need an extension just to get your media keys working properly, but at least there’s a workaround.
Google Labs are fun sections of services like Gmail where you can try out experimental features the company is developing. Play Music has a few of its own. Open up the Settings section of the Play Music webapp and you’ll see three right now:
Features in this section come and go, so it’s worth checking back every few months to see what Google is testing out.
Google may be awful at branding the crossover between Play Music and YouTube, but it’s actually a powerful combo. Streaming services like Spotify offer a premium subscription that gives you millions of songs for one monthly fee. However, if you subscribe to Google Play Music All Access, you also get a completely ad-free YouTube with YouTube Red. That’s not a bad deal for a subscription many people would already be paying for anyway. You can also download YouTube videos to watch offline and play videos in the background in the YouTube mobile app.
There’s also the rarely-mentioned YouTube Music. This app takes a Pandora-style approach to playing music videos from YouTube. It’s best feature is easily the Offline Mixtape. Every time you’re connected to Wi-Fi, YouTube Music will automatically download up to a hundred songs to your phone that you can listen to when you leave. Offline Mixtape requires a YouTube Red subscription but, again, if you’re already subscribed to Play Music All Access, you’re in. It might be more convenient if Google added this feature to the Play Music app itself, but it’s still handy as a standalone service.
Google doesn’t make it easy to know every feature of its apps—partly because of Google’s tendency to make two of everything—but if you dig a little, there are some really powerful tools hiding underneath the surface. If you haven’t checked it out in a while, or even if you’ve been a subscriber for years, it’s worth exploring again.
Illustration by Sam Wooley.
My office is a mess. So are many areas of my house, to be honest. I don’t like cleaning, so I tend not to bother with cleaning books. Even if they motivate me to clean, everything gets dirty again and, well, what’s the point? But then I met Unfuck Your Habitat.
This is part of Lifehacker’s book review series. Not every life hack can be summed up in a blog post, so we’ve decided to review some of our favorite life-changing books for deeper dives into life’s most important topics.
There are no weekend-long decluttering purges in Unfuck Your Habitat, no pulling all your clothes out of your closet and having a good hard think about each item. Instead, the book is geared to get you moving right away.
Somewhere in the first few chapters, the book had a mini-challenge: take a “before” picture of the nearest flat surface, then pick up five items. Well, I could do that. Later in the chapter, after making the case for tackling work in 20-minute bites, there was a challenge to spend 20 minutes on that same surface. Fine, I thought. I’ll play this game once.
Twenty minutes later, my desk was cleaner than I’d ever seen it—and I had enough extra time to rearrange things on a nearby bookshelf. The job was short and self-contained enough that I didn’t have time to get overwhelmed. And now I was done for the day. This, I thought, I can live with.
Unfuck Your Habitat is for people who are overwhelmed with their mess, whether it’s a little or a lot. And if it is a lot, that’s totally okay. No need to pretend you’ve scrubbed your floors...ever.
On the other hand, if you’re already a neat person but want to reach some next-level minimalism, this isn’t the book for you. Instead, head over to The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
Author Rachel Hoffman understands that her audience includes people with all kinds of reasons for being overwhelmed. Besides just being a busy human being, you might be struggling with depression or with a physical disability that makes it hard to find the energy to clean, or you may have emotional issues stemming from, say, being the child of a hoarder.
While the book is super inclusive, she takes the focus off of the traditional homemaker role that many cleaning books and systems have in mind. Kids get two pages in Unfuck Your Habitat, but dorm room living gets a whole chapter.
Much of this book’s value is its tone of pep talking you into tackling your mess in bite size pieces, and keeping up the good work even when the things you cleaned betray you by—horrors—getting dirty again.
Hoffman doesn’t include many details on the mechanics of cleaning, and points out that you can google that stuff yourself. Instead, she gives a big picture overview of how to get a living space into some semblance of order, and maintain it that way. It’s more about managing your time and your attitude than learning the chemistry of cleaning products or a specific way to sort knick-knacks.
Here’s the chapter breakdown:
After you’ve devoured the book, don’t forget to check out the Unfuck Your Habitat tumblr, which inspired the book. You’ll find an advice column, a series of challenges, and a bunch of before and after pictures that people have sent in. Hoffman encourages taking lots of pictures to document your progress.
Besides structuring your work into 20-minute chunks of time, the most valuable tips in this book relate to maintaining cleanliness on a daily basis.
The pithiest of these: Put things away, not down. As soon as I read this, I realized I am an inveterate put-downer. Why shelve a book if I can just set it down on this table here? Why file papers if I can just put them on top of that book? Before long, this habit leads to...well, to the exact situation in my kitchen that took me three 20/10s to unfuck last week.
But with the new rule, it’s been surprisingly easy to keep surfaces clean after their initial decluttering. I’m a big fan of a list from the tumblr that didn’t make it into the book: Things You Think Take Forever But Really Take Less Than a Minute. For example: putting trash in the trash can instead of leaving it on the counter.
Unfuck Your Habitat is the perfect housekeeping guide for somebody who is overwhelmed with their mess and can’t figure out how to start—or somebody who is always starting marathon cleaning projects only to watch everything go to hell again.
My biggest gripe about the book is just that I wish there was more of it: guidance on dealing with kids, on yard work, on the mess in your car, on how to budget your time when you’re not done decluttering but need to start maintaining the things you’ve already cleaned. I can’t fault the stuff that is there. And as a solid member of its target audience who gave the whole system a try for a few weeks—I believe.
These guy taped a a beautiful avalanche at Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia, Chile. It stopped right before it reached them, and just hovered over them.
Today at the BETT Show in London, two new Chromebooks have been announced. The first is from Acer, the Spin 11 while the second comes from ASUS, the C213. These new Chromebooks are designed specifically for education customers, packing a strong build, compact design, and special features for the target audience.
The former UK national phone company BT announced that it's writing down the value of its Italian operation by £530m because it has been committing accounting fraud for years, triggering a mass sell-off of its shares, wiping £5.5b off the company's valuation. (more…)
Rolls Royce just arranged for a "deferred prosecution" with UK prosecutors over revelations that it had committed jailable offenses by bribing overseas officials in order to secure their business; under this arrangement, prosecutors have allowed Rolls Royce to pay to have the prosecution halted and to have their executives immunized from criminal repercussions for their actions. (more…)
What are the best brain-busting puzzle games for Android?
The touchscreen controls of a smartphone offer a unique opportunity for puzzle games, and arguably they're best suited for our pocket devices because they can be easy to pick up and play when you have a few free moments. we've collected
Last updated January 20, 2017: Revamped list with additional titles.
Bridge Constructor is a great physics-based puzzle game in its own right, but the new spin-off in the Portal universe takes the concept and adds in all the wacky elements from Aperture Laboratories.
Through 60 test chambers, your goal is to get the test vehicles to the end of the course any way you can using portals, propulsion and repulsion gels while avoiding deadly lasers, pits of acid, and sentient turrets. It's an outstanding cross-over title that provides a challenge that will delight fans of Bridge Constructor and Portal alike.
Download: Bridge Constructor Portal ($4.99)
The Room is a widely celebrated puzzle franchise for Android, with three entries offering hours upon hours of challenging puzzle fun. These games are very reminiscent of point-and-click classic adventure series such as Myst and Siberia, and each offer hours and hours of entertainment with some of the best visuals you'll find in an Android game.
Controls are as simple as swiping around the screen and double tapping to focus in on an object or puzzle. As you progress through the game, you'll find objects that will help you find your way out. As you go, more and more of the story is revealed through notes left for you by the Craftsman.
Each game is pretty long and involved, so expect to spend many hours glued to your device as you solve puzzle after puzzle. These are paid games, but if you love a good puzzle challenge they're each well worth the price of admission!
Threes! is a fun and surprisingly cute number-based puzzle game where your goal is to swipe around the grid and match like numbers. But you've got to be strategic because if you fill up the board and run out of moves it's game over!
For a truly unfettered experience, you'll want to buy the full game for no ads or distractions while you play. If you'd prefer to save your money, the free version is also a great option, but once you burn through the set amount of plays you're given to start with, you'll need to watch ads to get more plays.
And believe us, once you get hooked on this game, you won't want to have to wait for ads all the time.
Like all the best puzzle games, Two Dots is simple to learn, difficult to master and highly addictive.
This is the sequel to the wildly popular Dots game, where the main object remains the same: connect as many dots of the same color as you can. The sequel brings new skills to the table, along with 900+ levels to work through.
Once you've gone through the first 10 levels, which act as a tutorial, Two Dots offers a linear adventure of sorts in Treasure Hunt, and a different mode called Expedition once you've reached level 35.
The game has absolutely no ads, and a really unique and clean visual style that you'll love. There are in-app purchases available for shuffles which might help you get through a particularly tricky level but you're better than that, right?
Download: Two Dots (Free w/ IAPs)
Monument Valley is an award-winning puzzle game that features outstanding art and sound design. You play as Ida, a princess who must find her way through fantastical structures which you must manipulate and change to complete the path and help her reach her goal.
The controls are simple as you tap to move the princess while discovering the different ways you can move the structures around. It's an intuitive experience that forces you to look at things from a different perspective. If you've never experienced the majestic wonder and mind-bending puzzles of Monument Valley, you should definitely check it out. You get the original game as well as a new chapter called Ida's Dream with the purchase, while Forgotten Shores features eight new chapters of gameplay which are available via an in-app purchase.
The sequel, Monument Valley 2, is also out and a worthwhile game to check out as well!
Download: Monument Valley ($3.99 w/IAPs)
Download: Monument Valley 2 ($4.99)
Brain It On is an absolutely addicting physics-based puzzle game that requires you to think outside the box to solve each level.
Using your finger or stylus, you must draw lines, shapes, weighted objects, or whatever else you think will solve each screen. Things get progressively creative and difficult as you progress through the over 200 levels, but you'll eventually need to go back and revisit old levels to get three stars to unlock new ones (stars are earned by finishing the level under time within the limit of shapes number of shapes).
It's a really fun game with multiple solutions available for each level, and is fun to play collaboratively as a group.
Download: Brain It On (Free w/ IAPs)
Developed by SQUARE ENIX, this is an amazing series of puzzle games that takes the characters and theme from an established gaming franchise, and throws them into a brand new puzzle-based adventure. So far, three franchises have been given the GO treatment — Hitman, Lara Croft and Deus Ex — with each garnering positive reviews from players and critics alike. You don't necessarily have to be fans of these franchises to enjoy their GO entries, though fans will likely enjoy the reimagined way of playing their favorite games.
These are highly stylized turn-based puzzlers that will provide hours of challenging fun — and best of all they're all currently on sale, so you can get all three for the price of an extra large coffee. Let's take a look at the individual games:
This was the first franchise to be converted into the GO puzzle format, and it still holds up. You play as Agent 47 and must work your way through heavily-guarded compounds using all the same techniques found in the full Hitman games you've played on PC or console: disguises, distractions, sniper rifles and of course 47's iconic Silverballer pistols. There are multiple ways to beat each level, whether you want to be silent and sneaky, or forceful and deadly. You pick what kind of Hitman to be, as you work towards assassinating your main targets.
The Tomb Raider is back in this challenging entry that adds new wrinkles to the turn-based puzzles introduced with Hitman Go. Lara Croft is athletic and adventurous, and her GO game reflects that with puzzles that have her dodging boobytraps and deadly enemies as you work your way through 100 levels split into six chapters. It's an award-winning game that lures you in with its outstanding visuals and keeps you playing with its increasingly challenging puzzles.
Download: Lara Croft GO ($0.99)
Deus Ex is the latest franchise to get the GO treatment, and this might be the best one yet. With visuals that reflect the cyberpunk stylings of Deus Ex, and new hacking gameplay elements, you play as Adam Jensen who's working to unravel a complicated mystery as you sneak your way through a well-guarded fortress. This one probably features the most fleshed-out storyline of the three, and also features time-limited puzzles along with a level editor, so you can design, share and play levels from the game's community.
These are our picks for the best, but which do you play? Let us know in the comments below!
Updated January 2018: Added Bridge Constructor Portal to our list along with Monument Valley 2.
Image: David Weekly/Flickr
Western Union admitted it behaved criminally through its "willful failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and aiding and abetting wire fraud," reports Forbes. They've agreed to pay a $586 million fine. From the Forbes article:
In a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission on Thursday, authorities describe insufficient or poorly enforced policies that resulted in the funneling of hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from illegal gambling, fraud and drug and human trafficking.
...
In one case, illegal immigrants from China sent money back to the people who smuggled them across the border. With the help of employees, the payments were structured so that they didn't trigger reporting requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act, say authorities.
In another example, Western Union processed hundreds of thousands of transactions for an international scam, wherein fraudsters directed people to send money in order to claim a prize or help a relative. Western Union employees often processed the payments in return for a cut of the proceeds, say authorities.
From CFO:
Wifredo A. Ferrer, the U.S. Attorney in Miami, said the misconduct reflected “a flawed corporate culture that failed to provide a checks and balances approach to combat criminal practices.”
“Western Union’s failure to implement proper controls and discipline agents that violated compliances policies enabled the proliferation of illegal gambling, money laundering and fraud-related schemes,” he added.
I'm not a fan of civil asset forfeiture, which is basically a way for law enforcement to steal money and assets from anyone without charging them with a crime. But in this case, it seems appropriate for the government seize the assets of the CEO of Western Union, Hikmet Ersek, until he can prove that his $8.5 million salary didn't depend on Western Union's admitted criminal activities.
Announced at I/O 2016 as a new model for software that doesn’t require a full download, the first Android Instant Apps are now live as part of limited testing. Initial partners include BuzzFeed, Wish, Periscope, and Viki, with Google also beginning to open up the experience for other third-party developers.
All Chromebooks new in 2017 will support Android apps out of the box. An update will not be required. Owners will be able to take the Chromebook home, open it up and immediately access the Google Play Store. The news comes from a single line of text on Google’s list of Chromebooks compatible with Android apps. “All Chromebooks launching in 2017 and after as well as the… Read More
If you’ve ever tried to clean out your closet or garage, you know getting rid of stuff isn’t easy, even if you never use it. Here’s what leads us to get so attached to stuff, and how that makes it hard to let go.
From childhood, we form a connection with the things around us, especially those we personally own. This video from TED explains three reasons why we get attached.
Of course, how attached you are to your things varies depending on the culture you were raised in, but most everyone experiences some degree of connection to their stuff. Check out the video above for details on each effect.
Why Are We So Attached to Our Things? | TED-Ed (YouTube)
The Good Junk (@thegoodjunk) is a blog which posts a beautiful gadget a day. Not all of them are 40-year-old Braun or B&O appliances, either! (A lot of them are.) Pictured above is the Casio XW-PD1 performance synthesizer, which was made in 19A5. Below is a MINITEL terminal.
Samsung has a new, um, battery of tests for its upcoming phones.
Now that Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 fire investigation has concluded, the company is looking to the future, which means convincing customers that its upcoming phones are safe for everyday use.
To reassure the public, and to ensure that no future incidents crop up, Samsung has changed its phone-testing facilities around the world to include an eight-point battery safety check. While many of these checks are currently in use at existing plants, including visual and durability inspections and a process for ensuring that voltage leaks are not prevalent, the company is implementing four brand new tests, including the very uncommon and expensive task of X-raying all of its phones prior to shipping them to consumers.
Samsung believes that any and all of these four new tests, which will run across its entire phone lineup and not just its flagships, would have caught the manufacturing defects present in both sets of Galaxy Note 7 batteries. The company also plans to run what's known as an "accelerated aging" test on its phones, which will simulate two weeks of real-world usage in just five days.
The fact that Samsung experienced such a broad series of battery misfortunes in a short period is both disconcerting and frustrating, but based on a survey Android Central performed in October, many customers feel comfortable putting the debacle behind them, and look forward to future Samsung devices.
The Galaxy Note 7 was very short lived after handsets began to explode. There have been reports and rumors that the battery was the root cause but results of an official investigation had yet to be announced. Today, Samsung has confirmed that the Note 7’s issues were indeed battery-related, specifically due to positive and negative battery cells making contact…
Unless you have a company buying licenses for you, tools like Photoshop, Pro Tools, Maya, or even Windows can be a serious bite out of your wallet. Here are some more affordable options to those normally pricey apps that’ll help you stop fretting and get more done.
The first one’s a bit obvious. If you don’t have the money for Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions, or never purchased a copy of Photoshop for yourself, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP for short) is for you. It’s feature-rich, powerful (even moreso with the GIMPShop plugin), and with just a little work, can work pretty much exactly like Photoshop when you need it to.
If you have a little trouble getting started with it though, that’s okay—it can look a little daunting, but this cheat sheet full of shortcuts and tips can help you navigate it and get up to speed quickly. After all, it’s your favorite PhotoShop alternative for a reason. If you’d like more alternatives, Windows users can try Paint.net (free), and Mac users can check out the highly-acclaimed Pixelmator ($30.)
Microsoft’s Office suite is the productivity standard in offices around the globe, but when it comes to your computer at home, if you don’t want to shell out for a license, or don’t have access to it through other means, you’ll still need something to work with—especially if you have to work with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint presentations others send you. Enter Libre Office, our long-favorite alternative if you need a local, non-web-based office suite.
Libre Office has come a long way in recent years, too. What used to look very much like a stereotypical “design by committee,” utilitiarian suite of tools has now come into its own as a more than capable and elegant competitor to Office that can still open Office documents, edit them, and save them for seamless use by people using Office. And of course, it’s completely free.
Adobe Illustrator is a must-have if you work with vector graphics, build logos, or even format documents for print or other publication, but again, if you’re not down to shell out for Creative Cloud subscriptions, Inkscape has been a long-time favorite for, well, just about everything you can do in Illustrator without the bells and whistles that most people don’t actually bother using. Plus it’s free, open-source, and cross-platform.
Inkscape also has a large user community and tons of guides on its tutorials blog to help you get started with it and up to speed quickly if you need a little help. We discussed it more in detail in our guide to replacing Creative Suite with affordable apps, along with some alternatives if Inkscape doesn’t suit your fancy.
If you’re interested in 3D modeling, 3D printing, or 3D animation, Blender is your tool of choice, at least to get started in the field. Sure, Maya and other tools like it are used in animation and modeling studios, but if you want to get started, or even model your own objects for 3D printing, Blender is the way to go.
It can be a little tricky to make sense of at first, though, and our 3D modeling night school can help you get started. If that’s not enough for you, this free ebook from Wikibooks is another great tool to help you learn Blender.
Make no mistake, there’s no replacement for good browsing hygiene and smart sense when it comes to what you click, what you download, and the sites you visit. However, it doesn’t hurt to have a good antivirus and/or combo antimalware tool on your computer at the same time, or especially on the computer of someone who may not have the same web street smarts you might have.
For that reason, Avira is our pick for the best for Windows, and Sophos is our pick for the best for macOS when it comes to antivirus, and MalwareBytes when it comes to antimalware. If you prefer something else? We have more options. Bottom line, there’s absolutely no reason to pay for pricey antivirus or antimalware subscriptions, and free tools—despite some sleazy practices from some of late—do the same job without the bloat and cruft that comes with big names you might recognize from office computers everywhere.
LMMS, formerly the Linux MultiMedia Studio, is a great, powerful, and free alternative to Apple’s Garageband, or even pricier, industry standard apps like Pro Tools. It probably won’t replace it if you’re looking to work professionally, but if you’re an amateur at home, this free, cross-platform tool is worth checking out.
Aside from turning your computer into a music sequencing machine, whatever computer you’re using, it’s richly featured for multi-track editing in a way that Audacity, our favorite simple recording and audio editing tool, isn’t. From sequencing, composing, mixing, and editing to effects mixing and built-in instruments for effects, loops, and other sounds, it’s all there in LMMS.
Virtualization isn’t just something for geeks to play with—it’s a great way to test out new tools and software and make sure it doesn’t wreak havoc on your computer. Virtualbox, free and cross-platform, may not strictly be the best or most efficient tool for the job, but it’s features and benefit-to-cost ratio is unmatched. It’s super powerful, and completely free.
Our getting started guide to Virtualbox can help you with the basics if you’ve ever thought “man I wish I had a computer to test this one that wasn’t mine,” and our power user’s guide can help you out if this is all old hat to you. If you’re curious what you’re missing by using Virtualbox over a tool like Fusion or Parallels, check out our virtualization showdown comparing all three here.
It’s hard to find a video editing tool that’s both good and free, especially compared to common at-home tools like iMovie or professional-grade tools like Adobe Premiere. However, if you are looking for an alternative, DaVinci Resolve, which started life as a complex (and expensive) color grading tool, picked up video editing features a few years ago. Since then it’s earned a name for itself as being a comprehensive, solid alternative video editor that—while a little tough for beginners to climb into—is robust enough once you have the hang of it to replace other, more expensive tools. There’s a paid version if you do want to shell out for it, and a comparison between the free and paid versions here.
Of course Linux deserves a spot on the list. Which distribution you use is, of course, entirely up to you—as is which desktop environment you choose—but if you’re moving from macOS or Windows to Linux, either for simplicity’s sake or because you don’t want to shell out for new licenses, or you just want to bring an old computer back to life, Ubuntu and Linux Mint are your two best options for getting the hang of things.
If you want to drop right into the deep end, Arch Linux is a favorite around these parts, but it’s not super newbie-friendly. Even so, we have a great guide on setting it up—and learning a lot about linux in the process. Also, make sure to check out our Lifehacker Pack for Linux for the essential, must-have tools to be productive and make the most of your new Linux installation.
Finally, everyone knows—and probably uses—Google Drive, (formerly Google Docs, because Google.) We live and die by it around here at Lifehacker, and combined with Gmail, it’s fast, flexible, free, available on any computer that has a web browser, and it’s powerful to boot. Sure, it may not have some of the perks of a traditional desktop office suite, but there are ways around that.
Combined with the wealth of plugins, add-ons, and other tools that can supercharge Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and you have a pretty powerful set of tools that you don’t have to pay a dime to use. And we haven’t even discussed the cheat sheets, templates, and other tricks to make yourself a G Suite ninja yet, either.
Illustration by Angelica Alzona. Additional images by Blender Foundation, Nemo, OpenClips, and Ase (Shutterstock), and Eduardo Quagliato.
Lifehacker’s Weekend Roundup gathers our best guides, explainers, and other posts on a certain subject so you can tackle big projects with ease. For more, check out our Weekend Roundup and Top 10 tags.
The mobile hotspot on your phone can be super-useful, but it's also a little tedious to get it set up when you need it. There's a new feature rolling out as part of Google Play Services 10.2 that makes it much easier. It's essentially automatic with a feature called Instant Tethering. Not everyone will have it right away, though.
Instant Tethering links up devices that are associated with your Google account to make it easier to stay online when a connection drops.
Read MoreGoogle is rolling out a new feature called 'Instant Tethering' in Play Services 10.2 [Update: More details] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Looking for the absolute best Android apps, utilities, and games, the Play Store has to offer? You've come to the right place!
There are a lot of Android apps out there, and we've rounded up the very best across each of the Play Store's major categories. Keep in mind that these are our subjective choices, and are always welcome to hear about what you're digging in the comments, so don't be shy!
Amazon's Kindle remains the de facto standard for e-reading and offers the widest marketplace for books and reference materials. The app includes a wide range of features, including definition look-up, text scaling, contrast adjustment, and location memory. You can even load Mobi and PDF files to be read in the Kindle app (though not ePub).
Download: Kindle (Free w/ IAPS)
Splashtop is a remote desktop access app that allows users to get access to everything they need on your home or work PC. So long as your computer is on, the desktop client is running, and you have an active subscription, you can use your Android device to click around your desktop, open applications, browse files, and make use of touch shortcuts to get more done faster. Encryption is enabled for business customers concerned about security.
Download: Splashtop (Free w/ subscription)
In no uncertain terms, Comixology made comics on mobile popular. Issues are made available to purchase the same day they're out on print. There are a bunch of free issues available, and the selection spans major publishers like Marvel, DC, IDW, and Disney. You'll also find related news and podcasts tucked away in there.
Download: Comixology (Free w/ IAPs)
Lynda remains a top source for current, high-quality instructional videos. Though the bulk of the service relies on a hefty $25/month subscription fee, there are a lot of free videos available. Many of the areas of subject matter are technical and surround certain types of software, but you'll also find photography, music, art, and other major topics covered.
Download: Lynda.com (Monthly subscription required)
IMDb is an invaluable tool for figuring out which films and shows actors are from, digging up obscure quotes, and seeing which shows are topping the charts. After watching an HD trailer, you can find showtimes at theatres near you, or mark it on your watchlist to catch it later. Between the full photo galleries, recent news, and information on every movie under the sun, IMDb is insanely useful.
Mint.com is an outstanding organizational app to stay on top of your budget. It plugs directly into your existing bank accounts and identifies transactions across broad categories so it can visualize the information in helpful way. You can set monthly budget limits for different types of activities, and manually add in transactions that aren't using any of your bank cards. Investment totals made through your bank are displayed here as well.
Endomondo is still one of the best all-around fitness trackers available on Android. You can track speed, distance, and time for running, walking, cycling, or any other overland activity and share the results to your friends on Facebook. If you're willing to go with the pro version, you're able to enjoy goal setting features, an audio coach, and view detailed graphs for your progress throughout a workout. You'll also find that a wide range of popular fitness bands and accessories will feed data into Endomondo.
Download: Endomondo (Free w/ IAPs, or $4.99 for Pro version
Tinder is a hugely popular location-based dating app. Users log in with their Facebook credentials, which populates a Tinder profile with all of their interests and a profile image. You're then presented with a stream of potential matches based on those nearby and with overlapping interests and common Facebook friends. With a swipe, users anonymously decide if they like someone or not, and they get a notification when someone they picked has picked them as well. Then it's just a matter of using the chat system to taking things from there.
Plex is a widely-respected media-sharing app that helps you get content on your Android device from your PC. Just run the media server software on your computer, and you can access music, video, and pictures from anywhere. Extra features, like Chromecast support and cloud saving, are available with a PlexPass subscription.
Download: Plex (Free w/subscription)
Medscape is a rich medical reference library that allows users to pour over thousands of procedures, drugs, and news articles. Specialities can be tagged so that relevant information can be made more prominent. The data is pulled in through WebMD, which is highly reputable in the sphere. One of the more useful sections for everyday users is a drug database and cross-referencing for potential interactions. For those really into medicine, there's an educational section where you can read up on the latest research and catch embedded videos going over the content.
Spotify is arguably the best music streaming service out there, featuring a massive library of tracks, as well as a station generator and some curated, mood and genre based offerings if you don't feel like making a playlist yourself.
There's also a social emphasis with Spotify, giving users the option to share and play friend's playlists to help them discover music and share what they're listening to on social media sites. You can stream shuffled music for free (with ads) or subscribe for unlimited access to everything Spotify offers.
Download: Spotify (Free, $9.99/month for premium)
Flipboard has become the new way people take in web content on their phone. Users build up a list of subscriptions, and content is fed into a beautiful interface. Swipes cause each page to turn smoothly, and a single tap on the header image takes you into the full text of an article. Though reading through your favorite sites is great, you can build your own magazines built from web content and share them with the Flipboard community at large.
Action Launcher brings a ton of thoughtful features plus lots of additional tweaks that you expect from a custom launcher. Replace the traditional app drawer with a slide-in Quickdrawer, maximize on-screen real estate with Shutters and tweak the home screen search bar with the customizable Quickbar. Beyond that, Action Launcher also offers theming options, suggestions for app icon replacements and a beta feature to normalize icon sizes.
The best features of Action Launcher 3 require a paid upgrade to the Plus version, but it's worth every penny.
Download: Action Launcher 3 (Free)
Snapseed is a highly polished photo editing app built smartly for touch input. Tapping navigation buttons along the bottom allow users to switch between tools, such as rotating, cropping, color correction, and filters. Then, swiping up and down on the picture lets you select the type of adjustment, and going left and right changes the amount of adjustment. It's a great interface for smaller screens, and provides all the major editing you might need to do.
Trello is a task app the can scale as large as company-wide project handing, to as small as grocery lists. Set reminders, add labels, organize in collections called boards, assign other members, attach pictures and documents, and much more. Trello has a very good-looking web client too, making it easy to manage your tasks by PC as well.
Amazon is the granddaddy of online retail. If you're shopping for anything at all, it's worth checking out to see what Amazon's offering. They have crazy deals all the time, just about every physical object you could possibly want to acquire, and with Prime, you'll get it on your doorstep lickety-split. A separate price check app can help by scanning barcodes of physical products and seeing if you can get it any cheaper on Amazon.
Like it or not, Facebook is the most ubiquitous social network out there. Everybody's on it, sharing everything they do. With the Android app, you can quickly post status updates, share links through the browser, upload and tag pictures, send instant messages, and leave likes on your friends' status updates. On many devices, Facebook information is tied to your address book, ensuring that their information is up-to-date and the image is their latest profile pic.
theScore remains a high-quality, broad-field sports app that helps you get all the news you could possibly want. NFL, NBA, NHL, EPL, UFC, and more are covered with news, scores, pictures, and video clips. Users can mark teams or players as favorites so they can track what's up more easily.
Tasker lets you set up a wide range of tasks to execute automatically given certain circumstances. You can set antenna to go off when you leave a certain location, turn on an app after tapping an NFC tag, or mute your ringer after connecting to a specific Wi-Fi network. With the help of third parties plugging into Tasker, you have a ton of options for if/then statements here.
Uber has become such a force in the sphere of transportation that it has displaced the entire taxi industry in many major cities. Uber acts as the go-between for pedestrians looking for a ride and a legion of private drivers. Uber drivers are vouched for by users to ensure security, and thanks to GPS, you can find the closest one easily. Prices are dictated by supply of drivers, which means you can get some very reasonable fares, though there are occasionally surges in pricing during busy periods. Payments are made through Uber, so there's no need for cash at any stage. If you're lucky enough to be in a city with Uber service, this is hands-down the way to get around.
Download: Uber (Free, plus fare)
TripIt lets you store all of your travel plans, including information about your itinerary, hotel, and car rental bookings in one convenient location. It can import this information direct from your email box, and you can easily share your travel plans with your family and friends. It'll even add your trips to your calendar.
TripIt is a free app and service for a basic set of features, but the real benefits come in when you subscribe to TripIt Pro for $49 per year. You get updates on any changes to your flights such as delays or gate changes, and it will also inform you when a better flight becomes available and will let you change your flight plans in-app.
Download: TripIt (Free or $49.99/year subscription)
You might be using Accuweather right now on your Android, whether you know it or not. The longtime weather service powers the weather data on many apps and widgets, including those pre-loaded on many handsets by manufacturers. They use Accuweather for a reason: it's dependable and damn accurate.
And why should you use Accuweather? That accuracy here is combined with a clean, concise app that is easy to navigate and easy to understand.
Download: Accuweather (Free, or $2.99 for premium)
Beautiful Widgets is a full complement of home screen widgets, including weather, time, and battery. Though Android includes many of those natively, the real selling point with is that Beautiful Widgets has a whole store full of styles to chose from. Combination widgets which include multiple data types, such as weather and clock, can use different themes together to create a really unique look.
Download: Beautiful Widgets ($2.69)
Muzei is a simple, gorgeous way of livening up your wallpaper rotation. By default, the background is blurred, and with a double-tap, it leaps into focus. You can set how long it takes for a new wallpaper to come in, or decide to leave the wallpaper permanently in focus. An open framework allows other extension apps to find and pick wallpapers for you, either based on your location, social network, cloud collection, and many other sources.
Google originally designed the Gboard for the iPhone, and they took their time making it available for Android. The wait was worth it, as Google Keyboard has been rebranded and updated with great new features including integrated web search. The Gboard is completely free, supports gesture typing for both individual words and entire sentences, a bounty of languages, and a modest choice of themes.
Pocket Casts does what any good podcast player should do: it loads quickly, has great discovery tools, has effects for cutting down on silences, and it looks great doing it. Shifty Jelly, the company behind Pocket Casts, has put a lot of love into making the app as full-featured as possible without alienating beginners just looking for an easy-to-use podcast app.
With tablet support, Chromecast output, and easy ways to store content on microSD cards, Pocket Casts is our pick for the best podcast app on Android.
Download: Pocket Casts ($3.99)
PinOut is a brilliant reimagining of the classic pinball action we're all familiar with into an endless arcade format, created by the award-winning developers behind Smash Hit. The game features sharp, futuristic graphics and smooth controls as it pits you in a race against the clock to see how far you can make it on one ball.
PinOut is a free download from the Google Play Store, but you might want to spend $2.99 on the one-time upgrade to premium to unlock the ability to start from previous checkpoints you've reached.
Download: PinOut (Free w/ IAPs)
Sky Force Reloaded is, simply, one of the finest games on Android. Featuring frantic gameplay, dazzling graphics, and a deep upgrade system it will have you coming back and playing for hours on end.
The story picks up after the events of Sky Force 2014 with General Mantis' daughter picking up the cause of her fallen father. Most stages feature an epic boss battle with her in a massive warship, but first you have to shoot and navigate your way through intense waves of laser-blasting tanks, turrets, and helicopters. New missions are unlocked by collecting medals, which are earned by saving all the humans, destroying all enemies, and staying untouched through a mission.
Download: Sky Force: Reloaded (Free)
Fans of Texas Hold 'em will be familiar with PokerStars. It stacked with features you'll love: millions of online players, frequent tournaments, multiple game styles to choose from and in-game table chat. Actual gambling apps aren't available through the Google Play Store, so you're playing with play money here — which you can buy through in-app purchases, or you can hold out for a free spin at the slots to get some starting funds once you're out.
Download: PokerStars Poker: Texas Hold'em (Free w/ IAPs)
Asphalt 8 is an over-the-top, white-knuckled racing game for Android. Power-ups litter the fantastic courses set in real-world locations, which can help you launch off ramps for amazing (and physically unlikely) stunts. Hopefully in the process you can trash some of the competition in explosively cinematic crashes. Some freemium elements are employed, such as purchasable currency and premium power-ups, but on the whole, the game is entirely playable without spending a cent.
Download: Asphalt 8: Airborne (Free, IAPs)
FIFA Mobile offers all of the excitement of a live footie match to your Android device. There are four game modes to choose from: you start out with Live Events and Attack Mode, and unlock Leagues and Season once your profile reaches level five. Controls include the standard virtual button and joystick layout, or you can try out some great finger-friendly gesture controls. No doubt soccer fans will appreciate the top-notch graphics and real player models.
Download: FIFA Mobile (Free, IAPs)
Those are our picks for the very best apps for Android, but there are a lot of apps out there and new ones are coming out all the time. Leave a comment with your favorites!
Zim & Zou make these delightful hand-cut paper buildings for their Forest Folks display in Dubai. (more…)
