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When life sucks and all you can do is scream, punk music is there for you. To give you an outlet, this playlist features some of the best music to come out of the punk genre.

This playlist, curated by Spotify, features music from punk bands from Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys, Green Day, Ramones, Buzzcocks, and tons of other pillars of punk music. It’s the perfect compilation to put on when you’re angry, you feel helpless, and you need to scream. Or if you simply live in 2016.

Welcome to our Featured Playlist series. Each week, we’ll share a new themed playlist, embedded for your convenience! You can copy the track list to your service of choice, or listen right here. Have a sweet playlist of your own? Share it with us in the comments below!

Photo by Sandra Druschke.

 Announced earlier this year, the PillDrill is a simple system designed to take some of the pain out of remembering to take medication – taking things between those big plastic pill boxes with the help of a little 21st century connectivity. The system is built around the Pill Drill Hub, which offers up an audio/visual reminder when the time comes to take a dose. Once the pills are taken and… Read More

 Google has now filed its official response to the EU’s antitrust charges against its Android mobile OS. The company had previously been granted a deadline extension by the European Commission, which kicked off a formal investigation into Android back in April. Read More

Earlier this week, Deadline revealed that New Line Cinema would be revisiting the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien. Rather than adapting one of his many novels or stories, director James Strong will be helming a film about the author himself, which has the potential to give viewers an entirely new way of looking at the works that he’s most famous for.

Middle Earth is described as following Tolkien’s "early life and love affair with Edith Bratt," as well as his service to the British Army during the First World War. The film, to be written by Angus Fletcher, is reportedly based on years of archival research on Tolkien’s life.

Tolkien had a challenging upbringing. Born in South Africa in 1892, he and his family moved to England when he was a...

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Thanks Oreo Cat.

Here’s something you didn’t know you needed: Former Doctor Who star David Tennant reciting relaxing passages to soothe stressed out house pets. The British insurance company More Than created the two films, which are “scientifically designed with the intention of reducing stress caused by fireworks and loud noises.” There’s one for dogs and one for cats, but they both work equally well for humans battling post-election stress too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xAFSNn335E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0xL2Q7D384

[via tennantnews.blogspot.com]

Courtesy of Ricky Tan on Twitter.

Aarian Marshall reports that poor towns are ripping up pothole-ridden roads rather than pay to maintain them.

Repaving roads is expensive, so Montpelier instead used its diminishing public works budget to take a step back in time and un-pave the road. Workers hauled out a machine called a “reclaimer” and pulverized the damaged asphalt and smoothed out the road’s exterior. They filled the space between Vermont’s cruddy soil and hardier dirt and gravel up top with a “geotextile”, a hardy fabric that helps with erosion, stability and drainage.

In an era of dismal infrastructure spending, where the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the country’s roads a D grade, rural areas all over the country are embracing this kind of strategic retreat.

It's also true that some rural towns paved unnecessarily and bizarrely. When I lived in the southwest, I'd sometimes run into grids of perfectly black country roads gridding through the empty flat llano, like something put into Sim City before you even get started on what buildings you zone for. Oil money.

Which is to say this sounds like an infrastructure problem, but in many cases it's just coming to terms with the reality of life in the country: "most of the community leaders interviewed by the report’s authors said their residents approved of de-paving, especially if agencies kept them informed about the process."

Photo: Deborah Fitchett (CC-BY-2.0)

Mink-holding should be a professional sport, as it seems harder to hold a mink for 8 seconds than to ride a bull. Coyote Peterson tries to hold an Alaskan mink, which promptly shows why members of the weasel family are known for weaseling out. (more…)

I feel like I've lost a year of my life expectancy just watching this. (more…)

It might feel like years ago by now, but it was just this past Monday when we all went bonkers over a dramatic video from the new installment of Planet Earth, wherein an iguana is seen escaping a gaggle of snakes. Now that we’re on the other side of the presidential election, and I think it’s safe to say we all need a little breather.

So let’s go back to that scene from Planet Earth II. How great! And actually, I’ll do you one better, because the BBC released a 360-degree video — also narrated by David Attenborough — that brings you behind the scenes of that particular shoot. It’s a fascinating glimpse both at how it was made as well as the environment that the crew was documenting. You can watch it above in your browser, or pull it up...

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Following an update for iOS this past summer, Adobe’s Lightroom for Android now supports all RAW file types, including .orf, .raw, .rw2, .cr2, and .nef. This means you no longer have to use Adobe’s DNG format – which had limited support for most camera models – or shoot images directly from the app.

Version 2.2 lets you import RAW images directly from your camera using a USB OTG (On-The-Go) cable to access PTP (Picture-Transfer-Protocol) mode. From there, you can use the app to fine-tune the image as normal.

RAW files allow editors to tweak images at a more detailed level since they have not been compressed, thus giving full access to data like white balance, shadows, highlights, saturation, and exposure. It’s a feature...

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Samsung has a tendency to throw stuff at the wall, and see what sticks. I don't mean that in a negative way - many of their seemingly-bizarre experiments became wildly popular (see: S7 edge). A patent application submitted by Samsung shows their concept of a foldable smartphone, and it's interesting to say the least.

There have been a few attempts at a foldable smartphone in the past - the ill-fated Kyocera Echo comes to mind.

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Patent drawings of a Samsung foldable phone design published was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Welcome to Kitten Academy, hosts of a livestream featuring "kittens learning to cat".

"If there is nothing going on, you can rewind the stream up to 4 hours to see action," the description promises. But the kittens are out in full force this morning.

Brief FAQ:
- We are kitten fosters, trying to help rescued cats get adopted by loving homes.
- We're in Illinois, USA.
- Yes, it's really live 24/7... forever.
- We turn off the lights at night, but we have good night-vision set up. For the cats, it seems dark.
- We don't get paid for this -- we pay for this.
- This stream began on April 20th, 2016. YouTube's time is incorrect.
- ADOPTION: Kittens may be adopted through Animal Outreach Society of McHenry

There is a "cheat sheet" to help ID specific kittens. GIFs and other kittenalia are collected at @kitten_academy. Here's a nice video of the kittens sleeping:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1MUP-egomU

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.

Games

Batman - The Telltale Series

Android Police coverage: 'BATMAN - The Telltale Series' available on Android, only first episode for now

TellTale's latest 3D adventure game tackles the company's biggest pop culture property yet: The Gosh-Darned Batman.

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40 new and notable Android games from the last 2 weeks (10/25/16 - 11/8/16) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

According to the video description:

“Buddy ran into this glass door once, and he wouldn't come through without me closing the door and opening it in front of him for a good week. This is one of the times I decided to record it, and boy am I glad I did!”

If your dog or cat is stressed out, plop them down in front of the TV to watch these movies designed to keep their attention and calm them down. Oh, and they’re narrated by David Tennant.

The videos, from More Than Pet Insurance, were made with the help of animal behaviorists and are guided by scientific research. For example, the dog video (shown above) was shot in a dog’s color vision and feature slow-moving scenery filled with a cast of sedentary dogs. David Tennant, who you might know from Doctor Who or Jessica Jones, speaks over the video with words and cadences that are designed to keep dogs relaxed.

The cat video (shown above) shows a variety of animate and inanimate objects through a cat’s favorite viewpoint: a window. There are swimming fish, swaying trees, and of course, the soothing tones of Tennant’s voice. Both the dog and cat videos are designed to be looped for your pets, and they’re specifically useful for dogs and cats that get stressed from loud noises like fireworks.

Woofering Heights and Peer Window via Science of Us

The most recognizable scooter brand in the world is going electric. Vespa will make an all-electric scooter to be sold sometime in the latter half of 2017. The news was announced by Vespa’s parent company, Piaggio, two days ahead of the Esposizione Internazionale Ciclo e Motociclo (EICMA), or the Milan Motorcycle Show.

Piaggio published a photo of a concept version of the electrified two-wheeler, which you can see above. It’s called the Vespa Elettrica, and it has a stark metal body — gasoline-powered Vespas are made out of steel, for what it’s worth — with electric blue accents. (I think the combination looks gorgeous, so here’s hoping most of it translates to the final version.) Piaggio says it will share more details later in the week...

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Over the weekend I wrote about some of my experiences with USB-C over the past year. They are, in short, mixed. I’ve had brief glimpses of the future that USB-C promises: a single port and a single cable for all gadgets. But figuring out how to get to that future means dealing with infuriatingly bad cables and hubs and trying to understand a hilariously complicated admixture of different protocols like Thunderbolt, HDMI, and DisplayPort that also theoretically work with this one single cable (plus all the dongles it currently requires).

But friends, I have not even come close to scratching the surface. And I’m here to tell you that reading Google+ posts about USB-C charging specifications is strangely relaxing (at least when compared to...

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There are new smartphones hitting the market constantly, but which is the best to pick up when you’re trying to save a buck or two? We’ve seen some great launches this summer and we’re only expecting more over the coming months, but for now, let’s go over the best affordable Android smartphones you can go pick up today…

more…

Filed under: Google Corporate

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation publishes several excellent podcasts, notably the As It Happens feed; like every podcast in the world, these podcasts are available via any podcast app in the same way that all web pages can be fetched with all web browsers -- this being the entire point of podcasts. (more…)

Mental health is a complex thing—it can depend on how you’re feeling physically, how well you’re taking care of yourself, and what else is going on in your life. This chart tracks all of the above, and it can work in your bullet journal or as a spreadsheet, as you prefer.

http://lifehacker.com/the-bullet-jou…

The top section of the chart is for physical symptoms: if you’re getting headaches, or can’t sleep, you’ll mark it there. The next section, highlighted above, is for habits that can affect your mood. If you’re taking medication, you can track it here. There are also spaces for sleep, caffeine, alcohol, and TV watching in this example. When you make your own, of course, you can adapt it to whatever habits matter to you personally.

The last section is for self-care, to make sure that you don’t forget the essentials. Read more at the link below for other ways to track and manage your mental health.

Here’s How to Use a Bullet Journal for Better Mental Health | BuzzFeed News

During the I/O 2016 Keynote presentation, and again at the October 4th Pixel announcement, Google made brief references to newly added support for seamless updates in Nougat. To make this work, many changes had to be made to the structure of Android and its assorted system partitions. As a result, there have also been some changes to the fastboot utility many of us use when new factory images become available.

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Android 7.1 feature spotlight: A closer look at seamless updates, partition changes, and new fastboot commands was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Interspecies friends.

[via]

Google's entry into the connected home market looks unassuming, but has thus far proved to be amusing. Even though it might be lacking in features and integrations right now, that could easily change down the road. In the spirit of Home's release, iFixit has given us their sacred teardown tradition to determine repairability for the smart speaker. Complete with photos and x-ray shots of the whole process, the process showed a few surprises.

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iFixit's Google Home teardown reveals Chromecast guts was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

 With more online shoppers turning to sites like Amazon, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have had to step up their competition on the e-commerce front – including by offering faster deliveries – or risk losing customers. The latest to join the fight is PetSmart, which today is rolling out a redesigned, mobile-friendly website offering same-day, scheduled deliveries… Read More

Android: When you get an Android update on your phone, your apps may not already be ready for the new version. AppChecker helps you find out which version of Android your apps are targeting.

When making apps, Android developers can choose a “target” version of Android that they’re aiming for. This usually means that it’s compatible with that version, and backwards compatible with anything below it. However, if any new features come out, targeting a lower version says that the app isn’t ready to support those features (at least in the way Google wants). So, for example, an app that targets Android Marshmallow may not be able to use the system-wide blocked numbers list introduced in Android Nougat.

If you’re not sure which version of Android your apps are targeting, AppChecker can show you. It reveals which version of Android’s TargetAPI (the technical name for Android’s version targeting) that your apps are shooting for. If you’re trying to figure out why a particular feature isn’t supported, or just wondering if you’re ready for a new Android update, this can help.

AppChecker | Google Play Store via Ghacks

Many of us have been talking our way around this issue for the past week without directly confronting it, so I feel like now’s as good a time to address it as any: Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops are not designed for professional use.

This should come as no surprise to those who’ve long perceived the Mac platform as inward-looking, limited in compatibility, and generally worse value for money than comparable Windows alternatives. Pros are smart with their tools and their money, after all. But the change with Apple’s 2016 generation of MacBook Pros is that those downsides have been amped up — more expensive and less compatible than ever before — to an extreme that exposes the fallacy of the continued use of the Pro moniker. These are...

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If it’s filled with puppies that is.

[via Tastefully Offensive and atree496 on Reddit]