The Minim+Aid is a "minimalist survival kit" from Japanese design firm Nendo that features "a whistle to alert others of one’s presence, a radio [that can also charge your phone], raincoat, lantern, drinking water and a plastic case, all packaged inside of a 5cm wide tube that is waterproof and floats." (more…)
The European Union today filed charges against Google, relating to the search giant's use of Android contracts and agreements to stop rival manufacturers from creating Android forks, and hindering them building applications and services that could topple Google's dominant position in the European mobile market.
This isn't totally new: the EU has been probing Google and the Android operating system for some time, trying to establish whether Google's dominant position at the pointy end of the market has caused it to breach the antitrust regulations, which are in place in order to halt any company from stopping other companies from competing with them.
Read MoreEU Files Antitrust Charges Against Google's Use Of Android Contracts And Agreements To Stop Rivals From Competing was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Exploding Kittens, a strategic digital card game with art from The Oatmeal, is now available on Android. The game is actually a digital version of a physical card game, in which you try to keep playing by avoiding the Exploding Kitten card.
To play Exploding Kittens, you'll need two to five players. You'll take turns drawing and playing different cards, and you'll need to use each card to avoid the exploding kitten cards. Once you draw one of those, you're out of the game, unless you have a defense card. While you can play with core deck, you can also purchase expansions in the app itself.
The game supports local and online multiplayer. You can either join an existing match using a code given to you by a friend, or host a match yourself.
Exploding Kittens is available now on the Google Play Store for $1.99
Lose your phone? You can now simply ask Google to find it for you right from a web search.
Google's ability to find and ring your phone or tablet has expanded outside of the Android Device Manager to regular Google search. Instead of going to the Android Device Manager website or app to find one of your other lost devices, you can now open up the main Google search page in your browser and type "find my phone" to get a top result of a map that will locate your phone, similar to the way you can use the main search box to see your upcoming flights and other personalized results.
The search result will show your last-used device, but you can use the drop-down menu in the top-right corner to switch devices, and hit the "Ring" button in the bottom-left to ring the device and help you locate it.
You can't lock or erase the phone from this menu, though — you'll need to click the map to then be forwarded along to the proper Android Device Manager page to do those actions. Still, if you've simply misplaced your phone around the house — or hopefully just another nearby, known location — and can't find it, you're only a few seconds away from having it located and rang with a simple Google search. Anything to make it easier to get back to your phone is a good thing.
Not using an Android? While you can't use a Google search to find iPhones and Windows Phones, you can use apps on each of those platforms to find a missing device.
How you think about your money has a huge effect on how you spend it. So, it’s weird that we often say we “own” something before we really do. Break that habit to get a better understanding of your own finances.
As personal finance site My Mixed Up Money explains, most of us probably don’t fully own our homes, cars, or even some of our furniture. We say they’re “ours” because who else’s would they be? Except, until they’re paid off, they’re probably technically owned by a bank or other financial institution. Recognizing this and calling it what it is can go a long way towards changing our mindsets about money:
When did we start to believe that everything we’ve put $500 towards is actually ours? I appreciate that you are excited about the new things you purchased over the weekend, I really am. But I’m also a little bit worried. Referring to something as your “own” is something that I am sure (not sure at all) was crafted by a really intelligent marketing and sales team.
While it may sound silly, if you referred to your car as “the car I’m buying from the bank,” or if you referred to your home as “the house the bank is letting me live in until I pay it off,” you might think differently about borrowing money. Maybe buying clothes with a credit card, or buying a new car just because you don’t like the look of this old one anymore wouldn’t sound so attractive. Or, if you’ve paid off some of your assets, maybe the sentence “I’m thinking of trading in my car for a new car that a bank will let me drive while I make payments for four years” wouldn’t sound as appealing. That mental barrier can help keep you in check in a world that wants you to spend more money than you probably have.
What Do You Really Own? | My Mixed Up Money via Rockstar Finance
Photo by Zak Greant.
George Osborne, the Tory chancellor of David Cameron's UK government, has amended the Bank of England and Financial Services Bill to exempt the families of "Politically Exposed Persons" -- Members of Parliament and other elites -- from money laundering investigations. (more…)
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers 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.
This week's roundup is brought to you by Playtime Internet Radio from HandyApps.
Read More30 New And Notable (And 1 WTF) Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (4/5/16 - 4/19/16) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
The European Union has filed formal antitrust charges against Google regarding its Android operating system. The regulators state that by bundling its own services and making Google Search the default search engine on Android, Google has abused its dominant position, preventing other companies from competing in these segments.
From the press release:
The Commission's preliminary view is that Google has implemented a strategy on mobile devices to preserve and strengthen its dominance in general internet search. First, the practices mean that Google Search is pre-installed and set as the default, or exclusive, search service on most Android devices sold in Europe.
Second, the practices appear to close off ways for rival search engines to access the market, via competing mobile browsers and operating systems. In addition, they also seem to harm consumers by stifling competition and restricting innovation in the wider mobile space.
A competitive mobile Internet sector is increasingly important for consumers and businesses in Europe. Based on our investigation thus far, we believe that Google's behavior denies consumers a wider choice of mobile apps and services and stands in the way of innovation by other players.
The charges are the latest in a series of antitrust investigations the EU has aimed at Google. Last year, regulators accused Google of abusing its market position in online search, stating that the search giant favored its own comparison shopping service over the competition.
Today's charges pose a significant threat to Google, as they target its mobile search business, which accounts for nearly half of its overall ad revenue. The EU has the power to fine Google up to 10% of its annual revenues, which could amount to a total of over $14 billion on these two cases.
A report into the market power of large online platforms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Airbnb has concluded that more needs to be done to bolster consumer trust in tech giants’ handling of their data. The review was carried out by the UK’s upper House of Parliament responding to a European Commission public consultation on “the regulatory environment for platforms,… Read More
The fight to drag the healthcare system kicking and screaming into the 21st century often overlooks the little picture in favor of larger systematic fixes. But for many users on multiple meds, the only thing standing between them and an incorrect or missed dosage is a big, plastic box from the drugstore sporting embossed letters of the days of the week. Read More
Yahoo said it earned 8 cents a share today, compared to the 7 cents that Wall Street had been expecting. Muted yay.
That is still down from 15 cents a year ago. Definite boo.
Its revenue was $1.087 compared to an expectation of $1.08. Even more muted yay.
That’s still a 12 percent drop. Big boo.
If you feel like your resume could use some padding, fear not, you’re probably just selling yourself short. A little job posting exploration can help you find some skills you forgot to add.
It’s hard to be objective and write about yourself when you’re putting together a resume. You can easily forget things you’re skilled at because they’ve become second nature to you. That’s why Rita Friedman, a Philadelphia-based career coach, suggests you scan through a bunch of job postings and look at the required skills. Friedman recommends you specifically highlight the parts that make you say “Oh, I do that all the time!” There are probably at least a few things you forgot about. And while you’re scanning, you can also take note of the important job skills you haven’t acquired yet. That way you know what to work on for the future.
http://lifehacker.com/5866630/how-ca...
9 ways to add skills you didn’t even know you had to your résumé | Business Insider
Photo by Jenny Cestnik.
The Atlantic has a photo gallery of the Great San Francisco Earthquake from 1906:
110 years ago next week, on April 18, 1906, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake centered near the city of San Francisco struck at 5:15 AM. The intense shaking toppled hundreds of buildings, but the resulting out-of-control fires were even more destructive. Broken water mains and limited firefighting capabilities allowed city-wide fires to burn for several days. Nearly 500 city blocks were leveled, with more than 25,000 buildings destroyed. At the time, the city was home to more than 400,000 residents—after the disaster, 250,000 were left homeless. The exact death toll is undetermined, but most estimates place the number of deaths caused by the earthquake and fire at more than 3,000.
Watch it full screen.
[via]
The FBI’s legal battle with Apple over an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters was rehashed today before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which heard testimony from law enforcement officials and technologists about the role encryption plays in criminal investigations.
The FBI’s executive assistant director for science and technology, Amy Hess, and… Read More
The number of people in the UK who get dementia each year may be decreasing, a trend that breaks with many researchers' predictions. In the country, the incidence rate of dementia — the number of new cases reported during a given time period — has gone down by 20 percent since the 1990s, according to a new paper in Nature Communications. It suggests that today's aging population may not be as prone to cognitive problems as those of the past.
The Razer Turret lapboard is a combination of a keyboard, a mouse, and a mousing surface that's designed to be used on the couch in front of your TV. It connects wirelessly to nearby devices like Razer's Android gaming console, and promises extensive battery life. The lapboard is rated to last for four months on a charge and the mouse can do 40 hours before needing to be plugged in again. The Turret name stems from the storage method for this peripheral — which, interestingly, sits in the gaming controllers section of Razer's website rather than being part of its keyboards portfolio — which sees the lapboard folding up and standing erect not unlike a weaponized turret. The price of $159.99 is a fair bit higher than the initial $129.99...
For the second year running, Google has released its annual report on the state of Android security, and like last year, there are some arresting headline figures. These include Google saying it now scans six billion Android apps every day on smartphones around the world to look for dodgy apps (known as Potentially Harmful Apps or PHAs, in Google's parlance). The company says this entails scanning 400 million devices daily, although it's not quite clear whether these are automated scans, those initiated by the user, or a combination of both.
Overall, though, the security picture for Android devices is pretty familiar. Google says that over the course of 2016, PHAs were installed on less than 0.15 percent of devices that only get apps...
This is the first full quarter after Netflix announced it massive global expansion to 130 new countries. It added a record 6.74 million new subscribers, and a whopping 42 percent of its customer base is now outside the United States. Investors were unhappy with the company's guidance for next quarter, however, with Netflix predicting it will add just 2 million new customers overseas, compared to the 3.45 million analysts had been expecting. That number sent the stock down around 12 percent in after hours trading.
The company had already been on a tear overseas, adding a record 5.59 million new subscribers last quarter, with four fifths of those gains coming outside the US.Netflix has warned several times that it believes the market in...
YouTube will today begin supporting 360-degree live streaming on its service, confirming reports from earlier this year stating that such a feature was in development. One of the first videos to take advantage of this more immersive format will be this year’s live stream from music event Coachella, where select performances from the festival will now be live streamed in 360 degrees.… Read More
And to all you creators who want to make your podcast available in Google Play Music, check out the podcast portal for more details.
The Authors Guild has been trying to get a court to shut down Google's book-scanning/book-search program for more than a decade. (more…)
Last month it was revealed that an individual in the “entertainment business” had prevented a UK tabloid newspaper from printing details of his extramarital affairs.
Referred to in court papers by the initials PJS (not his real initials), the reportedly “well known” individual is said to had some kind of “three-way sexual encounter” with another couple more than four years ago. This, while being married to his partner, YMA, also in the entertainment business.
The third-party couple (referred to as AB and CD) approached the UK’s Sun on Sunday newspaper in January this year and revealed details of their encounter with PJS. The paper then contacted PJS’s lawyer, at which point a legal battle ensued.
On January 18, lawyers for PJS and YMA applied for an order against Sun on Sunday preventing it from printing the story. The High Court rejected the demand but did hand down an interim order blocking publication while the pair filed an appeal (pdf)
The Court of Appeal subsequently ruled that the Sun on Sunday cannot publish the story because the entertainer had an expectation that his sexual encounters should remain a private matter. Inevitably, however, there are plenty of people who believe it should not.
The Sun on Sunday is determined to publish the story whenever it can but in the meantime the celebrity couple have been named countless times on social media and in dozens of press articles, including in Scotland, Europe, the United States and Canada.
So what, if anything, can be done about that? According to a BBC report citing Desmond Browne QC, the lawyer for PJS, “remarkable efforts” are taking place to remove the story from Twitter and Google. That can now be confirmed, at least in respect of the latter.
Usually dealing with the business of having copyright-infringing content taken down from the Internet, UK-based copyright takedown outfit Web Sheriff is well known in file-sharing circles. However, the company has also branched out to offer a number of additional services, including “Privacy Protection – reputation management.”
These activities rarely come into the public eye but it appears that Web Sheriff has recently been negotiating with Google to have sensitive content removed from its indexes. The matter in question can be found in the search giant’s Transparency Report where it’s listed under a fairly obvious heading.
As can be seen from the image above, Web Sheriff targeted 174 URLs in two batches, one on April 4 and the other on April 11. In total the anti-piracy outfit sent seven notices to Google but interestingly the search giant has taken no action on the overwhelming majority.
Why Google has taken no action is unclear but it’s possible that as an overseas company Google may not feel bound to remove the links. It’s also possible that the complaint was filed with Google as a copyright request and therefore does not meet the criteria for removal.
In any event, most links are now reaching “content not found” pages on various news resources, so there’s probably very little for Google to remove. This raises another topical point.
While Google is often portrayed as being able to do a lot to stop infringing (or in this case sensitive) content being made available via its search engine, it’s a lot more effective to have content taken down at the source. It seems likely that Web Sheriff has being doing just that and on the whole appears to have done a pretty good job.
But of course the big question is whether it was all worth it.
While news outlets are now waiting for a judgment set to be handed down Monday which could allow them to name the couple, their names are already all over the Internet. What started off as a story that would probably have been forgotten in a few days, has now transformed into a battle of international interest that has already failed in its key aim.
In the meantime, those who have ignored the injunction have been feeling the heat. A blogger who named the pair online says he’s been threatened by the entertainer’s legal team but doesn’t really care.
“It’s a massive Streisand effect. Now I am fielding calls from European tabloids,” he said.
“I told [PJS’s legal team] to take it where the sun doesn’t shine. There’s no bricks and mortar in the UK, there’s no printing press in the UK, there’s no server in the UK.”
The all-important hearing will be heard in open court on Monday after Lord Justice Jackson ruled that the case addresses matters of public interest.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Ian's Shoelace Site has a perfectly simple guide to lacing 45 different ways, with succinct descriptions of the benefits of each.
Previously:
• Learn the fastest way to tie your shoelaces
• Tie your shoes the Ukrainian way
• How to lace up your Vans
• Quest for the mathematically ideal shoe-lacing
Flexibility is very important, especially as we get older. Here are some basic, everyday stretches to improve and maintain your flexibility.
Business Insider has illustrated and animated the stretches, suggested by New York University professor of physical therapy, Marilyn Moffat.
The piriformis, above, is perhaps the hardest of the 12 stretches, but it could help with tightness in the hips. Other stretches include neck rotations, trunk rotations, and the familiar quad stretch. Some of these also have yoga equivalents, such as the back scratch (a.k.a. cow-face pose):
If any of these are difficult for you, you could use a prop, like a strap for the stretch above, but of course hold off if you feel pain.
I like that these cover most areas people experience tightness. They’re simple stretches, but that’s the beauty of them too.
Head to the link below to see all of the stretches and get your daily stretches in.
12 everyday stretches to stay flexible and fit at any age | Business Insider
While Google has been pushing out a ton of OS and app updates, the Drive team got out one of its own. This is a perfectly good update on its own, but it also includes clues to some upcoming features, too. In this update, you'll find a newly revised look and operation for uploading files, and there's even a color picker for folders. (Yey!) On the teardown side, we can look forward to recommendations for files, a shortcut to "Team Drives," and possibly even another form of device backup.
Read MoreGoogle Drive v2.4 Adds Inline Uploads And User-Selectable Colored Folders, May Soon Add Various Smart Recommendations And More [APK Teardown + Download] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Music festivals are about making sound, and lots of it. But hearing is far from the only sense assaulted during days spent rushing from one performance to another. Bodies bump against bodies. Drinks and sweat soak shirts and moisten skin. Colors and bright lights pierce eyes from all directions. To get the full experience, you must go in person.
Read More[Update: Streaming Now] The Coachella Music Festival Is Streaming For Free This Weekend Exclusively On YouTube was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
When you pass gas, or someone next to you does, a cloud of stink is sure to hang around for awhile. But is it possible to outrun the smell as soon as you hear it? This video has the answer.
This video from the AsapSCIENCE YouTube channel takes a look at all the ins and outs (mostly outs) of fart science. All in all, escaping a fart all depends on your proximity to the person and the way the direction the wind is blowing (if there is wind). If you’re the culprit, or you’re in close proximity of the exit point, and there’s no breeze, you can’t escape it. The stinky gas molecules are just too fast. You might as well prepare yourself mentally or cover your nose. If you have some space between you and the source, however, or there’s a breeze blowing toward them, you definitely have time to get away stink-free. Of course, if you are the one who dealt it, there are plenty of ways to do your business and get away with it anyway.
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-fart-in...
Could You Outrun a Fart? | YouTube
Going into this year’s CinemaCon, the annual Las Vegas trade show for movie exhibitors, studios, and vendors, the biggest question wasn’t whether some company was going to pull a blockbuster announcement out of its hat. It was what kind of impact The Screening Room, Sean Parker’s recently-revealed service that will stream first-run movies to the home, would have on the proceedings. It was directly mentioned by name only once during the main studio presentations, but that didn’t really matter: from the tenor of the conference, it was clear The Screening Room’s threat of technological disruption is poised to change the movie business forever.
Word first broke about The Screening Room back in March, and Parker’s pitch is said to be...
Encryption and how you control data your is a hot topic right now, but understanding encryption and how it relates to your personal data is confusing. YouTuber CGP Grey explains encryption, as well as some of the issues up for debate right now, as simply as possible.
http://lifehacker.com/how-the-fbi-s-...
Encryption, privacy, security, and how it all relates to each other is notoriously complicated to understand. CGP Grey explains the basics of encryption, how digital locks relate to real world locks from a legal perspective, and touches on a lot of the debate happening right now. It does so in a way that should be easy to understand even if you’re not tech savvy in any way. Of course, while the video provides a pretty quick overview, if you’re looking for a deeper dive, we’ve got you covered.
http://lifehacker.com/what-you-shoul...
Should all locks have keys? Phones, Castles, Encryption, and You | YouTube via MacSparky
