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 Is sitting at a computer all day making you fat, but standing desks are too expensive? The Hootsuite CEO’s nifty new side project could save your spine and slim your belly. Oristand is a $25 standing desk made of cardboard. Just unfold the contraption, stick it atop your normal desk, and you can work without hunching. Some employees at Hootsuite were already bolting little IKEA shelves… Read More

13 Magnificent Roles To Remember Alan Rickman's Career By

UK Home Secretary Theresa May stood before Parliament on Wednesday, and, with a straight face, said: "The UK does not undertake mass surveillance. We have not, and we do not, undertake mass surveillance, and that is not what the Investigatory Powers Bill is about." (more…)

The 2016 Oscar Nominations Are Here 

Alan Rickman, the British stage and screen actor best known internationally for his roles in Harry Potter and Die Hard, has died in London at the age of 69. As reported by BBC News, his family said in a statement that he died "surrounded by friends and family."

Known for his aquiline features and languid, mesmerizing voice, Rickman began his acting career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late '70s and early '80s, before moving onto British TV shows and Broadway. In 1988 he starred in Die Hard alongside Bruce Willis as the incomparable villain Hans Gruber, following this up with the role of Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. Then, with the Harry Potter franchise, Rickman's talents were embraced by a whole...

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Last year the UK Government announced a plan to increase the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement to ten years.

The current maximum of two years is not enough to deter infringers, lawmakers argued.

The plan followed a recommendation put forward in a study commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) a few months earlier.

This study concluded that the criminal sanctions for copyright infringement available under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) could be amended to bring them into line with related offenses, such as counterfeiting.

Before implementing the changes the Government launched a public consultation, asking for comments and advice from the public. This generated a lot of responses and this week the results were published by the IPO.

In total there were 1,032 responses to the consultation, and an overwhelming majority of 98 percent oppose the increased prison term.

There were only 21 responses supporting the plan, which all except one came from organizations. A total of 1,011 individuals came out in opposition, most of which used a submission form made available by the Open Rights Group (ORG).

Consultation response

The Government has released a summary of the findings (pdf) presenting the primary arguments from both sides. The opponents argue that prison term extension is not acceptable because the punishment would be too harsh.

“10 years is too high; copyright infringement is not a serious crime,” IPO summarizes.

In addition, due to the vague language employed, opponents are worried that the changes could lead to prison sentences for naive file-sharers who have no real criminal intent.

“The term ‘affect prejudicially’ is too vague and could mean someone facing a criminal charge where only a minimal amount of content has been infringed. This requires some threshold to ensure only commercial scale infringers are punished.”

The supporters of the prison term extension, including industry groups BPI, FACT and the MPA, argue that harsher sentences would help to serve as a deterrent, preventing people from pirating copyrighted works.

“Change would act as a powerful deterrent to those engaging in IP crime,” IPO summarizes.

According to the opponents there is no reason why online piracy should be treated differently than physical counterfeiting.

“It is important that creativity is respected and rewarded, and those who deliberately infringe or facilitate infringement should face criminal sanctions. Copyright infringement online is no less serious than that of physical, and therefore shouldn’t be treated any differently.”

The UK Government has not made any decisions yet on how to move forward but IPO notes that it will conduct an in-depth analysis of all the points raised. Any future legislation should take into account the public responses.

“This proposal has clearly struck a chord with many stakeholders, which is reflected in the high number of responses. As a result, the Government is now carefully considering the best way forward,” IPO notes.

“However, the Government remains committed to tackling those engaged in online criminality,” it adds.

The comments appear to suggest that a 10-year prison term may have been averted for now, but some sort of change to the current law is expected to come sooner or later.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

 Hot on the heels of PushDoctor’s $8.2 million Series A, another U.K. startup playing in the digital health app space has picked up funding. Babylon Health, which like PushDoctor, lets you have video consultations with a doctor (and a lot more), has raised a $25 million Series A round led by Investment AB Kinnevik, the Swedish listed entrepreneurial investment. Read More

The Book Mine is a used book store in Fair Oaks, CA (Northeast of Sacramento) has a web page with snippets of funny conversations with customers who are obnoxious, rude, or weird.

Do people donate all these books to you?

Yes. We show up for work every morning and there are boxes of valuable books sitting at the front door.

Wow, really! I could open a book store?

Sure!

If I opened a store, how would people know where to leave the books?

***

(phone call)

You buy books?

Every day

I've got something you're really going to want

Lay it on me

It's a set of Tom Sawyer

Really! Who wrote it?

I just said, Tom Sawyer

He was quite a guy. Who published it?

Beats me!

Could you look? I'm mildly curious

Wait a minute

(a couple of minutes of my life go by that I will never see again)

You still there?

Barely

Gosit and Dunlop

It's a reprint set and a non-starter for me. Gotta go. Thanks!

***

Older guy comes in...

I'm here for an appraisal.

I charge for appraisals.

No, I don't want to pay for nothing.

What do you have?

A book I wrote. It's about gambling.

Has it been published?

No, that's why I need a (sic) appraisal.

I only deal in old books.

Hey, gambling is old. It's been around a long time.

I don't think I can help you.

Yea I know, you're really wasting my time.

***

(grown-up, looks around)

Do you have any real books?

Yes.

Well, not like the ones you have here. You know, real books!

I'm not sure what you mean.

You know, books that are real.

Sorry, none of our books are real!

[via]

(Image: I don't have a photo of the Book Mine, so I used a photo I took last month at Bart's Books in Ojai, California. It's a bookstore without a roof!)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

I’ve already reviewed a few adult coloring books for Wink and thought I had moved on, but then Patterns of the Universe came my way and I couldn’t resist. When I was editor of Craft Magazine we used to cover projects that involved mathematical crafting, such as crocheting a hyperbolic reef. Although mathematical coloring is a lot simpler, it’s just as fun to see what kind of beauty will emerge when you play with patterns, numbers, and chance.

This coloring book is split into two sections: Coloring and Creating. The first offers your basic color-in-the-lines patterns, but they’re all math based and come with a short description to help you appreciate what you’re beautifying. The second Creating section includes simple instructions on how to create patterns, mostly through randomness, such as Coin Hex, which asks you to choose for your hexagon pattern only two colors (but I chose three). Then you must toss a coin (or number generator in my case) to determine the color for each hexagon. The point of an activity like this? Even though your colored pattern is random, “stare at it and you will see patterns. It’s a reminder that we find randomness very difficult to comprehend.” Very difficult indeed. I'm only one-quarter of the way through Coin Hex and already I see all kinds of patterns popping out of the page.

Patterns of the Universe: A Coloring Adventure in Math and Beauty
by Alex Bellos and Edmund Harriss
The Experiment
2015, 144 pages, 8.4 x 8.4 x 0.5 inches (softcover)
$11 Buy a copy on Amazon

Back in 2012, I wrote about 'Magnetic Reconnection', a beautiful, haunting experimental film about the aurora borealis, scored by Jim O'Rourke (Sonic Youth, Wilco) and narrated by Will Oldham (Matewan, Old Joy). (more…)

Batteries overheat and when they do and there's no control system in place to shut the device down, the temperature keeps on rising and they explode. That's the sad story at the beginning of every news article that talks about exploding Samsungs and LGs and iPhones and other smartphones or Lithium-ion battery-powered gadgets. But Stanford researchers have been working on this problem and trying to come up with a way to solve it with the current battery technology that we have.

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Stanford Researchers Figure Out A Way To Turn Off Overheating Lithium Batteries Before They Explode was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Pushbullet began as a quick way to send files, links, and other data from one device to another. Along the way, the team took the infrastructure it had in place and introduced instant messaging (through a phone using SMS). Last month the feature grew to include group conversations. Today, the service has evolved to support sending picture messages.

When you drag an image into a SMS conversation, Pushbullet will now convert the message to MMS.

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Latest Pushbullet Update Lets You Send Picture Messages (MMS) From Your Computer was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Over at the battlestations subreddit, repens picked up a shiny new ultrawide monitor and wanted to do something a little different with his desk to accomodate it. The end result is this good-looking, minimal, distraction-free setup.

Scroll down a bit in his thread and repens details the rig that powers the whole shebang:

Currently running an i7 4770k with 16GB of RAM (I really need to get 32GB) and a single 980ti in a Lian Li Tyr X500. I’ve also got a Lian Li v2000b I’ve been working on which this will eventually get transplanted into.

Monitor is an LG 34UM95

I had some Audioengine A2s on my desk, but I’ve gotten a bit tired of them so they’re in my closet until I find something else I like. Audio currently is handled by an Emotiva XDA-2 and a Schiit Lyr with Hifiman HE400'sAnd finally - the desk is here.

Thanks for looking!

If you love the keyboard as much as I do, you’ll want to check this comment, where he explains how he had it made—and the components you’ll want to reproduce it. You can pick up the PCB yourself, and his keyboard is using MX Cherry Greens with Dolch DSA keycaps.

The whole thing just looks serene, perfect for getting some work done, plenty of space on the desktop to spread stuff out if he needs to, and, of course, that ultrawide is probably fun for movies and games, as well, if he’s into that sort of thing. If you dig it, you can check out the whole gallery, or hit the link below that to head over to Reddit and let him know how nice the setup is.

If you have a workspace of your own to show off, share them with us by adding it to our Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Flickr pool. Make sure any photos you include are at least 1280x720. Keeping them to 16:9 helps, too. Include a little text about the stuff you used, how you came up with the design, and any other relevant details. If your clever organization and good design sense catches our eye, you might be the next featured workspace!

Something a bit different - new desk for my Ultrawide | Reddit

Google wants to make streaming Chrome tabs to a Chromecast even easier. Right now, you need to install the Google Cast Chrome extension to send music, videos, and webpages to your television. A Google+ post from François Beaufort indicates the company is working on a way to build the feature into the browser itself. The change means you may soon be able to right click a page in Chrome and see the "Cast" option show up to send whatever's in your browser window to a nearby Chromecast-equipped TV.

Beaufort is Google's self-titled "happiness evangelist," and he was hired in 2013, when he was known for being a reputable leaker of Chrome news and updates. He now does so in an official capacity at Google. Beaufort says the new cast feature...

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 Once upon a time (maybe around 2004), the social bookmarking service Delicious was the hottest thing on the web. It hit all the right buzzwords of the time (collaborative tagging, folksonomy, AJAX), but like so many other services, Yahoo simply let it whither after it acquired the company in 2005. Since then, it has changed owners twice — first to AVOS, a company owned by the founders… Read More

As Facebook and Microsoft have plowed ahead with virtual reality, Google has looked like it’s behind. But, in 2016, it may be serious about catching up.

The search giant is forming its own dedicated division for virtual reality computing, with CEO Sundar Pichai moving over a key deputy to run it, according to multiple sources. Simultaneously, the move signals Google’s emerging intent to build a viable enterprise business. Because with the executive shift, Google’s massive consumer Web applications now fall under incoming SVP Diane Greene.

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When you take that metaphorical first step onto your Android homescreen, the Google search bar is the first thing you see. It floats atop the screen like a banner, saying to the world: "Google made this, also tap on me because I do stuff."

As it turns out, Google is experimenting with making the search bar do more such stuff. In addition to search results, some users are seeing extra options in the dropdown that appears when they perform a search.

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Google Experiments With New Options In The Android Search Bar's Dropdown Menu was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai just announced that the company's annual I/O developer's conference has been scheduled for May 18th through the 20th. The venue this year is a bit different than last time; it's Mountain View's own Shoreline Ampitheatre. In a tweet, Pichai said this will bring Google's major event back "to neighborhood where it all started 10 yrs ago." That could also make for an easier place to demonstrate Google's fleet of self-driving automobiles — more convenient than San Francisco, anyway.

Additional specifics on I/O 2016, such as ticket info and other details, will be coming soon. Google typically uses the I/O stage to unveil its latest major Android update each year; in 2015 it was Android M, which became Android 6.0...

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After years of documenting instances in which parents and kids are terrorized by law enforcement and child welfare authorities because the kids were allowed to be on their own in public places, the Free Range Kids movement has gotten some justice: a new Federal law gives its official okey-doke to parents who let their kids get to school on their own. (more…)

 The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office has criticized the draft Investigatory Powers bill, currently before parliament, warning about the risks of requiring communications service providers to weaken encryption, and also asserting that no clear case has been made for why the state should require data on all its citizens to be retained for a full year. Read More

 Microsoft’s push towards Windows 10 continues. Today, Microsoft is ending support for Windows 8, as well as older versions of its Internet Explorer web browser, IE 8, IE 9, and IE 10. For end users, that doesn’t mean the software instantly becomes non-functional, but that it will longer be updated with bug fixes or other security patches. That  could potentially expose a… Read More

When it acquired Periscope last year, Twitter said the company’s live-streaming video would complement its text-heavy timeline with a new category of real-time content. Until now, though, it hasn’t been much of a complement: links to Periscope broadcasts appear on Twitter as plain URLs, without so much as a preview of the video being broadcast.

That begins to change today, as Periscope broadcasts start autoplaying (minus sound) in Twitter profiles, timelines, and individual tweets. (It’s not yet available for Moments.) The changes, which were sneaked into the last update of the Twitter for iOS app, are rolling out globally now. In-line broadcasts will be coming to Android and the web later, the company says.

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David Bowie released 25 solo LPs, two albums with a band, and one soundtrack in his 49 years as a working musician. Some of that music was incredible, some of it was decent, and some of it was bad; all of it was, at the very least, interesting. Many of us here at The Verge have specific and personal connections to Bowie's work, and we're sharing them together to celebrate the life and work of a singular, transformative artist.

"Space Oddity," Space Oddity, 1969

Chris Plante: When I was 11, my parents took me to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. I haven’t been back since, but I assure you that despite the pitch — a building dedicated rock stars — the museum was impossibly dull in my preteen eyes. It didn’t help that I...

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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.

Featured App

Expense IQ - Expense Manager

This week's roundup is brought to you by Expense IQ from HandyApps.

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17 New And Notable Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (12/29/15 - 1/11/16) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.