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Necessity is the mother of all (re)invention

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Behind the Scenes of Firefly

(via gifsboom:video)

Netflix can now ban users for bypassing geographic restrictions according to a Reddit post, and based on the company's own terms and conditions.

In the updated rules the company says "You may view a movie or TV show through the Netflix service primarily within the country in which you have established your account and only in geographic locations where we offer our service and have licensed such movie or TV show". Which is fine, and basically means you can use the service when you're travelling.

It then goes on to say "Netflix will use technologies to verify your geographic location". Now, this isn't too serious until we get to the clause a bit later in the conditions: "We may terminate or restrict your use of our service, without compensation or notice if you are, or if we reasonably believe that you are (i) in violation of any of these Terms of Use or (ii) engaged in illegal or improper use of the service".

Basically, if you circumvent the geo-restrictions, Netflix is entirely within its rights to end your service. Of course, it doesn't take an idiot to work out that Netflix has no interest in cutting people off and depriving itself of valuable customers. This clause is to appease the movie and TV studios who cut complicated rights deals across the world to show content in various regions.

Who benefits from this nonsense?

And honestly, even they probably don't care all that much. But somewhere, deep with in every movie studio, TV production company and TV network there sits a team of expensive lawyers who must, each month, bill their time to some project or other.

Frustratingly, they lean on Netflix to badger its users about them paying to watch content. So if Netflix does get forced to cut you off, there's a good chance you'll start getting your TV shows and movies from torrent sites. Which, apparently, is what the lawyers want.

We contacted Netflix for comment and will update when we hear more.

• Read our Netflix review

People living in far-flung locations, especially in developing nations, could always use affordable tests for various diseases that enable remote diagnosis. Take for instance, this new two-part biosensing platform developed by a team of scientists fr...

The French know a thing or two about good food, so it makes sense that they'd weigh in on the mobile culinary trend, too. Peugeot's Design Lab created the "Le Bistrot du Lion:" a transforming vehicle that offers cafe-style seating for up to 30 people...

In a surprise interview with Edward Snowden, John Oliver made NSA spying revelations more relatable to the American public through the topic of dick pics. The HBO comedian, who gives his satire a sharp bite via exhaustive research, traveled to Moscow...

A group of five impeccably dressed high school girls are almost murdered dozens of times by the same, mysterious stalker and the police in their idyllic small town are either corrupt or too incompetent to care. How do the girls fight back? Hacking, o...

Lithium-ion batteries have been a boon for the modern world -- they've replaced the heavier, single-use alkaline type in everything from wristwatches to jumbo jets. Unfortunately, these rechargeable cells are already struggling to keep up with our ev...

How do you end a marriage to someone who's purposefully avoiding your divorce papers? Try Facebook. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge has ruled that a New York woman can serve her divorce summons by messaging her soon to be ex-husband on Facebook. He'l...

Turkey's government blocked Twitter and YouTube on Monday, following another ban on the two services a year ago that was later dismissed by a judge. Facebook was also banned today, but the company complied with the censorship requests and was unblocked.

Welcome to Star Wars School, where we delve into the past, present and future of that franchise we all love so much. Today we’re discussing Han Solo’s one and only Millennium Falcon, uncovering some of the lesser known facts about that beauty.

She’s been every kid’s dream machine for nearly four decades -- the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy that can outrun Star Destroyers, successfully navigate asteroid fields, and evade the hungry chompers of space slugs. All, of course, while looking really good doing it.

9 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Luke Skywalker

Continue reading…

Actor Jason Statham claims his time with The Transporter films ended due to an offer he deemed unfavorable.

"You know what? It was obviously a great experience doing those films, and I would have loved to keep doing it. But they wanted me to sign on and do three more films without even seeing a script, and they offered me less money to do three than I'd get paid for one!" Statham told Vulture in an interview.

"So it was a business decision. I would have loved to have done it, but you can't really sign on without doing a script, and to sign on for three of them? And to get paid a pittance? I just couldn't see the value in that."

Continue reading…

Yes, there definitely was a "too good to be true" element to having Twin Peaks, Evil Dead, and X-Files all return to our lives. And now it seems the dream is crumbling. Somewhat.

A new series of tweets from director David Lynch has revealed that he is now off the project.

Dear Twitter Friends, Showtime did not pull the plug on Twin Peaks.

— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) April 5, 2015

After 1 year and 4 months of negotiations, I left because not enough money was offered to do the script the way I felt it needed to be done.

— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) April 5, 2015

Continue reading…

File under: Latest News

Photo credit: Riad Ariane / Barcroft Cars Riad Ariane / Barcroft Cars Most of the time you'd be lucky to glimpse one supercar on the road, but an exclusive motoring event in Leicestershire last weekend brought no less than 200 of the world's rarest and fastest vehicles together for charity. continue reading

Hackers continue their brazen attacks on organizations and are even having their victims call them on the phone to hustle them out of their company's money. That's what IBM's Security Intelligence division has discovered while researching a malware-b...

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Acting. [video]

Bonk.

(via ellieisamachine)

Last year SanDisk introduced the SanDisk Tech Assisted Refresh (STAR) program for enterprises to ease the transition from hard disk drives (HDDs) to SSDs. SanDisk gained valuable experience from its internal upgrade program where 4,600 employees’ laptops were migrated from HDDs to SSDs and with STAR program SanDisk is bringing the benefits of its internal program to all enterprises.

The core benefit of STAR program is that it requires no resources from the customer company. One of the main obstacles of SSD upgrades is the fact IT managers cannot abandon their daily routines and perform SSD upgrades on hundreds, or even thousands of computers, and hiring temporary workforce is both risky and expensive. In SanDisk’s STAR program, the upgrade and migration is fully done by SanDisk’s technical specialists, who will come onsite and perform the data migration and SSD installation overnight, resulting in zero downtime for the employees.

For any company, one of the most important financial metrics is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). By upgrading existing laptops with SSDs, companies are able to extend the lifecycle of a laptop from 3-4 years to 4-5 years, which results in annual savings of approximately $400 per laptop. For a company with 1,000 corporate laptops, that is deferred savings of $400,000 by simply extending the lifecycle of the laptop with an SSD.

Additionally, SSDs have higher reliability and lower failure rates when compared with traditional HDDs because SSDs are not susceptible to mechanical wear or crashes due to jarring motion. With less failures, there is less downtime for employees and the IT managers can also focus on other duties rather than replacing failed HDDs and reimaging the system data. Furthermore, SSDs offer significantly higher performance and battery life, which allows the employees to work longer and more efficiently. When considering all the advantages, SanDisk estimates that an SSD equipped laptop results in total annual savings of $610 per laptop.

For full details and customer experiences of SanDisk’s STAR program, please refer to the STAR SSD Upgrade Program whitepaper.

Blizzard is well aware that not everyone in its user base is a social butterfly. So fortunately, they're introducing an initiative across all of its games to help make communication a little bit easier. Prepare for B'Motes!

B'Motes will find their way into all of Blizzard's biggest franchises and function in different ways. Look for new role-playing dialogue options to hit World of Warcraft, hundreds of emotes to hit Hearthstone, a new Commander Voice Pack to hit Heroes of the Storm, and so on. Some may say ideas like literally having your words translated into a character's speech pattern is impossible. And… those people are probably right. Or are they?

Check out everything you need to know about B'Motes on Battle.net and improve your communication today.

World of Warcraft players probably should have guessed that anything would be on the table now that selfie cameras are a thing. So is anyone really all that surprised that Blizzard is going from S.E.L.F.I.E. to T.I.N.D.R.?

Yes, completing a random mission in your Garrison will reward you with the T.I.N.D.R. Box, an item that can then be assigned to any of your Level 100 followers. And in the name of love, T.I.N.D.R. Box missions will continue to appear until all Level 100 followers are distracted in the name of romance. Sure, this will probably put a dent in raiding, but it's a small price to pay for virtual courtship and sweet, sweet Pandarian love. If your followers find love, you get the greatest reward of all: fat loot.

For more on World of Warcraft's latest dive into the dating pool, check out Battle.net. And in what's sure to be some more super serious additions to the game, check out the latest round of patch notes.

News: Domino’s UK introduces the “Domi-No-Driver,” the world’s first driverless pizza delivery vehicle.