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 Game

Race Illegal: High Speed 3D

Today's roundup is presented by Race Illegal: High Speed 3D from HeroCraft.

• DotEmu Is Porting The Double Dragon Trilogy To Android, Complete With Co-Op, Custom Controls, And More
• [New Game] DotEmu's Double Dragon Trilogy Hits Android With Mobile-Optimized Gameplay, A Remastered Soundtrack, And More
• [New Game] Dragon Slayer Is A Magical Showdown Against An Army Of Ancient Reptiles
• [Bonus Round] Ku: Shroud Of The Morrigan, Battle Bears Gold, And World War Z

31 Best New Android Games From The Last 2 Weeks (11/26/13 - 12/9/13) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Every week we cover new Android apps with Fresh Meat on Wednesday, followed by Android Gaming on Thursday and Top 10 app updates on Friday. On Mondays we look back to see which ones were the most crowd-pleasing among our audience. Read on for the 10 most popular Android apps among your peers from last week.

1. Cal – Calendar by Any.do

App info: Any.do released their new Calendar app, and it’s definitely worth a download!

2. VSCO Cam®

App info: The popular iPhone app hits Android and is a solid app to fine tune your mobile photos.

3. Google Play Music

App info: The latest version adds SD storage for certain devices.

4. Assassins Creed Pirates

App info: Enjoy naval battles with this mobile-only Assassin’s Creed title.

5. Google Search

App info: Google Search application.

6. Helium – App Sync and Backup

App info: Helium is a great app to move all your data to your new device.

7. SidePlayer

App info: SidePlayer is a floating music player with nice customization options.

8. Permission Manager App Ops 4.4

App info: Here is another application to help you manage application-specific permissions.

9. Shine

App info: Shine is an activity tracker from Misfit Wearables.

10. Double Dragon Trilogy

App info: Revisit the classic ’80s arcade game with the new Double Dragon Trilogy.

Note:  To ensure apps receive a fair chance to make the list, we will retire any app that has made the list for 3 consecutive weeks and will place it in our Android and Me App Hall of Fame. We will post this Hall of Fame list in a dedicated series.

The sock monkey above is called "Rooster Monkburn," and he was created by Phillis May, who makes a sells sock monkeys. When Ms May and her husband traversed the TSA checkpoint at SEA-TAC, an eagle-eyed TSA operative noticed that Rooster was sporting a sub-two-inch toy pistol, which she seized, threatening to call police. Altogether, now, everyone: U! S! A! U! S! A! U! S! A!

May said the TSA agent went through the bag, through the sewing supplies and found the two-inch long pistol.

“She said ‘this is a gun,’” said May. “I said no, it’s not a gun it’s a prop for my monkey.”

“She said ‘If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not,’ and I said ‘really?’” said May.

The TSA agent told May she would have to confiscate the tiny gun and was supposed to call the police.

“I said well go ahead,” said May. “And I said really? You’re kidding me right, and she said no it looks like a gun.”

“She took my monkey’s gun,” said May, who has retained her sense of humor.

TSA agent confiscates sock monkey's toy pistol [Susan Wyatt/King 5 News]

(Thanks, Gary!)

(Image: Phyllis May)

Not only is Motorola incredibly quick with software updates for the Moto X, but the company also aims to make the Moto X experience even better through other means. Motorola has already uploaded a few system apps to the Play Store, like the camera app, and next up is Active Display.

Active Display is the system that displays notifications on your lockscreen without you having to actively turn the display on. You can then dismiss notifications or unlock the device straight to the app from Active Display. It’s one of Motorola’s more useful smart functions, and now it can be updated through the Play Store instead of waiting for software updates.

However, this Active Display update is only for KitKat-powered devices, limiting it to the Moto X. Verizon’s DROID lineup can’t install this update until the devices are updated to KitKat. It’s not a big deal, because the first update is a fix for a 1-2 second lag when using Active Display after the KitKat update on the Moto X, so the DROID phones don’t need it.

If you own a Moto X, use the widget below or head to the Play Store to update the Motorola Active Display app. Motorola has been on the ball with updates, so do you think it will contribute to its success?

Flipboard has confirmed that it raised an additional $50 million, which will close out the Series C round of financing that it brought on in September. In addition to the new funding, Flipboard is also announcing that it has also surpassed the 100-million-user milestone.

The additional funding, which was first reported by Fortune, will also be led Rizvi Traverse Management, the investment fund run by under-the-radar Suhail Rizvi. The funding closed last week, according to a company spokesperson, and brings the total amount raised to more than $160 million.

Valuation was pegged at $800 million, which was only slightly below the $1 billion that had previously been rumored. Existing investors, which include Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Index Ventures, and Insight Venture Partners, also participated.

Flipboard’s raise comes as the company continues to add new users. The company now has more than 100 million users, which is up from 85 million, at the time that it confirmed the first half of the Series C funding.

It has also been working to give users more tools to build magazine-like feeds of their favorite pieces of content. In March, it launched the 2.0 version of its product, which unveiled the magazine feature. Soon after, it enabled users to share those custom feeds with their friends.

All of that was meant to attract more brand advertisers, which the company hopes will treat its content more like magazines, in terms of how much they’re willing to pay to reach Flipboard readers. By placing their ads in a clean, well-lit, and attractive space, the hope is that Flipboard can command higher premiums than one would find in a typical mobile app.

It took that one step further in November, when it launched tools to enable brands to build their own catalogs. Those catalogs are meant to evoke a better shopping (or at least browsing experience) than one would find on most e-commerce sites.

The strategy appears to be working so far. While Flipboard has declined to give out revenue numbers in the past, in November CEO Mike McCue told TechCrunch:

At a high level, the economics for ad deals on Flipboard near print, as opposed to digital CPMs – which has always been a goal of ours,” he says. “This kind of brand advertising sells for about the same as what it sells for in print pages in Vanity Fair.

To continue getting more advertisers on board, and to keep moving its product forward, Flipboard expects to hire pretty aggressively over the next year. The company has about 100 employees today, according to CTO Eric Feng, and expects that to double to 200 by the end of next year. Hires will be focused on engineering and adding to its sales team.

If you thought that the days of Samwer brothers e-commerce investments with the eBays and Groupons of the world were over, think again. Today, their Berlin-based incubator Rocket Internet announced a new and strategic investment partner, the UK physical and online retail giant Tesco. Tesco, which is the world’s second-largest retailer by revenues (after Walmart) will now work in “close cooperation” with the brothers’ incubator. That will begin by leading a $250 million round in Lazada, an Amazon-like online marketplace with operations across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Other Rocket regulars Access Industries, Kinnevik and Verlinvest also participated.

Other aspects of the deal, Rocket says, will include “customer analytics, private label development and supply chain management.” And as another part of the news, it has also expanded operations in the region with Lamido in Indonesia and Vietnam — a social commerce effort “to tap into the large informal e-commerce market of C2C transactions which includes thousands of shops on social networks such as Facebook.”

It comes on the heels of a $100 million round in Lazada only six months ago and brings the total invested into Lazada to $486 million.

Rocket Internet — which is known mainly for incubating e-commerce startups — notes that this is the first time that Tesco has invested in a pure-play e-commerce operation. Up to now, Tesco has built an empire on Walmart-style supermarkets, primarily in the UK, using that to expand as a strong and early player in e-commerce in grocery and home goods delivery and later digital goods to complement the sale of electronics.

But the investment news comes at a tricky time for Tesco: the company has long been seen as an aggressive and successful retailer, but its strategy has stumbled in the past two years. In the last quarter sales were down 1.5% in its main UK stores, and sales in other markets in Europe were down 4%, and in Asia 5.1%. In September, it put its U.S. Fresh & Easy stores into bankruptcy (so, maybe not so Easy to crack the U.S., after all).

In that context, a focus on new, emerging markets that ride on operations that have already been seeded is a sign to investors that Tesco is now betting big on new opportunities. Emerging markets like Southeast Asia are a key target because they are large, and fast-growing. Southeast Asia as a region has some 600 million consumers who are only now really getting turned on to smartphones and shopping online.

Indeed, this seems to be the rationale for Tesco’s investment. “This investment in Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce retailer continues our strategy of developing leading multichannel businesses in core growth markets,” said Robin Terrell, group multichannel director of Tesco, in a statement. “Lazada is an exciting, pioneering business which has developed a market-leading offer in each of its five markets in just 18 months.”

Notably, Rocket Internet has established e-commerce businesses spanning home goods, fashion, financial services and much more across every continent. It has put a particularly strong focus on operations in emerging markets in recent years because they are growing faster and are less crowded with competition, Oliver Samwer told me earlier this year in an interview. It has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors to build out these operations, often from repeat investors — something that could either point to sustained success if you are a Samwer believer or ponzi-like tendencies focused around clones, if you are one of their detractors.

The real truth is that it’s hard to tell, because as is usual with Rocket Internet, it is not revealing the revenues, net income/loos or any other financial metrics of its operations. However, Tesco is a publicly-traded company, and that will likely lead to demands for greater transparency in the future. (For now Rocket tells us that the operation has some 1,500 employees across five Southeast Asian countries and that Lazada is the “leading online general merchandiser across the region.”

Although Access Industries, controlled by Russian-born (now U.S. citizen) tycoon Len Blavatnik, is a regular Rocket Internet investor, this will be Access’ first investment in Lazada. “We are delighted to welcome Tesco and Access to join our investor group through this funding round,” said Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Lazada Group, in a statement.

Microsoft introduced two-step verification security for its range of accounts back in April, and the company is extending its functionality this week. Over the next couple of days Microsoft accounts will be updated to include recovery codes, security notification control, and a new recent history view. Like many other online accounts, recovery codes will act as a method to retrieve an account if a phone number or email address is no longer accessible using two-step verification. Microsoft’s two-step verification process requires two pieces of security information, like an email address and phone number, to send codes to, and the company is introducing additional ways to control how those are delivered.

Currently, if you know...

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As we continue to read new revelations about the extent of the government's spying on citizens, more people are looking into ways to protect their privacy in emails, texts, and phone calls. You could write all your messages with lemon juice on parchment, but given the realities of the modern world, cryptographic encryption provides the best balance between security and convenience.

Unfortunately, encrypting your messages is still really inconvenient. Users who want to protect their privacy must typically go through a lengthy installation process that is probably explained in technical jargon, and then only send messages to people who are using the same protocol.

But what if secure messaging were built into your phone's underlying...

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Square did indeed reveal something new today as promised, and it’s a credit card reader design update, which is what we suggested was most likely yesterday when they teased the news. The new reader is thinner, and has a design that’s supposed to improve success rates at reading cards. Finally, the 3.5mm audio jack plug has been redesigned to play nicely with many more devices.

The new Square Reader is heading to store shelves as of next year, but it’s available now for free via the official Square website. In case you’re wondering just how thin it is, it’s about the depth of the iPhone 5 or 5s, so that actually is size savings of about half versus the thickness of the original version. It’s also got sharper edges, and honestly does look like a big improvement, even if the news isn’t earth-shattering.

Trent Reznor has never been shy about experimenting with new business models and his latest idea is one that most fans will appreciate. The November 8th Los Angeles performance of Nine Inch Nails' 2013 concert tour has been posted to YouTube as a teaser to the DVD and Blu-ray release coming up early next year. The retail package will include "tons" of additional content, 5.1 surround sound, and other extras, though if you just want to experience 77 minutes of the drama and spectacle of the show, the free online version will suffice.

Continue reading…

The British courts have granted HTC’s request for an urgent appeal of the injunction against the HTC One mini that took effect on December 6. HTC will have an opportunity to sway the court’s decision regarding the HTC One mini’s injunction on December 12. In the meantime, retailers will be allowed to continue selling the HTC One mini.

HTC is pleased that an urgent hearing with the Court of Appeal has been scheduled for Dec. 12. Until the Court of Appeal hearing on Dec. 12, the court’s injunction against HTC is stayed. Until the hearing on Dec. 12, our U.K. customers will be able to sell all HTC devices which are already in their inventories.HTC

This may be a short-lived victory for HTC, but European regulators are taking a closer look at Nokia and how the company handles its patent portfolio now that it has sold its handset business to Microsoft. Nokia has a massive library to standards essential patents, which EU Commissioner VP Joaquin Almunia is hoping Nokia will not use to ”extract higher returns” as it would result in an ”illegal advantage” over the competition. So far, Nokia’s patent lawsuits appear to be well thought out, but it’s reassuring to know that European regulators will be keeping an extra eye on Nokia as the company’s business model shifts next year.

For the past few months City of London Police have been working together with the music and movie industries to tackle sites that provide unauthorized access to copyrighted content.

Operation Creative, an initiative underway with the support of Hollywood and the major recording labels, set out during the summer to target a list of 61 sites with a clear message. The sites were informed that they could significantly modify their mode of operations or be dealt with by Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) instead.

While it’s believed that a small number of sites decided to call it a day, the vast majority refused to comply. In a statement sent to TorrentFreak this morning the police say that in response they sent the sites’ details to “60 brands, agencies and advertising technology businesses” with a request that they stop placing advertising on the sites.

As result, police say that during a three month pilot period the appearance of well-known brands’ advertising on the sites reduced by 12%. Nigel Gwilliam, Consultant Head of Digital at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, says that his members were pleased to assist in the initiative.

“We and our member agencies take online ad misplacement very seriously. We are delighted to have been able to work with PIPCU and rights holders on this pioneering pilot to throttle advertising revenue to copyright infringing websites and look for ward to further collaboration,” Gwilliam said.

Police suggest that this attack on advertising may have led to site owners struggling to maintain their revenue. As a result there was a 39% increase in sites displaying adult content or items which expose users to malware. Kieron Sharp, Director General at the Federation Against Copyright Theft, said his group was pleased to be protecting the public.

“FACT is delighted to be working with PIPCU and partners from the advertising, music and publishing sectors to protect UK consumers from websites that promote illegal content and also provide an unsafe platform that puts themselves and their families at risk. Many of these sites have no content filters and contain material that is unsuitable for children,” Sharp said.

Although the reported successes arrive with no supporting information to back them up, the BPI also feels that the campaign is bearing fruit.

“The early results from Operation Creative show that through working with the police and the online advertising industry, we can begin to disrupt the funding that sustains illegal websites,” commented Chief Executive Geoff Taylor.

Police say that second stage of Operation Creative targeted the domains of websites from the original 61 that despite the warnings continued their “offending.” PIPCU sent letters to their domain registrars informing them that they were doing business with sites “facilitating copyright infringement under UK law.”

The first sign of action in this area came in October when the domains of ExtraTorrent and SumoTorrent were suspended by their registrars. Today, however, police are claiming even bigger successes with the suspension of domains belonging to 40 “national and international websites.”

Having heard of no major torrent or file-sharing site with current domain issues, TorrentFreak asked the police to supply a list of the domains involved. The request was denied.

“At this stage we cannot release the names of the websites as some of them are still subject to ongoing investigation,” we were informed.

Any sites affected by the issues listed above can contact TorrentFreak here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

In mid October the long-running dispute between BitTorrent indexing site isoHunt and the Hollywood studios of the MPAA came to a premature and dramatic conclusion.

Under incredible pressure isoHunt’s Gary Fung agreed to pay a mind-boggling $110 million to the movie studios and in exchange for all of his legal problems becoming a thing of the past.

And then, just this week, file-hosting site Hotfile’s battle with Hollywood also came – wait for it – to a premature and dramatic conclusion. The embattled cyberlocker decided it would be better to pay the studios $80 million rather than have an annoying trial hanging over its head.

$100 million – A gift to the MPAA

Unsurprisingly this new-found cash generating plan (which hasn’t paid off so well since grabbing $110m from TorrentSpy in 2009) has the MPAA so excited it’s ready to significantly up the ante.

According to sources the first pirate site admin to incur the MPAA’s wrath in 2014 will have to pay a cool $2 billion and hand over a chalice filled with the blood of his first born child. This event will be turned into a movie and subsequently cammed by pirates, with the MPAA collecting successive $2 billion settlements from every site that dares to show it illegally from there on.

While the above paragraph is clearly utter nonsense, it carries only marginally less bullshit than the claims that isoHunt and Hotfile together collected $200 million and gave it to the MPAA. Anyone who believes they did might also be interested in a bridge The Pirate Bay has up for sale in London for which TorrentFreak is currently collecting deposits.

These huge headline amounts are there to scare other site owners who might be considering embarking on the same path as Gary Fung and the mystical Anton Titov. For sure, both former site operators knew that but faced with financial ruin they were both forced into settling with the MPAA instead. Who could blame them?

Think about it though. They handed over $200 million to avoid being ruined. That suggests that they must have even more money than that kicking around. While Hotfile’s finances might be healthier than Fung’s, the chances of the site having $80 million kicking around are slim at best. And rest assured, isoHunt’s former operator has never, ever had $110 million at his disposal.

In fact, when we last spoke to Fung he was far from suicidal. He was cheerfully starting up his own clothing line, even though he was apparently a tenth of a billion dollars in the hole.

Last week Kim Dotcom put out a tweet in the topic, hashtagged #insider. He doesn’t believe the settlement amounts either.

So what exactly did he mean?

“All I can say is that I know the settlement number published isn’t what Hotfile will pay. It’s a PR number the MPAA uses to scare others,” Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

“From what I have heard about how the MPAA does it in their settlement agreements is that they require the site owner to agree to a list of activities the site owner can’t do for five years, like start a new similar site.”

That’s probably why Gary Fung is testing out t-shirts rather than getting technical with torrents. And if Dotcom is correct, torrents will be a thing of the past for some time yet, if the isoHunt founder wants to keep control of his own finances that is.

“When that time has passed the site owner gets a significant discount (often over 90%) and in the meantime the site owner doesn’t have to settle the full amount, but only lets say, 5% of it,” Dotcom adds.

The Megaupload founder says the figures put out by Hollywood have no basis in truth and only exist in order to spread fear among others.

“So the MPAA can go out there and issue a press releases about these ridiculous settlements, scare the shit out of every site owner that allows user generated content, while getting pennies on the dollar for those settlements. I can tell site owners with confidence that these settlement numbers are FAKE,” he concludes.

Seriously – at any point did anyone ever believe otherwise?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

(click to embiggen)

Mark Burnett, whose work has been featured here before, has used lists of leaked passwords to compile a master list of the 10,000 worst passwords (with accompanying wordcloud, see above); an astonishing 91 percent of all passwords used appear in the top 1000. Here's the top 100, with their relative frequency:

password, 32027
123456, 25969
12345678, 8667
1234, 5786
qwerty, 5455
12345, 4523
dragon, 4321
pussy, 3945
baseball, 3739
football, 3682
letmein, 3536
monkey, 3487
696969, 3345
abc123, 3310
mustang, 3289
michael, 3249
shadow, 3209
master, 3182
jennifer, 2581
111111, 2570
2000, 2550
jordan, 2538
superman, 2523
harley, 2485
1234567, 2479
fuckme, 2378
hunter, 2377
fuckyou, 2362
trustno1, 2347
ranger, 2265
buster, 2254
thomas, 2194
tigger, 2192
robert, 2176
soccer, 2120
fuck, 2119
batman, 2108
test, 2097
pass, 2093
killer, 2044
hockey, 2040
george, 2033
charlie, 2013
andrew, 2009
michelle, 1977
love, 1960
sunshine, 1956
jessica, 1924
asshole, 1913
6969, 1889
pepper, 1881
daniel, 1822
access, 1817
123456789, 1793
654321, 1772
joshua, 1737
maggie, 1690
starwars, 1679
silver, 1666
william, 1662
dallas, 1659
yankees, 1657
123123, 1654
ashley, 1652
666666, 1645
hello, 1644
amanda, 1642
orange, 1623
biteme, 1621
freedom, 1612
computer, 1609
sexy, 1608
nicole, 1606
thunder, 1606
ginger, 1602
heather, 1597
hammer, 1596
summer, 1592
corvette, 1591
taylor, 1578
fucker, 1577
austin, 1554
1111, 1541
merlin, 1531
matthew, 1527
121212, 1499
golfer, 1491
princess, 1486
cheese, 1486
martin, 1469
chelsea, 1459
patrick, 1458
richard, 1457
diamond, 1432
yellow, 1422
bigdog, 1419
secret, 1406
asdfgh, 1403
sparky, 1400
cowboy, 1398

10,000 Top Passwords (via Beyond the Beyond)

Between shirts that don't stay tucked in, shoes that slip on and off, and zippers that get stuck every which way, it's a wonder we humans still wear clothes. Here are our top 10 clothing annoyances, and their clever solutions.

10. Make Your Zipper Behave

Zippers may be a fantastic feat of engineering, but when they start misbehaving, fixing them is like trying to wrestle a stubborn bear. Luckily, we've got solutions. Stuck zipper? Lubricate it with some Windex or a graphite pencil. Zipper won't stay up? Hook it onto a button with a key ring. Check out our list of every common zipper problem and how to fix them for more. And if you're more of a sweat pants kind of person, you can solve similar problems with your drawstring, too.

9. Keep Clothes from Wearing Out

Clothing wears out over time. It's just a fact of life. But you can do a lot to slow the process. For example, if you wear a lot of graphic T-shirts, wash them inside out to keep the graphic from fading too quickly. Washing things with similar fabrics—rather than similar colors—can help too. Having some minor sewing skills can help, too. Check out our guide to preserving your clothes for more.

8. Banish Underarm Stains

Sweat stains are as embarrassing as they are stubborn, but with the right things on hand, you can get your white shirts looking clean again in no time. The Art of Manliness found that OxiClean worked magic, but if you don't have any around, you could also get by with dish soap and hydrogen peroxide, or a number of other homemade concoctions. And for best results, dry in the sun for a stain-free finish.

7. Fix Ill-Fitting Items

Sometimes an item of clothing is perfect, except it just fits you kind of funny. Most things you can just get tailored, or even tailor them yourself. However, there are a few things you have to get right when you buy that item. Men buying suits, for example, should ensure the shoulders fit, since it's difficult to tailor. Women should check the ever-important hip area, in both tops and dresses (and don't even get us started on bra sizes). Whatever you do, don't just trust the size measurements—try things on to ensure they fit before you buy them. And if you're trying on a shirt, sit down to make sure it fits well.

6. De-Wrinkle Without Ironing

Okay, nobody likes ironing. And while you probably won't be able to escape ironing 100%, you have a lot of other options when it comes to de-wrinkling your clothes. You can hang them up in the bathroom when you shower, wet them and toss them in the dryer for a few minutes, or just spray them with a bit of water and hang them up. Of course, when you absolutely have to iron, a little aluminum foil can cut your ironing time in half.

5. Keep Collars Crisp and Straight

Ever have a shirt whose collar just didn't really fall the way you wanted it to? Button down shirt collars often fall limp after you wash them, and a lot of polo shirt collars can curl up as they wear out. Luckily, there are solutions: button the top button to keep your collars crisp, and for those polo shirts, try ironing these patches under the collar like a collar stay. Your shirt collars should stay crisp and straight for longer.

4. Fix Slippery, Tight, or Long-Laced Shoes

You'd think shoes are simple, but there are so many things that can go wrong. Some are too slippery, some are too tight, some give you blisters, and some just have unmanageable laces. If your shoes are of the slippery variety, a DIY cloth insert can help a lot, as can tongue or heel pads if the shoes are just a little too big. If they're too tight, you can usually stretch them out a bit with a hair dryer. If you're sick of tying your casual shoes, you can turn them into slip-ons or get some lock laces and never tie your shoes again.

3. Restore Shrunken Clothes

Nothing sucks quite like shrinking your favorite shirt in the wash. Luckily, you can un-shrink clothes with a bit of water and hair conditioner. Soak the garment with about 2-3 tablespoons of conditioner for five minutes, lay it on a towel, and carefully stretch it back to size as it dries. You should be able to wear it when you're done—and be careful the next time you wash it! That conditioner's also good for softening itchy wool sweaters too, while you're at it.

2. Keep Shirts Tucked In

One of the most annoying things about button down shirts is that they always seem to billow at the waist when you tuck them in. The solution: use this military tuck that keeps the excess fabric out of the way (though it helps to buy shirts that fit, too—see #7 on this list). And while we're on the subject: if you want to keep your underwear from having that same bunching, billowy problem, put them inside your pants and then put them both on at the same time. It'll change your life.

1. Store Everything Neatly

Of course one of the biggest clothing annoyances is the constant washing, drying, folding, and storing of your clothes. Luckily, we have a whole top 10 list just for that—but if nothing else, you should check out the above video which shows off 10 awesome tricks in 60 seconds. Lastly, cut down on clothing overload by weeding out what you don't wear with this hanger trick, and filling your drawers front to back for easier storage.

Images by Stella Dauer, Martha Silva, Jekert Gwapo, Debs, Diego Torres Silvestre, and Farrukh.

US-based Internet service providers receive DMCA notices from movie and music companies when their customers share copyrighted material without permission.

Since the ISPs are legally obliged to pass these notices on to the supposed infringers, companies that try to turn piracy into profit see this as a business opportunity.

One such outfit, US-based Rightscorp, sends out DMCA notices but tags settlement offers onto the end, thus managing to request cash from an individual whose identity they do not know. While this helpfully circumvents the need to obtain a court order, as reported yesterday Comcast has been stripping the settlement offers away.

Another way people avoid these kinds of demands is by using an anonymizing service such as a no-logging VPN service, such as those listed here. When these companies receive Rightscorp-style notices there is nothing they can do with them, since they do not know the identity of the user in question.

While VPNs work in theory, up until now there has been little public proof that these services really do stop anti-piracy outfits in their tracks. However, thanks to DMCA notices submitted to Chilling Effects by Proxy.sh, we now have evidence that users are avoiding expensive copyright settlements by using a VPN.

The notice below shows a DMCA/settlement demand from anti-piracy company CEG TEK sent on behalf of porn giant Manwin. In addition to the standard takedown text it requires the user to log into their systems and agree to a cash settlement to make a file-sharing lawsuit disappear. Of course, that’s not going to happen because the intended recipient was using a no-log VPN.

After following the links and entering the username and passwords detailed above, a TorrentFreak reader sent us the following screenshots of the settlement offer itself.

At this point the user is given the opportunity to enter more infringement notice details if they have them, with each adding to the total settlement amount. Once completed and following a click of the ‘continue’ button, a new page appears asking the alleged infringer to enter his personal details and select a payment method.

Further settlement notices sent by CEG TEK on behalf of other copyright holders including porn outfits Brazzers (1) and Celestial (1), (2), all reveal demands for cash. Since none of these were passed onto the VPN user, none of this companies will be receiving a penny.

Also of interest are several other notices sent by HBO, Viacom, Warner Bros. and NBC Universal to VPN users. While none of these ask for cash payment, these companies are partners in the ‘six strikes‘ campaign currently underway in the United States. If the individuals targeted by these notices had been using one of the participating ISPs, they would have had a ‘strike’ placed against their account.

Since they were using a no-logging VPN, the notices dropped into a black hole.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

2013 was a great year for our Hive Five feature, where we ask you for the best tools in a category, highlight the top five, and then challenge you to vote to determine the best or most popular. We covered a lot of ground this year and highlighted some great gadgets, apps, and tools. Here are the most popular Hive Fives of 2013.

If you're not familiar with the Hive Five feature, every week we ask you to tell us what product, tool, gadget, or device is best in a specific category. Then we tally up those nominations and highlight the ones you agree are the five best. We put them to a vote, and you decide the community favorite.

This year we mourned the demise of Google Reader, chose better razors for shaving, picked some great Android phones, and highlighted some awesome battery packs, to name a few.

Five Best DVD Ripping Tools

If you want to take your movies with you on the road, or just want to clean up those physical discs but keep your films and TV shows on your HTPC, you'll need to rip them first. Thankfully, there are plenty of great utilities designed to make the process easy and give you files that are playable on any device you choose, whenever you choose to watch them. Here are five of the best, based on your nominations.

Five Best Google Reader Alternatives

We're all seriously bummed about Google Reader shutting down, but it's not the end of the world, and there are a number of great news reading apps and services out there stepping up to replace it with syncing features and easy import tools to keep you organized. This week we're going to look at five of the best, based on your nominations.

Five Best External Battery Packs

When you're on the go and need a little extra power for a dying phone, a fading laptop, or a weary camera, carrying extra batteries is prudent, but it takes up space and you need one battery for every device. An external battery pack lets you carry one gadget that can charge up anything you plug it into. This week, we're checking out five of the best, based on your nominations.

Five Best Mind Mapping Tools

Mind mapping is a great way to brainstorm, make a plan, or turn ideas into the steps needed to make it real. Thankfully, there are great tools out there to help you build mind maps, organize them, and save them for later. Here's a look at five of the best, based on your nominations.

Five Best Sleep Tracking Gadgets or Apps

We could all use a better night's sleep, and the key to getting there is a mix of good sleep habits and understanding the things that keep you from getting the best sleep you possibly can. That's where sleep tracking gadgets that you wear, and smartphone apps that monitor your sleep cycles all come into play. This week, we're looking at five of the best sleep tracking tools, based on your nominations.

Five Best Android Phones: 2013 Edition

There are so many Android phones on the market that choosing the best one can mean a ton of research, price-checking, and waiting to see what's coming out in the next few weeks or months. Some are exclusive to specific carriers, some run stock Android, some are littered with bloatware but have powerful features. This week we wanted to know which you thought were the best of breed, not just because they round out a checklist of features or high-end hardware, but because you think they offer a great overall experience. Here's a look at the top five Android phones, based on your nominations.

Five Best Cloud Storage Providers

Free cloud storage is easy to come by these days—anyone can give it out, and anyone can give out lots of it. However, the best cloud storage providers give you more than just storage. They offer availability, multi-platform support, security, app integration, and more. This week we're going to look at five of the best cloud storage providers on the market, thanks to your nominations.

Five Best iPhone Cases

If you have an iPhone, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases to choose from. Some are slim and protect your phone without adding weight or bulk, others add pockets and other features at the expense of size and shape. This week, we're going to look at five of the best iPhone cases, based on your nominations.

Five Best Small Form Factor PC Cases

If you're building an HTPC, a small workstation, or you just don't want your rig to take up tons of space under or on top of your desk, you need a smaller PC case. Something that fits the important stuff, but doesn't waste a lot of space on expansion bays or components you may not need. This week we're going to take a look at five of the best for the job.

Five Best Exercise Headphones

The best headphones for sitting at your computer or in your home listening to music may not be the best headphones to put in your ears while you're jogging around town. Activity will make them fall out and noise isolation or closed ear models will make it hard to hear your surroundings, but you still want good audio quality for your money. We asked you for the best headphones for those workout sessions at the gym, and here are the five best, based on your nominations.

Five Best System Rescue Discs

When your computer starts behaving strangely, won't boot, or you start getting strange errors that you can't pin down, a great way to troubleshoot the problem is to boot to a rescue disc and see if you can isolate the problem. It might be your operating system, it could be hardware, but you'll never know until you boot to some other media to take a look. That said, there are tons of great system rescue discs to check out if you want a tool to save your ailing system. This week we're looking at five of the best, nominated by you, our readers.

Five Best Razors

A good, sharp, sturdy razor makes all the difference between nicks, cuts, or razor burn and a nice, smooth, even shave. Thankfully, you don't have to do with shoddily made, dull, cheap razors if you don't want to. This week we're going to look at five of the best razors for shaving, based on your nominations.

Five Best Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs)

A good digital-to-analog converter (or DAC) can make all the difference when listening to music, especially through headphones. We've talked about why they're so great, and how to choose a good one before, but this week we're looking at five of the best, based on your nominations.

Five Best A/V Receivers

A crucial and often overlooked part of your home entertainment setup is the humble receiver. It's responsible for organizing and funneling all of the audio and video from your Blu-ray player, game consoles, HTPC, and other devices to your TV and your speakers, but often it gets little attention. The best receivers have internet-capable features like streaming audio or video, a wealth of necessary ports for your devices, and won't break the bank at the same time. Here's a look at the top five, based on your nominations.

There you have it! The most popular Hive Fives of 2013. These are only a few, so if you want to see more, check out our Hive Five tag page. If there's a Hive Five topic you'd like to see us cover that we haven't yet, or one that you'd like us to revisit because the landscape has changed, don't forget to email us at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com, or let us know in the discussions below.

If you're curious what made the top of the charts in years gone by, take a look at the most popular Hive Fives of 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009.

FB could look a lot more like TV soon. While Vine and Instagram Video are booming, you don’t see many people natively uploading videos to Facebook. But now Facebook is bringing auto-play for native videos to all users after testing the feature in September. And it’s just the beginning of a huge push to put Facebook in motion.

Previously, any video uploaded to Facebook directly or shared to the News Feed from Instagram would appear the same as YouTube videos — locked behind a play button. While the conscious decision to stop scrolling for, open the video player, wait for it to load, and watch might not seem like a big deal, it may have been too much of a time and effort investment for some. If people don’t watch videos, they don’t get likes and comments that encourage friends to upload more, and they might skip uploading them themselves.

But after spotting an auto-play video in my feed yesterday and asking Facebook, the company confirms the new format is now internationally rolled out to most iOS and Android users and will reach all of them soon. Facebook tells me it’s still testing this feature on desktop and doesn’t have schedule for when it will roll out there.

On mobile, auto-play gives natively uploaded Facebook videos and ones shared from Instagram an advantage: you don’t have to think about playing them, they play themselves. At first they’ll play in-line even as you scroll, but with no sound. If you tap them, they expand full-screen and the audio kicks in. Videos uploaded to third-party sites retain the old click-to-play-format.

I’ve found the new design to be quite pleasing. As I wrote when Facebook’s auto-play style was first unveiled, it feels a bit like the moving photos in the Harry Potter newspapers.

If you don’t want to watch, you can scroll by with little disruption. This isn’t Myspace, Vine, or Instagram where auto-play sound is suddenly going to bombard everyone around you. If you’re not sure if you want to watch, you get a little preview. Maybe the thumbnail was dull but motion shows the video is actually exciting. A little animated audio levels icon clues you in to there being sound to be heard, though. You can watch silently if you don’t have headphones or privacy, but if you want the full experience, you can tap and the video plays instantly without a loading delay.

To respect users who don’t want to burn data, Facebook has added a setting that lets you only auto-play videos if you’re on WiFi and not on cellular data. It’s found in your phone’s Facebook settings on iOS and the Facebook app’s settings on Android.

Facebook With Commercials

When Facebook started testing auto-play, it was upfront about looking for ways to give the feature to marketers as well as users.  It wrote “At first, this feature will be limited to videos posted by individuals, musicians, and bands. We’re doing this to make sure we create the best possible experience. Over time, we’ll continue to explore how to bring this to marketers in the future.” I would bet we’re going to hear some news about this soon, either just before or after the New Year.

Facebook recently starting letting developers put videos in their app install ads, but those don’t auto-play. Maybe they will eventually, though.

For advertisers, auto-play videos could make their ads a lot more noticeable. Most people wouldn’t volunteer to watch a video ad (cool movie trailers aside), but if it’s already playing and looks compelling, they might watch or even expand it to include sound too. Facebook is a fan of consistency, so video ads might have a very similar user experience to organic videos.

Because they’re more captivating, Facebook could potentially charge a lot to show video ads. Back in September, AdAge reported Facebook could charge between $1 million and $2.4 million to distribute a 15-second video ad for a day. Facebook raked in $2.02 billion in Q3 2013, and video ads could give that number a significant bump in Q1 and Q2 2014. Finally, we might start to see a landslide of ad spend previously devoted to television coming online, as the Facebook format would be relatively familiar (though possibly with no sound unless clicked).

The question remains whether users will freak out about video ads. Comments on my last piece about them and general sentiment has been quite wary of what video ads will do to the Facebook experience. If they’re the most eye-catching things on the social network, they could seem quite annoying. AdAge says Facebook might cap video ads so users don’t see more than three a day. Striking the right balance will be critical, though surprisingly, Facebook found that showing static photo ads in the News Feed hasn’t had a significant negative impact on engagement.

And if you’re thinking to yourself, “AdBlock Plus, bro”, that’s up to you. Personally, I think ads are the lifeblood of innovation, funding free products we rely on. But they’re a nuisance unless well-targeted, so hopefully Facebook can keep video ads relevant to the viewer. Otherwise I’d expect a lot of people to look for ways to banish them from their feed.

FacebookCut Pro

The secret to making people swallow video ads might be getting them to shoot mini-movies themselves. If there were more user generated videos on the site, the ads would blend in.

The problem is, right now Facebook’s video creation tool is painfully outdated. Unlike its Instagram Video product, there’s no way to shoot multiple shots in a single video, no editing, no stabilization, no cover image, and no filters. That means videos shot with Facebook often look pretty crummy. Crummy videos get few likes, so people don’t shoot them, so no one sees them, so no one thinks to shoot them…

It’s time for Facebook to modernize its video creation tool.

It could easily port in the Instagram Video features, maybe with a better tagging interface since Facebook is more about friends. It also has patents on some pretty futuristic video technologies like recording video as soon as your camera is open, recognizing and tagging faces or locations, and detecting audio and visual cues like saying “that’s beautiful” to select a cover image thumbnail or create anchors for navigating around within a video while watching.

These features could make it much more fun to shoot and view Facebook videos, which could fill the feed with them and camouflage the video ads.

And even if the native creation tools stay the same, a better watching interface could make a big difference. Right now there’s no real way to discover and watch Facebook videos in bulk. A Facebook “channel” that showed your friends’ videos back-to-back (perhaps with clips from Pages and advertisers mixed in) could be an addictive lean-back experience. Better video viewing could pit Facebook in more direct competition with YouTube.

So basically, Facebook has a huge opportunity to step up its video…game, and auto-play on mobile is just the first step. Photos fueled Facebook’s popularity back in its early days. As it turns 10 years old in 2014, we’ll see if video can give it a second wind.

[Image Credit: BGR]

Outdated flood maps of New York City put in danger some 35,000 buildings, many of which later ended up being damaged in the wake of Hurricane Sandy last year, according to a new report. A new investigation by ProPublica says the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ignored numerous pleas to update maps that dated back to the 1980s, resulting in surprise damage for city dwellers who unknowingly bought and lived in high risk flood areas that would have been identified using newer cartographic and scientific techniques.

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This morning, as I listened to the BBC World Service on Mandela, I found myself pondering what it meant that he was South Africa's "first democratically elected leader."

This is undoubtedly true. The apartheid regime held elections regularly, but only white people were given the vote. The systematic, arbitrary denial of the franchise to a large fraction of the population makes those elections "undemocratic" and their leaders illegitimate. I think that this is indisputable.

But what about US elections prior to the 19th Amendment? Was Warren Harding the first "democratically elected leader of the United States?"

And what about the UK prior to 1918 (or 1928)? Women's suffrage came late the the UK, and if Nelson Mandela was the first democratically elected leader of South Africa, I think that makes Ramsay MacDonald the UK's first democratically elected leader.

Or if there's something special about gender that disqualifies it from being a prerequisite for democratic legitimacy, let's have the apples-to-apples comparison: enfranchisement for people of color.

Black people got the right to vote in the USA in 1870, making Ulysses S Grant the first "democratically elected" leader in US history (albeit that black people were systematically disenfranchised by law, norm, and deed throughout the land, a practice that continues today, especially in states with Tea Party legislatures).

Canada didn't give First Nations people the right to vote until 1960, making John Diefenbaker the first "democratically elected" leader in Canadian history.

It's not like the idea of women as full-fledged people, entitled to the vote, was obscure and unpopular before 1928. It's not like the idea of black people as human beings capable of reason was unheard of before 1870. It's not like First Nations people were universally considered incapable of self-determination before 1960. The systems that denied the vote to these people were violent, savage, and brutal in their repression of efforts to enfranchise all adults (and there's whole other post to be written about children and voting).

There was no democratic legitimacy in the apartheid era. None of the leaders of South Africa before Mandela were "democratically elected." But if we are going to retrospectively deny legitimacy to the men who called themselves democratic leaders because history has moved on, why not point out that every US President from Washington to Grant (or Harding) also had no legitimate claim to democratic leadership?

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. -The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(Image: Emmeline Pankhurst in prison, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

In addition to rebooting the Terminator series into a brand-new trilogy, Skydance Productions and Annapurna Pictures are developing a TV series that will complement the revived movie franchise. According to Deadline, the show is being written in conjunction with the first film of the new trilogy, set for release in June 2015. While plot details are scarce, the series will reportedly follow a critical moment from the original Terminator, but will go down a different narrative path.

The Terminator was last seen on TV only five years ago in the short-lived Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. For this outing, the companies involved want to create a universe reminiscent of what Marvel has recently done with its films and fan-favorite A...

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Disney now controls the future of the Indiana Jones franchise. Though Disney has owned the franchise's rights since it purchased Lucasfilm last October, rights to distribute and market any new films remained with Paramount Pictures, which released the series' first four installments. That could have been something of a hiccup when developing new films, but according to Variety, Disney and Paramount have now struck a deal that will give both distribution and marketing rights to Disney, while Paramount will retain rights to the first four pictures. There's no word yet on if a fifth movie is in the works, but Disney has been more than eager to take advantage of Lucasfilm's top property, and it would be no surprise to see it act similarly...

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There are no shortage of dedicated news apps available in the Play Store, but the Google News mobile site is about to get a revamp for all the people who rely on it to get their daily fix. With the update, the aging website will finally make the jump into the post-Ice Cream Sandwich era of Android.

The new site will have both a light and dark theme, and readers will be able to change the size of the story cards and the text inside them.

• Google Analytics App Gets A Massive Update To 2.0: New UI, More Data, Last Site Loads By Default, And More
• Chrome Beta For Android Now Supports Password Sync And Autofill [Updated]
• [Poll] The 'Recently Updated' Section Of The Play Store App Has Changed From 7 To 3 Days – Is That Better?
• WeatherBug App Gets Complete UI Overhaul – No Longer Looks Like A Hot Mess

Google News Mobile Site Set To Receive A Fresh New Look Over The Next Few Days was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

It bends! It flexes! It regains its shape! And it's just the start of things to come for the Korean smartphone manufacturer.

It’s quite possible that we’ve been looking at this all wrong. But can you blame us? For LG, with its new G Flex Android smartphone, has presented us with something that not only is curved — and not just the glass that rests against our face, but the entire body of the phone — but bends and flexes as well.

By now, we’ve all seen the videos, of course. You can press down on the G Flex — and press pretty damn hard, actually, with up to 88 pounds of force. The phone itself is curved. It flattens out, then regains its shape.

What sorcery is this?

Thing is, it’s but one trick the LG G Flex has up its sleeve. And once you get past that novelty, the rest sort of starts to fall into place.

Let’s be clear here — this is not our LG G Flex review. We’ve only had it for a few short days, and this is the proper Korean model — Korean apps and TV antenna included. There’s no way we can get a proper feel for battery life, and we have no idea what the U.S. carriers will do to this thing when and if (ahem) they get it.

But this is quite the interesting phone.

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http://marvel.com/news/story/21604/drew_goddard_joins_daredevil_on_netflix

"Goddard will write and direct the "Daredevil" first episode, setting the tone and look for the show, while also serving as series Showrunner and Executive Producer for the 13-episode series premiering on Netflix in 2015."

Google is launching an initiative to let organizations share their map data with the public, via Google’s Maps product and cloud-based infrastructure, and today partner National Geographic announced their participation in the project and shared some info via the official Google Maps blog. The partnership will mean that more than 500 reference and historic maps will now be available to browse as an additional layer on Google’s digital Maps engine.

This will let National Geographic explore interactive models complete with annotations that should help the archives come to life more effectively, and really animate issues of environmental change or provide education on important events throughout history. At a very basic level, this also makes available to many what was once hidden away in archival storage, visible only to those few historians who sought it out.

It’s not just about making things available free, however: National Geographic’s Frank Biasi, Director of Digital Development for NatGeo’s Maps, says there’s an added opportunity in that they can license or sell high-res and print editions of any map they make available through Google’s public data initiative, driving revenue back to the organization to support their nonprofit efforts.

Cartography may seem like fairly well-covered territory at this point, but combining the old and the new like this could be generative of very interesting comparative studies. Plus, putting them in front of more eyeballs means more potential for discovery by a wider pool of researchers, amateur and pro alike. After all, it never hurts to double check.

The UK Home Office has added language to its firearms rules, making clear that it's generally illegal to make, own, or sell 3D-printed guns. A revised version of its licensing policies says that guns like the Liberator, designed by Defense Distributed and released to the world in May, are covered under and forbidden by the Firearms Act 1968 — manufacturing 3D-printed guns or parts is effectively already banned because of rules against manufacturing guns or gun parts except under certain exemptions, but the guidance now includes explicit text to that effect. "3D printed weapons are potentially lethal barreled weapons and must be viewed as such in law," it reads. "The method of manufacture is not material to this consideration."

In a...

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British computer maker Piixl has a new SteamOS gaming box on the way that can go sight unseen in living rooms thanks to a design that latches onto the back of most flatscreen TV sets, walls, and underneath tables. The computer will run Valve's SteamOS, though according to Pocket-Lint, it will also be able to run Windows or Linux. Users can also install whatever graphics cards they want with what Piixl says will be "universal" GPU compatibility.

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