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History is full of evil dictators, and while the had their share of bad qualities, it’s undeniable they were efficient at getting things done. Here’s what we can learn from them, despite their evil nature.

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If you’ve been in this Android thing for awhile now, there’s a good chance you have an old tablet buried in a desk somewhere. Whether it was one a cheap Chinese model given to you as a gift, or something you gave your kids and they quickly forgot about, you can give it new life as a smart mirror in your home and it’s surprisingly easier than you might think.

The folks at Adafruit walked us through the entire process which pretty much involves installing Hannah Mitt’s HomeMirror app on Github and slapping an old tablet behind a cheap, plastic 2-way mirror. Here are the materials you’re going to need before you start followed by the how-to video:

Android-powered smart mirror

• Plastic 2-way mirror (see-through)
• Double-sided tape
• Velcro tape
• Black construction paper
• Packing tape
• Scissors
• Long enough USB cord to run to your mirror’s desired location

Placement is everything, so the most ideal location would probably be somewhere near the door so you can quickly check for boogers while seeing relevant information before you head out. Also, you don’t even have to use the above HomeMirror app, pretty much any other would do providing it’s high contrast. Anyone think this is cool enough to try out?

Breaking.... WikiLeaks, The Anti-secrecy and transparency organization, claims to have obtained the contents of CIA Director John Brennan's personal AOL email account. Also, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has promised to publish them soon on their website. Earlier this week, Brennan's personal email account was hacked by an anonymous self-described high school student, who

Both T-Mobile and Experian — the credit agency they use for credit checks — have revealed that they were the subject of a major data breach, resulting in the stolen data of more than 15 million people, some of which were T-Mobile customers. Although both companies are apologizing for the breach, the blame lies solely on Experian who hackers managed to pilfer the names, addresses, birth dates, drivers license numbers, passport numbers, and social security numbers of T-Mobile customers between the dates of September 1st, 2013 through September 16th, 2015.

Even long standing customers who have been with T-Mobile before that time are still at risk since the carrier runs your credit whenever adding a new line, or upgrading a device. So if that sounds like you, be on the lookout. On the bright side, because customers’ bank accounts and credit card payment information was stored safely with T-Mobile, you don’t have to worry about that stuff making its way into hackers’ grimy little hands.

While there isn’t much T-Mobile can do, CEO John Legere certainly wasn’t exactly happy about the hack, saying they’re now reevaluating their relationship with Experian as a result. T-Mobile will begin alerting customers logging into their accounts while Experian will be alerting customers in writing. While the breach affects millions of current T-Mobile customers take note: even if you applied for service with T-Mobile during the timeline above and later cancelled or were rejected, you’re in the same boat as everyone else (myself included). Ugh.

Update: A previous version of this post stated the 15 million people affected by the hack were T-Mobile customers, but T-Mobile has since issued a correction and we’ve updated the post appropriately.

[T-Mobile | Experian]

Just a few short months after finally gaining access to the Arctic, Shell has announced it is abandoning efforts to drill for oil and natural gas in Alaska following “disappointing” results of initial explorations. Shell’s decision to abandon the Burger J exploration well, located approximately 150 miles offshore from Barrow, Alaska, has caused resounding celebration amongst advocates for the environment, who worked for years to block drilling efforts. But will this decision close the book on offshore drilling in the Arctic?

Read the rest of Shell abandons Arctic drilling – $7 billion later

The OPM Data Breach (Office of Personnel Management) is getting even worse than we thought. We already know more than 21 Million current and former federal employees had their personal and highly sensitive private information hijacked in a massive data breach that affected Defense Department's OPM. But, now it has been revealed that the hackers have made off a lot more than just names,

At first blush, apples might seem pretty boring (that’s the fruit that got mankind expelled from paradise?) but a perfectly crisp, sweet and tart apple, fresh from the tree, is a beautiful thing—but each variety has its strengths and uses.

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If you noticed Google Voice Search queries are snappier and more accurate than they might have been previously — it’s not just you. Google announced today on their Google Research Blog that they’ve officially made the switch to a newer technology powering voice search, essentially turbo charging the service over on their end.

“Today, we’re happy to announce we built even better neural network acoustic models using Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) and sequence discriminative training techniques. These models are a special extension of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) that are more accurate, especially in noisy environments, and they are blazingly fast!”

Google also mentions that they included artificial noise and reverb in their training data, which helps with voice recognition in noisy environments. In addition to being more accurate and quicker to respond, Google’s newer technology requires much lower computational resources. It’s pretty technical, but if you’ve like to give the entire blog post a once over, hit up the link below.

In the meantime, Google’s new acoustic models are already working in voice search for both Android and iOS, so feel free to try it out if you haven’t in a while.

[Google Research Blog]

This is Really Insane!! Germany's top intelligence agency handed over details related to German citizen metadata just in order to obtain a copy of the National Security Agency's Main XKeyscore software, which was first revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. According to the new documents obtained by the German newspaper Die Zeit, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (

Tool belts aren’t for everyone, but keeping your hand tools within reach makes any project much easier. Here’s an alternative: make your own tool vest to fit every tool you need.

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Sometimes you don’t have the time or patience for a recipe (or you just have some leftover ingredients). This chart shows you a simple formula to put together any slow cooker meal.

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Ford Motor Company’s [NYSE:F] latest halo car will utilize loads of carbon fiber bits, but with its $400k price tag and 250-car annual production cap, the spectacular GT will be the polar opposite of cheap and high-volume. ALSO SEE: Stock 2015 Chevy Corvette Z06 0-185-MPH Run: Video As we've seen with the new aluminum F-150, however, the...

We’ve talked a lot about password security, and how you should be using longer, complex passphrases , rather than short passwords. In this video, Edward Snowden explains why you should use passphrases in a way all your friends and family can understand.

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U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is infamous for conducting Global Mass Surveillance to snoop secretly on users' online communications, phone calls, private instant messages, and personal emails, but there is something shocking about it. The Security Agency also asked its employees to watch Porn -- Yes! Porn and a lot of Porn. The Analysts and Terrorism experts employed by U.S.

When you think of gender issues in the Middle East, you probably think of there being fewer rights for women. In the UAE, however, some of your ideas might well be flipped on their heads. For example, it’s a common issue in the US and many other countries that women are heavily outnumbered by men in

Women Outnumber Men In STEM In The UAE (Video) was originally published on CleanTechnica.

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It’s long been thought that Audi’s latest RS 3 would be coming to the U.S., and now the automaker’s local chief, Scott Keogh, has confirmed it. However, the U.S. is unlikely to get the RS 3 Hatchback that goes on sale in Europe this summer; rather, we’ll get an RS 3 sedan, previewed last year by the A3 clubsport quattro...

Microsoft Stuns with New Work & Play Savings is a post by Travis Pope from Gotta Be Mobile.

Microsoft is hoping that a new Work & Play bundle will convince users on the fence about adopting some of its services to take the plunge and fully switch to its now robust line up of software and services.

Microsoft Work & Play debuted on the company’s Microsoft Store retail website early yesterday. Microsoft Work & Play isn’t another product from Microsoft in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s what amounts to a value bundle, an all-inclusive subscription to Microsoft’s more consumer oriented offerings.

$149.99 gets users a year-long subscription to Office 365 Home, OneDrive, Skype, Skype WiFi, Xbox Music and Xbox Live. Normally, Microsoft says that buying these things separately would cost over $250, which probably isn’t much consolation to those who might already have them all.

Office 365 is the company’s relatively new subscription service aimed at users who need Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote and Excel, but don’t want to pay upwards of $120 for each PC they own. Office 365 Home allows users to install Microsoft Office on up to 5 different PCs at a time. There’s additional installs for smartphones and tablets. Office 365 Home already comes with 5TB of OneDrive storage, 1TB for each users. Users also get an hour of Skype calling time a month per user. Normally, Office 365 Home costs $9.99 a month.

Read: What is Office 365?

Skype Wi-Fi is the service that allows users to connect to millions of internet access points around the world when they don’t have an internet connection. Xbox Music and Xbox Live are the two parts of this Microsoft Work & Play bundle that are drawing raised eyebrows.

Xbox Music is like Spotify in that it lets users store and stream millions of songs for just $9.99. In addition to that it gives users an extra 100GB of storage to add their music to OneDrive for easy streaming. It also provides free music video streaming on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles. A year of Xbox Music normally costs $99 from the Microsoft Store.

Millions of Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners use Xbox Live to play multiplayer games online with their friends and family. Microsoft also lets users with an Xbox Live Gold subscription store the video clips from their games on its servers. Each week Microsoft offers Deals with Gold discounts on some of the most popular games available. The company also hands out two Xbox One and Xbox 360 games to subscribers at no additional cost. Xbox Live Gold costs $60 a year normally.

Whether you should take Microsoft up on the new Work & Play bundle comes down to your preference for subscription services. Office 365 Home is a pretty easy way to get access to the Office apps wherever you need them. So are the included boosts for OneDrive, Skype and Skype Wi-Fi. If you’re already paying monthly for a music subscription service, it’s likely cheaper in the long run to purchase this bundle. Whether it’s worth buying to get Xbox Live Gold is pretty questionable since that service requires specific hardware to take advantage of the savings.

To be clear, Microsoft first offered the Work & Play bundle last year, but it was only for those heading into a Microsoft Store. This Work & Play bundle is available to everyone and anyone living in the United States who has access to the Microsoft Store website. Buyers who snatch up the subscription online receive an email with codes that need to be redeemed and links on where to submit those codes.

Microsoft isn’t partnering with any other retail stores to offer the Work & Play bundle for now.

Microsoft Stuns with New Work & Play Savings is a post by Travis Pope from Gotta Be Mobile.

Women are being charged $1,351 more than men, per year, for almost identical products, just labeled "for women." This pricing phenomena, often called the "Pink Tax", can typically be avoided by shopping in the men's section for identical products and paying close attention to pricing.

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When you're trying to declutter your home , sentimental items pose a difficult challenge. They take up valuable space, but you feel guilty when you even think about getting rid of them. Here are a few tips to help you go through your keepsakes without feeling like a heartless monster.

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Who will create the holy grail of EVs (long-range, but affordable)?

What if your car could be powered where the rubber meets the road? Range anxiety persists as a fear among electric car drivers, as heavy batteries with limited capacity remain slow to charge. Goodyear has announced its concept for a heat-gathering, electricity-generating tire at the 2015 Geneva International Auto Show, and the tire could change all that by making a few changes to an oft-overlooked component.

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Post tags: battery, bh03, car charged by tire, charging, concept, electric car, goodyear, heat-gathering tire, range anxiety, tire

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On August 2, 2012, a salt dome operated by the petrochemical company Texas Brine collapsed near Bayou Corne, Louisiana, creating a sinkhole that forced the entire town to evacuate. Since then it has expanded to over 26 acres as of 2014, and is estimated to be 750 feet deep. The still-growing sinkhole is showing no signs of stopping and no one knows when it will stop expanding, making it one of the largest ongoing disasters in the US.

Read the rest of VIDEO: Massive Louisiana sinkhole creates ghost town now overrun by feral kittens

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Post tags: assumption parish, bayou corne, environmental destruction, evacuation, louisiana, louisiana sinkhole, mining, salt dome collapse, sinkhole, texas brine

Filed under: Green, Tesla, Sedan, Electric, Performance

New video answers gripping question of which is quicker off the line on a frozen lake - a Tesla Model S P85D, or a snowmobile.

Continue reading Tesla Model S P85D gets pitted against a... snowmobile?

Tesla Model S P85D gets pitted against a... snowmobile? originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 12 Mar 2015 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One little boy, born missing the lower portion of his right arm, encountered a stroke of luck any comic book fan would envy. He received a brand-new 3D-printed bionic arm from Tony Stark himself. Robert Downey Jr met with seven-year-old Alex Pring to present him with an upgraded artificial limb. Downey also brought along one of the arms he wore in the Iron Man films, and he and Alex geeked out together, comparing the abilities of their man-made arms.

Read the rest of Robert Downey Jr gives 3D-printed prosthetic ‘Iron Man’ arm to seven-year-old superhero fan

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Post tags: 3D printed limbs, 3d printed prosthetics, 3D-printed artificial limbs, albert manero, alex pring, medical advancements, medical engineering, Robert Downey Jr, the collective project, University of Central Florida

Filed under: Design/Style, Green, Weird Car News, Green Culture, Emerging Technologies, Technology

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies intends to build a five-mile circuit next year as the centerpiece of a planned community in California. The short course wouldn't allow for the high speeds that could be possible from a longer design, but it allows the company to work out pod designs.

Continue reading First five miles of Hyperloop track planned for California

First five miles of Hyperloop track planned for California originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 27 Feb 2015 16:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may have heard the saying "nice guys finish last," but there is plenty of evidence that says being nice is far more advantageous. This video explains why being nice is almost always the best way to go.

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It seems like a question that's as old as time itself, "How much sleep do I really need?" The nonprofit National Sleep Foundation and a panel of 18 prominent medical scientists and researchers reviewed over 300 sleep studies to try and finally answer it.

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For the first time since the age of the Vikings, Icelanders will be able to publicly worship at the altar of Thor (or any other Norse god they choose). This month, construction begins on a temple dedicated solely to the Norse gods, where neo-pagans can celebrate ancient rituals, perform marriages and lay people to rest under the watchful eye of Odin. It’s the first temple of its kind in Iceland for at least 1,000 years, when Norse gods last dominated the religious scene.

Read the rest of Iceland is building the first temple to Norse gods in 1,000 years

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Post tags: first modern norse god temple, first modern pagan temple, Iceland norse temple, Iceland pagan temple, norse gods, Norse pagan church Reykjavik, Norse pagan temple Reykjavik, norse temple, pagan norse temple, pagan temple Reykjavik, Reykjavik, temple odin, temple thor, worshiping norse gods

Many people tend to be anxious about their fitness routine. They want to optimize everything, which leads to overthinking and eventually inconsistency. If this sounds like you, creating a ritual more be the best thing that you can do.

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The Energy Department has come up with $59 million in seed money to get the US solar industry cracking on the next stage of growth

Nothing Can Stop The US Solar Industry Juggernaut Now was originally published on CleanTechnica.

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