Category: Technology

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Technology

Reddit Blocks Huffington Post, Huffington Post Writes Kiss Up Review about Reddit

Reddit, the popular content sharing platform just revealed that a bunch of well-known political sites would be blocked from posting future articles to Reddit’s Political category or Subreddit. To the sites being blocked, this is a big deal considering the main objective of an information website, is to get that information out to the masses. The political category or subreddit alone has over 3 million subscribers, so a site being blocked from posting in that category could, and arguably would see their readership fall tremendously.

Huffington Post is one of the many sites blocked from posting future articles in the Politics Subreddit. Other sites like Fox News and other political sites are also added to the dreaded Reddit Banned List. You will think that these sites, given their already large online distribution, would take this Reddit ban with a grain of salt and not even register it on their rader. But not the Huffington Post.

Imagine my surprise today, when I came across this post on HuffPo written after being banned by Reddit. HuffPo praised Reddit for the great work they’re doing and for their creating their leading online platform – a platform that just blocked HuffPo’s submissions.

Can you say kiss-up?

Social news aggregators like reddit, founded in 2005, allow for the very best of journalism anywhere in the world to be exposed to a wide swath of the population. Reddit allows users the flexibility to subscribe to channels (called subreddits) that fit their interests, whether they are extremely technical, hard-science or trivial but fun. On reddit, you can find all the cat GIFs you could ever want, as well as read a solid and sourced conversation between trained academics on any given subject.

Because a network of millions of users determines the content of each subreddit and even the front page, newsworthy reports receive the attention they deserve. Journalists who go above and beyond are often recognized for their hard work and ingenuity, and because users can and do comment in longer form, the debate on important subjects is properly nuanced to match the complexity of the issue. Frequently, even unpopular opinions will be “upvoted” to get exposure, provided they are well argued and properly sourced. Unlike on television, where quick witticisms and soundbites are all producers have time for, reddit allows for a determined reader to gather a more complete set of facts before forming an opinion. As long as a viewer takes what they see with an appropriately-sized grain of salt, a comments thread on reddit will typically better inform the reader what the holes and deficits of a news article are, or what about an opinion piece is truly innovative and conversation-worthy.

Beyond determining what’s newsworthy, reddit allows for users to organize and act together better than ever before. When the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act threatened (and threatened again) the freedom of information on the Internet, redditorsgathered to fight the proposed law — and won. Redditors are engaged in activism on many fronts, and as the userbase grows, their power will, too. One can expect the campaigns of the 2016 Presidential Election to appeal to reddit frequently and often.

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Technology

The Reverse Microwave – Chills A Drink in Seconds

Microwaves are handy little units when we want to heat food or drinks up quickly. However, never before has there been a gadget that does just the opposite — cooling without the long wait. That is, until now.

A product of Enviro-Cool Limited, V-Tex is an environmentally-friendly, efficient system that cools beverages in a matter of seconds. From wine bottles to soda cans, the unit is able to chill drinks in all types of containers without disturbing carbonation. How? V-Tex uses a “start stop rotational sequence” to create a Rankine vortex, which essentially keeps a drink in its original state while quickly bringing down the temperature.

The reverse microwave requires nearly 80% less energy than many standard drink chillers, allowing consumers to save money and keep things green. It also frees up standard refrigerator space, since most beverages can be stored at room temperature elsewhere until right before serving.

Enviro-Cool plans to release both commercial and domestic versions of V-Tex, but until then, we’ll have to settle for poppin’ bottles in the fridge. See how it works below:

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Technology

Changes to Yahoo Mail Irritate Customers

She may be getting cheered on Wall Street, but Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is getting a thumbs down from users of the company’s email and chat forums.
Thousands of users have complained to Yahoo about its latest redesign that eliminated some popular features while adding others they find clunky and confusing.

“We have refreshed your inbox with more room for messages and added exciting new features you will love,” the Internet giant told users when it relaunched Yahoo Mail last week.
But rather than applaud the overhaul, users have flooded the company’s “feature suggestions” page to demand changes be rolled back and old features restored.

“I HATE IT! Please bring back the old version of yahoo classic,” wrote one aggrieved user on the site.

One of the biggest complaints has been Yahoo’s removal of the email’s “tabs” feature, which allowed users to open multiple emails at once.

A post headlined “Please Bring Back Tabs” has floated to the top of the suggestions page after attracting a whopping 47,302 votes and 3,608 comments as of Thursday afternoon.

The author of the post said that tabs is one of the reasons he uses Yahoo Mail over Gmail, echoing complaints on the site that the new interface mimics Google’s system. Mayer was a top executive at Google before she took the CEO job at Yahoo last summer.

“If I wanted to use Gmail, I would do that,” one user griped on the suggestions site. “You didn’t study the customer usability before changing your system, did you?”

Yahoo didn’t immediately return a request for comment, but a recent post on the suggestions site by the site’s administrator suggests that the company is at least aware of the complaints.

“The recent design changes in Yahoo Mail are important steps to building a more modern and personalized version. We recognize that this is a lot of change and are actively listening to user feedback so we can continuously make improvements,” said the post from the administrator.

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Featured News Technology

Adobe Gets Hacked!

 

OMG! Adobe has just disclosed that one of their servers has been hacked.

Although investigations are still ongoing, the company is sharing details on what they believe could have been accessed. It’s pretty huge!

Seems like the hackers have obtained encrypted data for as many as 2.9 million customers, and while Adobe stresses that the data is encrypted and that they “do not believe the attackers removed decrypted credit or debit card numbers”, that data — encrypted or not — is definitely not something they want to be floating around in the matrix. Neither do Adobe’s 2.9 million customers.

Adobe has yet to disclose how that data was encrypted, so it’s currently unclear just how secure anything really is at this point.

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Technology

Next For Samsung – Smart Phones with Curved Display

Curved displays are an early stage in screen evolution which is shifting to bendable or foldable designs, eventually allowing mobile and wearable gadgets to take on new forms that could radically change the high-end smartphone market.

“We plan to introduce a smartphone with a curved display in South Korea in October,” Samsung’s mobile business head of strategic marketing D.J. Lee said on Wednesday at an event launching the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone in Seoul.

In January Samsung, which has taken over from Apple Inc as the global smartphone leader, showed off prototype products with a flexible screen and a display that extends from the side of a device.

But technology firms have yet to figure out how to mass produce the parts cheaply and come up with display panels that can be as thin as a sheet and highly heat resistant.

Curved display is already commercially available in large-screen televisions. Samsung and its home rival LG Electronics Inc had started selling curved OLED TV sets this year priced at about $9,000.

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Technology

Android 4.4 KitKat with 64-bit Processing?

New reports say that 64-bit support is coming to Android in the near future – maybe as soon as Android 4.4 KitKat – or at least that’s what a recent Intel presentation seems to imply.

The image above is taken from a presentation given by Intel at its Developer Forum last week, where the company talked about its computing plans for the future, touching on various operating systems including Windows and Android.

As you can see in the picture, 64-bit support is mentioned as an upcoming “enhancement” for Android devices that will have Intel chips under the hood.

While Intel didn’t specifically confirm that 64-bit support is coming to Android 4.4 KitKat, it would make sense to see that happen considering the recent interest in mobile processors with such powers.

Apple was first to announce a mobile device that will have a chip with 64-bit support – the iPhone 5S with an Apple A7 inside – but it won’t be the only company to offer such products.

Samsung has also confirmed that its mobile devices will support 64-bit processing in the future, and now Intel is apparently saying that its mobile chips are ready to do the same.

In fact, Intel’s current Bay Trail Atom chips “are certified as ‘Intel 64’ chips,” which means they’re ready to offer 64-bit support.

Not to mention that we already know ARM’s next-gen of mobile chips will come with 64-bit support.

Interestingly, during IDF 2013 Intel was joined on stage by Google, as Sundar Pichai himself made an appearance to talk about Chrome and Android. From the looks of it, the chipmaker is more and more interested to increase its presence in the Android ecosystem.

That said, don’t get too excited about 64-bit processing just yet, no matter how interesting it may sound – and we’ll have to wait a while to see whether Android 4.4 KitKat will indeed offer such functionality. But it seems more than clear that 64-bit chips will be found in more and more mobile devices in the coming years, so it’s logical to speculate that Google will be ready to support them with future versions of its operating systems.

Google is rumored to unveil the next Nexus smartphone alongside Android 4.4 KitKat on October 14.

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Technology

The New iPhone, Same Old iPhone

The new iPhones look like the old iPhones. They sound like the old iPhones. They do the same things as the old iPhones. Just slightly better, more colorfully, and less expensively than the old iPhones. This might seem disappointing: even Apple’s phones are boring now. But this is an ideal state of affairs.

The original iPhone, released in June, 2007, gave birth to the modern smartphone era: browsing restaurant menus on a sidewalk, watching a movie on a bus, tweeting from the subway and posting photos of a newborn to Facebook the second it opens its eyes. What we can do now, six years later, has not fundamentally changed since then. It’s easier or faster—forty times faster, according to Apple—or higher resolution, or all of the above. To wit, the iPhone 5S has few genuinely new features, and those that it does have are nearly invisible. In order of importance, they are: a built-in fingerprint scanner to replace passwords, faster chips, a higher-quality camera, and a gold body. The iPhone 5C is essentially the exact same as the current iPhone 5, but shoved into a brightly colored plastic, rather than aluminum, shell and sold for a hundred dollars less than before.

Fundamental technology, like manufacturing processes for processors and imaging sensors and displays, have evolved to the point that the basic shape and sense of a phone—a thin rectangle with a four-to-five-inch high-resolution touch screen stuffed with a variety of sensors—is determined now largely based on its merits rather than its outright technical limitations, much the same way that the basic shape of a knife is defined by its function rather than our ability to produce it. (The biggest technical limitation for mobile devices now is battery technology, which has not seen a true breakthrough in decades.)

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News Technology

Facebook Ignored The Bug I Found Until I Used It To Hack Zuckerberg

Facebook has a bounty program where it pays people to report bugs instead of using them or selling them on the black market. In this case, instead of fixing the bug and paying the researcher the $500+ fee, Facebook told him “this was not a bug,” according to an email that Shreateh shared.

Shreateh says he tried a second time to warn Facebook and when that didn’t work, he used the bug to post a message to Mark Zuckerberg’s Wall.

The message said, “Sorry for breaking your privacy … but a couple of days ago, I found a serious Facebook exploit” and explained that Facebook’s security team wasn’t taking him seriously.

Here’s a photo of the message from Shreateh.

In a post on Hacker News, Matt Jones from Facebook’s security team said that once the team understood the bug they acted quickly, “We fixed this bug on Thursday.”

They also temporarily suspended Shreateh’s account and said they wouldn’t pay him the bounty fee because, by posting to Zuck’s account, he violated Facebook’s terms of service.

Read more: Business Insider

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Technology

New iPhone Coming in Next Month – So Says Apple

If you’re a fan of Apple, mark September 10 on your calendar. That’s when the company is reportedly unveiling the next iPhone.

According to All Things D, Apple is hosting an event next month where the company is expected to reveal its latest smartphone.

Naturally, the weeks leading up to the reported reveal have been filled with countless rumors on what consumers can expect from the next iPhone. Rumors range from a lower-cost model to appeal to more consumers to a device equipped with a fingerprint sensor.

The reported event arrives as Apple continues to cede ground to several strong competitors, most notably Samsung and its Galaxy S series as well as the army of devices running Google’s Android operating system. According to IDC, nearly 80% of the smartphones shipped last quarter ran on Android.

However, the introduction of a new iPhone could spark an Apple rebound. “With a new iPhone and revamped iOS coming out later this year, Apple is well-positioned to re-capture market share,” says IDC research manager Ramon Llamas.

Readers, what features would you like to see in the next iPhone?

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Technology

Woman Pays $1200 for Two Apples… The Fruit

An Australian woman paid $1,200 for two new Apple iPhones over website Gumtree, but opened the box to find just fruit inside.

The 21-year-old had posted an ad asking if anyone had a smartphone for sale.

She was soon contacted by another woman who said she had “two Apples” up for grabs.

The pair met at a McDonald’s restaurant where the woman handed over her cash for what she thought were two new iPhone boxes.

Failing to check the product before leaving, it was only after arriving home that she realized the cartons only contained apples.

Cops in her Queensland town of Upper Mt Gravatt, near Brisbane, said it served as a warning for people to be “wary” when buying items online.

“Don’t stay away because most people are doing the right thing, but be smart about what you buy,” Senior Constable Jess Hopkin told the Herald Sun.

“If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. It’s really just common sense.”

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Technology

Nokia Lumia 1020 Phone with a 41 Megapixel Sensor

 

 

The big, circular bump on the back of the Lumia 1020 is impossible to miss. Place the phone on a table and it rests at an angle, slightly propped up by the protrusion. Hold it in your hand and you’re always fondling the circle’s edges.

But the phone’s uniquely shaped backside isn’t without reason. In fact, it’s there for a really great reason:Nokia’s Lumia 1020 packs the best smartphone camera available, one with a gargantuan 41-megapixel sensor, Xenon flash, six physical lens elements, and the software to support it all.

The Finnish company had previously trumped all smartphone cameras with its 41-megapixel PureView 808last year. It won accolades and plenty of press buzz. The actual Symbian-powered phone, however, was mediocre. And where the Lumia 1020′s raised back looks fairly elegant and sleek, the PureView 808 looks as if somebody had just slapped an extra piece onto an already bulky phone’s back.

 

h/t – wired

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Education Technology

Teenager Plans ‘Hacker School’ to Help Africa Build Next Google


(CNN) — Martha Chumo, a 19-year-old self-taught programmer, was supposed to be in New York right now, honing her coding skills and mastering cutting-edge technologies in the company of fellow software enthusiasts.

Instead, she’s thousands of miles away, in her hometown of Nairobi, Kenya.

A few months ago, Chumo was accepted into the summer intake of Hacker School, a U.S.-based “retreat for hackers,” where budding programmers come together for three months to write code, learn new languages and share industry insights.

Whereas the programming boot camp was free to attend, Chumo still needed to find a way to cover her trip costs and buy a new laptop. Excited and determined, the young developer turned to online crowdsourcing platform Indiegogo for funds. She set a target of $4,200 and managed to raise nearly $5,800. All she needed then was a visa to travel to the United States.

 

h/t/ – CNN

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