This past Friday, the kids from 1980s Hawkins, Indiana, were back with Stranger Things 2, the second season of Netflix’s breakout show from the Duffer Brothers. It arrived with huge expectations and massive excitement so, like many of you, we binged the whole thing on its first weekend. Overall, Stranger Things 2 was…
Source: Gizmodo – 9 Things We Loved About Stranger Things 2 (and 4 We Didn’t)
A reader shares a report: For years, piracy persisted mainly in the realm of torrents, with sites like The Pirate Bay and Demonoid connecting internet denizens to premium content gratis. But a confluence of factors have sent torrent usage plummeting from 23 percent of all North American daily internet traffic in 2011 to under 5 percent last year. Legal crackdowns shuttered prominent torrent sites. Paid alternatives like Netflix and Hulu made it easier just to pay up. And then there were the “fully loaded” Kodi boxes — otherwise vanilla streaming devices that come with, or make easily accessible, so-called addons that seek out unlicensed content — that deliver pirated movies and TV shows with push-button ease. “Kodi and the plugin system and the people who made these plugins have just dumbed down the process,” says Dan Deeth, spokesperson for network-equipment company Sandvine. “It’s easy for anyone to use. It’s kind of set it and forget it. Like the Ron Popeil turkey roaster.” Kodi itself is just a media player; the majority of addons aren’t piracy focused, and lots of Kodi devices without illicit software plug-ins are utterly uncontroversial. Still, that Kodi has swallowed piracy may not surprise some of you; a full six percent of North American households have a Kodi device configured to access unlicensed content, according to a recent Sandvine study. But the story of how a popular, open-source media player called XBMC became a pirate’s paradise might. And with a legal crackdown looming, the Kodi ecosystem’s present may matter less than its uncertain future.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – How Kodi Took Over Piracy
This is the helmet-cam footage of Antoine Bizet’s run down the 2017 Red Bull Rampage downhill biking course. It’s intense to say the least, and I’m pretty sure I flipped over my own handlebars just watching it. Now I’m bleeding. “Where from?” Everywhere. Plus I think I broke all my bones. “So you’re just a blob now.” Exactly — that’s a good enough excuse to leave work early, right? “Depends on how you feel about getting fired.” Out of a cannon? I love it so much, I was born to circus.
Keep going for the video.
Source: Geekologie – You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me: First Person POV Of Red Bull Rampage Insane Downhill Biking Course
Man, this last couple of weeks has seen a veritable tsunami of sexual-harassment allegations, right? And while some of the accused are silent or flat-out denying any culpability, others have been swift to apologize.
Source: LifeHacker – How Not to Apologize
Sony dropped a bunch of new info for upcoming PlayStation games at its Paris Games Week keynote earlier today. From Infamous developer Sucker Punch’s samurai simulator Ghost of Tsushima, to release timing for the first Destiny 2 expansion and Detroit…
Source: Engadget – Watch Sony’s Paris Games Week event in under 10 minutes
A much-anticipated merger between T-Mobile and Sprint has been considered by analysts to be all but inevitable for the past few months. But reports that Sprint’s parent company, SoftBank, is getting cold feet sent both telecoms’ stock prices plummeting on Monday. It’s beginning to look like the deal that was as good…
Source: Gizmodo – The Dreaded Merger Between T-Mobile and Sprint May Actually Be Dead
The cautionary reports seem to resurface every year just before Halloween: “Don’t let your little ghouls and boys be tricked—with poisoned candy that could kill them! Stay tuned for the full story on News at 11.” I’ve heard the same warnings ever since I was a kid trying to breathe through a plastic Big Bird mask.
Source: LifeHacker – Poisoned Halloween Candy Is Not a Thing
Jack Ma, the eccentric CEO of online marketplace Alibaba, has a well-documented flair for the theatrical. Now the South China Morning Post—a newspaper owned by Ma—reports their boss will assume a starring role in the upcoming short movie Gong Shou Dao.
Source: Gizmodo – Alibaba Founder Jack Ma Adds ‘Kung Fu Movie Star’ to Resumé
Those pesky hackers are once again planting malware in apps to use your hardware for making money through mining. They are back in android apps and they’re on Google Play and ready to rock. If you feel your phone heating up and the battery going down it might just be a similar app. Come on people, don’t trust those kinds of apps on Google Play.
The efficacy of mobile devices to actually produce cryptocurrency in any meaningful amount is still doubtful. However, the effects on users of affected devices are clear: increased device wear and tear, reduced battery life, comparably slower performance.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Coin Miner Mobile Malware Returns, Hits Google Play
The OnePlus 5 might have just released earlier this year, but we’re already waiting in anticipation for the OnePlus 5T, which is a slightly upgraded model. Now, we might have an idea of what it looks like. This morning, Evan Blass tweeted a picture o…
Source: Engadget – This might be our best look at the OnePlus 5T yet
A new report by the NRDC examines how much food is being wasted, where it’s going, and why. The results aren’t pretty.
Source: TreeHugger – Most Americans think they waste less food than their neighbors
Enlarge (credit: Mike Mozart)
The on-again, off-again merger of Sprint and T-Mobile USA is apparently off again—for now.
Sprint owner SoftBank is “abandoning its efforts” to merge the carrier with T-Mobile, The Wall Street Journal reported today while quoting “people familiar with the matter.” A month ago, reports indicated that a merger would be announced by the end of October and that T-Mobile majority owner Deutsche Telekom would emerge with a majority stake in the combined company.
But SoftBank’s board met this past weekend “and expressed concern about giving up control,” the Journal wrote today. “Instead of a merger, Sprint plans to make a significant investment in its network,” the Journal report also said.
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Source: Ars Technica – Sprint/T-Mobile merger is off, preserving wireless competition (for now)
It’s a great day to buy a Breville Smart Oven. Two of your favorite toaster ovens, the Breville Smart Oven and the Breville Compact Smart Oven, are both around $40 off today, and the Breville Smart Oven Air is down about $80. (See this chart to compare features them all side-by-side.)
Source: LifeHacker – Three Different Models Of Your Favorite Toaster Oven Have Rare Discounts Today
What happens when a precancerous growth turns from a benign cluster of abnormal cells to a full-blown disease? Researchers are turning to genome sequencing in an effort to find out.
Source: Gizmodo – What Genetics Could Tell Us About How Cancer Develops
Japan’s conglomerate SoftBank, which owns Sprint, has pulled the plug on a proposed merger between the two carriers, several news outlets reported on Monday. From a report: SoftBank will reportedly propose ending merger talks with T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom as soon as Tuesday, October 31st. That’s according to Nikkei, which says that SoftBank wants to end merger talks due to “a failure to agree on ownership of the combined entity.” It’s said that Deutsche Telekom insisted on a controlling stake of the combined T-Mobile-Sprint, and that some people at SoftBank were okay with that as long as SoftBank had some sort of influence. However, SoftBank’s board recently decided that it wouldn’t give up control, and today it decided that it wants to call off the merger talks. Sprint and T-Mobile shares fell following the media reports.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Sprint Owner SoftBank Calls Off T-Mobile Merger Talks, Reports Say
CBS wants to remind you that All Access doesn’t just revolve around Star Trek: Discovery. It just premiered the trailer for its third All Access original series, the police comedy No Activity, ahead of its November 12th debut. The adaptation of an…
Source: Engadget – CBS previews its All Access-exclusive cop comedy ‘No Activity’
iOS: Security researcher Felix Krause is killing it this month, if “it” means iPhone users’ sense of security. We recently covered two of his security warnings: If you give an app permission to use your camera, it can also track your location and even secretly take photos and videos. Now he points out that if you’re…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Stop iOS Apps From Stealing Your Apple ID Password
It’s perhaps the best of the plastic foam insulations, but it is still a solid fossil fuel.
Source: TreeHugger – Should EPS foam be given a clean bill of health in green building?
This is a video of Korean Rubik’s Cube master SeungBeom Cho setting the new world record for solving a 3 x 3 Rubik’s Cube. The new time? 4.591 seconds, beating Patrick Ponce’s previous record of 4.67 seconds. For reference, my personal record is 16 years, 3 months, 11 days, 4 hours, 42 minutes and I only have the green side done so far.
Keep going for the record breaking video while I wish I had a squad.
Source: Geekologie – 4.591 Seconds: The New Rubik’s Cube Solving Record
Google “cord blood,” as I did when writing this article, and you’ll find services falling all over themselves to beg you for your child’s umbilical cord blood and, oh, just a few thousand dollars. In a updated policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics says: don’t listen to those guys. There’s a better…
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Cord Blood Banking Services Are Free
