While some of us require a monastic silence in order to complete anything work-related, plenty of other people find that music helps them focus. In our Upgrade episode with Tim Ferriss, he told us all about the songs he listens to throughout the day. Here’s a rundown:
Source: LifeHacker – This Is What Tim Ferriss Listens to While He’s Working
For every place featured on Hack Your City, we get a handful of comments saying “Here’s a tip: Never go there.” This sparkling witticism is always followed by a hundred comments that make that city sound like the best place on earth. This week our readers got us excited for Indianapolis, Indiana, leaving 148 comments…
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Indianapolis Tips From Our Readers
An anonymous reader shares a WSJ report: More than 100 million Americans are expected to travel during the holidays, and many will search for lodging online. But travelers may unknowingly pay more and fail to see all of their options because some major hotels have ganged up with Google to undercut competition (The link may be paywalled). Online travel agencies like Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity have replaced brick-and-mortar agents by offering consumers more choice and convenience at a lower price. These OTAs purchase inventory from wholesalers and then market rooms at a discount to consumers in addition to flights, rental cars and travel packages. Many also have agreements with companies like American Express, Costco and Delta to market their inventory. OTA websites let travelers sift through hotel offers based on price, brand, location, amenities and guest rating, among other search filters. OTAs earn a roughly 20 percent commission from hotels for each reservation they book, which covers their cost of marketing, inventory acquisition, customer support and payment processing. As hotels get squeezed by Airbnb and home rental sites, they have begun complaining that OTAs are eating into their profits. Several major hotels are now trying to use Google as a counterweight, while Google is exploiting its search dominance to steer consumers to its travel service. Some 60% of travelers begin trip-planning on Google.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google Works With Hotels To Hurt Travel Competition
It’s time to gaze into our crystal ball and see what the coming year has in store for science. From powerful new rockets and asteroid-sampling spacecraft to groundbreaking particle physics, there’s plenty to look forward to in 2018.
Source: Gizmodo – All the Wild Shit We’re Going to Do in Space and Physics in 2018
Thanks to greener sources of energy that include wind and solar, power prices in Germany are going negative at times, allowing consumers to profit by using power from the grid. This benefit emerged again over Christmas, as idle offices and weather suitable to wind power drove prices below zero.
In one recent example, power prices spent 31 hours below zero during the last weekend of October. At one point, they dipped as low as minus $98, per megawatt-hour, a wholesale measure. In other words, anyone who was able to hook up for a large blast of electricity at that time was paid $98 per unit for the trouble.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Germans Were Paid to Use Electricity This Holiday Season
Based on new legalese in the EULA, NVIDIA wants to ban the use of GeForce and Titan graphics cards in data centers. Instead, the company is encouraging researchers to use its Tesla GPUs, which includes support and longer life expectancy.
Clearly, NVIDIA isn’t wasting any time and has already started to enforce their new EULA. Sakura Internet, one of the largest data centers in Japan, was the first to receive a notice from NVIDIA to stop providing servers with TITAN X products.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – NVIDIA Forbids GeForce Driver Deployment in Data Centers
Battery issues are becoming a bit of a tradition for the Samsung Note line. Luckily, fires and explosions aren’t involved this time around, but some owners are reporting that their Note 8 (and S8 Plus) devices fail to charge once the battery is fully depleted.
According to a number of users on Samsung’s Community Forums, the issue occurs after the phone falls to 0% battery and switches off. At this point, affected Note 8 devices apparently won’t accept charge and become completely unresponsive. This includes the LED charging light in most cases.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Some Galaxy Note 8 Phones Not Turning On after Battery Hits Zero
Despite Russia’s ambitious plans for space domination it’s not had a great deal of luck bringing its designs to fruition. The Roscosmos program’s budget was slashed in 2015 (because of “moral decay”) and in April last year a technical glitch postpone…
Source: Engadget – Russia lost a m satellite because of a launchpad mix-up
I had an activity tracker once. I wore it for a few months, then got tired of it, and now I have no idea where it is. (Somewhere in my house, probably, tracking the fact that my dresser drawer has traveled zero steps today.) But Fitbits and their kin can be great tools if you actually use them. So, did you?
Source: LifeHacker – Did You Ever Use That Fitbit You Got Last Year?
(credit: Mac History)
If you’ve ever been curious to test out Apple’s original Lisa operating system, you’ll get the chance to do so next year using the original source code. Al Kossow, a software curator for the Computer History Museum, announced that the source code for Apple’s first operating system with a graphical user interface has been recovered and is currently with Apple for review. After the tech giant reviews it, the Computer History Museum will make the source code available to all sometime in 2018.
The original Lisa computer, named after Jobs’ eldest daughter, came out in 1983 and was generally considered to be a flop. It was a hard device for consumers to embrace because, at the time, it cost approximately $10,000. However, its operating system laid the foundation for the macOS we’re familiar with today.
Jobs reportedly got the idea for the Lisa OS after seeing visual interfaces with mouse support during a visit to Xerox PARC. Jobs took what he saw and made his own version of it—the Lisa operating system featuring a GUI, mouse support, and a file system. While the Lisa computer wasn’t as popular as Jobs hoped it would be, its operating system was a blueprint for the many graphic OSes available today.
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Source: Ars Technica – Source code for Apple’s historic Lisa OS to be made available in 2018
Much as we love all the new features that roll out with a fresh macOS update every year, we’re also rather partial to those long-standing tools and functions that have been around for longer—and which you might have forgotten about or never used in the first place. Here are a few of our favorites you should try on for…
Source: Gizmodo – 10 Really Useful macOS Features That You Never Noticed
Everyone from early investors to cybercriminals has benefited from the huge spike in the value of bitcoin in the past few weeks. It’s a boon for one other outfit that has likely racked up tens of millions of dollars’ worth of the cryptocurrency: WikiLeaks. Joseph Cox, reporting for The Daily Beast: The transparency organization may be sitting on a stockpile of bitcoin valued at around $25 million, and has likely exchanged several other large cryptocurrency caches for fiat cash, according to two sources who independently analyzed WikiLeaks’s bitcoin transactions. “Last wallet looks like his piggy bank,” John Bambenek, a security expert who has previously tracked Neo-Nazis’ use of bitcoin, told The Daily Beast, pointing to a specific bitcoin address believed to be linked to WikiLeaks. Since at least 2011, WikiLeaks has allowed supporters to send bitcoin donations. As noted by James Ball, a journalist and former WikiLeaks staffer, whoever is in control of this address — presumably WikiLeaks — moved around 3,000 bitcoin, worth $800 each, into a series of other accounts on one day in December 2013.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Where Did WikiLeaks’ Million Bitcoin Fortune Go?
Pick up deals on Eneloop batteries, TurboTax software, dash cameras, and a whole lot more.
Source: LifeHacker – Thursday’s Best Deals: Eneloop Batteries, TurboTax Software, Anker Dash Cams, and More
Deadspin Please Stop These Bad Hall Of Fame Arguments | Jezebel Comedian Iliza Shlesinger Sued for Banning Men From ‘Girls Night In’ Show | Splinter Roy Moore Cries Voter Fraud and Blames Black Voters in Last-Ditch Effort to Fight Election Results | Earther The Cities of the Future Could Be Built From Mushrooms | The…
Source: LifeHacker – Deadspin Please Stop These Bad Hall Of Fame Arguments | Jezebel Comedian Iliza Shlesinger Sued for B
At my fingertips lies the entire internet, filled with a near-infinite number of digital distractions. So why do I keep watching Steve Price’s latest Rube Goldberg machine featuring the adventures of a red ball encountering countless complex contraptions all powered by nothing but gravity?
Source: Gizmodo – Zone Out With This Hypnotizing Wall-Mounted Rube Goldberg Machine
In 2017, for the first time in my life, I actually stuck to a resolution. What’s more, I’d failed at the same resolution—to make a budget and stick to it—for many previous years. Now, if you think there’s something shameful in a grown person not being able to handle her finances, you’re right! But what’s even more…
Source: LifeHacker – If You Want to Stick to a New Year’s Resolution, Phrase It Diffferently
Google swears it won’t start scraping websites that previously opted out of web crawling just because it can now legally go back to its old ways. Back in 2012, the tech titan promised to change its practices in several areas to settle an antitrust in…
Source: Engadget – Google will continue to let sites opt out of showing in search results
AMD developers working on the newly open-sourced AMDVLK Vulkan driver have pushed out their first post-release code update synced against the latest changes in their internal AMD driver tree…
Source: Phoronix – AMD Pushes Out Their First Post-Release Update Of AMDVLK/XGL
Due to technical issues, Nintendo will not be releasing 64-gigabyte Switch cards until 2019. These were supposed to be released the second half of 2018, so gamers and developers are already voicing their disappointment.
Currently, the Switch cards can hold up to 32 gigabytes of data. That is less than the Blu-ray discs used by rival consoles, including Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox One, which can store up to 50 gigabytes of data. Nintendo used the cards for the Switch because they take up less space and make the device more portable.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Nintendo Delays Rollout of 64-Gigabyte Switch Game Cards until 2019
Apple may be slashing the prices of the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus because they aren’t hitting their intended sales targets. Normally, you’d have to wait until new models are introduced in the Fall, but some say we’ll see cheaper iPhones as early as Spring.
The underperforming markets are reportedly Taiwan, Singapore, and Apple’s most important one, the US. With a price slash of, say, $50 or more, sales of the devices might increase exponentially. The purported low demand for the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus could theoretically force Cupertino to cut down prices earlier next year.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Apple Rumored to Slash iPhone Prices Due to Lower Demand than Expected