Free Republic

Sony announced on Wednesday that it will be shutting down its Music Unlimited on-demand streaming music service ahead of launching Spotify on PlayStation Music. Music Unlimited will shut down in all 19 countries it operated on March 29, 2015, with nearly all of the countries among the 41 regions that Spotify for PlayStation Music will be available upon launch, including the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Music Unlimited launched in December 2010 on PlayStation Network in several countries worldwide, and the service was later extended to iPhone [Direct Link], Android, PlayStation Vita and other devices and platforms. In February...

Forget the post-PC era. The Mac just continues to get bigger. For its fiscal 2015 first quarter that ended Dec. 27, 2014, Apple sold 5.5 million Macs. That’s up 9% year-over-year and up 14% from the previous quarter and brought in revenue of US$6.9 billion. Apple has gained market share verses Windows PCs in all quarters since 2005 but one. The Mac has surpassed overall PC growth for 34 of the last 35 quarters.The Mac’s unit share of the worldwide PC market has grown from 2.1% in 2005 to 5.5% in 2013. Apple’s U.S. market share is somewhere between 10%...

A new procedure can quickly and efficiently increase the length of human telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that are linked to aging and disease, according to scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Treated cells behave as if they are much younger than untreated cells, multiplying with abandon in the laboratory dish rather than stagnating or dying. The procedure, which involves the use of a modified type of RNA, will improve the ability of researchers to generate large numbers of cells for study or drug development, the scientists say. Skin cells with telomeres lengthened by...

A top EU official wants internet and telecommunication companies to hand over encryption keys to police and spy agencies as part of a wider crackdown on terrorism. The EU’s counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, in a document leaked by London-based civil liberties group Statewatch, says the European Commission should come up with rules that require the firms to help national governments snoop on possible suspects. “Since the Snowden revelations, internet and telecommunications companies have started to use often decentralized encryption, which increasingly makes lawful interception by the relevant national authorities technically difficult or even impossible,” notes de Kerchove in the...

BlackBerry's CEO John Chen wants companies to stop "discriminatory practices" against BlackBerry by not allowing them to use certain apps. Chen called out Apple and Netflix in a blog post about net neutrality and what he called a "two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem" where developers create apps only for iOS and Android devices. "Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple's iMessage messaging service," he wrote. Apple's iMessage service is only available to customers using the company's ecosystem of devices. Calling out Netflix, Chen said...

At Microsoft’s Windows 10 event today, the company shared that all Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users will be able to upgrade to Windows 10, for free. Microsoft said that the free upgrade will be valid for the first year immediately after the release. Those on Windows Phone 8.1 will also get the update. Terry Myerson, VP of Windows at Microsoft said that the company wanted to make it a “seamless upgrade” for those users when Windows 10 is released.

Despite predictions to the contrary, it seem there is still plenty of life left in the PC market. PC shipments across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) reached 25.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014, a two percent increase on the same quarter a year ago, according to calculations by IDC. It said strong consumer demand during the holiday season meant the PC market racked up a third consecutive quarter of growth - albeit modest and patchy. PC sales across the region grew by 5.5 percent across the year, with 93.3 million PCs shipped. But the researchers...

HOUSTON - A River Oaks man says mysterious photos have begun appearing on his iCloud account, a week after his iPad and other items went missing from his truck. Randy Schaefer said he awoke Jan. 8 to find his iPad, laptop, checkbooks and cash gone. He immediately filed a police report but had little else to go on. Then, Jan. 16, while looking at old photos on his phone with his girlfriend, Randy said about a dozen pictures of two men he'd never seen before appeared in his iCloud folder. he pictures were of two men holding large amounts of...

Britain's Beagle 2 lander has finally been spotted, 12 years after it went missing while trying to land on the surface of Mars History books will need to be rewritten after scientists announced today that Beagle 2 has been finally been found on Mars, 12 years after it vanished without trace. The beleaguered spacecraft, which has become a byword for mission failure, was spotted by scientists operating the HiRise camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was discovered just 5km from its original touchdown site in the Isidis Planitia basin. And it appears that just one faulty motor was...

Sometimes even the rotation of the Earth falls behind schedule. Come June 30, our planet's timekeepers will compensate by adding a "leap second" to clocks. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) announced the change Monday at the Paris Observatory, in a bulletin addressed to the "authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time." The bulletin advises authorities the extra second will be introduced to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) during the final minute, of the final day of June. That means that right after the clock hits "23h 59m 59s," it will strike "23h 59m 60s" UTC....

Intel has taken a big if incomplete step toward rectifying the lack of diversity among its employees. Google, Apple, Facebook and other big companies in Silicon Valley -- now it's your turn.

The rebounding of polar bear populations over the past several decades has been a huge success story. Far from being endangered, vulnerable, or threatened, polar bears are thriving; their populations have exploded in virtually all of their habitats of the circumpolar nations. That’s good news for the polar bears, but bad news for the Polar Bear Specialist Group, the highly politicized organization of wildlife “scientists” that receives massive funding and favorable media coverage for regularly claiming that hoary arctic predators are perilously close to extinction due to human-caused global warming.The Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) is, perhaps, the best-known...

30 December 2014 Last updated at 11:33 Sony hackers 'shared' stolen employee login data Data that helped hackers access Sony's internal network came from another group targeting the firm's gaming network, reports the Washington Post. In an interview, a self-proclaimed Lizard Squad member said it had given stolen data to the Guardians of Peace. The GoP has carried out several attacks on Sony in a bid to halt the release of comedy film The Interview. By contrast, the Lizard Squad targeted Sony's PlayStation network knocking it offline on Christmas Day. The man interviewed by the newspaper appears to one of...

Startup Seeo has developed batteries that store far more energy than conventional ones, which could extend the range of electric cars. An experimental lithium-ion battery based on materials developed at a U.S. Department of Energy lab stores twice as much energy as the batteries used in most electric cars. If the technology can be commercialized, it could give affordable electric cars a range of over 200 miles per charge, says Hal Zarem, CEO of Seeo, a startup that’s working on the technology. Today the cheapest electric cars, which cost around $30,000, typically have a range of less than 100 miles....

Gmail blocked in China By Paul Carsten BEIJING Mon Dec 29, 2014 2:52am EST (Reuters) - Google Inc's Gmail was blocked in China after months of disruptions to the world's biggest email service, with an anti-censorship advocate suggesting the Great Firewall was to blame. Large numbers of Gmail web addresses were cut off in China on Friday, said GreatFire.org, a China-based freedom of speech advocacy group. Users said the service was still down on Monday. "I think the government is just trying to further eliminate Google's presence in China and even weaken its market overseas," said a member of GreatFire.org,...

Researchers have developed a new 'illusion coating' that could hide things by making them look like something else or even completely disappear. "Previous attempts at cloaking using a single meta-surface layer were restricted to very small-sized objects," said Zhi Hao Jiang, postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering, Pennsylvania State University. Jiang and Douglas H Werner developed a meta-material coating with a negligible thickness that allows coated objects to function normally while appearing as something other than what they really are, or even completely disappearing. The researchers employ what they call "illusion coatings," coatings made up of a thin flexible substrate with...

You knew this had to happen. While Samsung and other Android smartphone vendors bask in the glory of marketshare vs. Apple’s iPhone and iPad, it’s Apple that walks away with most of the profits. Without profits, tech companies have to tighten their belts, cut back on R&D (research and development), close stores, and reduce the product line. Guess which high profile tech company is doing all that? If you guessed Apple, you’d be so far off the mark that you’re probably in need of public assistance for watching too much Faux News and reading Business Insider. It’s not Apple. It’s...

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has officially become an Australian resident, is planning to make the Apple Isle his home – appropriately enough – and says one day he’d like it said he lived and died an Australian. The man who formed Apple with Steve Jobs in California back in 1976 has just had ­“permanent residency” stamped in his passport. He originally applied for Australian citizenship in 2012. He’s since taken steps to move more aspects of his life Down Under; in October he became an adjunct professor at the University of Technology in Sydney. He says he’s thinking about a...

A Sony employee has described the company as being “stuck in 1992″ following the massive hacks, with employees desperately trying to avoid using any technology that could be compromised, reports TechCrunch. There has, though, been one exception to the ban on modern technology: Apple kit. “People using Macs were fine,” she said. She said most work is done on iPads and iPhones. Sony may need to buy a few extra Macs, with some departments having only one or two computers for the entire office. It is, she said, like “living in an office from ten years ago.”

The U.S. National Security Agency should have an unlimited ability to collect digital information in the name of protecting the country against terrorism and other threats, an influential federal judge said during a debate on privacy. "I think privacy is actually overvalued," Judge Richard Posner, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, said during a conference about privacy and cybercrime in Washington, D.C., Thursday. "Much of what passes for the name of privacy is really just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct," Posner added. "Privacy is mainly about trying to improve your social and...