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Computers/Internet (General/Chat)

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  • Apple Watch may not be ticking with customers (APPLE Watch Sales Plunge 90%)

    07/07/2015 8:25:40 AM PDT · by Enlightened1 · 73 replies
    Market Watch ^ | 07/07/15 | Brett Arends
    Sales of the new Apple Watch have plunged by 90% since the opening week, according to a new market research report. Apple AAPL, -1.27% has been selling fewer than 20,000 watches a day in the U.S. since the initial surge in April, and on some days fewer than 10,000, according to data from Slice Intelligence, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based market research company. That is a sharp decline from week of the April 10 launch, when Apple sold about 1.5 million watches, or an average of about 200,000 a day, Slice estimates. Furthermore, two-thirds of the watches sold so far have...
  • Quick Search Engine Comparison

    07/07/2015 5:50:08 AM PDT · by tje · 7 replies
    imgur ^ | 070715 | tje
  • How many iPhones does it take to stop a bullet?

    07/06/2015 3:52:36 PM PDT · by Swordmaker · 5 replies
    C-Net ^ | 5 July 2015 6:38 pm BST | by Michael Franco
    Can a stack of iPhones protect a Samsung Galaxy S6 from a blast fired from a Russian assault rifle? You'll just have to watch and see. See the video here. Whenever a new iPhone comes out, there are lots of questions about its screen resolution, its battery life, the quality of its camera... You know, normal questions. A YouTube user known as EverythingApplePro recently had another kind of question about the shiny slabs of tech -- just how many of them it would take to stop a bullet shot at close range from an AK-74. No, that's not a typo;...
  • New Zealand makes cyberbullying a crime

    07/06/2015 8:03:41 AM PDT · by Enlightened1 · 6 replies
    Engadget ^ | 07/04/15 | Daniel Cooper
    New Zealand has passed a law that criminalizes one of the least desirable facets of the internet: cyberbullying. The legislation effectively prohibits sending messages to people that are racist, sexist, critical of their religion, sexuality or disability. The rest for determining harm will be if these communications were designed to cause "serious emotional distress," and if a person is found guilty, could face up to two years in jail. In addition, the bill creates a separate crime of incitement to suicide, which will see a person jailed for up to three years if they are found to be encouraging such...
  • Apple Music has an iCloud problem (possible library corruption in certain circumstances)

    07/06/2015 6:57:44 AM PDT · by dayglored · 13 replies
    The Verge ^ | July 1, 2015 | Chris Welch
    I really like Apple Music. Everything from the setup process (I kept hitting "more artists" until I couldn't anymore) through the entire user interface left me impressed yesterday. Apple has managed to reinvent its Music app by stuffing a subscription music service inside it — without making it all hopelessly confusing... Still, there's one fundamental problem with Apple Music that's crippling its potential for me and keeping it from becoming my one and only music destination — exactly the thing Apple wants it to be. It's the way the service heavily leans on iCloud. Or more specifically, "iCloud Music Library."...
  • Hacking Team, Which Sells Surveillance Tech To Governments, Exposed By Major Hack

    07/06/2015 5:43:59 AM PDT · by SoFloFreeper · 4 replies
    Tech Crunch ^ | July 6, 2015 | Jon Russell
    One of the technology world’s most notorious providers of surveillance and intrusion software has found itself on the wrong end of an embarrassing hack. A range of sensitive documents belonging to Italy-based Hacking Team, which is known for working with governments worldwide, appeared to leak out over the weekend, including email communications and client lists. The hackers, who remain unidentified at this time, also took over the group’s Twitter account, using it to post screenshots of emails and other details, as CSO first reported. Hacking Team is a mysterious organization which has long been thought to sell tracking and hacking...
  • Fortran: 7 Reasons Why It’s Not Dead

    07/06/2015 3:51:37 AM PDT · by markomalley · 68 replies
    Information Week ^ | 7/6/15 | Curtis Franklin Jr.
    Fortran: Where general-purpose programming began.The list of high-tech tools in continuous use since the early 1950s isn't very long: the Fender Telecaster, the B-52, and Fortran.Fortran (which started life as FORTRAN, or FORmula TRANslator) was first created by IBM programmer John Backus in 1950. By the time John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, FORTRAN III had been released and FORTRAN had the features with which it would become the predominant programming language for scientific and engineering applications. To a nontrivial extent, it still is.Whereas COBOL was created to be a general purpose language that worked well for creating applications for business...
  • Apple Is Forcing Ubiquity And Conformity On Consumers

    07/05/2015 12:13:45 PM PDT · by Swordmaker · 58 replies
    Forbes ^ | July 4, 2015 | by Theo Priestley
    Being locked into a single ecosystem isn’t necessarily a good thing I stepped off a train in London one morning and it struck me how many genuine and knock-off Barbour quilted jackets were among the commuter throng. And it made me think about just how commonplace they’ve become to the point that they’ve diluted their own brand image. “By Appointment to Her Majesty” has now become “By Appointment to Everyone”. It’s the same with the Hipster trend. Humans naturally struggle with their own identity so seek to adopt one from a group to feel included. Individuality is lost to conformity....
  • Apple iPhone seizes (US) share from rivals

    07/05/2015 11:50:00 AM PDT · by Swordmaker · 7 replies
    Mac Daily News ^ | July 4, 2015
    comScore has released data from comScore MobiLens and Mobile Metrix, reporting key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry for May 2015. Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 43.5 percent OEM market share. Smartphone OEM Market Share189.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (76.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in May.* Apple ranked as the top OEM with 43.5 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1.8 percentage points from February). Samsung ranked second with 28.7 percent market share (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by LG with 8.2 percent, Motorola with 4.9 percent and HTC...
  • When Irreplaceable History Lives on Obsolete Tech

    07/04/2015 7:11:01 PM PDT · by ShadowAce · 42 replies
    Popular Mechanics ^ | 2 July 2015 | John Wenz
    Cory Arcangel, a Brooklyn, New York–based artist, was watching a video from 1985 on YouTube (below) in which artist Andy Warhol generates a "painting" of Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry on an early Amiga computer, when he wondered, what became of these files? After a quick message to the Andrew Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, he found out: Sitting in the archives, yet to be catalogued, was a series of 3.5-inch floppy disks. The Computer Club at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh set about retrieving and saving Warhol's mid-'80s digital experiments. When they succeeded this spring, headlines heralded the achievement for...
  • On this day in 1996 our armed forces successfully repelled an alien invasion. Never Forget.

    07/04/2015 2:33:45 PM PDT · by Dallas59 · 53 replies
    Youtube ^ | 7/4/2015 | Youtube
    On this day in 1996, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, along with our armed forces, successfully repelled an alien invasion that could have wiped our very existence off this Earth. It's amazing to believe it's been 19 years already, but not a day goes by that I don't think about it.
  • These places have the slowest Internet in the country

    h2>Do you think your Internet is slow? That's nothing compared to what these folks are going through. If you live in Chicago, and try to connect via AT&T (T, Tech30) from 4 p.m to 11 p.m., speeds for certain websites and Internet services are basically like dial-up in the 1990s. There are a handful of other examples from researchers at M-Lab, which provides tools to assess Internet performance. In some cases, Internet speeds can be as slow as 0.5 Megabits per second. Take Seattle, where CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will...
  • Windows 7 Reaches 60 Percent Market Share for the First Time in History

    07/04/2015 8:04:58 AM PDT · by dayglored · 29 replies
    SoftPedia ^ | July 1, 2015 | (none)
    Windows 10 is almost here and since Windows 7 and 8.1 users will be allowed to upgrade to the new OS without paying a single cent, usage of these two versions increases on a daily basis. Statistics provided by Net Applications show that Window 7 has reached a market share of 60.98 percent in June 2015, obviously remaining the number one desktop operating system in the whole world. Windows 8.1 is second in this list with 13.12 percent, while Windows XP is still being used by 13.12 percent of the PC owners across the world. Windows 8 has dropped even...
  • Looking forward to getting Windows 10 the day it ships? Yeah, about that... (MS rollout plan)

    07/04/2015 7:24:30 AM PDT · by dayglored · 30 replies
    The Register ^ | July 2, 2015 | Neil McAllister
    Microsoft has shared more details about how it plans to roll out Windows 10 beginning later this month. We already knew the OS will start shipping to members of the Windows Insider program on July 29. On Thursday, however, Microsoft OS boss Terry Myerson explained in a blog post that not everyone should expect to receive their updates on that date. "From there, we will start notifying reserved systems in waves, slowly scaling up after July 29th," Myerson wrote. "Each day of the roll-out, we will listen, learn and update the experience for all Windows 10 users." What's more, he...
  • Another day, ANOTHER Windows 10 build for us Insiders (10162 w/ISO)

    07/04/2015 7:13:03 AM PDT · by dayglored · 11 replies
    The Register ^ | July 3, 2015 | Tim Anderson
    Microsoft's "Windows Insider" fast track is living up to its name, with build 10162 released yesterday, making it three builds in four days since 10158 appeared on 29 June. One difference this time round is that you can download the ISO image in one of 22 languages. The download page is headed "April update" at the time of writing, but expand the downloads and you find build 10162. The ISO image enables testing of clean installs, and suggests that this may qualify as a "slow" preview; the more stable builds which are made available to all testers. This is also...
  • Help with iTunes/Windows issue?

    07/02/2015 12:33:44 PM PDT · by Politicalkiddo · 23 replies
    Hi, guys. I've been trying to solve my issue for hours without any luck. So any suggestions are appreciated. I plugged my iPhone into my laptop, hoping to put some music onto it, but iTunes says that it (iTunes) is not connected to the internet and that it cannot detect my iPhone. My laptop can, however, detect my iPhone. Both my phone and my laptop are connected to the internet. I've tried updating my phone, Windows, and associated drivers with no luck. I have restarted my phone, my laptop, and iTunes several times. I have uninstalled all Apple programs and...
  • New Steve Jobs biopic is shaping up to be Apple’s worst nightmare

    07/02/2015 10:25:07 AM PDT · by Swordmaker · 29 replies
    Venture Beats ^ | July 2, 2015 | by Chris O'Brien
    Above: Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs. Image Credit: Universal After mounting a campaign earlier this year to burnish the legend of Steve Jobs, Apple insiders will likely be tearing out what’s left of their hair when a new biopic is released in October.The first official trailer released yesterday for Steve Jobs depicts the legend in full jerk mode. Humiliating employees, alienating cofounder Steve Wozniak, and denying paternity of his daughter, Lisa.Starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Seth Rogen as Wozniak, every frame of the two-minute trailer shows us an arrogant, smug Jobs.The portrayal shouldn’t be surprising given that the script was written by Aaron Sorkin and...
  • Google apologises for Photos app's racist blunder

    07/02/2015 2:08:41 AM PDT · by W. · 29 replies
    BBC Online ^ | 7/1/2015 | BBC Technology
    Google says it is "appalled" that its new Photos app mistakenly labelled a black couple as being "gorillas". Its product automatically tags uploaded pictures using its own artificial intelligence software. The error was brought to its attention by a New York-based software developer who was one of the people pictured in the photos involved. Google was later criticised on social media because of the label's racist connotations. "This is 100% not OK," acknowledged Google executive Yonatan Zunger after being contacted by Jacky Alcine via Twitter. "[It was] high on my list of bugs you 'never' want to see happen."
  • You can now use any Android app on your Mac w/ BlueStacks App Player

    07/01/2015 11:34:19 PM PDT · by Swordmaker · 8 replies
    9 to 5 Mac ^ | July 1, 2015
    Crossy Road on Mac with BlueStacks BlueStacks, a free desktop Android emulator that lets users play any mobile game or app on the big screen with a mouse and keyboard, has mostly been limited to PC users until today. But Mac users are about to get access to the software that the company says already has around 90 million users on Windows. While the app arrived briefly as an alpha release of Mac users back in 2012, this morning the company is launching an official release of the popular BlueStacks App Player software for Mac for the first time, allowing...
  • Apple issues large patch set to shore up OS X, iOS security

    07/01/2015 7:00:32 PM PDT · by Utilizer · 12 replies
    iTnews (AUS) ^ | Jul 1, 2015 6:02 P (AUS) | Juha Saarinen
    Apple has quietly included a large amount of security fixes in its latest set of patches for its OS X and iOS operating systems, plugging some serious, high-profile vulnerabilities in its code. A tally of the common vulnerability and exposures (CVE) tags in the OS X Yosemite 10.10.4, Security Update 2015-005 and Safari 8.0.7 update packages showed 80 vulnerabilities have been patched by Apple. These range from a flaw that allowed attackers to write to the low-level extensible firmware interface (EFI) - which manages the hardware in Mac computers - when the systems resume from sleep. The EFI zero-day was...