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Fujifilm X-A5 adds faster autofocus 4K bursts and a powered zoom lens

1/30/2018

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Fujifilm X-A5 adds faster autofocus, 4K bursts, and a powered zoom lens

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On Wednesday, January 31, Fujifilm unveiled the X-A5 mirrorless camera and a brand new 15-45mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS PZ kit lens. The X-A5 is an update over the existing X-A3, an entry-level model in Fujifilm’s X Series line of APS-C cameras. The new kit lens is designed to be extra compact, and is the first X mount lens to feature an electric powered zoom.

Wrapped in brown, pink, or black faux leather, the X-A5 puts a retro touch on an otherwise very modern mirrorless camera. Of course, so did its identical-looking predecessor. Save for the model number engraved on the front, there would be no way of telling these two cameras apart just by looking at them. The controls are identical, and the articulating touch screen still flips up a full 180 degrees for effortless selfies (or “self-portraits,” as Fujifilm insists). The user interface has been revamped, however, with a focus on touch operation, which should make the X-A5 even more approachable than its forebear.

For as little as has changed on the exterior, it’s not a terribly different story on the interior. The X-A5 still uses a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor, sans X-TRANS color array to help distinguish higher-end models like the X-T20 and X-T2. However, it’s not the exact same sensor as used in the X-A3. The new model incorporates phase detection autofocus, a faster method than the contrast detection AF used in older models. According to Fujifilm, the X-A5 will focus twice as fast as previous models.

The image processor is also new, although Fujifilm didn’t call it out by name in the press release, leading us to believe it’s an enhanced version of the previous EXR Processor II used in the X-A3. Regardless, the company claims it is 1.5 times faster than the previous version. That extra processing power means the X-A5 can shoot 4K image bursts at 15 frames per second. It also incorporates new slow-motion HD video options, offering up to a 4x slow-motion when shooting at 720p resolution. While the video specs aren’t out of this world by today’s standards, users looking to dabble in video should find the optical stabilization and powered zoom of the kit lens to be a big benefit.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Fujifilm without a way to easily connect to an Instax Share printer, and the X-A5 includes Bluetooth Low Energy to easily pair with a printer or mobile app.

The Fujifilm X-A5 will be available on February 5 for $600, which includes the 15-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. There is no body-only option for the camera, but Fujifilm shooters can pick up the lens by itself for $300.





Digital Trends

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January 30, 2018 at 11:22PM
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Spotify is testing a new playlist-based music app thats a lot like Pandora

1/30/2018

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Spotify is testing a new playlist-based music app that’s a lot like Pandora

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Spotify is testing an app that sees it move firmly into Pandora’s territory.

‘Stations’ is a new Android-only app that is being piloted by the company in Australia — it was first noticed by app analytics firm Sensor Tower on Tuesday.

This app offers a ‘lean-back’ option to listen to music based on genres and managed playlists. In the description, Spotify explains that it plays music instantly when opened with stations easily changed by scrolling inside the app. Like Spotify’s core service, there’s a personalization element with user-based playlists created once enough music has been played for it to gather data.

The app has picked up less than 100 downloads to date, while it is limited in its support for Android devices, all of which suggests it has only been used by Spotify’s own staff to date.

“We are always testing new products and experiences, but have no further news to share at this time,” was all that Spotify would tell us when we asked.

The core Spotify product is a subscription-based music, but there is a free version that lets users shuffle through playlists on mobile and is supported by advertising. The theory is that offering a limited version of the product encourages users to sign up for the full product. You’d imagine it could easily do that with this new app, which has a Spotify log-in button but doesn’t require users to be paying members.

With Stations, the company looks like it has taken an alternative approach by creating a standalone app that offers more direct competition to Pandora.

Pandora claims over five million users. It offers premium membership but the bulk of its revenue comes from advertising — $275.7 million of the $378.6 million that it earned in its most recent Q3 period. Late last year, Pandora boosted its money-making potential by adding video advertising to its mix.

Spotify’s exact financial situation is unclear since the company is private, but it is speculated to be planning to go public potentially as soon as this year. The company has been tipped to opt for a ‘direct listing,’ which would mean going public without doing an IPO. In other words, it is just insiders, not the company, that sell shares to the stock market.

The Swedish company seemed to take a step towards going public when it agreed to a share swap with Tencent Music, which is also reportedly planning a listing.





Digital Trends

via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com

January 30, 2018 at 11:14PM
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GOP Congressional Candidate Makes List Of Jews

1/30/2018

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GOP Congressional Candidate Makes List Of Jews

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Photo: AP

Paul Nehlen is a Republican candidate for Congress who’s running in the First Congressional District of Wisconsin, also known as the seat currently held by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Over the past few months, he’s gone full fascist, courting support from the alt-right both in Twitter DMs and in public.

Because of this, he’s been engaged in an ongoing battle with conservative Republicans like New York Post columnist John Podhoretz; in December, Nehlen told Podhoretz to “eat a bullet.” Later that same month, he was deemed too racist even for Breitbart, which said it had “cut all ties” and “removed his contributor page from the website” after a “series of anti-Semitic and pro-white supremacist comments.”

Today, Nehlen tweeted this:

While it may seem at first glance that making a list of your enemies in an Excel spreadsheet and including a tally of their religious and ethnic backgrounds is a completely normal and levelheaded thing to do, I can assure you that it is not.

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This isn’t Nehlen’s first race. He ran against Ryan for the first time using Trump-like rhetoric in 2016, at one point wondering out loud while on a radio show, “Why do we have Muslims in this country?” Even in an anti-establishment year, however, Nehlen lost by 70 points.

There’s reason to take Nehlen more seriously this time, however. According to a Politico profile of Ryan in December, the current Speaker is considering retiring, having finally accomplished his lifelong goal of writing hatred of the poor into the United States tax code. If Ryan does retire, it’ll be a wide open race in a district that has been held by Republicans since 1994, and Nehlen would have a much better shot at winning the primary without a ten-term incumbent to worry about.

The Democratic frontrunner in that race, union ironworker Randy Bryce, will be at the State of the Union tonight.





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

January 30, 2018 at 10:36PM
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Marvel Studios Has Yet to Consider How the X-Men or Fantastic Four Would Fit Into Its World

1/30/2018

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Marvel Studios Has Yet to Consider How the X-Men or Fantastic Four Would Fit Into Its World

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Image: Fox

If the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige doesn’t know about it.

Last month, news broke that Disney was going to purchase 20th Century Fox. Immediately, fan culture thought of one thing: Finally, the entire Marvel Comics universe could become part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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To be even more specific, it meant the X-Men (which includes breakout characters like Wolverine, Deadpool, and more), along with the Fantastic Four could, potentially, clash with Iron Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, and everyone else who’s already part of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. The only big piece Disney has always been missing are the Fox characters. However, if that were to happen, one man for sure would know about it: Feige. However, it turns out, he’s just as in the dark about it as we are.

“I read about it in the press like most people did,” Feige told Vulture. “These are big deals and certainly above my pay grade.”

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige (center) with Marvel directors James Gunn and Peyton Reed. Image: Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney

Buying Fox obviously means more to Disney than just Wolverine and Deadpool, but one would assume that played at least some role in it. But whether or not that’s true, Feige says a potential crossover or blending of the brands hasn’t been discussed yet.

The truth of the matter as I understand it is the deal has to be figured out. There’s been no communication. We’re not thinking about it. We’re focusing on everything we’ve already announced. If and when the deal actually happens, we’ll start to think more about it. Until then, we have a lot to do.

And it’s true—there’s already a lot to do. Such as, release Black Panther in two weeks, Avengers: Infinity War in three months, Ant-Man and the Wasp in six months, Captain Marvel in 13 months, Avengers 4 in 15 months and, finally, a Spider-Man Homecoming sequel in July of 2019. That’s as far as things are planned, at least as far as the public knows. (Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will be coming in 2020, too, but that’s still technically unannounced.)

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“It would be years away,” Feige said of any big changes to the roster as a result of the Fox deal. “We’ve announced everything through 2019, so none of those would be adjusted.”

So, hypothetically, could something like X-Men vs. The Avengers be coming in 2021? Yes. But, if it happens, it hasn’t even begun to become a thing yet. At least, according to Feige.

[Vulture]





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

January 30, 2018 at 10:24PM
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Trump Brags He Got Apple to Invest $350 Billion in the US (Hint: He Didn't and They Aren't)

1/30/2018

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Trump Brags He Got Apple to Invest $350 Billion in the US (Hint: He Didn't and They Aren't)

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Photo: AP

During his first State of the Union on Tuesday, in between cloying pleas for Democrats to help build his dumb wall and confused references to “beautiful clean coal,” President Donald Trump once again promised the country that tech giant Apple would be investing a badly needed $350 billion in the U.S.

The SOTU is one of the presidency’s biggest platforms, so this is probably the first time millions of people have heard Trump repeat the claim that “Apple has just announced it plans to invest a total of $350 billion in America, and hire another 20,000 workers.” As might be expected, it’s just not true! Trump, a supposed business genius, is mistaking two very simple concepts: repatriation and investment.

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Here’s what actually happened. For a very long time, Apple has been hoarding hundreds of billions of dollars overseas through a complicated tax avoidance scheme that allows it to dodge taxes in numerous countries. At the same time, Apple has insisted that it wouldn’t repatriate that money to the U.S. unless it gets a sweetheart deal amounting to far less in taxes than it saved by hoarding the pile in the first place. Apparently the massive handout to the rich cloaked as a middle-class tax cut congressional Republicans passed in 2017 qualified, and earlier this month Apple did indeed say it would contribute $350 billion to the U.S. economy over a period of five years and hire over 20,000 people.

But Trump has jumbled this all up. First of all, Apple’s overseas cash pile in recent filings stood at just $252 billion, not $350 billion, and if the company’s figures are to be believed, it’s getting away with paying taxes of just $38.8 billion or 15.5 percent on that $250 billion.

Apple itself appears to be playing some weird word games to exaggerate how much of that it’s actually pouring into hard investments. As the Verge noted, subtract the $38 billion tax payment and Apple has only laid out plans for around $37 billion in anything that could be called a new investment:

According to Apple’s press release, just $75 billion of that total number will come from capital expenditures, new investments in manufacturing, and its repatriation tax payment, which could imply that the rest of the number is simply the effects of a company as large as Apple having its regular impact on the US economy through its normal growth and spending.

That’s why, in its press release, Apple said its “direct contribution to the US economy will be more than $350 billion over the next five years,” not that it is actually investing $350 billion. How Apple defines “direct contribution” is anyone’s guess and probably the company’s prerogative.

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In return for Apple being allowed to move its Scrooge McDuck-style pool of gold coins back here for a pittance, the company has promised to make a token investment and Trump gets to play up its sound bites. The $350 billion number is bullshit, but hey, everyone rich wins! I think we can all agree that’s what really matters here.





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

January 30, 2018 at 10:12PM
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Crunch Report | Amazon JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway are building a healthcare company

1/30/2018

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Crunch Report | Amazon, JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway are building a healthcare company

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January 30, 2018 at 10:01PM
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Ken Bone Is Getting Drunk and Tweeting Through the State of the Union

1/30/2018

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Ken Bone Is Getting Drunk and Tweeting Through the State of the Union

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Image: AP

Ken Bone has logged on, and for a guy who has pounded three beers in under 20 minutes, he’s making some reasonable points.

The Ignatius J. Reilly lookalike who rose to memedom as an undecided question-asker during the 2016 presidential debates—only to fall from grace after his Reddit history revealed more than anyone needed to know about his sexual predilections—tweeted a drinking game of his own creation at the outset of Trump’s first State of the Union. He appears to be playing.

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While he live-tweets through the speech—which manages to be simultaneously horrifying and milquetoast—Trump tapped into an area in which Bone has some expertise.

“We have ended the war on American energy,” Trump claimed. “And we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal.”

Sure, you can read a political analysis that will explain our net coal exports are projected to fall, that the coal industry is dying, and that all Trump has really done is repeal a number of important environmental regulations. But just for a moment, let’s listen to the guy slamming beers in the red sweater:

Thanks, Ken. Keep up the good work.





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

January 30, 2018 at 09:36PM
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At the State of the Union Trump touts tax cuts and immigration deal

1/30/2018

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At the State of the Union, Trump touts tax cuts and immigration deal

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With a president as mercurial as Trump, it was anyone’s guess what would happen during his first State of the Union address. The appearance is the president’s most high profile public speaking moment of the year and Trump was expected to touch on some of the issues of the moment, including funding for a border wall, infrastructure and an immigration deal.

While less likely if things went according to plan though totally possible if he veered off script, it wasn’t clear if Trump would dig into the white-hot topic of the ongoing Russia investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That scenario would have proved a nightmare for his legal team and the White House, though with the speech done, they should be able to rest easy (for now).

As the address began, Trump hit a series of surprisingly hopeful notes, with declarations of “a new tide of optimism” and praise for the nation including an unusually ego-less assertion that “our state of the union is strong because our people are strong.”

As he moved deeper into the speech, Trump waded into some familiar ideological territory, chiding those who kneel during the national anthem as an act of protest.

In a portion of his speech touching on the tax cuts, Trump touched on Apple’s recent announcement that it would bring much of its tax-sheltered wealth abroad back to American shores thanks to a friendlier tax rate:

“Since we passed tax cuts, roughly three million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses. Many of them, thousands and thousands of dollars per worker and it’s getting more every month, every week. Apple has just announced it plans to invest a total of $350 billion in America, and hire another 20,000 workers.”

Trump was widely expected to tout the Republican tax cut plan, his only significant legislative win from a year spent navigating the process of lawmaking with a fully Republican-controlled Congress.

A bit later, Trump detoured into an portion of the speech on the pharmaceutical industry, declaring the “injustice” of high U.S. drug prices as one of his “top priorities for the year.”

“In many other countries, these drugs cost far less than what we pay in the United States and it is very, very unfair,” Trump said.

As expected, Trump announced plans for a $1.5 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill “tapping into private sector investment.”

Toward the end of the speech, Trump launched into the four pillars of a plan that would resolve the congressional gridlock around creating a path to citizenship for DACA-recipients. Expectedly, the path of the Dreamers is tied directly to “building a great wall on the southern border,” which in all likelihood will look more like a patchwork of physical barriers and surveillance technology.

Trump also announced an end to the Visa lottery system in favor of a “merit-based” system of immigration, “a program that randomly plans out green cards without regard for skill, merit, for the safety of American people,” in the president’s words.

“Time to begin moving toward a merit based immigration system, one that admits people who are skilled, who want to work, who will contribute to our society,” Trump said. He also announced plans to limit immigration sponsorships to “spouses and minor children.”

To see how the American public responded to the big speech, Google pulled together some search trends to depict what people were searching for as the address went on.

Popular search terms during the speech included “steve scalise,” “who is sitting behind trump,” “trump party planner, “live fact check trump” and, oddly, “trump clapping,” possibly a reference to what appear to have been his own very amplified claps into the microphone following major talking points.

All told, the speech was a mix of style — rousing the base, hitting the right anecdotes — and a bit of substance around actual policy proposals like the immigration deal. Given the potential nightmare scenarios here, Republicans and White House officials are likely to be pleased with the president’s performance.

By any other presidency’s standards, the speech had some wildly controversial moments — particularly an alarming call to remove federal workers who “undermine the public trust or fail the American people” while rewarding the loyal — but by 2018 standards, and Trump standards, it was fairly safe.

Featured Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images




Digital Trends

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January 30, 2018 at 09:33PM
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#NetNeutrality: California State Senate Approves Bill Protecting Open Internet Rules Despite FCC Order

1/30/2018

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#NetNeutrality: California State Senate Approves Bill Protecting Open Internet Rules, Despite FCC Order

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Demonstrators rally outside the Federal Communications Commission building to protest the end of net neutrality rules Dec. 14, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

On Monday, the California State Senate approved a bill that would impose net neutrality restrictions on internet service providers doing business in the state.

As Ars Technica reports, the Federal Communications Commission’s new order includes a provision to prevent any state and municipal governments from enacting net neutrality legislation at the local level, but that hasn’t stopped individual states from coming up with ways to circumvent the provision and keep the rules of the open internet in place.

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The governors of New York and Montana signed legislation last week that would prevent ISPs from getting state contracts if they do not abide by the rules of net neutrality. There is also a pending lawsuit in which 21 states plus the District of Columbia are attempting to block the FCC’s pre-emption of state laws and reverse the repeal of net neutrality that the commission voted on in December.

California’s S.B. 460, which passed 21-12, would prohibit mobile and home internet providers from “blocking lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices” except in the case of reasonable network management.

The bill would also outlaw throttling and paid prioritization. Further, ISPs would not be able to use deceptive marketing tactics “that misrepresent the treatment of internet traffic or content to its customers.”

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Finally, ISPs would not be able to get contracts with state agencies unless they certified under penalty of perjury that they will not participate in any of the activities that the bill bans.

The California bill differs from the executive orders signed in New York and Montana in that it attempts to directly impose legislation on ISPs. The two executive orders simply apply rules as to who can and cannot get state contracts. The California bill operates in direct opposition to the FCC’s pre-emption order.

S.B. 460 now moves on to the State Assembly for action. It is one of two bills making their way through the California Legislature to protect net neutrality.





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

January 30, 2018 at 09:12PM
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Our Destiny Is Death: Splinter's State of the Union 2018 Live Blog

1/30/2018

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Our Destiny Is Death: Splinter's State of the Union 2018 Live Blog 

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Illustration: Jim Cooke, Photo: Getty

Join the Splinter staff as we comment live on President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and the Democrats’ response.

Our large adult president will start delivering his speech at 9 P.M. EST. The speech will air on all the major networks, and our friends at Lifehacker have a handy guide to how you can stream the big show. Should you find yourself in need of alcohol, they have a drinking game too.

Come scream with us in the comments—we’ll be here all night!





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

January 30, 2018 at 08:48PM
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