Re-record not fade away: Obsolete Gadgets From The Last 50 Years - RTL Today

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Re-record not fade away: Obsolete Gadgets From The Last 50 Years  RTL Today

RTL Today covers Luxembourg and international news, business, science, technology, culture, community, lifestyle, health, sport, local amenities and activities ...

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January 31, 2019 at 01:53AM

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Nintendo delays Mario Kart mobile game until summer

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We’ve heard basically nothing about Mario Kart Tour, the upcoming smartphone entry in the banana-flinging racing game series, since Nintendo announced it exactly a year ago. The game was pegged for a release before the end of March 2019, but it turns out it’s not ready — Nintendo is delaying it til summer.

The decision has been made “in order to improve quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch,” according to a statement contained within Nintendo’s quarterly earnings released today. It’s the second major Nintendo title hit with a delay this month; last week the company announced that the much-anticipated Metroid Prime 4’s development is being completely rebooted.

Worried Nintendo fans might want to remind themselves of one of the more famous quotes from Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Perhaps he wasn’t thinking of constantly updated free-to-play mobile games with in-app purchases, given that he was talking around the time of the Nintendo 64, but the point stands. Probably.

Gadget News

via The Verge http://bit.ly/1jLudMg

January 31, 2019 at 01:47AM

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Killer Apple deals: $400-$900 off loaded Core i9 15" MacBook Pros (the lowest prices ever)

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For a limited time only, save $400 to $900 on high-end Mid 2018 15-inch MacBook Pros. Packed with upgrades, including Core i9 processors and additional storage, these systems also come with free expedited shipping for fast delivery to your door. Grab the lowest prices while you can, as these exclusive deals won't last long.



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January 31, 2019 at 01:37AM

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Nintendo cuts Switch sales forecast despite strong holiday season

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Nintendo had the best quarter ever for Switch sales, with 9.41 million consoles moved between October and December, a 30 percent improvement on a year ago. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokémon: Let’s Go were also both massive hits, at 12.08 million and 10 million units sold respectively. Super Mario Party performed well, too, selling 5.3 million copies.

Despite the huge numbers, though, Nintendo almost certainly won’t be able to hit its self-imposed target of 20 million Switch consoles sold this financial year. The current amount sold since April is 14.49 million units, but last year Nintendo sold just under two million. Accordingly, the company has revised its forecast down to 17 million units for the fiscal year.

Switch sales momentum remains strong, however, and few expected Nintendo to hit the ambitious 20 million figure in the first place. The company has major titles in the Animal Crossing and Pokémon series set to hit the system this year, although Metroid Prime 4 is further off than many thought following the recent announcement of a reboot in development.

Gadget News

via The Verge http://bit.ly/1jLudMg

January 31, 2019 at 01:33AM

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Samsung earnings reveal sharp drop in profit for the end of 2018

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Samsung warned people when it released its earnings projection for the four quarter of 2018 that it's expecting a sharp earnings drop. Turns out the tech giant really did have a relatively rough fourth quarter due to a drop in demand for memory chips, which fall under Samsung's top-earning semiconductor business, used in data centers and smartphones.

In its full earnings report for Q4 2018, the Korean conglomerate has revealed that it posted 59.27 trillion Korean won (US$53.4 billion) in quarterly revenue, down 10 percent from the same time last year. Its 10.8 trillion Korean won (US$9.7 billion) quarterly operating profit is also down 29 percent from the same period in 2017.

Samsung said its memory business (NAND and DRAM) suffered from "macroeconomic uncertainties and adjustments in inventory levels" by customers that include data center companies and smartphonemakers. The division was likely affected by the slowing global smartphone sales, which also made a strong impact on Apple's earnings for October to December last year. In fact, the company expects slow smartphone sales to affect its mobile display business in the first quarter of 2019, as well.

The mobile division itself suffered a profit decline quarter-on-quarter due to the sluggish market, and Samsung doesn't believe that'll change anytime soon. It says the demand for smartphones and tables is projected to drop even further for Q1 2019 due to seasonal slowdown, though it's hoping that the Galaxy S10 slated to be unveiled next month and its other upcoming flagships can prop up sales in the coming months.

The tech giant believes the issues that brought about a sharp decline in the fourth quarter of 2018 will persist, and it warned of worse earnings for 2019 due to the weaker demand for memory chips. That said, its poor performance for Q4 2018 didn't affect its numbers for the whole fiscal year: it posted 243.77 trillion won (US$220 billion) in revenue and 58.89 trillion won (US$53 billion) in operating profit for the whole of 2018, making it the second year in a row that the company was able to set record financial results.

Source: Samsung

Gadget News

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

January 31, 2019 at 01:12AM

Handy volunteers patch up dozens of gadgets at Ludlow repair cafe - shropshirestar.com

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Handy volunteers patch up dozens of gadgets at Ludlow repair cafe  shropshirestar.com

A team of expert volunteers spent a day tinkering and fixing everything from garden tools to kitchen appliances.

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January 31, 2019 at 12:48AM

California utility bankruptcy may pinch Indian IT firms - Gadgets Now

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California utility bankruptcy may pinch Indian IT firms  Gadgets Now

Tata Consultancy Services is likely to be impacted by bankruptcy filing of its client Pacific Gas & Electric and troubles at other Californian utilities could hurt other ...

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January 31, 2019 at 12:48AM

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New York settles with company selling fake social media followers

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The state of New York's Attorney General has settled a case with a company that made millions of dollars selling likes, comments and followers on social media, according to CNN. The activity of the now-defunct Devumi was discovered as part of a probe carried out by New York's Attorney General's office. The owner of the company, German Calas, Jr., will pay a pretty insignificant penalty of $50,000 to cover the cost of the investigation.

The office of New York's top attorney found that Calas—through Devumi and a number of other companies including DisruptX, Social Bull, and Bytion—was selling tons of fake content on social media. He completed more than 250,000 sales of social media activity in bundles, charging as much as $3,997 for 500,000 Twitter followers, $29 for 100 YouTube subscribers. The companies offered these services across platforms including Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, SoundCloud and Pinterest. According to the settlement, Devumi's clients included movie and TV stars, musicians, politicians, athletes, models and porn stars among others. Devumi generated about $15 million in revenue between 2015 and 2017.

The AG's settlement may be small in terms of monetary punishments, but it marks the first time a law enforcement agency has marked the activity of creating fake social media activity as illegal. The Attorney General's office said the business of Devumi constituted illegal deception and impersonation, opening the doors for further action against similar services. The state did not take a position on whether customers purchases the services were similarly breaking the law.

Source: CNN

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January 31, 2019 at 12:06AM

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Vaping may help some people quit cigarettes, but what about the nicotine?

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E-cigarettes helped more people quit smoking than traditional nicotine replacement therapy did, a new study says — but vapes aren’t a miracle cure for nicotine addiction. Most of the smokers who tried vaping were still smoking cigarettes by the end of the trial, and most of the vapers who did manage to quit smoking continued to vape a year later.

The new study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports that 18 percent of smokers who switched to e-cigarettes had given up cigarettes after a year. That’s more than the 9.9 percent of people who stopped smoking using conventional quitting aids like the patch, gum, lozenges, or inhalers. The results add weight to the claims that e-cigarettes could help some people quit cigarettes, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about the long term health effects of e-cigarettes, or how to keep millions of teens from using them.

E-cigarette companies market themselves as a less risky alternative for people looking to stop smoking cigarettes. But being less risky than cigarettes is a low bar, according to the CDC: “Burned cigarettes are extraordinarily dangerous, killing half of all people who smoke long-term.” And the jury’s been out about whether e-cigarettes can help people quit, Vox reports: few rigorous trials have compared vaping to other quitting aids, like the patch, or gum.

“This sort of study, a systematic, well-done randomized controlled trial, was what was severely lacking in the decade-long debate of the potential benefits and harms of e-cigarettes,” Gideon St. Helen, a tobacco researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the research, says in an email to The Verge. There are still major caveats: for example, the study participants knew they whether they were using e-cigarettes or, say, patches — and that knowledge could have skewed the results if they thought one strategy was better than the other. Plus, the study doesn’t assess more popular types of e-cigarettes, like Juul. Still, St. Helen says, “The findings are really important and perhaps game-changing.”

Researchers led by Peter Hajek, a professor of clinical psychology at the Wolfson Institute Of Preventive Medicine, found 866 people who wanted to quit smoking, and didn’t care how. For the first month, all of them received weekly one-on-one meetings with a clinician. Half also received their favorite nicotine replacement therapies, and half were given a starter kit for a refillable vape, including a bottle of Tobacco Royale flavored vape juice. Participants could swap out the device or the liquid if they wanted to.

The researchers checked in with the study participants periodically, assessing things like their sleep, whether they felt nauseated, if their throat or mouth hurt, and how much phlegm they coughed up. The big question was whether the participants could stay off cigarettes a year out. The researchers checked by measuring the carbon monoxide that the study participants exhaled – a marker for cigarette smoking. After a year, 18 percent of the e-cigarette users had quit smoking cigarettes, as had 10 percent of the nicotine replacement group. The e-cigarette users liked their vapes more than the other group liked their nicotine replacement therapies, and they had less severe withdrawal symptoms.

Here’s the catch: Of the people who kicked combustible cigarettes, 80 percent of the people in the vaping group were still using e-cigarettes after a year. That’s a huge fraction compared to the only 9 percent of people who were still using traditional nicotine replacement therapies at that point. So while vaping made it somewhat easier to quit cigarettes, it didn’t help much with quitting nicotine altogether. Plus, the study didn’t use the types of pod-based e-cigarettes like Juuls that are dominating the market. The science is still out, but given the convenience, the high nicotine dose, and the nicotine salts formulation, it’s possible pod-based vapes could be even harder to quit than the refillable kind used in the study.

The long-term health effects of vaping will be especially important to figure out out if switching to e-cigarettes signals the start of a long-term habit. We do know that nasty chemicals can form in the e-liquids while they sit on the shelf, for example, and vapers’ pee shows signs of exposure to carcinogens and irritants. Plus, the science around the health effects of nicotine itself is still murky: some studies suggests it might be risky for people with heart problems. And it’s addictive — which can lead people to feel controlled by their cravings, or to unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.

The question, St. Helen says, is what now? Yes, the study adds weight to something vapers have been saying for awhile: that e-cigarettes might be useful tools to help a fraction of smokers quit. But it’s impossible to look at the findings in a vacuum: there are 3.6 million high school and middle school students using e-cigarettes in what the US Surgeon General has declared an epidemic. “That risk remains, but will it be prioritized even as this well-done study shows e-cigarettes can help adult smokers quit smoking?” St. Helen says. The answer likely rests with regulators and the e-cigarette industry: if they can stop young people from vaping in record numbers, then maybe.

Gadget News

via The Verge http://bit.ly/1jLudMg

January 30, 2019 at 11:53PM

Fake electronic gadgets seized from shops - Daily Express

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Fake electronic gadgets seized from shops  Daily Express

KOTA KINABALU: Three shops in a shopping centre selling various fake electronic gadgets using Vivo as its brand were uncovered in a raid by an enforcement ...

Gadget News

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January 30, 2019 at 11:43PM