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Comcast's Xfinity X1 finally streams Netflix in 4K http://ift.tt/2xGJD17 Netflix has offered 4K streaming on seemingly every platform under the Sun by this point, but not Comcast's Xfinity X1. You've had to settle for 1080p if your TV, console or digital media player somehow wasn't up to the job. No more: Comcast has made 4K streaming available on the X1. You'll need an XG1v4 box, a Netflix Premium subscription and (of course) a 4K TV, but you too can watch Stranger Things or Narcos without missing a pixel. The addition is part of a broader expansion into 4K, we'd add. Comcast says it's planning to bring the higher resolution to curated Xfinity on Demand collections and discovery using the voice remote. You'll also have a choice of resolution for programs, so you don't have to test the limits of your capped connection by streaming everything in 4K. The cable giant is clearly late to the party, but it's hard to knock this when it makes 4K Netflix available to people who might never buy a streaming device of their own accord. Source: Comcast Gadget News via Engadget http://www.engadget.com October 31, 2017 at 02:51PM
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macOS Sierra, El Capitan security updates patch KRACK Wi-Fi exploit http://ift.tt/2iPQN0c On the same day that Apple patched it's front-line operating systems for the KRACK Wi-Fi attack vector, the company has also reached back a bit, and issued security updates for Sierra and El Capitan to fix the problem. Gadget News via AppleInsider - Frontpage News http://appleinsider.com October 31, 2017 at 02:49PM
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How to Be Bored and Brilliant, With Manoush Zomorodi http://ift.tt/2z2pbM4 In this episode we talk to Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s Note to Self and author of Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. Back in 2015, Manoush wondered if being plugged in all the time to a constant stream of entertainment and information actually made our lives worse. She noticed that we’re never bored—and she wondered, what is that lack of boredom doing to us? Manoush led her listeners through an experiment to help them unplug—and it was a huge success: after taking part in the experiment listeners reported feeling more creative and productive, and more satisfied with their lives.
Listen to The Upgrade above or find us in all the usual places where podcasts are served, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, and NPR One. Please subscribe, rate, and review! Discussed in This Episode:
Our Upgrades of the WeekEvery week we like to let you in on the upgrades we’ve made in our own lives. This week we talked about a news app, a healthy-food delivery program, and a calorie counter app. Want to Say Hello?Maybe you have a question for us. Maybe you just want to say hi. Whatever it is, we’re here for you:
Gadget News via Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com October 31, 2017 at 02:43PM
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Best Buy stops selling full-price iPhone X following backlash http://ift.tt/2zlqNRA Last Friday, when the iPhone X became available for preorder, would-be Best Buy customers found that to buy the phone upfront through the retailer, they would have to pay $100 more than what Apple itself was charging. Rather than $999 or $1,149 depending on what amount of storage was wanted, Best Buy was charging $1,099 and $1,249. Now, as Bloomberg reports, Best Buy has stopped selling the iPhone X upfront and is only offering it through carrier-specific billing plans. Last week when customers began complaining about the increased prices of the already expensive phones, a Best Buy spokesperson told Bloomberg, "Our prices reflect the fact that no matter a customer's desired plan or carrier, or whether a customer is on a business or personal plan, they are able to get a phone the way they want at Best Buy. Our customers have told us they want this flexibility and sometimes that has a cost." They added that having multiple purchasing options "has a cost" and the different prices were a reflection of that. The customer backlash appears to have had an effect. "Although there was clearly demand for the un-activated iPhone X, selling it that way cost more money, causing some confusion with our customers and noise in the media," a Best Buy spokesperson told Bloomberg today. "That's why we decided a few days ago to only sell the phone the traditional way, through installment billing plans." Now, customers can only get the iPhone X from Best Buy if they do so through Verizon's, AT&T's or Sprint's plans. Apple's iPhone X hits stores on November 3rd. Source: Bloomberg Gadget News via Engadget http://www.engadget.com October 31, 2017 at 02:33PM
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Stranger Things season 2’s meme is Jim Hopper dancing to everything http://ift.tt/2A3hXoH In season 1 of Stranger Things, we had #Justice4Barb. This season, we’ve got… dancing Hopper. Stranger Things season 2 got its first meme this week, as a Twitter account called @hopperdancingto started posting videos of Sheriff Jim Hopper dancing to K-pop, the Stranger Things theme song, the Bag Raiders, and Michael Jackson. The meme really took off when David Harbour, who plays Hopper, tweeted his fervent approval of the account. Now, 17,000 people are following Hopper Dancing To.
It’s too bad the scene is so dimly lit that Hopper and Eleven look gray and washed-out. The clip is taken from Stranger Things season 2, episode 3, “The Pollywog,” when (spoiler!), a flashback explains how Hopper sheltered Eleven after the events of season 1. Eleven looks on in awe, as Hopper shimmies to the 1972 song “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” by Jim Croce. If you didn’t like the show’s song choice, or just want to see Hopper get hyped about music from a different era, you can set the running loop of Hopper dancing to a new song with the hashtag #HopperDancing. Viral memes tend to be open-ended enough that anyone can add their own contributions. This one’s no exception: there are an infinite number of ways to reimagine what Hopper is hearing when he dances.
Gadget News via The Verge http://ift.tt/1jLudMg October 31, 2017 at 02:21PM Nokia 2 Budget Smartphone With 2-Day Battery Life Launched in India; Releasing Mid-November - NDTV10/31/2017 Nokia 2 Budget Smartphone With 2-Day Battery Life Launched in India; Releasing Mid-November - NDTV http://ift.tt/2A4TuiA
Gadget News via gadgets - Google News http://ift.tt/2pP6Yh0 October 31, 2017 at 02:20PM
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How to Get iOS 11.2, Which Brings iPhone X Wallpapers to Older iPhones http://ift.tt/2gZUjF0 Apple still hasn’t officially released iOS 11.1, but it’s already testing out the next big software update. The first developer preview for iOS 11.2 arrived this week, bringing some small but exciting improvements to the operating system. What’s New In iOS 11.2?The most notable change coming to iOS may be the addition of new wallpapers that were previously limited to the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. It didn’t take long for those wallpapers to leak, but once iOS 11.2 hits, you can use them on your older iPhone without having to download images from a third-party website first. Advertisement Apple also fixed an annoying bug in its calculator app that was introduced with iOS 11. The bug sometimes caused the calculator to malfunction and spit out the wrong answer when you entered symbols into it too quickly, according to MacRumors. Other updates include some slightly redesigned emoji, following the influx of new cartoon images added in iOS 11.1., and new loading animations for Live Photo effects. iOS 11.2 also introduces AirPlay 2 with a new system for switching between audio players, but it only works with other devices running the iOS 11.2 preview too. How to Get iOS 11.2Your best bet is to wait for the iOS 11.2 public beta, which is usually available a few days after each developer preview release. In the meantime, you’ll want to join the Apple Beta Software Program if you haven’t signed up in the past. You should also back up your iPhone to a Mac or PC beforehand on the off chance that something goes wrong. Advertisement Once the public beta hits, just follow the directions at the bottom of this article and those new iPhone wallpapers should be yours in no time. Gadget News via Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com October 31, 2017 at 02:13PM
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Tell Alexa or Google Assistant to Make Your House Spooky on Halloween http://ift.tt/2lBhneq Maybe you’ve spent the past month spreading faux cobwebs over your fireplace, creating the perfect Halloween playlist, and counting down the days to the most wonderful holiday of the year. Or maybe you woke up this morning, realized it’s October 31st, and thought, ‘Oh, perhaps I should be festive?’ If you have Google Assistant or Alexa, you can instantly set a spooky vibe in your home with a few simple commands. Below, instructions for how to pull it off on both devices: Google Assistant“Ok Google, let’s get spooky.” Say this command and Google Assistant will play an hour-long soundtrack of spooky music, and if you have connected smart lights, they will flicker on and off. “Ok Google, scare me.” How Google Assistant will respond, you’ll just have to see ... if you dare. It may tell an urban legend, or play werewolf sounds, or launch into the terrifying story of the “assistant who didn’t help” (ha). Advertisement Android Community has a list of other ways Google Assistant can help you get in the Halloween spirit. AlexaPlay spooky music and sounds. For some instant mood music, you can say “Alexa, play Halloween Party Soundtrack from Amazon” or “Alexa, play the album Scream by Michael Jackson.” For Halloween sounds, CNET gives these tips:
“Alexa, tell me a scary story.” Alexa can tell you a scary story on its own, or if you enable the Boo Bot skill, it will read you a random short scary story from the Reddit community Short Scary Stories. Gadget News via Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com October 31, 2017 at 02:13PM
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If Your Vibrator Is Hacked, Is It a Sex Crime? http://ift.tt/2h3sYS9 On a recent trip to Berlin, Alex Lomas’ acquaintance posed him a challenge: Can you find a Bluetooth-enabled butt plug in the wild, and can you turn it on without its owner’s help? Lomas, a penetration tester with the British cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners, pulled out his phone, consulted the detection app LightBlue, and quickly identified a Lovense Hush, purportedly “the most powerful vibrating buttplug on the market,” that Lomas says was nestled in the rear end of a stranger. What’s more, that Hush was vulnerable, open to hacking by anyone who knew how. As the world hurtles toward total app-connectivity, the gap between what our devices could do and what the law can address widens, particularly with teledildonics—or, sex tech that you can control remotely, over the internet. A sex toy hacking situation like the one Lomas identified isn’t likely to occur outside a lab, but linking a vibrator to the internet opens up the possibility that it might, and we should be ready to discuss it. Advertisement Lomas published the results of his experiment on the Pen Test Partners blog, and coined the term “screwdriving,” a sexualized play on wardriving (or the drive-by stealing of other people’s wi-fi). In a Skype interview with Gizmodo, he summarized the procedure in layman’s terms: Hush uses Bluetooth Low Energy, basically the more modern version of Bluetooth, to connect with smart devices. If you are wearing the butt plug out in public, and a designated partner is standing within about 30 feet of your tuchus, then that partner can control its vibration speed and pattern discreetly from their phone. Which is all well and good, Lomas said, unless that person wanders out of (admittedly limited) connectivity range. In that case, Hush “will sort of fail open into a discovery mode, ready for other people to discover and then take control,” to pair with the plug—there’s no password protection, or the PIN is an easily guessed 0000 or 1234—and pilot your anal experience, uninvited. (In an email, a Lovense rep explained that this is indeed the case, although the toy does have a function that automatically turns it off if the connected device falls out of range. Lomas pointed out that the customer would have to know that any of this is even possible, which many won’t.) Lomas did not sync with the Hush and dial up the vibration, but he could have, and therein lies the problem. A consumer could venture out into the world, intending to have a secret erotic experience with one person, but end up having telesex with someone else entirely. But what kind of crime even is that—cyber, sex, or some kind of newfangled hybrid? And is anyone out there equipped to handle it? The answer seems to lie somewhere in the neighborhood of not really slightly surprising as news of sex toy vulnerability becomes more and more frequent. White hat hackers have already exposed a number of adult companies--Lovense, WeVibe—as unstable repositories for the surprisingly detailed stores of intimate user data they’ve been collecting, mostly unbeknownst to their customers. WeVibe’s data insecurity led to invasion of privacy lawsuits and modest settlements, yet the possibility that random third parties could insert themselves into a mutual masturbation session on Skype or a camming platform like Chaturbate has been less widely discussed. Hush isn’t the only assailable toy: Pretty much any BLE-enabled toy (or indeed device, whether that’s a hearing aid or a smoke detector) could be opened to outside probing. Products connected to apps like Body Chat seem pretty open to outside intervention, while the camera-equipped Siime Eye vibrator is easily hijacked by anyone with the know-how, potentially affording strangers vividly detailed views of your genitalia. That victim would certainly be able to claim invasion of privacy, but a breach of that scale seems more significant. Advertisement To be fair, the possibility that an unwanted third party could hack a sex toy is sliver slim: As Lovense explained in its response to Lomas’ experiment and in an email exchange with Gizmodo (of the Internet of Things sex toy makers contacted, Lovense was the only one to respond), Hush can only connect to one device at a time, and screwdriving would require sophisticated knowledge of BLE and “Lovense protocol,” along with “BLE sniffing hardware” most people don’t have. Even if someone did manage to pounce on your butt plug’s lapsed BLE connection, they’d need to be extremely close: within 30 feet and “a clear line of sight,” so, probably following you around. But it’s possible to buy long-range Bluetooth transmitters and receivers, and Lomas reported that a number of readers tweeted at him post-publication to say they’d successfully located their neighbors’ toys through a shared wall. Lomas acknowledged that some Hush buyers may be into a stranger’s surreptitious involvement, and that’s perfectly fine; the problem, as he sees it, is that the average consumer probably won’t realize they’ve consented to a semi-private experience—that they are, “essentially, walking around with a giant butt plug transmitter” broadcasting out their anuses, or inadvertently offering a telescopic tour inside their vaginas. Indeed, in considering teledildonic hacks from a legal perspective, consent should be a big part of the equation: instinctually, a stranger surprising you with genital vibrations reads as a violation. Legally, sexual assault doesn’t require penetration, merely “sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient.” According to Shanlon Wu, a defense lawyer in Washington D.C. and a former federal sex crimes prosecutor, the absence of consent like what would result from a remotely controlled, hacked sex toy signals sex assault. Advertisement “The typical definition of a felony-type sexual abuse is an unconsented-to penetration,” whether it’s with a body part or an object, Wu said. As regards the latter, he doesn’t see the legal equation changing if it’s a hand or a device controlling the object’s movement. Wu acknowledged that some lawyers might get bogged down in the virtual aspect of the offense, and view wearing a teledildonic device as blanket consent to its use. But consent is not transferrable, he said. Wu offered an analogy: “If I’m entering a boxing match ... I’m consenting, obviously, to the contest with my opponent. If he hits me, I can’t be yelling, ‘Oh, he assaulted me, he punched me!’ because we’re consenting to punching each other. But if his corner man, his manager, comes out and clocks me in the head during the match, they can’t argue, ‘You consented to a boxing match, so anybody gets to beat up on you.’” Similarly, if you consent to someone using a sex toy on you, that’s not an invitation for any passerby to join in. “Consent is consent whether it’s in person or whether it’s remote, and I think that’s the thing to focus on,” Wu said. He sees this form of cyberstealthing as a straightforward sexual assault prosecution, but Stewart Baker—a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson where his practice covers cyberlaw and technology-related issues—disagreed. Advertisement “I’m having trouble fitting this neatly into a sex crime framework,” Baker told Gizmodo. “If somebody breaks into your dildo, they’re criminally responsible,” he said, but the question is how. While Baker agreed that vibrator hijacking skewed the concept of consent, he also speculated that trying it as a sex crime could raise complicating questions about agreed-upon partner participation. If the sex toy in question comes with a built-in camera, that could implicate its owner in ways that won’t sit well with many people: Baker noted that consensual sexting between teens has already translated to several child pornography prosecutions, and if two minors are using a camera-equipped vibrator with one another on Skype or any other internet-connected video platform, they could inadvertently land themselves in a similar world of legal hurt. The clearest path forward Baker sees is prosecuting screwdriving as a cyber crime, under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which encompasses all wittingly unauthorized access of a computer as well as the filching of its contents. While it does not specifically address teledildonics, the CFAA arguably offers a means of placing consent in a cyber context. “The difference between being authorized and having consent is vanishingly small,” Baker said, “and so if you don’t have authority to do something with somebody else’s dildo, then if you’re doing it remotely over the internet, you’ve committed a crime that could turn out to be a felony [under the CFAA].” Advertisement Who’s likely not liable, though? The manufacturers, unless they’ve somehow misrepresented the product, Baker said. (The Lovense rep with whom Gizmodo spoke said they would broach the idea of adding a clarifying label to product packaging with the CEO.) While civil suits have resulted from toymakers’ insecure data collection methods, when it comes to a telesex hack, the only person responsible is the hacker. Which means it’s reasonable to request that both the manufacturers and the law figure out how to address sex toy vulnerabilities. For both Wu and Baker, screwdriving cases remain relegated to the realm of the hypothetical and some disagreement on prosecuting such a crime likely stems from a lack of precedent. A CFAA violation and a sexual assault are both felony crimes, though, and their possible sentences vary widely. Arguably more important are the implications of treating a sex toy hijacking as a computer-related crime, rather than a crime against a person. Doing so risks minimizing an offense that ultimately hinges on unasked-for intimate contact, and a lawyer who argues that wearing a device like Hush in public is opening themselves to its unauthorized use is victim blaming. The legal approach to screwdriving, though, would likely depend on whatever real life victims materialize, and as sex tech veers increasingly toward IoT connectivity—syncing with an app, virtual reality masturbation sessions, setting off a cross-country partner’s vibrator—without manufacturers pausing to patch security holes, it seems reasonable to expect they will. And while it’s probably not time to agonize over whether or not a hacker is waiting in the wings of your Skype sex session, ready to hijack your vibrator at any moment, it might be time to start thinking about what the future of sex crimes looks like. Better now than after we’ve arrived. Gadget News via Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com October 31, 2017 at 02:13PM
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When to Use "Who" vs. "Whom" http://ift.tt/2gSgtVI Of all the tricky grammar topics, who versus whom ranks right up there: get it wrong, and you risk looking like a rube. Get it right and you risk looking pretentious. Get it wrong in a different way and you risk looking like a pretentious rube. So we at Lifehacker, who want to be both right and non-pretentious (but only sometimes succeed), thought we’d do a little research and break down the whole who/whom thing once and for all. A Quick Lesson on Subjects and ObjectsA subject is doing the action of the sentence: She threw the ball. She is the subject. The object has something done to it: the ball is the object. Who = Subject, Whom = Object“Who” functions as a subject: Who wants dinner? Who is going to the ball game? “Whom” is the object of the verb or the preposition: Whom did you hit? To whom are you speaking? Use This MnemonicA good way to test whether to use who or whom is to swap in he/she or him/her. If he/she works, use who. If him/her works, use whom: You are following ___? Because you would say “You are following him,” not “You are following he,” you know that whom is correct. ___ is taking me to the mall? “She is taking you to the mall,” not “Her is taking you to the mall,” so you know that the question should be “Who is taking me to the mall?” Advertisement My own personal trick for remembering this? Whom and him both end in m. If you can sub in him, it’s whom. Who vs. Whom for Advanced GrammariansSo that’s basic who versus whom. Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl, offers a brief tutorial on advanced who versus whom that covers adjectival clauses. For example: I saw the man ___ Joe says followed him around the party. Who or whom? The whole second part of the sentence is an adjectival clauses (or a clause that functions as a single adjective): Joe says followed him around the party. Advertisement You can remove the “Joe says” because it’s a parenthetical, or an aside—a bit of extraneous information. You’re left with “followed him around the party.” And then just apply your standard him/whom trick: Him followed around the party? Nope. He followed him around the party. So use who. All clear? Or are you all “whom cares?” Gadget News via Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com October 31, 2017 at 02:13PM |
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