Hasta La Gadget!

In what seems to be an unintentional response to our previous report surrounding the supposed rampant piracy on Android, another developer believes that the reverse is true. Chris Pruett, a developer for the popular game Wind-up Knight and founder of Robot Invader, said that the company’s piracy rate on the said game was about 12% on Android and about 15% on iOS. Pruett added that back when Wind-up Knight for iOS was a paid app, the piracy rate reportedly went 80%.

The developer also mentioned that roughly 100% of their pirate users on Android and iOS are in China. “I think piracy is, as always, a red herring. You can’t stop it, but as long as it’s slightly arduous, it’s not a lot of lost sales. Because a huge number of people who pirate software would never buy it in a million years,” Pruett explained. “You aren’t losing a sale to them. Piracy starts to matter only when pirate users can cost you money in other ways, e.g. network bandwidth and server cost. Yet another reason to be a free app in today’s mobile marketplace.”

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Android smartphone sales hit the jackpot with 888.8% jump, Android U.S market share declines, according to research,

Any readers out there who are into hiking as well? If you are, and you’re looking for a GPS receiver to take on your future trips, you might want to check out Magellan’s new eXplorist TOPO! Special Edition receivers. These GPS devices combine Magellan’s rugged and waterproof designs with National Geographic’s full-color USGS topographic maps that have been scanned at high resolution and seamlessly tiled together for “the most detailed outdoor recreation maps available for the entire U.S.”
(more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Magellan announces partnership with Effigis to add OnPOZ software to its eXplorist Pro 10 GPS, Magellan RoadMate portable automobile navigation range announced,

We’ve seen Star Wars chess sets before and we’ve seen some LEGO chess sets as well, but this one combines both and is a real work of art. It’s the third in a series of LEGO chess sets designed by Brandon Griffith. Each commemorates the three original Star Wars movies. You know, the good ones. At least two of them.

For the Return of the Jedi chess set, you can play as either the Imperials or the Rebels. Of course, the bad guys are always more fun. Brandon really did a great job of thinking out of the detail and building some clever pieces, with lots of detail.

The Endor theme of the board is really nice, especially the Ewok and Scout Stormtroopers as pawns. Though you’ve got to wonder about the Emperor as King and Darth Vader as Queen on the Empire side of the board.

If all chess sets were this cool, I might be bothered to actually play the game. Great work Brandon.

[flickr via The Brothers Brick via Nerd Approved]

With privacy being one of those hot-button issues now that we’re living in a post-9/11 world, it can be hard to know who to trust when it comes to whether or not the government is collecting data on you. Take this weekend’s development from the DefCon hacker conference, for instance: on the one hand, we have NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander telling attendees that the agency doesn’t maintain files on American citizens, while on the other hand, we have former NSA official William Binney claiming during a panel discussion that the NSA does. Who do we trust in this case? We’re not positive, but it sure does raise a few questions.

To get a bit more specific, Binney said that the NSA began forming plans to collect data on American citizens before the events of 9/11 even occurred. 9/11, as you might imagine, gave NSA officials the perfect excuse to roll out the program, and it wasn’t long before Binney ended up leaving the agency. “It started in February 2001 when they started asking telecoms for data,” he said. “That to me tells me that the real plan was to spy on Americans from the beginning.” Binney says that the reason he left the agency is because it started “spying on everyone in the country.”

Alexander claims that the NSA only spies on foreign entities, and though he seems to admit that the agency sometimes “incidentally” picks up information on American citizens, that information is restricted – “minimized” is the official word – unless there’s a crime involved. Binney and the other members of the panel, such as ACLU attorney Alex Abdo, pointed out that there are loopholes in the law that essentially allow the NSA to collect information on American citizens while looking into these “foreign entities,” which they can then go back to later if new information on the citizen in question surfaces.

If what Binney and his fellow panel members are saying is true, that’s pretty scary. There are plenty of people out there ready and willing to believe that the government is spying on them, and the NSA doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to stuff like this. Ultimately, Binney says that the the oversight Congress has over the NSA is “dependent” on what the NSA tells them, so there’s no real way of knowing that the agency is telling the truth. Be sure to check out our story timeline below for more information on the NSA.

[via Wired]

Former NSA official blows whistle on agency’s data collection program is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Are your elders always complaining about loud and monotonous music? Or perhaps you’ve started to feel similar sentiments? The Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona says it’s not just a matter of opinion. The team analyzed data on loudness, pitch and timbre from just under half a million tracks spanning 55 years, finding the average volume of recordings has increased in that time — said to be the doing of record labels so songs stand out amongst other radio noise. But, they report that little has changed in the actual music, and whilst there are obviously differences in composition, most melodies are created from just ten popular chords. Variations in timbre, or tone quality, have also dipped since the 1960s, which the team attributes to the experimentation of shredders from that era. Creativity in music is obviously still abundant and it’s important to point out only Western pop music was included in the analysis, but Gran was never really into the progressive stuff anyway.

Researchers prove your grandmother right, modern music is louder and all the same originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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