Apr 16
If The LEGO Movie (check out our review) gave you a craving for LEGO-themed entertainment, TV’s longest-running animated series is about to satisfy it: The Simpsons will soon air an … Continue reading
Apr 16
Shutter the door and make it snappy! This curious camera-shaped public toilet in Chongqing, China perfectly fits the computer and electronics focused vibe of the neighborhood. Bonus: there’s no better place to butt-dial a selfie.
Apr 16
Is it getting to be a pain (literally) to get in and out of your car?
What about turning your head half way around to see what is in your
"blind spot?" Can you see while driving at night? Well, here are 5
nifty products that will help you continue to drive without hurting
yourself; they’ll also help to keep you and other drivers safe.
Apr 16
There’s something seriously wrong in Sandford—but you wouldn’t know it just by looking around. The Gloucester haven has won Village of the Year for who knows how long. It’s a model of British country living—but beneath the picturesque facade is something far more sinister.
Apr 16
Daily Roundup: Samsung Gear 2 review, allure of the anonymous internet and more!
Posted in: Today's Chili
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all…
Apr 16
I’m proud to be an American where at least I know… we bone the most. At least according to this map which measures the frequency of sex and duration of sex by country. We don’t have the longest sex, though; that honor goes to Australia. Those down under have sessions that last for a "marathon" time of a little over 4 minutes.
Apr 16
You may think you know a pair of pants when you buy ’em, but denim’s true character isn’t revealed until your trou are well-loved, worn-in, and sudsed up a few times. Rather than just fade out like most pairs on the market—booooring—Betabrand’s new Gay Jeans (yup) have a technicolor surprise hiding underneath the regular indigo.
Apr 16
One of the more basic functions one might expect from a voice assistant feature is the ability to set the alarm. Google Now does this, Siri does this, Cortana does this, no wait, it doesn’t. According to reports, it seems that there are more than a fair share of Windows Phone 8.1 users out there who are experiencing difficulties when attempting to set their alarm via Cortana.
The error message they receive when trying to do so reads, “Something’s not right. Try again a little bit. (8000ffff).” Apparently even soft or hard resetting their phone does not seem to solve the issue either. There is also the possibility that it might be because Cortana is being used in another country other than the US, but there are US users who are reporting on the issue as well.
However we should note that as it stands, Windows Phone 8.1 has been released as a Developer Preview meaning that it is not primed for use for end-users just yet, although we would have expected Cortana to be able to set alarms since it’s a pretty basic function. Hopefully this is an issue Microsoft will look into an issue a fix if necessary.
In the meantime any of our readers running the Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview on their Windows Phone handsets run into the same problems as well? Do let us know in the comments below, especially if you’ve figured out how to make it work!
Users Report Cortana Having Problems Setting Alarms , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Cellphones, Cortana, Microsoft, Windows Phone,
Apr 16
As we’re sure many of you guys have heard by now, Windows XP is officially no longer supported by Microsoft. The operating system is still alive and kicking but it is no longer being supported, meaning that updates designed to protect the computer from viruses and malware will no longer be issued.
This isn’t good news for businesses and governments that still rely heavily on Windows XP and have yet to make the switch. Last we heard, Microsoft was charging very high prices to keep adding support until these organizations or government agencies had the opportunity to upgrade. Well it turns out Microsoft has had a change of heart and is now offering a discount.
In a statement released by Microsoft to ZDNet, “We’ve been working with customers and partners on the migration from Windows XP since we announced in September 2007 that support for Windows XP would end on April 8. 2014. As part of this effort, we’ve made custom support more affordable so large enterprise organizations could have temporary support in place while they migrate to a more modern and secure operating system.”
Microsoft did not state how big the discount was but according to ZDNet’s source, one customer had an original quote of $85 million to cover his entire company reduce to $3 million which is an extremely huge discount. ComputerWorld on the other hand has cited its own sources which claims that the ceiling for the custom coverage is set at $250,000, with a price of $250 per device which admittedly sounds a lot more reasonable.
Microsoft Discounting Windows XP Support For Enterprise , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Computers, Microsoft, windows xp,
Apr 16
You know that funny scramble of words and numbers that some websites use to complete a signup process? They’re typically used to prove that the person signing up for that account is human, as opposed to a bot who might be creating multiple accounts to use for spamming. Well it turns out that Google has managed to develop an algorithm that can solve Google’s own CAPTCHAs with a 99.8% accuracy.
According to Google, this algorithm was designed to be used to help Google analyze hard-to-read signs and house numbers captured by its Street View cameras. By solving this issue, they will be able to more accurately match images with locations on a map, but in the process it seems that this algorithm could also be used to solve CAPTCHAs.
However it seems that Google will not be putting their algorithm to the test in trying to break other CAPTCHAs. Instead the company will use this knowledge that they have gained to further strengthen reCAPTCHA, Google’s own CAPTCHA service. In a post by Vinay Shet, reCAPTCHA’s produce manager, “Thanks to this research, we know that relying on distorted text alone isn’t enough.”
It’s actually ironic that CAPTCHAs, designed to be read by humans, is more accurately read by an algorithm when humans are the ones who probably make more mistakes when it comes to identify the words/numbers!
Google Develops Algorithm That Can Decipher Its Own CAPTCHAs , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Web, Google,
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