Even cable giant Comcast has to pay attention to internet viewers, and last year it launched an interesting YouTube-like site called Watchable. Packed with content from creators including Buzzfeed and Vice it took aim directly at the very millennials…
Today’s world of video games is certainly a very different one from what we have experienced in the past. The leap in technological sophistication was a whole lot less back then — from 8-bit to 16-bit, the transition proved to be revolutionary, especially where the SNES or Super Famicom is concerned, delivering Mode 7 graphics and additional buttons on the controller for more options. Well, if you would like to relive your far younger gaming days, the $12.99 Super Retro Gamer 4-port USB hub might be just the deal.
This is one USB hub that will definitely bring a smile to your face no matter how stressed up you are at work, as you plug in a hard drive or a mouse or some other USB peripheral into it. It is a snap to use, is a no-brainer purchase decision for any serious Nintendo fans, and there is absolutely no need for any kind of button mashing at all. If there is one particular drawback that we can think of, it would be this — there is no USB 3.0 connectivity support here, as all four of those happen to be USB 2.0 ports.
[ Super Retro Gamer 4-port USB hub rolls back the years copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leads Republican rival Donald Trump by 12 percentage points among likely voters, her strongest showing this month, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.
The Aug. 18-22 poll showed that 45 percent of voters supported Clinton, while 33 percent backedTrump ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state, has led Trump, a New York businessman, throughout most of the 2016 campaign. But her latest lead represents a stronger level of support than polls indicated over the past few weeks. Earlier in August, Clinton’s lead over Trump ranged from 3 to 9 percentage points in the poll.
The poll also found that about 22 percent of likely voters would not pick either candidate. That lack of support is high compared with how people responded to the poll during the 2012 presidential election between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney.
“Those who are wavering right now are just as likely to be thinking about supporting a third-party candidate instead, and not between Clinton and Trump,” said Tom Smith, who directs the Center for the Study of Politics and Society at the University of Chicago.
During the latest polling, Clinton faced renewed scrutiny about her handling of classified emails while serving as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, and Trump’s campaign chief, Paul Manafort, resigned after a reshuffle of the candidate’s campaign leadership team.
Clinton held a smaller lead in a separate four-way poll that included Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party. Among likely voters, 41 percent supported Clinton, while 33 percent backed Trump. Johnson was backed by 7 percent and Stein by 2 percent.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. Both presidential polls included 1,115 respondents and had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
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We caught our first glimpse at the PowerEgg drone back in February when it was first unveiled. If you liked what you saw in that lightweight and intuitive consumer focused drone aircraft, you can now pre-order your own. The PowerEgg is from PowerVision Technology Group and can be pre-ordered globally starting now. Shipping is expected to happen in mid-October 2016. … Continue reading
Rumors have been flying about the iPhone 7 and one of the rumors that has some folks a bit concerned is the one suggesting Apple is ditching the headphone port on the smartphone. These rumors suggest that Apple is going to ship the next iPhone with EarPods that have Bluetooth connectivity with the iPhone for steaming music wirelessly. Rumors also … Continue reading
Google’s latest Drive update makes it easy to access your favorite files on Android. It adds the ability to add file and folder shortcuts to your homescreen, so you don’t need to launch the app every time there’s something in there you want to open….
One of the benefits of being an Amazon Prime member is unlimited cloud storage for photos, as well as 5GB of space for other file types. If you own any of the retailer’s Fire devices, too, you get unlimited storage for photos taken with that product,…
In the dying days of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, the great and the good in Washington scratched their heads and asked themselves: “Who lost Russia?”
Post-communist Russia was more fluid than the hordes of economists, missionaries and carpetbaggers who descended on Moscow in 1992 had ever imagined. But the question itself was salutary. Bill Clinton had indeed achieved a rare feat in the annals of US diplomacy: managing to turn a pro-western country into an anti-American one. How had he done it?
Joe Biden could well be asking himself a similar question as he flies to Turkey on Wednesday: Who is losing Turkey? The US has had a bad coup. In the first hours of 15 July, Secretary of State John Kerry hoped for “stability and continuity”. It took two hours for the White House to issue an unambiguous statement mentioning democracy and the rule of law. That delay was enough to plant the suspicion in Ankara that its closest military ally knew more than it was letting on.
A nation in shock from the lethal force used by the coup plotters on that Friday night – 35 jets, 37 helicopters, 246 armed vehicles, 4000 weapons and three ships – soon found itself getting lectures on human rights.
Kerry linked concerns about the scope of Erdogan’s purge of the army and administration to Turkey’s continued membership of NATO. That line prompted a former US ambassador in Turkey to suggest that his Secretary of State was hallucinating. “What was he smoking?” James Jeffrey asked, as he wondered how the US would deal with Russia and Iran if the largest military force in the region was kicked out of NATO.
Centcom then discovered that its closest contacts in the Turkish military were being thrown into prison. 151 generals and admirals, a third of the generals in the Turkish military, have been rounded up – and the head of US Central Command wanted to know why. He even said the purge could disrupt the military relationship between Turkey and the US.
“What I’m concerned about is … first and foremost that it will have an impact on the operations that we do along that very important seam,” Joseph Votel said. This prompted a furious response from Erdogan, and Centcom found itself quickly rowing back on that one.
Reports emerged daily in the Turkish media about the visits the coup plotters had made to the US. The movements of Adil Oksuz have attracted particular attention. A theologian teaching at Sakarya University, he was first arrested outside Akinci air base, from where the coup was masterminded. He had embarked on over 100 foreign trips since 2002, and most recently was in the US on 11 July before returning on 13 July.
Following his arrest, Oksuz was released by a judge and is now on the run. For the Turkish authorities, he is a prime suspect as one of the bag carriers for Fethullah Gulen, the self-exiled cult leader in Pennsylvania, whom Turkey accuses of being behind the coup plot.
All this has emerged before the opening salvo in the forthcoming legal battle over the extradition of Gulen has even been fired.
Russia, on the other hand, had a good coup. Iranian media claimed Russian military intelligence in Syria had picked up signals of the helicopter squad heading to Marmaris to assassinate Erdogan in his holiday villa and tipped off Turkish intelligence. He escaped by 15 minutes. However, Turkish intelligence had received reports of unusual troop movements several hours earlier.
Whether true or not, the story helped Putin in his attempts to pose as Erdogan’s saviour. When the Russian bomber was downed by a Turkish jet, Putin said he had been “stabbed in the back” by his ally. All this was now history. Erdogan had already prepared the ground for a reconciliation by apologising for the incident, hinting that it had nothing to do with him.
When Putin and Erdogan met, Turkish briefers and commentators went into overdrive to emphasise what the two men now had in common. However, they stressed the meeting was about bilateral trade – TurkStream, the natural gas pipeline bypassing Ukraine and tourism – not the heavy-lift subjects on which the two countries remain at loggerheads: Syria, the Kurds and Iran.
I am not convinced this represents the whole truth.
Erdogan’s problems with NATO, the US and its allies predate the coup. They all have to do with allegations that Turkey allowed IS fighters to transit into Syria and traded with IS, a claim made by Russia itself. In November last year Mohamed Dahlan, the exiled Palestinian strongman, told NATO policymakers at an Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) security conference “to look themselves in the mirror”.
“All Europe knows Daesh is dealing commercially with Turkey,” he said, “look at yourselves in the mirror. You talk like Arabs did 40 years ago. Terrorism in Syria all comes through Turkey. You are complicating the issue.”
This January, Jordan’s King Abdullah told top US congressmen in a closed meeting that Erdogan believed in a “radical Islamic solution to the region”. The king presented Turkey as part of a strategic challenge to the world: “We keep being forced to tackle tactical problems against ISIL [the Islamic State group] but not the strategic issue. We forget the issue [of] the Turks who are not with us on this strategically.” he said.
And Western intelligence agencies in Turkey have fuelled these claims of complicity with IS.
The MI6 station chief in Turkey briefed a British newspaper journalist about the links between Turkey and IS. The veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, quoted by name Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency between 2012 and 2014, as saying that Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border.
“If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,” Flynn told me. “We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.”
An unnamed adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Hersh:
“American intelligence had accumulated intercept and human intelligence demonstrating that the Erdogan government had been supporting [al-Nusra Front] for years, and was now doing the same for Islamic State…We told him we wanted him to shut down the pipeline of foreign jihadists flowing into Turkey. But he is dreaming big – of restoring the Ottoman Empire – and he did not realise the extent to which he could be successful in this.'”
The killer sentence was this one:
“We worked with Turks we trusted who were not loyal to Erdogan,” the adviser said, “and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the obsolete weapons in the arsenal, including M1 carbines that hadn’t been seen since the Korean War, and lots of Soviet arms. It was a message Assad could understand: “We have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its tracks.”
Working with Turks “who were not loyal to Erdogan” has a more concrete meaning in the light of what happened on 15 July. The briefings that Hersh and others got are now being seen by Ankara as preparation for the coup.
Biden will have to work hard to persuade Erdogan that this is not the case, that the Turks they worked with who were not loyal to Erdogan were not the same Turks who tried, and narrowly failed, to assassinate him.
There is little likelihood of Turkey leaving NATO. When Putin bared his teeth after his Sukhoi bomber got shot down last year, it was to NATO that Turkey turned. An external military threat today would produce the same reaction.
But nor can Turkey be guaranteed to play the same role, especially on its sensitive southern border. The coup has two most likely effects. Firstly, that Erdogan will feel freer to act in Turkey’s national interest in Northern Syria. He will not be constrained by the agenda, or the lack of it, set by the US. He will not feel subject to a US veto.
We have already seen the results of this in the advances by rebel forces in Aleppo. Assad’s bombing of US-backed Kurdish forces could not have happened without Putin’s assent, and this too suited Turkey’s red lines on its southern border.
The second effect of the coup will be on the army itself. A new army will be formed, not necessarily more Islamic, but certainly one that will do everything it can to display its loyalty to the Turkish state and to Erdogan himself. This was the message the army chief of staff gave to the biggest rally in Turkey after the coup.
This post-coup army will be stronger and more assertive, as we are seeing in Syria. For the first time in this conflict a major Turkish tank force has entered Syria. Erdogan said it would be targeting”terrorist groups like Daesh (IS) and PYD,” referring to the pro-Kurdish Democratic Union Party, whose military wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG) continue to make military gains in northern Syria. Turkish ground forces have support from the air supplied by US led coalition forces.
As Biden flies into Turkey on Wednesday, this means the US is on both sides of the sub-conflict raging along Turkey’s southern border simultaneously. Its supporting the Kurdish PYD who are attempting to build for themselves a continguous state along the border, and the Turkish forces who will stop them doing just that. This is the mess their Syria policy has landed them in.
The tectonic plates of this conflict have shifted again, with or without NATO’s or the Pentagon’s assent. The US faces nowhere near as many challenges from its enemies in the Middle East as it does from its allies. And as Russia demonstrates, there is no more dangerous an ally than an ally scorned.
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The average length of a marriage that ends in divorce is eight years. And in America, there is one divorce approximately every 36 seconds.
Let’s face it, the honeymoon period in most marriages has a shelf life and things can grow stale quickly. A few years ago, the Huff/Post50 team compiled a list of ways to reignite the sparks in your marriage ― especially for those whose marriages are decades-old. And because everyone can use a refresher course on occasion, here they are again, updated.
1. Remind your partner (and yourself) that you appreciate them.
After you’ve been married for many, many years, that passionate kiss when your partner walks in the door can easily morph into a peck on the check that can then morph into an inability even to look up from your computer. There are times when couples become so familiar with each other that the marriage starts to feel like a stultifying — albeit comfortable — routine. There’s a real danger in that. Studies show that nearly half of men who have cheated say it was because of emotional dissatisfaction — and not sex. When men don’t feel connected or appreciated by their wives, they are vulnerable to the advances of any attractive woman who casts a lustful glance their way. And it works the other way as well.
In his film “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen charged that “a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.”
2. Say thank you for the little things.
Don’t keep score, constantly calculating who does what. “I cleaned out the kids’ closets, so you have to clean the basement.” “I moved for your job when we first got married, so now you need to move for mine.” “I initiated sex last time, so now it’s your turn.” Playing tit for tat is childish and will do nothing but chip away at the trust and connection you’ve built with your spouse. If you are so inclined, keep score of all the positive things your partner does in a day — and then thank them. Hopefully they’ll get the hint and do the same for you.
3. Practice honesty, even when you’re ashamed.
If you have maxed out a credit card or two and find yourself hiding the bills each month, you can bet it’s going to come back to bite you. Eventually, whether you’re applying for a home loan or simply talking about the costs of summer vacation, these kinds of money issues will either be brought to light by a credit report or by the simple fact you can’t afford a trip away. Although infidelity usually happens in bed, it also can happen with money. And it will be a tough road gaining back your spouse’s trust if you’ve lied about overspending.
Along that same vein, if you feel you aren’t connecting with your partner the way you used to, you need to say something — now. Sometimes it takes a third party — a therapist— to get things back on track. Marriages rarely heal on their own.
4. Take care of yourself.
You can give all the lip service in the world to the idea that appearances don’t matter. But how about health?
5. Foster relationships outside your marriage.
Weekends away with friends are important breaks to take. Swapping stories with others and enjoying new experiences make us more interesting. When Katie Couric asked Barbra Streisand the secret to her happy long-time marriage to James Brolin, she replied “time apart.” “It gets romantic because even the conversations on the phone get more romantic. You need some distance,” Streisand said.
Your marriage should be your primary relationship — but it needn’t be the only one.
6. Watch your words.
There are many things you should never say to a longtime spouse, the first being: “Don’t you think our new neighbor is attractive?” That’s a question you just think you want to know the answer to. It’s also never a good idea to start a sentence with: “You know it’s always been your problem that…” Who wants to hear that from their partner? We hopefully all have a pretty good sense of ourselves at this point and having someone you love point out a failing in this way does little to engender a loving relationship.
“You always…” or “You never…” Think about it. Neither of these is true. If you start a sentence with these words your mate is certain to shut down or start a fight. Stop for a minute and think about what you really mean to say — and then say that instead.
7. Put away the jumper cables yourself.
In life, there are big things and there are little things. The big things — draining the bank accounts to support a gambling habit, forgetting to mention that he’s in the federal witness relocation program living under a false identity or that he has a second family stashed in Queens — are of course one-way streets to divorce court. But most of us don’t have problems of that magnitude. Most of us have problems that are more like petty and repeated annoyances, which when fed the steroids of resentment and anger.
Most of our problems start out small enough — he borrows the jumper cables from your car and then leaves them sitting in the driveway just waiting to get run over — and from that sprouts a giant festering sore. It leads you to utter words like, “If you loved me you would have put the jumper cables back in my car so that when I get stuck in a bad neighborhood with a dead battery I could save myself,” which, in my household, generally results in a reply like “When do you ever drive in bad neighborhoods?”
It is the small annoyances that, if left unaddressed, do us in. For a happier marriage, address them right away and keep it simple. “Honey, did you put jumper cables back in my car?”
8. Relish the silence.
Sometimes the best way to address a problem is to just walk away from it — as in seriously let it go. Not every slight must be addressed. Know that not every insult is intended. Practice letting go as much as you can. Forgive more. Forget more. Bite your tongue until the tip bleeds. And once in a while, remind yourself of why you married this person. Focus on those reasons and let stuff pass without mention.
The trick to successful silence, however, is that you really let the problem pass. If you stay silent and still harbor bad thoughts, well, that’s where ulcers come from. As the Beatles told us, “Let It Be.”
9. Recognize the ebb-and-flow.
Relationships aren’t flat-lined; that’s death, actually. Life has ups and downs, peaks and valleys. We all go through periods where the mere thought of life without our partners can bring tears to our eyes and then a week later we can’t stand the sound of their breathing next to us. We’ve all been there. The trick is knowing that you won’t stay in either place forever. Truth is, in a marriage, you spend most of your time in an emotional middle ground. It’s not songbirds chirping, nor is it considering which poison in his pasta will cause the most painful demise.
This middle ground isn’t the couple who sit in the restaurant across from one another without conversing. Those people have actually flat-lined and just don’t know it yet. No, the middle ground is when months meld into years and you know what the reaction will be before you say something. It’s when the book you finished last night just migrates automatically to the nightstand on his side and he tells you about the recorded “Modern Family” episode you slept through. It’s the everyday ebb and flow without the waves.
10. Be kind.
We tend to take advantage of those we love the most — probably because we know they love us and we can get away with it. It’s the old kick-the-cat syndrome. You have a bad day at the office and come home and take it out on your mate. A much healthier pattern is to start out each day by asking yourself, “What can I do today to make my partner happy?” And mean it. Doesn’t it make more sense to put your best face on for someone you love? Look for ways to say “yes.” This rule applies to parenting as well, but in a happy marriage, people are busy trying to please each other. That sometimes means sitting through endlessly long ball games, putting on a tie, watching a horror movie with your eyes closed, and traveling around old Civil War battleground sites when you really wanted to be vacationing on a beach in Hawaii. It’s doing things for your partner.
11. Maintain intimacy and passion, both inside and outside the bedroom.
Intimacy isn’t just sex and passion isn’t just doing it on the kitchen counter. Bedroom habits age along with the marriage. There may be no stronger aphrodisiac than a moonlight walk on the beach that ends in a kiss. There may be no greater display of passion than the zeal of a partner in a hospital room trying to get the nurse’s attention for an ailing wife. Don’t let others define what is a “normal” or “healthy” amount of sex for your marriage. Know that things change, but that doesn’t make them less exciting or fun. And intimacy comes in many shapes, including conversation and cuddling.
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Sex can be a crucial component of a relationship. Research shows that the happier married people are with their sex lives, the happier they are with their partnership. But between busy jobs and even busier personal schedules, it’s a wonder anyone has time to get, well, busy.
But people who have a healthy, active sex life aren’t magical wizards. They just have the habit down to a science.
Fortunately, anyone can steal the tricks of people who make sex a priority. The best part? There’s no Kama Sutra or self-help book required. In fact, it all comes down to tapping into your own psychology.
Below are six research-backed secrets of people who regularly have sex:
Your personality affects every aspect of your life ― including sex. A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality discovered that newlywed couples where the woman ranked high in agreeableness, or the desire to please others, tended to have more sex often than other couples. The research looked at the Big Five personality traits ― conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism and extraversion ― in order to make their conclusion.
The study also found that while men tried to initiate sex more, the women were ultimately the ones who determined whether or not the couple engaged in the activity.
Looking for the ultimate performance enhancer? Look no further than between the sheets. A small study found extra hours of sleep corresponded with higher levels of sexual desire in college-aged women.
And the process is also cyclical: Other research shows that the residual effects of sex ― like the release of oxytocin and other stress-relieving chemicals ― can mean better shuteye. (And, bonus, it does some pretty wonderful things for your health, too.)
Emotional intimacy really can spark physical intimacy. A study published in the Journal of Sex Research earlier this year found that 75 percent of sexually satisfied men and 74 percent of sexually satisfied women reported that their partner said “I love you” during their last sexual encounter. Many of the same individuals also said that setting the mood and engaging in sexy talk also helped with satisfaction.
Okay, here’s where that Kama Sutra may come in handy. In the same Journal of Sex Research study, researchers also found that trying new things in bed made the respondents happier. And who wouldn’t want to engage in an activity that makes them happy more often?
Work out to make it work in the bedroom. Research shows that regular physical activity can enhance your sex drive, particularly if you’re a man. Men who exercise more report better erectile function, according to a 2015 study. Regular workouts also may help reverse a low sex drive.
Sex is supposed to be pleasurable, not an item on a to-do list. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that when couples were tasked to have more sex they viewed it more like a chore and subsequently experienced a drop in mood. So, ideally, the key goal to having better sex may be not making it a goal at all and just letting the desire ― whenever it hits ― steer you in the right direction.
Sounds simple enough, right?
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
