Hasta La Gadget!

ZTE has come out with another 4G LTE-enabled Android 6.0 smartphone namely the Blade Max 3. Running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow OS, this mid-range smartphone sports a 6.0-inch 1920 x 1080 Full HD 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display, a 2.0GHz octa-core Snapdragon 625 processor, an Adreno 506 GPU, a 2GB RAM and a 16GB of expandable internal storage (up to 128GB).

Furthermore, the handset packs a 5MP front-facing camera, 13MP dual (Color + Monochrome) rear-facing cameras with dual-tone LED flash, a fingerprint sensor on the back, a 3.5mm audio jack and a 4000mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge.

For connectivity, the Blade Max 3 provides 4G LTE, dual-band WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS/GLONASS and USB Type-C. The ZTE Blade Max 3 is available now through U.S. Cellular for $199.99 without contract. [Product Page]

The post ZTE Blade Max 3 4G LTE-Enabled Android 6.0 Smartphone appeared first on TechFresh, Consumer Electronics Guide.

Before he co-founded the Fyre Festival, a disastrous music event on a private island that was supposed to be a luxury haven with Instagram models and Ja Rule but was actually a partially built tent city with feral dogs, 25-year-old Billy McFarland dropped out of college and started a combination credit card company and private club for millennials. Its customers said the company sold concert tickets it didn’t have and withheld thousands of dollars in refunds for months at a time.

The history of the card, called Magnises, gives reason to doubt that McFarland’s promise of refunds to Fyre Festival customers will be as simple or quick as he implies.

Magnises, McFarland said in 2014, is “Latin for nothing.” And McFarland did all the things that founders of startups with meaningless names do: He raised a few million dollars, produced a bafflingly unnecessary product and got his photo taken lying on top of six young women while holding his credit card.

Magnises marketed itself as a credit card for millennials, but because it was made of heavy matte metal and has a nonsense name, cardholder Gabe Saporta, an entrepreneur and synth-pop musician, told The New York Times in 2013 that “people don’t even believe it’s a real credit card.”   

People were right. Magnises isn’t a credit card. It’s really a credit card for their other credit cards: Customers pay a $250 annual fee for the metal card, which they can load their credit card information onto so they can buy things with it, which, of course, is what a plain old credit card does anyway.

What Magnises promised was access to certain restaurants and events, something offered by credit cards like American Express. Magnises also turned a West Village townhouse into a club, where New York society photographer Patrick McMullan and his DJ son would hang out with minor celebrities and real estate brokers. There was an app, too.

Oh, and singer Ja Rule was the company’s creative director.

The card didn’t do what it said it would do, according to online reviews. “Imagine if using OpenTable cost $250/year … that’s Magnises,” a review of the card by Michael Worley reads. And that dim view appears to be a best-case scenario. Another customer, Shawn Lee, wrote that it took a month and a half of daily refund requests, a dispute charge with his credit card company and a complaint to the Better Business Bureau to get a refund.

It’s unclear exactly why Magnises didn’t have the tickets it said it had or couldn’t process refunds quickly. A Business Insider report on the complaints indicates that understaffing and inexperience were factors.

And those problems, along with a great deal of hubris, appear to be part of what went wrong with the Fyre Festival on the island of Exuma in the Bahamas. It was supposed to be a multi-weekend music fest headlined by Blink-182. Tickets cost up to $250,000. Guests ended up stranded with no way to leave the island, where there were scattered amenities and limited bottled water.

A former Fyre Festival employee wrote in New York Magazine that the warning signs should have been obvious. A month and a half before the show, there were no vendors, no stage rented and no transportation. “We were standing on an empty gravel pit and no one had any idea how we were going to build a festival village from scratch,” Chloe Gordon wrote. Ja Rule visited the site, Gordon says, and basically seemed to just hang out on his yacht. 

Gordon’s final assessment is withering:

I cannot explain how or why the bros running this festival ignored every warning sign they were given along the way. The writing was on the wall. I saw it firsthand six weeks ago. They overlooked so many very basic things. And baby, they forgot to make me sign an NDA.

A spokesman for Fyre Festival scheduled a phone call with McFarland to comment on this article. McFarland didn’t call, and the festival spokesman subsequently did not answer numerous calls from the HuffPost. The Fyre spokesman called again later, though, after offering an exclusive statement to another publication, then hung up after HuffPost questioned him about the missed interview and changed arrangement.

Ja Rule responded with a statement apologizing to those who were stuck on the island and denying any blame for the fiasco:

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

AUSTIN, Texas ― Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones called a press conference Friday to explain to reporters just how deceptive they are, whether covering his contentious child custody trial or dismissing what he views as urgent public health issues, like the cross-breeding of pigs with humans.

Referring to reporters as “fops” and “fake news,” the radio host and famed Donald Trump-whisperer flogged journalists for questioning whether his political views were authentic. His lawyers had argued in court that the vitriolic comments he makes on his InfoWars show amounted to little more than “satire,” comparing him with comedian Stephen Colbert or radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

That argument succeeded in keeping some of Jones’ more offensive on-air comments away from the ears of the jury, which on Thursday night awarded Jones and his ex-wife joint custody of their three children. Travis County judge Orlinda Naranjo said from the first day of trial that she wouldn’t make the case about Jones’ politics or his radio show.

But the self-described Libertarian pundit’s legally expedient rebranding as a part-time political humorist fundamentally undermined his credibility. He clung to the argument, even while raging against it. In the news conference, as in the courtroom, Jones described roughly one-tenth of what he says on air as humor or satire.

“Thank you all,” Jones told the crowd in front of the courthouse where his custody trial took place. “Your mainstream media deception here only increased the power of InfoWars.” 

Even as he criticized the journalists who flocked to the trial, he thanked them for portraying him as a loving father ― an assessment provided by the dozens of therapists charged with providing expert judgement in the custody case.

But Jones also digressed. He attacked journalists for willfully misinterpreting his reports on InfoWars and failing to emphasize issues close to his heart, like the fact that scientists have experimented with injecting human cells into pigs.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous these human-animal chimeras are?” Jones said, asking the reporters to “Google it.” A few minutes earlier, he accused Google of trying to keep people from finding his show on the internet. The chimeras, he said, “are going to affect our children.”

He offered reporters a few words of commiseration, speculating that “corporate masters” had interfered with their news reports filed from the courthouse. His overall characterization of the trial’s news coverage, however, was resoundingly negative.

“You are dehumanizing me and my children,” Jones said. “You are dehumanizing yourselves.”

Jones’ accusations belied the cordial mood. He clearly enjoyed the attention, and reporters often giggled at his responses, when they centered on topics other than his hard-fought custody trial. Jones had held sole custody of his three children for the last three weeks, while his former wife saw the kids at infrequent and often supervised visits.

Courts will determine future arrangements for the children based on the jury’s verdict. 

Despite the anguish that Jones must have passed through as a father during the two-week ordeal, neither his politics nor his sense of humor changed. Asked whether he still believes the Sandy Hook massacre was a “false flag” operation, Jones demurred, saying that every lead should be investigated because the federal government doesn’t deserve our trust.

And when asked whether he still doubts that former President Barack Obama is really the father of his two daughters, Jones said that was an obvious example of his sense of satire.

“I was sitting there with [Mark] Cernovich,” Jones told HuffPost. “It was clearly a joke. We were laughing.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

When it comes to the great outdoors, many of us would have our collection of camping gear down pat — making sure that we can survive with the bare necessities if push comes to a shove. However, just in case there is a little bit of space left in your backpack that you would like to carry around, why not go ahead and be wild by toting around a portable speaker? Not only do you get to share your favorite tunes with your family and friends who are with you, you would also be able to use it to soothe or inspire yourself if you are alone. Ecoxgear knows that having a tough and rugged portable speaker which is capable of handling all the rigors of outdoor life is crucial, which is why they have come up with the EcoSlate.

The EcoSlate is deemed to be an all-in-one audio system which will merge a bright 200 Lumen flashlight, a built-in power bank and backlit buttons, resulting in the ultimate companion for any outdoor adventure. It is portable and compact, but do not let its relatively diminutive size fool you. It is still full well capable of packing a punch, boasting of a pair of 10W speakers as well as dual passive sub-woofers, while sporting a Bluetooth range of up to 100-feet for a single speaker.

So you have to go through a few bumps and knocks on your outdoor adventure. The EcoSlate is more than equal to the task, thanks to a tough, drop-proof exterior that meets military specifications. Even if you need to ford a river, fret not. The EcoSlate comes with IP67 waterproof certification, and best of all is, it even floats to make sure that whatever music that you are playing at the moment? It will not literally get drowned. The EcoSlate will arrive in Electric Blue, Grey, Black, Mint or Orange for $149.99 apiece.

Press Release
[ Ecoxgear reveals the EcoSlate rugged audio system copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Just like YouTube, Facebook has a problem with people stealing original content and reposting it under their own name or own page. This can be a problem for creators who are hoping to earn money through their videos, but not to worry because in Facebook’s bid to transform itself into a more legit video platform, they can come up with a solution.

According to a press release, Facebook announced that they have made some improvements to its Rights Manager tool which helps content creators manage their works. One of those improvements comes in the form of automated match actions, which means that these are options that users can set Rights Manager to perform automatically whenever their own copyrighted content is discovered.

One of them is to block the content from being viewable, and the other is to claim ad earnings. According to Facebook, this feature “Allows rights owners to claim a share of the money generated if an Ad Break runs in a piece of content that matches the rights owner’s reference file. We’re still early days with testing Ad Break, but this option may be something rights owners want to use in the future.”

Whether or not this will help with copyrighted videos being stolen and reposted under a different name remains to be seen, but these tools should hopefully be good enough to lure more creators to its platform.

Facebook Creators Can Earn Money From Stolen Videos , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.