Hasta La Gadget!

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House Republicans earlier this week passed a bill to scrap regulations preventing internet service providers from sharing customers’ personal information, including their web browsing history, without their consent.

Understandably, people aren’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of ISPs profiting off their browsing histories, and are raising hell about it. But AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, having lobbied for exactly that outcome, seem startled by the blowback, as indicated by blog posts the companies published about privacy Friday. 

Put another way: The farmer has decided to spend less time watching the hen house, and the foxes feel they’ve been unfairly maligned, despite having a well-deserved reputation for eating chickens. Oh, and the foxes paid the farmer to look the other way.

Pity the poor foxes.

Comcast struck a conciliatory tone in its blog, with the company’s chief privacy officer Gerard Lewis assuring readers the company does not “sell … broadband customers’ individual web browsing history.”

“We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted,” Lewis writes, “and we have no plans to do so.” Not having current plans to do so, of course, does not mean they will never do so.

Lewis adds that Comcast has “committed not to share our customers’ sensitive information (such as banking, children’s, and health information), unless we first obtain their affirmative, opt-in consent.”

As with his first reassurance, there’s a caveat here: Mainly, this only applies to select categories of information deemed “sensitive.” In the next sentence, Lewis elaborates that “other, non-sensitive data” is indeed used to send targeted ads. To his credit, Lewis provides a link for customers to opt out of receiving those ads, though it’s unclear if opting out of the ads means they cease collecting “non-sensitive” data.

Lewis closes with a pledge to “revise [Comcast’s] privacy policy to make more clear and prominent that, contrary to the many inaccurate statements and reports, we do not sell our customers’ individual web browsing information to third parties and that we do not share sensitive information unless our customers have affirmatively opted in to allow that to occur.”

In striking contrast to Comcast’s attempts at reassurance, AT&T executive Bob Quinn came out swinging, accusing those critical of Congress’ recent regulatory rollback of having a “fact-free debate.”

Quinn argues that ISPs safeguarded customer data just fine before the FCC introduced these rules, which he casts as the Obama administration putting its “hand on the scales to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.”

The real problem, Quinn says, is that “other internet companies, including operating system providers, web browsers, search engines, and social media platforms” are collecting and using customer information in shady ways.

That may well be true, but his argument doesn’t quite pass the smell test. Quinn is effectively saying, “We totally don’t collect and profit from your personal information” ― while also saying, “It’s not fair that other companies on the internet get to collect more information than we do.”

Verizon (which owns Huffington Post parent company AOL) also published a similar letter on the topic Friday, defending both its privacy record and using the same tired line about regulatory “consistency” to defend Congress’ rollback this week.

“Let’s set the record straight,” writes chief privacy office Karen Zacharia. “Verizon does not sell the personal web browsing history of our customers. We don’t do it and that’s the bottom line.

“Consumers benefit and innovations flourish when there is one consistent consumer privacy framework that applies to all internet companies and users in the internet ecosystem.”

— 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.

Tory Burch is more than happy to reveal its very first range of smartwatches that will hit the market this coming holiday season, where this particular line is said to extend the brand’s collection of timepieces even more. It is certainly encouraging to know that they are still going strong in this aspect, having first launched in the fall of 2014. The latest hybrid smartwatch range will be based on THE COLLINS, which comes across as a clean-lined, menswear-inspired design that happens to be one of the best selling timepieces from them.

Arriving in a quartet of distinct styles that will include a navy perforated leather strap with pops of red; a grosgrain fabric strap in a classic navy and ivory color combination; and gold-tone bracelets with toprings in orange or navy, you can be sure that fashionistas will be spoilt for choice.

The Tory Burch Collins hybrid smartwatch has been deemed to be the ultimate convergence of Tory Burch design alongside wearable technology, merging the elegance and simplicity of an analog watch with the capabilities of a world-class activity tracker. It might not look like much on the surface, but you can synchronize it to a smartphone over Bluetooth, making use of its dedicated app that plays nice with both iOS and Android platforms, to take advantage of several features.

Some features include precision timekeeping that changes time zones automatically when you travel, having a second time zone so that you know what time it is back home, notification technology that discreetly indicates when you have a phone call, text or email, activity tracking capability that automatically tracks and monitors daily activities, while keeping track of the length and quality of sleep with the Tory Burch Collins hybrid smartwatch app. Interestingly enough, this is one of the few smartwatches that do not require a charger, since it runs on coin cell batteries that enable extended use.

Press Release
[ Tory Burch reveals first hybrid smartwatch for the year copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Having additional pairs of “eyes” is always a welcome move by many people, and in this modern day and age, it would involve a security camera system. Z3 Technology, having come up with the GPS goggles in the past, has a new all-in-one HD H.265 IP video camera that has been specially designed to deliver the highest quality image at the lowest bandwidth, latency and power. This is a new IP video camera which merges Sony’s proven CMOS image sensor as well as auto focus zoom technology, using video compression expertise from Z3 Technology that provides a real-time H.265 HD video streaming solution.

The Z3Cam-HD is best used in both low light and back light applications, where it offers smooth transitions from wide area coverage to detailed close-ups. Apart from that, it comes equipped with essential features such as full HD 30x optical zoom, integrated auto-focus, exceptional low light performance (0.01 lux in color at 30 frames per second), spherical privacy zone masking and 120dB wide dynamic range.

The Z3Cam-HD will pave the way for H.265 or H.264 encoded video, where you can enjoy resolutions of up to 1080p60. Streaming can also be sent anywhere as long as there is a decent Internet connection, and is controlled over any distance via Z3’s intuitive HTTP-based control interface, Sony VISCA commands or ONVIF Profile S. Power over Ethernet (PoE) capability ensures that you will have another flexible option in the set up process.

Those who are interested can pick up the Z3Cam-HD as an all-in-one system or have it customized to any application as an OEM development kit, the HE2K-DCK-10. While there is no exact word on pricing as at press time, the Z3Cam-HD as well as the HE2K-DCK-10 are available for purchase right now. Any takers?

Press Release
[ Z3 Technology reveals Z3Cam-HD camera solution copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

RAR files are compressed files. You can identify the files with a .RAR extension. You can put a bundle of files and folders to create a compressed file utilizing an RAR archiver. Although, officially WinRAR is the archiver responsible for creating RAR files here we will take a look at how to extract RAR files on both Windows and Mac.

RAR files cannot be extracted by the built-in OS tools, that only works for ZIP files on both Linux and Mac. So, we have a couple of software utilities which can help extract RAR files on Windows and Mac.

How To Extract RAR files on Windows

• Using WinRAR

  
  1. Download and install WinRAR from its official download page.

  2. Search for the RAR file you want to extract. In this case, we have picked a sample file named “sample.rar” to extract.

  3. Simply right-click on the file to find the options to extract the RAR file. If you want to extract the files right there (in the same folder), you can go ahead clicking on “Extract Here“. In either case, if you want to set a file path, you can click on “Extract files” which would, in turn, ask you to specify the target location for extraction.

  The extraction should be quick enough if the RAR file is approximately bundled under 50 MB. If it is higher than that, it would take a couple of seconds to extract all the files inside it and so the time increases with the RAR file size.

• Using 7-Zip

  

  You can also try an alternative to WinRAR which is both open-source and available for free. Here are the steps you should follow while utilizing 7-Zip to extract RAR files.

  1. Download and install 7-Zip from its official site.

  2. After successful installation, search for the RAR file you want to extract.

  3. Right-click on the file you want to be extracted and then search for “7-Zip” in the options available as shown in the image above. You need to just hover your cursor over the 7-Zip option and then click on “Extract Here” to extract all the files and contents of the RAR file in the same location where the RAR file exists.

  If you want the files to be extracted elsewhere, you simply click on “Extract files” and then you will be required to specify the target storage location.

How To Extract RAR files on Mac

When on a Mac-powered system, you can open and extract ZIP files without the need of 3rd Party apps. However, you cannot extract RAR files without a software utility. Here, the software utility we are going to use to extract RAR files on Mac – The Unarchiver.

Steps to Extract RAR files on Mac Using The Unarchiver

1. Download and Install The Unarchiver from the app store.
2. After successful installation, search for the RAR file that you want to extract.
3. Simply right-click on the file you want to extract and then head for “Open With” option.
4. You need to select “The Unarchiver” after heading to the open with menu.
5. Create a folder on your desired location or simply select a folder on which you want to store the extracted files and click on “Extract“.

If you face any kind of trouble following this guide, let us know in the comments below.

How to Extract RAR files (Win+Mac) , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.