Between a dwindling list of distractions to keep me busy in the outside world and my work days ending hours before anyone else I know, I spend roughly two-thirds of most days with a mouse in my hand. Whether I’m toiling away here on The Inventory or putting Superman to shame in Spellbreak, it’s by far my most used…
While the AirPods were mocked when they were first launched, they have since gone on to become a pretty hot commodity, so much so that many companies have since adopted a similar design and concept. So much so that the US Customs and Border Protection tweeted that they had seized “counterfeit Apple AirPods” from Hong Kong.
The only problem was that the devices they seized weren’t knockoffs. As you can see in the tweet below, these are clearly not AirPods, and neither are they counterfeit products. They are none other than the OnePlus Buds, which are OnePlus’ answer to the Apple AirPods and true wireless earphones.
THAT’S NOT AN 🍎 —
CBP officers at JFK Airport recently seized 2,000 counterfeit Apple AirPods from Hong Kong, valued at $398K had they been genuine.
Details via @CBPNewYorkCity: https://t.co/XMgjkfT56i pic.twitter.com/Ofn9REJ9ZB
— CBP (@CBP) September 14, 2020
The government agency claims that the 2,000 units seized were worth almost $400,000, which would have been true if these were AirPods. However, given that they are the OnePlus Buds, the seized estimates would have been about $158,000. Some have questioned the seizure since these were clearly marked as a different product.
Hey, give those back! 🙃
— OnePlus USA (@OnePlus_USA) September 14, 2020
Seize the day. Seize the music. #OnePlusBuds pic.twitter.com/ykdLxUgG88
— OnePlus (@oneplus) September 14, 2020
However, the agency claims that they seized them due to how they allegedly violated Apple’s “configuration trademark”. We’re not sure what OnePlus is doing behind the scenes to attempt to rectify this, but in the meantime, the company’s social media decided to have a bit of fun by posting out a couple of tweets of their own.
US Customs Seized OnePlus Buds, Claiming They Were AirPods Knockoffs
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When it was first announced that TikTok would have to sell itself off to US companies, it was revealed that Microsoft was the frontrunner to acquire the company. However, in a short statement put out by the company today, Microsoft has announced that they would no longer be acquiring the company.
According to the statement, it was revealed that ByteDance was the one who cancelled the deal, and not Microsoft. “ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft. We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests.”
The company adds, “To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas.”
It will be interesting to see how this plays out due to the new restrictions that China had put on the exporting of Chinese technology, where the government would need to give their express approval before that happens, which could complicate the sale of the company, as well as future sales of other Chinese-related technology or companies.
Microsoft Is Not Buying TikTok Anymore
, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
One of the annoying things about Instagram is that it doesn’t support links in captions. This means whenever creators put a link, you’d need to memorize it and type it in yourself. Creators have since had to resort to alternatives, such as putting links in bio, but it’s hardly the most ideal situation.
However, according to the folks at Protocol, they have discovered a patent from Instagram dating back to 2016 which suggested that the company could have been exploring the idea of allowing links in captions, but users would have to pay to include it. The patent suggested that it would cost $2 everytime users choose to activate a link in a caption, but we’re not sure if that’s a placeholder or the actual cost.
That being said, it should be noted that since the patent was filed for back in 2016, there’s a good chance that this might have been an old idea and that Instagram could have moved on from the idea since. However, it does raise an interesting question as to whether or not users would be willing to pay more to access additional features.
Instagram is still largely free to use so obviously the company would love if they could monetize the service further beyond just ads. In fact, even Twitter seems to be thinking about introducing a new subscription feature that would allow users access to certain exclusive features, so why not Instagram, right?
Could Instagram Start Charging To Allow Links In Captions?
, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
The pandemic has led to N95 masks quickly becoming one of the world’s most sought-after resources as essential workers burned through billions of them. New research could lead to an N95 that you can recharge rather than throw away — or even one that continuously tops itself up for maximum effectiveness.
The proposed system, from researchers at Technion-IIT in Israel and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India, is not one of decontamination, as you might expect. Instead, it focuses on another aspect of N95 masks that renders them less effective over time.
N95s use both mechanical filtering, in which particles are caught in a matrix of microscopic fibers, and electrostatic filtering, in which particles are attracted to surfaces that carry a static charge. It’s like the old trick where you rub a balloon on your head and it sticks — but at the scale of microns.
The combination of these two methods makes N95 masks very effective, but the electrostatic charge, like any charge, dissipates after time as air and moisture pass over it. While decontamination via UV or high temperature may help keep the mechanical filter from becoming a tiny petri dish, they do nothing to restore the electrostatic charge that acted as a second barrier to entry.
In a paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids, Dov Levine and Shankar Ghosh (from Technion and Tata, respectively) show that it’s possible to recharge an N95’s filter to the point where it was close to off-the-shelf levels of efficacy. All that’s needed is to place the filter between two plate electrodes and apply a strong electric field.
“We find that the total charge deposited on the masks depends strongly on the charging time… with the pristine value almost reattained after a 60 min charge at 1000 V,” write the researchers in their paper.
A self-charging N95 mask prototype
It’s unlikely that healthcare workers are going to be disassembling their masks after every shift, though. While a service and special mask type could (and if it’s effective, should) be established to do this, the team also explored the possibility of a mask with a built-in battery that recharges itself constantly:
A solution that can help replenish the lost charge on the masks in real time would be desirable. In this section, we provide a proof-of-concept method of keeping the masks charged, which comes as a logical extension of our recharging method.
We tested a technique by which the filter material maintains its charge and thus its filtration efficiency… Since the currents required are extremely small, a large battery is not required, and it is possible that a small compact and practical solution may be feasible.
The image above shows a prototype, which the team found to work quite well.
Of course it’s not quite ready for deployment; IEEE Spectrum asked Peter Tsai, the creator of the N95 mask, for his opinion on it. He suggested that the team’s method for testing filtration efficacy is “likely questionable” but didn’t take issue with the rest of the study.
Though it won’t be in hospitals tomorrow or next week, the team notes that “crucially, our method can be performed using readily available equipment and materials and so can be employed both in urban and rural settings.” So once it’s thoroughly tested it’s possible these rechargeable masks could start showing up everywhere. Let’s hope so.
Epic has just wrapped up a problem that had some players worried they’d been banned from Fortnite. Around 6:30 PM ET on Monday, Epic brought its Fortnite servers back online with a fix for the problem that was warning players they didn’t have permission to play the game. Now we’re seeing the fallout from this issue — Epic says that … Continue reading
While I think we can all agree that every app on our phone is probably an invasive little shit, I’d argue that weather apps deserve their own little corner in hell. We’ve seen weather apps sign folks up for services without their say-so, sneakily get location data from users who deliberately turned that function off,…
Spotify is undoubtedly the king of music streaming services at the moment, but we imagine that there are some who might not necessarily prefer to use the service. For example, if you prefer using Apple Music due to its tighter integration with iOS, we get it. Or if you’re an audiophile and you prefer using Tidal for its higher quality streams, we understand.
If you’ve already subscribed to Spotify Premium and want to cancel it, don’t worry it’s a particularly easy process. The best part is that you’re not locked into any contract of sorts so you’re free to cancel and resubscribe anytime you want.
If you’ve subscribed to Spotify Premium directly through Spotify, then you’ll need to go through Spotify’s website in order to cancel your subscription.
Note that this method also applies to Android, so if you’re subscribed to Spotify on Android, you can follow the steps above to cancel your Premium subscription on your mobile device.
Once you’re done, your Spotify account will still be active and you’ll still be able to stream songs. However, your account will be reverted to the Spotify free tier. This means that you’ll be limited to certain features and functionality compared to Spotify Premium, such as the ability to download songs for offline listening. There will also be ads as part of the free tier, so that’s something to consider.
If you log into your Spotify account on the web and you are unable to cancel your Premium subscription through there, it means that there is a good chance that you’ve subscribed through iTunes, but not to worry, the process is equally as simple.
If price is one of the main reasons you are considering canceling your subscription, here are some alternatives to outright canceling it while keeping Premium features.
If you’re a student, Spotify offers student pricing which is basically half the price of a regular Premium subscription. This will cost $4.99 a month and is valid for four years, which is basically over the duration of a degree program. You will have to renew it every 12 months and you can renew it up to three times.
There is also a Spotify Duo plan which was introduced not too long ago. This is priced at $12.99 a month which makes it slightly more expensive than a regular Premium subscription, but if there are two of you and you split the subscription, it will be cheaper./
Last but not least, Spotify has a family plan that supports up to six people at once. If you are living with your family, this could be a considerably cheaper option as it costs $14.99 a month, which when split six ways is a lot more affordable.
How To Cancel Your Spotify Premium Subscription
, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Whenever we delete something on Windows, it is typically sent to the recycle bin. This usually gives users a chance to recover those files in case they were deleted by accident. But did you know that until you actually empty the recycle bin, the files you “deleted” actually still take up storage space on your computer?
This is why it’s important to empty the recycle bin every now and then, but we get it, sometimes you don’t think about it or forget to do it, but the good news is that if you have a few minutes to spare, you can actually set it up in such a way that you can set it so that you can automatically empty your recycle bin on a schedule, and here’s how.
Assuming you didn’t choose “Never”, this means that depending on your duration, your recycle bin will actually automatically empty itself based on the number of days you’ve chosen. Unless you’re hard up on storage space, 30 days is a good duration as it will at the very least give you some time to recover files that you might have deleted by accident or if you have had a change of heart about a deleted file.
Do take note that once you’ve emptied out the recycle bin, they are essentially gone for “good”. We put “good” in quotes because there are actually ways to recover deleted files using third-party software, but your mileage may vary depending on the software and how long ago it’s been deleted.
The best thing you can do to avoid any hassle or headaches is to make sure that you really want those files deleted first. Also if you’re deleting to free up space on your computer, you might want to consider backing up to an external hard drive or cloning your existing drive so that you will still have a copy if you ever need it.
How To Automatically Empty The Windows Recycle Bin (On A Schedule)
, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Insta360 has announced the third major software update for its ONE R modular action camera. It has been less than a year since the first of these three major updates were released, underscoring the rapid rate at which the company is evolving its action cam. This is a feature drop update with the most notable among the changes being a … Continue reading
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