Tuesday, December 15, 2015

IT News Head Lines (Engadget) 16/12/2015





Seattle votes to let Lyft and Uber drivers unionize
The Seattle City Council's voted unanimously (9 - 0) that drivers for Lyft and Uber can form unions. The decision is much more complex than the drivers simply being able to organize and collectively bargain for better wages or benefits, though. The r...

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The US wants to check visa applicants' social media posts
Getting a US visa might soon become even harder for some individuals. In addition to the 5939582 requirements applicants need to enter the country, the United States government wants to start inspecting their social media posts. According to The Wall...

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Philips Hue won't work with third-party light bulbs for now
Bad news if you're planning to slip a few non-Philips light bulbs into your Hue setup: they won't work, at least not for a while. Philips has dropped support for third-party bulbs after noticing that a growing number of them had "interoperability is...

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What's on your HDTV: 'Fargo', 'The Expanse' and 'Luther'
It's hard for me to think of a better show than Fargo, and tonight its season finale airs on FX. While there's a collection of other season and mid-season wrap-ups on TV, the one to watch is Syfy's The Expanse. Based on a popular book series, it prem...

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Nanoparticle-based windows could switch colors on demand
One day, you might not need special bulbs to give your room's lighting a different hue -- you'd just tell the windows themselves to change. Rice University researchers have discovered that you can change the colors transmitted through glass by sendi...

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Hulu's reworked iPhone app helps you find favorite shows
Hulu knows that you sometimes want to plow through a TV series on your smartphone instead of a bigger screen, and it's making that easier through a freshly redesigned iOS app. The new version gives you an "all-new" iPhone interface that helps you fi...

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UK police try to scare teen hackers by visiting them at home
As you might have noticed, many teen hackers aren't easily deterred. Why would they be when they have a lot to prove, loads of peer pressure and little sense of the damage they're doing? British police think they have a way to scare those hackers s...

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NASA's using PlayStation VR to train its space robots
Virtual Reality tricks the human brain. With a headset strapped on your face, you can pet a dino, visit restricted sites or even experience the horror of being devoured by a shark. But outside the realms of entertainment and news, the immersive visua...

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NASA offers a rare, steady view of the sunlit Earth
Until now, getting a good, steady look at the sunlit side of Earth either required a trip to the Moon or a photo from a departing space probe. Neither of those are very practical, to put it mildly. However, NASA is now delivering those kinds of pho...

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Gmail's Inbox app makes it easier to share travel info
If you fancy Google's Inbox app to wrangle your Gmail, sharing travel details is about to get even easier. Mountain View is rolling out an update to the service that lets you attach those handy card-like Trip Bundles to emails with a tap. This should...

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Verizon catches up to the pack with on-the-go DVR streaming
Heads-up, FIOS fans: Verizon (which, through a bizarre turn of events, now owns our parent company AOL) is now letting all of its FIOS subscribers stream the contents of their DVRs to their smartphones and tablets. Well, most of that content, anyway...

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Nintendo's 'Yo-Kai Watch' is a love letter to urban life
I was sitting on an eight hour flight back from London, my 3DS the only thing illuminating my little corner of the plane. My boyfriend, bored in the middle seat next to me, had leaned over to look at what I was doing. "That looks like Pokémon....

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Facebook is replacing Photo Sync with its Moments app
If you've been storing pictures with Facebook's Photo Sync feature, those will soon be moved to another property from the social network. As spotted by TechCrunch, Facebook has started notifying people that, on January 10th, content from Photo Sync i...

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The True Love Tinder Robot swipes based on your sweaty palms
We're not always honest with ourselves, especially when it comes to love -- and this is where the True Love Tinder Robot can lend a hand. It promises to read (and swipe) your true feelings via the electrical conductance, or uncontrollable sweatiness,...

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Buy a $30 Chromecast and Google will give you $20
Google announced a new promotion for its Chromecast line on Monday: Buy one of the $30 devices, get $20 in Google Play store credit. What's more, you don't have to buy it directly from Google to qualify for the deal. Pick up one from either Best Buy...

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NC town fears solar farm will 'suck up all the energy from the sun'
The town council of Woodland, North Carolina rejected a rezoning proposal that would have allowed the installation of a new solar farm within its borders. The council had previously approved three other solar farms, which are currently under construc...

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NY Attorney General wants public to report broadband speeds
If you're a New York resident, here's your chance to tell the state government how bad your internet service really is. The state's Attorney General wants the public to test their broadband speeds and report the findings as part of an investigation i...

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Google Maps for iOS displays gas prices along your route
As if Google Maps wasn't useful enough already, the application is getting yet another handy feature. Today, Google updated its iOS version of the app to show gas prices when people search for stations, making it easy to see how much each location ch...

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Meet the firm designing futuristic UI for Iron Man and Samsung
Remember Tony Stark's glass smartphone and transparent coffee table in the Iron Man movies? Or how about that gorgeous statue rendering of the Avengers in action at the end of Age of Ultron? You've got one company to thank for those sequences: Percep...

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YouTube axes direct video uploads from webcams
If you're one of the few recording to YouTube straight from your webcam, the video-hosting site will soon get rid of that feature. On January 16th, you'll no longer be able to capture video straight from the camera connected to your computer and uplo...

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'Fable Legends' will launch after spring 2016
Fable Legends -- Lionhead's free, multiplayer-focused fantasy romp for Xbox One and Windows 10 -- is scheduled to launch after spring 2016. It was originally on tap to release this holiday season. The game's open beta will go live in the spring, oste...

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Almond WiFi routers now control Nest gear in your home
Securifi's Almond routers just got much, much more useful if you use one of them as the center of your smart home. Both the base Almond and the Almond+ now talk directly to Nest's thermostat and Protect smoke detector, giving you network-savvy contro...

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Adorable puzzler 'Unravel' pulls heartstrings in February
Come February 9th, you'll be able to play the most charming (and atypical) game to come out of Electronic Arts' E3 media briefing this year, Unravel. The adorable physics-based puzzle platformer hits EA's PC-based Origin service, PlayStation 4 and Xb...

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The first 'Star Trek Beyond' trailer makes some noise
Okay, Star Trek Into Darkness wasn't very good. But there's still hope for the next film! Star Trek Beyond comes from another team of writers, Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, and the man who rebooted the Fast and the Furious franchise, Justin Lin. And judg...

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Xprize offers $7 million for exploring the ocean floor
After years of focusing on moonshots and other lofty goals, the Xprize Foundation now hopes to inspire innovation in the opposite direction... in a very literal sense. Its new Shell Ocean Discovery Xprize is offering a total of $7 million in awards t...

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Available Tags:Philips , windows , iPhone , UK , NASA , Facebook , Google , iOS , Samsung , YouTube

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