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Netflix didn't take home any Oscars for its critically beloved film, Mudbound , but it did get a win for Icarus , an explosive documentary about the Russian sports doping scandal. The doc, directed by Bryan Fogel, premiered at Sundance last year, after which Netflix snapped up global distribution rights. Mudbound , meanwhile, was notably nominated four categories: Best Supporting Actress for Mary J. Blige; Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Original Song; and Best Achievement in Cinematography. The latter awards also marked the first time a woman (Rachel Morrison) was nominated in the cinematography category. Netflix was also nominated in the Best Documentary category for Strong Island , a film that explored the death of director Yance Ford's brother, and the broken judicial system that allowed his killer to be freed. It's not a huge surprise to see Icarus take the win, though. The film's director initially wanted to see if he could get away with doping in a profession...

Blizzard is keeping up its habit of marking the anniversaries of major games . The original StarCraft is turning 20 on March 31st, and the studio is promising a slew of extras across its games to mark the occasion, including the classic real-time strategy title itself. You can log in to StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft II after March 6th to get commemorative interface skins, plus portraits and decals if you sign into SCII by April 6th. And if you're not particularly big on those titles, there are plenty of other ways to obtain perks -- you might even prefer them to the ones you get with StarCraft proper. Overwatch players will have access to a special Sarah Kerrigan Ghost skin for Widowmaker (see above) between March 6th and April 3rd, for starters. You can also get a Battlecruiser-themed pet in Diablo III (from March 6th onward), one of several StarCraft -themed pets in World of Warcraft (March 31st to April 6th), anniversary portraits in Heroes of the Storm (March...

HTC said it would return to dual rear cameras in 2018, and we now have an idea as to when that might happen. LlabTooFer, a historically accurate source of HTC-related leaks, has posted what's claimed to be specs for the Imagine (aka U12), and its centerpiece would be a dual rear camera system with 12- and 16-megapixel sensors. It's not explained how this would work, but the size difference is usually meant to allow cropping for portrait or zoom modes without losing detail. The device wouldn't lean solely on this feature, either. The Imagine/U12 would also tout an "HTC Face Unlock" feature (albeit using a lone 8MP camera at the front), a speedy Snapdragon 845 chip, a tall 6-inch QHD+ screen (possibly comparable to the U11+ ), up to 6GB of RAM, a peak 256GB of internal storage, a 3,420mAh battery and IP68-level water resistance. Edge Sense 2.0 would evolve HTC's squeeze-based control. Even software updates would play an important role -- HTC reportedly plan...

The European Union has vowed to counter tech companies' tax maneuvers by targeting their revenue , and it's now clearer just what that will involve. In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche , French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the EU would unveil plans to tax tech firms' revenue at a rate between "2 percent and 6 percent," most likely skewing closer to 2 percent. That may not seem like much, but Le Maire portrayed it as a "starting point." It's better to get a policy you can implement quickly than deal with "interminable negotiations," he said, adding that it can be improved later. The official EU directive would be unveiled in the "coming weeks," according to the minister. Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and other tech giants have been accused of using legal tricks to avoid paying taxes in European countries, such as routing profit through Ireland or even the British island of Jersey. A tax on revenue theoretica...

Battlefield medics frequently only have a brief window of opportunity to treat an injury before it's fatal or causes permanent disabilities, and it's frequently so fleeting that there's not much they can do. DARPA is exploring an unusual solution to that problem: slow the biological processes to give medics more room to breathe. Its new Biostasis research program aims to bring cell activity to a near halt by using biochemicals that control energetics at the protein level. If animals like tardigrades and wood frogs can stabilize their cells to survive freezing and dehydration, similar techniques might offer more time to medics who want to treat wounds before a victim's vital systems break down. DARPA knows this won't be easy. The trick is to slow down every cellular process at roughly the same rate -- you can't just pause a few while others run at full speed. You'd also have to minimize any damage when the cells return to their normal function. The Bio...

Levi Strauss is introducing a digitizing technique that uses lasers to ethically create designs on its jeans in place of manual labor. Called Project FLX (which stands for Future-Led Execution), the technique will cut out harmful chemicals and reduce labor-intensive steps in producing jean finishes from between 18 to 24 steps to just three. Levi is also planning to scale this across the company’s denim supply chain. “Our first step in the new process is to photograph the jean, and then we take that and illustrate it in a way that the laser can interpret. So what used to happen traditionally 8, 10, 12 minutes with manual applications, we can now execute with the laser in 90 seconds or so,” said Bart Sights , Levi’s VP in technical... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2oTzF9x"

Microsoft is rolling out an updated version of Skype for Android, one that’s optimized for devices running older versions of the OS, providing better audio and video quality for lower-end devices. The new update will optimize the app for Android devices running versions 4.0.3 to 5.1. Microsoft says that this version “is lighter on both disk and memory consumption,” and that it’ll provide better audio and video for those devices, in addition to better performance when the connection isn’t so hot. The update will be rolled out worldwide in the coming weeks. The approach looks a bit like what Google is doing with Android Go , a stripped down version of Android that doesn’t require as much processing power, RAM, or storage. They’re phones... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FRA306"

The first time I merged a kitty cat into another, I was immediately rewarded with a new type, the kitten. But it took two kittens to make a sneaky cat, and four kittens to make a Japanese bobtail. By the time I reached the 20th cat, the elusive Egyptian Mau, it took merging 262,144 kitty cats together. It’s been weeks since I began playing Cat Condo , a mobile game on iOS and Android , created by a Taiwanese start-up called Zepni Ltd., and progress has definitely stalled. It’s an idle clicker game where the goal is to match cats to breed more cats and use the money each cat makes to buy even more, until your photo gallery is filled up with rare species. But to me, this difficulty in getting to the next 20 rare and unobtainable cats is what... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2I4uyf5"

Remember those 'sonic attacks' against the American and Canadian embassies last summer, making staff queasy and raising all kinds of questions as to what happened? There might have an answer. University of Michigan researchers have theorized that the incidents were really the result of ultrasonic signals from poorly functioning surveillance equipment. While individual ultrasonic signals can't harm people outside of extreme circumstances, multiple signals can clash with each other and produce a sound that's just low enough to be audible. The scientists tested their hypothesis by replicating the "chirping" from an AP video using two ultrasonic emitters that combined tones, one at 25kHz and another at 180Hz. That produced a similar-sounding 7kHz frequency with ripples of sound at an even 180Hz spacing. The team even built a device that would simulate eavesdropping by playing a song instead of the 180Hz tone. Don't rush to call the case closed. Researc...

Many years ago, in a moment of candid honesty, Nilay Patel described how his childhood was somehow defined and irrevocably ruined by an attempt to set up and use an IR blaster. It might also have had something to do with being a Packers fan? I can’t remember clearly, it was so long ago. The important takeaway was that IR blasters are in some way disastrous and evil. It’s 2018. Nilay is now my boss, and seems relatively chill for someone who struggled so mightily with a glorified TV remote in his past. And so it was with great interest last month that I read Nilay’s review of Caavo: the IR blaster to end all IR blasters . It uses machine vision! It has eight HDMI inputs! It’s an absurd amount of engineering and workarounds to make a... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2CZU7u1"

Smart lighting company LIFX has produced a range of products that you can control from your phone or with a virtual assistant such as Alexa or Siri. Now, Microsoft users can join them: the company announced that users can now control their smart lights with the company’s virtual assistant, Cortana. The lights connect directly to your home’s Wi-Fi, and LIFX says that users can ask Cortana to turn the lights on and off (specific lights or the entire house), set the lights to a certain percentage, or change the color. Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2I2Mozf"

Brands are once again beating a hasty retreat after learning that they were running ads on objectionable YouTube channels . Several big brands (including Acer, Alibaba, Fox, Nike and Paramount) have suspended ads from InfoWars' channels after CNN demonstrated that their commercials were streaming on the conspiracy-peddling network's videos. The companies said they were not only unaware of the placement, but in numerous cases had set up exclusion filters to avoid displaying ads against content like this. Some also said they explicitly blacklisted InfoWars channels, but didn't realize how many channels the company actually had. The exposé even caught the non-profit USA for UNHCR inadvertently running ads on InfoWars, and it's going one step further by pulling all ads from YouTube. It and other organizations are asking if they can recoup the advertising money they spent on InfoWars' channels. We've asked Google if it can comment on the findings. In a statem...

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By Amadou Diallo This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . If you're a photo enthusiast ready to make the leap to creating your own gallery-quality prints at home, the most flexible option is an inkjet printer. After spending a total of 76 hours of research and side-by-side testing during various iterations of this guide, we think the best inkjet printer for making long-lasting, high-quality photographic prints up to 13 inches wide is the $800 Epson SureColor P600 . Who should buy this? If you already own a 13-inch-capable photo inkjet printer, you should probably sit tight. Photo printer technology is so mature that you won't see much (if any) difference in print quality between a printer made today and one released even five years ago. If you don't already own a photo inkjet printer, the fi...

Amazon has unveiled (via Engadget ) a new toolset for skill developers: the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) sound library . It’s a free repository of sound clips that developers can use to add enhance the skills that they are creating for the company’s smart assistant. The skills come in 14 categories: Ambience , Animal , Battle , Cartoon , Foley , Home , Human , Impact , Magic , Musical , Nature , Office , SciFi , and Transportation . Each category features a variety of stock sounds, along with an SSML code that developers can insert into their skill’s code. Amazon suggests that the sound snippets can be used to enhance the skills, such as using applause when someone answers a trivia question correctly, to add ambiance to a story, or as an audible indicator... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2oI1Vwi"

As the president sets the stage for a showdown with the video game industry over school safety (since it's the games that are the real problem, not the guns, nope nope nope), small scale skirmishes and outright battles have been springing up all over the internet this week. GitHub somehow survived the biggest DDoS attack in history, Equifax revealed that another 2.4 million people were affected by its latest security breach and The Woz himself lost seventy grand in a bitcoin scam. Numbers, because how else will you know if you're mature enough to play this game? 10 minutes : Despite being utterly hammered with 1.3 Tbps traffic spikes during what is thought to be the most severe DDoS attack in internet history , GitHub managed to remain largely online. The site was knocked offline for less than a quarter of an hour. 1 hour : The European Commission had previously issued guidelines to social media networks regarding how quickly they're expected to remove hate speech fr...

I want to hate the HomePod. Apple’s new $350 speaker symbolizes everything backward and compromising about the iPhone maker’s walled garden: the speaker requires you have an iOS device to use it, and it demands an Apple Music account to make use of Siri-powered voice control playback. It is antithetical to platform-agnostic Sonos and unabashedly so, as if Apple is daring its competitors to try and compete with its hardware prowess and platform lock-in. And yet, I find myself mulling over purchasing one for myself. I’ve been using a review unit HomePod, on loan from Apple, for the past week and I find it simultaneously frustrating and fantastic in almost equal measure. It sounds great, better than any Bluetooth speaker I’ve tried in... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FoaZjq"

This year's Mobile World Congress has been strangely quiet. Despite Samsung's return to the event to launch its latest flagship phones and Google unveiling new Android Go devices, the convention has been almost uneventful. In fact, the most interesting thing to have happened this show has been snow falling in Barcelona, with temperatures dipping close to 38 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 0 degrees Celsius). Although Nokia's parent company tried to drum up interest by reviving an old favorite like it did before , people just didn't care as much the second time around. There was plenty of news around 5G developments, since an early version of the spec was approved late last year . Every major company had its own demos of achieving 5G speeds on all varieties of communications -- from phones and detachables to cars, drones and VR headsets. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai himself was here to share plans to open up 28GHz and 24GHz spectrum for auction late this year, as well as to...

Last week, YouTube said that some of the warnings and bans handed down to some right-wing channels might have been mistakes from human moderators , but despite the walk back, some companies have begun pulling ads from Infowars’ The Alex Jones Channel. CNN reports that numerous companies, including Nike, Moen, Expedia, Acer, ClassPass, Honey, Alibaba, and OneFamily, have pulled their ads after learning that their ads were running on Jones’ channel. Jones has risen to notoriety in recent years for his conspiracy theories, saying that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was a hoax, and more recently, suggesting without proof that some of the survivors of the recent shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2tbj8De"

You've seen electric Formula cars , Le Mans racers and even a Pikes Peak machine , but there's still room for more firsts in EV racing. VW's Seat brand has unveiled the Cupra e-Racer, which it says is the first completely electric touring-class race car. It's built on the existing Cupra Leon TCR design and promises the kind of performance you'd expect in this category: it can muster 402HP of continuous power, and 670HP at peak. There's no question that Seat is treating this as a halo car, particularly for its newly formed Cupra sports badge. However, it's not just for show: it's helping to start a new "E TCR" (no prizes for what the "E" refers to) category. It may soon be a question of which racing classes haven't been electrified, even though it'll likely take a long while before the EVs dominate. Via: Autoblog Source: Seat via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2tgNSCz"

Vulnerabilities in cellular network technology definitely aren't things of the past. Researchers at Purdue and the University of Iowa have outlined exploits in LTE protocols that would let intruders conduct ten serious attacks, including spying on calls and text messages, tracking locations, knocking devices offline and even faking emergency alerts . Intuders can take advantage of three key protocol tasks (such as attaching a device to the network and maintaining a connection) to conduct authentication relay attacks that not only let them connect to the network without credentials, but masquerade as the victim's device. A hacker could not only compromise the network, but frame someone else for the crime. These aren't just theoretical attacks, either. The team tested eight of the ten attacks using SIM cards from four large US carriers. While the issues have to do with LTE itself, it is possible to fix them -- at least one of the big US carriers already has. There's...