Weekly Roundup: 2013 Mac Pro review, judge okays NSA spying and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Judge okays NSA spying
A US District judge in Manhattan deemed the NSA’s telephone data collection legal, as he saw no evidence was being used in any way other than attempting to foil terrorist plots. Click through for the ruling.
Apple Mac Pro review (2013)
Apple’s latest workstation is a powerhouse. Armed with up to 7 teraflops of computing power, a super chill cooling system and beautiful new design, the 2013 Mac Pro is more than ready for the modern age. Click through for our review.
Taiwanese FTC fines Apple
Apple awoke to a not-so-merry surprise on Christmas day as Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission accused the company of unlawfully mandating pricing to iPhone carriers. According to WSJ, Cupertino can appeal the ruling, but could face steep penalties. Click the link for more information.
Jack Dorsey joins Disney
Today, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey joined Disney’s board of directors. Click through for a quick look at how the social network’s inaugural user (@jack) wound up working for the mouse.
Hackers reverse engineer Wii U GamePad to stream from PC
Thought using the Wii U GamePad as a simple PC controller was a neat trick? Try this on for size: a small team of hackers has figured out how to stream PC games to the tablet-esque controller natively, circumventing its host console. The hack was shown this week at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress, where the group revealed how it reverse engineered the GamePad controller. After weaving a complex tale of dumped firmware, decoded video and buggy streams, the team showed a simple drawing app streaming from a laptop to the Wii U GamePad. Impressive? Sure, but the crowd didn’t erupt into applause until they booted up a Gamecube emulated session of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
Despite some crashes, the demo appeared to be fairly playable — though the team warns that the available code is aimed primarily at developers. The group eventually plans to build user-friendly tools for Windows and OSX, as well as an Android port designed to allow users to substitute the Wii U GamePad with their own tablets, streaming from the console to the slate of their choice. It’s not quite ready to replace your NVIDIA Shield, but the project is brimming with potential. Check out the presentation’s slides at the source link below, or read on for a video of the hack in action (the fun starts about 47 minutes in).
Via: NeoGaf
Source: Libdrc, Slides (Google Drive), 30C3
The best cellphone deals of the week: 12.29.13
With Engadget’s new tools, you can track price drops on thousands of devices every day, and once a week we feature some of the best deals right here. But act fast! Many of these are limited-time offers, and won’t last long.
The holiday shopping rush may be winding down, but there’s still some great deals for the taking. Best Buy is currently offering stellar pricing on both the iPhone 5s and the HTC One — so long as you’re willing to opt for a two-year contract. Be sure to visit our product database to monitor prices on these gadgets and more as they move around. Join us and add the gadgets you’re shopping for to your “Want” list; every time there’s a price cut, you’ll get an email alert!
We weren’t shy about how much we loved the HTC One when it arrived back in the spring. The handset earned a 96 Engadget Global Score and now has an attractive $50 price tag from the folks in the blue shirts. Depending on your carrier choice, silver, red, black and blue models are available should you decide to splurge for the metal-clad device.
The more colorful of Apple’s two handsets that were unveiled this fall is quite the value at no cost with a two-year agreement. According to our Price Drop tool, this is the lowest the multi-hued gadget has been since mid-October. Of course, the choice of color is yours once more here.
Filed under: Cellphones
Cyrcle Icon Pack Review
Hey guys, the name’s Patrick Campanale. I’m new around here, and one thing that I love about Android is the customization options available. One of those options is the ability to use custom icon packs. A few weeks ago, we talked had the Cyrcle icon pack in our Themer’s Roundup, but today, I want to take a more in-depth look at Cyrcle, a new icon pack from Andrea Corvi, aka djskarpia.
A little over a week ago, Andrea shared something with me and the rest of his Google+ following. He received an email from Google stating that Cyrcle had been removed from the Play Store, their reason being, ”Wrong tags used in the description on the Play Store.” You can read the full story at the link above. Needless to say, Andrea re-released Cyrcle as a new app, which means he lost all of his rating and download numbers on the store.
Shortly after this, he released an update on December 24th, which contained 54 new icons, more alternative icons, and fixed some issues with activities. This was because of the great response he got to people supporting him when Google shut it down. Shortly after the re-release of Cyrcle, the beloved icon pack jumped into the top 10 in the US play store for top new paid apps under productivity, which is really saying something. I have spoken with Andrea, and he has told me that he has a lot in store for Cyrcle, including pushing it over 2,000 custom icons, which is one of, if not the largest icon pack in the Play Store. But enough backstory, let’s take a look at Cyrcle.
Cyrcle was one of the first icon packs I bought when I started to get into customization with icon packs and wallpapers. I’m not a heavy customizer, but I like to make my device look nice. Cyrcle is one icon pack that did just that, without having to work and tweak the icons to display just right, or to go through the developer’s library of icons included with the pack and chose a bunch of alternatives. Cyrcle is good, right out of the box.
The icon pack comes with 1,800 icons, with Andrea working to bring that number to 2,000 soon. It also comes with quite a few very nice wallpapers that fit the “circle” theme of the icons. The icons are very minimalistic in design, and don’t try to over do it. They just work, plain and simple. One reason that I always go back to Cyrcle is the fact of how nice they look on my Galaxy S4 with it’s beautifully huge 1080P 5″ screen. No other icon pack comes close, in my opinion.
The icons are circular in nature, as you would expect, and most of them boast a single color background; though some have multi-colored backgrounds, like Candy Crush Saga.
If you want to pick these up, and you really should, you can head into the Play Store and buy them at your leisure. Don’t wait to long though, the Cyrcle Icons are currently on sale for just $0.99.
Related articles across the web
Defense bill makes US-based Russian satellite monitoring stations ‘next to impossible’ due to spying fears
The State Department hoped the building of satellite monitoring stations might soften tempers between the US and Russia, which have flared in the wake of asylum for Edward Snowden and arguments over Syrian politcs. Congressional Republicans, the Pentagon and the CIA, on the other hand, had different ideas, suggesting that US-based stations built to support Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) – the Russian equivalent to GPS – could help the country’s spying efforts. And now language included in a defense bill signed by President Obama late last week likely marks the end of the project – for now, at least.
An anonymous Republican aide told The New York Times that, “the idea was to make it next to impossible, if not impossible, to do this,” essentially removing the State Department from the process as, “they were the ones who caused all the trouble in the first place.” The plan, intended to improve GLONASS’s accuracy, would require the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to assure Congress that the stations wouldn’t be used to spy on the US to get the green light.
Filed under: GPS
Source: The New York Times
AIVAnet 