Need a bulletproof shield? How about a Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 Instead
Many of us were confused by Samsung‘s move to release the Samsung Galaxy Mega line of devices, particularly the gargantuan Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3. As it turns out, we now know exactly what it was made for (don’t quote me on that). A Chinese man has survived a gunshot thanks to his Mega 6.3 which was nestled in his breast pocket. The gunshot occurred due to an altercation between the victim and another man; the victim had picked up the man’s wallet after it fell out of his pocked and proceeded to joke about buying a beer with it before handing it back. It was at this point that the wallet’s owner took issue with that comment and shot the victim in the chest. Talk about an overreaction…
As you can see from the photo at the top of this article, the phone was destroyed in the shooting, but it’s always good to know that a phone can stand between you and a potentially fatal wound. Samsung has of course superseded last year’s Mega 6.3 with the even more massive Galaxy W; perhaps Samsung should rename the line to be the Galaxy Shield instead. And the lesson here? Make sure you have a larger smartphone in your pocket if you decide to make an inappropriate joke in public. Or, you know, don’t.
What do you think about the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 stopping a bullet? Do you think a phone over 6-inches is too big? Let us know your thoughts.
//<![CDATA[
ord = window.ord || Math.floor(Math.random()*1E16);
document.write('’);
//]]>
The post Need a bulletproof shield? How about a Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 Instead appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
.CPlase_panel display:none;
Delta Airlines Launches In-Flight Entertainment for iOS Devices Through Updated Apps [iOS Blog]
Delta Airlines today updated its Fly Delta apps for the iPhone and iPad, allowing customers to access free in-flight entertainment through its new Delta Studio initiative. Avaliable on all domestic and two-cabin aircrafts, the app will allow access to a number of TV shows and movies including Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Frozen through on-board Wi-Fi.
The updated Fly Delta app also allows access to past and current issues of Delta’s Sky Magazine, as well as the Glass Bottom Jet feature which provides tracking information for a current flight. The airline is also allowing users of the Gogo Video Player app [Direct Link] to stream and access content through in flight entertainment services.
Delta’s move to offer in-flight entertainment through its apps for iOS devices follows a similar move by United Airlines, which started its movie services for the iPhone and iPad in April. This September, Hawaiian Airlines will also begin offering iPad minis on flights, as those units will come with equipped with a variety of movies and TV shows in addition to games.
Fly Delta for the iPhone [Direct Link] and iPad [Direct Link] are free apps and can be downloaded through the App Store.
.CPlase_panel display:none;
eBay is winning at gender diversity in technology
Online auction service eBay has followed in the footsteps of other tech companies and published a diversity report of its own — one that indicates that it’s winning at gender diversity in the workplace. According to the report, 42 percent of its 33,000 employees all over the globe are women. Among those firms that shared their diversity percentages recently, Pinterest comes the closest with a 40 percent female workforce, and then Yahoo whose female employees make up 37 percent of the total. Google and Twitter tie for the last place, as women make up 30 percent of all employees in both companies (though to be fair, Google has projects to encourage more women to take up careers in technology).
More female employees also hold leadership roles at eBay (28 percent) compared to Pinterest (19 percent), most likely because of the company’s Women’s Initiative Network. WIN was formed three years ago to entice more women to stay with the company for the long haul and thereby hold leadership roles in time. In addition to nurturing a healthy male-to-female ratio in the office, eBay also says that it actively recruits from the LGBT community and advocate for the equal rights of same-sex couples. If you’re wondering where Apple’s statistics are, well, it hasn’t published a diversity report yet, though Tim Cook promised to do so back in early July.
Filed under: Misc
Source: eBay, The Wall Street Journal
.CPlase_panel display:none;
Poochi the robot dog can talk with your 3DS (and play rock-paper-scissors)
You can count on Japan to perpetually push the idea of robot pets — and some of us are okay with that. Poochi is the latest effort from Sega Toys, and it can interact with with a downloadable app / mini-game on Nintendo’s 3DS. This particular robot pet series has been on sale in Japan (and the US) for several years, but this is a notable evolution: the blue and pink pet substitutes communicate with 3DSes wirelessly, translating yips and barks into, well, Japanese. It sings (the way a cartoon robot dog should), and can even play rock-paper-scissors with you if you’re feeling particularly lonely. Courtesy of the 3DS connection, there’s several more mini-games and even a Nintendogs-ish interaction screen — which is kind of confusing when the dog’s right in front of you in real life. Poochi has sensors on its back, nose and tail, and there’s handy color indicators on its face to indicate how it’s feeling. The robot (and companion app) launches today, priced at 6,000 yen — around $58. We’ve added the (surprisingly intense) TV ad after the break. We’re still waiting on an alpha-male version.
Filed under: Robots
Source: Nintendo (Japanese)
.CPlase_panel display:none;
New malware can live inside any USB device undetected
It turns out that the stalwart USB thumbstick, or any universal serial bus device, isn’t as trustworthy as once thought. A pair of security researchers has found we need to worry about more than just malware-infected files that are stored portable drives, and now need to guard against hacks built into our geek-stick’s firmware according to Wired. The proof-of-concept malware Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell have created is invisible and installable on a USB device and can do everything from taking over a user’s PC to hijacking the DNS settings for your browser. Or, if it’s installed on a mobile device it can spy on your communications and send them to a remote location, similar to the NSA’s Cottonmouth gadgets. If those don’t worry you, perhaps that the “BadUSB” malware can infect any USB device — including keyboards — and wreak havoc, will. What’s more, a simple reformat isn’t enough to disinfect either, and the solution that Lell and Nohl suggest goes against the core of what many of us are used to doing.
The duo says that the only way around BadUSB is to more or less treat devices like hypodermic needles; trusting only those that have been used within our personal ecosystem and throwing away any that’ve come in contact with other computers. Hopefully you don’t have a ton of untrustworthy Porsche sticks laying around.
[Image credit: Getty Images]
Filed under: Internet, Software
Via: Gizmodo Australia
Source: Wired
.CPlase_panel display:none;
Mars 2020 rover will give us a way to know the red planet better
NASA’s been planning for the Mars 2020 rover for a long time now, back when Curiosity was just making its way to the red planet. Now, the agency has finally chosen seven scientific instruments that’ll be equipped on the new rover out of the 58 proposals submitted by researchers from all over the globe. These instruments were chosen based on their potential to discover how humans can live off the extraterrestrial land by using the natural resources available, and also by their capacity to unearth any danger posed by Martian dust to future human explorers.
One of the scientific payloads is called Mastcam-Z, a camera with panoramic, stereoscopic and zoom abilities. Another called SuperCam can analyze the chemical and mineral composition of rocks, while the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) can determine the elemental composition of surface minerals. The third one called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) uses UV light to detect organic compounds, while Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) will attempt to produce oxygen from Martian carbon dioxide. Then there’s the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) that will monitor the environmental conditions on the planet, and finally, the Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Exploration (RIMFAX) equipped with a ground-penetrating radar that’ll give us a glimpse of what’s beneath the planet’s surface.
All these equipment will cost $130 million to develop and will be the main difference between the upcoming rover and Curiosity, as Mars 2020′s designed to look similar to the latter. Before NASA sends off Mars 2020, though, it still has to go through the InSight mission, which will explore Mars’ interior in 2016. The agency still also has to find a way to keep communication between the planets going if it wants the new rover to be able to transmit data back home.
Filed under: Science
Source: NASA
.CPlase_panel display:none;
Find and review with Yelp [App of the Day]
Similar to Around Me, Yelp allows you to find restaurants, bars, movie theaters and more. But only Yelp will provide you with quality reviews from people like you looking for the best place. Not only can you find reviews for places, you can write the reviews yourself and post photos of your experience there for… Read more »
The post Find and review with Yelp [App of the Day] appeared first on AndroidGuys.
.CPlase_panel display:none;
Wikipedia iOS app relaunches with mobile editing and a new design
Wikipedia recently revamped its app for Android, bringing the ability to edit articles and view random articles in the process. Starting today, those features are also available on iOS, with a new version of the official app available for download in the App Store. In addition to adding new functionality, the Wikimedia Foundation’s overhauled the design, and it promises a better, faster navigation experience. Check it out for yourself via the source link below.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Wikimedia Blog, Wikipedia Mobile (iTunes Preview)
.CPlase_panel display:none;
Apple decal sellers saw a tremendous spike in sales following ‘Stickers’ ad
Your worst fear, confirmed: Engadget‘s staff laptop of choice is the MacBook Air. Other than the massive checks we each personally receive from Apple (har har), it’s our go-to laptop because it’s light, fast, and great for the kind of work we do. It doesn’t hurt that it looks sweet with stickers as well, of course. And after Apple highlighted users’ proclivity for decking out their MBAs in a recent video (seen below), the world of laptop decal sellers was suddenly cast in the spotlight. That spotlight resulted in a lot of new buyers, according to a report on MacStories. Quite a few more, actually. One of the venders MacStories spoke with saw orders increase by 400 percent since the ad aired, and page views jumped from a typical 500 per day all the way up to a peak of some 4,500 last week. If you dug any of those stickers, well, our sister site TUAW searched out links for where to buy those 74 decals. And while a majority of those depicted are easily found online, for those that aren’t, the site scoured Etsy and other places for suitable stand-ins. Now for the hard part: picking out the perfect decal.
Ben Gilbert contributed to this report
Filed under: Laptops, Internet, Apple
Source: MacStories, TUAW
.CPlase_panel display:none;
Samsung Q2 2014 earnings show reduced profits as smartphone demand remains flat
Samsung Q2 2014 earnings were revealed in South Korea on Thursday, and though the company made a net profit 6.25 trillion Korean Won ($6.1 billion), the numbers also represented a stark decline of 19.6 percent from last year’s yield.
In a statement, Samsung said that the weak quarter was an indirect result of stagnant demand for smartphones and tablets, which in turn led to increased marketing expenditures to reduce inventory. “Amid low seasonality, smartphone demand remained flat [quarter-over-quarter] while [it] declined slightly QoQ for Tablet,” a Samsung presentation read (PDF). Samsung is a smartphone giant and it ships endless phones all over the world, and the company wrote that “slower demand for mobile devices also impacted Samsung’s logic chip business or System LSI.”
In addition to the turtle market growth, Samsung also said that the appreciation of Korean Won played a vital part in causing loss to some of the company’s profit. As the Korean won strengthened, Samsung was able to bring back less of the revenue it made off consumers in foreign markets.
Samsung’s second quarter results press release was wary about the future, stating that “the second half of 2014 will remain a challenge,” and “prospects for growth remain unclear as competition over global market share intensifies in the mobile industry.” Still, the company does expect to see growth in consumer electronics next quarter, potentially spurred “by shipments of premium TVs with curved and UHD features.”
Samsung also mentioned that in the second half of the year it would “focus on releasing new premium mobile devices and a new flagship model in the large screen category, along with new mid-to-low-end models with more advanced features and competitive pricing.” Analysts told that Samsung may have to focus on creating more sub-$200 devices, as well as focus on ways to decrease the costs of making its further high-end phones. In its press release, Samsung also promised “a more diverse product portfolio” of wearables in its Galaxy Gear line.
//<![CDATA[
ord = window.ord || Math.floor(Math.random()*1E16);
document.write('’);
//]]>
The post Samsung Q2 2014 earnings show reduced profits as smartphone demand remains flat appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
.CPlase_panel display:none;
AIVAnet 