SoundCloud inks licensing deal with 20,000 indie labels

SoundCloud continues to lend a hand to independent artists, and today the streaming option announced a royalty agreement with Merlin. While the name may not ring a bell, Merlin works with 20,000 indie labels and distributors including Beggars Group (Vampire Weekend), Secretly Group (Bon Iver), Domino (Animal Collective), Kontor Records (Tiësto) and more. Merlin works with smaller outfits to negotiate things like royalties and licensing, which is exactly what it’s done here with SoundCloud. The deal means that on top of being able to pipe in content from labels and distro, the streaming repository will offer compensation when tunes are played. “You’ll also be able to discover and listen to more new tracks from the best independent label creators on the planet, safe in the knowledge they’ll now have the opportunity to get paid while you listen,” a blog post announcing the deal explains.

SoundCloud already signed a deal with Warner Music Group alongside a projected 2015 launch for its own streaming service. However, it’s having a hard time convincing Universal and Sony to join in as well. Before going after the proper paperwork, SoundCloud drew the ire of labels for hosting copyrighted material without proper permission. In fact, just last month Sony pulled songs from Hozier, Adele and others after talks stalled. The site currently offers a premium option for creators to publish and share their work with ad platform that sends revenue back to the labels and performers.

When the advertisements were announced in August, word of a paid tier that would nix the distractions also circulated. If SoundCloud is indeed prepping its own service, locking down a load of indie artists and one major label is a good start, but it’ll need the catalogs of Sony and Universal to become a really attractive option for listeners. Across the web and mobile, SoundCloud tallies 175 million monthly users so it certainly has some listeners’ attention.

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Source: SoundCloud

How to play PC and PlayStation 4 games on Android

Our Android devices are powerful machines, and they’re bound to get even better as chipset manufacturers begin producing power hungry hardware like MediaTek’s monster 10-core processor. Soon enough, most smartphones are going to have more RAM than our laptops, the ZenFone 2 being a perfect example.

How can we take full advantage of this power? After all, in day-to-day use, we barely even scratch the surface of what our smartphone are fully capable of. Well, one way is playing PC games on your Android device. Yes, full-fledged PC games, such as the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Battlefield, and the like.

NVIDIA GRID

NVIDIA GRID lets you stream games from a remote server over your own computer. Only, it’s not available for any mobile devices besides NVIDIA’s own SHIELD devices. Another downfall is that the service is only available to you if you have a ping of 60ms or less to one of six NVIDIA data centers in the world, which could require a connection of up to 50MB/s.

That said, this service is very limited, and won’t be useful to most people. If you’re one of the lucky people to have a Shield device and live off of the west coast with a celestial Internet connection, NVIDIA’s GRID service is an excellent option for you. And if you’re lucky enough to meet all two parameters, it might just be wise to go get yourself a lotto ticket.

Moonlight Game Streaming

Due to incompatibility issues between the operating systems games are designed for, you can’t play PC games directly on your Android device. But, you can certainly stream them to your Android device and that does require you to have a PC with some very specific graphics card requirements.

There’s always the option of using NVIDIA’s GameStream service, but similar to GRID, that’s only available to Shield devices, making it severely limited. There are indeed some awesome unofficial apps out there that make it possible to stream PC games on your Android device, such as Moonlight Game Streaming.

Moonlight Game Streaming is a simple and effective way to stream games straight off your PC with NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience software, whether it be as graphic intensive as Skyrim or more processor heavy, like Civilization V. However, to use Moonlight Game Streaming your PC back at home is going to need a compatible graphics card. If you have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600/700/800/900 series GPU, you can stream games straight to your Android device without any cost. You’ll also need to make sure you have the NVIDIA GeForce Experience (GFE) 2.2.2 or higher on your computer.

Next, you’re going to need to download the Moonlight Game Streaming app. You can get it here. Once that’s downloaded, and if you plan on streaming games from behind a router, you’re going to need to forward your ports to get it to work. The exact ports you will need to forward are as follows:

• TCP 35043, 47984, 47989, 47995, 47996, 48010
• UDP 47998, 47999, 48000

Do keep in mind that you only need to forward these ports if you plan on streaming outside your own network. For a comprehensive guide on forwarding ports, click here.

After you complete those steps, you’re almost ready to go. You just need to pair your PC and Android device. Make sure the latest version of the GeForce Experience is on your computer, and that you’ve already scanned for games. If everything is all set there, you can begin the pairing. Your PC should show up automatically — to start pairing, simply click the entry in the list of PCs.

Once your PC is ready, type in the PIN that popped up on your Android device and press ‘accept’ on the pairing dialog that comes up. After that, the pair should be complete. Choose your PC from the PC list, and from there you should be able to select a list of games to stream.

Finally, all you need is a controller. Most controllers work with Moonlight Game Streaming. PlayStation 3 controllers, though, will require you to install the SixAxis Enabler app on your smartphone or tablet.

If you’re not into streaming games from your PC, you can also do so through your PlayStation through a nifty feature called PlayStation Now.

PlayStation Now

While there are a myriad of ways to play PC games on your Android device, Sony is now offering some of their own solutions for PlayStation 4 streaming. Remember the cloud game streaming service Gaikai that Sony bought a long time ago? They’re using the technology from Gaikai to create PlayStation Now, which lets users stream select games from the PlayStation 4, 3, Vita, and various televisions.

If you have a compatible television, just downloaded PlayStation Now from the Sony Store, and they’ll take you through a detailed guide on getting everything setup!

Wrap Up

A lot of the excellent and seamless ways to play PC games on your Android device have been taken off the Play Store, for the most part. OnLive and Gaikai were strong players in the industry, but didn’t last long before they either died out or got swallowed up by larger companies like Sony. That said, there’s still a few bastions of hope out there to make the idea possible.

These are our favorite ways to stream PC games to our Android devices? Do you have any trade secrets? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.

Come comment on this article: How to play PC and PlayStation 4 games on Android

Deal: Save 94% on the Complete 2015 Learn to Code Bundle

To build a revolutionary application, you’ll need a few things – a great idea, determination, and most importantly, coding knowledge. If you’re looking for an inexpensive, thorough coding course that will give you all of the basics and then some, look no further than the Complete 2015 Learn to Code Bundle – currently 94% off in the AA Deals Store.

This bundle features 8 informative courses with more than 74 hours of training in all. You’ll learn to design from scratch with HTML, CSS, jQuery and Javascript, and you’ll also learn development in Ruby on Rails, Python and PHP. A lot more is being offered here, so take a look at the list of courses below:

• The Complete Web Developer Course – Build 14 Websites – Learn to Program from Scratch in Just 6 Weeks ($199 value)
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This cock ring quantifies your sex life

There are fitness trackers for your head, torso, wrist and calves, and then there are fitness trackers for your genitals. Drawing inspiration from Bondara’s conceptual SexFit, Lovely is a cock ring wearable device that’ll pull triple duty as an erotic toy, priapic activity monitor and sexual performance coach. Simply slide your penis into the hardware, get banging away and, when you’re done, a mobile app will tell you your score. Statistics that are recorded by the device include the calories you’ve burned, the force of your thrusting and even your top speed. The software will even look at your performance and come up with one of 120 new positions that you can try next time out.

The stretchable ring is made out of medical-grade silicone and will vibrate to give a little bit of extra stimulation to your partner. If you choose to keep that feature going, then Lovely will last for just two hours, but if you can think you can do the job on your own, the device will run for seven hours at a time. Between sessions, you can simply dump the gear onto an inductive charging dock to re-juice it ready for your next session, but for God’s sake, rinse it first.

Given that there’s a Y in the name of the day, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that Lovely’s creators are begging for your cash on Indiegogo. If you kick in $99 (early bird) $129 (everyone else) then you’ll expect to get your device by June 2016. Until then, you’ll just have to think of some other way to keep your other half entertained — maybe you should take up doubles Canasta or something.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/129459790

Filed under: Wearables

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Via: Wareable

Source: Indiegogo

White House secretly expands NSA power to collect US internet data

The Obama administration expanded the NSA’s ability to collect Americans’ internet data in 2012, with absolutely no notice to the public, The New York Times reports. The Justice Department issued two memos, in secret, to the NSA allowing the agency to gather and search Americans’ international internet traffic without a warrant, ostensibly to find foreign hackers or malware. The secret memos allowed the NSA to track IP addresses and cybersignatures that could be tied to foreign governments. However, documents provided to the Times by Edward Snowden show that the NSA tried to target hackers that weren’t tied to any foreign authority.

A bit of background: The NSA covertly began a warrantless wiretapping program under President George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11, 2001. This program came under fire in 2005, once the public learned about it. Congress legalized the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps in 2008, with a caveat: The agency was only allowed to target noncitizens not on American soil. The Obama administration started building its own cybersecurity policy in 2009 and at the same time, the NSA proposed using its existing, warrantless surveillance program in the name of cybersecurity.

In 2011, the FBI received permission to “wiretap” internet data linked to specific governments. The FBI negotiated in 2012 to use the NSA’s internet-monitoring systems, which gathered digital traffic at “chokepoints operated by US providers through which international communications enter and leave the United States,” a leaked document reads, according to the Times. The NSA then began sending this data to the FBI’s “cyberdata repository” in Quantico, Virginia.

Back to 2012: The Justice Department secretly permitted the NSA to search American’s internet addresses and cybersignatures without a warrant, tying the authority to the government’s existing program of monitoring foreign powers. The NSA has long surveilled the internet data of foreign intelligence targets, but the 2012 memos expanded these procedures and allowed the agency to search for less-identifying IP addresses and malware. The expanded authority allows the NSA to collect large amounts of Americans’ data, including private emails, trade secrets and business dealings, because monitoring a hacker involves copying the data that person steals, the Times reports.

Information about the US government’s hidden surveillance practices comes at a pertinent time. This week, for the first time since the 9/11 attacks, Congress and the Senate passed a measure limiting the government’s domestic surveillance powers.

The Times spoke with Jonathan Mayer, a cybersecurity scholar at Stanford Law School who reviewed some of the leaked documents, and he said the NSA’s activities look like law enforcement, not foreign-intelligence gathering. Mayer told the Times, “That’s a major policy decision about how to structure cybersecurity in the US and not a conversation that has been had in public.”

[Image credit: Associated Press]

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Source: The New York Times