T-Mobile adds YouTube and more to its Binge On streaming

Following a round of additions to its Binge On initiative in January, T-Mobile is tacking on more content to the data-free video option. Beginning today, YouTube, Google Play Movies, Red Bull TV, Discovery Go, Fox Business, Baeble Music, ESNE TV, FilmOn.TV and KlowdTV won’t count against that data cap when you stream video on the Un-carrier. The company says today’s group pushes the total services available via Binge On to more than 50. Of course, the videos you watch are “mobile optimized,” so don’t expect Ultra HD quality.

Speaking of quality, T-Mobile also announced today that it would give content providers the option to bypass Binge On. If a company prefers for its video to stream at a native resolution, it can choose to do so. However, it will count against customers’ data allotment and won’t be included the data-free streaming push. The carrier is also giving content providers the ability to optimize content themselves for Binge On, rather than having T-Mobile do it for them. In fact, YouTube, which was added today, will be one of the first to leverage the new option. This makes a lot of sense considering the video hosting site was critical of the carrier “throttling” video quality without permission late last year.

Source: T-Mobile

‘BioShock: The Collection’ for Xbox One, PS4 and PC pops up again

The evidence that a BioShock compilation will soon arrive on current-gen consoles continues to pile up. BioShock: The Collection is a yet unannounced but often rumored set that includes BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite, based on the artwork accompanying a ratings listing for Taiwan. The collection popped up in another ratings listing in Brazil last month that also included Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. Details remain scarce, though, as all we have to go on is the cover art and these filings for now.

This release would be the first time these titles make the leap to Xbox One and PS4 in what could be a primer of sorts for the rumored fourth installment of the franchise that was first tipped late last year. Any new game will likely be under new direction as the team behind BioShock and BioShock Infinite, Irrational Games, split in 2014. There’s still no word on a date, but these listings would seem to confirm that the set is primed for release at some point.

BioShock: The Collection rated for PC/PS4/XB1 in Taiwan. https://t.co/UTJqx7RJDO pic.twitter.com/VA8aY2NPIi

— lifelower (@lifelower) March 17, 2016

Via: Eurogamer

Source: @lifelower (Twitter)

Uber is testing a way to pay drivers instantly

Uber is testing out a way to pay its drivers at the end of every ride, rather than once a week, which will hopefully help them avoid payday lending services charging high fees, the AP reports. Once signed up, drivers’ earnings will be sent to an account from the online banking company Gobank. They won’t be charged any fees as long as they access the account at least once every six months (though GoBank will charge $8.95 a month if the money sits any longer). The program will first launch in San Francisco and other cities, and it’s also a direct response to a similar instant payment offering from Lyft (which requires drivers to deposit at least $50, and charges 50 cents for every transaction).

Up until now, Uber drivers who needed to get paid quickly relied on services like Clearbanc, which charges $2 a day to deposit money into an account. That quickly adds up if you work several days a week.

GoBank and its parent company Green Dot, best known for pre-paid debit cards, say that they’ll be exploring similar partnerships with other companies if the Uber program is successful. And given the fast rise of the on-demand economy, there likely will be significant demand for workers to be paid more quickly.

Source: Seattle Times (AP)

Microsoft finally rolls out Windows 10 Mobile to older phones

For a while there, Windows 10 Mobile was only easy to come by if you needed a new phone or liked unfinished software. Now — finally, thankfully — Microsoft is starting to rollout its Windows 10 updates to existing devices running Window Phone 8.1. As you might expect, though, the list of compatible devices skews pretty heavily toward hardware crafted by Microsoft and Nokia, so those of you hanging onto your special HTC One M8s are out of luck for now. The other thing to bear in mind is that while Microsoft has officially kicked off the update process today, there’s a good chance you’re still going to have to wait for it.

Before we go any further, here’s the list of supported phones: Lumia 1520, 930, 640, 640XL, 730, 735, 830, 532, 535, 540, 635 1GB, 636 1GB, 638 1GB, 430, 435, BLU Win HD w510u, BLU Win HD LTE x150q, and the MCJ Madosma Q501.

As usual, the update can (and likely will) be handled differently based on where you live and what carrier your phone is attached to. What’s unclear is how many more devices will eventually get Microsoft’s Windows 10 blessing — the company was quick to admit on its Windows Experience blog that “many older devices are not able to successfully upgrade without an impact on the customer experience. That might be a bummer for some of you, but it’s the right move — after all, the Lumia 950 was mind with Windows 10 in mind and still suffered some curious hiccups out of the gate. Keeping the quality of the experience high is the only way to keep Windows 10 Mobile going; with any luck, it’ll hit still more devices without compromising on that quality.

Source: Windows Experience blog

Alphabet is looking to sell off Boston Dynamics

Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, has decided to put its robotics division, Boston Dynamics, up for sale, according to a report from Bloomberg News. Per a pair of anonymous Google employees familiar with the matter, Alphabet executives are apparently no longer willing to invest in a division that does not have an immediate revenue stream.

The trouble began almost immediately after Google bought the robotics company in late 2013. While the marquee Replicant project was folded into Google X, company’s advanced research group, the rest of Boston Dynamics was not. What’s more, the Boston Dynamics team reportedly had continuing difficulties working with Google’s other robotics engineers in California and Tokyo.

The situation worsened after Google reformed itself into Alphabet and focused more heavily on making its various sub-companies more attractive to investors. But with a public fearful that robots are coming to take their jobs, freedoms and even their lives — combined with Boston Dynamic’s lack of viable products — Alphabet’s executives began to see the division as a liability. “There’s excitement from the tech press,” Google communications director, Courtney Hohne, wrote in an internal email that Bloomberg obtained. “But we’re also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs.”

As such, momentum for spinning off the robotics division has been growing for months. “We as a startup of our size cannot spend 30-plus percent of our resources on things that take ten years,” Larry Page’s advisor and former Google senior vice president, Jonathan Rosenberg, said during an internal meeting back in November. “There’s some time frame that we need to be generating an amount of revenue that covers expenses and (that) needs to be a few years.”

There’s no word on where Boston Dynamics will eventually land. Bloomberg speculates that the Toyota Research Institute and Amazon could be potential buyers, though neither company has confirmed their interest.

Source: Bloomberg

Audible wants to you share audiobook passages like Vine clips

The next time you discover a notable passage in an audiobook, Audible wants you to share it among your friends like you would a meme or Vine clip. The audiobook company announced a Clips feature today, a tool that allows you to select a short passage or excerpt to download for future listening. The feature also lets you share the snippet of audio via social channels, email and text message. In the Audible app, just tap the Clips icon when you hear something you want to save or share. The software will then let you select up to 45 seconds of audio. And yes, you can make edits should the need arise.

The folks that you send the clip to won’t need an account or the app in order to listen. They’ll also be able to share the snippet and, as you might expect, buy the full audiobook once their interest is piqued. The Clips feature is available on iOS and Windows now and will soon be available inside the Android version of the app soon.

Don’t like Twitter’s new algorithmic feed? Then turn it off.

Remember the uproar that was #RIPTwitter from a few weeks back? Well, conserve your internet outrage because, love it or hate it, Twitter’s new algorithmic timeline — the one that surfaces “tweets you are likely to care about most” — is now enabled by default. According to The Next Web, Twitter began rolling out the feature early this week and catching many users by surprise. The change comes after the company debuted the feature back in February as a then opt-in setting. Though, at the time, it did warn users this new feed would be automatically turned on as it rolled out.

The good news is that you’re not stuck with the setting which gives timeline priority to tweets from accounts you regularly interact with. You can easily head to settings to disable it. Or, if you’re the lazy type, simply refresh your feed and you should see the good ol’ reverse chronological timeline we all seem to cling to so fiercely.

Image credit: Twitter

Source: The Next Web

Apple Watch Predicted to Capture 50% Market Share in 2016 on 14 Million Sales

While the Apple Watch captured an impressive 75.5 percent share of the smartwatch market through its launch quarter last year, market research firm IDC predicts that watchOS will gradually cede market share to competing platforms such as Android Wear, Tizen, and Pebble OS over the next four to five years.

IDC forecasts that the Apple Watch software will capture 49.4 percent market share in 2016, but that figure is expected to drop to 37.6 percent in 2020. IDC expects global shipments of 237.1 million wearable devices in 2020, up from an estimated 110 million in 2016, as the wearable market continues to grow.

The decline in market share will not be indicative of fewer Apple Watch sales, as sales of the wrist-worn device are projected to rise from an estimated 14 million units in 2016 to 31 million in 2020. Comparatively, Apple sold an estimated 11.5 million watches over the final 8 months of 2015, based on combined IDC and Strategy Analytics data.

Instead, the wearable market is expected to become a more competitive landscape. IDC forecasts that Android Wear will remain the second most popular smartwatch platform, with an estimated 6.1 million sales and 21.4 percent market share in 2016 rising to 28.8 million sales and 35 percent market share by 2020.

IDC believes that Chinese smartwatches using real-time operating systems (RTOS) will trail in third place in the smartwatch market with 10.1 percent market share by 2020. Tizen, Android, Linux, and Pebble OS round off the list with estimated 6.6 percent, 5.2 percent, 2.8 percent, and 2.7 percent market shares by 2020.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 2
Tags: IDC, Android Wear
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Available Today on Apple TV, Sequels Coming Soon

After getting ported to the iOS App Store in 2013, the original Sonic The Hedgehog is making its way back to the living room today with a launch on the Apple TV App Store (via TouchArcade). The game is essentially the remastered iOS version optimized for Apple TV, and will let fans play classic Sonic with the all-new Apple TV remote.

Race at lightning speeds across seven classic zones as Sonic the Hedgehog. Run and spin through loop-de-loops as you collect rings and defeat enemies on your mission to save the world from the evil Dr. Eggman.

This re-mastered mobile version of the SEGA Genesis classic features the full “Sonic The Hedgehog” game.

In addition to the release of the first game on Apple TV, a few more Sonic games will be following suit in the coming weeks. On March 24, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 will launch on tvOS, while fans will be able to download Sonic CD a week later on March 31.

Sonic The Hedgehog is available now from the tvOS App Store for $2.99. It’s likely that the two upcoming games will be priced similarly.

Related Roundup: Apple TV
Buyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Buy Now)
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Freeze ground beef in flat bags for faster thawing – CNET

Taylor Martin/CNET

Ground beef was on a killer sale at the market and you bought several pounds. Now you have a dilemma. You have to freeze it so it won’t spoil before you and your family can eat it all. But you also know that you’re going to put off cooking it for weeks or months because it’s going to take hours to thaw.

However, reddit user r0ckarong shared a way in which you can store and freeze ground beef so that it can be thawed in a matter of minutes, not hours.

To use r0ckarong’s method, all you will need are several zip-top bags.

Begin by dividing the beef into portions. Each zip-top bag should have enough ground beef inside for at least one meal. Place the beef in the zip-top bag, squeeze out as much air as possible and seal the bag.

Next, press firmly on the bag to flatten it out. You will need to work and knead the meat to flatten it out and have it fill the bag entirely.

Taylor Martin/CNET

Repeat this process for each portion of ground beef. When you’re finished and ready to freeze, the bags of ground beef should stack very neatly and save space.

When it’s time to thaw the meat, remove one bag of meat and place it in a bath of hot or ice cold water.

If you opt to go with hot water, place the bag of meat in a bath of water approximately 102 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Celsius). If the water is too hot, it can actually start to cook the meat, which is not what you want. USDA sponsored research revealed that this thawing method moves the meat through the temperature range which microbes like to grow very quickly, meaning it’s safe, so long as you cook immediately after the meat has thawed.

If, on the other hand, you choose to do a cool thaw, you can simply place the meat in the refrigerator the night before you plan to cook the meat or make an ice bath in your kitchen sink. Place the meat in the sink and make sure to keep the temperature of the water below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 Celsius). Once the meat has fully thawed, promptly begin cooking the meat.