Pirate Party victory gives it a real chance of influencing politics

As of now, the Pirate Party is more than just a symbolic vote for internet freedom, copyright reform or straight-up democratic change — in Iceland, it could have a tangible effect. The party just won 14.5 percent of the total vote and 10 seats in Iceland’s parliamentary election, giving a national Pirate Party its first real chance at forming a government (if only as part of a coalition). While the conservative Independence Party came out ahead with 21 seats, it’s unlikely to have any choice but to partner with one or more left-wing parties. Outrage over corruption forced the once-leading Progressive Party down to just eight seats, and there’s no guarantee that Independence will want to side with the Left-Green Movement (which also garnered 10 seats) or other parties.

To be fair, the Pirate Party didn’t make giant strides forward solely (or even primarily) because of its technology policy. It’s more likely that its values of free speech, privacy and government transparency appealed directly to citizens frustrated with shady politics. Also, this wouldn’t be nearly as feasible in many other countries. Iceland’s small population (less than 400,000 people) and approach to democracy increased the Pirates’ chances of scooping up enough votes to have meaningful power.

No matter how the results came to be, they could easily amount a litmus test for the Pirate Party. If it joins a ruling coalition, it gets to show whether or not its tech-savvy ideology can make a difference on a national scale. And even if it’s left out, it’s large enough in Iceland that it could ally with sympathetic parties on key votes. No, the election probably won’t have a tremendous effect on other countries, but it could give other Pirate Parties some added credibility.

Source: TorrentFreak

Alton Brown’s internet cooking show will be a ‘Good Eats’ sequel

Do you miss Alton Brown’s classic cooking show Good Eats? You’re about to get more of it… and then some. In a live chat with fans, Brown has revealed that his previously hinted-at internet cooking show will be a spiritual sequel to Good Eats, but without the corporate limits that kept him from cooking certain meals or exploring techniques while on TV. He may cook rabbit, for example, or work with sous vides — those just weren’t options on the Food Network, Brown says.

As a sign of the change in direction, the chef spent most of his chat soliciting ideas from fans. You could see him cooking with only a microwave, trying Hawaiian food or making poutine. He even floated the idea of making a Brunswick stew with squirrel meat. The internet-only show won’t debut until sometime in 2017, but it’s already evident that Brown plans to take full advantage of his online freedom — this won’t be sanitized for the sake of nervous broadcasters.

Source: Alton Brown (Facebook)

Teen arrested for sharing exploit that almost brought down 911

An Arizona teen is discovering why you should think very carefully about sharing exploits online: you don’t know what people will do with them… or in some cases, that you’re sharing the right exploits. Phoenix police have arrested 18-year-old Meetkumar Hitesbhai Desai on computer tampering charges after he publicly posted a version of iOS-based JavaScript attack that he thought would only deliver annoying pop-ups, but actually made bogus 911 calls. In the Phoenix region, there were so many hang-up calls (there were 1,849 link clicks in total) that there was the “potential danger” of emergency phone services going down, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office says. California and Texas police saw call spikes, too.

Desai tells police he was only trying to find iOS flaws and report them to Apple for the sake of collecting bug bounties and acclaim. Reportedly, he was only trying to prank friends with the public post and slipped up by releasing the wrong code.

It’s not certain that a judge and jury will sympathize with Desai’s account of events. If this really was a mistake, it still had serious repercussions. What if 911 really had gone down, or had been late to responding to real calls? Whatever the truth may be, the bust emphasizes how fragile emergency phone services can be. As Softpedia observes, researchers have learned that it could take just 6,000 smartphones to completely flood a state’s 911 system. Given that it took a relatively mild incident to bring one region’s system to its knees, 911 providers will want to beef up their defenses if they expect to survive larger, more deliberate attacks.

Via: Softpedia, The Verge

Source: Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office (PDF)

From the Editor’s Desk: It’s complicated

We don’t need a third mobile platform. We need better mobile strategies.

Yesterday, Jerry wrote a fantastic piece about how the world needs a third player in the mobile space, a competitor to Google’s and Apple’s duopoly that has taken hold since Microsoft all but abandoned the mobile hardware space in 2015. I agree with a lot of his points, especially around how these two huge technology companies need to be held in check or risk becoming complacent.

But given Google’s recent foray into hardware and integrating its core web services so tightly with it, I don’t think we’re at risk of these companies becoming lazy and not innovating; what’s more likely is that they get too big and take on too much at once. We can see some of this happening on both sides, with Google’s very public discontinuation of Project Ara and scaling back of Google Fiber, and with Apple’s reported move away from building its own car, opting instead to focus on software.

Microsoft’s new Paint 3D app for Windows 10 (Windows Central)

At the same time, Microsoft was rightfully praised this past week for delivering a truly innovative product, in the Surface Studio desktop, and a cohesive vision of the future that collects all of its disparate businesses — mobile software and apps, Bing, VR, HoloLens, machine learning, Azure, cloud storage — into a neat narrative about empowering creative people to get work done. I bought it, and I’m sure a lot of you did, too: it’s the perfect cap to a comeback story that began with Satya Nadella’s poised and thoughtful position as the company’s leader. And Paint 3D looks pretty damn powerful.

But if you take what Jerry referred to as a “third mobile platform” and position Microsoft as that potential savior, you’re going to be thoroughly disappointed. Microsoft has ceded mobile — as a full-stack builder of hardware and software — in favor of a much more nuanced, and potentially more powerful, position: a horizontal strategy that sees its best features available on Windows 10, yes, but also iOS, Android — hell, even Oculus and SteamVR.

Unlike Apple, and much like Google, Microsoft will likely never make a considerable profit from its hardware, since it is in the business of tunnelling into your connected lives from places you wouldn’t expect: powering Siri’s and Alexa’s web search; taking business away from Amazon’s AWS dominance; beating Google at AI; and, yes, making great hardware that forces Apple loyalists to wake up and say, “There is an alternative.”

We don’t need a third mobile platform — we already have a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Instead, we need better experiences for consumers through more astute partnerships.

You also can’t forget Amazon and Facebook. They may not make phones (anymore), but their ubiquity on your phones, and in your homes, could be construed as another mobile platform. Facebook alone owns three of my most-used apps, and Alexa has slowly been eating into the time I would spend streaming music to Apple TV or asking Google Now for the day’s top stories.

And then there’s the Android manufacturers like Samsung, Asus, Xiaomi, LeEco and myriad others that build platforms on top of Android already. Some, like Xiaomi and LeEco, have amassed huge followings less for their hardware than their ability to use that hardware as loss leadership for their subscription-based software and services.

So while I think that Jerry makes some great points, he is wrong about one thing: we don’t need a third mobile platform. We already have a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Instead, we need better experiences for consumers through more astute partnerships. Samsung has already figured this out to some extent, partnering with Microsoft, Facebook and a number of other players to counter Google’s dominance even as it builds on top of Android. It doesn’t mean changing the default search to Bing, or replicating even more Google services on top of Android, but finding ways to add value to people’s lives without tacking on gratuitous features — as is often the case today.

The answer to mobile innovation isn’t obvious to me — some think it’s AR/VR, others AI/bots, others still solving the app monetization problem — but that there is tremendous innovation happening at all levels, be it hardware, software, or in the cloud, is obvious. And I hope that doesn’t change.

A few other things:

• It’s pretty clear that the Pixel and Pixel XL are winners. One person could be an aberration; two, a coincidence. But now that nearly everyone on the AC staff has one in hand and shares the same sentiment, I think it’s fair to crown the Pixel as the best Android phone currently available.
• But that statement sure has been controversial.
• The LG V20 is likely one of the last major carrier releases of the year, and if you’re not enthused by the Pixel it’s a pretty good alternative. It also takes the complete opposite strategy, despite being built on what amounts to the same software. But whereas the Pixel is all about understated (dare I say, underdeveloped) design, the LG V20 constitutes excess in almost every way. Excess is not inherently bad, and LG has reined in its software a little, but if you read my above thoughts and then think about the Pixel at one side of the spectrum and the V20 at the other, things start to make a bit more sense.
• It’s also sad to see how completely LG caved to the carriers with the V20 release. Not only does the AT&T model have 20 pre-installed apps, but Verizon straight-up breaks several features because they came close to duplicating many of the services Big Red bundles with its phones. .
• We discuss this in great detail in our latest podcast.
• It’s a shame about Vine. It’s an even bigger shame about Twitter.
• I’m incredibly excited about Google Home given the early potential of Assistant. The first units should start shipping this week.
• I’m even more excited about Google Wifi, since my home is basically a Wi-Fi nightmare zone that requires mesh.
• I love that we’re doing more on Chrome recently. If you want to see Google’s tablet strategy for 2017, look at what’s happening on Chromebooks right now.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday and have a very happy, safe and spooky Halloween!

    -Daniel

Classic Mac Startup Chime Not Present in New MacBook Pros

Apple has done away with the traditional startup chime on its new MacBook Pro lineup because the machines automatically power on when the lid is opened.

Pingie.com was first to note the removal of the sound from Apple’s new 13-inch and 15-inch laptops – both the models featuring Apple’s new Touch Bar (as well as the 13-inch version without a Bar) automatically boot when opened or when connected to a power source if the battery is dead, so the sound has apparently been deemed surplus to requirements.

The iconic chiming startup sound was originally made to indicate that diagnostic tests have found no hardware or software issues. A similar sound has accompanied almost every Mac boot sequence since 1991 and its most recent F-sharp chord incarnation was first used in the iMac G3.

A C major chord was originally recorded by Apple engineer Jim Reekes using a Korg keyboard, and what most people hear these days is a pitch-shifted version of the sound made by the Macintosh Quadra family of professional computers, first released in 1991.

According to the book The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel, and Buy, Reekes’ “earconic” sound came out of a desire to replace the older tritone boot sound heard on earlier Macs. Reekes wanted to use a more meditative sound to indicate the Mac had passed its initial Power On Self Test (POST) checks, a sound he later called a “palate cleanser for the ears”.

According to Reekes, Apple executives didn’t particularly like the sound, but it managed to make the final code that was shipped in all Quadra 700 Macs. Allegedly, Steve Jobs himself prevented any further alteration of the sound when he came back to Apple in 1996.

The Mac startup sound can also be heard in 2008 Disney-Pixar movie WALL*E. When the titular robot character has reached 100 percent power after positioning his solar array, the booting chime goes off.

Apple has updated its support documents to reflect the change. As noted previously, Apple has also removed the backlit Apple logo on new MacBook Pro models.

Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer’s Guide: Retina MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
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Best Battery Packs For Your Galaxy S6

The Galaxy S6 is still a great phone, but you might find its battery life to be lacking.

Still loving your Samsung Galaxy S6? That’s fantastic. But what might not be so fantastic is your phone’s battery life. Its 2,550mAh battery was never a strength so you might be struggling to make it through your day without relying on your charger. That’s really inconvenient, as you can’t utilize a regular charger just anywhere. That’s where having a battery pack for your Galaxy S6 comes in handy.

We’ve selected our top four favorite battery packs for the Galaxy S6 that range from 3,000 mAh all the way up to 25,600 mAh. That means you’ll have enough battery life to get you through the most demanding of days, no matter which option you go with.

• TYLT Energi (3,000 mAh)
• Aukey Quick Charge Battery (10,000 mAh)
• KMASHI Quick Charge Portable Charger (20,000 mAh)
• Anker E7 Battery (25,000 mAh)

TYLT Energi (3,000 mAh)

Not every portable battery has to be huge and unwieldy, but you still want it to charge up your phone quickly and efficiently. The TYLT Energi 3K battery walks the line nicely with a compact case that’s made of durable hard plastic and contains 3,000 mAh of capacity. A built-in MicroUSB cable means you don’t have to bring one of your own to charge up your phone, and an additional standard USB port means you can charge two devices at once if you need to in a pinch.

The capacity is just right for giving your Galaxy S6 a full charge, and when you get back home it won’t take long at all to get the Energi 3K itself juiced back up and ready for your next outing. What’s more, the price is just right at the moment at under $20.

See at Amazon

Aukey Quick Charge Battery (10,000 mAh)

We might sound like a broken record suggesting this portable battery, but when it comes to quickly charging the Galaxy S6 you want a battery that can stand up to the challenge.

After our initial hands on review of the Aukey 10,000mAh Quick Charge Battery, we determined that its sleek design, Quick Charge 2.0 capability and 10k battery capacity was simply a must-have for anyone in the fast charging club. We’ve seen it in action with the Galaxy S6, too — and it works great.

This Quick Charge battery comes with a white micro-USB cable, and is available for under $30 on Amazon.

See at Amazon

KMASHI Quick Charge Portable Charger (20,000 mAh)

KMASHI’s external battery bank has a capacity of 20,000mAh and can charge two devices simultaneously. It’s got one regular USB charging port, and another Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 port which is compatible with your Galaxy S6.

This battery pack comes with a built-in LED flashlight for emergency situations and offers a sleek, somewhat rugged design, which means you can take it with you anywhere. Coming it at around 6 inches by 4 inches, it’s about average size for a portable battery pack of this capacity. Given its size you’ll be be able to fully charge your Galaxy S6 multiple times with this battery pack. You can get yours for under $50 on Amazon.

See at Amazon

Anker E7 Battery (25,000 mAh)

Saving the beast for last, Anker’s Astro E7 has an impressive 25,600mAh battery inside and offers an incredible charging speed of 3A per USB port or 4A using all 3 ports.

Packed with Anker’s PowerIQ technology, it will automatically detect the fastest possible charging speed when plugged into the Galaxy S6 — that goes for any device, too. It even comes with an LED flashlight built-in which could prove useful for camping trips among many other low light situations.

If you’re after a battery pack for your Galaxy S6 that’ll outlast the rest, this is a keeper. It comes with a micro-USB cable, travel pouch, and is available in black or white right now for $79.99.

See at Amazon

Samsung Galaxy S6

• Galaxy S6 review
• Galaxy S6 complete specs
• Galaxy S6 news | GS6 edge news
• Galaxy S6 beginner’s guide
• Galaxy S6 forums | GS6 edge forums
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