Obama: Michael Jordan is more than just a meme

We’re sure most of you know Michael Jordan as one of the best basketball players of all time, but we wouldn’t be surprised if some clueless kid only knows him as “crying MJ.” Since the meme continues to enjoy immense popularity — and it’s not hard to see why — the president had to make sure people knew who Jordan was when he awarded the legendary athlete the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He’s “more than just a logo, more than just an internet meme,” the president jokingly said when he introduced the former Chicago Bulls player and Space Jam star. It’s been over a decade since his final retirement, after all, and twenty years since the film that co-starred Bugs Bunny.

The Crying MJ meme uses a photo snapped by AP photographer Stephan Savoia during Jordan’s induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. People started pasting the athlete’s tear-streaked face onto photos of other people in unfortunate situations, and the rest, as they say, is history. Besides MJ, a bunch of other people also received the Medal of Freedom, including female code pioneers Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton. Hopper’s work led to the English-like programming languages we know today, while Hamilton was a software engineer for the Apollo program and helped land humans on the the moon.

President Obama: Michael Jordan is more than just an Internet meme. #CryingJordan #MedalofFreedom pic.twitter.com/I4pCgpfuqL

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) November 22, 2016

Crying Jordan on Jordan crying 😭😭😭😭😭

Credit- @StretchMyBandz pic.twitter.com/dLOK5e40j5

— Crying Jordan (@CryingJordan) November 22, 2016

Huawei Watch price cut to £168 on Amazon UK

Get the best Android Wear smartwatch at a £70 discount.

The Huawei Watch remains our pick for best Android Wear smartwatch, and now you can pick up the wearable at a substantial discount on Amazon UK. As part of its ongoing Black Friday deals, Amazon has cut the price from £239 to £167.99, a 30% discount. (That’s around half the original launch price for the watch, for what it’s worth.)

See at Amazon UK

You’ll have a hard time tracking down a better smartwatch at that price point. Here’s Russell Holly on why the Huawei Watch is the best:

Huawei’s Watch is a unique successful attempt at making Android Wear watches look more like and actual watch and less like a gadget. It’s packing a fully circular always-on display, microphone and speaker for handling calls, and a heart-rate sensor for connecting with your favorite fitness apps. The battery will last the average user multiple days, but promises to last through a whole day no matter who you are.

Pokemon Go updates include improved Nearby feature and Ditto sightings

Niantic Labs has begun rolling out its much improved Nearby Pokemon tracking feature to users in the US, Canada and Australia. The new version has already been available for testing with select users in San Francisco, and replaces the footprint system that didn’t always help you find new Pokemon.

The new Nearby feature only works if you’re near a PokeStop. It will show you what PokeMon are nearby, but it will just show you which PokeStop they’re nearest to. It may still not be perfect in practice, but hopefully should help you focus on a certain area to track down new Pokemon rather than just wandering the streets aimlessly.

The new Nearby feature is available in the following locations:

• United States of America: All states west of the Mississippi River (except Hawaii and Alaska)
• Canada: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the western half of Ontario.
• Australia: All states and territories

Reddit

The other big update that should hopefully receive a more global release is the introduction of Ditto, the last of the original 151 Pokemon. Niantic Labs hasn’t officially announced that the transforming Pokemon is available in the game, but some users have noticed a Pidgey, Rattata or Magikarp they’ve caught has actually been a Ditto in disguise and has transformed once it’s been caught.

Fortunately, the CP increase when it transforms into Ditto. Many users think this way of catching a Ditto is reserved for low-level Pokemon only, as you’d be pretty annoyed if you caught a rare Pokemon with 1000CP and it transformed into Ditto with 400CP.

The Silph Road found evidence of a ‘Transform’ move in Pokemon Go’s code, as well as 100 new Pokemon set to arrive in the game, all of which are likely to be Generation 2. There’s no word on when these will arrive in the game.

Freeview Play expands, Hisense, Toshiba, Sharp and Blaupunkt TVs join the party

The amount of devices compatible with Freeview Play is set to expand greatly with four new manufacturers jumping on board.

From next year, televisions from Hisense, Sharp, Toshiba and Blaupunkt will come with the Freeview Play catch-up service. They join existing and future sets from Panasonic, LG and JVC.

Freeview Play is the on demand tech from the UK’s free-to-air digital TV brand which gives you the ability to scroll backwards through the electronic programme guide as well as forwards, in order to catch-up with shows you might have missed. Click on programmes shown on BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and UKTV channels and they will play automatically through the respective broadcaster’s catch-up app.

The service is also available on set-top-boxes from Panasonic and Humax.

• What is Freeview Play, when is it coming to my TV and how can I get it?
• What Freeview Play TV or set-top-box is best for you?

“With new manufacturers on board, Freeview Play has become the most-widely adopted catch-up TV platform in the UK, which is no mean feat in just over a year,” said Guy North, Freeview’s managing director.

“Freeview Play now has the content, functionality and distribution to really deliver scale in the TV market, meaning we are well on our way to achieving our ambition of making connected viewing accessible and affordable for everyone.”

The 2017 Freeview Play specification, which all partners must adhere to, includes new search and recommendations features.

Hijacked headphones could be used to listen in on your life

Fun fact: If you’re in a pinch and need a microphone, a spare pair of headphones can do the job. Not so fun fact? A group of researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University just figured out that those headphones can be hijacked to spy on you. Yeah — 2016 is scary.

Technically, the group’s work doesn’t so much hack headphones as it hacks a PC. Researchers created a piece of malware that exploits the audio-jack retasking function of RealTek codecs, the audio technology that comes with most PC motherboards. An attacked computer can remotely be configured to swap the headphone jack for the microphone jack, allowing any headphones that might potentially be plugged in to serve as a microphone — making it possible to use them as an eavesdropping device. The audio is pretty good, too: in tests done with a pair of Sennheiser headphones, recorded conversation was understandable from up to 20 feet away.

The group’s software, called ‘Speake(a)r’ isn’t actually malicious, and was only used to test a theory — but researchers say the threat is very real. “People don’t think about this privacy vulnerability,” research lead Mordechai Guri told Wired. “Even if you remove your computer’s microphone, if you use headphones you can be recorded.”

So far, the group has only replicated the results in PCs using RealTek audio, but it’s possible that tablets, smartphones and other devices with audio jacks could be vulnerable to a similar attack. There’s no evidence that any such malware exists in the wild, either. Still, better safe than sorry: if you’re worried about being spied on, unplug your headphones when you’re not using them.

Source: Wired, BGU

NASA says Ceres’ brightest crater is made of salt

The scientists in charge of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has released more high-res images of Ceres, along with information that sheds more light on what it’s made of. One of the new images is another close-up of its famous Occator Crater taken from a different angle on October 16th, 920 miles above the dwarf planet. Occator is Ceres’ brightest spot, and according to the Dawn team’s latest research, it’s because the crater is made of salt. The team believes the impact that formed the crater forced a briny liquid to seep out from underground. It froze then immediately turned into vapor, leaving a blanket of salt behind.

Besides the Occator close-up, the team has also released an image showing how Ceres would appear to the naked eye, which you can see below. They combined the images captured by the probe’s red, green and blue filters. After that, they tweaked the resulting color to be consistent with the way Ceres reflects different wavelengths of light. You’ll likely get to know the dwarf planet even more closely than this in the near future — the agency expects to get more data after its sixth science orbit, which intends to investigate its surface composition.

[Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA]

Via: Space

Source: NASA

Pebble 4.3 Update Improves Heart Rate Tracking, Adds iOS Reminders Support

Pebble has released a new firmware for its Pebble 2 and Time-Series smartwatches that brings a faster interface, improved heart-rate tracking features and Reminders support for iOS.

First off, the new 4.3 firmware update introduces a new watchface to 2-Series and Time-Series watches that includes at-a-glance readouts for time, step count, step progress for the day, and heart rate (2-Series only).

For 2-Series watches, the update introduces on-wrist and in-app heart-rate zones, which tally how much time the body has spent in Fat Burn, Endurance, and Performance HR zones.

Third-party phone apps like Runkeeper can now also use Pebble’s heart-rate monitoring to capture, sync, and visualize pulse data during activities, while fitness apps that send live workout data to the watch can now include HR data from the watch in their visualizations.

Aside from improved overall heart-rate monitoring, the update also supports voice reminders that save to the user’s timeline and sync with the iOS reminders app, so that reminders created on the watch show up in the default Reminders list. Marking items as done in a Reminders list also sync back to the watch.

Owners of compatible Pebble watches can update their Pebble apps to version 4.3 from the App Store, while 2-Series and Time-Series users should update their watches from the Pebble app via Menu -> Support -> Update Your Pebble.

Tag: Pebble
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Watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 360-degree video

Let’s be honest: no matter how much you like watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, it loses a lot of its thunder if you aren’t in New York City to witness it first-hand. However, you might get a better feel for it with the 2016 event. Macy’s, NBCUniversal and our corporate overlords at Verizon are planning to livestream the parade in 360 degrees as soon as it kicks off on November 24th at 9AM Eastern. If you have a browser or device that can handle 360-degree YouTube video, you too can watch the floats and marching bands almost as if you were streetside. There will be numerous 360-degree cameras placed at “strategic points” on the route to add a dash of variety. No, this won’t help you skip the less-than-enthralling segments, but those so-so moments will at least will be more immersive than ever before.

Source: YouTube (livestream), (preview)