Slide a refurbished unlocked Pixel into your pocket for as little as $355

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time with another exclusive deal on a refurbished Google Pixel!

If you’ve been looking for a great deal on the smaller Google Pixel, you won’t want to miss out on this one. Right now you can pick up an unlocked refurbished 32GB Google Pixel for $355 with coupon code THRFTPXL at Daily Steals. This is a savings of $24.99 from the regular price that Daily Steals has it listed at, and beats the price Woot recently had for a refurbished unit by $45.

Since not everyone can live with just 32GB of storage, you can also opt for the 128GB model for $385 when using the same coupon code.

The 32GB is only available in black, but the 128GB is available in both silver and black. They are all refurbished units, which means that they may show some signs of wear, but should work without issue. Daily Steals is backing them with a 90-day warranty, and you still have the 30-day return period if you are unhappy with your purchase.

If the Pixel XL is what you are after, you can pick up an unlocked refurbished 32GB unit for $415 with the coupon code THRFTPIXEL.

See at Daily Steals

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Best WebVR experiences you should try right now!

What experience should I use to test out WebVR?

WebVR is an open standard for creating web-based VR experiences. Developers can create basically anything they want, and these creations then run in a web browser, including Edge and Chrome. Mozilla Firefox just received full WebVR support as well, so to celebrate, we’ve rounded up some of the best WebVR experiences we’ve come across so far.

Read more at VRHeads!

The Nokia 8 is now official

Nokia’s first Android flagship has finally been announced.

This year seems to be going well for HMD Global. The company has licensed the Nokia name to begin selling Android phones with a familiar label, and it’s managed to keep its update promises to users. After sending out press invitations last month, the company has announced the long-anticipated Nokia 8 flagship.

The Nokia 8 features a 5.3-inch QHD IPS display covered in 2.5D Gorilla Glass 5, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor paired with 4GB of RAM, 128GB (Gloss Blue only) or 64GB (all other colors) of UFS 2.1 internal storage, plus a microSD slot for expansion, USB 3.1 Type-C for charging and data transfer, a 3090mAh battery, and a dual Nano-SIM slot – the second SIM slot doubles as the microSD slot. The phone has three 13-megapixel cameras, with the rear unit combining a full-color sensor with a monochromatic sensor, featuring a f/2.0 aperture, 76.9-degree field of view, optical image stabilization in the primary lens, 4K recording and a dual-tone flash. The front-facing camera is another 13MP, f/2.0 lens with a 78.4-degree field of view. Like Nokia’s older Windows Phones, the new device uses Carl Zeiss optics. The phone is rated at IP54, and advertised as “Splashproof.”

One interesting feature is the “Bothie” mode: the ability to record or take photos with both the front and rear cameras at the same time. Samsung and LG have done this as well, but Nokia stands out by allowing users to do this while live streaming to platforms such as Facebook Live and YouTube Live. To enhance the recording experience, the phone includes Nokia’s OZO Audio, which promises immersive, 360-degree surround recording.

The device will ship with Android 7.1.1 Nougat with minimal customizations, just like other Nokia devices. We have not heard of a timetable on when to expect Android 8.0, but based on Nokia keeping up with security updates each month, there should be a quick turnaround. The phone will be available in Gloss Blue, Tempered Blue, Steel, and Polished Copper for €599. There has not been any word on U.S. availability at this time.

Are you looking forward to the Nokia 8? Let us know down below!

Nokia 8 specs: Snapdragon 835, dual cameras, and Android 7.1.1 Nougat

Nokia’s first Android flagship packs the latest internals.

Nokia’s long-awaited Android flagship is now official, and there’s a lot to like. The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 835 and features 4GB of RAM, along with 64GB of storage and a microSD slot. There are two Zeiss-tuned 13MP cameras at the back — a primary RGB shooter augmented by a secondary monochrome sensor and a 13MP camera up front that can shoot 4K video.

The phone also has a 5.3-inch QHD display, a 3090mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen1 connectivity, a headphone jack, OZO Audio for 360-degree immersive audio capture, and Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box.

Here’s a detailed look at the specs on offer with the Nokia 8:

The Nokia 8 will go up for sale from September 6 for €599. Who’s interested in buying Nokia’s first Android flagship?

How to deal with Daydream display flicker on Galaxy S8

Stop the flicker with this tip!

You need to be able to see what is going on when you have a VR headset on, but if you have issues with your display then you can give yourself a headache or cause damage to your eyes. Some users have reported an issue where the display on their Galaxy S8 flickers brightly and repeatedly.

This is a disorienting issue that absolutely nobody wants to run into, but if you do we’ve got a solution for you!

Read more at VRHeads

Pick up an unlocked Huawei Mate 9 for $450 at Amazon

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time with a nice price drop on the Huawei Mate 9.

If you’re in the market for a new smartphone, Huawei’s Mate 9 may have crossed your radar. Right now you can pick one up for just $449.99 at Amazon, which is a savings of $50 from its regular price. Being unlocked, you can buy this and pop in the SIM card of your choice (from a compatible GSM carrier) and be on your way with the phone. Unfortunately, it will not work on either Verizon or Sprint.

• Integrated with Alexa voice service. Just tap and ask Alexa to enjoy thousands of skills on the go, such as hearing the latest news, weather and traffic reports, check Sport scores, and much more.
• Enjoy revolutionary two-day battery life with a large 4000Mah battery and smart power-saving technology. Huawei supercharge technology safely charges the Device for a full day’s power in 20 minutes.
• Second-generation Leica Dual Camera with a 12MP RGB sensor and 20MP monochrome sensor renders images in unprecedented detail for exceptional results that take you from mere photography to artistry.
• 5.9 inch screen with 3-months Complimentary screen protection. Dual SIM (Primary Nano SIM + Micro SD, and secondary Nano SIM slot) to support 1334 carriers in 217 countries and Regions.
• Four noise-cancelling microphones with directional audio capture eliminate background noise and improve call quality. No support for Wi-Fi calling.

This is a match of the lowest price we’ve seen at Amazon. You get a whole lot of phone for the money, so don’t miss out on this deal.

See at Amazon

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Facebook helps you celebrate birthdays with videos and fundraising

Whether you’re a fan of Facebook’s birthday-centric features or not, it’s still pretty handy to know when your buddy’s next celebration day is so you can mark the occasion. The social network keeps adding new ways to celebrate, with recap videos that extend your birthday another few days to simple text-based wish-sending. Facebook has just added two more ways to celebrate: fundraisers and personalized videos for your close friends.

Now when your birthday is two weeks out, you’ll get a message with the chance to raise some funds for one of the 750,000 US nonprofit organizations on Facebook. Simply add your friends’ names and they’ll be invited to donate in honor of the day of your birth.

When it’s time for your buddy’s birthday, you can now send them a personalized video, made by Facebook. Just like last year’s friendship videos, birthday videos will pull together images and videos of your friend and add them to colorful little animated scenes. You’ll see these short films on your own timeline when one of your close friends has a birthday, and you’ll be able to share it from there.

Source: Facebook

Researchers create more efficient supercapacitor to power wearables

Supercapacitors offer a lot of advantages over batteries when it comes to energy storage. They can store a lot more of it, they can take on or transmit energy much more quickly and they typically last way longer. But incorporating supercapacitors into things like wearables has been difficult because making them flexible and stretchable comes with some costs. Usually, flexible supercapacitors are made with complex and pricey methods or are limited to just a few types of materials. They can also end up being less stable and, thus, short-lived. And a major problem with these sorts of supercapacitors is actually getting the ions inside of them, which are needed for energy transport, to the area where they need to be in order to be useful.

However, researchers at the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London have come up with a new method that solves all of these problems. Their work was just published in ACS Energy Letters.

The research team used polymers that contain the necessary ions and interwove them with the conductive material of the supercapacitor, so that they were always in contact and allowed the ions to constantly be in close proximity to the active areas where energy transfer goes down. “Our supercapacitors can store a lot of charge very quickly, because the thin active material (the conductive polymer) is always in contact with a second polymer which contains ions,” lead researcher Stoyan Smoukov told Phys.org. “Just like the red thin regions of a candy cane are always in close proximity to the white parts. But this is on a much smaller scale.”

The material can also last a long time and not wear out with repeated charging and discharging. After 3000 cycles, the supercapacitor retained 97.5 percent of its original energy storage ability. And bending the material didn’t affect its performance either — 99 percent of capacitance was retained after 1000 bends and unbends. “This interpenetrating structure enables the material to bend more easily, as well as swell and shrink without cracking, leading to greater longevity. This one method is like killing not just two, but three birds with one stone,” said Smoukov.

The researchers say the material shows promise for wearable electronics and other technologies that require flexible energy storage devices.

Via: Phys.org

Source: ACS Energy Letters

Twitter’s dilemma: What to do with Trump

“My use of Twitter is not presidential,” said President Donald Trump on Twitter last month, before adding the kicker in emphatic all caps: “it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL.”

Yet nearly seven months into his presidency, Trump has so flabbergasted the public with his tweets that there has been a relentless stream of calls for Twitter to suspend his account.

The latest furor erupted on Tuesday: Trump’s retweet of a cartoon person with a CNN logo over its head being hit by a train while attempting to hold it back. The train has Trump’s name on it; the tweet read, “Nothing can stop the #TrumpTrain!!” This wasn’t the first time the president has suggested violence against CNN on Twitter, but it was a particularly shocking choice of image mere days after an attacker drove into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white nationalist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In June, Minnesota Congressman and Democratic National Committee Deputy Chair Keith Ellison likened the president to a “social media bully” and said his account should be taken down. An online petition with 72,000 signatures calls for Trump to be banned from Twitter. A recent poll showed that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s Twitter use.

Engadget compared all the tweets from Trump’s personal Twitter account in his almost seven months in office — over 1,200 tweets in total — to the Twitter rules that govern who gets banned online. We wanted to see if calls for Trump to get booted from Twitter were valid.

The results, according to our analysis and the input of online-censorship experts, is that many of Trump’s tweets since taking office may have been incendiary or untrue, but there were no clear-cut cases for banishment, based on how Twitter has enforced its rules so far. “Based on the rules alone, some of his tweets could constitute harassment. But I think based on the interpretation of those rules, not necessarily,” said Jillian York, co-founder of Onlinecensorship.org, a project that tracks takedowns on various social media platforms.

When Twitter has suspended high-profile accounts, it’s typically been for more cut-and-dried offenses: posting racial epithets (Azealia Banks), threatening physical violence (Chuck Johnson), directly inciting harassment (Milo Yiannopoulos) or uploading revenge porn (George Zimmerman).

Since becoming president, Trump has instead occupied a gray area. And Twitter’s rules leave plenty of gray.

Before his election, for instance, Trump tweeted, “Incompetent Hillary, despite the horrible attack in Brussels today, wants borders to be weak and open-and let the Muslims flow in. No way!” This could be interpreted as hateful conduct.

Since January, he has avoided directly calling out religious or ethnic groups, giving him plausible deniability, even if his meaning remains unmistakable. For example, in reference to a travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Trump wrote, “Because the ban was lifted by a judge, many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country. A terrible decision.”

To York, the tweet would not be cause for dismissal, if only because it doesn’t contain threats of physical violence. “Generally I think that Twitter errs on the side of only taking down violent incitement of hateful speech,” she said.

Trump’s now-deleted retweet from Aug. 15th. Source: Twitter

In addition to hateful conduct, Twitter’s terms also forbid “behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.”

Trump has called former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning a “traitor” and referred to The New York Times, CNN and NBC News as “the enemy of the American people.” He has used insults like “Crooked Hillary” for his rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, and “dumb as a rock Mika” for MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski.

Trump uses tweeted insults as a political tool. Last August, angered about a segment on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly’s show, he told her, “I almost unleashed my beautiful Twitter account against you,” according to Kelly in her recent memoir.

However, it’s possible Twitter permits these attacks because politicians, activists and media institutions are public figures who are open to public criticism.

“Whether you’re the president, a celebrity or Kim Kardashian, if you’re in the public eye the kinds of things you are legitimately able to complain about are going to be narrower and narrower,” said Mary Anne Franks, a University of Miami law professor and vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative who sits on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council.

Attacks on private citizens may be viewed differently. Last December, Trump tweeted insults about Indiana Union leader Chuck Jones that led to telephoned threats. “Nothing that says they’re gonna kill me, but, you know, you better keep your eye on your kids,” Jones told MSNBC. “We know what car you drive. Things along those lines.”

While caustic attacks on private civilians could constitute harassment, Trump has refrained from them since taking office.

Still, predicting how Twitter will interpret “harassment” amounts to little more than a guessing game.

The company has pledged in recent months to curb abuse across its network and last month, reported taking action on 10 times as many abusive accounts as it did a year ago. But Twitter is a private company that can moderate speech as it chooses, and it has repeatedly declined to reveal how it decides whether a ban is necessary. While its rules are public, the way Twitter interprets those rules — outside blatant cases involving racism or threats of physical violence — remains an enigma.

Franks said members of Twitter’s trust and safety council — advocates and academics who advise the company — only provide general guidelines for managing harassment but don’t discuss specific accounts. A potential decision to ban Trump would have to come from inside the company, not the council.

In practice, Twitter appears to limit censure as much as possible — in part because the company seems to rely on First Amendment laws as a guideline, according to Franks. “The way that most social media companies are trying to navigate these issues is by more or less anchoring themselves alongside legal conceptions,” she said. “Even though they’re entitled to act in much more broad ways than the government, they often tend to adhere to those traditional concepts.”

This is one reason Twitter has appeared to give Trump a wide berth to insult public figures: because it’s the same thing the law does. Even then, York says certain famous people — including Trump — are treated more leniently by Twitter. “I would say that they’re definitely creating an exception for him,” she said.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hinted at a more liberal handling of Trump when he told Wired that its takedown policy accounts for “newsworthiness.” “So we’re not taking something down that people should be able to report on and actually show that this is what the source said,” he said. “It’s really important to make sure that we provide that source for the right reporting, and to minimize bias in articles.”

“The problem for Twitter is going to be … the day that something Donald Trump says on Twitter actually gets somebody killed.” — Mary Anne Franks, University of Miami

The key question is whether Trump should receive more scrutiny or less from moderators as arguably the world’s most powerful human.

On one hand, his tweets — including the insults — indeed constitute newsworthy, political speech that the public has a right to know about. More free speech than a regular citizen, the argument goes, should be permissible. Bolstering this argument is a recently filed lawsuit against Trump from the Knight First Amendment Institute claiming that blocking citizens from his account is restricting their freedom of speech.

“Imagine a world in which the only Trump that we heard was the one that was carefully scripted by lawyers and advisors,” said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and attorney for Edward Snowden. “We would be deprived of invaluable information about the president’s state of mind, about his beliefs, about his erratic tendencies, about his television viewing. This is all information that has provided citizens with a window into who Trump is.”

On the other hand, the weight of Trump’s words as president has graver consequences than in the case of an average user. A mean tweet about Chuck Jones may not constitute harassment if a private citizen writes it. When Trump broadcasts it to 35 million followers, Jones receives threats. Similarly, for a regular citizen to post a gif of Trump beating up a CNN logo or ramming it with a train, it’s considered “punching up”; on the president’s account, it looks like a threat to the press — as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has claimed.

Franks believes Trump’s threats may only intensify in time. “The concern is — especially with this particular president — now you’ve got somebody with an incredible megaphone that can amplify abuse and harassment toward people in a way that’s probably unlike any other person on Twitter,” said Franks. “The problem for Twitter is going to be — and I’m sorry to anticipate that this is probably going to come soon — the day that something Donald Trump says on Twitter actually gets somebody killed. So at that point I think Twitter’s going to have to recalibrate. But until then, I think they’re really going to probably err on the side of leaving things up.”

This puts Twitter in a bind.

Let Trump say what he wants as long as he doesn’t cross any red lines and someone might get hurt. Twitter would then need to explain why it let his harassment slide for so long.

Shut him down and the company may take hits from free speech advocates as well as Trump supporters. What’s more, Trump’s tweets draw millions of users to the service every day. To ban Trump from Twitter would mean the private company loses one of its most valuable users, thereby making itself less relevant in the daily news cycle.

A reasonable first step may be for Twitter to acknowledge that Trump and other public figures are exceptions to its usual rules and codify that in its policies. Twitter and Facebook are not neutral platforms for expression. It was Trump’s election that prompted Mark Zuckerberg to admit as much. Recently GoDaddy and Google cancelled domain registration for neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer for violating their terms of service. Now the rules set by services like Twitter will play a major role in defining what it means to be “modern day presidential.”

With additional reporting by Daniel Cooper, Nicole Lee and Jessica Conditt

Neo-nazi website Daily Stormer briefly resurfaces with Russian domain (updated)

After being rejected by both GoDaddy and Google, neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer resurfaced today with a Russian domain extension. As Vox reports, Stormer’s efforts to secure a Chinese hosting service (DailyStormer.wang) were cut short, so it turned to the Dark Web and then the mainstream internet. A Whois report states that the hosting company is CloudFlare and the IP location is in Arizona. But, the site isn’t online as of publication time.

Ars Technica reports that Stormer has lost its .com privileges entirely.

Stormer is using its Dark Web site (.onion) to direct readers to the current URL. The text on the Dark site promises that the publication will move to the TOR network should the new host take it down, and that it will keep readers updated of any domain changes via the TOR network. Presumably, that’s already happened.

If you’ll remember, Cloudflare is the same host that The Pirate Bay used to mask identifying characteristics of its traffic data. It isn’t a stretch of the imagination that this is why Stormer chose the host. But, just this year the company revealed that it was under a gag order to not reveal a secret FBI subpoena for certain user records. More than that, Tor has come out swinging against CloudFlare for banning traffic from the anonymous web browser.

If today’s brief resurgence is any indication, the racists running Stormer will likely have to retreat to the Dark Web once again.

Update: The Washington Times writes that Cloudflare has terminated its contract with The Daily Stormer, which may be why the site is currently offline.

Via: Vox

Source: Whois