No more service fees and wait times: Fix your electronics yourself for $7

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time with a deal on an awesome screwdriver set!

Jackyled’s 45 in 1 Precision Screwdriver Set is currently available at Amazon for just $6.92 when you enter promo code ZDAU28AE at checkout to save $4 off this item’s regular price.

Featuring a tweezer, handle, extension bar and 42 screwdriver bits, this set is a great option for repairing smaller objects like phones, laptops, watches or eyeglasses. It comes with a non-slip cover for the handle to assist your grip while you work, and the bits are magnetic which helps keep them securely attached to the handle.

This tool set has a 4.5 out of 5-star ranking on Amazon and is a #1 Best Seller on the site.

Need some repair tips? Check out iFixit which provides tons of repair tutorials for common tech.

See at Amazon

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For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

Samsung’s next Gear Fit will let you plumb the briny depths and listen to music without your phone

Samsung’s next Gear Fit fitness band will include standalone GPS and offline Spotify playback.

Like its phones and tablets, Samsung makes different wearables to fit different roles. One of these roles is the traditional watch, filled by the Gear S line. The other is that of a fitness band, filled by the Gear Fit line. The first Gear Fit tracker was announced in early 2014, and Samsung has been steadily improving the line since then.

Most of the time, Samsung announces a new Gear device when it announces a new Galaxy flagship, and it looks like that will be the case again. According to VentureBeat, Samsung will announce the Gear Fit2 Pro alongside the upcoming Galaxy Note 8 on August 23. The wearable is said to be IP68 dust- and water-resistant, an important factor for a fitness-focused device. It will also be submersible to 5 atmospheres of pressure (5 ATM), or approximately 130 feet. So you should have no problem using it at the local pool.

Another great addition is the ability to download and listen to your Spotify playlists without needing your phone, which will be great for users who want to leave their phone at home or in the car during their workout. There’s also the standard step and workout tracking, as to be expected. The fitness band also includes standalone GPS for tracking long runs without a phone. VentureBeat claims this data backs up to the Speedo On application, but that application does not currently exist in the Play Store. It’s also hard to imagine Samsung wouldn’t use its existing health app. Finally, it looks like the clasp will provide a much more secure fit (pun intended).

There’s no word on availability or pricing just yet, but we should find out soon enough. Are you looking forward to the new Samsung Gear Fit2 Pro? Let us know down below!

Learn more about the Samsung Gear Fit2Pro!

How did Amazon screw up the Echo Show’s best feature so badly?

Echo Show is good at showing headlines, but very bad at showing anything that’s actually important. And that’s a problem.

It’s Sunday morning. Past the breakfast hour and closing in on lunch. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to make myself feel better after seeing the carnage in Charlottesville, N.C., and the predictable responses on Twitter and Facebook and from our political leaders. It’s times like these that I don’t want to think at all about tech toys. (And to be clear, this is hardly the first time. Or the second. Or the third. And I’m hardly alone in this feeling.)

But something stood out as I stood in the kitchen making breakfast. And it took me a few hours before I realized what it was.

It was the Amazon Echo Show. Alexa with a screen. I’d chuckled a little earlier in the day reading blogger-turned-investor-turned-blogger M.G. Siegler’s “Quick Thoughts on Amazon’s Echo Show.”

What really sold me was that while I was making coffee, it was next to me displaying news headlines. … This sounds obvious. I mean, we all walk around every single day with devices in our pockets that can access any information — including news headlines — at any time. But there’s something profound about having it pushed to you in an ambient way.

I agree. And once you’re bludgeoned with information the way I was at a newspaper starting from 19 years old — it was my job to try to tame the waterfall — it’s a hard habit to give up. Echo Show is perfect for this. Or, rather, it can be. Eventually.

If it’s not timely, and it’s not important, then why is it being pushed in front of my eyes?

I can say this with certainty: The afterglow of Echo Show headlines will wear off pretty quickly. Maybe it’ll be when you wonder why you’re seeing a headline that’s two hours old (an eternity in online news time). Or maybe it’s when you’ve seen 13 headlines in a row that you just don’t care about. The image at the top of this post — promoting a “Game of Thrones” Episode 5 preview, is showing the day after the episode aired. What good is that?

Or maybe it’s the morning after a domestic terrorist event when you’re walking through the kitchen and don’t see a single headline about it on the Echo Show.

That’s right. Not a word about Charlottesville and the racist Nazis who directly contributed to the death of a woman. (And indirectly to the deaths of two law enforcement officers whose helicopter crashed.)

Not a single headline that I saw in the morning. Or in the 10 minutes I left a camera trained at the Echo Show.

Something about the #EchoShow headlines on Sunday morning struck me as odd. … Catch what’s missing? pic.twitter.com/BOf36vsa2d

— Phil Nickinson (@mdrndad) August 14, 2017

As I’m writing most of this piece about 9 hours later, I still don’t see any headlines about Charlottesville. … Fast-forward to Monday morning. … Still nothing. No headlines. No videos. No still images.

Echo Show isn’t exactly a font of information just yet. At least nothing timely. Or of any real import.

Does Amazon worry about our showing us anything remotely provocative? Or is it just bad at this?

The question now is why. I don’t think Amazon’s doing anything nefarious here. And I don’t even think it’s about Charlottesville or the current political landscape. I think it’s probably more a matter of not wanting to surface anything too provocative or potentially upsetting. And there’s something to be said for that.

In fact, that’s pretty much what Amazon said for that when I asked. Here’s a quote from a company representative:

For trending topics on Echo Show, we primarily surface lifestyle, entertainment, and sports news since it’s a communal device that the whole family sees and uses. If customers want to hear business or political news, we offer the daily Flash Briefing which offers a variety of news outlets to choose from. As with everything we do, the Echo Show trending topics experience will continue to improve and evolve over time based on customer feedback.

Fair enough, though I’d still argue the world ain’t always a pretty place. It’s not really protecting anyone here.

The good news is that this is an easy problem to fix. In lieu of actually improving the headlines feature itself, Amazon could let the user tailor the options. More news, less fluff. More from one source over another. It’s limitless, really.

The problem right now is that the Echo Show headlines are extremely limited. And dated. And that just makes Echo Show — and Amazon — look silly and out of touch.

Amazon Echo

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See at Amazon

Get Google’s own contacts app on any Android phone

Until now, the only normal way to get Google’s official, dedicated Android contacts app was to pick up a Pixel, Nexus or Android One phone. Many third-party apps could fill in the gaps, but it wasn’t what Google had planned. However, you no longer have to turn to alternatives. Google has released Contacts on the Play Store for any device running Android 5.0 Lollipop or newer. If you’re no fan of the contacts interface on your Galaxy S8, you can see how Google handles it instead.

The software is mainly helpful for its tight integration. It’s potentially ideal if you have multiple Google accounts, since it’s easy to switch between them. Contacts likewise gives you a consistent interface between your phone and the web, and it ties closely into third-party apps like Facebook. The most recent version has also added automatic suggestions for contact info and can merge duplicates. There’s enough here that it might be worth giving Google’s approach a try, even if it’s just to confirm that you prefer another app.

Via: Android Police, 9to5Google

Source: Google Play

Four people arrested in India for leaking latest ‘Game of Thrones’ episode

HBO’s Game of Thrones has suffered a couple of leaks lately, with episodes of the hit show released to the internet before their scheduled air date. According to a new report at AFP News, however, four individuals in India have been arrested, though not for the most recent hack, according to Entertainment Weekly. Deputy Commissioner of Police Akbar Pathan told AFP that the arrest was for “unauthorized publication of the fourth episode from season seven.”

The four people will be detained until August 21st, said Pathan, under investigation for “criminal breach of trust and computer-related offenses.” The case was filed by a Mumbai-based company that stores and processes the HBO shows for an app; the accused were company employees who had access to the files. We’ve reached out to HBO for comment on this matter and will update the post when we hear back.

Via: Entertainment Weekly

Source: AFP News

Softlab transforms ’empty’ space with light and mirrors

Recently, Engadget visited The Lab, HP’s trippy art exhibition incongruously placed in the middle of the Panorama Music Festival in NYC. It proved surprisingly popular among festival-goers thanks to the visual and auditory sensory experiences (and possibly because illegal substances were involved). One in particular stood out from a technological and artistic point of view, however: “Volume,” an installation by NYC’s SOFTLab.

The installation (below) is made up of 100 mirrored panels that move individually through custom servos, tracking viewers as they move around them via a depth camera array. “Using a weighted average of the various people being tracked, the mirrors rotate to face the nearest person,” SOFTLab explains. Those mirrors reflect only the light and the viewers, thanks to the sparse setting around them.

Meanwhile, LEDs controlled by microphones move the mirror panels up and down based on the ambient sound coming from around the installation. The overall effect is of light pulsing and swarming back and forth, with mirrors reflecting the spectators in weird slices, all set to appropriately spacey music.

The whole thing is controlled by a computer with a visual interface depicting the mirrors that can be rotated in 3D. It can be tweaked for greater intensity and the number of exhibition viewers. (For more on how the exhibit was done technically, check out the making-of video.)

Like the other Panorama installations, Volume was designed to invoke “whoa” reactions from the viewers and present good selfie opportunities. However, you can read more into it if you’re into techie art. “The installation was inspired by the ability of light and sound to form space through reflection and their dependence on atmosphere,” SOFTLab points out. In other words, it’s meant to make us think a bit more about space that we normally consider empty.

The designers aim to show that it’s a good thing it’s not empty. “Small changes in this volume of transparent material allows light and sound to move through space,” it notes. “The mirrors in our installation represent these particles acting in harmony to challenge and enhance what we see.”

To look at it another way, the exhibition is showing that there’s often more behind things than what you can see. By tracking your movement and sounds, and responding dramatically in kind, “Volume” illustrates neatly that the shallow way we often perceive things and people can completely change how they behave in return.

Via: Design Boom

Source: Softlab

Google is reportedly testing a long overdue UI update for Calendar

Google Calendar might finally be getting a much needed update. The Next Web is reporting that some users’ Calendars have a whole new user interface that’s seemingly based on Google’s Material Design language. Some of those with access to the redesigned desktop version have been posting to Reddit, providing screenshots of the UI and information about its functionality.

Google launched Material Design in 2014 and has been using it as the basis for a number of updates across its product line including YouTube, Chrome, Search and Inbox. It’s sort of surprising that it has taken this long for Material Design to reach Calendar, but the images from Reddit users show a cleaner, more appealing design that brings Calendar in line with other Google sites and apps.

It’s unclear when Google plans to roll out the new Calendar to everyone, but we’ve reached out to the company for more information. We’ll update this post when we have more.

Source: The Next Web

Google cancels neo-Nazi site’s registration in a matter of hours

If the white supremacists at Daily Stormer thought they were going to get a warm reception from other web service providers after GoDaddy gave them the boot, they were clearly mistaken. Google says it’s cancelling the neo-Nazi website’s domain registration a mere 3 hours after it signed up. A Google spokesperson tells us that DS was “violating our terms of service.” The domain is still listed as registered with Google as of this writing, but it’s likely going to take some time before the change is reflected in public databases.

Google isn’t publicly elaborating on why it’s pulling the plug, but GoDaddy said it dropped the registration after DS posted an article attacking the character of Heather Heyer, the anti-racism protester murdered when a white supremacist rammed demonstrators with his car. The piece wasn’t shy about condoning the attack, and GoDaddy argued that the site could incite more attacks as a result. Google undoubtedly feels the same way — it doesn’t want to be associated with a site that’s effectively encouraging murder.

It’s unclear where the site will try to register next, although it’s safe to say that any major domain registration service is going to balk at the idea from now on. However, the incident does highlight one of the pitfalls of automated domain transfers like Google’s, which can switch a site over in a matter of minutes. They’re convenient for the vast majority of users, but they can be problematic when egregious offenders transfer domains with little warning.

Source: Reuters (CNBC)

UK cybersecurity researcher pleads not guilty to malware charges

Marcus Hutchins, the British cyber security researcher who won attention for helping to halt the spread of the WannaCry malware program earlier this year, has just entered a plea of not guilty for a set of unrelated charges. Hutchins was arrested by the FBI at the Def Con security conference in Las Vegas and was due for arraignment in a Milwaukee court last Friday. The arraignment was postponed until Monday, August 14th, which is when Hutchins entered his plea.

According to Reuters, US prosecutors have charged Hutchins and an unnamed co-defendant for advertising, distributing and profiting from malware code, “Kronos,” that would let attackers access bank accounts and credit cards from people who downloaded it from an email attachment. While the court case is still pending, the prosecutors claim that Hutchins has already admitted to writing the malware. The 23-year old’s lawyer told Reuters that Hutchins is a “brilliant young man and a hero” and that he will “vigorously defend himself against these charges, and when the evidence comes to light, we are confident he will be fully vindicated.”

Source: Reuters

Alleged Microsoft memo says Surface reliability issues are fixed

Last week, Consumer Reports removed its “recommended” rating from four of Microsoft’s Surface laptops and tablets, citing reliability concerns: 25 percent of the 90,000 users they surveyed reported freezing and shutdowns in the first couple years of device use. The tech giant took issue with the publication’s data and reported significantly lower failure rates. But a company VP allegedly sent an internal memo picking apart which device failures tipped the scales and caused Consumer Reports to slam the whole Surface family.

In a post on his site Thurrott, tech journalist Paul Thurrott described the memo. Written by Microsoft vice president Panos Panay, it reaffirmed that all current Surface devices enjoy low failure rates and high customer satisfaction. However, two devices released concurrently in 2015, the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, had significant return rates soon after they launched (as seen in the graph below). Irate consumers complaining about these products from this time frame might have been disproportionately represented in Consumer Reports’ survey data, Panay suggested.

Why the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book had such high “failure” rates is a story unto itself: Competing narratives from inside sources blame either Intel’s then-new Skylake generation of chips that Microsoft loaded into those devices, or that the tech company just flubbed when creating custom drivers and settings for its hybrid devices, Thurrott recalled.

Commitments to improve later devices paid off, Panay continued in the memo, which is reflected in the lower return rates for more recent Surface devices. Across the whole product family, Surfaces currently have less than one percent of “incidents per unit.” Panay also took issue with what Consumer Reports’ considers a ‘failure:’ Frozen screens or unresponsive touch are minor incidents that the user can easily fix.

Whether they should have to or not apparently didn’t reflect the other metric Panay brought up: That Surface products beat competing devices with consistently-higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS), a version of customer satisfaction measuring whether consumers would recommend others buy the same model. But that isn’t the same as reliability, which is what Consumer Reports was originally surveying, Thurrott points out.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft to confirm the existence of this memo as it’s described and will report when we hear back. But Thurrott has a good history of uncovering information ahead of time, like when he revealed that Microsoft’s Hololens wouldn’t be released ahead of 2019.

Source: Thurrott