Otterbox celebrates ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ with three new phone cases

Like previous Star Wars movies, Otterbox is celebrating the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story with the launch of a slew of new Otterbox Symmetry phone cases. There are three cases in total, each of them celebrating a different aspect of the film.

First up, you have the Millennium Falcon style, which shows the Falcon itself on the back above text that reads “The All-New Millennium Falcon.” The case is blue white and blue. The second case is built for Chewbacca fans, and basically shows Chewie’s face on the back, with a black background. The third and final design basically shows different symbols from the Star Wars universe, including the Star Wars logo, among others.

Want to get your hands on the new cases for yourself? Thankfully, they’re available for a slew of popular phones, including the iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Android fans can still get the cases too — though only if you have the Samsung Galaxy S9 or Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus. Prices for the cases vary depending on the phone that you have, but cases for the smaller phones come at $45, while the larger phone cases come at $55.

This isn’t the first time Otterbox has celebrated the release of a Star Wars movie. In fact, the three new cases join a number of other case designs, including designs of Darth Vader, the Star Wars logo, Stormtroopers, BB-8, and more. Not all cases are available for every phone, but if you have an iPhone 8 or iPhone X you have access to a wide selection of cases. Cases for the Galaxy S9 are available, though the selection is a little more limited, and if you have another Android phone, you’re largely out of luck.

The Otterbox Symmetry series, according to Otterbox, is designed to retain a relatively slim and sleek form while still protecting your device from bumps and scratches. The series isn’t the most protective — but it should work just fine for most day-to-day use. As Otterbox points out, the Symmetry series doesn’t protect against water — though thankfully most of the phones it’s built to protect are water-resistant in the first place.

You can get the new cases for yourself straight from the Otterbox website.

See Otterbox x Star Wars Solo collection

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Xiaomi should bring its air quality monitor to India immediately

Xiaomi’s $75 air quality monitor is an essential commodity for the Indian market.

Air quality in India has deteriorated over the course of the last decade, with Delhi being a prime example of just how bad the situation is in the country. Last winter, the capital witnessed particulate matter (PM2.5) in excess of 500 (that’s because most of the instruments could only record up to 500), making the air toxic. For most major metropolitan cities in India, an air purifier is as essential as an air conditioner or water purifier, and there’s no shortage of products catered to this segment.

Air quality is also terrible in China, with Beijing often credited as the most polluted city on Earth. Xiaomi has been offering a variety of air purifiers in its home market for some time now, and introduced the Mi Air Purifier 2 back in 2016. The company also sells an air quality monitor in China, and having used it for the past month, I’m convinced that Xiaomi should bring the product to India in the near future.

The air quality monitor is the most straightforward Xiaomi product I’ve used yet — it is essentially a small cube with a laser sensor at the back that measures air quality. There’s an OLED display that tells you the PM2.5 count in real time, and you can also hook it up to your home’s Wi-Fi network and see the air quality statistics via the Mi Home app.

Xiaomi’s air quality monitor is portable, reliable, and affordable.

Like most Xiaomi ecosystem products, the air quality monitor is made out of ABS plastic and has a single button at the top for switching the unit on and off.

There’s also the option to link it to Xiaomi’s air purifier, and you can set up rules where the air purifier automatically switches on if the air quality exceeds a certain threshold, and vice versa.

At just 62 x 37 x 62mm and coming in at 100g, the air quality monitor is portable enough that you can use it anywhere, and the battery is good for over two hours of continuous operation (it charges over MicroUSB). I was wary of the device’s performance initially, but it posted results that were consistent with that of a $165 Laser Egg.

For a long time, Indian customers have been enamored by two Xiaomi products outside of its phones — the Mi TV and the Mi Notebook. Xiaomi introduced the former in the country earlier this year, and there’s no word on when (or if) the latter will ever show up in the subcontinent.

It’s easy to see why these are the two products that Xiaomi fans covet the most. TVs and laptops are generally overpriced in India, and with Xiaomi offering the same great value for money with its TV range and the Mi Notebook series as its phones, there’s a lot of interest around these products.

That said, Xiaomi has been very strategic about the products it launches in India, with the manufacturer taking a calculated approach instead of launching its entire portfolio in the subcontinent. In that context, it makes sense for the company to introduce its air quality monitor in India — there’s an addressable need for such a product in the country, and the $75 price tag is a bargain for the quality on offer.

The air quality monitor is particularly useful if you already have the Mi Air Purifier 2, but even if you’re using an air purifier from a different brand, it’s a great product to quickly measure the air pollution in your vicinity. For now, you’ll have to resort to buying the air quality monitor from the likes of Gearbest, but if there’s one product that Xiaomi needs to bring to India immediately, it’s this one.

See at Gearbest

Dropbox gets full-screen iPad navigation and drag-and-drop for iOS

You know how an iPad’s screen real estate is wasted on Dropbox? Well, it’s wasted no more. The file hosting service has rolled out a pretty meaty update for Apple devices, which includes full-screen file navigation for Cupertino’s tablets. Just collapse the preview pane to see files’ full names, so you can be sure you’re clicking on unbelievablylengthyfilename01 instead of unbelievablylengthyfilename02. You’ll also notice that you can now drag and drop files around when you tap and hold them — so long as your device is running iOS 11 — making it easier to arrange them a certain way or organize them in folders.

Another feature bundled with the latest update is the ability to grant access to files while you’re on the go. If a classmate or a colleague asks for permission to access a specific document while you’re on mobile, for instance, you can grant them access through the push notification that pops up. Finally, Dropbox says it has added the ability to edit text for over 120 types of file extensions, giving you a way to edit documents without having to open them on another application or on a computer. All these features are now available on iOS — since they sound especially useful for trips and vacations, simply update your app before you go.

Source: Dropbox

Want to hide your Pornhub browsing? Use digital currency to make payments

Pornhub visitors wanting to keep their monthly subscription off the credit card bill now have an alternative form of payment — cryptocurrency. More specifically, the biggest porn stash on the internet now accepts Verge Currency payments for all goods provided by the site, including the Pornhub Premium subscription service. The move to cryptocurrency is the site’s solution for the need to remain innovative while protecting privacy. 

“Not only is this an exciting announcement for us and the adult entertainment industry, it’s exciting for the crypto space,” Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said in a statement. “History has proven that the adult entertainment industry plays a critical role in adoption for innovative technology. We saw that with VHS, Beta Max, credit card payment icons and, most recently, VR goggles. We expect to see widespread adoption of crypto and blockchain in short order.” 

First launched in 2014 as DogecoinDark, Verge Currency aims to bring private payments to businesses and individuals. It’s an open-source platform designed for “everyday use” and supported by community members versus other cryptocurrencies funded by private companies and initial coin offerings. Verge relies on a TOR-based component that hides your IP address while a second I2P component sends data through an encrypted “tunnel” across the network. 

What is interesting about this specific cryptocurrency is the Wraith Protocol — a technology that enables users to switch between public and private ledgers on the Verge blockchain. With this feature turned on, the blockchain explorer doesn’t see your transaction, thus it’s not linked to your public address. But if the feature is switched off, the blockchain explorer will see your transactions linked to your public address. 

“Verge integrates Tor in its Core, Electrum, and Android wallets, thereby eliminating any single point at which the communicating peers can be determined through network surveillance that relies upon knowing its source and destination,” the Verge Currency site states. 

Along with the main Pornhub site, both Brazzers (adult HD videos) and Nutaku (adult gaming) will start accepting Verge Currency as well.  

The news follows the site’s move to secure HTTPS connections in March 2017. The site said the switch was due to an ongoing effort to increase confidentiality and privacy for visitors. It was also in response to the repeal of internet privacy rules that previously prevented internet service providers from selling browsing histories. 

After that, Pornhub optimized its platform for the visually impaired, such as providing enlarged text, adding keyboard shortcuts, providing customized color contrasts, text descriptions, and more. The company even launched an interactive sex toy portfolio in January combining virtual experiences with adult-oriented fun. These toys not only link to specific videos on Pornhub but also synchronize with each other across the internet. Clearly, Pornhub is trying to stay ahead of the competition.  

“Here at Pornhub, we have always strongly valued innovation and privacy,” Price said. “Our acceptance of Verge is an affirmation of our dedication to innovation and privacy. [We] think Verge, with its focus on anonymity, is the best option whether for privacy, convenience or both.” 

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IRS E-File system crashes on Tax Day, promises to reopen within 8,000 years

The day you’ve been waiting for is finally here. April 17 is Tax Day, America’s favorite holiday, and to celebrate, the Internal Revenue Service experienced an outage. It’s all fixed up now, so congratulations, you can pay your taxes!

Earlier on Tuesday, the website claimed the E-File system was down for scheduled maintenance, with plans to go back up sometime between April 17, 2018, and December 31, 9999.

As Vox points out, it’s likely the E-File outage caused the confusing “scheduled maintenance” error, and it ended up going back up well before its quoted restoration date millennia in the future. The IRS Direct Pay system was also down, so anyone who owed on their taxes was unable to make payments. Again, the system is back up now, so go pay what you owe.

The outage was likely the result of an influx of last-minute tax filings, overwhelming the IRS’ electronic filing system, despite the fact that the IRS sees a massive wave of traffic on Tax Day every year as people scramble to get their taxes in under the deadline.

Reportedly, third party solutions like TurboTax were unaffected, since you can file your taxes through a third party and they’ll just submit them to the IRS’ E-File system when it goes back up.

When we first reported on the outage, the IRS E-File page displayed a simple warning that the system was down.

“The MeF System is down, we are working on this as a priority,” the IRS E-File page warns.

It’s back up now, both the direct pay and E-File systems are fully operational, and it appears the IRS is even extending filing deadlines on account of the unscheduled outage.

“We’ll make sure taxpayers have extensions once the system comes up to make sure they can use it, and it in no way impacts people paying their taxes,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said, according to Bloomberg. “It was just a technical issue we’re working through.”

So, to reiterate, you can now pay your taxes online again and you might even be looking at a bit of an extension. Still, probably get in there and file your taxes before the system goes down again.

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HQ Trivia for Android: Everything you need to know

What you need to get started with the hottest trivia game for Android!

We love trivia games. Whether they be on the television or at the table-top, quiz and trivia games have been a long-time favorite for a lot of people. HQ Trivia is the evolution of everything from those old black and white shows from yesteryear through to today’s newest tech, all mashed together into one heck of a fun app.

HQ can be a lot of fun, and with a chance to win real money — a lot of it — everyone is playing! There are 800,000 to one million players regularly tuned in to the twice-daily show and the most hyped games now regularly surpass two million players, as they did when Dwayne Johnson hosted a $300,000 game to promote Rampage.

April 17, 2018 — App updates and… Robert De Niro on HQ?!?

HQ is starting to roll out a major update to the game that lets you connect with friends in the game. iOS should have already received the update with an update for Android app promised to come “soon”. The new features let you add friends via their username or through your phone contacts. You can keep tabs on how you rank among your friends and swipe right during the game to see who made it past that savage question on Q5.

HQ also teased a special surprise for the April 18 game. See what you can make of these cryptic tweets:

There is a common thread among these tweets that will tell you about a special surprise we have tomorrow… who can figure it out first?

— HQ Trivia (@hqtrivia) April 17, 2018

Nothing has been officially confirmed as of yet, but Twitter users were quick to piece together the clues and conclude that it all points to Robert De Niro co-hosting the next episode. Following up the success of Dwayne Johnson’s guest appearance on the app last week, it would make some sense considering the appearance would coincide with opening night of De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Interested in participating in the HQ phenomenon? Here’s everything you need to get started having fun and winning some cash.

What is HQ Trivia?

Think of HQ Trivia as a live game-show app. It’s very much like Jeopardy! except you don’t have to fly to a TV studio to get in on the action and play.

Twice on weekdays at 3 pm and 9 pm Eastern, a host hands out multiple choice questions on a wide range of topics and you answer as best you can. Get all 12 correct and you win a share of the pot. Get a question wrong, and you’re out for the session and will need to wait until the next round to try again.

You watch and play right from your phone, as it happens in real time, against hundreds of thousands of other players. Prizes range from a few dollars to a whopping $20,000 we saw given away in that Super Bowl game and it goes straight into your PayPal account. It’s a lot of fun and a chance to win real money — two things we all love. Prizes for Sunday night games now regularly top out around $25,000

How to download HQ Trivia

That’s the easiest part! HQ Trivia for Android is officially out of beta so all you need to do is fire up the Google Play Store app!

Downloading and installing HQ Trivia is completely free.

Download HQ Trivia from Google Play (free)

How to sign up

You’ll need a unique username and a phone number to get started with HQ Trivia.

You sign up right inside the app and it is the first thing you’ll be asked to do when you open it. When a game isn’t in session, opening the app tells you when the next one starts and lets you see your total winnings or look through the leaderboards.

Be sure to read the terms and conditions before you go any further, and after you’re properly signed in you are asked f you’d like to receive push notifications letting you know when games are about to begin so you can get in on the action.

How to play

Right now HQ Trivia is free to play and free of any ads. Make sure you’re signed in on your phone and every day at 9 pm and weekdays at 3 pm all you need to do is open the app to get started.

You’ll be asked a question and given three possible answers. Questions cover just about every topic imaginable and just like the game shows you’ll see on TV they can be hard or they can be easy, but get progressively more trivial as the game goes on. Answer correctly before the 10-second timer runs out and you move to the next question. Get it wrong or take too much time and you’re out of the game, but can keep watching to see how many people win.

There’s a live chat during each game if you want to be a little social, but you can also swipe it off the screen if it gets too distracting. Even if you get eliminated early you can keep watching — and finding out how many lucky dogs make it to the winner’s circle is the fun part!

Extra lives

Like any good game worth its salt, HQ Trivia gives you extra lives.

If you have an extra life while you’re playing a game, you get a chance to answer a question wrong or take too much time and not be ejected from the game. If that happens and you have an extra life on your account, you’ll get the option of spending your extra life to stay in the game. You can only spend one extra life per game so make them count!

You earn extra lives by referring your friends to HQ Trivia. For example, if you used the referral code mousemachine I’d get a free life. Go ahead and try, I’ll let you know if it worked.

How much can I win?

A lot! While HQ Trivia is free to download and play, you can win real money if you make it to the end of a game.

The cash prize for a basic weekday game starts at $5,000 and is split evenly between everyone who survived the 12-questions. On the rare occasion that everyone is eliminated, the prize rolls over to the next game. It keeps going until someone wins. Sunday games are typically in the $25,000 range or more and often go up to 15 questions and HQ has started regularly involving a special guest host for Wednesday games with the cash pool rising exponentially. Most recently, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson hosted a $300,000 game in part to promote his film Rampage, and HQ regularly drops hints about future surprises on Twitter.

HQ used to have you wait until you hit the $20 mark you can cash out via PayPal, but they’ve changed the rules so you can cash out your winnings no matter the prize amount. You won’t need to enter a credit card or pay anything to play.

Update April 2018: Added information about the Robert DeNiro rumors and updated the guide with the latest figures from the biggest HQ games to date.

Sonos will sell red, yellow and green One speakers for a limited time

Sonos speakers, for the most part, have been limited to two shades, black and white, which is a result of the brand’s desire for its devices to blend in with the home rather than stand out. Well those looking for a little bit of color now have their opportunity as Sonos has just announced a partnership with Danish brand Hay, resulting in a speaker line with red, yellow and green options.

The Hay Sonos One Limited Edition Collection features hues in line with Hay’s 2018 palette. “Color is one of the most important tools in the design process, and it was very important we didn’t just create a color scale that looked beautiful,” Hay co-founder Mette Hay said in a statement. “Colors can hide completely and disappear or provide contrast.” In 2015, Sonos launched a blue speaker in partnership with Blue Note Records.

Though there’s a pink option in the image above, The Verge reports that it won’t actually be for sale. The Hay line of Sonos One speakers will be available in September and the speakers are priced at $229.

Source: Sonos

YouTube details how its updates help creators get paid

YouTube knows creators are worried about being demonetized without warning, and it’s experimenting with new methods to prevent those rude surprises. As part of a broader piece discussing efforts to improve relations with creators, company chief Susan Wojcicki said YouTube is piloting a video upload process that has you supplying “specific information” about your clip as it relates to “advertiser-friendly” guidelines. If you know your video will include a lot of risqué material, you can let YouTube know in advance so that you’re less likely to lose ads.

In a “sneak peek” posted earlier in the month, the service hinted at what that information could include. It would touch on not just the nature of the content, but the level of it. Is there a lot of sex, violence, drug use, firearm , hateful language or profanity? The process would also include more generalized questions about the age-appropriateness of the clip and its connection to “sensitive current events.” There’s no guarantees these questions made it into the pilot (or will make it to an official launch), but they indicate what YouTube is looking for.

Wojcicki stressed that this is far from the only method involved in reviewing videos, as algorithms and human reviewers will still play a part. It knows there will be dishonest types who understate the provocative nature of their uploads. For truthful creators, though, this could be a tremendous asset. It might reduce the chances of YouTube mistakenly demonetizing clips. YouTube itself could benefit, too, as it might see fewer advertisers pulling out over fears their commercials will run alongside offensive videos.

The larger piece, meanwhile, acknowledged that YouTube needed to open (and has been opening) a line of dialogue with creators that didn’t really exist before. It’s now replying to creators six times as often and running a Creator Insider channel for behind-the-scenes info. There’s a test for sponsorship deals that provides an alternative to ad revenue. The company is likewise taking more steps to enforce and tighten its policies, and sharpening the focus of its educational resources (such as helping to avoid “creator burnout”). In short: it knows it can’t just dictate changes and expect its community to accept them.

Source: YouTube Creator Blog, Creator Insider (YouTube)

Scientists think these meteorite diamonds formed on a long-lost planet

Scientists studying a meteorite fragment that fell to Earth in 2008 have found evidence that suggests it may have originated from a Mercury-sized planet that no longer exists. The makeup of a meteorite — the elements it contains, what ratios they’re in — can usually point us to where it came from, like say the moon or Mars. But there are a set of meteorites, including the one collected in 2008, that have no known origin, appearing to be from a planetary body that has since been destroyed and purged from our solar system. “These samples are coming from an era that we don’t have any access to,” Farhang Nabiei, a researcher on the project, told The Washington Post.

To get a better idea of this meteorite’s history, scientists used transmission electron microscopy to study its composition and they found deposits of chromite, phosphate and iron-nickel-sulfide trapped within diamonds contained in the meteorite. And those observations gave them some clues as to how the diamonds formed. Their work was published today in Nature Communications.

Diamonds are often found in this family of meteorites, but they’re usually pretty tiny. And researchers say there are three main ways they can form — during a major collision, through the deposit of chemical vapor or through sustained high pressure and temperature, like the way diamonds form here on Earth. The size of the diamonds in this meteorite, which were larger than others’, aren’t compatible with the first two methods, meaning they likely formed through high pressure within some sort of major astronomical body. And the metal deposits found within them would likely have formed in a young planet at least the size of Mercury and maybe as large as Mars, according to the researchers.

Models have predicted that a number of protoplanets existed during the early years of our solar system and that through accretions and collisions helped form the existing terrestrial planets and some of their moons. Though there’s no way to know what exactly happened to the “lost” planet that formed these diamonds, it was likely destroyed through collisions billions of years ago. But it’s history is part of our history. “This is part of the story of how we came to be,” said Nabiei.

Via: EPFL

Source: Nature Communications

EU may follow US push for easier data sharing across borders

Last month, US lawmakers passed legislation updating how law enforcement gets access to native companies’ data held overseas. The new CLOUD Act, as it’s called, had its supporters (big tech corporations like Apple, Google and Engadget’s parent company Oath) and detractors (privacy advocates like the EFF) and redefines how the US negotiates with other nations for corporate information — including text messages, emails and documents. Now the European Commission has proposed its own version of those rules to speed law enforcement access to data.

Ideally, this will smooth over a process that was so slow and unwieldy that it’s lead to conflict between US and EU authorities, as happened when American authorities unsuccessfully tried to wrest data from Microsoft that was located in Ireland. While the tech titan won that legal challenge, as it happens, the Supreme Court dropped the appeal-in-process earlier this week, as the CLOUD Act essentially ensured Microsoft and other companies won’t be able to enact the same defense next time. Per the new law, US authorities can request that information.

Under the EU proposal, online service providers would be required to respond to authorities’ requests within ten days — or, in emergencies, within six hours. Both are far quicker than the 120-day limit for the existing European Investigation Order used to ask for data. Authorities would also be able to command companies not to delete certain information while the request is being processed. Compliance is mandatory; The existing ‘voluntary cooperation’ model created too many challenges for companies and increased the uncertainty of law enforcement data requests.

The EU proposal only allows requests for ‘electronic evidence,’ which includes everything from communications to subscriber and traffic data, that is relevant to criminal investigations. Crucially, it only applies to stored information, not intercepting it in transit. Much like the US CLOUD Act, it establishes safeguards to protect user privacy. But according to the proposal’s FAQ, the judge allowing the request will likely have to make the final call about whether it violates laws and interests of the country hosting the data.

The European Parliament needs to vote on the proposal before it becomes law, and may amend it along the way.

Via: The Wall Street Journal

Source: The European Commission