Navigate hands-free while biking with iOttie’s $20 Bike & Bar Phone Mount

Get around with ease and this handy phone mount.

If you’re looking for an easier solution for navigating and using your phone while biking, riding a motorcycle or even taking a walk with a stroller, look no further. The iOttie Active Edge Bike & Bar Mount is currently on sale at Amazon for $19.99, a savings of around $15 off its regular price. This is also the lowest it’s dropped in price there since late 2015. The discount is available on any color of the mount, including Black, Indigo Blue and Electric Lime.

This universal bike & bar mounting system can fit on bars any diameter between 0.85 inches and 1.4 inches. It allows for your phone’s orientation to remain fully adjustable so you can quickly switch from portrait to landscape view. The arms will fit devices with a case that measure up to 3 inches wide and up to 6.5 inches in height. The cradle portion of the mount covers three corners of your device to secure it in place.

Just under 200 customers at Amazon have reviewed this product resulting in an overall rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars.

See at Amazon

An e-waste recycler is going to jail for ‘pirating’ Windows

Eric Lundgren is a renowned innovator in the field of recycling e-waste. The 33-year-old man is the founder of the first electronic hybrid recycling facility in the United States, which uses old mobile phones, computers and other electronics to build new devices. He’s long been an advocate of recycling electronics, and now he’s going to jail for it. According to The Washington Post, Lundgren was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison over restore disks for Windows computers.

These CDs allow users to restore Windows to their computers if their installation is corrupted or wiped. It requires that the person using it already have a license for the operating system; the disk itself does not have a license. While these CDs are distributed for free with the purchase of a computer, people often throw them out or misplace them. The OS can be downloaded onto a licensed computer, but many don’t feel qualified to take that step.

Lundgren realized that people were simply discarding old computers and buying new ones, rather than trying to restore Windows. He decided to begin manufacturing restore CDs that could be sold to computer repair shops for a quarter each. The idea was these shops could give the disks to consumers, who could use them in the future to restore their computers and, as a result, reduce e-waste.

However, things began to go downhill after US Customs got ahold of a shipment of these disks in 2012. They charged Lundgren with conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods, as well as criminal copyright infringement. The premise here was that Lundgren was providing users with a copy of the Windows operating system on these restore disks, but that was untrue. The users needed to have a previously purchased license, or the restore disks wouldn’t work.

While Lundgren argued that these disks had zero value, Microsoft claimed (through a letter and an expert witness) that these were “counterfeit operating systems” and that they had the potential to hurt Microsoft’s sales. The pricing was set at $25 a piece, which was what Microsoft claimed it charged repair shops for these disks. The catch here is that this is the price for a fully licensed operating system, not Lundgren’s version.

Lundgren feels his options have been exhausted (appeal to the Supreme Court would be too pricey) and is resigned to serving his prison sentence. But the real fear here is that this decision is a precedent for software manufacturers that want to prevent users from taking steps to extend the life of their computers. It’s a blow to the cause of e-waste recycling and it certainly seems petty on the part of Microsoft.

Source: Washington Post

Amazon made a kid-friendly Alexa with an Echo Dot to match

Amazon has unveiled the Echo Dot Kids Edition with a custom version of Alexa that will read to kids, play music, answer questions and do other chores. It uses a new flavor of its FreeTime app called FreeTime for Alexa that includes parent controls and family-friendly features that run on any Echo device. It will give kids a different experience than adults; for instance, when they say “please,” it will reply “thanks for asking so nicely” to reinforce their politeness.

FreeTime for Alexa (available in free or subscription versions) will also answer questions differently. The regular version will merely reply “eight” if you ask how many planets are in the solar system, but the kids version will name each planet and explain why Pluto is no longer in the club.

The kid-friendly voice assistant will also allow parents to set time limits, pause Echo devices for homework, limit skills with parental controls, block explicit songs and use the Echo as an intercom. Kids won’t be able to shop with their voice or place phone calls, nor link with apps like Uber and Spotify.

They can, however, listen to family stations on iHeart Radio. FreeTime Unlimited on Alexa also lets kids access to 300 Audible children’s books, set alarm clocks with SpongeBob Squarepants characters, and access premium Alexa skills like Disney Stories, Nickleodeon’s No Way That’s True and National Geographic’s This or That.

All of this sounds fun, but it raises questions around children’s privacy, a hot-button issue at the moment thanks to Facebook, YouTube and other data-collecting apps. Amazon told CNBC that it won’t gather individual data, but information will still go to Amazon since Alexa is a cloud-based service.

Despite those reassurances, a voice service aimed at children might rub many parents the wrong way, as it represents a fairly brazen way for Amazon to get children hooked on its service. Given the ease-of-use factor for kids compared to, say, Siri or Google Assistant, it gives Amazon and edge in turning children into future customers.

The Echo Dot Kids Edition comes in bright primary colors (red, green and blue) and costs $80. To get many of the kid-friendly services, however, you’ll have to subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited for $2.99 a month (for Prime customers). The hardware and the service will both start shipping on May 9th, 2018.

Source: Amazon (1), (2)

Microsoft plans version of Windows 10 for devices with limited storage

A smaller, more pared down version of Windows 10 was spotted in the latest Redstone 5 preview build. Microsoft is calling it Windows 10 Lean and it’s 2GB smaller in size than standard editions of Windows 10 once installed. Missing from this version are the Registry Editor, Internet Explorer, wallpaper, Microsoft Management Console and drivers for CD and DVD drives, and Windows Central notes that the lighter Windows 10 might be designed to ensure tablets and laptops with little internal storage can install Windows 10 feature updates.

Welcome to Windows 10 Lean/CloudE/S (once again?)
This new edition started shipping with this week’s Skip Ahead build (17650)
It seems to be heavily cut down, an x64 clean install is roughly 2 GB smaller than Pro
Its edition ID is 0xB7 which was missing from SDK headers pic.twitter.com/2Sn3SVXeZB

— Lucan (@tfwboredom) April 20, 2018

Additionally, the Redstone 5 preview also features phone-related APIs that support functions like dialing, blocking withheld numbers, video calling, Bluetooth headset support and speakerphone mode, stoking those persistent Andromeda rumors.

The Windows 10 Lean included in the preview build is buggy, according to Windows Central, and it’s important to keep in mind that it’s still in development. There’s no guarantee about what Microsoft will choose to do with it going forward.

Via: ZDNet

Best Buy 4-Day Sale: Save at Least $350 on MacBook Pro and $250 on MacBook Air

Continuing its string of sales this week, Best Buy today launched a new 4-day sale that will end Saturday, April 28 at 11:59 p.m. CT. A variety of Apple products are included in the sale, including iPhone X, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and iPad, with MacBook Pro prices in particular at about the lowest we’ve ever seen.

For the MacBook Pro, students and parents of students can get the latest model with an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and 256GB hard drive for $1,399.99, down from $1,799.99. The $50 Student Deals bonus applies to all current-generation Mac notebooks.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Check out more information on the discounts in the list below:

• iPhone X – Save up to $499.99 with eligible trade-in with Verizon
• MacBook Pro – Save $350–$400 / as low as $1,399.99 with Student Deals
• MacBook Air – Save $250–$300 / as low as $699.99 with Student Deals
• 5th Generation iPad – Save $70–$80 / as low as $259.99 for 32GB Wi-Fi
• 21.5-inch iMac (3.4GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD) – $1,299.99, down from $1,499.99
• Beats Studio3 Wireless Headphones – $239.99 in Blue, down from $349.99
• Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones – $197.99 in Rose Gold, down from $299.99

There are also numerous non-Apple devices on sale for the rest of the week, some of which we’ve rounded up below:

• Get 50 percent off select Apple Watch bands by Exclusive / as low as $7.49
• Bragi The Dash – $99.99, down from $299.99
• Sony XB950B1 Wireless Over-the-Ear Headphones – $99.99, down from $179.99
• Ultimate Ears MEGABOOM – $141.99, down from $299.99

Best Buy also still has a few ongoing trade-in offers for those interested in iPad or Apple Watch. For the iPad, you can get a minimum $125 Best Buy gift card when trading in select previous-generation iPad models. The Apple Watch offer nets you $70 or more to put toward an Apple Watch Series 3 when you trade in any working Apple Watch in-store only.

Head over to Best Buy to shop all of the 4-day sale’s discounts, and then visit our Deals Roundup for more information on other sales and offers happening this week.

Related Roundup: Apple DealsTag: Best Buy
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The latest Harry Potter mobile game puts Hogwarts in your pocket

In Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, which launched today for Android and iOS, players create their own character and progress through seven years of rigorous tutelage at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. They must choose their preferred House, survive potions class with Professor Snape, Transfigure themselves under the supervision of Professor McGonagall and even duel with other students. Not only that, players must also unravel the mystery as to why their in-game older brother was expelled from Hogwarts and reveal the sinister secrets he was pursuing.

The story is set in the 1980s, seven years before The Boy Who Lived enrolled at the school. Players will be treated to appearances from not only their favorite teachers and faculty from the story but also many of the main cast’s elder siblings, like Ron Weasley’s older brother, George.

“You’ll see characters like Professor Dumbledore, Professor Snape, Hagrid, and many more, who’ll appear and interact with the player character, during the game,” Matt London, a senior narrative designer at Jam City, told Engadget during a recent demo. “In addition, there are a bunch of new characters as well, that we’re introducing.”

The gameplay is easy enough that small children can play along. Navigating and interacting with the surrounding environments, whether that’s at Hogwarts proper or down in Diagon Alley, involves little more than taps and swipes of the screen. For example, when learning the Lumos charm from Professor Flitwick, players must trace the wand’s path to complete the spell — in this case, the shape of a caret. Or, when collecting materials for Snape’s potions class, players simple tap on the scene’s highlighted items.

It’s simple, mindless entertainment — about what you’d expect from a casual free-to-play game. The game often felt like a stripped-down version of Bully’s gameplay mechanics with the level of difficulty you’d find in The Simpsons: Tapped Out. It’s certainly not my cup of tea, but if you’re looking for a few minutes of distraction waiting for your bus by delving into the Harry Potter universe, this game serves as an effective time sink.

Beyond simplistic controls and gameplay, Hogwarts Mystery offers a robust avatar creation and customization scheme. “It was super important to us, that all Harry Potter fans feel like they can create a character that looks like them, and know that they belong in Hogwarts,” London explained. “So everything from lip shape, to eyebrow shape, nose shape, all these things are adjustable.” Players can also customize their character’s clothes and hairstyle using the game’s currency (which can be purchased for real-world money or slowly accumulated by completing various in-game tasks).

The game’s major selling point is the sheer scope and depth of its story. The Jam City team spent two years crafting the Hogwarts Mystery script, pouring in countless details, callbacks, and subtle nods from the entire book and film series, including Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

This is an extremely ambitious effort, especially for mobile. There have been at least a dozen other Harry Potter video games released since 2001 and virtually all of them focus on either a single school year or a specific book (like Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince from EA) for their subject matter. Heck, even the LEGO Harry Potter game only covered four school years worth of content at a time. To pack the entire bibliography into a single game, and recreate it so faithfully, is a testament to the Jam City team’s efforts over the past couple of years.

“This script that we’re working on, is fast approaching 200,000 words, and growing, which is longer than the novels,” London said. “It’s not a game that you’re going to want to sit down and play for 12 hours straight. That’s not the way it’s designed. We want players to feel like they have Hogwarts in their pocket all the time, and so, it’s a game that I hope players will play for months, if not for years.”

Even if you wanted to play of 12 hours straight, you simply can’t. The game utilizes a standard free-to-play trope wherein every action the player takes requires a set amount of “energy” which slowly regenerates over time. Once you’ve used up your current allotment, you’ll have to sit tight and wait for it to regrow before continuing.

From the hour-long demo that I watched, this game isn’t going to be challenging anybody’s dexterity or problem solving skills. There are small secrets and easter eggs tucked into the levels, to be sure. But for the most part, the game revolves around completing various tasks within an allotted amount of time, usually between one and eight hours. And even that is designed to be as low stress as possible.

Overall, Hogwarts Mystery is equal parts Choose Your Own Adventure, wherein the choices you make have a lasting impact how the story progresses, and Ready Player One, wherein the storytellers attempt to force as much nostalgia down your gullet as humanly possible. So if you’re looking for challenging fast-paced gameplay, look elsewhere. But if you want to live your best Hogwarts life in a richly-detailed universe faithfully crafted from the Harry Potter universe as JK Rowling herself would have imagined it, then Hogwarts Mystery is well worth a download.

Google joins others in making the gun emoji a water pistol

Google is updating its gun emoji to replace the image of a handgun with that of an orange and yellow water pistol. The change is, according to Emojipedia, rolling out to Android users in an update, and will help to make the squirt gun the de-facto symbol. It’s a big step towards eliminating images of handguns from the language, which was started by Apple in 2016.

The iPhone maker was the first to swap out a glyph of a real weapon for a toy, and other platforms have since followed suit. WhatsApp, Samsung and Twitter have all chosen to abandon symbols representing real weapons in favor of toys. The two holdouts these days are Microsoft, which controversially changed its symbol from a ’50s-style ray-gun to a pistol around the time Apple made its switch, and Facebook.

Microsoft said that it made its switch to ensure that the glyphs it sent were being commonly understood by others. After all, you don’t want to be responsible for symbol conflicts as people talk across platforms to one another. But it’s likely that, now that the tide has traveled the other way, both remaining outfits will seek to align themselves with the friendlier version of the emoji.

Source: Emojipedia

‘Tacoma’ brings space-sleuthing to PS4 on May 8th

Last August, Gone Home developer Fullbright released Tacoma on Xbox One, PC, Mac and Linux. It was an ambitious adventure game set on an empty space station in 2088; you played as a sort of space detective with access to immersive 3D recordings and personal files on crew-member computers. Now, Fullbright has announced that it’s bringing the game to PlayStation 4 on May 8th. The experience will be identical save for a new “Developer Commentary Mode” that includes two hours of writer, designer, artist and programmer insight. If you’re interested, the title is available for pre-order now with 20 percent off the usual asking price.

Source: PlayStation Blog

YouTube’s algorithms couldn’t detect graphic bestiality images

YouTube might have pulled 8.3 million videos violating its guidelines in the fourth quarter of 2017, but the platform is still plagued with various kinds of disturbing content. A new BuzzFeed report, for instance, has revealed that YouTube has been hosting images depicting bestiality for quite a while now. Certain search terms, including “girl and her horse” and “lovely smart girl playing baby cute dogs on rice,” surface videos that use thumbnails of women who seem to be engaging in sexual acts with horses and dogs.

The videos apparently feature women brushing, bathing and taking care of animals, with a camera moving around to take upskirt and crotch shots. An unnamed YouTube employee told BuzzFeed News that the platform’s thumbnail monitoring tech still isn’t as powerful as its video algorithms. He said it probably didn’t catch the bestiality thumbnails, because they lack the usual signifiers associated with typical porn, like human skin.

The employee also told the publication that the thumbnails are similar to the ones made by a Cambodian content farm, which got kicked off the website in 2017. That probably explains why multiple videos share the same explicit image. He said the use of bestiality shows “how the Cambodian content farm tactics are evolving.” One of the other reasons why YouTube might have missed the images is because the videos aren’t monetized, though their uploaders are likely planning to make money off their content in the future. And if YouTube doesn’t stop them, they could make a lot since some of their videos have amassed millions of views in the months they’ve been up on the website.

According to the publication, at least one of the offending accounts (SC Daily) also uploaded those bizarre videos masquerading as kid-friendly content. It said YouTube already started removing the videos featuring bestiality thumbnails, but a quick check shows that they’re still around. Some of them have been up on the website for over half a year, though most have been uploaded merely a few days ago. We even found one using a kid-themed profile and channel name.

In YouTube’s first Community Guidelines enforcement report, it said most of the videos it took down were flagged by its algorithms. Clearly, it has to beef up the algorithm monitoring its thumbnails. For now, you can report any disturbing content you find by going into the video, clicking the ellipsis icon and choosing Report.

Source: BuzzFeed

Philips’ huge 4K monitor is the first with super-bright HDR

DisplayHDR certification assures consumers of an excellent standard of monitor performance, but none have received the top level — until now. Philips’ 43-inch Momentum (436M6) is the first to get HDR1000 approval, guaranteeing a superb 1,000 cd/m2 brightness, deep blacks, 10-bit color depth and an HDR-compliant color gamut. To pull it off, Philips used Quantum Dot tech, much like Samsung uses on its QLED TVs and monitors. It also features Ambiglow technology that puts a halo of light on your walls and floor, matching the content on the screen.

The beauty of DisplayHDR is that you don’t even to look at a product’s specs to know what you’ll get. There are three standards, DisplayHDR 400, 600 and 1000. At the HDR 1000 level, it must put out at least 1,000 cd/m2 of brightness, or 600 cd/m2 over a long duration, around two to four times what you’re getting on your current display. All DisplayHDR levels must also support a 955:1 contrast ratio, 10-bits per color of image processing, and cinema-quality color gamuts.

Naturally, these specs are ideal for watching HDR movies on Blu-ray or Netflix, but also for creating such content in the first place. As such, Philips is offering something called MultiView, which lets you simultaneously connect a PC and set-top box, for instance. That way, you can easily switch between watching Stranger Things and, say, color-correcting Stranger Things, if you happen to work on that show.

The Momentum 436M36 isn’t cheap at $1,000, but it’s in line with the price of other DisplayHDR monitors like the smaller HDR600-certified, $450 HP Pavilion Gaming 32 HDR display. It will arrive sometime this summer.

Source: Philips