Cyanogen Inc. reportedly laying off 20% of staff in major restructuring

New reports claim that Cyanogen Inc. may have laid off as much as 20% of its staff. One of those reports claims the company could be switching its strategy away from OS development to focus on apps.

Android Police stated:

The layoffs most heavily impact the open source arm of the Android ROM-gone-startup, which may be eliminated entirely (not CyanogenMod itself, just the people at Cyanogen Inc. who work on the open source side).

Recode adds that the moves were made by Lior Tal, who joined Cyanogen as its new COO in June. It also says that many of the company’s top executives have departed in the past several weeks. So far, Cyanogen has yet to confirm any of these reports.

Amazon Echo can now offer you comedy from The Daily Show

Thanks to its latest round of updates, the Amazon Echo connected speaker can now offer the unique political humor and current events topics from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Amazon says:

With convention season in full swing, you can now get a regular dose of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Alexa. Hear a highlight clip from the latest episode or get the upcoming guest list. Just ask, “Alexa, enable The Daily Show skill,” and “Alexa, ask The Daily Show for news.”

If you like comedy, you can also ask the Echo to tell you a dog or a cat joke. Owners can also ask the Amazon Echo to play Morning Edition via TuneIn if they need more serious news stories.

Amazon Echo

• Read our updated review
• Get the latest news
• Join the discussion
• Download the Echo app

Amazon

Paramount signs up to release more movies with DTS:X audio

We got a chance to hear the audio capabilities of DTS:X at CES in 2015, but there haven’t been many movies released that way so far. Now Paramount seems ready to change that, signing up with DTS to release a “collection” of films with the multi-dimensional audio encoding applied. Some of the Blu-rays are already on shelves, like The Big Short and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, but there should be more on the way. Like Dolby Atmos, DTS:X is supposed to align audio in a way that fits with where your speakers are actually positioned, and as we saw in our demo, allows for features like turning up the volume on dialogue without affecting other sounds.

DTS says a number of home theater manufacturers (Denon, Marantz, Sony, Trinnov and Yamaha) have added support for the format recently via firmware updates, while others (Acurus, Anthem, ARCAM, Integra, Krell, McIntosh, Onkyo, Outlaw Audio, Pioneer, Steinway Lyngdorf and Theta Digital/AT) have updates coming later this year. Of course, if you prefer to skip the discs and receivers, DTS and Paramount also mention that “select” titles will be available with DTS Headphone: X soundtracks on streaming.

Source: DTS

Celeb hacker who stole nude images gets six months in prison

Andrew Helton from Oregon pleaded guilty to hacking celebs’ emails and stealing explicit images earlier this year. Now, District Judge John A. Kronstadt has sentenced him to six months in prison and two years of supervised release. According to Assistant United States Attorney Stephanie S. Christensen, the defendant “targeted, baited and hooked” not just celebrities, but also acquaintances with phishing emails for over two years. He also kept the nude and intimate photos he stole in his own computer. tried Christensen tried to convince the judge to hand the accused a year-long prison sentence. Helton’s celebrity victims remain unnamed, because the source for that massive nude photo leak dubbed as “The Fappening” was another hacker altogether.

Ryan Collins, a Pennsylvania native, also admitted that he phished celebrities and stole explicit images earlier this year. The images he pilfered, including those of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, were the ones that were distributed online. Helton’s case preceded Collins’ — he was arrested back in 2013 — and authorities believe his collection was at least never made public.

While Christensen fought for a year-long sentence, Helton’s lawyer said his client shouldn’t be sent to prison at all. He argued that the defendant was suffering from a mental illness during the time of the incident and only used the most basic phishing technique. Helton sent out emails that looked like they were from Apple and Google, asking the victims to verify their accounts by clicking on a link that led to a fake website. “There was no expertise involved. All I did was essentially copy and paste,” the defendant said, serving as a reminder that we really should pay more attention to the links we click.

Via: The Huffington Post

Source: AP

How to set up a 5.1 home theater system with Sonos for Android

Get BIG home theater sound with Sonos!

Sonos speakers are smart. “How smart?” you ask.

So smart that, when you combine a Sonos Playbar, Sub, and either two Play:1s, two Play:3s, or two Play:5s (gen 2), you can turn all the individual components into a bumpin’ home theater system!

Note: Your rear surround speakers must both be the same model or this just won’t work.

There are a couple different ways to do this, especially if you have an existing system that you’re adding to. We’re going to show you the easiest way to set this up. Here we go!

How to set up a 5.1 surround home theater system with Sonos for Android

To make life easier, you’re going to want to factory reset all of the speakers that you have set up already.

Once that’s done we’re going to start by setting up the Playbar, which will prompt the setup of the rest of your home theater system.

Launch the Sonos Controller app from your Home screen or from the app drawer.
Tap Set Up a New Sonos System.
Tap Next on the welcome screen.

Tap Standard Setup so everything stays wireless.

Tap Next on the “Standard Setup” screen.
Tap Set up this player. Choose the Playbar from the list, if it prompts you.
Follow the on-screen instructions.

Tap Next.

Tap I see an orange light once you see the orange light flashing on the side of the Playbar.
Tap Next on the “Wireless Setup” screen.
Enter your Wi-Fi password into the field.

Tap Continue.

Tap Next once the Playbar has been added to your network.
Tap the dropdown menu.
Tap the room in which you’ll have your home theater setup.

Tap Next.

Tap Next once your TV is turned off.
Tap Add a Sub.

Tap Next once you have plugged in your Sub. As the screen says, it can take up to 30 seconds for it to register (it’s not kidding).

Follow the on-screen instructions.
Tap Next once the Sub has been added.

Tap Add Surrounds.

Swipe left and right to choose which players you have.
Tap Set up these players, once you’ve chosen the Sonos model that you have.
Tap Next on the “Add Left Surround” screen, once you’ve placed the speaker where you like it.

Follow the on-screen instructions.

Tap Next on the “Added Left Surround” screen.
Tap Next on the “Add Right Surround” screen.

Follow the on-screen instructions.

Tap Next on the “Added Right Surround” screen.
Tap Next on the “Audio Setup” screen.

Tap Next once you have moved to a central location in the room from which you will watch TV.

Tap the play button to start the Sub test sounds.

• Tap No Difference if the alternating tones don’t change in volume.
• Tap A is louder if the Sub sounds louder when the letter “A” is highlighted.
• Tap B is louder if the Sub sounds louder when the letter “B” is highlighted.

Tap the play button to start the bass tones.
Tap the bass setting that is most pleasing to your ear.

Tap Next.

You will be asked how far away from you your left and right surround speakers are. Tap one of the following options:

• Less than 2 feet
• 2 feet to 10 feet
• More than 10 feet

Tap Next on the “Audio Setup” screen.

Tap Next on the “TV Sound” screen, once your Playbar is connected to your television via optical cable.

Tap Next once you have your TV turned on to a movie or show.
Tap Next after setting your TV speakers to external. This can be done using your remote in your TV’s sound settings.

Tap Next.

Tap Successfully disabled, once you have your audio output set to external speakers.
Tap Next.

Tap Next on the “Remote Control Setup” screen.

Follow the on-screen instructions.
Tap Next once your remote is set up.

Press the volume button on your TV remote and tap an option.

• A message is displayed
• A volume level is displayed

• Nothing is displayed

  

Tap Next on the “TV Messages” screen.
Tap Add Another Player if you wish to do so and follow steps 3-13. Otherwise, tap Not Now.

Tap Next on the “Sonos Registration” screen.

Enter your email address.
Check or uncheck the checkoxes, depending on whether or not you’d like to receive software and company emails from Sonos.

Tap Next.

Tap Use Current Location to allow Sonos to use your location as part of the registration process.
Enter your zip/postal code.
Tap Next.

Check or uncheck the checkbox, depending on whether or not you’d like to send usage data to Sonos.

Tap Next.
Tap Next on the “Registration Complete** screen.

Tap Set Up Music Services if you wish to set up a music service. Otherwise, tap Skip to Sonos Menu.

It was a long road, but we got there! Now you can enjoy immersive 5.1 surround sound thanks to Sonos!

Xenon detector finds no dark matter after 20-month study

Despite being buried a mile under the South Dakota surface and isolated in rock and water for 20 months, the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter sensor failed to detect anything. While this is yet another unsuccessful attempt to observe the mysterious substance that makes up four-fifths of the universe’s mass, at least the findings will help the next hunt.

The scientists, who ran the experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, presented their results yesterday at the International Dark Matter conference in Sheffield, UK. While it’s possible that the LUX failed to pick up dark matter while it was active from 2014 to 2016, the researchers are confident that any of it passing through would have been caught. Already the most sensitive detector of the substance during its first run in 2013, the LUX team pushed its performance to four times its original project goals.

As its title implies, the core of the LUX detector is xenon — one-third of a ton of it, cooled to a liquid state and isolated from other interactions by keeping it deep underground and encased in a 72,000-gallon tank of water. The idea was that the leading theoretical candidate for dark matter, weakly interactive massive particles (WIMPs), pass through our bodies all the time but don’t react. But if they collide with xenon atoms, they would theoretically produce small flashes of lightning, which external sensors would catch. Alas, no interactions were recorded in the detector’s 20-month run.

Despite that setback, the project’s scientists haven’t scrapped the WIMP idea: the long-run experiment just eliminated a large swath of mass-ranges and interaction-coupling strengths where the particles might exist, the team said in a statement. Unfortunately, this may leave the door wide open for the Large Hadron Collider to be the first to observe dark matter in its experiments later in 2016, which the LUX team had been racing for three years.

Should CERN’s colossal atom smasher not achieve it either, the next generation of xenon detectors will be the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, which will have ten tons of the element and expect to achieve 70 times the sensitivity of the original LUX. The more advanced model is expected to be ready for its own dark matter search in 2020.

Via: Scientific American

Source: Sanford Underground Research Facility blog

No surprise here: Pokemon Go breaks App Store record, Apple says

Pokemon Go has taken over the world, and Apple’s App Store, apparently.

Apple has confirmed to Polygon, The Verge, iMore, and a bunch of other places that the augmented-reality game has broken a record by being the most downloaded game in its first week than any other app in history. There are of course no concrete numbers floating around, but Pokemon Go has been sitting in Apple’s top-free and top-grossing charts since launching last week.

It’s therefore beating giants like Game of War, Candy Crush Saga, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat. According to mobile analytics company SuperData Research, Pokemon Go likely earned as much as $14 million by 11 July, meaning it took in a daily revenue of about $2 million. Other estimates put the game’s revenue between $1 million to $2.3 million a day during its first week.

Inverse reported that an App Annie analyst thinks the game might make a billion dollars a year after all the server issues are ironed out and it becomes available around the globe. App Annie and VentureBeat also said it is the fastest mobile game to hit the number one spot for revenue on mobile stores. Check out Pocket-lint’s round-up of other mind-boggling facts about Pokemon Go.

We’ve reached out to Niantic Labs, the game’s developer, and The Pokemon Company for specific numbers and will update when we know more.

• Pokemon Go: How to play and other tips and tricks
• Help! Pokemon Go isn’t working: How to fix common Pokemon Go problems
• Can’t get Pokemon Go in your country yet? Here’s how to download it now
• What is Pokemon Go and why is everyone talking about it? 
• Pokemon Go: Best, worst and craziest places people have found Pokemon
• London through the eyes of Pokemon Go
• Pokemon Go top tips: Master the Pokemon mayhem

Where to buy the Sony Xperia XA Ultra in Canada

The Sony Xperia XA Ultra may not be the most powerful phone on the market, but it’s certainly one of the largest.

With a huge 6-inch 1080p display, a MediaTek processor, 3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 21.5MP rear camera sensor, a 16MP front camera, and a 2,700mAh battery, the phone will mainly appeal to video and camera enthusiasts.

The phone is only available at one carrier in Canada, Wind Mobile.

Buy the Sony Xperia XA Ultra at Wind Mobile

The Sony Xperia XA Ultra is available for:

• $0 with a $15/month WindTab Boost
• $149 with a $5/month WindTab Boost
• $299 on WindTab
• $399 outright

See at Wind Mobile

More: Sony Xperia XA Ultra hands-on