New Technology : Happy Birthday Is Finally Public Domain, China’s Official Linux Distro…[Tech News Digest]

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The song “Happy Birthday” finally enters the public domain, a look at the Linux distro the Chinese government is hoping to replace Windows with, people are watching fewer season premiers this year, Pebble’s got an attractive new watch, and a cat that is absolutely up to no good. Happy Birthday Is Now Public Domain Have you ever wondered why TV and movie characters go out of their way to avoid singing “Happy Birthday”? It’s because the song, despite its public domain melody and culturally omnipresent lyrics, weren’t free to use. Warner Music owned the rights, and they charged everyone for...

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New Technology : Cool Employee Perks Offered By Some of the World’s Biggest Companies

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What kind of perks do you get at your job? Does your employer take good care of you, or do you feel like you’re not getting enough cool stuff for working with them? Today, we’re taking a look at some of the coolest perks offered with some of the biggest companies out there. Google, Apple, McDonald’s, and so many other companies offer incredibly cool stuff to their employees. After reading the infographic, you might just decide that you want to quit your current job and move to one of these companies as soon as possible! Via ChairOffice Click to Enlarge

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New Technology : Make a Remote Controlled Photo Slideshow With an Android

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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Why would anyone buy a digital picture frame, when there are already plenty of old tablets getting thrown out that could instead be recycled and put to the same use? With new generations of iPad coming out all the time, and folks upgrading to the latest Android tablet whenever a new one comes out, the piles of “old” tablets keep showing up on places like Ebay and Amazon at rock-bottom prices. Maybe you even have a one or two kicking around a drawer somewhere in your house. If you’ve ever wanted to set up a digital display in your home...

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New Technology : Test Your Password Strength with the Same Tool Hackers Use

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Is your password secure? We’ve all heard a lot of advice about what sorts of passwords you should never pick – and there are various tools that claim to assess the security of your password online. However, these can only be dubiously accurate. The only way to really test the security of your passwords is to try to break them. So today, we’re going to do just that. I’m going to show you how to use a tool that real hackers use to crack passwords, and show you how to use it to check yours. And, if it fails the test,...

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New Technology : How to Work from Home & Be Productive with Collaborative Online Tools

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In the days before the Internet (a.k.a The Dark Ages), people would travel to an office and stay there until their employer (henceforth known as Big Boss) released them from their chains of servitude. Fast forward to today, the Internet lets us ROFL and LOL at each other, we each have 3,000 friends on Facebook, and we don’t have to talk to anyone unless we want to. People are also now abandoning the dreaded office commute, and instead choosing to work from their home office in their Spiderman pants. It’s a brave new world. But in order to be productive as a...

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New Technology : How to Get Windows Media Center in Windows 10 & Its Limitations

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Following Microsoft’s abandoning of Windows Media Center (WMC) in Windows 10, we’ve previously taken a look at the various alternatives that you can employ. However, did you know that it is, in fact, possible to install WMC on Windows 10? We’re sure you’ll be pleased to learn that this is simple to do. But are the end results as good as you’re hoping for? Why WMC for Windows 10 Is Desirable TV piped from your satellite dish, cable connection, or terrestrial aerial and displayed on a media center enables you to abandon your set-top box and incorporate media, DVD and...

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New Technology : YouTube Will Use Neural Networks to Actually Understand Videos

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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Searching YouTube can be a frustrating experience; if you know what a video is about, or you remember the contents but not the name, you could be searching for a very long time. That’s because YouTube doesn’t actually see the videos the way that a person does. It just sees the metadata – title, description, and tags. And that’s assumed the uploader bothered to include the information. All of that could change in the near future. Google recently filed a patent that indicates YouTube might actually start to understand the videos that it plays. Relevance-Based Image Selection Google’s patent application is...

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New Technology : Why are Fanboys Trashing Apple’s First Android App?

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Apple released their first Android app last week. Named Move to iOS, it’s meant to make switching from Google’s Android operating system (OS) to Apple’s iOS a smoother transition. If you don’t mind ignoring Mihir’s advice about sticking to one mobile ecosystem, it’s easier than ever to leave Android behind with the help of this app. Predictably, Android fans with no intention of switching are leaving 1-star reviews on the Google Play Store. Why do people spend time doing this? I’ve attempted to dive in and see what motivated people to trash this app. The App Itself For completion’s sake, let’s...

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New Technology : How Audio Compression Works, and Can You Really Tell the Difference?

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The way we listen to music has changed considerably over the years. The age of physical formats is over, and digital files now dominate. Whether you stream or download your music, it’s almost certainly in formats like MP3 or AAC. These are compressed into small and convenient file sizes, and to achieve that they remove sound from the original recording. In this article, we’ll take a look at how music compression works, and whether it has any real effect on how your music actually sounds. How Compression Works Digital music is most often served to us — through media stores...

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New Technology : FBI Backdoors Won’t Help Anybody – Not Even the FBI

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The FBI has been in the news recently with its campaign to force technology companies to modify their encryption methods to make it easier to snoop on users’ messages. According to the FBI, this is a commonsense change: after all, criminals rely on these encrypted services to communicate secretly, and the constitution grants them the right to seize information (like letters and documents) when a lawful warrant is presented. So why not give the FBI the ability to read encrypted documents? If we fail to take these steps, the FBI warns, criminals and terrorists will continue to ‘go dark’ –...

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