New Technology : The Chinese Government Has A New Linux Distro: Is It Any Good?

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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The People’s Republic of China is what you’d call a technological powerhouse. Most of our electronics and gadgets are built in the sprawling factories of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, with their thousands of workers diligently working around the clock to brings us new toys to buy. But while China’s well known for its manufacturing dominance, it’s less well regarded when it comes to the conceptualization and imagination of products. That tends to happen in Silicon Valley, or Dublin, or London, or any other creative tech hub. But China does come up with a lot of cool stuff. It’s just that it overwhelmingly tends...

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New Technology : Disney Invests Millions into VR Movies

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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It was often said that the heyday of virtual reality was in the early 90s. Back then, developers were building virtual reality games and worlds, and consumers were eager for the dream of VR. Unfortunately, the technology wasn’t good enough to provide a good experience, and the boom crashed and burned, turning the power glove and the Virtual Boy into industry jokes. Building a compelling VR headset is a huge challenge, and without good hardware, content developers were severely hamstrung. Headsets had low resolutions, high latency, and were uncomfortable to wear for long periods, due to the sheer weight of them....

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New Technology : Improve the Functionality of Android’s Power Button

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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On, off, on, off… that’s pretty much all your power button does. You press it to switch your Android device into standby, you switch it back on again… and occasionally you switch it off or reboot by long pressing and tapping the appropriate menu option. As hardware button goes, the power button is redundant most of the time, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Let’s take a look at how the power button can be adjusted. Changing How You Use the Power Button Before proceeding, however, spend a few moments just thinking about this. You’ve spent years using...

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New Technology : China’s Security Demands on US Tech Companies Should Have You Worried

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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China is quickly becoming one of the most important drivers of technology around the world—their huge market for products as well as their immense purchasing power keep them near the top of the list of countries that are able influence tech companies. China flexed its bargaining muscles recently by distributing a “pledge of compliance” to a number of large American tech firms, and the terms of that pledge are worrying. “Secure and Controllable” The pledge contained a number of points, but there are two that analysts have focused on. The first point requires that all data collected in China must stay in China—it will be...

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New Technology : 7 Great Steampunk Projects Built With an Arduino

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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Great steampunk style includes blinking lights, moving parts, and gauges—all perfect candidates for automation with an Arduino! With some LEDs, a servo or two, some imagination, and a willingness to experiment, you can create some really cool steampunk Arduino projects. Here are seven that you can use for inspiration. Steampunk Watch This impressive watch got a lot of attention when it first debuted, and it remains an Arduino-steampunk classic. With a wooden case, brass tubing, and some monocle-like lenses, it exudes steampunk style, and the Arduino powering it adds some seriously cool functional tech. The source code allows the watch to tell...

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New Technology : Write and Share Rich, Beautiful Facebook Posts With New Facebook Notes

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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Facebook has updated Facebook Notes, a feature available to all users, with one focus: to help you write better-looking, media-rich posts. Facebook Notes seems to be a competitor to Medium, the long-form blogging tool for Twitter, but it’s integrated tightly into the world’s largest social network. Notes has been around for some time, but never really received a lot of attention. Partly, that’s because Notes has looked and felt outdated for some time now. And also because as we know, short posts get more likes, long posts get more shares. The new update makes Notes look modern and beautiful, and...

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New Technology : How to Be More Decisive and Get More Done

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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We’ve all been there. What should you eat for dinner? Which laptop are you going to buy? Are you going to accept the new job offer or stay where you’re at? Or maybe the toughest decision of all, which Linux distro is right for you? The story is always the same. You think about it for a while, but pretty soon your brain locks up and you come out looking like this: At best you end up wasting a lot of time and settling for the most neutral option, which often isn’t very satisfying or enjoyable. At worst you postpone...

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New Technology : Firefox 42’s Tab Queuing for Android is Awesome – Try it Out Now!

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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Mozilla has released a new beta version of its popular Firefox web browser and it’s got a fantastic feature for Android smartphones. Firefox 42 Beta for Android brings Tab Queuing— i.e. the ability to open external links later in the background in Firefox. Firefox 42 Beta for Android and desktop also adds Tracking Protection in Private Browsing mode, which stops third-party companies from tracking your web behavior as you go from one site to another. And the desktop version also gets Tab Muting! Download: Firefox 42 Beta for Android, Windows, Mac, or Linux What is Tab Queuing? “Open URLs in...

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New Technology : What Are Bad Sectors And How Can You Fix Them? [Part 2]

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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Part 1 of this article looked at drive hardware and how the controller works behind the scenes to detect and resolve issues with bad sectors it detects during normal operation. In this conclusion to that discussion, we will look at the tools available from the operating system, drive manufacturers, and other third parties you can use to manage and monitor your drives to keep them as healthy as possible. Disclaimer: Before running any of the commands in this article, make sure you have a good backup of the drive since attempts to repair bad sectors may result in corruption of the...

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New Technology : Is Twitter Really Reading Your Direct Messages, And If So, Why?

♠ Posted by channel-top-news in ,,,,,,
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Social networking is a massive risk to your privacy, and furthermore to your security. After all, if you let something like Digital Shadow loose on your Facebook profile, it can glean all sorts of information about you. If you’ve not created a secure but memorable one, it can even guess your passwords. But if you’re smart and limit the information you give publically, you can keep a fair degree of personal information private. Twitter, however, is one of the biggest threats to privacy – and if a new lawsuit is correct, it could be an even bigger issue… Here’s What...

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