Category Archives: Blog

TL;DR: Save $30 on the universally popular Fitbit Charge 3, an activity tracker that’s water resistant up to 50 meters.

You’re no couch potato, but hitting your personal fitness goals can sometimes always seems to be overtaken by something more important. When it comes to managing the daily grind, who has time to count every step they take?

Don’t give up just yet. Track those steps while staying connected to your everyday phone apps when you use a fitness tracking device. The Fitbit Charge 3, which made it onto our list of the best fitness trackers, is on sale now at Amazon for only $119.95 (a price drop of $30.) Read more…

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Get ready to see a lot of new augmented reality effects in Instagram.

The photo-sharing app is now prominently featuring user-generated AR selfie filters in a move that seems like a direct challenge to Snapchat’s Lenses. 

Instagram has been testing its AR creation software, called Spark AR Studio, for some time, but now it’s making it more widely available. And, to mark the occasion, it’s showing off users’ creations in the app. 

You can check them out from the Instagram camera by scrolling all the way to the end and selecting “browse more effects.” 

As with Snapchat’s Lens Studio software, Spark AR Studio appears aimed at creative professionals who have some experience with similar software, though Instagram is encouraging artists of all stripes to try it out.  Read more…

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The launch date that’s been circulated may be a day sooner that it was last year. Additionally, Starbucks may be adding a few other items to their fall lineup.

Read more here. Read more…

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A full 103-card set of first edition Pokémon cards sold for $107,000 at auction on Saturday, an amount of money that could have gotten you around 35,000 packs of cards back when they first hit the U.S. in the late ’90s.

The auction, sold through Goldin Auctions, started bids at $25,000 and shot up to more than four times that amount in just a dozen bidsTMZ first reported on the auction Monday.

You can peruse through the full collection on Goldin Auctions’ website, which includes an incredibly rare and valuable first edition Charizard, which you can tell comes from the first printing because of the shadowless border around the Pokémon’s portrait.  Read more…

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Hot Girl Summer is nearly over, and Basic Girl Autumn is just around the corner. We know this because pumpkin spice season may be arriving earlier than it ever has before.

A report from Business Insider cites Starbucks employees (and otherwise uncorroborated social media posts) as saying that the 2019 launch date for the Pumpkin Spice Latte will be Aug. 27 — a day earlier than last year’s official launch.

Giant jugs of pumpkin spice flavor-sauce arrived in stores at the beginning of August, as documented on r/starbucks (note the June 2019 batch date printed above the label):

On Aug. 7, Starbucks’ Facebook account posted a semi-cryptic clip of a pumpkin converted into a bootleg Magic 8-Ball to official pumpkin-spice fan group Leaf Rakers Society, suggesting the eighth month of the year. (The group is closed, but anyone can join.) The caption promises one clue a week, meaning the next is due on or around Aug. 14.  Read more…

More about Starbucks, Fall, Pumpkin Spice Latte, Culture, and Food

Tumblr’s future is finally clear: Verizon is selling the blogging platform, which Yahoo once valued at more than a billion dollars, for a “nominal amount,” according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Verizon announced Monday that it planned to sell Tumblr to Automattic, the San Francisco company that owns WordPress. 

“WordPress.com and Tumblr were both early pioneers among blogging platforms,” Tumblr wrote in a statement. “Automattic shares our vision to build passionate communities around shared interests and to democratize publishing so that anyone with a story can tell it, especially when they come from under-heard voices and marginalized communities.” Read more…

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Ninja has beef with Twitch, the platform where he first found fame.

The superstar streamer whose real name is Richard Tyler Blevins now reps Microsoft’s competing Mixer, as of Aug. 1. But he left behind a community of 14.7 million followers on Twitch, and now he’s claiming Twitch is exploiting the community he built without his permission.

Blevins laid it all out in a video posted to Twitter on Sunday. He starts by explaining his new streaming situation on Mixer and describes what he says was a “smooth” transition off of Twitch. “Super professional, we haven’t said anything bad or negative about Twitch, obviously, because we haven’t needed to.” Read more…

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Weapons that injure crowds of people by emitting dangerous sounds may seem like the stuff of science fiction. Unfortunately, malicious hackers might be able to do just that — but with Bluetooth- or WiFi-capable smartphones, headphones, speakers, or laptops.

Researcher Matt Wixey is unveiling research at the Def Con hacking conference that shows the potential for devices with speakers to be hacked and turned into sonic weapons, as reported by the BBC. 

Wixey found that by creating a virus and exploiting “known weaknesses,” many devices have little protection to ensure the integrity of their speakers. Once hacked, devices could be made to play “dangerous” sounds, such as sounds at high or low frequencies that could deafen, disorient, or injure. Read more…

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Not even your precious memories are safe from hackers. 

That much was made clear at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, where a security researcher demonstrated just how easy it is to remotely encrypt a digital camera with ransomware. And once that happens, you can say goodbye to all your photos — unless you pay up. 

The specific camera in question was a Canon EOS 80D, but, as Eyal Itkin explained to the early Sunday morning crowd of seemingly hungover hackers, it’s likely not the only model vulnerable. 

“If you can do something to cameras, you have many potential victims you can affect,” he observed. “Would you pay to get your camera back?” Read more…

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Swedish photographer and dog enthusiast  Evelyn Edblad has trained her three Australian Kelpies to be extraordinarily still.

In a video uploaded to YouTube, Edblad filmed her three dogs standing motionless for some 30 seconds, before she gave the call for them to sprint off.

“I’ve taught Jackson, Cash, and X to stay still on command before I give them the signal that they are free to go,” Edblad wrote online. “They then freeze in expectation, knowing they’ll soon get to run around.”

It’s an impressive level of group discipline, even for keen-witted sheep-herding dogs. Read more…

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