iOS 10 preview: Apple goes back to ignoring the iPad in a wide-ranging update

iOS 10 gives developers plenty to do and lets its users have a little fun, too.

Enlarge / The iOS 10 beta on a 9.7-inch iPad Pro and an iPhone 6S. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

I’ve spent most of the last six months buying a house, so you’ll need to forgive me if I have houses and house metaphors on the brain. I’ve found them helpful while trying to nail down iOS 10.

Imagine iOS 6 as a fundamentally solid house in need of some major remodeling. iOS 7 was largely a cosmetic update, putting on some new siding (or maybe a nice brick façade) and giving all the rooms a nice paint job. iOS 8 with its under-the-hood changes was roughly equivalent to replacing wiring and plumbing—stuff that’s harder to see but makes a big difference in everyday usage. iOS 9 gave an extensive makeover to one particular room (let’s call it “the iPad”) that had been basically fine for a while but wasn’t being used to its fullest potential.

In the context of this overextended metaphor, iOS 10 is best thought of as an effort to redo multiple other rooms in the house, knocking out some figurative walls and removing metaphorical ugly dropped ceilings. For the first time in a while, Apple is making notable changes to the way basic things like the lock screen, the notification center, and Siri look and work.

Read 97 remaining paragraphs | Comments

F1 2016: Manueller Start und Multiplayer für bis zu 22 Teilnehmer

Mit F1 2016 will Codemasters einige größere Neuerungen im virtuellen Rennzirkus einführen. Neben Details wie einem manuellen Start soll es auch einen Multiplayermodus für bis zu 22 Teilnehmer geben. (Formel 1, Rennspiel)

Mit F1 2016 will Codemasters einige größere Neuerungen im virtuellen Rennzirkus einführen. Neben Details wie einem manuellen Start soll es auch einen Multiplayermodus für bis zu 22 Teilnehmer geben. (Formel 1, Rennspiel)

House Oversight Committee grills Comey over Clinton e-mail findings

Expect lots of exasperation over the decision not to prosecute.

The House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing today, focused on Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account during her tenure as Secretary of State. The Representatives will get to question FBI Director James Comey, State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, and Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullogh III. The hearing comes two days after Comey called the use of private e-mail by Clinton and the mishandling of classified information by her, her staff, and State Department officials "extremely careless" but declined to recommend criminal prosecution.

“The FBI’s recommendation is surprising and confusing," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said in a statement announcing the hearing. "The fact pattern presented by Director Comey makes clear Secretary Clinton violated the law. Individuals who intentionally skirt the law must be held accountable. Congress and the American people have a right to understand the depth and breadth of the FBI’s investigation. I thank Director Comey for accepting the invitation to publicly answer these important questions.”

In his testimony, in response to questions about whether Clinton should have been aware that she was sending highly classified data in unclassified e-mails, Comey said, "I don’t think our investigation established she was that sophisticated about classification."

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

$4 Freedom 251 smartphone begins shipping in India (in a bumpy launch)

$4 Freedom 251 smartphone begins shipping in India (in a bumpy launch)

Less than half a year after announcing plans to sell a $4 smartphone in India, Ringing Bells is starting to deliver the first Freedom 251 phones Friday.

The good news is that the phone is reportedly a lot better than you’d expect a device that costs just 251 rupees (or about $4) to be.

The less good news is that the phone actually costs more than 251 rupees to make: Ringing Bells is losing Rs 150 ($2.22) per phone, and the company is hoping it can get a government subsidy to make up the difference.

Continue reading $4 Freedom 251 smartphone begins shipping in India (in a bumpy launch) at Liliputing.

$4 Freedom 251 smartphone begins shipping in India (in a bumpy launch)

Less than half a year after announcing plans to sell a $4 smartphone in India, Ringing Bells is starting to deliver the first Freedom 251 phones Friday.

The good news is that the phone is reportedly a lot better than you’d expect a device that costs just 251 rupees (or about $4) to be.

The less good news is that the phone actually costs more than 251 rupees to make: Ringing Bells is losing Rs 150 ($2.22) per phone, and the company is hoping it can get a government subsidy to make up the difference.

Continue reading $4 Freedom 251 smartphone begins shipping in India (in a bumpy launch) at Liliputing.

In an effort to find more players, Evolve is now free

Hope you didn’t buy the game last week or anything…

After struggling for over a year to make Evolve work as a traditional, paid title, the developers at Turtle Rock are making a radical shift to a free-to-play model with Evolve: Stage 2. The game is entering beta today on the PC and possibly coming to consoles in the future.

"Making Evolve free on PC is going to be a process that takes time and a lot of hard work, but we believe in Evolve and we believe in you, our players and want to do what’s best for both," Turtle Rock wrote in a blog post late last night.

So far, Turtle Rock hasn't announced how it plans to make money off the new, free version of Evolve. According to an extensive Turtle Rock interview with Game Informer, everything in the game will be unlockable via "silver keys" earned during play. As of now, those keys cannot be purchased for actual money.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Audible Channels is a premium podcast network for $5 per month (or free for Audible subscribers)

Audible Channels is a premium podcast network for $5 per month (or free for Audible subscribers)

Audible is one of the biggest players in the audiobook space, and over the past year the company has been hiring a lot of radio and podcast professionals in an effort to expand into new territory.

Now Audible has taken the wraps off its new “short-form digital audio” service.

Audible Channels is basically a premium podcast network featuring ad-free programming and exclusive content that won’t be available anywhere else.

Subscribers can pay $5 per month to access every show available from Audible Channels.

Continue reading Audible Channels is a premium podcast network for $5 per month (or free for Audible subscribers) at Liliputing.

Audible Channels is a premium podcast network for $5 per month (or free for Audible subscribers)

Audible is one of the biggest players in the audiobook space, and over the past year the company has been hiring a lot of radio and podcast professionals in an effort to expand into new territory.

Now Audible has taken the wraps off its new “short-form digital audio” service.

Audible Channels is basically a premium podcast network featuring ad-free programming and exclusive content that won’t be available anywhere else.

Subscribers can pay $5 per month to access every show available from Audible Channels.

Continue reading Audible Channels is a premium podcast network for $5 per month (or free for Audible subscribers) at Liliputing.

Samsung-SSD: Firmware-Update steigert Leseleistung der 840 ohne Evo

Über anderthalb Jahre nach der Ankündigung, die sich mit der Zeit verringernde Geschwindigkeit der SSD 840 wieder zu erhöhen, hat Samsung einen entsprechenden Patch ausgeliefert. (Solid State Drive, Speichermedien)

Über anderthalb Jahre nach der Ankündigung, die sich mit der Zeit verringernde Geschwindigkeit der SSD 840 wieder zu erhöhen, hat Samsung einen entsprechenden Patch ausgeliefert. (Solid State Drive, Speichermedien)

Fair-use-Policy von Number26: Fünf Abhebungen im Monat müssen reichen

Wie oft darf bei einem kostenfreien Konto Geld abgehoben werden? Number26 hat Kriterien veröffentlicht, mit denen mehr Transparenz hergestellt werden soll. Zuvor war zahlreichen Nutzern gekündigt worden. (Number26, Internet)

Wie oft darf bei einem kostenfreien Konto Geld abgehoben werden? Number26 hat Kriterien veröffentlicht, mit denen mehr Transparenz hergestellt werden soll. Zuvor war zahlreichen Nutzern gekündigt worden. (Number26, Internet)

Bitch Planet is a dark, futuristic satire about women in prison

A dystopian comic about women sent to jail on another planet.

With its deliberately shocking name and over-the-top imagery of scantily clad women fighting in prison, Bitch Planet looks like the comic book version of a 1960s exploitation movie. If you've ever watched Russ Meyer's classic flick Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, you know what I'm talking about. But this comic book, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and drawn by Valentine De Landro (the two also co-created the concept), manages to do something unexpected. Somehow, by depicting sensationalized violence and extreme future scenarios, DeConnick and De Landro manage to tell a surprisingly subtle story about the dangers of political conformity.

Image Comics recently published the first Bitch Planet collection, Extraordinary Machine, which delivers a fairly complete arc while still leaving us on a good cliffhanger. The tale begins with a seriously creepy look at Bitch Planet, the isolated planet where "non-compliant" women are sent to "live out [their] lives in penitence and service." The prisoners are all tattooed with NC, for non-compliant, which has already become a popular geek tattoo in the real world. Mostly, the prison is run remotely from Earth by a team of wise cracking guys who deploy giant holographic women to order the inmates around, and punish them with stints in solitary where the wall screens are filled with mocking faces that tell the mostly innocent women how guilty and evil they are. Still, there are a few guards around to beat the crap out of anyone who dares to question how tight their prison garb is—and to murder some of the women for mysterious reasons. De Landro's art is both satirical and horrifically disturbing, and he's brilliant at including little details like ads or signs in the panel backgrounds that show us what this future Earth is like.

It's made of people

Slowly we realize that all this insanity is happening because Earth has fallen under the power of an authoritarian group known as the Council of Fathers, who rule with an iron fist but pretend to be kindly, priest-like elders. To please the Fathers, the Bitch Planet warden devises a scheme to enter a team of female prisoners into the "Megaton," a brutal rugby-like game that has become Earth's most popular sporting event. Indeed, the Council of Fathers requires all men to watch Megaton, because they believe this bloody, dangerous sport helps "exorcise" men's warlike urges so they can form peaceful political coalitions. Except, of course, the Fathers' rule is hardly peaceful. There are rigid economic divisions between men, and there are several scenes where we see powerful men humiliating and abusing their male underlings. Women, as you might guess, have no rights at all in this future. They are forced to become wives and mothers, or eke out a perilous existence on an economic ladder where they can only ascend a few rungs from the bottom.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Nvidia unveils the GTX 1060: Faster than a GTX 980 for $250

Hot on the heels of AMD’s mainstream RX 480, you can buy the GTX 1060 on July 19.

Nvidia has unveiled the GTX 1060, the most affordable member of its Pascal-based graphics card lineup yet. Starting at $250 (UK price TBC, but likely £220), Nvidia claims the GTX 1060 is faster than a GTX 980—a card that costs upwards of $400 (£380)—and features a power-sipping TDP of just 120W. It'll be released worldwide on July 19.

While the full technical details behind the GTX 1060 aren't available just yet, Nvidia has revealed that the card is based on a new GP106 chip, not a binned version of the the GP104 chip used in the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. The GTX 1060 sports 1280 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at 8GHz (only a 6GB version will be available), and a boost clock of 1.7GHz that Nvidia claims is easily overclocked to 2GHz and beyond. Power supply is via a single 6-pin connector.

Like the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, the GTX 1060 will be available from manufacturers like Asus, Zotac, and Gigabyte, as well as directly from Nvidia in Founders Edition form at a higher $299 (~£260) price. The extra $50 buys a dual-FET power supply, as well as a similar blower-style cooler to the more expensive Pascal cards, albeit one made out of plastic rather than metal.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments