Greg Kumparak
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Latest from Greg Kumparak
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LG’s Crazy New Smartphone Screen Has Almost No Bezel
Tired of looking at all that extra space around your smartphone screen? Let’s ignore for a second that that space serves a rather important function (giving you somewhere to put your thumb/fingers that isn’t on the screen) and just marvel at this thing. Read More
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Google Play Books Updated To Make It A Better eReader For Students, Chefs, And Others Who Read Huge Books
Most eReader apps tend to be built for reading something from start to finish — which makes sense, given that that’s how about 99 percent of fiction works are meant to be read. But what about non-fiction stuff? The research documents, the textbooks, and the cookbooks of the world? In books of that sort, the reader often needs to flip back and forth between opposite ends of the… Read More
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Looks Like Microsoft Just Leaked Its Own Fitness Band [Update: It's Now Official]
Whoops! Before Microsoft even got a chance to announce that they’re making a fitness tracking band (a la Jawbone Up, Fitbit Force, etc.), the device’s companion syncing app has found its way onto the Mac App Store. Read More
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MPAA Bans Google Glass And Other Wearable Cameras From Movie Theaters Because Duh
Under the new rules, theater owners will ask anyone with wearable recording devices to turn’em off and put them away. Fail to do that, and they’ll give you the boot. If they have any reason to think you’re recording in the theater, meanwhile, they’ll call the cops. Read More
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YouTube Can Now Play Videos At A Buttery 60 Frames Per Second
After years of capping video playback at 30 frames per second, it looks like YouTube is finally upping the bar. Back in June, YouTube announced that 60 FPS video playback was on the way in “the coming months”. Alas, the only examples of this to pop up since were a handful of EA game trailers that YouTube handpicked to showcase the new, ultra-slick framerate. Sometime in the past… Read More
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Here’s What Google’s LEGO-Style Phone, Project Ara, Looks Like Right Now
It’s been a few weeks since we’ve heard much about Project Ara, Google’s efforts to build a phone out of components that can be swapped out, piece-by-piece. Google showed off the device a bit back at I/O — alas, things got a bit… crashy during the presentation. In a new video released today, the Phonebloks team shows the Ara prototype in its most recent form… Read More
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Google Now Lets You Make Free One Minute International Calls
Need to make an international phone call, but don’t want to deal with the mystery connection fees and huge minute-by-minute charges? Google has just quietly launched a rather nifty new feature: free international calling to 25 different countries through Hangouts/Gmail/Google+. The catch, if you want to call it that: only the first 60 seconds are free. Read More
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You Can Now Order Taco Bell On Your iPhone Or Android
Scenario: It’s 12:30 am. You’re in Taco Bell. You’d do pretty much anything for a crunchwrap supreme. The problem: If you open your mouth and try to speak, it’ll become immediately obvious that you just smoked what you’re at least 90% sure was all of the weed in the entire world. Solution: You can now order Taco Bell on your phone. Read More
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T-Mobile CEO John Legere Says Without The iPhone, A Carrier “Is Shit”
It probably goes without saying, but: carriers love them some iPhones. For anyone who comes into the store with an iPhone in mind, the two-year contracts pretty much write themselves. Carrier execs would rarely speak too bluntly about that fact, though; Apple is already chipping away at their stronghold (see: Apple taking app distribution out of the carrier’s hands, things like Apple… Read More
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Elon Musk Compares Building Artificial Intelligence To “Summoning The Demon”
This past week, Tesla CEO/Living, Breathing Tony Stark/Space X Founder Elon Musk was interviewed at the MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium. While the whole interview is worth watching, one answer to a question from the audience takes a particularly intense turn. Read More
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You Can Now Build Oculus Rift Projects In The Free Version Of Unity
Hey, you! Yeah, you! The one with the awesome idea for something that needs to be built in virtual reality! Remember a few weeks back, when Oculus mentioned that their development tools would soon work with the free version of the Unity game engine, rather than just the $1,500 Pro Version? It’s done. Read More
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Don’t Open Random PowerPoint Presentations From Strangers Right Now (Or Ever, Really)
Heads up! In what feels like a throwback to the late 90s/early 2000’s, Microsoft has discovered one helluva bug in Microsoft Office. Executed properly, the bug could be exploited to take over your entire system running just about any version of Windows. You can find Microsoft’s full disclosure on the bug here, but here’s the bulk of what you should know: This bug is… Read More
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AT&T Breaks The Apple SIM’s Best Feature, Locks It Down If You Pick AT&T
The idea behind the Apple SIM that comes in the new iPads is most excellent: one SIM, many carriers. Whenever you want to switch carriers, you’d just pop into settings and pick the new one. If you want to bring your own SIM, you can — but otherwise, everything happens through software. No swapping SIMs, no ordering new SIMs, no hassle. Read More
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Amazon Fire Phone Flops
Given that Amazon was tanking the price of the Fire Phone down to 99 cents two months after launch (leading to many a “Fire sale!” joke), this probably won’t come as much of a surprise: the Fire Phone isn’t a success. On the Amazon earnings call today, Amazon noted that the company was taking a $170 million dollar writedown “primarily related” to… Read More
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PlayStation 4 Update Coming On 10/28 Lets You Play Games With Friends Who Don’t Own A Copy
Back in August, Sony started teasing a new feature it calls “Share Play.” Though we’re still waiting to see just how well it works, the idea itself is wonderful: once enabled, you can let your friends play your games with you (or by themselves, even) from across the vast Interwebs without them actually owning a copy of the game. Read More
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Twilio Project Turns 2048 Into A Multiplayer Game That You Play By Text
Remember all of the wonderfully-entertaining frustration that was Twitch Plays Pokemon? Take that concept and turn it on its head. Wrap it around a puzzle game instead of a side-scroller, and have players text in commands rather than input them via chat. The end result: TwilioPlays2048. Read More
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Hands-On With The Nexus 6 And Android Lollipop
Smack dab in the middle of last week, Google announced two new pieces of shiny: the Nexus 6 phone, and the Nexus 9 tablet. Alas, both announcements came by way of blog post, rather than the standard fanfare-filled physical event — meaning no one actually got to touch the devices. Until now! Read More
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Hands-On With The Nexus 9 Tablet
The Nexus 9 in a nutshell: it’s big, and it’s beautiful. I got to spend a few fleeting minutes with the device this afternoon, and though we plan to have a full review in the coming days, I thought I’d share my initial thoughts. Like the jump from Nexus 5 to Nexus 6, there’s a pretty huge spike in quality and build feel from the Nexus 7 to the Nexus 9. The predecessor… Read More
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Apple’s Huge Q4: $42.1 Billion In Revenue, $8.5 Billion In Profit
Today after the bell, Apple reported its fiscal fourth quarter financial performance, including revenue of $42.1 billion, and earnings per share of $1.42. Analysts had expected Apple to report profit of $1.31 per share, on revenue for the period of $39.85 billion. During the fiscal quarter, Apple had net profit of $8.5 billion, up 13.3% from $7.5 Billion in the same quarter last year. Compared… Read More
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PSA: You Won’t Be Able To Upgrade The New Mac Mini’s RAM Yourself
If you’ve ever owned a Mac Mini, there’s something you should probably know about the recently-announced latest generation: the RAM? It’s soldered to the board now. In other words, you won’t be able to upgrade it yourself. Past generations of Mac Minis allowed the user to crack open the case and install RAM they’d sourced themselves (generally at a price quite a… Read More