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What is Widevine? Streaming services use a special DRM called Widevine, which is owned by Google. It requires Android manufacturers to meet certain criteria for video processing and cryptography that will secure the content being streamed. While Widevine doesn’t require phone makers to pay a fee, they have to pass a test to acquire a certificate. Streaming apps such as Netflix will check for that certificate to stream HD content. Android devices have either L1 (high) or L3 (low) security level of Widevine certification....

But there’s one key difference. Someone decides, for their own economic benefit, who gets to listen to what speech or which speaker. And this isn’t disclosed when you enter, either. You might only get a few listeners when you speak, while someone else with similar ideas has a large audience. Would this truly be free speech? This is an important question because the modern agoras are social media platforms – and this is how they organize speech....

Cincinnati resident Daniel Bleiden pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft last week. He’d previously served as vice president of accounting and finance at StyleHaul, the seminal digital media company for the fashion, lifestyle, and beauty industries, which shut down earlier this year. The Department of Justice noted that during his time at the company, Bleiden had abused his authority to smuggle company money into his personal bank account, later loading his cryptocurrency accounts with more than $8 million....

Coming August 7 – Pre-order now! Steam: https://t.co/8aUMQZWd27Epic Games Store: https://t.co/eoagDoT151#HorizonZeroDawnPC #BeyondTheHorizon pic.twitter.com/CP3XbgcYmN — Guerrilla (@Guerrilla) July 3, 2020 Developer Guerrilla Games updated the Steam page for the game with the release date, which we originally knew was just sometime in the summer. Since the original PS4 game is several years old at this point, it makes sense to get a little extra mileage out of it with a PC release....

While ingrates mark the milestone by insolently asking the entrepreneur to stop union-busting, we want to celebrate the joyous occasion with a song: Bo Burnham’s “Bezos I.” The lyrics tell the touching tale of Jeffrey’s selfless mission to become a tech oligarch. The track was a highlight of Burnham’s Netflix special, Inside, but its legacy didn’t end there. In the months after the show’s release, the tender tribute to Bezos was reappropriated on TikTok as an ode to disaster capitalism....

Indeed, that’s a valid question. Battery degradation is bound to happen at some point. As a lithium-ion battery is charged and discharged, it degrades over time. Think of your old laptop for instance. It’s gone through so many charging cycles that the battery’s busted and the only way it works is if it’s constantly plugged into a socket. Depending on the machine, this usually happens after two to four years....

Our international team has created two different types of diamond at room temperature — and in a matter of minutes. It’s the first time diamonds have successfully been produced in a lab without added heat. Our findings are published in the journal Small. There’s more than one form of diamond Carbon atoms can bond together in a number of ways to form different materials including soft black graphite and hard transparent diamond....

This week we received questions that are interconnected, so I’ll answer them with one story. This week’s questions: “What is the first thing you ever sold to anyone?” “What is an essential step many first-time founders miss to prevent premature (and problematic) growth?” When I was a kid, I lived in a typical Dutch town with lots of canals. What wasn’t typical about it was how drunk people behaved on the weekends: they would throw bicycles in the canals for the lols....

As several studies have highlighted, nature within urban settings plays a pivotal role in combating many of the global public health challenges commonly associated with urbanization. This includes maladies such as depression and high blood pressure. A 2022 study showed that trees actually have the ability to improve urban air quality as leaves and pine needles capture pollutants from the air. That cities do need green spaces is therefore not a particularly contentious issue....

I love scrolling through Reddit when I wake up on weekends – especially since I fine-tuned my feeds to separate work from leisure. But there’s one thing that always kills my vibe: the dreaded [removed] sign. You know it, you’ve seen it, you hate it too. The [removed] (or [deleted]) notice shows up after a Redditor – or a moderator – wipes a post for one reason or another. The original thread and title remain, but their content is no longer available....

Different circumstances require different strategies On the one hand, an entrepreneur would prefer to run a highly profitable business with a low customer satisfaction rate than vice versa. On the other hand, levels of positive customer experience tend to decrease globally, as companies deliver better services and users get accustomed to these new standards almost instantly. I’ve found the core ‘balance’ to be driven by the business owner’s goals. If an entrepreneur aims to make money quickly, they won’t be concerned about customer satisfaction much, whether they deliver a promised level of services or meet deadlines....

As any early-stage startup member, I had to find something to do that would contribute to the company. I had a vague inkling that the European Commission had made vast quantities of funding available to SMEs for innovative ideas, but no idea where to start looking. This led me on a bureaucratic quest to find out how we could get a slice of that pie. And let me tell you, it was not easy....

iOS 13 is finally here, and with it comes Apple’s increased focus on gaming. We now have Apple Arcade, a mobile gaming subscription service that comes with dozens of excellent new games. One of the side benefits of this is that you can now use popular wireless game controllers with your iPhone and iPad. Before now, iOS didn’t support Bluetooth game controllers generally. Instead, it supported the MFi (Made For iPhone) SDK, for whom only a few third-party developers made controllers — not a surprise when you read Apple’s rather restrictive rules for how the buttons must be laid out and what each one must do....

Nobody loves an em-dash more than I do — I put an em-dash on anything. It really is a wonderful grammatical tool. You can use it to dictate the pace of your writing, to bring more attention to an argument, to add extra information without cluttering a sentence. It truly is a gift to writing — and you should absolutely use it. Unfortunately, the em-dash — and the en-dash (–) for that matter — is not popular enough to deserve its own place on the keyboard....

In The Netherlands, this kind of living is increasingly seen as an attractive, and viable, option; there’s a whole thread dedicated to self-sustainable living in the r/Netherlands subreddit, and Standford spin-off, ReGen Villages, began exploring the country as a site for a high-tech off-grid eco-village. “When COVID hit, almost overnight there was an exodus from urban areas. People were looking to move to the suburbs or the countryside because they wanted to feel like they could provide for themselves,” says founder James Ehrlich....

Today’s best designers are more than creators; they’re facilitators. In an increasingly multidisciplinary, collaborative, and creative process that includes many participants, they act as conductors who align and inspire the team to give their best. UX workshops are probably one of the best ways to put this into practice. The rise of ideologies like Design Thinking, Lean UX, and Design Sprints have turned UX workshops into a necessity, and for designers, the ability to facilitate a design workshop is a highly desirable skill....

But if you really need to sift diamonds from fakes and create a marketing campaign that will definitely work, here are my three favorite approaches to testing ideas that my team at Refocus.me uses. 1. Go to the shelf of ideas and divide them up by priority Start by evaluating ideas according to Impact, Confidence, and Effort criteria. This approach is known as ICE system, and it’s a good way of relative prioritization, which easily applies to almost any product....

I’ll bet money that you’re logged into your social media platforms on multiple devices. Phones, tablets, computers — it’s convenient to be able to have your multi-hour social browsing sessions from anywhere. But you should always know what devices your apps are logged into, as a matter of basic digital security. And every now and then, it helps do the technical version of a welfare check, just to see which devices have access to your accounts....

There are all sorts of reasons to leave a job. Maybe you’ve found a new and exciting company you want to work for. Maybe your dream role has just opened up somewhere else. Maybe you want to switch fields or careers. Maybe you’re leaving the country. Maybe you’re burnt out and need a break. Maybe your current workplace is a toxic mess and you want to escape! Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: you have to tell your boss you’re quitting....

According to Reuters, the platform, known as Digital Vault, will allow investors to get real-time access to records of securities purchased in private markets. HSBC’s platform will digitize paper records and leverage blockchain tech in a bid to maximize efficiency, reducing the time it takes for investors to make checks or queries on their holdings. While it sounds like an interesting idea, HSBC hasn’t clarified the potential cost savings of using such a system....