Wow, Mobile Gaming Looks Awesome With Nvidia's Quad-Core Project Kal-El Chip [Video]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5806734/wow-mobile-gaming-looks-awesome-with-nvidias-quad+core-project-kal+el-chip

Nvidia's just showing off now. Specifically, their next-gen Tegra quad-core chipset, code-named Project Kal-El. As you can see in the video, the 12-core Nvidia GPU includes support for trie dynamic lighting; the first time we've seen something like this. [Nvidia]

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Twitter Likes Photo-Sharing So Much It May Launch Its Own Service [Blip]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5806803/twitter-likes-photo+sharing-so-much-it-may-launch-its-own-service

Twitter may kick off its own photo-sharing service according to a rumor from All Things D. Just like TwitPic and Yfrog, this official service could let you upload photos and share them using a shortened URL.

No word on what will happen to TwitPic and Yfrog support if Twitter develops it own solution. We would like to think Twitter would be open to any service, but the company has become increasingly anti-competitive. In March, it told developers to stop making apps that duplicate the functionality of its own clients.

We may know more photo-sharing soon. Twitter CEO Dick Costello could make the big announcement at the D9 Conference later this week. [AllThingsD]

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ARM hopes to strengthen grip on mobile PCs, take 50 percent of the market by 2015

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/30/arm-hopes-to-strengthen-grip-on-mobile-pcs-take-50-per-cent-of/

We've already heard rumors that chip designer ARM has been trying to get its wares into the Macbook Air. While we can't add anything to that particular story, we do have further evidence that ARM is going beyond smartphones and tablets in order to target bigger form factors. The company's president, Tudor Brown, has just appeared at Computex to declare that ARM wants to conquer the "mobile PC market", where the company currently only has a 10 percent share. He's aiming for 15 percent by the end of this year, and an Intel-provoking 50 percent by 2015. "Mobile PC" is a pretty ambiguous category, but we think it's safe to assume the focus is on low- and mid-power netbooks and ultraportables. Such devices could potentially run off ARM's forthcoming multi-core chips -- like perhaps the quad-core beast inside NVIDIA's mind-blowing Kal-El processor, or the more distant Cortex-A15. It's hard to imagine these tablet-centric chips ever competing with Intel's top performers, but four years is a mighty long time in this business.

ARM hopes to strengthen grip on mobile PCs, take 50 percent of the market by 2015 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 May 2011 08:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Top 10 Simple Privacy Tricks Everyone Should Use [Video]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5806487/top-10-simple-privacy-tricks-everyone-should-use

Protecting your privacy on the internet these days seems like a hefty undertaking, but there are a few things you can do to protect your privacy with just the click of a button. Here are our favorite super-simple tricks.

We've talked about our 10 favorite privacy hacks before, but a lot of times inducing a privacy-oriented overhaul on your workflow is time consuming, and sometimes it just might not fit the way you work (it's not imperative, of course, that everyone quit Facebook without quitting Facebook, and your less tech-savvy friends and relatives may not have the patience for the more involved set-ups. These tweaks are, instead, very simple tricks that we think everyone should use, whether you're a tin-foil hat wearer or you just want to reduce the spam in your email inbox. They're so simple, in fact, that even the less tech-savvy should have no problem setting them up with a few clicks.

10. Use Temporary Credit Cards to Avoid Repeat Billing

Whether you want to add some extra security to your online purchases, or you just want to save yourself from overbilling, temporary credit cards are a great help. Most card issuers have them (usually called "safe shopping" cards or "gift cards"), and you can choose the card's spending limit, expiration date, and more. That way, you can make sure that automatic billing doesn't kick in unless you absolutely want it too (after all, it can't charge you if there's no money left on the card). Plus, if anyone ever gets a hold of your account information, all they have is a gift card with a spending limit, not your real credit card. Photo by _Dinkel_.

9. Leave Your Home Address Off Your GPS Unit

If you aren't into everyone knowing where you are at all times, you'll want to make sure any given app doesn't share your location. Usually this is pretty simple: don't use services like Foursquare, turn off Facebook Places, etc. But don't ignore the obvious, either: the "Home" button on your smartphone or navigation unit, for example, could lead any car thief right to your home. Instead, use a nearby landmark as your "home" location—that way, your navigation unit will always lead you close enough so you know how to get back, but won't lead any ne'er-do-wells right to your front door. Photo by D'Arcy Norman.

8. Use a Fake Birthday for Web Signups

Most of the information web sites ask for when you sign up is unnecessary, and sometimes even unsafe. Identity thieves can do quite a bit of damage with just your birthday. Make sure you don't post both the date and the year of your birthday on anything public like Facebook, and if you're required to use it for a web signup, just use an un-birthday to keep their demographic data in place, but without giving out all your personal information.

7. Change Your Gender for Less Annoying Ads

If the ads on your favorite web site are particularly obnoxious, an easy way to avoid them is to try changing the gender on your account. Spotify, for example, seems to only advertise Spotify features and music albums to women. Similarly, setting your gender as male can help you escape the annoying diet or motherhood ads on certain sites if you're a woman. It differs from site to site which ads are less annoying, too. I don't really need the birth control pills Pandora's selling me, but those ads are far less intrusive than the giant, animated Bud Light ads it had when my account was "male".

6. Use HTTPS Whenever Possible

HTTPS is a super easy way to stay safe on the net, and a lot of services will use it by default with a quick settings tweak. You can enable it on Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail by just ticking a checkbox. For everything else, there's the HTTPS Everywhere extension, which will use HTTPS on any site that allows it.

5. Use AdBlock, Even if You Don't Block Ads

You may have heard a lot about extensions like AdBlock Plus, but ignored them because you want to support the sites you visit (and we thank you for that). However, AdBlock extensions are great privacy tools, even if you aren't blocking ads. They can keep you protected from known malware spreaders, and even keep sites like Pandora from hijacking your Facebook login. All you need is a few simple filters in place to put another brick on the privacy wall.

4. Save Yourself from IM Distractions and Annoyances

There's nothing more annoying (or distracting) than getting an instant message from someone you don't want to talk to. Luckily, there are quite a few things you can do to keep your IMs more private, like only allowing your friends to message you, go invisible on a schedule, or only show your online status to the Facebook friends you actually like.

3. Use Disposable Email Addresses to Avoid Spam

One of the best ways to wipe out spam in your inbox is to use a disposable email address for the internet's sketchier sites. If you visit a site that requires an email address but that you don't fully trust, using a service like previously mentioned Trashmail or the simpler 10 Minute Mail, you can use a quick temporary email address to get the necessary "confirmation email" and ignore any future spam that might come your way.

2. Create Secure, Easy-to-Remember Passwords

While the most secure password is one you can't remember, there are a lot of tricks to creating easy, memorable passwords without making them easy to guess. We've shared many password-creation tricks before, like storing your passwords in a dictionary, or making sure you use multi-word phrases for better protection. Even just adding a space or two to your passwords can make it much harder to break—just make sure you have a good system in place so you can easily remember them all.

1. Keep Your Security Questions as Private as Your Passwords

Strong passwords are important, but they're utterly useless if your "security question" is something anyone can answer. Instead of going the traditional security question route, you could use a formula to create a memorable, yet indecipherable security question, or even shift your hands on the keyboard. In addition, you could just use word association to make the question easy for you, but hard for others—e.g., "What's your mother's maiden name?" could be answered with your favorite Iron Maiden album instead.

Got any of your own favorite one-click privacy tricks? Share them with us in the comments.

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You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
 

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MAFIAA Fire Gets You Around Shut-Down Domains to Their New Homes [Add-ons]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5806455/mafiaa-fire-gets-you-around-shut+down-domains-to-their-new-homes

Firefox/Chrome: When government officials seized ownership of a number of domains last month, a lot of people suddenly found their favorite torrent tracker shut down. Many owners of the seized domains simply moved to new URLs. If you're looking for them, the MAFIAA Fire extension uses a crowd-sourced database of alternative domains to connect you.

The MAFIAA Fire extension, once installed, will take you around any seized domain to an alternative operated by the same owner, if one is available. The extension maintains the list of alternatives and IP addresses so you can type in the name you know and be routed around the seized domain until you get to the site you're looking for.

To the extension developer, this is a matter of privacy and censorship, but to law enforcement officials it's an anti-piracy campaign that they've said will continue for years. Have you tried MAFIAA Fire, or miss your old torrent tracker after it was shut down? Let us know your thoughts on the issue in the comments.

Update: The developer's web site, which hosts the Chrome version of the MAFIAA Fire Redirector, has had its hosting suspended this morning. We've linked to the Firefox add-on below, which is still up at Mozilla.org.

MAFIAA Fire Redirector | Mozilla Add-Ons via TorrentFreak

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You can follow Alan Henry, the author of this post, on Twitter.

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