Earlier this month, John Oliver spent a segment on Last Week Tonight explaining native advertising, a practice followed by many online media outlets such as BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and VICE, which combines editorial content along with sponsored advertisements.
There are so many mods we can apply using a custom recovery. From themes to bug fixes and feature ports, a typical rooted user spends a decent chunk of time in TWRP Recovery.
Reddit is home to tons of fun and unique content. A starting point for the various memes and videos that eventually make it into your Facebook feed, you could seriously spend all day just browsing different subreddits and not get bored.
Telemarketers can be as terrifying as a villain from a horror film. Your phone rings with an unknown 800 number, and you immediately fill with a sense of dread. There's no way to get them to stop calling; you imagine the number appearing on your phone at all hours of the day and night, haunting you.
Clash of Clans is one of the most successful games ever to come out for Android and iOS. It has been downloaded over 50 million times from Google Play alone, and shows no signs of decline.
Many of our everyday apps include a menu tab or search bar, like Chrome and Twitter. In fact, a lot of times those are the first things we go for, as search is universal in most apps, and app settings are just about always accessible through the menu.
In a world where mobile devices are the new norm for interacting and staying in contact with one another, it's important to make the experience as smooth as possible, and typing is the biggest problem for me.
Netflix has received a lot of publicity lately, and not because of its impressive worldwide library. From blog wars with Comcast to streaming deals with Verizon, it's easy to forget that the company exists for our entertainment, but sometimes that entertainment has drawbacks.
Real suffering is sitting through a thirty-second ad to watch a fifteen-second video, or watching your favorite music video in three-second fragments. Real suffering is this: “An error occurred, please try again later.” If you’re a modern human and multitask with multiple tabs while you're on YouTube, you don’t have to sacrifice your bandwidth and sanity. There's a simple way to watch YouTube ad-free and lag-free.
You've seen the Samsung Fingers and the Emoji Translator, and I know you spent a good part of the day catching Pokémon, but now that April Fool's Day is officially upon us, the flood of gags has reached a tipping point. Here's the best of what we've seen today.
If you're spending hours on your phone playing games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, or posting online to Google+ and Pinterest, you're probably being spied on. The latest releases from NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden reveal that the National Security Agency, and its UK counterpart, GCHQ, are mining the ad networks utilized in these apps to collect a trove of information on you.
Update 1: Evad3ers have released a statement to the jailbreak community, claiming that the safety and security of their users is the most important thing to them and that all speculations about malware being encoded into the jailbreak is simply not true. You can read the full letter over at Evasi0n's site.
Let's just say it's been a pretty bad year for spies and government agencies and an even worse one for the privacy of U.S. citizens. Edward Snowden blew the lid off the NSA's spy program, and the FBI was recently discovered to have the ability to access your webcam any time they want—without triggering the "camera on" light. Yeah, that means those Justin Bieber lip sync videos you recorded weren't just for your private collection.
Voodoo you want the best costume this year? You're probably laughing so hard right now that you need to hold yourself together with pins and needles, right?
Android gets a lot of love for its immeasurable amount of customization, and for the most part, you don't even have to do any heinous hacking to swag out your Samsung Galaxy S3 or other Android device.
I know what you're thinking. Why spend time talking about another flashlight application when there are literally thousands of them scattered throughout Google Play? As it turns out, there is a void in the realm of flashlight Android apps. Flashing lights, strobe lights, cop lights, warning lights—they're all available, but the one feature that's missing is adjustable brightness.
Why do we still need to plug in our phones to charge them? Wireless charging exists, and has for quite some time, but most manufacturers don't include it in their devices. When it comes to the Samsung Galaxy S4, you can buy a QI-compatible wireless charging kit, but between the charging pad and the battery cover, you're looking at around $90 or more.
In old-school Konami fashion, there's an Easter egg lurking inside your Samsung Galaxy S3, and I'm not talking about gingerbread men, robots, or jelly beans. In fact, it's actually an achievement, like those you would unlock in Black Ops on your Xbox 360, and it's pretty easy to find.
When you upgrade to a new Android smartphone like the HTC One, you can have browser bookmarks, Wi-Fi passwords, and other settings quickly transferred over from your old device using your Google Account backup. However, you'll still have to download apps individually from your Google Play list, and not all of your saved progress will be transferred over. Fortunately, there is a third-party app that will allow you to backup and restore your apps—with all their data.
"We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we?" Benedict Cumberbatch may have been talking about acting, but the sentiment rings true for all of us at some point or another. Whether it's work, school, or just boredom at home—we all wish for an escape sometimes. If only.
Last month, Alexander Heit drifted into oncoming traffic after being distracted from the road. His sudden correction forced his vehicle to roll and flip over. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly thereafter. All because of a freaking text message. He was only 22 years old.
In early 2000, at the age of 19, Noah Kalina began taking a photo of himself with the same facial expression—every single day. Six years and over 2,000 photographs later, Kalina turned his project into a time-lapsed montage on YouTube. In just one day, his video received over a million views.
There are some really talented graffiti artists out there. Some of them are good enough that businesses hire them to paint advertisements, rather than hiring someone to scrub their work off the side of the building.
When I was moving into my current apartment, I had to store some of my things in my ex-roommate's garage for over a month while I was getting settled. One of those things was my dresser. Upon moving it into my new place, I realized something was horribly, horribly wrong—none of the drawers seemed to fit quite right anymore (if they fit at all). The combination of the differences in temperature and humidity in the garage caused them to swell and change shape. Several months later, they fit bet...
We've all had to write an essay or research paper at some point, and undoubtedly the hardest part about it is always the citation, right? If you ask me, it's a huge pain in the arse. Even more so if you're gathering your facts from a huge variety of sources.
Eggs are one of the most versatile foods imaginable. They can be cooked in tons of different ways, eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and go with just about anything. Most of us have hard-boiled and scrambled eggs before, but have you ever thought about combining the two? That looks pretty good, doesn't it? But it's not exactly the kind of scrambled and hard-boiled eggs combo I'm referring to. And thankfully, this isn't what I'm talking about either... No, even though balut may look like ...
These days, you can find a digital version of almost any form of entertainment. Being able to download or stream content is convenient for a lot of reasons—you can avoid going to the store and you never have to worry about late fees on rentals.
Streaming video has definitely changed how we watch movies and television shows, but with the constantly growing number of services out there, it can be hard to keep track of who's got what. Who's got Disney now? Starz? Netflix? Who knows. And when you add sites that let you rent or purchase titles, you could spend all evening trying to find something to watch. Here to simplify the process is a service called Can I Stream It?, which lets you search for your favorite movies and TV shows to fin...
The stereotypical geek is not good at sports. Think about it, we’re known for spending time in dark basements doing weird stuff that has nothing to do with running around and being active. So we’re known for our inability to play sports, but I wouldn't call it an inability so much as a creative way of passing these challenges by the skin of our teeth. Examples:
It's really no wonder why Christmas is the most popular and widely celebrated holiday of the year. Your whole family gets a chance to spend some much needed quality time together—and not just gorging on food like at Thanksgiving. But in all seriousness, that's not the reason at all... we're talking Christmas presents here.
If you have a lot of friends on Facebook, chances are that every day is at least one of their birthdays. If you took the time to individually post a message every time, you'd spend ALL of your time on Facebook, but you don't want to be a bad friend either. Let's face it, some people take this stuff personally.
LEGO may no longer be in its heyday, but those colored building blocks of joy can still make some really cool and creative things. I mean, take a look at these pieces from LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya. While making something like that is undoubtedly impressive, it could be just a little too difficult for the common LEGO enthusiast—and expensive (LEGOs aren't cheap these days). So, for the regular LEGO-builders, usefulness is more important that extravagance.
If you're like me, getting as much sleep as possible is priority number one. With more and more time spent on or around our cell phones, it's becoming harder and harder to block out all the noise.
Lightning has struck, but not everyone is excited. Apple's new 8-pin Lightning connector for the iPhone 5 has replaced the aging 30-pin connector. Many users have concerns that their current third-party devices will no longer operate properly with the smaller all-digital design, not to mention the expensive price tag for each adapter. What Does This Mean for the User?
Considering how often many of us fly on commercial airlines, the idea that a hacker could somehow interfere with the plane is a very scary thought. It doesn't help to learn that at Defcon, a researcher found that the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B), transmissions that planes use to communicate with airport towers are both unencrypted and unauthenticated.
Assuming everyone knows of the recent "String of attacks" passed between Obama and Romney, I just want to talk about how useless this entire thing is. I'll try to be as un-biased as possible.
It seems like there's never any breaks in air travel when it comes to money. The airfares just keep rising, and now most major airlines charge for all checked baggage, so carry-ons are the way to go. But you need to know how to take it easy with your packing list. Pack light and travel without the burden of that extra $15 or more per bag.
Hotels are anonymous and while this is a great thing, you should also be careful about the nameless folks who've used your room before you. Follow this tutorial to make the most of your hotel and ensure a great vacation experience.
Looking at homes is the fun part. But before you go house hunting, make sure you have your financial ducks in a row.
Testing products for a living is a bit more complicated than it sounds. You Will Need
