Cell Phone Companies Are Tracking Your Usage
By
Sledgstone, in Science & Technology
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By Sledgstone
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57526994-94/android-users-outraged-over-motorolas-broken-promise/
Next phone I buy will be an HTC or a Samsung. I will never buy a Motorola phone again. I specifically bought this phone because it was on sale, it had basically the same specs as the samsung galaxy at the time and it was guaranteed to be upgraded to the latest android operating system.
I never got that upgraded operating system. Android 2.3 is so outdated, that numerous apps are not even available for it. I cannot even run Google Chrome.. wtf. No Vine, no Time Warner app, etc. Numerous basic features on all phones are not available to me because I bought this phone with the belief that I'd only use the old operating system for another month or so. I remember when my brother's Nexus got upgraded to android 4.1, he was talking about how it was like a brand new phone again.. I was looking forward to this upgrade for so long.. and then my hopes were crushed.
Say no to Motorola. Don't even bother buying their crap, because its completely unsupported.
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By Sledgstone
I tested two games tonight, Borderlands and The Walking Dead.. and Steam In-Home Streaming works. I was logged into my steam account on both machines at the same time. Once two systems are logged in at once, the Play and Install Game links change so there is a drop down for both options. You can select any game, click the drop down and choose to install or play / stream any game from either machine. So I picked Borderlands to try first and set it to stream from my new desktop. It loaded up fine but I had to change all the video settings because it has never been played on that PC before. I set everything to max graphics, something my laptop has not been able to do for this game, and started playing BL on my laptop in maxed settings. It worked flawlessly. I only played for a few minutes, but my laptop's fan didn't even kick on like it normally would for that game. It was definitely running off the other computer because I've tried these settings on my laptop before and it was unplayable do to how horribly laggy it became. But with the in-home streaming, it wasn't an issue at all. I seemed to have some issues with the Walking Dead. It lagged out on me once and a second time it kicked me from the game. But I think it was because the desktop was going into sleep mode. I'll have to test that again later.
I'm now very interested in getting a Steam Machine.. but not some powerful one, no.. I want the lowest end steam machine that comes with a controller. As long as I can stream from my main desktop, I'll have no problem playing every game on my steam account and I won't be limited to what can only run on Steam OS. I wonder if some company will make a HDMI dongle steam machine made strictly for streaming from another computer over wifi. I'd buy it.
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By Sledgstone
I finally figured out my NAT issues. I'm posting this because so many games are affected by NAT / router issues. The main NAT problem I've been having is PSN's new party chat feature. Because the chat works by having individuals self host the VOIP on their own systems, many people will experience NAT errors because of their routers.
This is not a step by step guide, but instead its a list for future reference for anyone that is having NAT issues and the steps I performed to fix them on my network. Search on google how to do these specific steps for your game systems and / or routers / modems.
1) I manually set my PS4 to have a static IP by manually entering the IP# I wanted it to have. The IP# is the same as all the other devices on my network except for the last set of numbers. This I set to 80 to make sure that nothing else on my network would ever try to get that number assigned to it. I also had to set the numbers for my default gateway, DNS, etc.
2) I opened my router settings, I then changed the range of DHCP IP#s to 2-79 to make sure my PS4 IP# would be outside of the DHCP range. Because it is now a static IP#, it's number cannot be in the DHCP range.
3) I then set that specific IP# for the PS4 to be in a DMZ (demilitarized zone). After resetting everything, I realized the problem was not resolved.
4) I set a variety of port forwards / triggers for the IP# of the PS4 that are specific to PSN. This did not resolve the issue either.. I found some more ports for PS3/PS4 and added those as well. Still didn't work.
5) This is the solution.. I realized that I had to login to my modem which had a different IP# from my router. Once I was in the modem admin, I set my router's IP# to be in the modem's DMZ. I then also set the modem to run in "Bridged mode".
Once that last part was done, I reset everything. The end result is that on my router admin screen, the WAN number changed from a 192.168.0.2 number to the actual IP# of my internet. The problem was that my system was being double NATed. All the settings I made to the router were all nulled and pointless because the modem itself was blocking all those settings with it's own NAT. Because the modem was now bridged, it basically skips all its NAT and firewall options and now acts as a bridge from my router to the actual internet as opposed to being a wall that granted restricted access.
Now when I run the Internet test on my PS4, it still shows up as NAT Type 2, but I no longer get the warning text at the bottom about fragmented packets possibly causing errors. Also, when I make a party chat, I no longer receive a NAT error message. My NAT issues seem to be resolved. I tested it tonight with my brother. We got into a party chat just fine and played some BF4.
And then after a while we realized that everyone on our squad could hear us the entire time because we had VOIP turned on in the BF4 settings. We thought party chat would override that but it does not. We had squad mates talking in our ear in the last round. After turning VOIP off in the BF4 settings, it disabled all voice chatting for the game, but PSN's party chat continued to work fine in the game. I'm very glad PSN has a party chat option now. Its much easier to keep talking rather than losing a conversation because of a lost connection to an EA server.
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By Sledgstone
Here is a video of Samsung's flexible screen tech from 2 years ago. Samsung, Sony and LG will all have flexible screens soon. This video was made before LG's flexible battery tech. Because there were no flexible batteries, there had to be a solid piece of the phone. Now the entire thing can be potentially flexible.
With how thin the screens can be, it might only be a matter of time before we have tablets that are the size of a standard 12 inch ruler that have screens that can be pulled / rolled out into full size.
Source: Dailymail
The next interesting part is gesture control. All hands free control using ultrasound.
Combine these two techs and we'll have the next gen cell phones, tablets, laptops, TVs of the future.
Source: Bitrebels
The flexible screen tech got me thinking.. they could make clothing out of those screens. Imagine a camouflage suit made out of this display technology. With the proper use of numerous mini cameras the screens could display your surroundings all over the suit and blend you completely into any location.
Also, with screens that thin.. once they make them bigger and higher resolution, future TVs could be sold rolled up. Apply some double sided tape to your wall, unroll the tv and stick the screen in place. And with gesture control, we wouldn't need a camera built into the TV for smart app features.
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