Monday, 23 May 2016

New League Bonus and Loot System - Clash of Clans

Everything about the new Loot System

  • Loot is now also distributed to the Town Hall (Town Hall will no longer keep 1000Gold and 1000Elixir).
  • Maximum Loot is unchanged.
  • The Town Hall now contains a part of loot equal to 1 Gold Storage, 1 Elixir Storage and 1/4 the Dark Elixir Storage. (The TH now can keeps up to 1,600,000Gold, 1,600,000Elixir and 50,000Dark Elixir).
  • The higher TH level is, the more loot it can storage.
  • Goblins now target the Town Hall and Clan Castle like other Storages.
  • Available loot percentage of TH6-10 has been increased.
  • Higher TH level players now get less loot from smaller TH level players.
  • You can find targets at a 2-TH-level difference (good news, the Loot Bonus Farming Strategy still works fine!)

The new League Bonus System

  • League Bonuses have been dramatically increased.
  • The better your raid is, the more Bonus you can get (from 0% to 100%). This is based on the destroyed building percentage.
  • You can get 100% League Bonus If you can destroy more than 70% building.

Wednesday, 18 May 2016

WhatsApp's Latest Update Introduces An Annoying Notification For The Web Client

WhatsApp is doing something not so cool, but maybe a bit understandable in its latest beta version 2.16.86. When you start WhatsApp Web, you'll get a new notification telling you that the web client is currently active.


The notification seems semi-permanent. You can't manually dismiss it, but it disappears when you don't use the web client for a while, only to re-appear when you switch back to that tab in your browser. I kind of understand the rationale behind it: safety and privacy. Maybe you forgot WhatsApp Web running on a computer that you're not using or maybe you've stepped away from your computer, but someone else has opened your tab and started checking your conversations. Previously, you had no idea that was happening. Now you can simply tap the notification to end any browser session and disconnect it.
The problem though is the notification. It's there and it's staying. It'll make you think you have unread messages when you don't because of the WhatsApp icon in your notification bar. It'll unnecessarily occupy a slot in your notification drop-down. And it'll make your Android Wear watch vibrate each time it shows up
Right now, there's no way to disable it without disabling all WhatsApp notifications, which, for a messaging app, is not in the cards. If WhatsApp could at least give us a setting to disable the notification if we don't care about any of those privacy concerns or we know we're the only ones with access to our Web session, that'd be great. As it stands, this is much more of an annoyance than a feature.

Friday, 13 May 2016

Google creates 13 new emoji to represent working women


 
Google employees have designed 13 emoji to represent women in work after a campaign to redress the gender balance.

Emoji, the world's fastest growing language, came under fire earlier this year when Always, the global feminine care brand.

The project showed young women being asked how they felt about the representations of women on emoji keyboards - namely as bride, princess and dancer.

Young females send over a billion emojis every day, but they said that they felt they were not properly represented by the characters on offer.

The emoji language is developed by Unicode Consortium, who are now reviewing the possibility of adding the new characters.

If they get the OK, keyboards will include a businesswoman, doctor, health care worker, scientist, school graduate, technologist, factory worker, high-tech worker, mechanic, farmer, chef, teacher and musician.

There will also be matching male emoji.

Unicode is also reviewing 79 other characters which, if successful, will be in use from June 2017.

They include include a prince, a dancing man, a man in a tuxedo, men wrestling and playing handball, a pregnant woman, a gymnast and Mother Christmas.

Hyundai is building an 'Iron Man' suit


The company posted a series of photos and some scant information about a wearable robot it's building on its blog on Wednesday
The exoskeleton looks nothing like Stark's suit, but the Marvel superhero is clearly an inspiration. 
In the page announcing the project, Hyundai repeatedly references Iron Man's suit, more or less wondering if people realized that the wearable robot they've only seen in movies is actually being developed by Hyundai.
Hyundai's wearable robot is being designed to work in a variety of scenarios, including manufacturing, where Hyundai believes it can help increase productivity, while lowering the incidence of injuries.
Like the Iron Man suit, Hyundai's exoskeleton will give the wearer super-lifting strength. Hyundai wrote that it can lift "hundreds of kilograms," would could translate to 600 pounds of lifting strength.
Since the entire suit weighs roughly 50 kilograms (110 pounds), it could be useful in defense, where pilots can "move quickly over long distances."
It's also being developed to help paraplegics walk again, and aid the elderly become more mobile and even stand for longer periods of time.

HP's new 2-in-1 laptops are inspired by Nike Flyknit sneakers

The palm rests on the new 2016 HP Pavilion x360 2-in-1 convertibles have a new "digital threaded" design inspired by Nike's Flyknit running sneakers

HP's updated its Pavilion-branded laptops, which include its 2-in-1 laptops, standard laptops and all-in-one PCs.

HP Pavilion 2-in-1

All of the Pavilion machines are now running Windows 10. But most striking, on the laptops, they're all sporting a new "digital threaded" design on the palm rest that HP says was inspired by Nike's Flyknit sneakers. 
Pavilion x360 comes in three sizes: 11.6-inch (starting at $379.99), 13.3-inch (starting at $479.99) and 15.6-inch (starting at $579.99). And since they're convertible machines, you can switch between laptop, tent, stand and tablet modes. 
Their lower price points means they're made of plastic and not premium metal like on the Spectre x360. The 2-in-1 laptops come in multiple colors 
HP's streamlined the Pavilion x360 laptops to tighten up some of the nuts and bolts. The hinge on the 11- and 13-inch models are metal (the same one from the Spectre x360), but the 15-inch's is plastic.
Performance-wise, the 11-inch is configurable with an Intel Celeron, Pentium or Core i3 (Skylake) processor and up to 8GB of RAM. The 13-inch with a Core i3 or i5 (Skylake) processors and up to 16GB of RAM. And the 15-inch with a Pentium or Core i3, i5, or i7 (Skylake) chip with up to 8GB of RAM and an optional NVIDIA GeForce 930M graphics chip. 
Battery life is rated at up to 10 hours on the 11-inch, up to 9 hours on the 13-inch and up to 9.25 hours on the 15-inch Pavilion x360. Some models support HP Fast Charge, which lets you charge them up from 0% to 90% in about 90 minutes.

HP Pavilion Notebooks


Comes in three display sizes and in various colors: 14.-inch (starting at $539.99), 15.6-inch (starting at $579.99) and 17.3-inch (starting at $899.99). Resolution choices include HD, full HD and 4K; touchscreens are optional.
The 2016 Pavilion Notebooks are still made of plastic. There's nothing remarkable about the design. The 14- and 15-inch are up to 22% thinner and have occupy a smaller footprint over last year's models.
The 14-inch Pavilion Notebook is configurable with Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 (Skylake) processors, up to 16GB of RAM and an optional NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics chip. The 15-inch with Core i3, i5 or i7 (Skylake) chips, up to 16GB of RAM and optional NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, GTX 950M, GTX 960M graphics; seventh-generation AMD A12-9700 quad-core with optional Radeon R7 Graphics is also an alternative. The 17-inch model is configurable with Core i3, i5 or i7 (Skylake) processors, up to 16GB of RAM and an optional NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics chip. 
Battery life is rated at up to 10 hours on the 14-inch and 9.5 hours for both the 15- and 17-inch laptops. All of the Pavilion Notebooks come with the aforementioned HP Fast Charge.


Pavilion All-in-Ones

 

Available with a 23.8- or 27-inch full HD or QHD resolution display, the new AiO can be specced out in and Intel Pentium or up to Core i7 (Skylake) processors, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 3TB of hard drive storage (or hybrid hard drive/SSD up to 1TB), and optional NVIDIA GT 930A graphics of seventh-generation AMD A10 graphics. 

Audio is, of course, by B&O Play. Below the front-facing speaker grille all the ports, including a USB Type-C port that can be used to charge other devices, USB 3.0 port, 3-in-1 memory card slot and a headphone jack. Around back are more ports: another USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, Ethernet, and HDMI. 

A touchscreen isn't standard, but you can customize it with one. You can also opt for an Intel Real Sense camera for Windows Hello authentication. 

The 23.8-inch model starts at $699.99 and the 27-inch model starts at $999.99.

Wednesday, 11 May 2016

WhatsApp Desktop Clients Now Available For Windows And Mac OS X

The company has announced on its official blog that the desktop versions are now available for Windows and Mac OS X. Sorry Linux users, you're stuck using the web client... but if it's any consolation, they look more or less identical.
The desktop version of WhatsApp uses the same credentials as the innumerable mobile apps, along with the phone number-based contact directory that has made it such a popular data-only replacement for conventional text messaging. The initial login requires a QR scan from your phone, so you'll need the app to be active on your mobile device before you can start chatting natively. The client is surprisingly hefty at over 60MB for the Windows version, but it's functional and fast.
 WhatsApp reached the top of the chat service world and got a 19 billion dollar payday by making itself available and interoperable on every mobile platform on the planet, so it seems at least plausible that it will come to Linux at some point. We'll see - in the meantime, use the "Add to desktop" feature in Chrome for the web version and roll your own.

Instagram Announces New Icons, Makes App Redesign Official

Instagram is ditching its standard retro camera icon. In its place is a new hyper-colorful icon with a simpler representation of the camera. The company's other app icons are getting a similar makeover.

 As you can see above, Layout, Boomerang, and Hyperlapse are all getting more colorful, simple icons. Though, not as colorful as Instagram.

The slimmed down UI that started making its way out to some users recently is official now as well. The toolbar at the bottom is more subtle with a gray/white/black theme. It also leaves more room for content around the UI. This is still a server-side change, so installing the new app from APK mirror is only guaranteed to get you the updated icon. You'll have to wait on the new UI if you don't see it already.