Two weeks before the official Blu-ray release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is scheduled to hit retail, an early copy of the movie has been leaked on several torrent sites around the Internet. Within hours of being posted, it became the most shared file on The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents and similar sites.

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According to TorrentFreak, around 250,000 pirates had downloaded the Blu-ray release of The Force Awakens within 12 hours of the first copy making its way online. The group that ripped the movie provided a photo of the disc:

Of course, this isn’t the first leak of The Force Awakens. Recorded copies of the movie were posted within days of the movie being released in theaters, but shaky cam torrents don’t draw nearly as much attention as HD leaks.

TorrentFreak also notes that Disney and Lucasfilm have sent out tens of thousands of takedown requests over the past few weeks, but the pirated Blu-ray is still available on a majority of the popular torrent sites to this day.

If stealing movies isn’t your thing, you won’t have to wait long to get your hands on the official release. Disney announced earlier this month that the digital download would be available on April 1st and the physical copies would release on April 5th. For more details on the various releases, check this post, which also lists all the bonus features.

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Stop for a moment to think about all of the old gadgets hiding around your home right now. All the old computers, tablets and cell phones tucked away never to be used again. And it’s not just devices that have been replaced by newer models, it’s also things that have become obsolete. Seriously, now that you have a killer camera on your iPhone or Galaxy S7, are you ever going to pick up that old dedicated point and shoot camera again? You probably didn’t even remember you had it until we just reminded you. And come on… as much as you use your PS4 these days, are you ever really going to dig your PS2 out of the garage and play those boring old games?

What you probably don’t realize is that all these gadgets sitting around your house aren’t just clutter, they’re a gold mine that you can quickly and easily turn into cash that can be spent on things you need and actually might use.

You shop at Amazon all the time. You belong to Amazon Prime. You probably even fancy yourself an Amazon expert. But did you know that Amazon has one of the most comprehensive used gadget trade-in programs out there?

From smartphones, tablets and cameras to wireless routers, video game controllers, computers, wearables, MP3 players and just about anything else that runs on a battery, Amazon’s trade-in program makes it insanely easy to learn how much your old unused gear is worth. Then you can gather it all up, ship it off to Amazon for free with a prepaid label, and get credit on your account to spend on anything and everything you want. And while some services can take forever, Amazon will pay you for your gear within two days of receiving it.

There’s another cool way to use Amazon’s trade-in service. When you buy a new smartphone, you can get some pretty low trade-in quotes from your carrier. If you don’t feel like selling your current phone privately instead, you can use Amazon long before you get your new phone. Smartphone value quotes are locked in for 21 days from now through May 1, so you can get your guaranteed quote now and know exactly how much you’ll have to put toward your new phone. Then you can take your time, buy the new phone, and send Amazon your old one once the new one is activated and all set up.

You’ll find a bunch of other benefits to Amazon’s trade-in program compared other options out there and like everything else Amazon does, it’s beyond simple to use. Get started right here on Amazon’s main trade-in page.

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The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge are Samsung’s best smartphones ever. That’s abundantly clear. Samsung has perfected an amazing design released last year, addressed previous complaints from consumers, and returned in 2016 with a product refresh that’s already selling better than expected.

But is the Galaxy S7 the best in the world? Consumer Reports believes so.

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“These new models aren’t just Samsung’s best smartphones, but, perhaps, the best smartphones. And they now sit atop our Ratings,” Mike Gikas wrote.

“The new Galaxy S7 and S7 edge bring back water-resistance and expandable memory. They earn Excellent battery life scores, and turn in top-notch performance in other areas,” he added.

Consumer Reports praised the various features that aren’t available on the Galaxy S6, including water-resistance and microSD support. But the organization was less enthusiastic other aspects of the device, including the great 12-megapixel rear camera and the battery life.

“Our testers found that battery life wasn’t as good as it had been on the previous models. Camera performance was just Good,” Consumer Reports wrote.

Of note, expert reviews have deemed the Galaxy S7’s camera to be the best the world has ever seen.

There you have it, the Galaxy S7 series represents the best smartphone duo on the planet according to Consumer Reports. Of course, in real-life tests, the Galaxy S7 can’t outperform the iPhone just yet.

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A dramatic new twist in the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI unfolded on Monday night when the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal judge to vacate its hearing with Apple that was scheduled for Tuesday. The Cupertino, California-based company was set to begin arguing its case after a judge ordered it to supply the FBI with tools that would allow it to break into an iPhone that had previously belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

In the DOJ’s request, it stated that a third party may have a means of helping the FBI to break into the iPhone in question without Apple’s help, and the FBI now has until April 5th to provide an update. While the agency refused to disclose who or what this mysterious third party might be, it looks like the company’s cover has now been blown.

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Via Reuters, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday that it has learned the identity of the company that will assist the FBI in hacking its way past the recovered iPhone’s security. According to the report, mobile forensic software and solutions provider Cellebrite is the company in question.

“Cellebrite mobile forensics solutions give access to and unlock the intelligence of mobile data sources to extend investigative capabilities, accelerate investigations, unify investigative teams and produce solid evidence,” the company says on its website. “Cellebrite’s range of mobile forensic products, the UFED Series, enable the bit-for-bit extraction and in-depth decoding and analysis of data from thousands of mobile devices, including feature phones, smartphones, portable GPS devices, tablets and phones manufactured with Chinese chipsets.”

The iPhone recovered from Farook is protected by a lock screen PIN code or password, and all iOS devices with lock screen protection are encrypted. The FBI had requested that Apple build a special version of iOS that would allow it to use a brute force attack to guess the phone’s PIN or password without risking the deletion of the data after too many failed attempts, but we’ve already explained some of the many other ways the FBI might be able to break into the iPhone. It’s unclear if Cellebrite plans to use any of those methods.

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Though it took a few years to get there, Apple with iOS 8 finally introduced support for third-party keyboards, thereby allowing iPhone and iPad users to install and enjoy custom keyboards for the very first time. Looking to get in on the action, The Verge reports that Google has been busy developing its own third-party keyboard for iOS.

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Though there’s no release date just yet, the report relays that Google has been testing the device internally for months now. And not surprisingly, the company is aiming to position ‘search’ as a central part of the keyboard experience. The underlying goal? Increase the number of Google searches coming from iOS devices.
Like its Android counterpart, the Google keyboard for iOS employs gesture-based typing, so you can slide your finger from one letter to the next and let Google guess your intended word. Tap the Google logo and you can access traditional web search. It also appears to have distinct buttons for pictures and GIF searches, both presumably powered by Google image search. The keyboard is visually distinct from the standard Android keyboard, which incorporates voice search but no text or image-based searching.
As anyone who has used Facebook Messenger can attest, quick and easy access to GIFs and photos is remarkably addicting and fun. While it remains to be seen how functional, efficient and fast Google’s keyboard app is, the upcoming keyboard app certainly sounds intriguing.

The report further adds that Google is particularly interested in mobile search on iOS because smartphone users on the whole don’t do as much web searching as their desktop counterparts. And with mobile ads commanding higher rates than desktop ads, it stands to reason that Google views increasing the number of web searches emanating from iOS devices as a strategic priority.

Additionally, it’s worth pointing out that Siri has also eaten into Google search volume. Indeed, Google chairman Eric Schmidt once called virtual assistants like Siri a strategic threat to Google’s core business. While Siri undoubtedly has its flaws, it still performs remarkably well for basic queries that users previously had to rely upon Google to answer. Today, an iPhone user looking for, say, nearby sandwich shops is much more likely to either use Siri or a third-party app like AroundMe to see what his or her food options are.

To date, third party keyboards are beloved by many users, but there’s no denying that such apps remain a particularly niche category within the App Store. That said, the cache of Google’s brand will undoubtedly bolster the app’s visibility and perhaps popularity once it becomes available for download.

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Streaming music is hardly the new kid on the block, but it’s seemingly grown exponentially in the past few years thanks to services like Pandora, Spotify, and most recently, Apple Music. With 2015 now behind us, the RIAA today released its year-end sales report and highlighted how revenue from streaming music over the past year generated more revenue than digital downloads, an industry first.

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The report reads in part:
The streaming category includes revenues from subscription services (such as paid versions of Spotify, TIDAL, and Apple Music, among others), streaming radio service revenues that are distributed by SoundExchange (like Pandora, SiriusXM, and other Internet radio), and other non-subscription on-demand streaming services (such as YouTube, Vevo, and ad-supported Spotify).
For the year gone by, the streaming sites mentioned above generated $2.4 billion, accounting for 34.3% of all industry revenue. Digital downloads meanwhile, a tally which includes both digital album and singles sales, accounted for 34% of record label revenue. And pulling up the rear, physical music sales accounted for approximately 28% of industry revenue for the year gone by.

All told, the music industry enjoyed revenue of $7 billion last year, a modest 0.9% increase from 2014. As the report highlights, revenue from digital downloads and physical sales continue to trend downwards but are being offset by a corresponding increase in streaming subscriptions.

“In 2015, digital music subscription services reached new all-time highs, generating more than $1 billion in revenues for the first time, and averaging nearly 11 million paid subscriptions for the year,” RIAA CEO Cary Sherman said. “Heading into 2016, the number of subscriptions swelled even higher — more than 13 million by the end of December — holding great promise for this year.”

On a related note, Spotify earlier this week disclosed that it now has more than 30 million paid subscribers.

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When you send an email to someone, it goes through something called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), a standard that was first developed in the 1980s and that lacks the ability to fully encrypt our messages. Because of this, a group of engineers from several different companies — including from Microsoft, Google, Comcast and LinkedIn — are working on a new proposal that would update the standard to ensure full encryption for all email messages.

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The proposal, which was submitted recently to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), outlines a new mechanism called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Strict Transport Security (SMTP STS). Its main goal is to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks that have compromised past efforts at making SMTP a more secure protocol.

The IETF notes that under current protocols, “any attacker who can delete parts of the SMTP session (such as the “250 STARTTLS” response) or who can redirect the entire SMTP session (perhaps by overwriting the resolved MX record of the delivery domain) can perform such a downgrade or interception attack” on any messages sent.

The idea with the new proposal is to give message transfer agents (MTAs) that send emails the ability to watch out for certain red flags that would bounce sent messages back to their recipients if there are hints that they’ve been compromised. It essentially works like this: When you send a message to a destination that supports the new SMTP STS standard, the MTAs will automatically check to see if its destination supports encryption and if it has a valid certificate. In theory, this would prevent the message from being intercepted by a malicious server along the way to its destination, thus blocking attempted man-in-the-middle attacks.

This standard is still just a proposal and there are obviously a lot of details to be worked out before it gets rolled out worldwide. To get more technical details on how it would work, check out the IETF’s full page on it at this link.

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If you’ve ever been a goalie in hockey, you know that hockey pucks are not soft little discs. In fact, they’re very hard and they really hurt when they’re flying at you at over 100 miles per hour. So I was pretty surprised to see a hockey puck get crushed like a grape in a wild new viral video posted by the Finnish Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube.

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In retrospect, however, I shouldn’t have been at all surprised that a hockey puck wouldn’t be able to withstand pressure from the hydraulic press since it’s made of solid vulcanized black rubber.

All the same, it’s a bit jarring to see how easily the puck gets squished under the power of the press, as you can see in this screencap…

…and it’s not too long before the entire thing simply bursts apart…

…leaving only these remains behind…

“Hockey puck exploded!” exclaimed the man making the video.

It sure did, my friend. It sure did.

The entire Hydraulic Press Channel is filled with similarly amusing videos, if you’re interested in this sort of thing. The channel bills itself as the only place for people who “wanna see stuff getting crushed by hydraulic press” and it does not disappoint.

Check out the whole thing below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxDycguIWXI&feature=youtu.be

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How would you like to go down a transparent slide that’s mounted over 1,000 feet in the air? If that sounds like your thing, then you’ll definitely want to check out the new Skyslide that’s being built on the side of the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. Per The Los Angeles Times, the slide will begin on the building’s 70th floor and will take riders down to its 69th floor. While this doesn’t seem like much of a drop, the slide itself is about 45 feet in length and will give you a bird’s eye view of the entire city on your way down.

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As The Los Angeles Times notes, this slide is part of a gigantic $50 million renovation of the U.S. Bank Tower, which happens to be the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast. Riding on it will not be free, however: You’ll have to pay $8 to take a trip on the Skyslide, and that’s after you’ve already paid $25 for access to the new Skyspace complex where it will be located.

Even so, riding on the Skyslide looks like a lot of fun. Gizmodo has a terrific video that will give you an idea of just how far off the ground you’ll be if you ever decide to give it a shot.

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