It's the end of an era, sort of: Fraunhofer IIS, the developers of the MP3 audio compression format, announced that they are ceasing their licensing program. In a blog post, spokesman Matthias Rose says that it's had a good 20-year run and is obsolete. But it's also true that the decoding patents expired last year, and the last encoding patents are soon to follow. So there's not much hope of selling any licenses in any case.
MP3 put out to pasture
Elderly woman hit with recurring subscription after asking voice assistant to say the Hail Mary
An old lady in England got a voice assistant as a gift. A devout Catholic, she asked it to say the Hail Mary. Delighted when it did so, she made it a daily habit. And Amazon was charging her for it, writes Patrick Collinson, her son. She had "unwittingly ordered" a subscription for an app… READ THE REST
California's net neutrality law survives courtroom challenge
As Ars Technica puts it, "ISPs can't find any judges who will block California's Net Neutrality law", and it's not like they haven't been shopping hard. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who voted for federal net neutrality rules in 2015 and opposed their repeal in 2017, applauded yesterday's court decision."This is big. Because when the FCC… READ THE REST
The mystery of ⍼, a Unicode character of unknown purpose
⍼, "RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW", is a Unicode character of uncertain origin. It may be summoned as the HTML entity ⍼. Jonathan Chan set out to uncover its mysterious purpose, a journey that led way back to Unicode's own antecedents. The meaning of ⍼ will be whatever meaning is assigned by whoever uses… READ THE REST
Light up with a pipe that's made to make smoking simple
There's a lot of reasons to buy a new smoking piece. Maybe you dropped your old one and that cool glass octopus build doesn't work so well when it's in a million pieces. Perhaps you're making the switch from rolling your own to something a little less cumbersome. Or maybe you just want an upgrade. Whatever… READ THE REST
Life's hard enough, which is why this flexible lighter is a game-changer
From ensuring you have enough money for gas this week to keeping up with today's politics, life is far from easy. And everyday things like making dinner, commuting to work, and even lighting candles should be the least of your worries. But when it comes to reaching down into the jar of your favorite candle, unable to… READ THE REST
These $29 game design and development courses might make learning as fun as the real thing
Gaming is something that most people can appreciate. Whether you're into the classics, a casual gamer, or a die-hard who plays all the time, there are many different ways to enjoy the hobby. But we think it's safe to say, novice or professional, we're all interested in how games even come to be. If you're fascinated by gaming… READ THE REST
