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Weekly Rewind: Tinder STDs, VR t-shirts and Happy Meals, Hack the Pentagon

Weekly Rewind 3-6-2016
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In the tech world, a lot happens in a week. So much news goes on, in fact, that it’s almost impossible for mere mortals with real lives to keep track of everything. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick and dirty list of the top 10 tech stories from the first week of March. Everything from the ongoing encryption debate to Kickstarter failures — it’s all here.

Stories: 1-5

Apple vs. FBI: A complete timeline of tech’s privacy standoff

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Apple has added a webpage offering access to amicus briefs from various groups in support of Apple’s stance in the ongoing case. An Amicus curiae means someone who is a friend of the court, and in submitting an amicus brief, the individual or group is throwing support to a certain side.

Read the full story here.

New study finds Tinder users twice as likely to have a STI

tinder
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A new study by a British pharmaceutical company has found that Tinder users are twice as likely to have a sexually transmitted infection (STI) as those who don’t use the app. The most common STI among users of the app was shown to be genital warts, followed by herpes, and chlamydia.

Read the full story here.

MQA is an impressive new file format that squeezes superior sound into less space

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A new way to render hi-res digital audio files, MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) makes files that are much smaller than today’s standard Hi-Res FLAC files. We weren’t given an exact number, but it looks like MQA will be about three times smaller than a comparable high-res FLAC file, meaning they’ll be pretty easy to take along.

Read the full story here.

The greasiest VR headset yet? McDonald’s launches viewer made from Happy Meal box

It may well be the greasiest VR viewer out there, but McDonald’s is nevertheless confident its Happy Goggles will be a hit with kids who get a chance to try it out. The Happy Goggles promotion, which takes place this month at 14 of the fast-food restaurant’s outlets across Sweden, lets the littl’uns convert their Happy Meal box into a set of VR goggles. Think of it as a smelly version of Google Cardboard.

Read the full story here.

Department of Defense recruits white hats for ‘Hack the Pentagon’ program

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The Pentagon wants hackers to put its websites’ cyber defenses to the test with its own bug bounty style “Hack the Pentagon” program. Vetted hackers will be invited to test the security of the Department of Defense website. The program, set up by the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service (DDS), is focused on the public-facing sites.

Read the full story here.

Recommended Videos

Stories: 6-10

This VR t-shirt teaches anatomy by letting you virtually peer inside someone’s body

Everyone loves a cool t-shirt, but what if your funky new skeleton t-shirt were actually a virtual reality-enabled anatomy lesson? Curiscope created Virtuali-tee to give kids a cool way to bring anatomy out of textbooks and into the real world. The t-shirt looks like a stylized skeleton design at first glance, but when viewed through the accompanying mobile app, the shirt displays everything from bones to organs to blood vessels.

Read the full story here.

This ‘Apple freak’ CEO wants to build an Apple car

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Apple still won’t confirm the existence of a much-discussed car program known as “Project Titan,” but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) CEO Sergio Marchionne hopes that if Apple really does launch a car, it will hire his company to build it. Marchionne describes himself as an “Apple freak” who owns every type of product the company makes, is apparently eager for a partnership with Cupertino.

Read the full story here.

Coolest Cooler, Kickstarter’s most-funded project ever, is too broke to ship to backers

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The coolest cooler on the Internet is in desperate need of some cold, hard cash. For the second time in its short history, Coolest Cooler is running short of money, and is now petitioning investors to raise the funds needed to deliver its goods to its 60,000 paying customers, reports Eater.

Read the full story here.

YouTube stars will now be in the running for Emmys due to new awards categories

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And the Emmy goes to; PewDiePie. PewDie who? That may be the reaction from a certain segment of viewers during the next Emmy awards as YouTube stars begin vying for the gongs, thanks to the introduction of new categories that will recognize digital short-form content.

Read the full story here.

Wanna sing for Stone Temple Pilots? They’re hunting for a new singer online

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How do you replace the irreplaceable? That’s the vexing task facing the three core members of Stone Temple Pilots — guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo, and drummer Eric Kretz — who are on a mission-quest to find themselves a new lead singer. And they’re taking the search online.

Read the full story here.

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
I tracked my sleep with a smart display, ring, and watch. This is my favorite
The Oura Ring app on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, showing the Sleep screen.

Since I had a heart attack four years ago, I’ve been on a journey to understand my health. A crucial part of my recovery and focus has been my sleep, and it'smade even more important by the fact that my heart attack took place in the middle of the night while I was fast asleep. Thankfully, I woke up, but our sleep can tell us a lot about our underlying health.

Virtually every wearable now offers some form of sleep tracking, but like most things in technology, not all devices are created equal. Beyond just data, there’s also the question of which is most comfortable to track your sleep, which device gives you the most reliable data, and ultimately, how you can ensure you track your sleep wherever you are.

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How to transfer your books from Goodreads to StoryGraph
Front page of a book on Onyx BOOX Go 10.3 tablet.

Goodreads has been the only game in town for Android and iOS book-tracking for a long time now, and like most monopolies, it has grown old and fat. Acquired by Amazon in 2013, avid book readers have had lots to complain about in recent years, with the service languishing unloved, with no serious updates and an aging interface. It's been due some serious competition for a long time, and lo and behold, some has arrived. StoryGraph is a book-tracking app that offers everything you'll find on Goodreads but with an algorithm that lets you know about what you might love, and adds features any bibliophile will know are essential — like a Did Not Finish list.

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The next iOS 18 update is on its way. Here’s what we know
The iPhone 16 sitting on top of orange mums.

When iOS 18.2 released just over a week ago, it unlocked a lot of long-awaited features like Image Playground, Visual Intelligence, and improvements to writing tools. Now, it seems like another update could be just around the corner: version 18.2.1.

MacRumors found evidence of the update in their analytic logs, a source that has supposedly revealed quite a few iOS versions before release. Given that this is a minor update, it isn't likely to come with new features or anything groundbreaking. Instead, it will most likely be targeted at bug fixes, although no specific problems have been named. You should expect this update to drop either in late December or early January, but a year-end release is more likely.

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