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OS X 10.10.4 includes native TRIM support for third party SSD Terminal command = Code:
sudo trimforce enable
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An update Apple Support Pages document about MacBook battery servicing indicates that MacBook owners who are seeing their laptop’s battery retain less than 80% of its original capacity can get them replaced free if the computer is still covered under AppleCare.(MacTrast)
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According to Rogers, iOS 8.4 will go live at 8 AM Pacific this Tuesday, two hours earlier than Apple's usual iOS update release window. |
Regina police say they're getting lots of unwanted 911 calls from Siri, Apple's "intelligent personal assistant".(CBC)
People with iPhones use Siri to do things like order pizza or get answers to questions.
However, on the weekend, police received an unusually high number of 911 hangup calls to their communications centre.
In just two hours on Sunday morning, 114 hang up 911 calls came in.
They believe the calls came in response to a widely circulated social media message telling people to ask Siri about "9/11" (pronounced nine-eleven) — a reference to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
"The messages on Twitter, Facebook and other social media prompt people with a teaser like, 'Say 9/11 into Siri and you'll be amazed', or 'When you say 9/11 to Siri, her response is hilarious'," a news release from the police said.
What happens next is not hilarious, however. Siri dials 911, accessing a 911 communications officer.
Many of the callers, when they hear a live operator on the line asking about the emergency, panic and hang up.
Star of the original Avengers, a favourite from the past. I loved that show.|
The District, Baltimore and many counties in between are contributing millions annually to prop up one of the nation’s busiest facilities here in Elkridge, Md. — but it is still losing money. In fact, almost every facility like it in the country is running in the red. And Waste Management and other recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around. |
Apple has launched a replacement program for defective 3TB hard drives used in its flagship 27-inch iMacs for the 2013 season. The offer is being made across the world as Apple has found that the hard drives can fail under specific circumstances.(DigitalJournal)
The company will be replacing the affected units free of charge at its retail stores. Alternatively, customers can visit an Apple Authorised Service Provider to have the work done.
As the International Business Times reports, Apple is contacting owners of computers that are eligible for the replacement. People who bought a 27-inch iMac with a 3TB hard drive between December 2012 and September 2013 will be emailed details of how to get the faulty unit replaced.
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Early last decade, privacy activists practically yelled and screamed that the NSA’s taps of various points of the Internet and telecom networks had the technical potential for enormous abuse against privacy. Everybody else dismissed those points as basically tinfoilhattery – until the Snowden files came out, and it was revealed that precisely everybody involved had abused their technical capability for invasion of privacy as far as was possible. Perhaps it would be wise to not repeat that exact mistake. Nobody, and I really mean nobody, is to be trusted with a technical capability to listen to every room in the world, with listening profiles customizable at the identified-individual level, on the mere basis of “trust us”. Privacy remains your own responsibility. |
A tip from a childhood friend helped police identify the suspected gunman in a shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., that left nine people dead, police say.(CBC)
The suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, of Lexington, S.C., was arrested during a traffic stop late Thursday morning in Shelby, N.C., and will be taken back to South Carolina.
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The pastor of the church, state Senator Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed.
Earlier today, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch declared that acts such as the mass murder of worshippers in a black church in Charleston, allegedly by a man fond of white supremacist symbols, "have no place in a civilized society."(CBC)
She's right, of course. But a reasonable case can be made that South Carolina is less a civilized society than a predator's paradise.
In a civilized society, people have some assurance that laws, and the agents who enforce those laws, will shield them from predators, protecting the weak being the essence of civilization.
But even leaving aside its ugly history of race relations — the Confederate flag still flies in front of the state capital in Columbia — South Carolina, like many other U.S. states, is a place where the love of guns trumps the protection of innocents.
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Dylann Storm Roof, the prime suspect in Wednesday's slaughter.
There he stands in his Facebook picture, posing in a bog somewhere, the flags of apartheid South Africa and the white-ruled former Rhodesia stitched ostentatiously onto his jacket.
News photo of the month, that one.
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One of the first news organizations to report Roof's birthday present was the Charleston Post and Courier, a newspaper that has a Pulitzer Prize to its credit.
On the front page today, just over the headline CHURCH ATTACK KILLS 9, it featured a peel-off advertisement for "Ladies Night" at the ATP Gun Shop and Range: "$30 gets you everything!" Gun, ammo, even a souvenir T-shirt.
The newspaper at least had the grace to apologize for that.
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Meanwhile, at the White House, the president was raising his civilized voice, once again.
"I've had to make comments like this too many times," Barack Obama told reporters, rather plaintively. He has spoken after mass murders at least six times during his presidency.
"At some point as a country, we have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries."
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Obama went on to say that "it is in our power to do something about it."
But it's actually not in his power to do anything about it. He tried, after the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.
The country was outraged. Most Americans agreed with him. Then the National Rifle Association started making some calls and Congress punked out.
Why would anyone think it'll be any different this time?
A National Rifle Association board member has blamed the political position of South Carolina State Senator — and pastor — Clementa Pinckney for the church massacre in Charleston that left nine people dead.(Independent UK)
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NRA board member Charles Cotton has said that if Senator Pinckney had not voted to oppose legislation that would have allowed guns in South Carolina churches, “eight of his church members…might be alive,” Politico reported.
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Alan will forever be missed as the man who inspired so many people to take a stand (and take up writing) on any issue and just say 'enough already.' He didn't want you to cry on his shoulder, he wanted you to fight against the many injustices that you thought were worth fighting. He could respect a fighter, even one on the other side of the divide, but not a quitter. It just wasn't in his DNA. |
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A Toronto anti-oilsands activist – still registered as an anti-oil lobbyist – is now running Alberta’s energy department. |
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There are twelve ministers in the Alberta cabinet, including Notley herself, each with a chief of staff. And ten of those chiefs are, like Mitchell, NDP activists from other provinces, many of whom will commute each week to Alberta from Vancouver, Toronto, or elsewhere. |
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There is something weirdly colonial about non-residents being sent in to run a province to which they have few or no ties. It feels as if the NDP believes Alberta lacks people with talent and judgment to govern themselves. It feels nepotistic – highly paid consolation prizes for failed NDP activists from other campaigns. Like Nathan Rotman. He worked on Olivia Chow’s unsuccessful campaign for Toronto mayor. Now he’s the chief of staff to Alberta’s Finance Minister. Was there no-one in Alberta with any financial background? No socially conscious businessman, or even an NDP-friendly professor or think tank economist? Four million Albertans, but not one who understands Alberta’s fiscal situation better than an Olivia Chow door-knocker? |
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The Wildrose Party says it’s a troubling sign that the NDP energy minister’s top staffer was registered as a federal lobbyist for an organization opposed to pipeline projects proposed to ship Alberta oilsands crude. |
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"What is remarkable about my companies is that they have been successful despite having such a tiny incentive from the government relative to our competitors," Musk told The Times. |
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"Tesla could be profitable right now if we went into low-growth mode and we just served premium buyers," he said. "The reason we are not profitable is because we are making massive investments to create an affordable long-range electric car." Tesla's only current car, the Model S sport sedan, typically sells for about $100,000. |
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Film legend Sir Christopher Lee has died at the age of 93. The actor - known as a horror star in the 1950s before forging a second career in fantasy blockbusters - had been treated for heart failure and respiratory problems in hospital. He died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London on Sunday morning after three weeks of treatment, but his widow decided to withhold the news until today so family and friends could be informed. |
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CBC host Evan Solomon fired after Star investigation finds he took secret cut of art deals CBC journalist facilitated sales of art to wealthy Canadians he dealt with in his job — including one buyer who had no idea Solomon was collecting a commission. CBC has fired marquee host Evan Solomon after the Star reported that he was taking secret commission payments related to art sales involving people he dealt with as a host. “I regret to inform you that CBC News has ended its relationship with Evan Solomon,” executive Jennifer McGuire said in a brief statement issued late Tuesday, a day after the Star presented the findings of its investigation to the network. Solomon, 47, was the Ottawa-based host of Power and Politics on television and The House on CBC radio, and had been one of the people touted to replace Peter Mansbridge on The National when the veteran newsman retires. The Star found Solomon had been brokering the sale of paintings and masks owned by a flamboyant Toronto-area art collector to rich and famous buyers. Solomon, in at least one case, took commissions in excess of $300,000 for several pieces of art and did not disclose to the buyer that he was being paid fees for introducing buyer and seller. The CBC had taken Solomon off the air Monday pending an investigation “over the next couple of days.” That move came after the Star presented the CBC with the results of its probe of Solomon. The network severed its relationship with Solomon on Tuesday without further explanation. McGuire, general manager and editor in chief of CBC News and Centres, said in the statement that the network would “be making announcements about the interim hosting of these programs in the next few days.” |
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EDMONTON — A 35-year-old Edmonton Police Service officer in the hate crimes unit was shot to death in a southwest Edmonton suburb on Monday night, in an act city Police Chief Rod Knecht described as “a tragedy of unspeakable proportions.” A second officer was injured, but is expected to make a full recovery. Knecht identified the officer who was killed as Const. Daniel Woodall, 35. “His job was to protect all of us from harm, victimization, and criminal activity. We will forever be in his debt for his actions this evening,” said Knecht, speaking to reporters gathered at Edmonton Police Service headquarters early Tuesday morning. “But, of far greater importance, a wife is without a husband tonight and two young children are without a loving father. This is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions for the EPS, for the broader policing community and for all Canadians.” Woodall had been with the EPS for eight years. Knecht identified the injured officer as southwest division patrol Sgt. Jason Harley, 38, a 15-year member of the EPS. Knecht said the shooting happened at about 8 p.m., when several officers came under fire while executing a warrant for criminal harassment at a home in the Callingwood area, around 182nd Street and 62A Avenue. Knecht said the shots were fired from inside the home as the officers attempted to enter the residence. |
