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Can you dig it? Shovel Knight’s getting a free update

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A plague upon all your houses.
A plague upon all your houses.
Photo: Yacht Club Games

Indie favorite Shovel Knight is getting a new, free update based on a popular bad guy from the first release.

Called Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows, the new expansion will include a whole new way to play in the Shovel Knight universe with new levels, music, art, and platforming. The villainous Plague Knight, master of alchemy, is the star of this new addition, which will come along with the original game, Shovel Knight, and as a free update to owners of the original game, which won over 70 Game of the Year awards in 2014.

Check out the video below to see all the chaos of this action-packed expansion.

Ashley Madison hack airs tech’s dirty laundry

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Email addresses from some of the top tech companies are on the list of outed accounts following a hack on the infidelity site, Ashley Madison.
Email addresses from some of the top tech companies are on the list of outed accounts following a hack on the infidelity site, Ashley Madison.
Photo: David Pierini/Cult of Mac

Some of the tech world’s brightest may have been caught with their hard drives in the wrong place.

Email accounts from some of the biggest technology companies, including Apple and IBM, were among those outed as a result of the recent hack on Ashley Madison, the dating website for infidelity.

iOS 9 code appears to confirm Force Touch for iPhone 6s

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Apple Watch's Force Touch is coming to iPhone.
Apple Watch’s Force Touch is coming to iPhone.
Photo: Apple

The addition of Force Touch on the next iPhone has been churning through the rumor mill practically since Apple unveiled the technology with the Apple Watch last year. We’ve yet to see any component leaks that confirm the tech is actually coming to the iPhone 6s, but one developer may have just found evidence that it’s definitely on the way.

iOS developer Hamza Sood discovered key references to Force Touch in iOS today that appear to confirm the iPhone 6s will indeed come with pressure sensitive technology, and it may also add the new trackpad gestures that Apple is adding to iPad with the release of iOS 9.

Here’s what Hamza found:

With each sip of coffee this cup lid gives you some sugar

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This coffee cup lid will let you drink from its delicious lips and include an awkward touching of noses.
This coffee cup lid will let you drink from its delicious lips and include an awkward touching of noses.
Photo: Jang Woo-Seok

Jang Woo-Seok loves coffee and kisses. But it’s only coffee he gets on a daily basis – that is until he designed a cup lid that provides both.

The designer from South Korea has taken the common coffee cup lid and gave it puckering lips for B2B, a chain of coffee shops in his home country.

Jony Ive will offer another peek behind Apple curtain at Vanity Fair Summit

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Jony Ive
Jony Ive doesn't find failure very interesting.
Photo: Vanity Fair/YouTube

Jony Ive seemed embarrassed when Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter started their interview by calling Ive the “greatest industrial designer in the world right now.”

The Apple design guru closed his eyes, rubbed his head, and then provided a soft-spoken but enlightening 25-minute peek inside his head during 2014’s Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. Wonder what he’ll say this year?

Pocket now recommends stories you might have missed

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pocket-now-recommends-stories-you-might-have-missed-image-cultofandroidcomwp-contentuploads201508pocket-6-recommendations-jpg
The app update wants to fill your pocket with recommended stories and videos.
Photo: Pocket
pocket-6-recommendations
The app update wants to fill your pocket with recommended stories and videos. Photo: Pocket

Pocket updated its apps for Android and iOS to version 6.0, which now tailors to your interests. The release brings a new Recommendations tab that scans your activity in Pocket and, armed with that knowledge, presents you with new stories and other content you might find interesting.

First third-party watch accessory hits Apple Store shelves

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NightStand is the first third-party Apple Watch accessory in Apple Stores.
NightStand is the first third-party Apple Watch accessory available in the Apple Store.
Photo: ElevationLab

You no longer have to depend on the Internet to provide you with third-party Apple Watch accessories, as the company has started stocking them in its gleaming, glass-covered retail locations.

The first accessory on offer is a minimalist charging dock that will be compatible with watchOS 2’s Nightstand Mode when the firmware update launches this fall.

Swipe your way to iOS 9’s suggested contacts

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There they are! Hello, contacts!
There they are! Hello, contacts!
Screen: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

iOS 8 introduced the idea of showing your most-contacted contacts in the multitasking screen. You’d simply double click on the Home button to see the list of the most recent apps as well as a row of the folks you contacted the most across the top.

If you’re looking for that feature in iOS 9, you might have noticed that the contacts are no longer in the multitasking screen. Never fear, though, they’ve just moved.

Send your photos to a select few with XY Share It

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The XY Share It lets you transmit photos to only those you want looking at them.
The XY Share It lets you transmit photos to only those you want looking at them.
Photo: XY

You have a great picture of your kid on their first day of school and you would like to share it with just two people. You could post to Facebook or Instagram, but then everyone sees it. You could attach it to an email or text or you could just pass the phone over the next time you see them.

The company XY has another option. It has designed a Bluetooth device the size of a keychain that lets you share an album of pictures with select people.

Tablet and PC shipments expected to decline faster than expected

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El Capitan coming to an iPad near you?
El Capitan coming to an iPad near you?
Photo: Cult of Mac

Microsoft recently launched Windows 10 to the public, but it looks like that won’t be enough to help increase PC shipments next year as IDC estimates PC shipments will fall by -8.7% in 2015 and not stabilize until 2017.

PC shipments aren’t the only tech item on the decline either. Tablet sales are expected to decline even faster than IDC’s previous forecast of a 3.8%. The firm currently projects tablet shipments will drop 8% in 2015, however there is a silver lining for Apple.The 2-in-1 tablet market is expected to grow 86.5% in 2015, right as Apple’s preparing to launch the iPad Pro.

Official Steve Jobs movie poster is insanely great

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Ooh, pretty.
Photo: Universal

After years of speculation, we’ve finally gotten the official movie poster for the forthcoming Steve Jobs biopic — and, man, does it ever look great!

Keeping to the same minimalist style as the Walter Isaacson book jacket it’s based on, the poster shows Michael Fassbender striking a typically Jobsian pose, complete with plenty of white space.

Steve would surely have approved!

Save up to 60% on 5 great ways to satisfy the jones for drones [Deals]

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This limited-edition flier that packs an amazing amount of moves in its palm-sized frame.
This limited-edition flier that packs an amazing amount of moves in its palm-sized frame.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

It’s fine to admit it: you get a little jealous every time you see someone playing with a drone. Why not join the fun with a little drone of your own? We’ve found five deals on compact, fully-equipped and affordable drones to get you flying, filming, and having fun in no time and for next to nothing.

Court slaps spy who helped Samsung win Apple chip orders

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chips
The battle to win Apple's chip orders is hotter than ever.
Photo: Apple

Taiwan’s top court ruled in favor of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in a lawsuit involving a former employee who allegedly leaked trade secrets to Samsung.

The accused party — TSMC’s former senior director of R&D, Liang Mong-song — allegedly helped Samsung catch up in the chip-fabrication business and win orders for Apple’s A-series processors..

iPhone 6 smokes Samsung Note 5 in speed test

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The Note 5 has super specs, but can't match iPhone 6's speed. Photo: Samsung
The Note 5 has super specs, but can’t match iPhone 6’s speed. Photo: Samsung

The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 is one of the most beefed up and powerful smartphones the world has ever seen. In terms of raw specs, the Note 5 blows the 2014 iPhone 6 out of the water with 4GB of RAM and a zippier processor, but as Apple has taught us for so many years, specs don’t always translate into better performance.

To see how fast the Galaxy Note 5 is compared to last year’s iPhone hardware, DroidModderX pitted the two devices against each other in a speed test designed to mimic everyday use, and the results were quite surprising. The iPhone is running on weaker hardware, but thanks to Apple’s software it managed to blow the Note 5 out of the water, thanks to Samsung’s horrible TouchWiz UI that bogs down all the memory.

Watch iPhone 6 destroy the Note 5 below:

How to get desktop notifications for Gmail in OS X without using Mail

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You can use Gmail's web app and get Notifications in OS X with Aura.
You can use Gmail's web app and get Notifications in OS X with Aura.
Photo: Cross Coded

If you use Gmail – and let’s face it, most of us do – one of the biggest draws of using an external app, like OS X Mail, is being able to get Notifications when new emails arrive. Unfortunately, many email apps don’t support Gmail’s best features natively, like labeling, search or automatically filtered inboxes.

If you’d like to get Notifications when a new Gmail comes in, but continue to use the Gmail web app instead of a dedicated client, here’s how.

Internet musical asks, ‘What would Steve Jobs do?’

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Who better to turn to in your moment of need?
Photo: Burning Man: The Musical

If you ever find yourself asking “What would Steve Jobs do?” in a bleak moment of crisis, you may well find yourself enjoying the latest would-be viral video.

Called Burning Man: The Musical, the short music video portrays the excitement around the annual Burning Man hippie-fest-turned-tech-networking-event, where zillionaire CEOs get together and pretend to be penniless beatniks for a couple of days, while staying in air-conditioned wigwams and attending $15,000-per-head parties.

Oh, and the video’s got a great Steve Jobs-themed song, too.

Double the apps in your iOS dock with Doubler

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Want double the dock icons? Install Docker.
Want double the dock icons? Install Docker.
Photo: Modmyi

Let’s face it: the dock gets crowded. Even on the iPad, the short row of icons Apple gives us at the bottom of our iOS homepage is always too little.

You can fill your dock with folders if you want to cram more apps there… or you can download this neat little jailbreak tweak, which doubles the amount of icons you can put in your dock.

Steve Jobs movie isn’t really about Steve Jobs at all, says Kate Winslet

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Kate Winslet (left) plays Joanna Hoffman (right) in Steve Jobs.
Winslet says the Mac's legendary marketing guru was one of the few people who didn't need anything from Steve Jobs.
Photo: Kate Winslet/Joanna Hoffman

The Steve Jobs movie isn’t really about Steve Jobs at all, claims actress Kate Winslet, who plays Joanna Hoffman, the legendary Macintosh marketing chief, in the upcoming film.

In a new interview, Winslet opens up about the movie, and says that it is more about one man’s ability to change the world — for better or worse.

Neil Young admits his iPod competitor is having a hard time

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Neil Young's high-res audio player is having a touch time taking off.
Neil Young's high-res audio player is having a touch time taking off.
Photo: Pono

After years spent whining about how the iPod was killing the music industry, rock legend Neil Young pulled his albums from Apple Music and launched his own iPod killer, the Pono Player. It was a weird pyramid shaped device that specialized in high-resolution audio, sold through its own music store, which Ars Technica memorably declared a tall, refreshing drink of snake water.

Anyone surprised to hear, then, that even as iPod sales die, Young’s Pono Player is having trouble keeping pace with it?

Here’s definitive proof of Apple’s legendary reality distortion field

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What AAPL stock looked at close Monday.
What AAPL stock looked at close Monday.
Photo: Finviz

You might remember that on Monday, AAPL stock had a bit of a bad day before rebounding. It wasn’t just a bad day for Apple stock, though: Fueled by fears of a total collapse of the Chinese stock market, the whole S&P 500 collapsed that day.

In the first 24 hours, only Apple rebounded. It’s proof positive of Apple’s fabled “reality distortion field.”