Expanding its reach ever so slightly from TV and Movies, Hulu now has a video games hub, which will feature trailers, reviews and gameplay footage for numerous games. And while that doesn't inspire awe quite yet, it could someday become home to a solid collection of video tips and walkthroughs. [Hulu]

If you didn't already know that the Taliban had a mailing list, your mind is already blown. But here's a solid one-upper: the Taliban spokesperson accidentally CC'd everyone on that list in an otherwise pedestrian email, outing some people who likely didn't want the world to know they were subscribers.

According to ABC News, the list was mostly comprised of journalists, but had some other interesting figures on it:

The list, made up of more than 400 recipients, consists mostly of journalists, but also includes an address appearing to belong to a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator, several academics and activists, an l Afghan consultative committee, and a representative of Gulbuddein Hekmatar, an Afghan warlord whose outlawed group Hezb-i-Islami is believed to be behind several attacks against coalition troops.

The list is mostly used for the Taliban to claim responsibility for attacks, and activity on the account has risen sharply in recent weeks. It's probably safe to say they lost some subscribers after this. [ABC News]

Lytro's founder Ren Ng has always maintained that there was potential in light field photography far beyond the main refocusing trick that the Lytro Camera launched with. And when the latest Lytro desktop software update hits on December 4th, we'll get to see a couple more of those tricks: perspective shift and living filters.

Perspective shift is a subtle, but at times awesome, effect for making a Lytro image pop with 3D-like depth. Previously appearing in a video at a Hong Kong press event, it looks the same as it was before. If you click and drag around any Lytro image, it will automatically set any Lytro image—past or present—into perspective shift mode and let you move the image around ever so slightly. It's like peering into a diorama.

The effect, as you can see, gives images an added look not present before.

And then there are filters. But these aren't simple, Instagram-style overlays. In fact, some are dynamic filters that change as you refocus the image, creating a new shot with each click of the mouse. Yes there are one such as the Film Noir or 8-Track filters that will turn an image black and white or give it the vintage look.

But the real winners are the filters like Crayon, which will keep the focused portion of an image in color, while the blurred portion turns black and white, or Glass, where anything behind the focus point will appear obscured, as if the light was being refracted through glass. These filters can potentially add another level of consideration into how shots are composed at the time their shot, so that when the filter is applied, certain parts are strategically altered.

The full list of 9 filters are as follows:

Carnival: Twist and distort your picture as you refocus and change perspective as if you're in a funhouse of mirrors.

Crayon: Add a touch of color to a monochrome version of your picture. Click to focus and add color into your scene, or change your perspective and add color back into your scene as you explore.

Glass: Put a sheet of virtual glass into your scene. Everything in front of where you click will be unchanged, and everything behind will appear to be behind a piece of frosted glass.

Line Art: Reduce your scene to a grayscale outline, seeing more detailed lines where you refocus.

Mosaic: Create a tiled mosaic in the out-of-focus parts of your scene as you click or change your perspective.

Blur+: Significantly enhance the amount of blur in the out-of-focus parts of your scene.

Pop: Make parts of your scene pop out with extra detail and vibrancy when those areas are clicked.

Film Noir: Add a moody and stylized black and white look to your pictures, with a little bit of extra detail and color where you click.

8-Track: Bring back the ‘70s with this filter that adds an aged, vignetted look to your pictures. Click to un-age parts of your scene and see them come back to life, disco suit not required.

For now, these features aren't available to Lytro owners, but on December 4, the software update will go live, and all of your pictures—old and new—will work with the new effects. [Lytro]

Once upon a time, online console gaming was a novel thing. And a singular, cohesive, online community built around a console was downright mindblowing. Enter Xbox Live, which turns 10 this week.

To celebrate its new online system, Microsoft made maybe the corniest, ever-so-slightly racist, ad to introduce everyone to Xbox Live and all its features. And let's not forget some of the wonderful tech signifiers which pop up in the three minute ad, which include "high-speed internet connections" an old beige CRT monitor, and some horrible vintage '70s TV set which is about the size of five LED TVs.

It's more or less a terrible, terrible ad, but is also a fun reminder of the early days of the Xbox, and that awful controller we all used to make fun of. [WinSyde]

If you've been looking for a way to stream Spotify tracks without having to use the standalone app, that day may come sooner than later: Spotify has confirmed with us that they have begun testing the feature with a small audience.

A web-based version of Spotify has been a rumor for awhile now, and rumblings of the beta rollout first popped up on the Verge this morning, who cited an unnamed source close to the company. Spotify's Graham James then provided the following confirmation to Gizmodo:

Yes. I can confirm that we've launched a beta version of a Spotify web player that we're testing with a small number of users. Potentially it's a great additional feature for times you can't play music through the desktop app, like at work or at a friend's house. We'll have more detail on the web player next year.

Web-based access is something the Spotify app has needed for a long time, and its addition will make the service even more flexible as it competes against smaller services such as Rdio and MOG. Hopefully we'll see this early next year and not later in the year.

Nokia's rebranded mapping service will soon arrive on iPhones and and Android devices, under the moniker of Here. For Android users this isn't a huge deal, but for iPhone owners living in the age of iOS 6, it could change a lot. Nokia's maps, on other platforms, have been fantastic.

The apps aren't quite available yet, but the web-based version of Here is functional on mobile browsers, offering a glimpse of what we can expect. What's so great about it? Quite a bit, actually.

• 
  
• Cached Maps: Here will allow you to select a zone and zoom level for any given locale, and then the app will download all the data it needs so that you can access the maps offline. I chose lower mahattan at the setting which just starts to detail streets, and it cached a ~35 megabyte map for me. This is a feature I can see myself using on a regular basis.
  

  

• Smart Traffic Routing: Unfortunately, the web version of Here does not have turn-by-turn, but its static driving directions do make up for that some. You see, there happens to be an option to select the time of day you'll be driving, and it will determine the most efficient route from point A to point B based on the normalized traffic data it has collected in the past for any given time of day.
  

  

• Public Transit
• : Yes, public transit is a prominent part of Here. But more than just giving you subway directions when you ask for them, it displays the name of each metro station on the map and gives you the option of overlaying train maps on top of the standard map (see top image).
  

  

• Collections: Going on a trip and want to bookmark all the places you've researched on a map? Wandering around randomly one day and want to remember that shop you stepped into? Collections is a quick and easy way to plot points on a map. It's like a more functional Google Custom Map.
  

  

• Points of Interest: If you search for a business, restaurant, or anything else using Here, it will automatically generate a list of nearby spots that you might also be interested in. Handy if the place you're trying to travel to is closed, or fully booked.
  

  Of course, this is still just a web app, so it's a little lacking when it comes to beauty and polish. But if Here can combine the functionality of the web app with the perks of a natively coded app, it could be really awesome. We'll find out in a few weeks.

Think about anything you need to do regarding your gadget charging needs. Need to power an iPhone 5? What about a fourth-gen iPad? An Android phone? Some weird gadget with a strange USB port? Need to charge at home? In the car? Hate tangled cables? Scosche has addressed all of these scenarios with its latest line of charging accessories.

The auto-friendly StrikeDrive, wall-hugging StrikeBase and retractable StrikeLine accessories range in price from $25-$50 and come in varying configurations: 5 watts or 12 watts, one USB port or two. They don't look so great, but they do guarantee that you can charge the vast majority of personal electronics out there. Expect to see them some time early next year. [Scosche via MacRumors]

Early next year, Vimeo will introduce a new feature to its PRO account holders. In short, those users will be able to charge for their videos on a per view (or per whatever) basis. It's a move that could either attract a whole different class of known independent filmmakers or amass a sizable mountain of videos that are fine as free (or ad-supported) content, but maybe not worth a premium price tag.

Vimeo has always been ad-free and vigilant about maintaining its original content community. The availability of a paywall doesn't mean that every video will instantly cost a fee to view, and could prove a more effective way of monetary payment for creators. But for viewers, paying for premium videos on Vimeo could become a gamble if something that looked interesting turned out to be a mediocre production from a director or studio with an inflated sense of their own talent. The question is: would ads be a better option for Vimeo? [TheNextWeb]

The DNA display happens to be great for other reasons in addition to ppi.

Yes a 1080p screen is better on paper (when considering resolution on its own), but not so much IRL.

HTC's new Droid DNA smartphone has plenty of qualities that make it intriguing. It has a quad-core Snapdragon chipset. It crams a 5-inch display in a body nearly the size of a One X or Galaxy S III. Its Super LCD 3 technology trumps the Super LCD 2 that made the HTC 8x display so lovely. By all accounts it's a wonderful device.

But one thing HTC takes particular pride in is the 1920x1080 display, good for a pixel density of 440 pixels per inch, the highest ever in any handheld consumer device. This should make tech nerds lose their shit, right? Not quite. Welcome to your new favorite meaningless stat: ppi.

The problem with most specs is that beyond a certain point, they fail to be useful. You might remember that when digital cameras first appeared, they left plenty of room for improvement. Part of that improvement involved adding megapixels to the sensor, since getting more detail from the sensor typically involved increasing the dimensions of the image itself. But at some point in the mid-2000s, an increase in megapixels no longer meant it was a surefire sign of improvement. My 5MP camera started taking better pictures than your 10MP shooter. Beyond a certain point, unless you're planning on blowing up your picture to the size of a warehouse wall, megapixels just don't matter.

This same line of thinking manifested itself when contrast ratio became a spec for Plasma and LCD displays (OMG ONE ZILLION TO ONE CONTRAST RATIO)—can't see it, doesn't matter—and is now resurfacing as companies enter the pixel density arms race. Increases in pixel density are going from impressive technical feats to masturbatory experiments for the sake of marketing strategy.

So what do we make of HTC managing to pack a 1920x1080 display in a 5-inch screen? When it comes to tangible user benefits, not much. According to those who toil away in research labs, the human eye can not discern granular detail when it is higher than 300 PPI. Hence Apple's 326 PPI display in the iPhone 4 back in 2010. Yes, some—notably Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate—have argued that no display will be perfectly "retina" until it has a density of 477 PPI. But others, like University of Utah professor Bryan Jones, dispute the basis of Soneira's reasoning, arguing that from a foot away, displays will actually appear retina when greater than 287 PPI. But even Soneira acknowledeged that the retina effect kicks in when a 300 PPI display is held 18 inches away. You know. Where you hold your phone.

Does increased smartphone resolution help for watching high-def movies? Not really. To really reap the benefit of 1080p video, you need no smaller than a 40-inch display (and ideally one above 50-inches) to notice anything awesome while sitting at a comfortable distance. In fact, to theoretically reap any benefits of 1080p video on your phone, you'd need to be holding it 6-8 inches from your face. No one holds their phone 6-8 inches from their face.

Sure, you can get yourself some added digital real estate with a 1080p smartphone display, but you run the risk of making everything too small to easily view. In fact, the only tangible benefit of a 1080p is that a phone's chipset doesn't then have to waste horsepower scaling down the resolution of high-def content. That's a minor reward, though, one offset by all that pixel-pushing gobbling up hardware resources and battery life.

That's not to say that the Droid DNA has a bad screen by any means. In fact, our own Brent Rose thinks its the best smartphone screen he's ever seen, citing its rich colors, and sharp text. But that more to do with HTC's Super LCD 3 technology and its rendering engines as it does raw pixel density, in the same way that a camera's ISO performance matters far more than its megapixelage.

Does this mean that the display wars are over, and everyone should give up on trying to make better screens? Of course not. There are plenty of ways to make a better-looking display. But we've reached the point in the pixel density wars where higher figures have stopped automatically equating to improved performance for users. Any grandstanding about pixel density, from here on out, now is mostly just marketing fluff.

If you believe in the power of voting, chances are you're going to head to a polling place sometime between now and the end of the day to cast your ballot. You'll probably be waiting a few minutes as well. With that in mind, we tossed together 10 election day pieces for you to save to Instagram/Pocket/Readability to distract you.

Curious what Obama and Romney are like away from the cameras? We got you covered. Skeptical of electronic voting? There's a link for that. Want to revisit the specters of elections past? Let me help you out.

• Wanna know how the presidential candidates spent their last days on the trail? Read here.
• Worried about voter fraud? Take off the tin foil hat. Mother Jones says not to believe the hype.
• Meanwhile, The New Republic argues fervently for the dissolution of the electoral college.
• Michael Lewis' profile of Obama from 2008 is an essential read, even if you don't care much about politics. It's just a well-written look into the life of the most important figure in America before he became the most important figure in America.
• Mitt Romney is sometimes seen as a robotic stiff who can be just a shade too pragmatic, but a 2012 NY Times profile of the candidate shows a man who has suffered some adversity of his own and come away better for it.
• Curious how Obama won the 2008 election over John McCain? Revisit Newsweek's epic seven-part feature chock full of behind-the-scenes reporting.
• Nearly everything written by Joan Didion is worth a glance, and her 1988 piece on the reality distortion of presidential campaigns is as sharp and astute as anything she's written.
• Hendrik Hertzberg is one of my personal favorite political writers, and his piece about Hurricane Sandy and its effect on the presidential campaign is about as much of a measured and well-reasoned take as you'll find.
• Did you get an I Voted sticker? Good job! The Atlantic argues in favor of its greater importance.
• Curious what the Inauguration speech will sound like in January. Probably like this.

But these are just a few to get you started. What are you reading while in line? Are you reading anything at all? Are you even in line?

It's election day. Some of you have the fortune of being able to vote electronically, thus removing any confusion over whether or not that chad was hanging. Well it's supposed to remove confusion in theory. Have you voted yet? Was it some form of an electronic ballot? Did you notice anything sketchy? Let's talk about it.

Image via Soukie.net

If you're a resident of NYC or Westchester, Long Island and Rockland counties, you can submit an affadavit ballot for the presidential and US Senatorial elections at any polling place in the state of New York you like tomorrow. You can't vote in local elections, but it's still useful for those who's living and transportations situations we're affected by Hurricane Sandy. [Twitter]

Image via Soukie.net

Up until now, Instagram profiles have only been viewable from the app (or through some sort of a third-party site/client). But AllThingsD reports that you'll now be able to fire up any web browser and have access to any public Instagram account, making it approximately 1000000% easier to stalk people using the service. Oh, and did I mention it basically looks like the design of its Facebook overlord?

The service had previously allowed you to view photos on a one-off basis (provided you had a direct link), and only recently allowed users to like and comment on photos from the browser. Now comes a much larger expansion out of the app and onto a more universal platform: HTML.

Like Facebook, each profile has a banner image up top which culls images from your instagram account, and a square overlay for a profile pic. But below is a design much cleaner and easier on the eyes. Thumbnails are laid out in a clean grid, organized by date. Click an image and you're directed to the individual photo pages we've all seen before.

So far, the pages don't seem to be live to the public, but by all accounts they're on their way over the next few days to bring visual joy to our laptops and tablets. [Instagram via AllThingsD]

CBS is home to many shows in which some unsuspecting individual with a special gift helps law enforcement agencies solve crimes once a week. And if you happen to be a fan of these shows, but don't like watching them over broadcast or using the CBS site, there's good news: they'll stream on Hulu Plus next year.

CBS was one of the last network holdouts from the weird, not-so-little experiment that is Hulu, and the addition of CBS content adds further legitimacy to the concept of online television. And with that, there will be 2600 more episodes for Hulu Plus subscribers to choose from. [Hulu via TNW]