Thursday 24 December 2015

Brain-like computer chip developed by Chinese scientists

BEIJING: Scientists from China's Zhejiang province have developed a computer chip that works much like the brain, the media reported on Thursday.

Jointly developed by scientists from Hangzhou Dianzi University and Zhejiang University, the new chip, named "Darwin" was revealed earlier this

Thursday 10 December 2015

Facebook Gets An Offline Mode

Facebook this week said it will begin rolling out new technology that allows users on slower mobile connections to still see new stories in their News Feed, even when on a poor connection or when they’re unable to reach Facebook’s servers. In addition, users will be able to comment on posts when

Google's quantum computer is 100 million times faster than your PC


Initial tests found that Google and Nasa's quantum computing system was unable to outperform regular computers. But now Google has announced that its D-Wave computer has outperformed a traditional desktop by 108 times -- making it one hundred million times faster. 
"What a D-Wave does in a second would take a conventional computer 10,000 years to do," said Hartmut Nevan, director of engineering at Google, during a news conference to

Thursday 26 November 2015

Faceshift: Apple buys Star Wars motion-capture company

Apple has purchased the company behind motion-capture technology used in the latest Star Wars film.
Faceshift, a Zurich based start-up, specialises in software that allows 3D animated characters to mimic the facial expressions of an actor.
Apple has now bought the company, though it is

Thursday 19 November 2015

Windows turns 30: a visual history






The PC revolution started off life 30 years ago this week. Microsoft launched its first version of Windows on November 20th, 1985, to succeed MS-DOS. It was a huge milestone that paved the way for the modern versions of Windows we use today. While Windows 10 doesn’t look anything like Windows 1.0, it still has many of its original fundamentals like scroll bars, drop-down menus, icons, dialog boxes, and apps like Notepad and MS paint.
Windows 1.0 also set the stage for the mouse. If you used MS-DOS then you could only type in commands, but with Windows 1.0 you picke

Facebook will now offer to hide your exes from you after a breakup

The more ubiquitous Facebook becomes around the world, the more likely you are to one day have an ex-boyfriend, -girlfriend, or -spouse using the service. So what happens when you break up, and you

Beats now makes rose gold headphones

The newly tinted Solo2 wireless and urBeats headphones are available today

Apple broke up its stale color options of space gray, silver, and gold earlier this year by introducing an iPhone that was unflinchingly pink. Rose gold, as it's known, turned out to be such a hit that the company also made pink Apple Watches. Now the trend continues, as Apple has started selling Beats Solo2 wireless headphones and urBeats headphones in rose gold, too.
Neither pair of headphones is being changed in any other appreciable way, save for the new color option. That's fine — they're both

LG joins Apple, Google in creating its own mobile payment system


Just when you thought there couldn't be more tech companies tackling the notion of mobile payments, in walks LG.
The South Korean electronics conglomerate said Thursday it plans to launch LG Pay, a service that will presumably turn its smartphones into digital wallets.
LG is the latest company looking at mobile payments as the next big service. While the idea of paying for goods and services with smartphones has been around for years, Apple Pay helped ignite consumer interest in the

Instagram doubles its active users in India in a year


India is on the cusp of officially becoming the country with the world's second largest Internet userbase, and that's great news for Mark Zuckerberg.

Instagram, a megapopular photo-sharing platform that in 2012 was bought by Facebookfor around $1 billion, doubled its base of monthly active users in India during

Apple crosses $1-billion sales mark in India

MUMBAI | KOLKATA: Apple crossed the $1-billion sales mark in Indian operations for the first time in the year ended March, according to results filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) on Wednesday.

The maker of iPhones and iPads posted a 44% increase in sales to Rs 6,472.89 crore from Rs 4500.35 crore and net profit

Anonymous ‘Operation Isis’ accused of wrongly naming innocent people after Paris attacks

Anonymous’s “war” on Isis is leading to innocent people being wrongly reported as members of the militant group.
The 'hacktivist' network launched an operation to identify and shut down the accounts of Islamic extremists in the wake of the attacks in Paris, but people who are not affiliated to Isis appear to have been identified as part of the

Thursday 29 October 2015

Hate Candy Crush invites? Facebook is about to kill them




The days of receiving endless, annoying Candy Crush invites may become a thing of the past, according to Facebook.

Speaking at a Townhall Q&A session at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebookengineers were looking at a "solution" for the problem.

"This is where these Q&As are really

Facebook satellite will beam internet access to Africa from 2016


Facebook is to launch a satellite in the second half of 2016 that will provide internet access to remote areas of Africa.

"I'm excited to announce our first project to deliver internet from space," founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.

A partnership with French-based Eutelsat will see Facebook get shared access to the satellite. "To connect people living in remote regions,

Project Loon to launch balloon-powered internet in Indonesia

google/alphabet project loon

Alphabet has announced that it will be partnering with Indonesia's top three mobile network providers to test and then roll out its Project Loon balloon-powered internet service across the country.
In a Google Blog post, the Project Loon Vice President Mike Cassidy described the

Snowden slams UK government over encryption 'backdoor' plans








The UK government wants backdoor access to communications for "everything people actually use", Edward Snowden has claimed.

The former NSA contractor took to Twitter to criticise comments from Baroness Shields, the UK minister for internet safety and security, over her position on encrypted data.

Shields said the government

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Microsoft launches Windows laptop

Microsoft's surprise product launch was a laptop dubbed the Surface Book
Microsoft has launched a laptop dubbed the Surface Book, as part of a suite of new Windows 10 products.
It also showed off two new smartphones, an updated Surface tablet and a new fitness band.
Much is riding on the

Friday 18 September 2015

Apple wins appeal over smartphone patents

Samsung and Apple have faced each other in court many times
Samsung could be forced to stop selling some phones after Apple won an appeal in a US court.
The decision comes after a lawsuit first filed in 2012 in which Apple claimed Samsung was using some of its technology without proper permission.
That case was decided in May 2014 when Apple was awarded $120m (£76m) damages.
Apple appealed, saying Samsung should stop selling phones using the disputed features. Judges disagreed but this

Thursday 20 August 2015

Darwinism At Your Doorstep: Why You Only Care About Amazon Now

I’ve seen a lot of people on social media talking about Saturday’s New York Times article by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld about Amazon’s toxic workplace culture. Lots of people saying they find the level of stress and pain workers were put through unconscionable–80-hour work weeks,midnight emails, people

Wednesday 19 August 2015

Company Awarded Patent For ‘Space Elevator’

The space game is hot and only the strongest are going to survive. One Canadian company feels like its in a good spot to succeed, having just been awarded the patent for a “space elevator.”
Back to the how’s and what’s in a second…the company, Thoth Technology, took an aggressive shot at Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the process of

Google unveils OnHub, a Wi-Fi router for the smart-home era

The search giant's newest device is a router Google hopes you'll display proudly, and gives the company a beachhead for tech in your home too.

Google has for years tried to remake several household items, from thermostats and speakers to smoke detectors and TVs. Now, it's tackling another device lots of people have in their house: Wi-Fi routers.
The search giant on Tuesday unveiled the OnHub, a sleek new router that Google developed with the networking hardware company TP-Link. The $200 device is also meant to eventually help control all the other disparate Internet-connected devices in your home.
google onHub

The idea is this: Most Wi-Fi routers are ugly, with unruly cords, so people put them on the floor or out of the way where they

Friday 24 July 2015

Windows 10: Which Version Should You Get?

Microsoft’s Windows 10 is coming to a computer near you in a little more than a week. And, like its two most recent predecessors (the widely reviled Windows 8 and fan favorite Windows 7), Windows 10 will be

Monday 20 July 2015

Samsung Announces Two Galaxy Tab S2 Tablets Which Are Thinner Than The iPad

Samsung announced its thinnest smartphone to date last week — that’s the Galaxy A8 — and today the Korean firm took the wraps off its thinnest tablet devices so far: the Galaxy Tab S2.
Like last year’s Galaxy Tab S, design is a big focus for these two devices. And, at just 5.6mm, they are more slender than Apple’s sleekest iPad Air (6.1mm). They are available in two new sizes — 8 inch and 9.7 inch — which

Microsoft Launches Visual Studio 2015

After a year of previews and one release candidate, Microsoft today officially launched the latest version of its Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) together with an update to its .NET framework.
Visual Studio 2015 (VS 2015) is now

Watch the first FAA-approved delivery drone drop medicine down to rural Virginians

Will your late night snacks be next?
On Friday of last week, the world of drones had a historic first when a unit operated by Flirtey picked up medical supplies from a regional airport in Virginia and flew them over rough, rural terrain before dropping them down to a medical clinic. There was no breakthrough technology at work here, although the 3D-printed tether that lowered the package down was a custom design. Rather, this was the first delivery approved by the

Wednesday 1 July 2015

Unreleased iPods appear in latest version of iTunes

Some hawk-eyed users (and MacRumors) have noticed something interesting in iTunes 12.2: iPods that don't exist yet. The latest version of Apple's desktop music software, released yesterday, contains an image of the iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle, with all three devices coated in colors that aren't part of the current lineup. The iPod touch is seen in

You can remotely start your Hyundai with your Apple Watch now

 After launching its Android Wear app earlier this year, Hyundai is taking its Blue Link connected car platform to the obvious next destination: the Apple Watch. The Watch-compatible Blue Link app is now in the iOS App Store, offering seemingly all of the same features that are on the Android Wear version — remote engine start and stop, remote door lock and unlock, remote light flashing, and a car finder with a map, among other things. All features can be

THIS ONLINE ANONYMITY BOX PUTS YOU A MILE AWAY FROM YOUR IP ADDRESS

IN THE GAME of anonymity-versus-surveillance online, the discovery of the user’s IP address usually means game over. But if Ben Caudill has his way, a network snoop who successfully hunts a user through layers of proxy connections to a final IP address would be met with a dead end—while the anonymous user

Zuck Details How Artificial Intelligence Will Show You The Perfect Facebook Posts

What’s Facebook working on in its three AI labs? A way to understand exactly what you share so it can serve that content to people with matching interests. Today in a public Q&A on his Facebook Page, CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a closer look at why Facebook is investing in AI, as well as detailing his

Monday 29 June 2015

Gadget Ogling: Wrist-Saving Keyboards, Resource-Saving Smartphones and New Angles on Reality

Welcome to another edition of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that discards the minnows of terrible new gadget announcements in the hopes of landing the catch of the day in the form of a world-changing gizmo.

Hooking my attention this week are a flashy ergonomic keyboard, a modular smartphone, a wide-angle virtual reality helmet, and a complex game controller.
Be advised: These are not formal reviews, -- they relate only to

Friday 26 June 2015

Lexus announces that it’s made a real hoverboard you can ride

In the race for a real hoverboard that you, the happy consumer, can actually get your hands on and ride, Lexus may be the emerging winner.
In this video, the subsidiary of Toyota says that they have made a real, rideable hoverboard. It’s called SLIDE, and this skateboard-size hoverboard is the

You can now use Facebook Messenger without a Facebook account

Facebook is opening up its messaging platform to anyone.
The social networking giant today announced that users in the U.S., Canada, Peru and Venezuela can now use Facebook Messenger even if they don’t have a Facebook account.
Previously, Facebook required that users log-in with their Facebook credentials in order to use Messenger.
Now, though, you can sign up for Messenger with a name, phone number, and photo.


Facebook created Messenger in 2011 and briefly allowed non-Facebook users to

Microsoft debuts new Windows 10 ‘Hero’ default desktop image

This is a far cry from the rolling green hill many of us grew up with on our desktops. Microsoft’s updated operating system will come with a new “hero” desktop image, the default option when Windows 10 is first installed. The company debuted the image today in advance of

Programmers are copying security flaws into your software, researchers warn

Many software developers are cribbing code, and its flaws, that someone else created. And the problem is only getting harder to keep up with.
hackabolic key padlock
Security researchers say that many software flaws are
 simply copied by programmers from other sources.
 It's easy to assume that hackers work way above our pay grade. Electronic intruders must be able to exploit vulnerabilities in the software we use because they're evil geniuses, right?
That may be the case in some very sophisticated attacks, experts say, but in others, not so much. Programmers -- the people who create the software -- don't write all their code from scratch, instead borrowing freely from others' work. The problem: they're not vetting the code for security problems.
Working more as code assemblers than as writers, programmers are sourcing about 80 percent to 90 percent of the code in any

The US Army is getting hoverbikes

Malloy Aeronautics, a UK-based company, has been slowly and publicly developing a hoverbike over the last few years — it even used Kickstarter to raise funds. But it looks like the project is now headed in a new direction, because the US Department of Defense just announced a deal with Malloy to develop the

Samsung makes big trucks transparent in the name of road safety

Art Lebedev's Transparentius is brought to life in new Samsung prototype
Back in 2009, Russian design house Art Lebedev introduced the dramatically titled Transparentius concept for improving road safety. It was remarkably simple: put a camera on the front of large, slow-moving trucks and connect it to

Microsoft CEO says 'magical things' and 'tough choices' are ahead

hackaholic microsoft ceo
'Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.'
Microsoft is becoming a company of laser focus under Satya Nadella, and today the CEO emailed staff with a new mission statement and outlook for the 2016 fiscal year. Nadella's message, obtained by GeekWire, is optimistic but also straightforward and honest, and he acknowledges that Microsoft will face difficult decisions in the coming months. "Our mission is to

Thursday 25 June 2015

iPhone 7 UK release date, specs & new features rumours: Force Touch to make new iPhone thicker than iPhone 6

hackaholic iphone 6
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus arrived in September, but now that we're well into 2015 it's no surprise that chatter about what's next for Apple's smartphone is getting louder and clearer. Here's everything we know about the iPhone 7 release date, specs, new features and design rumours and bring you the latest iPhone 7 speculation to help you

Tuesday 23 June 2015

No more Powerbank, Oukitel’s New Smartphone coming With 10,000 mAh Battery

 Oukitel: The smartphone that could last a week thanks to a 10,000mAh battery
The Chinese have a way of introducing features in gadgets that can lead the industry by storm. Oukitel, a Chinese smartphone maker, has unveiled a prototype smartphone with an insane 10,000 mAh battery.
Oukitel claims to deliver

Monday 15 June 2015

Gadget Ogling: Equalized Eardrums, Holographic Pyramids and Live-Streaming Ovens

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that plays until it finds the Royal Flush of new gadget announcements and discards the 9-highs of terrible ones.

In the cards this week are a gizmo for fine-tuned audio, a display that renders 2D images as 3D holograms, a smart oven, and a bread

iPhone 6S will have 1080p slo-mo selfie camera and LED flash, reveals iOS 9 preview

CODE discovered in the first developer preview of iOS 9 has revealed some MAJOR upgrades to the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus camera.

iPhone 6s 1080
Apple is rumoured to be hard at work on the successor to its hugely successful iPhone 6
Apple is rumoured to be hard at work on the successor to its hugely successful iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

REVEALED: The Windows 10 smartwatch Microsoft was building BEFORE the Apple Watch

THESE leaked images reveal Microsoft's answer to the Apple Watch – and it looks awesome.

windows 10 smartwatch
The Nokia design team was quietly working on a colourful wearable for Microsoft
The colourful square-faced smartwatch was being developed by the Nokia design team before Apple announced its first

Wednesday 10 June 2015

Japan Plans to Explore Martian Moons With Asteroid-Probing Tech

Martian Moons
Countries are scrambling to get to Mars in a good ol’ fashioned space race. But focus might be shifting to the red planet’s two moons. According to reports,

iOS 9: iPhone will now track sexual activity

iOS 9 tracks sexual activity
As part of new 'reproductive health' tracking, they can track when exactly you had sex and whether they used protection

Apple's iPhone will now let people track exactly how often, when and how they have sex.
As part of new "reproductive health" tracking features, Apple has added an option for "Sexual Activity". When users click on it,

Tuesday 9 June 2015

You'll soon get 10TB SSDs thanks to new memory tech

SSDs and other flash memory devices will soon get cheaper and larger thanks to big announcements from Toshiba and Intel. Both companies revealed new "3D NAND" memory chips that are stacked in layers to pack in more data, unlike single-plane chips currently used. Toshiba said that it's created the world's first

'Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain' is a tale of revenge

In Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, a human bomb sank the dreams and private military corporation of Big Boss, the central figure in Konami's stealth franchise. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain continues where we saw the Boss last: hospitalized and disfigured by the bomb blast. The soldier has lost an arm in the chaos and his body has been invaded by over 100 foreign bodies -- a mixture of human teeth and shrapnel -- but the incident seems to have

Get tailor-made headphone audio with this little device

Audio snobs may already be boasting their high-end audio equipment, be it portable headphone amps or a special chip inside their smartphones, but these are no good if your ears have slight hearing loss. Even if you deem your ears to be pitch perfect, chances are your left and right ears have different sensitivity to certain frequencies. The solution?

Microsoft officially launches 1TB Xbox One console

1TB Xbox One Console
As expected, Microsoft has officially launched an Xbox One with double the storage of the original, complete with a controller that finally packs a 3.5mm stereo jack. The 1TB console will start shipping to retailers on June 16th in the US and other "select markets," according to Redmond. As rumored, the price will be $399, and even better, the standard 500MB Xbox One will permanently keep its $349 discounted price. Finally, Microsoft revealed that the

Apple's Swift programming language is going open source

Swift Programming Language
Last year, Apple introduced Swift, its very own programming language, which was focused on making it easier to build apps. Now, in a bid to make it more

Monday 8 June 2015

The Best Unsung Features of Windows 10

Windows 10 features
There are things about working with large companies that can be really frustrating. For instance, when both Windows Vista and Windows 8 were coming to market, a number of us pointed out that things needed to be fixed before the product was released, but we were ignored, with catastrophic results.
This time, however, Windows 10 is looking better than

Menlo Security Emerges From Stealth With $25M And Plan To Defeat Malware



Menlo Security, a company with a unique plan to battle malware, emerged from stealth today and also announced $25M in Series B funding.
The idea is an intriguing one. Many security problems emanate from malware, which can give hackers a path into a system where they can

Sneak peek of Windows 10 build 10136 shows Office 95 running just fine, thank you

Windows 10 and office 95
As Windows 10 hurtles toward its July 29 release date, a sneak peek at the next official builds shows this state-of-the-art operating system running—yes—Office 95. That's how backward-compatible the OS will be, bragged Microsoft's Gabe Aul on Twitter. Most likely your copy of Office 95 went

Wi-Fi That Charges Your Gadgets Is Closer Than You Think

Wi-Fi battery charging
IT’S EASY TO take Wi-Fi for granted (as long as you have the password). But what if it did more than facilitate your Pinterest habit? What if instead of just connecting your devices to the Internet, it charged them as well, no wires required?
That’s the promise of new research from a team at the University of Washington, which has developed what it’s calling a “power over Wi-Fi” system that can recharge batteries through

Sunday 31 May 2015

Virtually there: How Google is readying VR for you

The search giant has a low-cost contraption made of cardboard that can turn any smartphone into a virtual reality headset. The goal: mass appeal.


Google's updated version of Cardboard works with any device up to six inches, including Apple's iPhone.
Google has an ambitious plan for the future: help nearly anyone with a smartphone to experience virtual reality.
The technology industry is preparing for an onslaught of new devices that mount on your head, immersing you in computer-generated worlds ranging from space battles to

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