News consumption on Facebook and Twitter has increased significantly in the last two years, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation. Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of Twitter and Facebook members surveyed said they got news from those social networks. For Twitter, that's an 11 point increase from 2013, when 52 percent of its members said...
Photos transmitted from 4 billion miles away by NASA's New Horizons Pluto space probe have sparked fresh interest in space exploration. New Horizons traveled more than 3 billion miles over a nine-and-a-half year stretch to reach the Pluto system. A close-up image of a region near Pluto's equator shows a range of mountains reaching up to 11,000 feet in height (see above). The...
Six years and more than a dozen spinoffs after Angry Birds first took flight, the game finally will receive a proper sequel on July 30, Rovio announced last week. The details are scant, but Angry Birds 2 apparently will be "bigger, badder and birdier," going by a tweet from Rovio. Rovio hasn't specified if Angry Birds 2 will launch on both Android and...
Apple on Thursday released to consumers a preview of the latest versions of its mobile and desktop operating systems -- iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan -- which contain a number of new features, including a revamped two-factor authentication scheme. The latest release of iOS also contains two new smart folders. One automatically collects any photos captured with the front-facing camera in...
Two self-driving prototype vehicles, one operated by Google and the other operated by Delphi Automotive, earlier this week avoided a collision in Palo Alto, California. Neither car touched the other, but the incident spurred a number of rattled headlines over the so-called "near miss." In actuality, both vehicles responded as they were supposed to, the companies said in response to the media brouhaha....
During its annual developers conference held last week, Google I/O, the company revealed its latest effort to drive development of Cardboard VR apps and spur the growth of VR content across YouTube. Google has released blueprints for VR headsets made of cardboard and encouraged third parties to bring their best designs to market. Several are available for purchase with a "Works with Google...
Windows 10 is a well-meaning effort by Microsoft to mollify Windows 8 haters and coax Windows 7 loyalists to upgrade — all while stubbornly sticking to its goal of a single OS for every possible platform. And by framing the problem that way, Microsoft has given itself a nearly impossible task. To the company’s credit, each new build lurches closer to being usable, although...
After more than a decade of research, scientists at Stanford University have created a working computer based on the physical movement of water droplets. It’s a breakthrough in physical computing that gets at the most basic definition of a computer: any programmable device that can carry about logical (mathematical) operations. By combining cutting-edge theory in fluid dynamics with very-much-not-cutting-edge theory in computing, the team was able...
Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled the Surface Hub, a large-screen device meant to dramatically improve business collaboration. The 55-inch and 84-inch interactive displays marry white boards with presentations, voice with video, speakers with addressees, Android with iOS, and Windows 10 with conference rooms. The Surface Hubs will go on sale July 1, and on Sept. 1, they'll start shipping out of a Microsoft facility...
HGST (Formerly Hitachi’s hard drive division) has been talking about its helium storage devices for several years and the firm is finally ready to ship the new drives for enterprise deployments. The Ultrastar Archive Ha10 isn’t just filled with helium — it also uses new Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) to write data to the disk. While this allows for unprecedented areal density, there...
Apple this week announced Swift 2 and said it would open-source it later this year. Swift 2 is a programming language for iOS, OS X and watchOS. It has a new error handling model that works with Apple SDKs and NSError. Two new features in Objective-C -- nullability annotations and generics -- make Swift 2 work better with Apple SDKs. "Generating higher-quality code...
Chrome developers have announced that an upcoming version of Chrome will prevent video ads from automatically playing when a website loads. The new feature has already been pushed out to beta builds and can be manually enabled by opening Chrome’s content settings and adjusting the plugin content options. This push comes as part of an overall effort to improve Chrome’s performance on modern...
Despite the isolated success of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease, and a few other impressive parlor tricks with BCIs, running massive networks of wire electrodes through the brain is probably not going to be a long-term solution to any brain problem. Recognizing this truth, many researchers have turned to nanoparticle-based approaches for remote, non-invasive stimulation of the brain. A single 10 ug...
Researchers at Linz University in Austria has developed the world’s first artificial leg capable of simulating some of the “feeling” in a normal leg. Professor Hubert Egger led a live demonstration during a Vienna press conference, detailing how the Austrian researchers have fitted a human being with a leg prosthesis that sends feelings to its wearer. Here’s how it works: Doctors surgically move the...
The statement that “human-level artificial intelligence is the last invention mankind need ever make” has been much bandied about of late. It implies that once we have invented something as smart as ourselves, it can take over and start making the inventions itself. The concept is most often pronounced by a computer scientists speaking from a podium and resembling nothing so much as a...
Do you love to learn? Then you should take a look at this massive sale happening over at Udemy. Thousands of online courses are being discounted to just $10 a pop, so you can take multiple courses even if you’re on a budget. Whether you need to learn how to design logos or how to speak Arabic, there’s something for nigh-on every area...
When the iPad was released in the spring of 2010, many people didn’t know what to make of it. Some would point to my iPad and ask: Why do I need a giant iPod touch? Or, why can’t I see more than one app on this big screen? These questions faded away as the usefulness of the iPad became clearer in the months that followed....
While there is no getting around the creep factor when it comes to topics like artificial limbs and regenerative medicine, advancement in these spheres holds out enormous potential for improving human welfare. With the stakes so high, it’s hardly surprising that research dollars have been pouring into these areas in the last few years. The fruits of such investment are just now coming...
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 any OS I've ever...
A radical new approach to fighting influenza could not only save countless lives each year, it could pave the way for other drugs in the future. Called Vasculotide, it represents a paradigm shift in the thinking of fighting deadly viruses. Rather than trying to kill the virus itself, or stop it from infecting the body, Vasculotide simply stops the infected body from leaking fluid into the lungs. That’s...
