Facebook says it has developed a laser detector that could open the airwaves to new high-speed data communications systems that don't require dedicated spectrum or licenses.
The component, disclosed on Tuesday in a scientific journal, comes from the company's Connectivity Lab, which is involved in developing technology that can help spread high-speed Internet to places it currently doesn't reach.
Getting Internet signals to new areas is typically done using wireless, because it's much more cost-efficient than running cables to communities outside of urban areas. But traditional wireless comes with speed limitations and requires radio spectrum that often needs to be purchased from the government.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In what may be another first for our connected world, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan placed what appeared to be a Facetime call to a national news broadcast early on Saturday while the world tried to figure out if a military coup against him had succeeded.
Erdogan appeared on a journalist's iPhone, held up to the camera so viewers could see and hear what he had to say. He claimed that he remained in control and urged the public to take to the streets to oppose the coup attempt.
Erdogan's use of modern technology to speak to the nation comes with a heap of irony. He has been keen to shut off access to the Internet during sensitive times and go after those who try to get around such bans and those who insult him. Reporters Without Borders says Erdogan has "systematically" censored the Internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, company founders, engineers, and investors have signed an open letter regarding Donald Trump. The gist: They don't like him and think his presidency would be a disaster for the business of innovation.
The letter, published Thursday on Medium, accuses Trump of running a campaign based on fear of new ideas and new people, as well as anger, bigotry, and "a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline."
"We have listened to Donald Trump over the past year and we have concluded: Trump would be a disaster for innovation," the letter said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, company founders, engineers, and investors have signed an open letter regarding Donald Trump. The gist: They don't like him and think his presidency would be a disaster for the business of innovation.
The letter, published Thursday on Medium, accuses Trump of running a campaign based on fear of new ideas and new people, as well as anger, bigotry, and "a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline."
"We have listened to Donald Trump over the past year and we have concluded: Trump would be a disaster for innovation," the letter said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mark Karpeles, the former CEO of the collapsed Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange, was released on bail on Thursday, just under a year since he was arrested by Japanese police.Japanese broadcaster Nippon TV showed video of Karpeles, 31, walking out of the Tokyo Detention House and getting into a waiting taxi. The broadcaster said he was freed on bail of ¥10 million ($95,000) and is prohibited from leaving Japan under the bail terms.In the pictures, Karpeles looked noticeably thinner than on Aug. 1 last year when he was arrested at his Tokyo apartment.His arrest came more than a year after Mt Gox collapsed in early 2014. At the time it was riding high on a Bitcoin bubble that had made it the world's largest Bitcoin exchange. Its failure hit many who had bought Bitcoin during a surge of interest in the cyber money system at the end of 2013.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A driver in New York state ran his car off the road and into a tree last night as a result of playing "Pokémon Go."Police in Auburn, a town near Syracuse in upstate New York, were called to a traffic accident shortly before 11 p.m."The driver admitted to actively playing the Pokémon Go game while driving causing him to become distracted and run off the roadway into a tree," the police said in a statement.The car was badly damaged in the accident and police say the driver is lucky he was not seriously injured."This is an example of how easily accidents can occur when someone is engaged in the game and not paying attention," the police said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple is co-producing a TV show about app design and development, and you might be able to play a starring role.On Tuesday, the production company working with Apple on the show, Propagate, announced an open casting call for people who want to be on "Planet of the Apps."The show is Apple's first foray into TV series production and is described as "a new unscripted series about the world of apps and the developers who create them."Applications are being accepted through the show's website until Aug. 26. The producers will then travel to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and New York to meet with app developers and tech entrepreneurs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A man who told police he feared surveillance by Google has been arrested and charged with arson after one of the company's self-driving cars was destroyed in an attack in June.Raul Murillo Diaz of Oakland was stopped by police after Google security spotted him driving around the company's headquarters campus in Mountain View, California, just after midnight on June 30. They became suspicious because his car matched that spotted at the scene of several attacks on the company over the preceding six weeks.The first, on May 19, saw several Molotov cocktails thrown at a Google Street View vehicle that was parked in a company lot in Mountain View. The resulting fire didn't damage the car because the bottles bounced off it, but the ground nearby was burnt.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state, but the FBI isn't recommending any charges be brought against her for mishandling classified information.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, days after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the presidential candidate, FBI Director James Comey said his investigation had uncovered numerous instances of the system being improperly used for classified information. He also said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that the system could have been hacked.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers
The controversy was thought to revolve around a single server, but Comey disclosed that over the years Clinton was secretary of state, she relied on a string of email servers. When new ones were installed, the older ones were removed but data was not always deleted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state, but the FBI isn't recommending any charges be brought against her for mishandling classified information.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, days after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the presidential candidate, FBI Director James Comey said his investigation had uncovered numerous instances of the system being improperly used for classified information. He also said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that the system could have been hacked.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers
The controversy was thought to revolve around a single server, but Comey disclosed that over the years Clinton was secretary of state, she relied on a string of email servers. When new ones were installed, the older ones were removed but data was not always deleted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Defense Department's research and development arm is offering to fund projects that will simplify the massively complex task of building models for machine learning applications.Models are a fundamental part of machine learning. Similar to algorithms, they help teach computers to, say, identify a cat in a photo, forecast weather from historical data or sort spam from legitimate email.But writing the models takes time and requires many skills. Typically, data scientists, subject matter experts and software engineers all have to come together to develop the model.When New York University researchers wanted to model block-by-block traffic flow data for the city, it took 60 person-months of work by data scientists to prepare the data for use and an additional 30 person-months to develop the model.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Emojis have become an important and essential communication tool for hundreds of millions of people, so naturally, now there's a movie coming.Sony Pictures Animation said Monday that it will produce an animated movie about "the secret world of our phones and the beloved characters that have become daily necessities in global interpersonal communication.""Emojimovie: Express Yourself" is due in August 2017. It will be written by Eric Siegel and Anthony Leondis and directed by Leondis. He previously wrote and directed "Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch" and "Igor." Sony Pictures Animation
Sony Pictures Animation "Emoji Movie: Express Yourself"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An IT worker at Mossak Fonseca, the company at the heart of the "Panama Papers" leak, was arrested Wednesday in Geneva.The arrest was made as part of the investigation into the leak, which saw 11.5 million documents from the law firm leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.The documents detailed thousands of offshore companies set up by Mossak Fonseca on behalf of rich clients, sometimes for the purpose of tax avoidance.The identity of the worker has not been released, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung reporter who led a year-long investigation into the documents said he did not believe the arrested worker was his source.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An IT worker at Mossak Fonseca, the company at the heart of the "Panama Papers" leak, was arrested Wednesday in Geneva.The arrest was made as part of the investigation into the leak, which saw 11.5 million documents from the law firm leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.The documents detailed thousands of offshore companies set up by Mossak Fonseca on behalf of rich clients, sometimes for the purpose of tax avoidance.The identity of the worker has not been released, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung reporter who led a year-long investigation into the documents said he did not believe the arrested worker was his source.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Silicon Valley startup says it's developed a better lens for smartphone photography -- one that produces clearer images without the distortion often seen in photos from competing lenses.The secret to DynaOptics' Oowa lens is a proprietary manufacturing process that produces what the company calls a freeform lens."What we are able to do with this freeform lens is essentially create a rectangular-like image so that it maps exactly onto the rectangular shape of the image sensor that's in the phone," DynaOptics CEO Li Han Chan said in an interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If there's one thing that separates Asus from its competitors, it's the company's willingness to experiment with new designs.Asus has had a few big hits that the rest of the industry followed, like the Eee PC in 2008, which sparked the craze for netbooks. Other products have fared less well, like the PadFone, a hybrid device that includes a smartphone that docks into a tablet.But year after year, in a hardware industry that shies away from risk, Asus usually has a surprise or two up its sleeve. Last week it was a home help robot called Zenbo, whose cute antics and affordable price-tag stole the show at Computex.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you think overclocking is something that only hardcore PC enthusiasts can get into, think again. At Computex in Taipei last week I got the chance to try overclocking Intel's latest processor, the 10-core Broadwell-E chip, and it was a lot of fun.Thanks to Intel's XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility) overclocking app, doing some basic overclocking was easy. But beware: If you're the type of person who likes a challenge and enjoys tinkering with computers, it can get addictive fast.Overclocking is the process of running a processor and other components faster than their rated speed. It's done to get more performance for heavy-duty applications like gaming and video processing, and there's even a competitive side to it, with international rankings and competitions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Japan's Mouse Computer has developed add-on biometric sensors that will bring Windows Hello to any PC running Windows 10.
Windows Hello is Microsoft's biometric security system. It allows users to dump passwords for facial or fingerprint recognition, but only on PCs that have the correct hardware.
Many new PCs do, but generations of older machines that can run Windows 10 don't have the infrared camera or fingerprint sensors that are required. That's where the new add-on peripherals come in.
There's a USB camera unit and a tiny USB fingerprint reader. Both will bring Windows Hello to Windows 10 PCs, said Microsoft this week at the Computex trade show in Taipei.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Japan's Mouse Computer has developed add-on biometric sensors that will bring Windows Hello to any PC running Windows 10.
Windows Hello is Microsoft's biometric security system. It allows users to dump passwords for facial or fingerprint recognition, but only on PCs that have the correct hardware.
Many new PCs do, but generations of older machines that can run Windows 10 don't have the infrared camera or fingerprint sensors that are required. That's where the new add-on peripherals come in.
There's a USB camera unit and a tiny USB fingerprint reader. Both will bring Windows Hello to Windows 10 PCs, said Microsoft this week at the Computex trade show in Taipei.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When the combined armies of Zorg are firing photon weapons at you, 5 kilograms doesn't seem like much.
Even the cables and straps that are a necessary part of MSI's Backpack PC fade into the background when you're immersed in a virtual reality game.
That's what I discovered when I took MSI's new Backpack PC for a test spin on Wednesday at Computex in Taipei. The device is an entire gaming PC built into a backpack that allows for completely untethered virtual reality gaming.
Current VR games run on a computer that sits on a desk or floor and stubbornly won't move as you jump around in a virtual world. It means long cables are needed and that can be a hazard and a hassle.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Martyn Williams