The days of typing in the lengthy default password from the bottom of your mom’s router could be over. Google has unveiled a way to get round this, along with dedicated virtual reality headsets and a hyperlocal take on GPS among a host of small but useful improvements to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Possibly […]
Google says it’s used balloons to help “tens of thousands” of people get online in Peru after flooding hit connections in rural areas. It was an unplanned expansion of an ongoing experimental project. Project Loon (which is technically run by Google parent company Alphabet) uses 49-feet wide helium balloons flying 12 miles above earth to […]
An Indian teen has designed a satellite weighing just 64 grams. It will spend 12 minutes in micro-gravity next month to test how well the design works. Rifath Sharook’s ‘Kalamsat’, named after former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam, was the winner of Cubes In Space, a joint competition run by NASA and education company I […]
Smartphones with batteries that recharge inside five minutes could be on sale next year according to a company that’s been working on the technology for several years. But ongoing mysteries about how exactly it works means there’s still scepticism. We covered the claims by StoreDot back in 2014, noting that it had explained that: The […]
The latest version of Amazon’s Echo will have a seven inch touchscreen that can double up as a videophone. The addition of a screen on the $230 device fulfils three main roles. The first is to give a visual element to the Alexa assistant while retaining the hands-free convenience. For example, as well as getting […]
A man seeking free chicken nuggets has set a new record for the most retweeted post on Twitter. Carter Wilkinson’s tweet has passed the 3,430,249 retweets of Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie — and his poultry plea has paid off. Wilkinson acted after cheekily asking Wendy’s last month how many retweets he would have to get […]
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University say they can turn virtually anything into a computer touchpad by using a conductive spray paint. The technology is simply a more ambitious implementation of how touchscreens already work. While older ‘resistive’ screens worked by the user physically pressing down a screen until it contacted a second layer beneath, modern capacitive […]
Donkey Kong is among four new entrants to the World Video Game Hall of Fame. It’s joined by Halo: Combat Evolved, Pokemon Red and Green, and Street Fighter II. The hall is a permanent exhibition at Rochester, New York’s The Strong Museum of Play. Potential inductees are nominated by the public and then shortlisted and […]
Most American homes don’t have a landline telephone according to newly published figures. Young adults and renters are the most likely to be cell-phone only. The figures come from the National Center for Health Statistics. Twice a year it carries out a wide-ranging survey of around 20,000 households on health issues and asks for a […]
NASA is offering a prize to coders who can help speed up the supercomputer software used to improve aircraft performance. You’ll need to be a US citizen and able to work with Modern Fortran. While many people think of NASA as being a space organization, it also works on aeronautics closer to home. This includes […]
The Beatles and Star Wars fandoms must have a sizeable crossover by sheer force of numbers and both are covered in a new parody album of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The project from Palette Swap Ninja took five years of work and was completed in time for both the 40th anniversary of Star […]
A map overlay with Link’s past movements may be the highlight of the upcoming The Master Trial DLC for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Other tweaks make gathering Korok seeds a little easier, while the main new gameplay content is a hard mode and a gauntlet challenge. The “hero’s path” addition is an […]