A planned Tetris movie will now be a trilogy. The makers say it isn’t a money grab but instead is needed to properly tell the story they have planned. Producer Larry Kasanoff isn’t saying anything about what that story will actually be, but says the most obvious approach with some form of anthropomorphized blocks is […]
A 10-year-old girl has won a place on a summer fellowship designed for computer scientists. She’ll be helped to make robots to cheer up the people of Paris. The Paris Summer Innovation Fellowship offers two weeks of funding and practical assistance to help “city problem solvers” find ways to improve the French capital. The company […]
An AI system that could run on a Raspberry Pi computer has comprehensively beaten a former fighter pilot in simulated air combat. The system, ALPHA, appears to triumph over human abilities with two of the most common advantages of computers over people: speed and endurance. The system is said to be able to figure out […]
A free chatbot has reportedly helped 160,000 people overturn parking tickets. The man behind DoNotPay now plans to create similar services for other legal complaints. Joshua Browder, a student at Stanford University, created the bot to help inform people of their rights when challenging parking tickets. While it appears to the user as if it […]
An Indian company says it will start shipping a $4 smartphone this month. The move comes despite serious scepticism about the economics involved. The phone, the Android-based Freedom 251, is far from exactly top-spec, but sounds perfectly serviceable for very basic use. It has a 4 inch, non-HD screen, 1.3GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of […]
Most people questioned in a study say self-driving cars should aim to save as many lives as possible in a crash, even if that means sacrificing the passenger. But they also said they wouldn’t choose to use a car set up in such a manner. The study was conducted by three academics in the Department […]
KFC is offering a free powerbank in box meals for Indian customers to charge their phones. It’s a great deal, but is merely a promotional offer. The Watt-a-Box is a limited edition version of an existing box meal and costs the usual price of 150 rupees (around US$2.20.) As well as the usual five food […]
The US government has given a thumbs up to commercial drones but with some potentially crippling restrictions for would-be delivery firms including an effective ban on flying over urban areas. The new rules follow a lengthy consultation process by the Federal Aviation Administration into what it formally calls “small unmanned aircraft systems.” The FAA first […]
A crowd-sourced navigation app will soon help drivers avoid left-turns and difficult intersections. Waze is also getting a test feature to avoid high-crime areas. The Google-owned app combines traditional mapping and live traffic data with user reports of crashes, temporary road closures and other factors that may affect the optimum route at a specific time. […]
Google has made two-factor authentication a little simpler to use. It’s now possible to confirm your identity on a phone with a single tap rather than typing a code. At the moment, if you login to Google on an unfamiliar computer and you’re using two-factor authentication, you have to receive a six-digit code though either […]