The first Ubuntu smartphone goes on sale next week. But it’s more of a publicity drive than a serious launch. The Aquarius E4.5 from Spanish manufacturer BQ normally runs on Android, but a new model will run on a version of Ubuntu developed by Canonical. Rather than go on full sale, a limited number will go […]
Secret documents from the work by Alan Turing’s team of codebreakers have been found stuffed into the walls and roof of a hut at Bletchley Park. It appears that after completing a day’s work, the team didn’t securely destroy the papers as was protocol, but instead used them to boost insulation in the far-from-luxurious facility. […]
Amazon has talked about it, but now a Chinese online retailer is doing it: using drones to deliver goods to customers. Alibaba is roughly the Chinese equivalent of combining Amazon and eBay and last year took in revenue of 52.5 billion yen (approximately US $8.4 billion.) Its subdivision Taobao is running a very limited trial: […]
How can anyone forget The Mountain from last season’s Game of Thrones. We’ll post no spoilers, so no worries, but we can say that the man lived up to the name. Played by Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (no, I didn’t just sneeze), the actor is pretty much a mountain in real life, which he proved recently to […]
British lawmakers have given the thumbs up to a fertility treatment that uses genetic material from three people. The first birth to result from the mitochondrial treatment may come as early as next year. As we’ve previously detailed, the treatment aims to prevent mothers passing on disorders that results from faults in mitochondria, the “power […]
The number of tablets shipped by manufacturers has fallen year-on-year for the first time. Lenovo was the only one of the top five tablet makers to increase shipments, with Apple and Samsung both losing market share. The figures come from IDC and cover October through December 2014. The comparisons are with the same period in […]
A very rare breed of fox that hasn’t been seen in the wilds around Yosemite park for a century recently made a jaw dropping (yet oddly casual) reappearance, sparking much excitement for lovers of this stunning creature who feared its time was all but done. From i09: “We are thrilled to hear about the sighting […]
Time is an illusion put forth to control how we spend our days and ensure we do them as efficiently as possible. Or time is a unit of measurement, in the same way inches are a unit of measurement. Truth is, time is a mystery to us, even though we pretend we have a grasp […]
The Federal Communications Commission has changed the “official” definition of broadband to 25Mbps downloads and 3Mbps uploads. But the new threshold will largely affect statistics rather than practicalities. The FCC definition had been set at 4Mbps downloads and 1Mbps uploads since 2010. By a vote of three to two, the commissioners ruled that this was […]
You may look at this and laugh, but if you read my pieces on this site every day you know, this is just another sign of the impending robopocalypse. Sure, the blue screen temps are way off and it isn’t likely any of those places are going to reach 2000 degrees, but what if that […]