Google has agreed to lease a NASA airfield for 60 years in a deal worth $1.16 billion. It plans to use Moffett Federal Airfield for its space research subsidiary Planetary Ventures LLC. The airfield, in Mountain View in the San Francisco bay area, was originally a naval air base; NASA took control in 1994 when […]
A robotics firm owned by Google has programmed a human-sized robot to carry out the crane kick from The Karate Kid. The idea appears to be to show that the robot has the type of balance and depth perception that even real humans might find a challenge. It’s the work of Boston Dynamics, the firm […]
A machine that “prints” foods such as pizza is on the way. The Foodini is designed to make it easier to prepare fresh foods rather than rely on processed, prepared meals. While the device works along the lines of a 3D printer, it uses natural food ingredients rather than plastics. In principle it can work […]
A low-cost, portable incubator for premature babies has won the James Dyson award for design engineer students. “mOm” is designed specifically for use in refugee camps and other deprived settings. Designer James Roberts began work on the project after watching a documentary about refugee camps. He says around 150,000 children are born in camps every […]
If you thought emojis were a short-lived gimmick, you could be disappointed by two new moves to improve the experience of using them. The Unicode standard may be updated to allow emojis in particular skin tones. Meanwhile smart-typing app Swype has been updated to automatically suggest an emoji based on the tone of your text. […]
HP is launching a new computer that blends touchscreens, scanners and cameras into something very unlike a standard desktop PC. It remains to be seen if people will find enough uses for it to make it a success. The $1,899 device, oddly named Sprout, is a standard PC at heart, running Windows 8 but with […]
A self-driving car has hit 149 miles per hour on a racing circuit. Manufacturers Audi say it’s not just showing off, but rather a demonstration that the car could cope in an emergency requiring fast maneuvering. The test on the RS7 was carried out at Hockenheim, a Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit near Frankfurt, Germany. […]
A Chinese inventor has come up with an “umbrella” that uses air rather than fabric. It’s great news for the user, but not so much for fellow pedestrians. The project, which has destroyed its Kickstarter funding target, is still very much in development and inventor Chuan Wang expects to refine the device heavily before a […]
It’s no secret plenty of us with health concerns check symptoms by typing them into Google long before we go to see the doctor. Now Google may remove that time gap altogether. The company has confirmed it is testing a feature that will offer to connect people searching for health related terms to speak to […]
Five British police forces have confirmed that phones and tablets seized as evidence have been remotely wiped while in their custody. Responding to enquiries by the BBC, Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Durham and Nottingham police all reported one wiping incident, while Dorset said it had suffered six such incidents in the space of a year. A sixth […]