IBM is putting $3 billion into two projects designed to rethink the very concept of computer chip production. It says such a move is needed to meet increasing demands for processing without impractical increases in energy use. Both projects will run for five years. They both involve exploring the continuing efforts to shrink chips — […]
A British fire service is developing an app that will let callers send live video of an incident to give emergency staff more information before they arrive on the scene. West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) wants other services from around the country such as police and ambulance to get involved in the tech behind the […]
A new firm of birth control could allow women to switch contraception on and off with a remote control. It could also be adapted for other drugs. The device is 20mm x 20mm x 7mm and includes a battery and a 1.5-cm wide microchip. At scheduled intervals, the chip releases an electric charge that melts […]
Jos Stiglingh usedย a GoPro — and a drone — to get really, REALLY up close and personal with the recent Fourth of July fireworks show over West Palm Beach, Florida. [via Gear Junkie]
Boston’s parks are getting a string of benches with built-in cellphone chargers. But it’s unclear at best whether it’s a financially viable proposition. The Soofa, described as an urban hub, has a built-in solar panel which provides the power for two USB ports for charging. (You need to bring your own charging cable.) Officials say […]
Goldman Sachs has asked a US court to force Google to remotely delete a message sent to the wrong address. The e-mail, sent last week, was meant to go to an address ending in gs.com, but mistakenly went to the same username but at gmail.com instead. That’s particularly unfortunate as the e-mail included “highly confidential […]
The Norwegian government says it will not repeat experiments with online voting. It said there wasn’t enough guarantee of security and a secret vote. The country used online voting as an option in 12 cities and towns as an experiment in 2011 and 2013 and has now reported on the experience. In the 2013 experiment, […]
Work to reconstruct one of the earliest computers has been boosted by the discovery of the original circuit diagrams. The EDSAC project had previously relied on photographs to put together components. As we covered a couple of years ago, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was arguably the first completed and fully operational machine to […]
The Supreme Court has made two key rulings on tech-related cases today. It’s ruled against Aereo, an online service that thought it found a loophole in broadcasting laws. And it’s ruled that the police do not generally have a right to search cellphones during a warrantless arrest. Aereo allows paying customers to access over-the-air broadcasts […]
Perhaps no technological failure is better known than that of the Dvorak keyboard. Since the early 1870s nearly every typewriter used a keyboard with a QWERTY layout, yet most studies show the Dvorak arrangement of keys to be faster. This videos probes the underlying reasons that this arrangement failed to make headway in the marketplace. […]