General Tech

Although there were a number of reasons for Google to give itself a new parent company – Alphabet – one of the effects of such a move we were told, was that some of the search giant's less profitable, more experimental strategies and developments would receive more focus. That appears …

Virtual reality is on its way with the first consumer oriented headsets and games due out next year. However, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey still knows that there is more work to be done before virtual reality can be truly successful, one obstacle that he recently spoke out on was the …

We've had a few notable TV leaks over the last few years. One season premier of Dexter leaked online weeks before schedule, this year we saw several episodes of Game of Thrones leak ahead of the season 5 premier and now today, people are downloading a new episode of Arrow, …

2016 might be the year that virtual reality first becomes viable for consumers around the world, but it's also the year that we'll get our first taste of automated grocery deliveries. A new venture by original Skype founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis called Starship, has built a prototype autonomous delivery …

Researchers at MIT have come up with a new device that makes use of wireless signals in order to see humans through walls. The device is known as RF-Capture and it works by emitting wireless signals through walls, which then bounce off of human bodies on the other side. As the …

Up until now, lithium air batteries have been purely theoretical. However, recently some researchers at Cambridge University managed to put together a working prototype, with extreme energy density, with a 90 per cent energy efficiency boost. Early tests also show that it can be charged more than two thousand times, …

Earlier this week, we got wind of talks taking place between Toshiba and Sony. Now, Sony has confirmed that it is planning to buy out Toshiba's image sensor business, which will in turn boost its production capabilities. Right now, terms are still being negotiated but we do know that Toshiba's …

Earlier this year, a Harvard Law School student launched a petition to the US Copyright Office to allow for abandoned online games to become exempt to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This would mean that games abandoned by publishers with dead DRM servers could legally be cracked and played again. …

The European Parliament has passed a law today that will put a stop to mobile roaming data fees by June 2017. This law was passed as part of a larger legislation, which also wanted to strengthen Net Neutrality laws but unfortunately was left with some major problems that could allow …

Intel has announced that it has acquired Saffron Technologies in an effort to improve its machine learning efforts. Saffron Technologies has previously offered predictive analytical data to industries across the spectrum. For now, Intel intends to keep Saffron running as its own standalone business, though it will look in to …

Toshiba is apparently in advanced talks to sell its image sensor business to Sony for as much as $165 million. This comes just a few weeks after we learned that Sony also acquired sensor start-up company, SoftKinetic. So far, this news is coming from multiple sources, ranging from Japanese newpaper, …

Not content with turning our transportation electric and making space travel more affordable, Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk also has another pet project: the Hyperloop. A near-vacuum sealed tube-train design that could carry passengers across entire countries faster than airplane travel. The concept is still a long way …

Popcorn Time for the web brought the torrent streaming service to web browsers, removing the need to download and use the app. However, following legal threats, the service went down. Then 24 hours later, new developers picked up the project and brought the service straight back to life. The original …

As if yesterday's cafuffle with the double muscle dog/cow wasn't enough, today's edition of off-beat technology sees us looking at Nike's self-lacing shoes from Back to the Future II. While many of us may have watched the films – or at least been subjected to endless Facebook posts about them …

We have been hearing about it for many months but now it has finally happened, Google has officially launched YouTube Red, the paid, ad-free subscription service for the world's most popular video on demand platform. YouTube Red will offer everything on the site right now with no adverts, the subscription …

When Elon Musk said that the Autopilot feature that was rolled out to all Model S and Model X owners was probably safe for people, he was mainly thinking about pedestrians that may make the inadvisable move to step out in front of them. He didn't mention anything about the Autopilot …

It seems that Microsoft might not be the sole supplier of the Hololens as Asus is apparently in talks with the company to build its own version. This would make Asus the first third-party company to build a version of Microsoft's augmented reality headset if a deal can be made. …

Amazon has designed its own pair of augmented reality glasses, judging by a recent patent filing from the company. While many other device makers are currently focussed on virtual reality, there aren't as many big names currently working on augmented reality, aside from Microsoft with the Hololens and Google with …

Samsung and South Korea are aiming to cut down on manufacturing costs for electronics by building robots to replace factory workers. The idea is to replace human employees with cheap to run robots, to deal with plenty of tasks, including those that currently require a more delicate touch. The South …

It looks like Google wants to take on Amazon in the delivery drone race, as the company has just submitted two new designs to the Federal Aviation Administration. These are being tested by the Google X branch, which is Google's experimental division. The drones are named M2 and B3 at …

Microsoft has been pushing its Surface pretty hard recently, striking deals with Dell and HP to get the tablet in to businesses. It turns out that at one point, Microsoft's plans also involved getting Lenovo on-board to help sell the Windows tablet but the company got turned down. Lenovo didn't …

Virtual Reality is brand new technology to the consumer market and the Oculus Rift headset has a lot of support behind it. However, as is the case with most brand new devices, there will be a cost premium associated with being an early adopter. We recently learned that the first consumer …

SK Hynix has announced plans to bring 36-layer 3D NAND flash chips to the market later this year, with plans to produce 48-layer 3D NAND Flash in place for some time next year. The South Korean based company also recently started mass producing 20nm class DRAM, though it is still …

Eye-tracking company, Tobii announced today that its software and hardware is at the point where it is ready to be implemented with consumer devices, like laptops, or possibly even virtual reality or augmented reality products in the future. Tobii has been well-known in this space for quite some time and …

Although fully automated cars aren't expected to hit our roads until sometime in the 2020s, we're well on our way with a combination of features and safety measures that are now available to Tesla drivers as part of its ‘autopilot' scheme. The update was rolled out to Tesla Model S and …

Google has decided that it is going to remove the Chrome notification centre for the browser on Windows and OS X. The notification centre was first implemented back in 2013 but many people either switch it off, or simply ignore it sitting the in the taskbar. In a post on the …

The consumer version of the Oculus Rift is finally coming out next year and it looks like analysts are already predicting big things for the virtual reality headset. According to analytic firm, Suisse, Oculus will sell as many as five million Rift headsets within its first year on the market, …

Disc-based DRM has been huge in the entertainment industry, with most DVD's and Blu-rays coming region locked to specific devices. However, we are moving in to a new realm of 4K/UHD content at the moment, which means new Blu-ray disc technology, which just had region coding removed from its specification sheet. …

The RIAA was much faster than anyone anticipated this week, launching a lawsuit against new music streaming service, Aurous almost immediately following its launch. Aurous has adopted the Netflix model, much like Popcorn Time, offering songs on demand for streaming across devices, without any adverts, as featured in Spotify. The …

A crowd funding campaign to create a futuristic razor that uses a laser to cut hair, rather than traditional blades. The campaign had raised just over $4 million on Kickstarter over the last couple of weeks but the campaign was suddenly suspended after the company behind it also put the …