General Tech

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 …

Qualcomm has gone ahead and sold off its augmented reality business for a hefty $65 million. The former Qualcomm subsidiary is known as Vuforia, and it had been under the chip maker's wing for the last few years, creating tools for developers to create AR content for smart devices. Right now, Vuforia …

Dell has announced that it is going to take over data centre giant, EMC in a massive $67 billion acquisition deal, the largest ever in the history of the tech industry so far. EMC has apparently agreed to the sale price, which is worth around $33.15 per share, though some …

Earlier this week, Riot officially took a stance against the controversial, grey market key selling site G2A. The site was banned from sponsoring any more professional League of Legends teams and its logo was to be immediately removed from any merchandise or marketing material present at the up coming League …

A team of students from ETH Zurich, Switzerland are hoping to help change the perception many people still have about electric cars, by having their home-spun, F1 inspired vehicle beat petrol racers in an annual contest known as Formula Student. Their car, known as the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) Fluela, …

Sony might be in a tough financial position right now but it still has some cash left to acquire new technology. Today, it was announced that Sony has acquired SoftKinetic, a start up company responsible for body-sensing and image-recognition technology- two things that would be perfect for virtual reality,  which …

Earlier this week, a Twitch streamer got a visit from the police. It wasn't a false swatting complaint, this time it was a noise complaint from a neighbour in the same apartment complex. Unfortunately for this streamer, the police turning up at his door was just the start of his …

Over the last year, key reselling sites like G2A have come under increased scrutiny. Despite their popularity, more often than not you don't actually know where your game code is coming from and plenty of people have ended up having games revoked from their libraries. Now League of Legends developer, …

Facebook has been working on new ways to help developing countries get connected to the web for some time now. It has experimented with more ‘out of the box' methods, like balloons and drones in the past but for now, its plans seem to rest with satellites, as the company …

Microsoft surprised us all back in January when it showed off the Hololens for the first time. Since then, the company has put a ton of effort in to showing off interesting demos for the device, including ones based around Halo and Minecraft at E3. Now, developers know exactly when …

Razer has been a company for gamers for a long time, primarily focussing on peripherals over the last decade. However, over the last few years, the company has also been working on expanding its software suite, with Synapse, Comms, Cortex and now Razer is also getting in to audio production …

Media companies are constantly trying to gain access to user information in their fight against online pirates and from time to time, courts do sympathize with them. This week, a Dutch court has ordered Google to hand over the personal details of a user who put pirated eBooks up on …

Over the last few years as our portable devices get more and more powerful, battery life has started to take a bit of a hit and unfortunately, nobody has quite figured out how to make bigger, longer-lasting batteries for super thin and light products yet. As a result, companies have …