The semiconductor industry has realized the benefits of Moore’s Law for 50 years, making chips that have grown from tens to billions of transistors and performing an increased range of functions from memory to logic to signal processing. Next year or in 2017, the world’s largest maker of microprocessors will …
Read More »Bing predicts 84% of this year’s Oscar winners correctly
The Bing prediction engine has been busy this last week getting to grips with the Oscars and trying to predict the winners for each category. While it didn't get all 24 predictions correct, it did manage to get 20 correct giving it an 84% success rate. At last year's Oscars …
Read More »Music company attempts to DMCA Skype, AMD and 93 other downloads
A German music company has attempted to claim copyright on some of the world's most popular downloads, including Skype, AMD drivers, Linux and many more. Over the years we have seen many copyright holders attempt to abuse the DMCA takedown system to censor legitimate content and the worst part is, there are …
Read More »Google being investigated over an antitrust complaint in Russia
Google is facing another anti-trust investigation, this time in Russia over its Android Operating System. The complaint was filed by Yandex, a Russian competitor to Google, which controls over half of the search traffic in the country. Google's popularity with Android has given it a strong position against Yandex, taking …
Read More »Developer manages to pair Moto 360 with iPhone
It turns out that there is a way to get an Android Wear device to play nicely with iOS, as one developer managed to pair the popular Moto 360 with an iPhone, allowing the smart watch to receive notifications from iOS. Official support is unlikely though, after all, Apple will …
Read More »Judge throws out two class-action lawsuits against Google
A California court has decided to dismiss two class-action lawsuits against Google, which accused the company of bad business practises, despite a lack of evidence. Eventually, it was decided that the plaintiffs could not sufficiently support their claims. The first class action lawsuit claimed that because Google has other Android device …
Read More »Twitch to host its own convention this year
Twitch has decided that it is going to start hosting its own convention this year. TwitchCon was announced yesterday and will hit San Fransisco in September from the 25th to the 26th. According to the official announcement page, this will be a ‘interactive convention', inviting in broadcasters and viewers alike. …
Read More »Google is looking to revive Google Wallet by paying carriers
Google's Wallet service didn't take off in the same way that Apple Pay has but Google hasn't given up just yet. According to a new report, the company is looking to revive Google Wallet and turn it in to a genuine competitor in the mobile payments field. In order to …
Read More »Google already showing off early Glass 2 prototypes to select few
Google shut down its Glass explorers program earlier this year, bringing development of the wearable back behind closed doors. However, it turns out that Google is already ready to show off early versions of Glass 2, reportedly sending prototype units out to selected partners. The few people to have a …
Read More »How fast is the speed of light really?
Update: Thanks to our readers for pointing out some of the problems with this piece. Mark Smith came up with a short and sweet analogy for what's going on in the video below: “The times given are how long *we* perceive it takes light to travel those distances. Relativity tells …
Read More »Sony wants to sell overpriced memory cards for ‘premium sound’
Sony is doing a lot of restructuring at the moment in an effort to try to return to profitability. However, this might not be the answer. Sony is currently working on a new memory card that promises ‘premium sound' and as you would imagine, it's going to cost more than …
Read More »Samsung buys LoopPay to compete with Apple Pay
Samsung has acquired LoopPay, a Kickstarted mobile wallet provider that allows payments to take place on existing magnetic strip readers. This will help Samsung compete against Apple's new Apple Pay service, which has taken off in the US and is due to expand to other territories this year. Speculation about …
Read More »Dell starts accepting bitcoin payments in UK
Dell has announced that it plans to start accepting bitcoins as a form of payment in the UK, following a successful trial of the digital currency over in the US. Dell initially began accepting crypto-currency as a form of payment in July last year but it was a US only …
Read More »Some Samsung Smart TVs aren’t encrypting user voices
Samsung's Smart TVs have come under fire recently thanks to a poorly worded privacy policy and an advert insertion bug affecting users in Australia. However, things just seem to keep getting worse as now it turns out that some Smart TV models are uploading user voices to the internet in …
Read More »New Alien movie incoming from District 9 director
If the recent success of Alien: Isolation has taught us anything, it's that despite the abortive efforts of the Aliens vs Predator movies and the Promethius film, people still love the Alien franchise; but more so for its roots than its branches. Fortunately then, it looks like we might get …
Read More »Alien star gave our solar system a fly-by 70k years ago
Although one of the common ways sci-fi writers like to make their planets more exciting is adding a second sun to the mix, it's not something we're ever likely to experience here on Earth. However our ancestors might have, as 70,000 years ago, another star did a fly-by of our …
Read More »Want to buy 50,000 Bitcoins?
In a rare opportunity, thanks to the United States Marshals Service and Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame, you are now able to bid on 50,000 seized Bitcoins. These Bitcoins are currently worth around £7.7 million (or $11.9 million USD) and were seized from Ulbricht when the feds snatched his laptop away from him in a San …
Read More »Samsung to use $56 billion for growth, acquisitions
Without any doubts, Samsung Electronics is among the most successful companies in the high-tech industry nowadays. While the firm’s profit declined in 2014, the company increased its dividends to cheer up investors. However, the company will not do such a thing this year and will spend money on growth, which …
Read More »The Pebble Smartwatch can now run Android Wear apps
The Pebble is about to get a bit more exciting, it has a long battery life, its affordable and now its compatible with apps built for Google's own wearable operating system, Android Wear. Compatibility comes via the latest update to the Pebble App on the Google Play Store. Version 2.3 …
Read More »First UK eSports arena opens in London next month
eSports has become a big deal over in Asia and North America with thousands of people attending pro-gaming events throughout the year and now, the UK is joining the ranks with the first UK eSports arena opening up in London next month. In March, the Gfinity Arena will open up, …
Read More »High percentage of people are still nervous about driverless cars
The UK is pushing to be one of the world's front-runners when it comes to automated vehicles, with politicians rushing through legislation to allow their usage on our roads and a large scale trial in several different major cities taking place over the next few months. However, not everyone is quite …
Read More »Snapchat could be worth as much as $19 billion
Despite last year's “Snappening” showing that thanks to malicious third party applications, Snapchat images are anything but temporary, the service continues to see heavy usage and is now seeking new funding which if successful, would value the company at over $19 billion (£12.3 billion). If Snapchat is able to raise …
Read More »Pirate Bay return far from smooth sailing
The return of the Pirate Bay at the beginning of February should have been a triumphant one, with fans and staff happy to see the classic face of online file sharing back to its old self. Unfortunately for them though, its rebirth has been anything but that. On top of …
Read More »Asus USB 3.1 Hands-on Preview
The widespread introduction of USB 3.1-capable components is already under way. That roll-out is currently centred around motherboards providing support for the 10Gbps ports, but further devices will make use of the higher speed connector in coming months. We get an early hands-on look at one of Asus' upcoming USB …
Read More »Sony to launch smartglasses in March
A few weeks have passed since Google took Google Glass development back behind closed doors but the wearable's failure to truly take off hasn't deterred Sony from launching its own pair of smart glasses, which will arrive on the 10th of March. The SmartEyeGlass as its called will launch in …
Read More »US approves drone usage for films, not delivery
Drones were always going to need regulation. As fun a toy as they are, as they get lighter, smaller and more powerful, they have the potential to travel higher and further and that means they could not only invade people's privacy, but also pose a real hazard to civilian and military …
Read More »LG still denies deliberately damaging Samsung washing machines
In September last year, we published one of our hardest hitting stories of 2014, when it was discovered that executives from LG were accused of deliberately sabotaging Samsung washing machines in the lead up to an important electronics show in Germany. With the trial set to take place in the …
Read More »MegaUpload software dev. pleads guilty on copyright charges
One of the software developers that worked on the long defunct MegaUpload file locker site, founded by internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, has plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, after being arrested in the US just a few days ago. His sentence will see him spend the next …
Read More »Scientists still confused over Mars ‘protuberance’
If there's one thing we know about the universe at large, it's that it can always surprise us. Even close to home in-fact, as Mars, one of our solar system companions has been puzzling scientists for years, having protruded something from its atmosphere back in 2012 and nobody is quite sure …
Read More »Computers are now better than you at recognising stuff
On average, us flesh sacks can recognise stuff in pictures pretty well, with an error rate of around 5.1% according to a recent study. Previously computers could come pretty close to that, getting around 6.66% of objects wrong. Now however, a new computer vision system from Microsoft Research is actually managing to …
Read More »