Independent news, views, opinions and reviews on the latest gadgets, games, science, technology and research from Apple and more. It’s about the technologies that change the way we live, work, love and behave.
Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship Two:
“This was a test flight. This is what test flights are for. The desert around Mojave has a decades-long history of smoking holes in the ground and test-pilot funerals, though most of them usually originate from Edwards AFB, a few mile to the south. The company won’t be flying passengers until they’ve had many successful consecutive test flights, with whatever new vehicle they develop, assuming they follow through on pledges at the press conference yesterday, and move forward.”
Reaching space is dangerous…
Posted: 2nd, November 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
The bright light in the lower right region of the sun shows an X-class solar flare on Oct. 26, 2014, as captured by NASA’s SDO. This was the third X-class flare in 48 hour. Image by NASA/SDO
AS I write, it’s 23 degrees Centigrade in London. On Halloween.
PBS has news:
By the time the giant spot on the sun rotated into view on October 18, it was already 80,000 miles wide, big enough to fit all of Jupiter, big enough to lay 10 Earths, side by side, across. It is the largest spot the sun has harbored in 24 years.
But while most erupting sunspots lob chunks of plasma outward in events called coronal mass ejections, this one’s keeping its plasma close to the surface.
To rewind, a sunspot is a darker, cooler area on the sun’s visible surface that stores intense magnetic energy. (Note: Cooler, in this case, means roughly 7,500 degrees Fahrenheit, down from about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.)
The sun is not a solid body. It’s a ball of hot, hot ionized gas called plasma that’s threaded with magnetic field, created by charged particles moving around. The sun spins faster at its equator, and the result is that some of that magnetic field drags, getting twisted and knotted up in the process. As this happens, these knots of magnetic field gain energy, pressure and buoyancy, and some of them float to the surface, and penetrate it, popping out…
Releasing this pent-up energy typically takes two forms: a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection, and this is key to what makes the behavior here unusual. A coronal mass ejection is made up of balls of gas ejected from the sun’s outer atmosphere, consisting of charged particles and magnetic field. The fastest CME’s travel up to 93 million miles a day, or millions of miles per hour. A solar flare is a burst of x-rays and energy, typically smaller and shorter-lasting than a CME, and rather than being launched out into space, it is caused by material accelerated back into the sun…
When a solar flare erupts, it lights up the side of the Earth that’s facing the flare, and heats up the Earth’s upper atmosphere, or ionosphere, which can temporarily change its properties. Solar flares pose less danger than CME’s, but they can affect short-wave radio communication used by pilots and ships, since the radio waves are bounced off the upper atmosphere.
Sunspots, first seen through a telescope by Galileo, are classified by how complex they are. Similar to a mole, a clean, round sunspot is of less interest to sun watchers.
“Imagine the doctor says you’ve got a nice little round mole,” Young said. “But when it starts to break up into pieces and change color and get jagged and complicated, that’s when you start to become concerned.”
Posted: 31st, October 2014 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment
JOURNALISM is dying. Verizon has a new news website:
The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology news site called SugarString.com. The publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, is meant to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge while bringing in a potentially giant mainstream audience to beat those competitors at their own game.
There’s just one catch: In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.
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Posted: 30th, October 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
Video: time-lapse of braces straightening teeth: Spotter: The Kid Should See This
Posted: 30th, October 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
THERE’S something in the human psyche that loves seeing things blow-up. Explosions are even better when there’s no casualties, because you can just enjoy the show without wanting to vomit with the weight of it all.
Yesterday, NASA launched the unmanned Orbital Sciences Corp Antares rocket as part of a $1.9billion contract, however, it didn’t make it out of the atmosphere as it turned into a huge molten fireball seven seconds above the ground, before crashing back into the earth, blowing up everywhere.
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Posted: 30th, October 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
FACE of the Day: Honda’s ASIMO:
ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative MObility) Honda’s humanoid robot, ascends a staircase as it makes its UK debut at the WIRED Conference in London. Honda’s development of humanoid robots began in 1986 and many developments have been made since ASIMO first launched in 2000.
Posted: 17th, October 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
HOW capitalism works: the domain name Ebola.com is for sale. You can buy it for $150,000. Jon Schultz is selling. He also owns biurdflu.com and terror.com, which is nice.
Schultz, of Las Vegas-based Blue String Ventures, looks at domains through the lens of a gambler. It’s not what a domain is worth today, he advised in an interview with the Washington Post. It’s what it is worth tomorrow. “Our domain, birdflu.com, is worth way more than Ebola.com. We’re definitely holding onto that one for the event,” he said, referring to an outbreak he contends could be way bigger than Ebola, turning the owner of birdflu.com into a very rich man. “That one’s airborne and Ebola would never go airborne in the United States like bird flu can.”
Schultz bought Ebola.com for $13,500, in 2008.
It’s boom time, baby!
Posted: 15th, October 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
WHO in Seattle drew a big penis on a $2.5m Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport (the world’s most expensive production car).
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Posted: 9th, October 2014 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
Exciting news for the spam filters on our email: scientists have revealed that they can now grow a penis in a laboratory. Just think what’s going to happen when the mass marketers get ahold of that idea: if you thought that pills to increase size were heavily marketed you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Scientists have successfully grown penises in a laboratory and say they could be tested on humans within five years.
The organs would be used to help men who have suffered a serious injury to the region, had surgery for cancer or are suffering from a congenital abnormality.
The work is being carried out the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, North Carolina.
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Posted: 7th, October 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment (1)
This Tuesday, June 24, 2014 photo shows the Draganflyer X4-ES drone, a professional, GPS guided, four-rotor UAV helicopter capable of autonomous flight, video and digital still images, during a demonstration for the media in the Alerus Center in Grand Forks, N.D.
TO New Jersey, where a man has taken badly to being spied upon. He used a shotgun to shoot down his neighbour’s drone.
The droner was using his spy in the sky to check out a nearby home undergoing renovations.
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Posted: 6th, October 2014 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
In this May 28, 2008 file photo, space shuttle Discovery commander Mark Kelly, right, gestures as he walks with his twin brother, astronaut Scott Kelly, left, and mission specialist Ron Garan, after arrival at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
TWIN astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly are ready to be in a novel twin study:
In March, Scott – a former International Space Station commander and veteran of the space program – departs on a one-year mission to the ISS, alongside Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. Meanwhile, Mark, who is now retired from NASA, will stay on the ground, at home in Arizona. A group of researchers will track Scott in space, and his genetic doppelgänger on Earth, to get a fuller picture of the myriad effects of long-term space travel – crucial information if we hope to send astronauts to Mars and beyond.
The twins study brings NASA into a new realm of science, what Craig Kundrot, at NASA’s human research program, calls “21st-century omics research.” This includes genomics (the study of the Kellys’ DNA), metabolomics (their metabolism), microbiomics (the bacteria in their guts), and more. “The twin study is really a baptism for us,” says Kundrot, who’s based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. But there’s another reason NASA has largely avoided this type of research, until now. “NASA has never been in the genetics game for one simple reason,” says Fred Turek of Northwestern University, one of the investigators on the twin study. “Astronauts have only one fear in life: that some scientist is going to find something wrong with them.”
That and finding their twin repulsive…
Posted: 5th, October 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
HERE’S a bit of a problem for Apple’s new Watch: looking at one while driving could earn you a £100 fine. And yes, that is even if it’s just a watch that you’re looking at. Because while you might just have it set up to show just a watch face the police aren’t to know that: and thus they can assume that you’re checking your emails or whatever. And that will be punished just like texting while driving will be: so this is all going to be most interesting really.
Here’s the proof:
The Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has warned that anyone caught using a justWatch when driving will be be hit with the same punishment as if they had been using a mobile phone.
This cautionary missive was backed up the Department for Transport, which said that anyone caught Apple wrist-watching while driving would be clobbered with three penalty points on their driving licence and a £100 fine.
The thing is that it’s a real problem. People being distracted by their mobile phone while driving killed some 110 people in the UK last year. And as that Apple Watch is more akin to a mobile than it is just to a watch then it’s going to get covered by those mobile phone rules, not the ones that say we’re allowed to glance at our watch while driving.
That’s a bit of a problem for the new product launch, isn’t it?
Posted: 30th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
DO all iPhones take the same selfies? No. The newest models show your pores in better detail. Lisa Bettany shares with Snap Snap Snap readers her iPhone snaps taken with the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, and the new iPhone 6 i.
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Posted: 25th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
STOOD in the line outside Apple’s NYC emporium, Casey Neistat spotted Chinese resellers looking to resells the gadgets before they’re launched in China.
Apple limits each customer to two phones per person. Many faces in the crowd buy two with the Chinese resellers’ cash, earning a commission for standing around.
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Posted: 23rd, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
HOW about that online debate?
In this month’s issue of Personality and Individual Differences a study was published that confirms what we all suspected: internet trolls are horrible people.
Aren’t they just saying things online?
Let’s start by getting our definitions straight. An internet troll is someone who comes into a discussion and posts comments designed to upset or disrupt the conversation. Often, it seems like there is no real purpose behind their comments except to upset everyone else involved. Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response.
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Posted: 22nd, September 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
JOAN Rivers might be dead but never let it be said she fails tos ee ou a contractual obligation.
“This badass is being replaced by an iPhone 6 (not the fat one). I got this one in 2010 and, after 4 years, my only complaint is that apps are now designed for bigger screens, and the battery is getting tired. Never had a case for it, since it was most beautiful on its own. Great achievement in design. Great product. #apple #iphone #tech.”
Her views on the iPhone 7, 8, 9 and X are not yet scheduled to be known…
Posted: 19th, September 2014 | In: Celebrities, Technology | Comment
THE iPhone launch has become a seasonal event. Like the X Factor auditions, it allows the sane the chance to look at the demented and desperate being wrangled by the rich and successful.
This highlights package of twattery, features the Grow-Yur-Own Apple fansboys sitting in a portable greenhouse, Glasgow’s saddest trio and two men jumping for joy at having spent loadsa money on a telephone.
Billy (surname not given) and Mike Roberts wait outside the Apple Store on Regent Street
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Posted: 19th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comments (3)
n this photo taken Wednesday, July 30, 2014, Silicon Valley pioneer and Silent Circle co-founder Jon Callas holds up Blackphone with encryption apps displayed on it at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Revelations about the NSA’s electronic eavesdropping capabilities, with targets reported to include Chancellor Angela Merkel, have sparked anger in Germany, and a boom in encryption services that make it hard for the most sophisticated spies to read emails, listen to calls or comb through texts. ‘Snowden’s leaks were a real boon for us,’ said Callas, whose company sells an encryption app which allows users to talk and text in private. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
BAD news for spies. Apple will not comply with police orders to unlock your iPhones, iPads. Why? Because it can’t:
The move, announced with the publication of a new privacy policy tied to the release of Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, amounts to an engineering solution to a legal quandary: Rather than comply with binding court orders, Apple has reworked its latest encryption in a way that prevents the company — or anyone but the device’s owner — from gaining access to the vast troves of user data typically stored on smartphones or tablet computers.
The key is the encryption that Apple mobile devices automatically put in place when a user selects a passcode, making it difficult for anyone who lacks that passcode to access the information within, including photos, e-mails and recordings. Apple once maintained the ability to unlock some content on devices for legally binding police requests but will no longer do so for iOS 8, it said in the new privacy policy.
“Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data,” Apple said on its Web site. “So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.”
Just don’t use the company’s cloud software…
Posted: 19th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
TO Australia, where an Apple fanboy who queued to buy an iPhone 6 is showing it off to the excited Press. His hand shakes as he touches the genuine cardboard box and peels the lid off:
Posted: 19th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
A NEW allegation about those massive factories in China that make all of Apple’s iKit. That the chemicals being used to clean the electronics have caused an outbreak of leukaemia among the workers. It should be said that there’s not likely to be much truth to the allegations: but then they’re coming from a “labour watch” group who seem not to have been all that interested in the truth in the past. It’s the same group who brought us the news of the high suicide rates in the same factories. When in fact that suicide rate was lower than it is in China in general:
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Posted: 17th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
In this Sept. 9, 2014 photo, Apple CEO Tim Cook, left, greets Bono from the band U2 after they preformed at the end of the Apple event on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Cupertino, Calif.
THERE’S been much chatter about Apple’s move to give away U2’s new album Songs of Innocence to 500 million iTunes customers in 119 countries to coincide with its iPhone 6 and Watch launch.
U2’s singer Bono (Mr G21) opined:
“People who haven’t heard our music, or weren’t remotely interested, might play us for the first time because we’re in their library,”
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Posted: 17th, September 2014 | In: Celebrities, Music, Technology | Comment
DIGITAL: Cameras are so confusing. This modern cameras is better:
Spotter: Little Brown Miscellanea.
Posted: 8th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
BILLLIONS reel as it is revealed that the internet is actually full. It’s this that led to eBay falling over this week and it will in the future disrupt our vital supplies of funny cat photos. That, at least, is what the Mail is trying to peddle to us as the latest calamity to befall our race:
Major technical problems could become a regular occurrence for website users because the internet is running out of space, experts have warned.
An online breakdown caused chaos on Tuesday, costing the economy millions of pounds in lost trade and effectively closing access to a number of huge website.
Online auctioneer eBay was out of action for most of the day, with buyers and sellers inundating the site with complaints about lost business after being unable to log onto their accounts.
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Posted: 8th, September 2014 | In: Technology | Comment
HARD cheese for those of you like smelling your own farts? But good news for eveyrone around you. The toilet-seat with an in-built fan is here. CNet has more:
We are in a golden age for toilet technology. Recent years have given us highly entertaining innovations like toilet landing lights, home toilet wave-to-flush kits, and Bluetooth-equipped toilets that can be flushed using an app. There is no stopping the forward progress of toilet tech, as evidenced by Fresh Air Plus, a newcomer to the lavatory scene.
Fresh Air Plus is a Kickstarter project that replaces your old, lifeless toilet seat with a seat that has a built-in exhaust fan designed to capture and safely vent unwelcome odors outside your house. The Kickstarter promotional video describes the issue as “stinky, gross, and sometimes socially awkward.” The seat has a sensor that detects when someone is sitting down. This triggers the fan to turn on.
The seat also has an anti-slam lid that closes softly. The best part of all is a series of purplish and red blinking star lights on the side that let you and any visitors know that this isn’t your momma’s toilet seat, it’s a high-tech beast of a bathroom machine.
The installation process involves removing your old seat, attaching the Fresh Air Plus in its place, plugging the seat into a wall socket, and then connecting a hose to an exhaust vent running outside. The biggest issue here is that you probably don’t already have a small round vent in your wall, so you’ll have to get handy and put one in or hire somebody to come do it. It gets a little trickier if your bathroom doesn’t have an outside-facing wall. This situation requires running the hose through the wall to connect up with the ventilation pipe used by your bathroom ceiling fan.
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Posted: 4th, September 2014 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
WHO to blame for the naked photos of Jennifer Lawrence and, reportedly, 100 other stars leaked on the web? The hackers who took images from the star’s iCloud account? No. David Auerbach blames Apple:
Apple is currently delighted that people are talking about how you shouldn’t take naked photos of yourself in the first place, but make no mistake: Apple has been provably irresponsible with users’ security. It is currently unclear how the naked photos were gathered—most likely through a number of different methods and different servers over a period of months if not years. What isclear is that Apple has had a known security vulnerability in its iCloud service for months and has been careless about protecting its users. Apple patched this vulnerability shortly after the leak, so even if we’re not sure of exactly how the photos got hacked, evidently Apple thinks it might have had something to do with it. Whether or not this particular vulnerability was used to gather some of the photos—Apple is not commenting, as usual, but the ubiquity and popularity of Apple’s products certainly points to the iCloud of being a likely source—its existence is reason enough for users to be deeply upset at their beloved company for not taking security seriously enough.
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Posted: 3rd, September 2014 | In: Celebrities, Technology | Comment
