Technology Category
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.
Chinese Official Shrinks 103-Year-Old Woman In Epic Photoshop Fail
Posted: 31st, October 2013 | In: Politicians, Technology | Comment
31p Will Make Your iPhone Able To Read Your Emotions
Are you disappointed that your iPhone can’t tell if you’re happy? Well that can be remedied by plugging in 31p of sensors to an iPhone 5S and letting it monitor your heartbeat.
The strategy director of a chip company – Freescale Semiconductor’s Kaivan Karimi explained how for a fifty cents your device can be trained to know what you’re thinking before you do. Speaking at the Gigaom conference this week in San Francisco, he explained how it’s just about measuring your pulse, and your sweat:
“your device will know you significantly better than you do, or than your loved ones do. This will lead a lot of good stuff.”
Heartrate from emotion is different from heartrate from exercise, Mr Karimi says – so once you have those you can pretty much monitor what a person’s emotions are.
By making a watch that can take readings of the pulse and skin moisture on your wrist, and linking it up to your iPhone, the device will be able to “read your mind”, Mr Karimi said.
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Posted: 30th, October 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
Brit Arrested For “Pwning” US Government, Tripped Up By Named Paypal Account…
A British man threatened to “pwn” US government web services before uploading a mocking video to a government website, and stealing the personal details of FBI agents, court documents allege.
Lauri Love, 28, of Suffolk, was arrested yesterday morning under the Computer Misuse Act by the UK’s National Crime Agency and was released on bail until February 2014. The former Glasgow University student is the son of a vicar in Suffolk, the Telegraph reports. The Mail says that Mr Love was a leading member of the Occupy movement who carried out his sophisticated attacks from his parents’ house.
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Posted: 29th, October 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
Apple Really Is Dodging Taxes You Know!
THERE’S been intensive debate….well, let’s call that screaming matches….about whether Apple is avoiding tax or not. Everyone points to the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich as irrefutable proof that they’re skiving swine.
The thing is that this isn’t tax avoidance. It’s most certainly not tax evasion for as all agree it’s wholly and entirely legal. But it’s not even tax avoidance: for this is how the corporate tax system is set up to work: this is how it was designed. Companies, when they sell overseas, are taxed on the profits they make in their home country. That’s it, that’s all. And Apple will indeed be taxed on their overseas profits as and when they take those profits back into the US. That’s also just it: there is no more to the story than that. At the very best the entire structure delays the payment of tax: but it most certainly does not mean that the tax has been avoided.
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Posted: 29th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Samsung Is Making Augmented Reality Glasses For Sport. What Sports?
SAMSUNG wants to put its computers on your face. And has just landed a patent for a new device that will do just that.
Google has staked out the space of face computers and though little demonstrable desire has been expressed for the devices – its Google Glass has been the poster child for the technology.
The idea is you walk around with a pair of glasses with a built-in computer that sits on top of one of your ears. The lenses are transparent screens through which you see the world, but also any stuff that Google wants to push on there, weightloss adverts, vouchers, that kind of thing. You know what Google likes to tell you about.
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Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Sexism: The Fault Is In Ourselves, Not Google’s Autocomplete
THIS is a rather fun finding, the UN has actually managed to do something both useful and interesting. There’s a piece in the Guardian about it here and the main page of the project is here.
What they’ve done is go to Google, typed in part of a query and seen how Google autocomplete finishes it off:
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Posted: 23rd, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Was iOS 7 created in Microsoft Word? An Exhausting Video
WAS iOS 7 created in Microsoft Word? Maybe. Vaclav Krejci has made an exhausting video of his duplication. Watching it is hard work but couples with the sound it is a challenge. Still, Vaclav is a true Anorak, a master forger of the internet generation:
Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
LMFHO: Facebook Arousal Software Legitimately Executes People Enjoying Beheading Videos
ON Facebook you can now watch videos of Kenneth Bigley, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley being beheaded.
The one problem is that you must be 13 or older to view them. Only then will you be able to understand that the beheadings are not sensationalist and gory but presented in a way that will “condemn” rather than celebrate the acts. This way you will learn that beheading a man is wrong.
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Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
Should Apple Throw $150 Billion at Shareholders or Not?
ONE investor in Apple, Carl Icahn, has demanded that Apple should throw $150 billion of the company’s money at shareholders. It seems like a reasonable enough idea, given that the company’s money does actually belong to the shareholders, but there’s a couple of minor problems. The most obvious being that despite Apple having $150 billion in cash it would have to go and borrow to pay that amount to the shareholders:
Mr Icahn took to Twitter to disclose that he had used a dinner meeting to press the tech giant’s chief executive Tim Cook to carry out further share buybacks. He said he had “pushed hard” for more share purchases by the iPhone and iPad maker.
Buybacks reward investors by lifting earnings per share and Apple shares rose 2.4pc on the news the influential investor was pressing the company over its share purchases.
“Had a cordial dinner with Tim last night,” Mr Icahn said on Twitter. “We pushed hard for a $150bn buyback. We decided to continue dialogue in about three weeks.”
Mr Icahn later told CNBC that he had invested $2bn in Apple. He added that the tech group’s finance chief had also attended the meal with Mr Cook.
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Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
We Know You’re Reading This At Work You Know: Google’s Online News Explainer
ONE of the things that’s become increasingly apparent in the development of this ‘ere internet thing over the last couple of decades is that everyone’s reading it at work. We seem to have shifted the “finding out the news” thing away from free or leisure time into the working hours of the day and the week.
Anyone who has ever run a website knows this little point: traffic starts to rise from a particular timezone as people start to arrive at work in that timezone. UK traffic is pitiful before about 8.30 am and rises strongly after 9.30 am. It then falls away again around 5 pm. US traffic starts to rise around 8 am East Coast Time and continues to rise until the Californians get in several hours later.
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Posted: 21st, October 2013 | In: Money, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Image Processing Guy Creates Incredible Picture of Saturn
YOU think you know Saturn and then Saturn Gordan Ugarkovic creates the hereunder magnificent picture of the planet. It is huge – both picture and planet, that is. Others explain what we’re looking at:
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Posted: 18th, October 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
1984: Bruce McCandless takes man’s first untethered flight in space
ON 12 February 1984, Bruce McCandless waved farewell to the Challenger Space Shuttle and floated off into space. His only power was his Manned Maneuvering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet-propelled backpack. It was humankind’s first untethered flight in space.
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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment
The Daily Mail defines Apple’s massive iPhone 5c failure for us
OR rather, the Mail might want to try and find a different measure of failure. For Apple has, as we all know, released two new iPhones, the iPhone 5c and the iPhone 5s. Which seem to be selling pretty well: they shifted 9 million pieces over their first weekend which is many, many, more than they’ve done in the first few days of any other iPhone model. But here’s the Mail:
Is the iPhone5C a failure? Apple ‘halves’ production and slashes the price of its handset in China due to ‘dismal sales’
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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Markets versus bureaucrats in mobile phones roaming row: Simple Choice defeats the EU telecoms Tsar
WE’VE got a great little example here of how markets and bureaucrats work. Steely Neelie, the EU telecoms Tsar, is insisting that the mobile telephone companies will have to stop charging people for data roaming. That’s the idea that when you cross a border you start getting charged a fortune for your online access.
Europe’s digital tsar Neelie Kroes has been defending her call for greater integration of telcos across Europe, and appears to be arguing that what she described as “artificial” lowered roaming revenues should not hinder the telcos’ greater investment in European infrastructure.
Neelie’s plan is to get rid roaming charges across Europe by forcing operators to scrape them altogether, or offer customers the almost-impractical option of an Alternative Roaming Partner, but operators won’t give up on their revenue stream so easily and are lobbying to water down the legislation before it goes to the vote.
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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Cyclist ticketed for not riding in bike lane makes video of himself crashing into things in bike lanes
THE cyclist ticketed for not riding in bike lane has made this video of him crashing into things in bike lanes:
Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
HTC’s creates tacky golden bling to celebrate black music at the MOBO awards
I’M really not sure that this is all that appropriate you know. Is overpriced golden blong really the way to celebrate the best of black and urban music at the MOBO Awards?
Because that’s what they’re doing:
Still, HTC has just announced a new model that’ll put their scarcity to shame: an 18 carat gold HTC One priced at £2,750 (about $4,400). Only five copies will be made to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the MOBO awards, which honors black artists and urban music in the UK. It’s the “most exclusive and expensive smartphone every produced by HTC,” according to MOBO, and features a MOBO 18 logo laser etched on the back.
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Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Money, Music, Technology | Comment
Mobile phone spectrum fees rise: Costs to us won’t
THE mobile phone companies have got all hot under the collar about new fees they’ve got to pay for the spectrum they use to provide the service. So much so that they’ve actually started lying about it. For this rise in fees will have absolutely no effect at all on the prices the companies charge us:
The communications regulator on Thursday unveiled plans to increase the amount it charges EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three for using certain bands of the airwaves by between 330pc and 433pc, meaning an increase in combined annual fees from £64.4m to £309m.
The move will provide a £245m a year boost to the Treasury, but the mobile operators said that it would discourage investment in new 4G services and labelled the price rises “excessive”.
Industry sources said they were digesting the likely implications of the new fees, adding that they may have to charge customers extra in order to protect margins.
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Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Dear Margaret Hodge: Facebook just isn’t avoiding tax in the UK
DEAR Lord the egregious Margaret Hodge is getting boring on this subject. She seems to ignore the manner in which every time she opens her gob on the subject of corporate tax she has to be corrected. It simply is not true that Facebook is avoiding tax in the UK:
However, those numbers are not reflected in its accounts. In common with fellow American technology leaders Google and Apple, Facebook funnels the vast majority of its income from advertisers targeting its 33 million British users through Ireland. “This is yet another example of what appears to be deliberate manipulation of accounts of economic activity to deprive the British taxpayer of a rightful tax contribution, according to the profits they make in the UK,” said Commons public accounts committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge. “I am getting fed up of this constant stream of stories and little sign of a challenge from HMRC and a strange silence from government.”
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Posted: 9th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
FIFA 14 features Liverpool and Newcastle player in gay love scene
FIFA 14 is doing its bit for gay rights in football. Well, possibly not. After Andy Carroll, then of Newcastle United, kissing Arsenal’s Lukasz Fabianski in FIFA 12, this season’s title has upped the ante.
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Posted: 9th, October 2013 | In: Sports, Technology | Comment
Toby Young, Wikipedia and the 583 entry edits
ONE of the tiresome chores of life is maintaining the polish on one’s public profile. Don’t I know it, poppets! If anyone doubts this, check out Toby Young’s impressively anal attention to detail in his Wikipedia entry. Since January 2012 to the present (alone), he has made about 60 corrections, amendments and emendations.
Some are perfectly understandable. On 28 August 2013, for instance, he added an apostrophe to Earl’s Court. And on 27 April 2012, he deleted the word “stint” to avoid repetition. I like this. Editing is a much neglected art. Other edits suggest a dynamic growth in minor celebrity selfie-dom. On 2 August of this year he writes: “I deleted the ref to my father cos it implies I was the beneficiary of nepotism which I wasn’t. The admissions tutor later told me that Brasenose were legally obliged to honour the mistaken offer. Nowt to do with my dad.”
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Posted: 9th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Technology | Comment
Calculator testing: Morrisons v WHSmith v Canon – an unpacking masterclass
HOW to unpack a Morrison’s calculator; and how it stacks up against a WHSmith calculator and a calculator from Canon, This is not an unboxing video. This is an unpacking masterclass:
Spotter: Brady Haran
Posted: 8th, October 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
