As reported on The Verge. By Laura June I thought I wanted something ‘iPhone-sized,’ but I was wrong Late on the night of September 9th, 2012, I was sitting at my kitchen table, going over notes for a piece I was writing about video game arcades. The next morning at 6AM I was bound for an Amtrak train which would take me to Pennsylvania, then to Baltimore, on a four-day trip of interviews for the piece. I…
As reported on The Verge. By Andrew Webster Moonshine may be closely associated with prohibition and the illegal booze trade, but thanks to some new laws in states like Tennessee, it’s slowly becoming a big (and legal) business. As Time reports, moonshine — or unaged white whiskey — only represents one percent of all whiskey sales, but numbers are on the rise. Last year around 130,000 cases of moonshine were sold in the US, compared to just 50,000 in…
As reported on TechCrunch. by DAN SOLMON The campus of Washington State University in Southeast Washington’s agricultural region looks like a typical land-grant university. The connected mix of art-deco, modern, and post-modern buildings that collectively house the College of Engineering and Architecture hide a strange and incredible secret: that the researchers inside are close to making human-compatible ceramic bone grafts and custom-made prostheses and implants. In short, they’re building cyborgs in Palouse. Welcome to the…
As reported on TechCrunch. by FREDERIC LARDINOIS Microsoft’s SharePoint always featured a core set of social tools, but with the acquisition of Yammer, as well as the ongoing integration ofLync and Skype, the folks over in Redmond are clearly ready to push social as the next major cornerstone of their enterprise offerings. Today, Microsoft is launching a new campaign to help companies understand how social canhelp them become more productive. In connection to this, the company also commissioned a new study that tried…
As reported on TechCrunch. by KIM-MAI CUTLER A wellspring of interest in quadcopters for commercial applications is advancing globally. FromAirware’s recent $10.7 million round from Andreessen Horowitz to the launch of AngelPad’s DroneDeploy, quadcopters are one of the hot, hardware trends that founders and VCs are latching onto. This experimentation is also happening on the other side of the world. Russia’s UVS Avia is building higher-end microdrones to examine nuclear reactors and waste sites, along with doing search-and-rescue in remote…
As reported on Engadget. By Steve Dent Many of the Pentagon’s most advanced weapon systems — including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and PAC-3 Patriot missile system — were compromised by Chinese hackers, according to a classified document obtained by the Washington Post. The list of weapons was part of an earlier DoD report condemning Chinese cyber-espionage activities, but had been confidential until now. Other systems hacked are said to include the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), the Navy’s…
As reported on Engadget. By Jamie Rigg Given the success of the original Galaxy Note and its sequel, there’s little doubt a third installment of the super-sized handset line is on Samsung’s to-launch list. Korean site ETNews claims to have heard the first legitimate confirmation of the Note III’s existence, however, citing a Samsung official as its source. The insider apparently had much to say on plans for the camera, too. It’s expected to be a 13-megapixel affair and could see other upgrades…
As reported on Engadget. By Jon Fingas It’s comparatively easy to run fiber optic lines at high speeds; it’s another matter to sustain that pace between continents. Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs has found a way to go that extreme distance by relying on the basic concept behind noise-cancelling headphones. When the researchers send data across two light beams in opposing phases, they can superimpose the signals and neutralize the distortion that would normally occur at long ranges. Such clean output lets…