Month: February 2014

Humor Security

In Russia, Bathroom Mirror Watches You!

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As reported on TechCrunch.  by Gregory Ferenstein In Russia, spying on visitors is so pervasive, authorities don’t even seem realize that watching someone shower is cause for alarm. During a press meeting on the Winter Olympics, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak claimed that Western journalists were deliberately sabotaging the hotel facilities. As evidence, he said authorities had seen guests leave the water running in the shower. Yes, you read that right. Here’s the full report from the Wall…

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Art

Remote Controlled Robots To Roam Tate Britain Gallery After Hours So Web Users Can Peek At The Art

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As reported on TechCrunch  by Natasha Lomas Who doesn’t want to hang out in the museum after hours? London’s Tate Britain art gallery houses a treasure trove of great works from Hogarth, Gainsborough and Whistler, to Bacon and Freud.The gallery gets more than a million visitors a year passing through its lofty halls during opening hours, but after dark its passageways fall silent and the works fade from public view. That’s going to change next summer thanks to the inaugural…

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Hardware Dev

‘Beep’ works like a Chromecast for your old speakers

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As reported on Engadget. BY EMILY PRICE If you want to make your favorite speakers wireless, you have a few options. Nothing on the market, however, is quite like Beep. Launching today, the tiny dial works like a Chromecast for your speakers, and lets you cast tunes from your mobile device over Wi-Fi — and with none of the range restrictions that affect Bluetooth-based devices. The creation of two ex-Android engineers, the project has financial backing from…

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Google

Google refuses to pay French privacy fine in a battle of company versus country

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As reported on Engadget. BY SHARIF SAKR France and Google are playing a delicate game of brinkmanship in the courts of Europe, and it still isn’t clear who’ll come off worse. France fined the search company €150,000 ($200,000) last month as a penalty for failing to tell French citizens exactly what happens to their personal data. Google could have coughed up the trivial sum and drowned its sorrows in a bottle of beaujolais, but instead it has decided to fight…

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Android Apple Application

Steve Wozniak: Apple Should Make an Android Phone

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As reported on Wired. BY MAT HONAN Steve Wozniak. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED   At the Apps World North America conference in San Francisco, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak gave WIRED a wide-ranging interview, touching on everything from his preferred iPhone 5s color (he has all three) to the fictional operating system in the movie Her. But his most interesting comment by far was a heretical recommendation for his former company: Apple, he thinks, should release an Android handset. “There’s nothing…

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History

Tunnel vision: how an obsessed explorer found and lost the world’s oldest subway

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As reported on The Verge. By Adrianne Jeffries New York City has sealed up a 169-year-old landmark, but the man who discovered it wants back inside The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of Acheron-like solemnity and darkness, now all closed and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences. — Walt Whitman, writing about the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel in 1861     Bob Diamond had been…

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Art Google

DevArt: Google’s ambitious project to program a new generation of artists

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As reported on The Verge. By Aaron Souppouris You could be the star of a major new exhibition Your work could be at the heart of one of the largest digital art exhibitions the world has ever seen, thanks to a collaboration between London’s Barbican Centre and Google. The exhibition is called Digital Revolution, and from July 3rd to September 14th it will explore the impact of technology on art over the past 40 years. It will…

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Automotive

Your car’s computer system can be hacked with off-the-shelf parts

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As reported on Engadget. BY SEAN BUCKLEY You probably don’t spend much time thinking about the computer in your car, but a pair of Spanish security researchers sure do. In preparation for next month’s Black HatAsia security conference in Singapore, Javier Vazquez-Vidal and Alberto Garcia Illera have assembled a small electronic device that can leave a vehicle’s computer system open to attack. “It can take five minutes or less to hook up and then walk away,” Vidal…

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Business PC

Sony sells its VAIO PC business, is splitting TV arm into a separate company

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As reported on Engadget. BY MAT SMITH Sony said it was “addressing various options” as recently as yesterday when it came to its VAIO PC and laptop arm, and while announcing its financial results for Q3 2013, it’s apparently come to a decision. Amid reforming its TV arm (and splitting it into a standalone entity by June 2014), it’s going to sell its PC business and VAIO brand to Japan Industrial Partners (JIP), with the final…

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HealthCare Imagery

What Musicians Can Tell Us About Dyslexia and the Brain

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As reported on Wired. BY GREG MILLER Daniel Paxton/Flickr   Dyslexia is a frustrating disorder that gives otherwise smart people trouble with reading. Nobody knows exactly what causes it, but one popular hypothesis is that the root of the problem is a deficit in the brain’s ability to process sounds, especially during childhood. Kids who have a hard time parsing all those talky sounds that grownups make also struggle to learn the connections between speech sounds and…

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