As reported on TechCrunch. by Greg Kumparak As has been rumored for the past few weeks, AT&T has just officially announced their plans to acquire DirecTV. The terms of the deal came together at roughly $95 per share, which comes to a grand total of $48.5 billion dollars. If you add in the nearly $19B worth of debt that DirecTV is towing behind it, though, this deal sets AT&T back to a tune closer to $67 billion. It…
As reported on TechCrunch. by John Biggs Robotics isn’t all stomping metal men and robotic dogs – it’s also about beauty. The folks from Team BlackSheep proved this by flying a powerful, long-range drone over the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. And when I say over I mean over. The average drone can hit about 165 feet before panicking and coming back to earth. TBS uses the TBS Discovery, a drone with a range of up to three kilometers. The team travelled to the UAE…
As reported on Engadget. BY MAT SMITH The buttons are easier to type on, the battery lasts longer, it’s familiar. No, we’re not talking about BlackBerry this time, but the Japanese feature phone. Glorious, folding forefather to the smartphone, and the form-factor that gave birth to gara-kei, a shorthand phrase for “Galapagos phones”. It’s a negative term pointing to devices that simply wouldn’t survive outside of Japan. However, it’s not stopped the country’s biggest carrier, NTT…
As reported on Engadget. BY SHARIF SAKR It must be hard being Ernő Rubik. Back in the 1980s, the architect and toy inventor had the rare good fortune of becoming one of very few self-made millionaires from communist Europe. But in the process he was horribly pigeon-holed. His patented Rubik’s Cube sold 350 million units, while his other creations — Rubik’s Snake, Rubik’s Magic, and presumably a few blocky buildings somewhere in Hungary — barely got a mention.…
As reported on The Verge. By Cassandra Khaw Paul Ford has an offbeat fascination with military infographics. “No matter how abstract they are, these pictures describe systems that the U.S. military uses to make optimal, efficient decisions about killing other humans,” he writes on Medium. The diagrams showcased in the article are complex and esoteric, proving comical by their complete lack of context with phrases like “Publish Subscribe Broker” and “COCOM ‘Living Plans.’” He even discovers a…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Alex Wilhelm After much sturm und drang, the Federal Communications Commission this morning voted to proceed on a set of controversial net neutrality rules. The proposed regulations now enter a four month comment period. Expect there to be shouting. This morning the FCC voted to move forward with a set of proposed rules to collect public response. Most controversial in the proposals is the potential for the legal codification of paid prioritization agreements…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Darrell Etherington Google cites the 1939 World’s Fair ‘Futurama’ ride for GM as the inception point of the passion for self-driving vehicles, but the self-driving car project kicked off at Google in 2009 under Sebastian Thrun, with an initial focus on the relatively uncomplicated (but still monumental) task of negotiating freeways. The past year or so has been focused on tackling city street driving, with improvements including pedestrian and cyclist detection,…
As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS Cubans haven’t had an above-ground, independent digital news outlet in their country so far — not surprising when their government only allowed personal cellphone andcomputer sales six years ago. However, all that’s set to change when blogger Yoani Sanchez launches her digital newspaper 14ymedio on May 21st. Rather than simply publish news on the web, the team will get the word out through whatever technology Cubans can use: cellphones, email, CDs and even USB…
As reported on Engadget. BY STEVE DENT Google has just made a creative choice for its new head of Glass, picking one-time Mattel design lead and noted jewelery artist Ivy Ross. That signals a big shift away from Glass’ geeky developer base while it transitions to a full-fledged consumer product. She would fill the position previously held by Babak Parviz as Google’s Glass lead and work underGoogle X for Astro Teller and co-founder Sergei Brin. On the Google Glass G+ page, Ross said that…
As reported on The Verge. By Chris Schodt A year into the biggest project of their career, a lost letter made the developers of 1 World Trade Center start from scratch. Vanity Fair has a preview of the new documentary 16 Acres, which chronicles the challenges and conflicts that surrounded the redevelopment of the iconic structure. Months after the cornerstone for 1 World Trade Center had already been laid, security concerns from the New York Police Department halted construction and…