Author: admin

Entertainment

Telefonica shows off streaming 4K video on home fiber HD

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As reported on Engadget. By Jon Fingas The future of TV is supposed to involve streaming video, and it’s also supposed to involve 4K TVs — but melding the two has been difficult. Telefonica wants to show that the feat is at least possible with mere mortal connections: it’s been using Mobile World Congress to show 4K video streaming on a 100Mbps fiber-to-the-home link. As our Spanish teammates can attest, the (admittedly very local) demo works as well as you’d…

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Engineering Story Tech

Watch Zuck, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, & Others In Short Film To Inspire Kids To Learn How To Code

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As reported on TechCrunch. by COLLEEN TAYLOR Code.org, the new non-profit aimed at encouraging computer science education launched last month by entrepreneur and investor brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, has assembled an all-star group of the world’s most well-known and successful folks with programming skills to talk about how learning to code has changed their lives — and how isn’t quite as hard as people might think.As you can see in the five minute clip embedded above, the short film (nine…

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Culture

How To Treat Your Employees

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As reported on TechCrunch. by JAMES ALTUCHER Wade had sex with Karen and now I had to fire him. She was our top designer. And he was also starting to make fun of one of my partners behind his back. He’d do that roll-the-eyes thing whenever my partner spoke. Wade had caught the disease. The disease is very contagious and it spreads to the other employees quickly and it contaminates everyone’s work. Like a tumor you…

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Business

Sony unloads ‘Sony City Osaka’ building for $1.2 billion, will remain as lessee

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As reported on Engadget. By Steve Dent In a bid to bolster its bottom line, Sony’s been selling properties like a desperate monopoly player, and the latest space on the board to go is the Sony City Osaka building for 111.1 billion yen ($1.2 billion). That follows the sale of its NY headquarters for a similar sum, and the move of its global HQ from Sweden to Tokyo. The Osaka building has been purchased by a Japanese holding company who will…

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Mobile

Samsung invites public to Times Square for its Galaxy S IV unveiling Mobile

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As reported on Engadget. By Steve Dent So, what are you up to on March 14th? If your idea of a good time is seeing a new smartphone unveiled, Samsung’s arranging just such a party at Times Square in New York for the upcoming Galaxy S IV, according to a recent tweet. We’d guess that revelers will get to watch a livestream of the recently announced Samsung Unpacked 2013 shindig for the new handset on the block’s famous big…

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Education

A School in the Cloud and the Future of Learning

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As reported on Wired. BY MICHAEL V. COPELAND Sugata Mitra, TED 2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson Sugata Mitra is the kind of guy every kids wants to be their teacher. Unbelievably energized, always ready with a smile, and always ready to leave you and your classmates to your own devices.  Mitra calls his approach to education “self-organized learning.” At its core it’s all about sparking curiosity, about asking smart questions and then sitting back and letting kids…

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Culture

The Strange Beauty of Historic Computers Brought Back From the Dead

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As reported on Wired. BY CADE METZ When you open the door and walk into the room, it even smells like the 1960s. It reminds you of the old garage where your grandfather kept his twin Chevrolet Corvairs. But those aren’t cars you smell. Those are computers.  This is the “1401 Room” on the first floor of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California — the room where Robert Garner and his motley crew of amateur technicians…

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Culture Imagery

The ghostly photographs of President Truman’s White House renovation

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As reported on The Verge. By Amar Toor In the late 1940s, then-President Harry S. Truman called for a massive renovation of the White House, which, at 150-years-old, was in dire need of an upgrade. The result was a comprehensive overhaul, as workers completely gutted the interior, leaving only the mansion’s exterior intact. National Journal has compiled some of the most stunning photographs from the project, providing a rare glimpse at one of America’s most iconic buildings in a…

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Entertainment

CBS considers producing original content for streaming services

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As reported on The Verge. By Jeff Blagdon CBS is thinking about creating original content for streaming video on demand services like Netflix, an executive told a group of investors today. Asked if he could see CBS producing a studio-caliber show along the lines of Netflix’s House of Cards, Global Distribution Group CEO Armando Nuñez said, “it’s definitely a possibility,” adding, “we view Netflix, Amazon and all these SVOD platforms as new players. If you can get the right…

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Environmental Science Story

Infrared holography lets firefighters see through fire and smoke

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As reported on The Verge. By Jeff Blagdon It isn’t easy to see through the smoke and flames in a burning building, but it’s crucial for emergency responders like firefighters, who need to be able to tell if people are trapped inside. To solve the problem, researchers at Italy’s National Institute of Optics have come up with a technique that one-ups conventional infrared camera technology by ditching an optical lens in favor of a laser, using…

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