As reported on The Verge. By Aaron Souppouris The latest part of Banksy’s multi-day New York City art show saw the street artist covertly put his art on sale at just $60 a piece. Although it’s difficult to put a value on the stenciled works, collectors’ appetite for original Banksy art is generally insatiable, and even the safest estimate would be tens of thousands of dollars per piece. There were dozens of stencils on sale at…
As reported on TechCrunch. by MG SIEGLER A simple link. That’s all it took to unleash a hailstorm of angry emails, messages, tweets, and comments. Why? I dared wonder if libraries will continue to exist in the future. I mean, it’s not that crazy a notion, right? (Ifyou’re a librarian, you’re not allowed to answer that.) Last Monday, I linked to this piece by Art Brodsky for Wired from my blog. In it, he argues that beyond the recent hoopla around e-book pricing, the…
As reported on Engadget. By Jon Fingas Not every tech company can afford to build a head-mounted display from scratch; thanks to OmniVision’s new OmniGlass reference design, they won’t have to. The template combines a 0.26-inch, 720p liquid crystal on silicon display with a 4-megapixel camera and an imaging chip, giving firms most of what they’d need to craft a Google Glass-like wearable computer beyond the computer itself. Don’t anticipate a flood of me-too products just yet, though. OmniGlass developer kits…
As reported on Engadget. By Sharif Sakr The bigger the phone, the harder it is to hide. After a slew of detailed leaks, HTC is finally ready to announce the HTC One Max: an enlarged version of the original Onethat boosts the size of the 1080p LCD panel up to 5.9 inches while attempting to keep the One’s classy aluminum look and feel. This attempt is made regardless of the impact on general portability — the One Max weighs 217…
As reported on The Verge. By Russell Brandom In May, Google launched the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab with hardware from the Canadian quantum computing company D-Wave and technical expertise from NASA. It was an ambitious open research project aimed at exploring both the capabilities of quantum computer architecture and the mysteries of space exploration — but in the months since, they’ve stayed quiet about exactly what kind of work they’ve been doing there. OPERATED AT NEAR-ABSOLUTE-ZERO TEMPERATURES…
As reported on TechCrunch. by ALEX WILLIAMS Smart machines are coming to the business world, but don’t tell that to the CEOs. Sixty-percent of CEOs surveyed by Gartner Research say the emergence of smart machines capable of absorbing millions of middle-class jobs within 15 years is a “futurist fantasy.” The survey results reflect the anxiety about automation of the work world and the advent of smart machines that Gartner says will have a widespread and deep business impact by…
As reported on TechCrunch. by ALEXANDRA JORDAN When Alexandra Jordan presented at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, the fourth grader from Sunnyvale, CA proved to be something of an audience favorite. Jordan conceived of and coded her own hack, a playdate app called Super Fun Kid Time, which she is planning to launch in November. In honor of the International Day of the Girl — formally recognized by the United Nations on October 11th, 2012 — we asked Jordan to write a…
As reported on Engadget. By Brad Molen A couple weeks ago we covered a new Indiegogo campaign from QSAlpha, a company aiming to produce a super-encrypted smartphone (along with a software-based platform for standard Android users as well). Despite the fact that the funding phase didn’t go so well, the manufacturer recently announced that its phones will go into production and begin shipping in Q2 of next year. But which operators will take on this hardcore encrypted handset? Sources have…
As reported on Engadget. By Timothy J. Seppala It feels like the last time we thought about the Mini Cooper, it was pulling bank jobs with Mark Wahlberg. Since then, the diminutive coupe has apparently outgrown its rebellious phase and is now thinking about more mature notions, like safety. At next month’s LA Auto Show, the 2014 hardtop will debut a new collision warning system that employs cameras — instead of the feature’s typical sonar tech…
As reported on The Verge. By Jacob Kastrenakes The CEO of DreamWorks Animation wanted to see a few more episodes of Breaking Bad, and he was willing to put up a Walter White-style stack of money in order to make it happen. According to Variety, Jeffrey Katzenberg — who as CEO of DreamWorks Animation had no relationship to the series — offered to finance three additional episodes of the show for $25 million apiece. The price would likely have…