Category: Story

Business Internet Story

Netflix intros a dedicated ISP speed index page to highlight streaming champions

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As reported on Engadget. By Jon Fingas Netflix has long been judging your ISP’s streaming quality, but you’ve had to dig around blog posts and other less accessible pages to get the low-down on just which networks reign supreme. Its new, dedicated ISP Speed Index page is much more straightforward: stop by and you’ll always have a quick glimpse of which internet providers are the most Netflix-friendly across key countries, with more detailed breakdowns for individual nations. Not…

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Story

Money matters: why women founders struggle in Silicon Valley

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As reported on The Verge. By Noah Davis Last spring and summer, Kathryn Minshew, co-founder of The Muse and one of Inc’s“15 Women to Watch in Tech”, was trying to raise money for the female-focused job site that was growing 30 percent a month and reaching 250,000 dedicated active users every month by June of 2012. She pitched herself, her co-founders — whom she met while working at McKinsey & Company — and the Muse to any and every…

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News Story Tech

NYC awards six Reinvent Payphones finalists, asks public to select favorite via Facebook

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As reported on Engadget. By Joe Pollicino The payphone. Despite how connected our world has gotten in the last decade or so, the majority of the 11,000 payphones in NYC stem from a 1999 contract. Due to expire and renew in October 2014, the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has been actively figuring out how and what type of modern solution it wants to replace roughly all 11,000 of them with. You’ve heard about…

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Microsoft Story Tablet

Samsung will stop sale of Windows RT tablets in Germany due to weak demand, according to reports

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As reported on Engadget. By Sharif Sakr We already know that Samsung was too timid (or maybe too sensible) to launch its Windows RT-based ATIV Tab hybrid in the US, but now it appears the manufacturer is having doubts about European demand too. Heise.de and our friends atMobileGeeks are reporting that Samsung will stop selling its ATIV Tab in Germany — Europe’s biggest economy — and some other unspecified European countries after speaking to retailers about the level of interest they’re seeing for Microsoft’s stripped…

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Culture Story Trends

Silicon Valley Has Hit Peak Lameness

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As reported on TechCrunch. by JACK MCKENNA Hey Bros of Virool, I know you think it’s cool that your launch party is being written up in TechCrunch. But seriously, half-naked girls in silver mono-kinis dancing in front of floating arithmetic, fractions and percentage signs? Why would women want to work for this company? When did Silicon Valley become so thin on actual technology that startups had to have “nerd” or “science”-themed parties to have cred? You’re YC-backed for chissake. How much…

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Science Story

Physicists steer light on superconducting chips, forge our quantum computing future Alt

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As reported on Engadget. By Nicole Lee We’re still years away from quantum computing becoming an everyday reality, but the physics geniuses over at the University of California Santa Barbara have made a discovery that might speed that process along. A team under professor John Martinis’ tutelage has developed a way to manipulate light on a superconducting chip at the quantum level, allowing the group to control the wave forms of released photons with a switch and a resonator. That…

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Cloud Story Tech Trends

Tokyoflash’s cryptography-inspired Kisai X watch tells time via pyramid lens, LED lights

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As reported on Engadget. By Sarah Silbert Tokyoflash, maker of highly conceptual, anything-but-your-average-wristwatch products like the Kisai OTO and the Kisai Maru, is outing its latest device: the Kisai X. Like many of the company’s timepieces, the X is the result of fan submissions. In this case, it was co-designed by Firdaus Rohman and Heather Sable, who clearly were inspired by cryptography. Like several other Kisai watches, the X doesn’t put a priority on easily decipherable digits. In fact,…

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Science Space Story

NASA’s discovery of third radiation belt around Earth will mean ‘rewriting textbooks’

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As reported on The Verge. By Jeff Blagdon Scientists used to think that the Van Allen belts — two nested rings of charged particles surrounding the Earth — bulge and swell in response to what’s happening on the sun, but are otherwise more or less fixed in place. Well, according to a new findingannounced by NASA, the rings are actually much more malleable than originally thought. New data shows their structure reconfigured in response to a…

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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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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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