Technology Category
Independent news, views, opinions and reviews on the latest gadgets, games, science, technology and research from Apple and more. It’s about the technologies that change the way we live, work, love and behave.
eBay Is Down Worldwide
Ebay.co.uk crashed this evening around 1800. The net is getting busy/red hot with angry punters trying to find out why their goods aren’t been sold.
The site will not log on anyone. Thousands of transaction are probably affected.
Posted: 3rd, September 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Police Investigate Video Games Developer Over ‘Global Thermonuclear War’ Drawing
HENRY Smith, a software developer, was working on a game called “Global Thermonuclear War.” He drew a scence depicting a nuclear attack on Washington. As you can see from the above image, it was a drawing full of details. The bombs is launched from somewhere in Russia.
The Guardian reports on what happened when the developer’s letting agency popped round to his flat and saw the drawing:
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Posted: 27th, August 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
King Digital Plunges 23% As Candy Crush Saga Runs Out Of Steam
WELL, what the stock market was worrying about has come to pass. King Digital is the maker of Candy Crush Saga, that game that’s been sucking the life out of the nation for the past couple of years. It’s also one of the great UK successes in the mobile games space. However, they’ve not been able to come up with anything to replace that now becoming ever less fashionable game: thus the stock sank like a stone:
King Digital Entertainment, the makers of mobile game Candy Crush Saga, has cut their 2014 forecast following the company’s poor performance at the New York Stock Exchange.
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Posted: 22nd, August 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Video: ‘Electronic Makeup’ Completely Transforms This Model’s Face
THIS is a great video of Nobumichi Asai‘s projection mapping of “electronic makeup” applied to a model’s face.
Asai used Omote, a combination of real-time face tracking and projection mapping to transform a model’s face into mesmerizing patterns.
via Gizmodo and h/t Alice Lowe
Posted: 19th, August 2014 | In: Fashion, Technology | Comment
Stop Trying To Turn Women Into Scientists And Engineers Says Expert
GIVEN the way that the entire society seems to agree that we should have roughly equal numbers of men and women doing the same sort of jobs it’s a bit of a surprise to find an expert insisting that this is all codswallop. But that’s what we’ve got, an educational expert insisting that as most women don’t actually want to be scientists or engineers then why in hell is everyone insisting that there should be more of them?
Attempts to encourage more girls to study the sciences ‘completely deny human biology and nature’, an academic has claimed.
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Posted: 15th, July 2014 | In: Technology | Comments (4)
Steve Jobs Was Right: Apple’s iPhone 6 Is To Be Made By Robots
Workers are seen inside a Foxconn factory in the township of Longhua in the southern Guangdong province May 26, 2010. A spate of nine employee deaths at global contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn, Apple’s main supplier of iPhones, has cast a spotlight on some of the harsher aspects of blue-collar life on the Chinese factory floor.
THIS rather proves Steve Jobs’ point that “those jobs are never coming back”. For Apple’s iPhone 6 is to be assembled by robots rather than by hand as has been done with all previous generations of iPhone.
iPhone maker Foxconn has revealed Apple’s new iPhone 6 could be the first to be made using its ‘robot army’.
The firm has pledged to have a million robot workers by the end of the year – and CEO Terry Gou has revealed the robots, dubbed ‘Foxbots’, are in the final stages of testing.
It is believed Foxconn will install 10,000 robots as a test.
Jobs made the comment originally to President Obama. He was asking, well, all those jobs that are now in China, all those manufacturing jobs, when are they going to come back to America? The answer being “those jobs are never coming back”.
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Posted: 8th, July 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Other Parents: Instagram Mum Upset Over Rule-Breaking Photo Of Her Daughter Marlow
COURTNEY Adamo was kicked off Instagram for posting a picture of her daughter Marlow.
Yes, quite. We’re uspet because the censors should not stop anyone who feels a need to show off their kids to strangers and who calls the progency Marlow (siblings: Easton, Quin and Ivy). These people represent that form of entertainment we call ‘Other Parents’. The Other Parents are the ones who serve up their child rearing skills and nippers for us to appriase and – if we’re in a good mood – ridicule.
As such, we’re all for keepng Courtney and her Adamios on the web. More fun for us.
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Posted: 25th, June 2014 | In: Technology | Comments (2)
Luis Suarez Balls: Twitter Plot To Rape And Kill Liverpool Star’s Wife And Young Daughter
ISN’T Free Speech great. There are no buts. Say what you like.
You can on Twitter. But only if the speakers are telling you stuff you might want to hear;. If you don’t like it, you can call the police. What you say on Twitter can earn you a prison sentence and a police raid. But if the Twitter police don’t like your target (see Emma West should be raped; “Let’s hunt Liam Stacey down”; Josie Cunnigham should be shot) then demanding that people be murdered and making threats to rape children is fine.
Free Speech, it turns out, is only free on Twitter if the illiberal mob agree that their target is fair game and won’t snitch on you.
The censorious police only respond to nasty comments if it fits in with this politically correct agenda.
In response to England’s dire showing at the World Cup, and defeat to the mighty Uruguay, the Twitter brains trust have been mouthing off about what they’d like to do yo Luis Suarez,scorer of the goal that sent England home.
None have been arrested. No paper has led with new of Twitter Trolls making terrible threats.
Might it be that what people say on Twitter is not typical of their every waking thought and moral; that what they belch on social media no more wrong than shouting at pigeons in the precinct?
As Joey Barton noted:
I’ve had loads of death threats! Still here aren’t I. I just laugh my head off when I get them… Surely, if u were gonna kill someone you wouldn’t give them a headups.
Arresting people for what they say on Twitter is not about right and wrong; it’s about making the police and elite look good and moral…
Posted: 23rd, June 2014 | In: Sports, Technology | Comment
Hillsborough Joins The War On Free Speech And Bicholim: Chelsea Fan Sacked For Abusing Liverpool On Wikipedia
THE War on Free Speech looks at the story of the man who posted a message on Wikipedia. In “Revealed: How The Telegraph found the Hillsborough Wikipedia vandal”, the paper reports:
A civil servant in Liverpool has been fired for using government computers to post abuse about the Hillsborough disaster on the Wikipedia website following an investigation by The Telegraph. The Whitehall official used the government intranet to mock the 1989 tragedy in which 96 Liverpool fans died at Sheffield Wednesday’s football ground.
The 24-year-old idiot changed the message “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to “You’ll Never Walk Again”.
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Posted: 17th, June 2014 | In: Liverpool, Reviews, Sports, Technology | Comment
A Close Look At The Royal Navy’s New Starburst Missile Warhead
YOU’RE looking at a cross section of a Starburst Missile warhead on display during the announcement of a £48 million contract for missiles for Royal Navy helicopters at the Thales UK plant in Belfast. The system is aimed at deflecting the threat from small ships and fast attack craft.
Now. If we can find a moving vessel to land those helicopters on, we’re in business….
Posted: 16th, June 2014 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
Using Tinder and Grindr Gives You The Clap
TINDR and Grindr give you the clap. That, at least, is the finding of a new piece of scientific research, that using dating apps on smartphones, like Tinder or Grindr, gives you the clap. It’s not, by the way, the apps themselves that leave you with that itchy or burning sensation. Rather, that if you’re the sort of person who bunks up with anyone likely to say yes then you’re more likely to end up with the clap than those who are more discerning.
People who meet their sexual partners through dating apps are more likely to catch an STI, new research suggests.
The study found the risk is higher for those who meet people through apps than for those who meet sexual partners online or in bars and clubs.
In the last few years, smartphone apps – such as Tinder and Grindr – have become increasingly popular ways to meet potential sexual partners.
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Posted: 16th, June 2014 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Find Out What Happens When People Answer Phone In This Cinema
CAR crash TV:
Posted: 12th, June 2014 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Watch The Video Of The New iPhone 6, Dummy
WHAT looks like the new iPhone 6, due for release this summer, can be seen in that video above. The information source is a French website, nowhereelse, and they’ve been pretty reliable in the past. For an English description of what’s going on:
We have already seen dozens of moulds, designs and claimed leaks of Apple new iPhone.
However, a new video provides the best look yet at the rumoured design for a larger, 4.7inch screen handset.
Apple is rumoured to be preparing to launch the handset in August, a month earlier than expected – with an even larger 5.5inch model following a month later.
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Posted: 29th, May 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Rap Genius Founder Fired For Being a Complete Dickhead About Elliot Rodger
THAT you’re able to think up and found one of the web’s hotter properties does show that you’ve got some smarts. You’re good at doing something at least. But that’s not to say that having done that that you’re smart, as Mahbod Moghadam of Rap Genius has just proven. For he’s gone off and done something so dickheaded that he’s had to immediately resign from the company that he himself founded. He took the manifesto of the UCSB psycho shooter who killed all those people last week and loaded it up onto his own site. Fair enough, that’s what it’s for, you put a document up on Rap Genius and then people can add their annotations to it. But then he started to make his own annotations. Which were not cool, not cool at all:
Rap Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam has been fired from the annotation service after posting appalling comments on the memoir of mass murderer Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in a shooting spree earlier this week.
In now-removed annotations on the site on the sick 141-page manifesto, Moghadam added a tasteless series of comments, including “beautifully written” and also “MY GUESS: his sister is smokin hot.”
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Posted: 29th, May 2014 | In: Money, Music, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Your Official Guide To 1970s CB Slang
THE INTERNET has created its own slang, saturated with efficient abbreviations and a constantly evolving jargon that only insiders know. As novel as this seems, just a few decades ago there was another trendy lingo sprung from a new technology: CB Slang.
Citizen’s Band radio had been around since the 1950s, but you had to be licensed and had to use a registered call sign. However, once the CB became widely used on the interstates throughout the US, all rules were thrown out the window. Truckers started making up their own handles and things got interesting.
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Posted: 27th, May 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Technology | Comment (1)
In 1985 The Press Association Presented The Future of Journalism
IN 1985, the Press Association presented the future of journalism.
The pencil and paper remain the most reliable tools in a journalist’s possession.
Posted: 26th, May 2014 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment (1)
Making Sense of Chemical Stories: The Posters
SENSE About Science is “a charitable trust that equips people to make sense of scientific and medical claims in public discussion”. Science matters. Government quote it when they want to control what you teach, eats and watch.
There are dangers in politicising science.
SAB sees “leading scientists, toxicologists and dieticians debunk common chemical misconceptions.” They’ve produced these posters about what we eat.
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Posted: 22nd, May 2014 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Black Keys: Proud To Be Luddites
FANS of the Black Keys are, like the band themselves, people who look back at a fabled ‘golden age’ of rock that doesn’t actually exist.
See, a lot of fans of bluesy dadrock will tell themselves that, once upon a time, music was made by ‘real’ people who played ‘real’ instruments. Everything was honest. The lunatic were ruling the asylum and people were able to express themselves artistically in a way that people aren’t now.
Of course, that’s complete piss. Music has always been a cesspool and decade on decade, there was exactly the same amount of great music and complete dreck thrown toward the public.
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Posted: 20th, May 2014 | In: Music, Technology | Comment
Pass The Happy Pills: The Internet Is Depressing The Children!
ONE of the great problems in this modern world is that people are forever confusing cause and effect. Or if you prefer, forgetting that correlation does not mean causation. And so it is with this latest report that the internet is making our precious little children sad. For what’s forgotten, not even considered here, is that it could well be that sad people, those with few friends in the real world, go on hte internet more than others, instead of it being going online that makes people sad:
Children who spend too much time on the internet are developing mental health problems, according to government health advisors.
Those who sit behind a screen for more than four hours a day are particularly at risk, although very low levels of use can cause issues, they say.
Public Health England, which issues guidelines to the NHS, said children face social problems such as loneliness, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and heightened aggression as a result of overusing computers.
The huge improvements made in children’s welfare over the last 20 years had now been “curtailed and may now be in reverse”, it said.
In a dossier to MPs it warned of a clear relationship between the amount of time spent on social media sites such as Facebook and “lower levels of well-being”.
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Posted: 19th, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Sell Twitter Or Else! Says Daily Telegraph
IN what might not be the very best share tipping column ever the Daily Telegraph is telling us all that we should unload our Twitter shares immediately. This isn’t sensible advice: or rather, it might be but it isn’t for the reasons they’re giving. Which is that the lock in is about to end and thus lots of people might start selling their stock:
Twitter investors should sell shares now as a clause that prevented the majority of shares being sold is about to expire next Monday, May 5. This could cause another sharp fall in the share price as a flood of shares comes to the market from employees looking to bank gains.
When twitter floated last November it offered 70m shares for trading on the US stock markets. However, there are 589.5m shares in existence today but holders of those shares have their hands tied by a “lock-up” clause that prevented them from being sold for 180 days from the November 6.
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Posted: 6th, May 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Saudi Husband Hacked Government Website To Congratulate Wife For Exam Success
“I apologize for the hacking your website, but I wanted to congratulate my wife Bashayir, my partner, after graduating. I wanted to tell her this through your website. I would like to wish everyone luck and success.”
Posted: 6th, May 2014 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment
Epic Adverts: Stevie Wonder Plays Atari Video Games
IN 1977, Stevie Wonder advertised Atari Video games:
“If I could play video games, you bet it would be an Atari”
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Posted: 30th, April 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Technology | Comments (2)
The Eight-Track Miracle: 8 Reasons It Failed
WHEN eight-track tapes hit the shelves in the latter part of the Sixties, it was seen as a godsend. All of a sudden, you could listen to your music collection in your car, or out-and-about with the new boom-boxes. There were even rumors it would completely replace the vinyl record. Yet, just over a decade later, the humble cassette tape was able to drive it to extinction. Its heyday lasted from 1968-1975, and by 1980 the poor eight-track was in history’s dustbin, a sort-of laughable derelict from the Seventies.
So what happened? Here are 8 reasons for its untimely demise.
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Posted: 23rd, April 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music, Technology | Comments (9)
