Behold the future, my friends. It isn’t hoverboards or laser swords or transportation hailing apps or drone deliveries, it is this: a gigantic touchscreen that lets you build your own pizza on the table that you will eat it on. Use the touchscreen to perfectly customize your order, play games while you wait and pay from your smartphone. The future looks delicious. Read more…
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I’ve seen the future and it’s this touchscreen Pizza Hut menu table
RadioShack’s Super Bowl ad showing how cool and hip it is may’ve come a little too late, as the retailer has today announced its intention to close up to 1, 100 “underperforming stores” across the US. The news was bundled in the company’s 2013 financials, which tell a story of declining sales and continued losses. RadioShack’s CEO blamed poor performance on “lower store traffic” and “intense promotional activity, ” among other things, but expressed faith in the retailer’s changing brand identity to turn things around. On the up-side, the fancy new “Concept Stores” are allegedly going strong, and around 4, 000 locations on top of the thousand-odd facing closure will continue to operate as usual. Perhaps some of those underperforming stores should’ve been cleared out in the 80s, after all. Filed under: Misc Comments Via: The Wall Street Journal Source: RadioShack
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RadioShack plans to close over 1,000 ‘underperforming’ stores
You no longer have to live in one of a few fortunate countries to make a Skype call while checking your Outlook.com email: as of today, Skype for Outlook.com is available worldwide . All you need now is to download a browser plugin and link your Skype account. The global release comes alongside improved software support, too. PC users can now participate in HD video chats, while Mac users get a Safari plugin. If you’re heavily invested in Microsoft’s internet services, everything you need to get started is at the source link. Filed under: Internet , Microsoft Comments Source: Skype
Don’t panic! Your Twitter account hasn’t been hacked, the password has just been accidentally reset . Read more…
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Twitter Accidentally Reset Its Users’ Passwords
MTorrice writes “Lithium-sulfur batteries promise to store four to five times as much energy as today’s best lithium-ion batteries. But their short lifetimes have stood in the way of their commercialization. Now researchers demonstrate that a sulfur-based polymer could be the solution for lightweight, inexpensive batteries that store large amounts of energy. Battery electrodes made from the material have one of the highest energy-storage capacities ever reported” Litihium Ion batteries should maintain capacity for about 1000 cycles, whereas Lithium-sulfur batteries traditionally went kaput after about 100. But it looks like they are getting pretty close to something feasible, from the article: “The best performing copolymer consisted of 90% sulfur by mass. Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1, 225 mAh per gram of material. After 100 charge-discharge cycles, the capacity dropped to 1, 005 mAh/g, and after 500 cycles it fell to about 635 mAh/g. In comparison, a lithium-ion battery typically starts out with a storage capacity of 200 mAh/g but maintains it for the life of the battery, Pyun says.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sulfur Polymers Could Enable Long-Lasting, High-Capacity Batteries
In a time when business cards seem more obsolete than ever , more and more people are coming up with fantastic ways to modernize them. And no one will probably make a better first impression than Kevin Bateske, who created this business-card-sized Game Boy clone called the Arduboy that’s just 1.6 millimeters thick. Read more…
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Make an Awesome First Impression With a Tetris-Playing Business Card
Biologists have discovered a rare mutation that kills off the gene responsible for Type 2 diabetes . The mutation, which reduces risk by up to two-thirds (even in obese people), destroys a gene used by pancreas cells where insulin is made . It’s a promising discovery that could result a drug that mimics the mutation’s effect. Read more…
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Biologists have discovered a rare mutation that kills off the gene responsible for Type 2 diabetes.
Comcast’s plan to divest itself of 3 million subscribers, which it hopes will help it win approval of a merger with Time Warner Cable, could result in the creation of a new cable company. Rather than selling off territories to existing cable companies, Comcast is considering an option to “[spin] them off in a new publicly traded company,” Bloomberg reported , citing anonymous sources.”Regulators may push for the spin-out because it would create a new competitor,” Bloomberg wrote. “A new company formed in such a way would be the fourth-largest US cable company by subscribers, trailing the merged Comcast-Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications Inc,. and Charter Communications Inc.” Creating a new company with those customers wouldn’t result in more choices for consumers in individual markets. Despite being the two largest cable companies in the US, Comcast and Time Warner Cable don’t compete against each other in any regional territory. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Comcast subscriber spinoff could create a new cable company
Apple has officially announced CarPlay , its new in-car interface that’ll be compatible with new Ferrari, Mercedes and Volvo cars unveiled at the Geneva Auto Show this week. Designed “from the ground up” to bridge the gap between your iPhone and your auto, it will offer touch and Siri-based voice navigation of your smartphone services, including contacts, voicemail, notifications, map directions and music cueing — it will even support third-party apps like Spotify and iHeartRadio from launch. Voice controls will be activated by a button on the steering wheel, while the in-car touchscreen is populated with those familiar iOS 7 icons for easy access. The service will launch as an iOS update for Lightning-enabled iPhones (that’s iPhone 5 and up), with CarPlay-compatible vehicles launching later this year. And if any of the above aren’t your preferred automaker, Apple says that you can expect compatible cars from BMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and several more in the near future. Update: At first CarPlay will only allow you to connect through a Lightning cable, but WiFi should be coming in the near future — at least from Volvo. And, in case you’re wondering, the CarPlay connection is based on the H.264 video protocol, and sends user input from the touchscreen back to your iDevice. There’s also a video demo/teaser that we’ve added after the break. Filed under: Cellphones , Transportation , Mobile , Apple Comments Source: Apple , CarPlay , Volvo
Cross Office Shibuya Medio, the office building in Tokyo that is home to MtGox and Mark Karpeles’ other companies. Tokyo Apartments As MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles and his lawyers officially filed for court-supervised restructuring of the Bitcoin exchange, someone posted a chunk of code to Pastebin that would appear to lend credence to Karpeles’ contention that his company was hacked. The block of PHP code appears to be part of the backend for MtGox’s Bitcoin exchange site, and it includes references to IP addresses registered to Karpeles’ Web hosting and consulting company, Tibanne . In an update to the MtGox website late Monday, the company reasserted its claim that it had been hacked through an exploit of a weakness in its exchange website code. “Although the complete extent is not yet known, we found that approximately 750,000 bitcoins deposited by users and approximately 100,000 bitcoins belonging to us had disappeared,” the company’s spokesperson said in the latest update at the MtGox website. “We believe that there is a high probability that these bitcoins were stolen as a result of an abuse of this bug and we have asked an expert to look at the possibility of a criminal complaint and undertake proper procedures.” That loss was discovered on February 24. On the same day, the company found “large discrepancies between the amount of cash held in financial institutions and the amount deposited from our users. The amounts are still under investigation and may vary, but they approximate JPY 2.8 billion [$27 million US].” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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MtGox code posted by hackers as company files for bankruptcy protection