In the next ten years, Earth’s population is expected to increase by one billion , and only 3% of our planet’s water is fit for drinking. Most of that relatively small amount is trapped in frozen glaciers. But Egyptian researchers have developed a way of removing the salt out of sea water for our growing population in a way that’s super energy efficient. Read more…
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How to Desalinize Water Using Half the Energy of Traditional Methods
An anonymous reader writes: Hewlett-Packard says its upcoming spinoff of its technology divisions focused on software, consulting and data analysis will eliminate up to 30, 000 jobs. The cuts announced Tuesday will be within the newly formed Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which is splitting from the Palo Alto, California company’s personal computer and printing operation. “The new reductions amount to about 10 percent of the new company’s workforce, and will save about $2.7 billion in annual operating costs.” The split is scheduled to be completed by the end of next month. “The head of the group, Mike Nefkens, outlined a plan under which it is cutting jobs in what he called ‘high-cost countries’ and moving them to low-cost countries. He said that by the end of HP Enterprise’s fiscal year 2018, only 40 percent of the group’s work force will be located in high-cost countries.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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HP To Jettison Up To 30,000 Jobs As Part of Spinoff
An anonymous reader writes: The Competition Commission of India has opened an investigation into Google to decide whether the company unfairly prioritized search results to its own services. Google could face a fine of up to $1.4 billion — 10% of its net income in 2014. A number of other internet companies, including Facebook and FlipKart, responded to queries from the CCI by confirming that Google does this. “The CCI’s report accuses Google of displaying its own content and services more prominently in search results than other sources that have higher hit rates. It also states that sponsored links shown in search results are dependent on the amount of advertising funds Google receives from its clients. Ecommerce portal Flipkart noted that it found search results to have a direct correlation with the amount of money it spent on advertising with Google.” The company has faced similar antitrust concerns in the EU and the U.S Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Google Facing Fine of Up To $1.4 Billion In India Over Rigged Search Results
Uber is getting richer and richer. It’s now valued at $51 billion after raising another $1 billion in funding, and it got to this stage two years faster than Facebook did. As always, the ride-sharing service has attracted an assortment of investors during its latest funding round — one of them’s none other than tech juggernaut Microsoft, according to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal . While neither company has admitted it yet, Bloomberg says Microsoft has agreed to back Uber to the tune of around $100 million. It’s unclear whether this means they’re pursuing a deeper relationship or if they’re working together on a project or two, at least. If you recall, though, Uber’s snapped up a portion of Bing’s mapping tech back in June, along with a hundred of Redmond’s employees. Microsoft is neither the first nor the only tech corporation/personality that has invested in the ride-hailing service. Chinese internet giant Baidu jumped in weeks after it was announced that Uber was already valued at $40 billion with an investment that could’ve been as big as $600 million. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos put his money in the company way back in 2011, while Google Ventures backed it with $258 million in 2013. That was years before both companies announced their intentions to develop self-driving taxi services, making them future competitors. In all, Uber now has $5 billion to spend on the aggressive expansion it’s planning in India , China and Southeast Asia. [Image credit: Getty Images] Filed under: Transportation , Microsoft Comments Source: The New York Times , Bloomberg , The Wall Street Journal
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Uber reaches $50 billion value thanks (in part) to Microsoft
Facebook vows to be transparent, and yet the Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered that the company is hiding all the ways that it blocks access in the United States, on behalf of law enforcement. Read more…
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How Facebook Is Censoring Content in the United States
Indian police recently purchased five drones so they could dump pepper spray on protesters during political demonstrations. Read more…
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Police in India Will Use Weaponized Pepper Spray Drones on Protesters
Nearly 280, 000 AT&T customers had their personal data stolen by scammers , including the last four digits of social security numbers and other identifying information. The huge breach happened when at least three AT&T employees at a Mexico-based call center sold customer data to scammers . Read more…
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AT&T Let Scammers Steal Personal Data from at Least 280,000 Customers
Deer aren’t the slim, graceful vegans we thought they were. Scientists using field cameras have caught deer preying on nestling song birds. And it’s not just deer. Herbivores the world over may be supplementing their diets. Read more…
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Field Cameras Catch Deer Eating Birds—Wait, Why Do Deer Eat Birds?
MojoKid writes: For the past few years, Intel has promised that its various low-power Atom-based processors would usher in a wave of low-cost Android and Windows mobile products that could compete with ARM-based solutions. And for years, we’ve seen no more than a trickle of hardware, often with limited availability. Now, that’s finally beginning to change. Intel’s Bay Trail and Merrifield SoCs are starting to show up more in full-featured, sub-$200 devices from major brands. One of the most interesting questions for would-be x86 buyers in the Android tablet space is whether to go with a Merrifield or Bay Trail Atom-based device. Merrifield is a dual-core chip without Hyper-Threading. Bay Trail is a quad-core variant and a graphics engine derived from Intel’s Ivy Bridge Core series CPUs. That GPU is the other significant difference between the two SoCs. With Bay Trail, Intel is still employing their own graphics solution, while Merrifield pairs a dual-core CPU with a PowerVR G6400 graphics core. So, what’s the experience of using a tablet running Android on x86 like these days? Pretty much like using an ARM-based Android tablet currently, and surprisingly good for any tablet in the $199 or less bracket. In fact, some of the low cost Intel/Android solutions out there currently from the likes of Acer, Dell, Asus, and Lenovo, all compete performance-wise pretty well versus the current generation of mainstream ARM-based Android tablets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Android On Intel x86 Tablet Performance Explored: Things Are Improving
If you download Kindle ebooks from dubious sources aka anywhere other than Amazon, watch out. A security researcher has discovered a security hole in the “Manage Your Kindle” page on Amazon’s website that outs your Amazon credentials to hackers when you upload a malicious ebook. Read more…
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Your Amazon Account Can Be Hacked Via a Malicious Kindle Ebook