Sony’s latest quirky product to emerge from its First Flight crowdfunding platform is this sleek universal remote. Called Huis—pronounce it “house”—the e-ink device is designed to be a fully customizable tool to control your entire home. Read more…
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We Hope Sony’s Sleek Universal E -Ink Remote Reaches the US
The Wikimedia Foundation has finally disclosed details of its controversial Knowledge Engine grant — and it confirms that Wikipedia is getting seriously into search, despite Jimmy Wales’ categorical denial that WMF is “doing a Google.” After a Wikipedia signpost article, and coverage at El Reg this week, the WMF caved and posted the Knight Foundation’s approval of the $250, 000 grant. The grant provides seed money for stage one of the Knowledge Engine, described as “a system for discovering reliable and trustworthy information on the Internet.” The discovery stage includes an exploration of prototypes of future versions of Wikipedia.org which are “open channels” rather than an encyclopedia, analyzing the query-to-content path, and embedding the Wikipedia Knowledge Engine “via carriers and Original Equipment Manufacturers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Reluctant Wikipedia Lifts Lid On $2.5M Internet Search Engine Project
Google has been steadily migrating its resources towards the Photos ecosystem since the company first announced it at last year’s I/O developers conference. It’s already shut down Google+ photos in lieu of the newer service and linked Photos to your phone’s native camera app. Today Google announced that it will shut down Picasa . The move will occur over the next several months, beginning on May 1, 2016. Take note, however, that the Picasa desktop application won’t work after March 1st. Current Picasa users simply have to log into Photos — all of their content has already been moved over. Source: Google (Picasa Blog)
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Google is shutting down Picasa in favor of Photos
AT&T has been working on possible 5G technologies, such as millimeter waves, for years. Now that it’s time to get serious, it’s teaming up with Ericsson and Intel to ramp up its development in the lab in the second quarter of the year. After that, it’s moving its 5G endeavors out of the lab and into the field, starting with outdoor tests over the summer. The carrier says 60 percent of its mobile traffic in 2015 came from video. It’s moving forward with its 5G plans, because emerging technologies like virtual reality, 4K video, robots, Internet of Things and self-driving cars will be even more demanding. As AT&T’s Chief Strategy Officer John Donovan notes, those technologies “will be immersive, pervasive and responsive to customers. 5G will help make them a reality.” 5G internet could be anywhere from 10 to 100 times faster than LTE, with users observing downloads going gigabits (yes, giga bits) per second. Imagine being able to finish downloading a TV show for less than three seconds. That’s nowhere near enough time to get up and microwave some popcorn. AT&T believes its 5G network will even be able to start streaming videos much, much faster — just 1 to 5 milliseconds from the moment you press play — than an LTE connection. If everything goes well, some parts of Austin, Texas will be able to test out Ma Bell’s 5G tech by the end of this year. The company says it’s conducting tests in a way that enables it to deploy the network commercially as soon as 5G standards are set. You’d have to wait a while for that to happen, though. 3GPP, the international consortium in charge of hashing out network standards, is working on it right now. However, phase one (of two) won’t be completed until the first half of 2018. By the way, AT&T isn’t the only US carrier gearing up to test its next-gen mobile network: Verizon will soon begin its 5G wireless service trials, as well. [Image credit: Mike Mozart/Flickr ] Source: AT&T
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AT&T gets ready to test 5G technologies this 2016
MySpace still exists . Crazy, right? The once monolithic social network had faded into irrelevancy until it was relaunched with a little help from Justin Timberlake back in 2013. The fresh coat of paint wasn’t enough to reinvigorate the platform, however, and it’s now being sold as part of its parent company Viant to Time Inc. Yep, that’s the same Time Inc that publishes Time, Fortune , Entertainment Weekly and a whole bunch of other magazines. The company described the acquisition as “game changing, ” most likely in reference to Viant’s broader ad-tech business. MySpace does, supposedly, still have a part to play in that offering, but it’s notable the site was barely mentioned in the footnote of today’s press release . Source: Time Inc. (Press Release)
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Time Inc buys…MySpace?
The Internet Archive has spent many years gathering and storing digital content from the past. It now hosts millions of web pages, texts, videos and audio snippets, but recently the site expanded its collection to include software, or more specifically, games . After making more than 2, 400 DOS titles available to play in the browser , the Internet Archive has embraced the GUI and done the same for Windows 3.1. It’s kicked things off by adding more than 1, 000 programs to its Windows 3.1 Software Library. The vast majority of them are games, including Taipei and Ski Free , but there’s plenty of browser-based shareware to get stuck into. There’s also a curated collection called the “Windows Showcase, ” which lists some of the best known programs and games from 20 years ago. It’s been made possible by Boris Gjenero’s EM-DOSbox emulator, which converts Windows runtimes into JavaScript code that can be interpreted by your browser. It’s what underpins the Archive’s DOS collection and testers have already used it to boot Windows 95 . That suggests we may only have to wait a short while to see more Windows programs added to the collection. Via: Internet Archive Blog Source: Windows 3.1 Software Library
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You can run over 1,000 Windows 3.1 programs in your browser
Good news for everyone who won’t be able to make it to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child : the script for the play will be on sale July 31. That’s right after the official opening of the play. And on Harry’s birthday. Read more…
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The Harry Potter Play Will Become the Eighth Harry Potter Book in July
Despite a stormy ride, The Pirate Bay is still alive and well . And now it has a wonderful new feature: You can stream its torrents right there in your browser. Read more…
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Now You Can Stream Torrents From The Pirate Bay in Your Browser
The last time we heard from Chinese cracking forum 3DM—responsible for illegal cracks of pirated video games— they were being frustrated by Just Cause 3’s “Denovo” copy protection . Now they’re walking away from the game entirely. Read more…
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One Of The World’s Biggest PC Piracy Groups Is Quitting The Game
Campaigning for Bernie Sanders, and presumably any other politician, can get you banned from Tinder. According to a report from Reuters , two users of the dating app learned that the hard way recently, after their accounts were locked for sending private messages about the 2016 presidential candidate . One woman, for example, told the publication she sent 60 messages per day to other people on Tinder, as she hoped to convince them to support Senator Sanders. Those read as “Do you feel the Bern?” and “Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks, ” which would then prompt the recipients to get updates from the Sanders campaign . It also sent a link with a sign-up page for volunteering. Tinder has yet to issue an official statement, but we reached out to the service and will update the story if we hear back. It’s worth noting that Tinder’s Terms of Use are pretty clear. The document’s Section 9, which you can read in full here , states users “may not post, upload, display or otherwise make available Content that … involves the transmission of ‘junk mail, ‘ ‘chain letters, ‘ or unsolicited mass mailing or ‘spamming’ (or ‘spimming, ‘ ‘phishing, ‘ ‘trolling’ or similar activities).” If a user doesn’t follow the rules, Tinder says it has the right to “investigate, suspend and/or terminate” an account. Via: The Hill Source: Reuters
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Tinder bans users for sending pro-Bernie Sanders messages