This year — for the first time in the New York Police Department’s history — officials will have a camera-equipped, remote-controlled quadcopter on hand to watch over the thousands in Times Square. The NYPD planned to use drones during Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration. Then it started raining. Source: Washington Post Tech
Read MoreSimon Romero / New York Times: Since Waymo started testing driverless vans in Chandler, AZ in 2017, nearly two dozen attacks have been made on them including slashed tires and thrown rocks — CHANDLER, Ariz. — The assailant slipped out of a park around noon one day in October, zeroing in on his target …
Read MoreOh, the hijinks that the early days of the PC revolution allowed. Back in the days when a 20MB hard drive was a big deal and MS-DOS 3.1 ruled over every plain beige PC-clone cobbled together by enthusiasts like myself, it was great fun to “set up” someone else’s machine to do something unexpected. This
Read MoreA high school junior dug deep into the data on a mysteriously dimming star to search for evidence of a highly advanced civilization. Teen scientist checks for alien lasers around famously weird star – CNET Source: CNet
Read MoreTribune did not say whether the hackers may have ties to a foreign government, how they infiltrated the company’s network, or what their motives may be. What we still don’t know about the cyberattack on Tribune newspapers Source: Washington Post Tech
Read MoreNASDAQ.com: Chinese online brokerage Futu Securities files for a US IPO, seeking to raise up to $300M, and says it had $92M in revenue for year ending September 2018 — Futu Holdings, the largest China-based online broker age, filed on Friday with the SEC to raise up to $300 million in an initial public offering.
Read MoreVacuum tubes fueled a technological revolution. They made the amplification of signals a reality for transatlantic telephone cables (and transcontinental ones too), they performed logic for early computers, and they delivered that warm fuzzy sound for high fidelity audio. But they were labor intensive to produce, and fragile, so semiconductors came along and replaced tubes
Read MoreFrank Chaparro / The Block: Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary Bakkt raises $182.5M to build its cryptocurrency exchange; sources: regulatory hurdles delay its plans for bitcoin futures — Bakkt, the cryptocurrency venture by Intercontinental Exchange, has scored $182.5 million to build out its platform aimed … Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary Bakkt raises 2.5M to build its cryptocurrency exchange;
Read MoreThe transition to new fifth-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, will affect how you use smartphones and many other devices. Let’s talk about the essentials. 5G Is Coming Next Year. Here’s What You Need to Know. Source: NY Times Tech
Read MoreAs 2019 nears, the New Horizons spacecraft is zooming toward mysterious space rock Ultima Thule on a historic flyby. NASA New Horizons to photograph Ultima Thule in historic New Year's flyby – CNET Source: CNet
Read MoreEcho Huang / Quartz: China-owned spacecraft maker CASIC launches first of 156 satellites intended to provide internet service by 2022 to rural China and then to developing countries — Over the weekend, China launched a satellite into low-earth orbit, the first step of a plan to provide global satellite internet … China-owned spacecraft maker CASIC
Read MoreJohansson, one of the world’s highest-paid actresses, spoke to The Washington Post in an exclusive interview: “The Internet is just another place where sex sells and vulnerable people are preyed upon.” Scarlett Johansson on fake AI-generated sex videos: ‘Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image’ Source: Washington Post Tech
Read MoreThe hottest toy of the year was a glittering, baby-pink plastic suitcase that we buy without knowing what’s inside. Why Do You Love a L.O.L. Surprise? Source: NY Times Tech
Read MoreGet a closer look at the main character in the upcoming live-action Pokemon movie. Ryan Reynolds shares a behind-the-scenes peek at Detective Pikachu – CNET Source: CNet
Read MoreDrew Harwell / Washington Post: How deepfakes, AI-generated videos that graft a person’s face onto another’s body, have been weaponized to harass and humiliate their subjects, mostly women — “Deepfake” creators are making disturbingly realistic, computer-generated videos with photos taken from the Web, and ordinary women are suffering the damage. How deepfakes, AI-generated videos that
Read MoreInsurance is a funny business. Life insurance, for example, is essentially betting someone you will die before your time. With the recent focus on companies getting hacked, it isn’t surprising that cybersecurity insurance is now big business. Get hacked and get paid. Maybe. The reason I say maybe is because of the recent court battle
Read MoreYou can be the person who knows all the ins and outs of using Cisco systems to drive your business with the training in the Ultimate Cisco Certification Super Bundle. You can get the whole thing now for $40 with promo code: NEWYEAR2019. For , there won’t be a Cisco networking question that you can’t
Read MoreMeng Jing / South China Morning Post: Beijing plans to adopt facial recognition-enabled smart locks in its public housing projects involving 120K tenants in 2019 to crack down on illegal subletting — – The smart lock is one of the latest hi-tech tools authorities are using to keep an eye on its citizens Beijing plans
Read MorePicture the keypad of a telephone and calculator side by side. Can you see the subtle difference between the two without resorting to your smartphone? Don’t worry if you can’t recall the design. Most of us are so used to accepting the common interfaces that we tend to overlook the calculator’s inverted key sequence. A
Read MoreThe Russian-built Tupolev Tu-144 beat the Concorde into the air by two months. But the supersonic plane would enjoy a far less successful career. Before the Concorde, there was 'the Concordski' – CNET Source: CNet
Read MoreThe next 12 months has Roadshow editors eager for a pickup truck, a crossover and a lot of sports cars. Cars we're most looking forward to driving in 2019 – Roadshow Source: CNet
Read MoreNot that we don’t love Star Trek, but the writers could never decide if ion propulsion was super high tech (Spock’s Brain) or something they used every day (The Menagerie). Regardless, ion propulsion is real and we have it today on more than one spacecraft. However, MIT recently demonstrated an ion-powered airplane. How exciting! An
Read MoreGlobes Online: Der Spiegel: Volkswagen is planning to write off over $300M it invested in Gett, as the Israeli startup struggles to compete with Uber, Lyft, Didi, and others — “Der Spiegel” reported that Volkswagen would write off its over $300 million investment in the Israeli taxi hailing company. Der Spiegel: Volkswagen is planning to
Read More[This Old Tony] is no stranger to quality tools, but he started on a mini lathe. Nostalgia does not stop him from broadcasting his usual brand of snark (actually, it is doubtful that anything short of YouTube going offline will stop that). He rates the lathe’s ability to machine different materials and lets you decide
Read MoreCardano is an open-source blockchain and smart contracts platform, supported by the namesake cryptocurrency Cardano (ADA). The project is a direct competitor to Ethereum, and the two organizations also share a co-founder between them — Charles Hokinson. Hokinson claims that Cardano has cracked the problem of scalability with blockchains through its ‘Ouroboros‘ proof of stake
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