Tech news in brief

Following a successful Indiegogo campaign, Canon USA is officially launching the IVY REC, a clippable, display-less camera, designed for outdoors enthusiasts looking for an alternative to fragile, bulky phones to immortalize their adventures. Under the hood, you get a 13-megapixel 1/3-inch CMOS…

Ubuntu’s next version (19.10, “Eoan Ermine”) will support ZFS in its installer, making it the first Linux distribution to offer native support for this first-class file system. But support will be “experimental” at first – i.e. do not install on production systems! The ZFS system provides many…

The 16th version of the operating system formerly known as OS X has been released! To read up on Catalina, you can turn to the classic “Ars Technica Review” (link hereunder), which examines every last detail of the new system. Among the more interesting novelties are the Catalyst project, which…

When it introduced its latest Surface products, Microsoft saved the bombshell for last: its return to the smartphone market. The Surface Duo, to be released at the end of 2020, will not run some operating system descended from Windows Phone, but rather… Android! Further, it is a foldable device…

The Surface Pro X is a slim Windows 10 tablet with a detachable keyboard and stylus and, more importantly, an ARM processor. In fact, the SQ1 ARM chip was specifically developed by Microsoft jointly with Qualcomm for the Surface Pro X. Its design is based on the Snapdragon 8cx, the SoC in the…

Amazon seems determined to never let you leave home without Alexa. The cloud and on-line shopping titan has introduced several new products that let you access your Alexa assistant on the go, for example with the wireless Echo Buds earbuds, or, in partnership with General Motors, in any Buick…

After a disastrous launch in February, the foldable Samsung phone is back in an improved, more robust and hopefully problem-free version. Indeed, the early buyers and reporters who had gotten their hands on the early devices found the display quickly gave out, sometimes on the first day of use, a…

Google revealed its new Play Pass service which, for USD5 per month, gives you unlimited access to a library of over 350 Android games free of microtransactions. Strangely, Google also included non-game applications like Photo Studio Pro and AccuWeather, which kind of confuses the message. By…

Dutch company Fairphone builds Android phones for durability, making them cheap and easy to repair. So easy, in fact, that you can make your own repairs with a simple Phillips 00 screwdriver, included with your purchase. Further, Fairphones are built with fair-trade, recycled materials, are…

At a time when people can store thousands of photos on their phones and the cloud, printed photos still have an undeniable charm, and gifting a framed photograph to a loved one is so much nicer than just sending them the digital file. This is why Polaroid has developed the Lab, a USD129 tower that…

At the IFA 2019 show in Berlin, HMD Global, the Finnish company that bought Nokia’s mobile division from Microsoft in 2016, announced a new version of the Nokia 2720 Fold, a GSM flip phone first issued in 2009. It seems that there is still a strong market for basic mobile phones, or “dumb phones”…

Logitech’s MX Master mouse is the favourite rodent of cool productive cats. So how do you improve on a tail-less mouse that’s already great? Logitech has managed to do just that for its third-generation mouse, with small adjustments that make it even easier and more comfortable to use. Like the MX…

At the IFA 2019 show in Berlin, Samsung unveiled its first SoC with an integrated 5G modem. The Exynos 980 is a mid-range octacore SoC with two Cortex-A77 clocked at 2.2GHz and six Cortex-A55 at 2.2GHz. Among the improvements on the Exynos 9610 SoC are the Neural Processing Unit (NPU), WiFi 6…

Apple has long shut out small independent repair shops, refusing to supply them with spare parts for the iPhone. But the Cupertino company seems to be softening its policy: independent repair shops will now be able to purchase parts, repair and diagnostics manuals and tools straight from Apple…

While Insta360 literally made its name with its 360° cameras, its new Go is far more conventional, producing 1080p videos at 25fps. What is less conventional is its size (just 5cm high) and weight (a mere 18.3 grams). Thanks to its magnetized base and a clip, you can affix it just about anywhere…

Until today, the successive versions of the Android operating system had their own, sweet codenames, working their way down the alphabet. Version 8.x was Oreo, coming after Nougat (7.x), which itself followed on Marshmallow (6.x). It seems that this is now just a sweet memory, since the next…

Chinese company Segway-Ninebot Group has unveiled new products, including the KickScooter T60, a three-wheeled electric scooter that uses AI to autonomously return to its charging station. These smart scooters are intended for scooter fleet operators like Bird, Jump, Lime and Lyft that are popping…

At the SIGGRAPH conference, the Unreal Engine team presented an impressive real-time VFX technology that could change the way films are made. This technology could be a game changer and make the chroma keying (green/blue screen) obsolete. For this new system, the studio is equipped with four giant…

Though the market for Android tablets has not been very kind to Samsung, the company perseveres. It has announced a high-end tablet, the US$ 650 Galaxy Tab S6. The device, which has kept the 10.5-inch Super AMOLED display (2,560 × 1,600 pixels), features a Snapdragon 855 2.84 GHz processor, 6GB of…

ThinkTiny is a miniature game console that picks up the ThinkPad design with the iconic red TrackPoint nub as a joystick. Based on an ATtiny1614 microcontroller by Microchip (8 bit, 2KB RAM, 16KB of storage), this Paul Klinger creation allows you to play classic titles such as Snake, Tetris and…

At first glance, Aquanaut looks like a traditional unmanned mini-submarine, until its hull opens up like a Transformer, exposing two arms that fold out and a head packed full of sensors. The sleek submarine is now a half-humanoid robot, ready to get to work. Developed by startup Houston…

Bandai Namco is launching a new platform, Tori, which will combine physical toys with iOS and Android mobile apps. Tori is the product of a collaboration between Bandai Namco and the French technology firm ISKN, which developed the Slate graphics tablet. Tori is described as “a creative and…

Apple is close to signing a deal with Taiwanese manufacturers to start using microLED displays in its products as early as next year, according to Chinese newspaper Economic Daily News. According to sources in Apple’s supply chain, the company is set to launch a watch with a microLED display in…

On Monday, Tesla announced lowered prices on its entire line of vehicles, making most versions of Model S, X and 3 more affordable. However, the cheaper versions of the S and X models, called “Standard”, have been eliminated. The price for the “Long Range” Model S (now the cheapest Model S) dropped…

Alan Turing, the mathematician who helped crack the Enigma machine code during World War II and who pioneered computing and artificial intelligence, will appear on the new GBP50 banknote (CAD82, EUR55). The mathematician was chosen from among 989 scientists, in a decision that recognizes both his…

Launched in March 2017 to compete with Slack, Microsoft Teams has just overtaken its rival. Microsoft has announced that Teams has more than 13 million active daily users, compared to about 10 million for Slack. The amount rises to 19 million when looking at weekly active users. And more than…

SimBlock is a blockchain simulator developed by Kazuyuki Shudo, associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, which allows users to easily experiment with the functioning of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and soon, Ethereum. It runs on any computer that supports Java and allows users to…

The Urban Flying Opera project, held in Turin, Italy, consisted in collecting small illustrations from the artistic community via an application and then selecting a number of them to paint on a 14x12-meter wall in the empty shell of an old Iveco truck manufacturing factory. Four drones from Tsuru…

A quasi-daily occurrence for web surfers is stumbling on irritants, be they poorly-designed interfaces, intrusive pop-ups that interfere with your reading, idiotic forms or impossible CAPTCHAs. Now, a Belgian design studio has collected and featured all of these irritants on a single web site; the…

Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware, addressed some good questions to Jeff Bezos, and Amazon provided answers you didn’t want to hear. In short, Amazon’s Alexa keeps all data with no expiration date, and shares it too! Be worried: this data includes recordings and transcripts of every…

The Raspberry Foundation unveiled a major new upgrade of its miniature computer. While the new Pi 4 Model B keeps the dimensions and entry-level price of its predecessor (USD35), it is three times as powerful, thanks to its 1.5GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 SoC (Broadcom BCM2711). The basic model has…

You would have thought that Apple had given up on autonomous driving, especially after last January when it laid off 200 staff working on the secretive Project Titan. Nothing is further from the truth: in fact, the company bought Drive.ai, a Mountain View-based autonomous driving startup, valued at…

Walmart has confirmed it is using image recognition and AI technologies in over 1,000 stores to fight shoplifting, and checkout errors. The surveillance program, named “Missed Scan Detection” by Walmart, uses cameras to identify items that clients “forget” to scan at the self-checkout, as well as…

The likeness of the new Mac Pro to a cheese grater has not gone unnoticed. But could it really be used to grate parmesan on your spaghetti? A youtuber, Winston Moy, went to great lengths to find out, using the Autodesk Fusion 360 to model the new Mac’s honeycombed grid. He fabricated it in aluminum…

Kano is a startup that specializes in assembly-ready educational computers. So far, its models were based on Raspberry Pi 3 and on an operating system developed by the company. Kano now offers a new kit to assemble a touch-screen laptop that works with Windows 10 S. With a design similar to the…

As the trade war between the U.S. and China heats up, Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of the iPhone and iPad, says that whatever happens, Apple phones will remain available for the American market. While most of Foxconn’s manufacturing occurs in China, where it operates 12 factories spread across…

Every year, Chinese drone-maker DJI organizes a major robotics competition, called RoboMasters, where student-built robots do battle in an arena. Now, the company has launched a scaled-down, educational combat robot for the home. Called RoboMaster S1, it can be controlled using a mobile app, or…

Thanks to the E3 show, this week is gaming news week. Microsoft capitalized on this major show to reveal a few details on the successor to the Xbox One. Code-named “Project Scarlett”, the console should launch in 2020, in time for the Holidays. At the event, we learned that reduced loading times…

At Amazon’s re:MARS Conference in Las Vegas, the retail and cloud giant unveiled a new drone design, the Prime Air, able to fly up to 25 km and deliver packages weighing up to 2.25 kg in under 30 minutes. The new drone is capable of identifying static and moving objects. To detect static objects…

The highlight of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California, was probably the unveiling of the long-awaited new Mac Pro. The previous Mac Pro (the aluminium cylinder, or “trash can”) dated back from 2013 and hadn’t evolved since, to the despair of video and 3D graphics…

Are you spending less time on Facebook? You’re not alone; in fact, you’re part of a trend. According to a study by eMarketer, daily time spent on Facebook declined by 3 minutes among U.S. users in 2018, from 41 minutes in 2017; and usage is expected to further decline in 2019. Debra Aho Williamson…

Pregnancy can be a chancy business, as all women – and their partners – know. Ruling out pregnancy is now possible, but falling pregnant is still not guaranteed, to the dismay of many hopeful moms. Now, they have another device in their arsenal: the Yono earbud. This wearable (or “hearable”, since…

At the Computex trade show, hardware builder Asus unveiled an over-the-top laptop: the ZenBook Pro Duo. Besides its main 4K, 15-inch OLED display, it has a second, 3840×1100px, 32:9 IPS touchscreen just above the keyboard. Redundant, you say? Not if you want to permanently display the apps you use…

GitHub has launched Sponsors, a beta version of a system to financially support your favorite developers. Sponsors allows anyone with a GitHub account to fund any Sponsors-registered open-source developer through a recurrent monthly payment. During the first year of a developer’s participation in…

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is about to test self-driving mail shipment. Over a two-week period, California start-up TuSimple, a self-driving trucking company, will be hauling mail between USPS’s distribution centres in Dallas, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona. The 1,700km run will be covered…

After the wind delayed the launch of the first 60 satellites of the future SpaceX Starlink constellation from May 15th to 16th, problems with the satellite software forced the company to cancel the second attempt 24 hours later, which will delay the launch by about 8 days. The two-stage Falcon 9…

Google’s Titan Security Keys come in two versions: the USB version for computers and the Bluetooth LE version for IOS and Android devices. The latter version is the one that has revealed a security flaw that is rather embarrassing for a product that is supposed to bolster security. Due to a…

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. Surfing the latest craze for foldable phones, Lenovo has unveiled a functional prototype of a portable, foldable PC. And it’s not just a tech demo: Lenovo has been developing this for over three years and has plans to launch a finished device in 2020 as part…

Last July, Sony introduced its 48-megapixel sensor for smartphones, the IMX586, which was already pretty impressive. On Thursday, Samsung responded with its 64-megapixel sensor, the Isocell Bright GW1. This means that it is more powerful than the highest-quality traditional cameras, like the Nikon…

AMD and Cray have announced that they will be building the Frontier, a new supercomputer, for the US Departement of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It will have over 1.5 exaFLOP/s of power, or 1.5×1018 operations per second, or the equivalent of 100,000 Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080…

Virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive need to be tethered to powerful PCs, while mobile-phone VR is skinny and far less immersive. But Facebook’s new Oculus Quest seems to the best solution available, at a (relatively) reasonable price to boot. The Oculus Quest is…

Sad new for the techno gadget world: Anki, the creator of the adorable miniature robots Cozmo and Vector, is closing shop, laying off some 200 employees. The reason given by Boris Sofman, CEO of the San Francisco-based company, is the failure of the latest round of financing. Anki had already…

Sea Hero Quest is a video game developed in partnership with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, game studio Glitchers and several European universities. It is designed to identify individuals who might have early symptoms of dementia. In this mobile VR game, compatible with Samsung Gear VR and Google…

Samsung’s Galaxy View 2 is a portable television (17.3-inch 1080p display) and an oversized Android tablet (Oreo 8.1) all at once, measuring 41.7x26.4x1.7cm and weighing in at 2.28kg. Powered by a hefty 12,000mAh battery, the device comes with an Exynos 7884 eight-core chip, 3Gb of RAM and 64Gb of…

Until today, Tesla’s on-board computers ran on Nvidia chips. Now, the company has developed its own on-board computer equipped with its proprietary Tesla SoC. The in-house development team was led by Pete Bannon, a veteran engineer who has worked at Intel, P. A. Semi and, most recently, at Apple…

On the eve of a jury trial in San Diego, Qualcomm and Apple unexpectedly agreed to end their legal disputes over patent royalties. Apple had accused Qualcomm of extortion and in response, Qualcomm sued Apple for patent infringement in courts worldwide. The agreement puts an end to all litigation…

After the German site WinFuture picked up leaked marketing materials, it revealed that Microsoft is about to release All-Digital, a version of the Xbox One S without a Blu-ray player. The documents show that the console will go on sale May 7 in Germany for 229 EUR (345 CAD). The photos show that…

LG has filed a patent for a phone that’s not just foldable, but also transparent. TV shows and sci-fi flicks are replete with transparent tablets and displays; but what possible use could they have back here in real life, except maybe to look cool and futuristic? While the patent is long on…

Samsung’s Galaxy S10 features a new fingerprint sensor, the 3D Sonic Sensor by Qualcomm, which uses ultrasonic technology to generate a 3D representation of your finger. This innovation allows for an invisible, in-display fingerprint reader, touted by its creators to offer “vault-like security”.

Amazon wants to launch thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit (590 to 630 km) to provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity across the globe. Its Kuiper project aims to deploy no less than 3,236 satellites to cover all latitudes between 56 degrees north and 56 degrees south, an…

Two years ago, Boston Dynamics, now owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, unveiled its impressive Handle, a wheeled two-legged robot. Today, the company published a video showing Handles working in a traditional warehouse: one Handle takes packages weighing 5 kg from shelves and carefully places…

Google is integrating AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), its lite version of HTML/JS, in e-mail. Web Gmail will support AMP content as of today, and mobile Gmail in the near future, soon to be joined by Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail and Mail.Ru. Integrated AMP content will provide users with interactive…

To celebrate the birthday of composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach on March 21 1685, Google created its first Doodle using artificial intelligence technologies. Designed in partnership with the Google Magenta and Google PAIR teams, the Doodle offers a charming, interactive experience that…

At its annual GDC show, Epic Games showed demos including this short movie, titled Rebirth, that illustrates the photorealistic capabilities of Unreal Engine. It was produced by Quixel, which markets hundreds of 2D and 3D assets (Megascans), some of which were used in the film to create landscapes…

Nvidia has launched a new, single-board nano-computer dedicated to artificial-intelligence applications for an affordable 99 USD. The Jetson Nano is a very powerful computer (472 gigaflops) that allows you to run multiple neural networks in parallel for applications such as image classification…

Mozilla has launched a new encrypted file-sharing service called Firefox Send that is similar to WeTransfer. It allows users to send up to 1 GB of files free of charge. Users can increase their transfer capacity to 2.5 GB if they open a Firefox account that is also free. Unlike other services…

Google released a beta version of its upcoming Android operating system. The highlights of this release include new privacy and security controls, support for new foldable phones, a sharing menu that finally really works, and a faster application launch. You can only install this first beta version…

If you have a smart speaker, you might own a Google Home or more likely, an Amazon Echo. In U.S. smart speaker owners grew 40 percent over 2018 to now reach 66.4 million — or 26.2 percent of the U.S. adult population. Though market share is debatable, the consensus is that the Echo is in the lead…

Google has begun marketing its Coral-branded devices that are dedicated to developing artificial intelligence applications based on machine learning. Powered by the Google Edge TPU chip (Tensor Processing Unit), the first batch of devices delivers the Coral Dev Board and the Coral USB…

Colourise is a free online service that allows you to colorize old black-and-white images with deep learning AI, Generative Adversarial Networks. It was developed during a hackathon by engineers from GovTech, Singapore’s government technology agency. Colourise has been specially trained to render…

According to the New York Times, Facebook is planning to roll out its own cryptocurrency. Facebook money would be good on its WhatsApp messaging application, allowing users to send money to friends and family. Unlike other, speculative cryptocurrencies, Facebook money wouldn’t fluctuate based on…

No sooner had Samsung introduced its Galaxy Fold than the competition leveraged the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to unveil their own version of the foldable phone. 2019 will be known as Year I of the era of foldable phones, with Huawei, Oppo, TCL and Motorola making their mark. Huawei is…

Microsoft has unveiled the second generation of its augmented reality headset. With a wider field of vision and improved ergonomics, the HoloLens 2 addresses the biggest issues with the first-generation device. Each eye has a display of 2,000 x 1,500 pixels, up from 1,268 x 720 pixels. The original…

Nike recently launched Adapt BB, the first smart-phone controlled, self-lacing shoe. Thanks to a motor built into the sole, an application makes it possible to tie and untie the laces. Unfortunately, many users of these 350 USD shoes indicate that after a firmware update, the left shoe won’t…

Given the huge success of services like Netflix, iTunes and Prime Video, the Blu-ray format seems to be stalling, especially in North America. Samsung, for example, told Forbes and CNET that it would no longer launch new Blu-ray player models and it would stop making Blu-Ray drives for the US…

North’s Focals smart glasses look like regular glasses, but provide an AR environment. Unlike Google Glass, they don’t have a camera; but they do let you see notifications from your phone through Bluetooth, much like a smartwatch. You can control them discreetly through a ring that acts as a…

Researchers at the École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich (ETH Zürich) have built Skaterbot, a four-legged robot on skates. Skaterbot’s legs, which are 3D-printed, are modular, so that their design can be modified with the addition or removal of modules. The ETH engineers fabricated the legs with a…

In the beginning of micro-computing, computers had severely limited sound ability: they could beep, and that’s about it. Nor did you want to hear that beep, as it usually meant an input error, a crash, or a hardware problem. IBM’s Personal Computer, released in 1981, had a more advanced speaker…

Cybersecurity specialist Linuz Henze has discovered a major security breach in the Keychain Access application on macOS Mojave, which is specifically responsible for protecting all your login credentials and sensitive information (passwords, certificates, secure notes, etc.). This flaw allows…

Google has released a Chrome extension called Password Checkup. Its role is to check passwords, both those stored in the password manager and those you enter manually, to ensure that they are not associated with hacked accounts. It operates through a Google database that stores data from more than…

Researchers at New York University and Stanford University convinced Facebook users to take a break from the social network for four weeks. Nearly 3,000 users accepted the challenge and completed detailed questionnaires about their daily routine, political opinion and general mood. Randomly…

When you think of computers or accessories by Razer, black immediately comes to mind--not pink. But this is a special, limited-series operation for Valentine’s. The company will not charge the notorious “pink tax”: the price is the same as for the non-gendered variant. The Razer Blade Stealth Rose…

Samsung has announced the arrival of a eUFS storage chip (embedded Universal Flash Storage) for phones, with a capacity of one terabyte, which is a worldwide first. This new chip is the same size as the previous one, which was 512 GB, and offers up to 1,000 megabytes per second in read speed, which…

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new technology for 3D printing that is 100 times faster than conventional additive printing. If you’ve ever stood around a 3D printer watching it build your object at an agonizingly slow pace, you’ll be bowled over by the video below. The…

Since Apple killed off the audio jack, smart phones have steadily been evolving towards a portless future. Audio jacks are becoming extinct, and the “Home” button now seems to be at risk. Chinese company Meizu has taken the trend to its natural endpoint with Meizu Zero, a radical new telephone with…

Nostalgia seems to be a lucrative niche in technology gadgets ... The legendary 2004 Motorola Razr will be making a comeback as a smart phone, for the price of ... hang tight ... USD 1,500. Motorola Mobility, which Lenovo bought out from Google in 2014, is determined to leverage the brand’s legacy.

In a year from now, on January 14, 2020, Microsoft will no longer offer any technical support or security updates for Windows 7. Launched in 2009, Windows 7 came with regular support until January 2015, the year Windows 10 appeared. Since then, the operating system got along with “extended…

All Lovot wants is to be loved. And to this end, Kaname Hayashi, a former developer of the humanoid robot Pepper, made the robot irresistible, like a hybrid between a stuffed penguin and a teletubby baby with large dreamy eyes. It doesn’t even speak, it just makes cute cooing sounds. Its only…

Designed by a French company, the connected sofa that we were all waiting for, that vibrates, lights up, activates Alexa, and recharges your phone, was presented at the latest CES in Las Vegas. The Smart Sofa uses several technologies, including Bluetooth, WiFi and Android OS. The sensory and…

Some people like to have more than one keyboard, for example if you need to write in two different languages. You may also want to customize your keyboard to suit your particular needs. At the CES in Las Vegas, a French company presented an elegant solution: on the Nemeio mechanical keyboard, each…

Apple confirmed for the editors of The Verge that some of its iPad Pros, 2018 vintage, come with a slight curvature to the aluminum chassis. But nothing to worry about, according to the company: this is a “side effect of the manufacturing process” and should not worsen over time or negatively…

Nvidia researchers have created an artificial intelligence capable of generating realistic portraits of imaginary individuals through a generative antagonist network (GAN). Such systems have been generating human faces for a while now, but never with this kind of result. The researchers tested the…

At its re:Invent 2018 event, Amazon Web Services introduced several new features, including its hybrid cloud offering, Outposts, which allows businesses to have a piece of AWS’s cloud in-house, in a shared space, or in a data center of their choice. Like the Snowball and Snowmobile, this is a…

To run an online game, you need a suite of services that goes beyond the functionality of a game engine like Unreal. Epic Games has developed and intensively field-tested such a suite of services with Fortnite, its worldwide hit that brings together more than 200 million players on 7 platforms. The…

Many key players in consumer electronics are trying to anticipate the effects of the trade war between the United States and China. In order to avoid taxation on its Chinese-made cameras upon entry into the United States, GoPro announced that it would move camera production for its main market, the…

Microsoft will replace its current Edge browser, which uses its own EdgeHTML rendering engine, and Chakra JavaScript engine, with a new browser based on Chromium (a Blink rendering engine and V8 JavaScript engine). For now, the new browser’s code name is Anaheim, after a town in L.A.’s suburbs.

A startup in San Francisco purchased the rights for the Palm trademark from TCL last year to launch a mini Android phone named Palm Phone, which bears no relation to the old products associated with the brand that went under in 2010. The device is only available through Verizon as an add-on to a…

DJI introduced a new mini camera mounted on a gimbal called The Osmo Pocket. It’s 12.2 cm tall and weighs just 116 g, which means it’s so portable that you wouldn’t think twice about bringing it along. Its small size has no bearing on its functionality: a 1/2.3-inch sensor records 4K video up to…

Samsung just revealed its new solid state drive (SSD) lineup that comes in three flavors and doesn’t break the bank: 1, 2 and 4 TB. The 2.5-inch form with SATA interface fits into most laptops and desktops. On the performance front, the sequential read and write speeds are up to 550 and 520 MB per…

A trio at Osaka University has been working on an android head-and-face since 2011. They’re making progress. By deforming 116 micropoints of its facial anatomy, they can raise its eyelids, pucker a lip, or release all features of the face. It explores more nuanced expressions, ranging from…

In an interview with Axios on HBO, Tim Cook defended Apple’s decision to use Google as the default search engine. This decision doesn’t jibe with the company’s strong rhetoric on the protection of personal data and private life, considering that Google’s business model is to make money using users’…

KOSEN are schools in Japan that teach technology. They offer a 5-year engineering program for 15-year-olds graduating from high school. Teams of students representing various KOSEN schools throughout the country compete on a given theme at an annual robotics meet, the KOSEN Robocon. This year, the…

Microsoft launched a preview of PlayFab Multiplayer Servers, a new Azure-based service that gives game developers tools that ease many things that are normally a tedious aspect of multiplayer game development: managing players’ identities and profiles, matchmaking (pairing similarly skilled players…

HTTP, aka Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the foundation of the World Wide Web, will abandon its TCP data transport layer. Since the TCP/IP Model has been fundamental to the Internet since its inception, the change is significant. In its next version, called HTTP/3, the hypertext transfer protocol…

In 2017, Samsung said it would launch a foldable Galaxy Note in 2018, while cautioning that there were still “challenges to overcome”. The challenges must be stubborn, since no folding phone looks to be launched this year. However, on Wednesday, at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisc…

Yongnuo, a Hong Kong photographic equipment manufacturer, unveiled a mirrorless camera that runs on Android 7.1 and is EF-compatible, which means you can use it with any high-end Canon lense. Temporarily called “YN450”, the device offers a 16-megapixel Four Thirds sensor that can shoot 4K video at…

The European Union has launched the iBorderCtrl project to further monitor third-country nationals who want to cross the borders of the Schengen area. Users will interact with a digital border guard that will direct them to enter their passports and visas for digitization and ask them the usual…

You find cats irresistible, but the hair, the scratched furniture, the soiled litter, and the smell of cod liver cat food aren’t your thing? Here’s a solution: a cat robot that eats nothing but electricity. Nybble is a feline robot with a structure made of thin layers of laser-cut plywood. A custom…

Last June, we reported that Apple was working on iOS 12 so that law enforcement would find it much harder to hack locked iPhones. A favourite among police forces, the GrayKey device, which connects to the Lightning port to unlock iPhones, was in the Apple engineers’ cross-hairs. It seems they’ve…

As soon as it appeared in 1997, Winamp was the most popular free MP3 player on Windows and also the most downloaded freeware. Its creator, Nullsoft, was bought by AOL in 1999 for around 100 million. Since then, Winamp has been in a slow tailspin, primarily due to bad management decisions and a…

Mochibot is a strange and remarkable robot made of 32 individually actuated telescoping legs, developed by a team of researchers from the Keiō and Tokyo universities. Its shape—which looks like a sphere when it’s at rest—is based on a rhombic triacontahedron, which is a polyhedron with 32 vertices…

Google just unveiled its third-generation Pixel 3 and 3 XL smartphones. The exterior design has evolved since the previous generation. Though the dimensions are the same, the aluminum back has been replaced by a glass panel and a big notch now features on the front face. As can be expected, the…

A group of health researchers in India have tried to tally the death toll from selfie taking, counting 259 deaths worldwide from October 2011 to November 2017. This probably underestimates the casualties, as the researchers went only from news reports. The top three causes of death were, in order…

The WiFi Alliance consortium has revised its naming conventions for Wi-Fi standards to make them easier to tell apart. Until now, the versions had convoluted names such as 802.11ac or 802.11g, which were difficult to memorize. Going forward, we’ll have a simpler, more intuitive version number…

A recent report revealed that the voting machines used in 26 American States as well as in the District of Columbia have a serious security flaw. Election Systems & Software’s Model 650’s update procedures pose a security risk that had been identified in a report commissioned by Ohio’s secretary of…

Tomorrow, in New York, Amazon will open a new store that only sells the most popular products on its on-line platform. Called Amazon 4-star, the store sells electronics, kitchen and home items, toys, books and games that have garnered a 4-star rating or higher, or are best-sellers. Prime member get…

Amazon announced the impending release of its first kitchen appliance: a microwave oven that is compatible with the Alexa system. Moreover, it will include Dash Replenishment Services, which means it can automatically order popcorn from Amazon. With its compact size (44cm wide, 36cm tall and 25.5cm…

Following in the footsteps of the successful NES Classic Edition and Super NES Classic, Sony is emulating the Nintendo strategy to bring back an older console as a miniature gaming device and calling it “Classic”: nearly 25 years after its initial appearance, Sony announced the upcoming release of…

Flying insects like bees, dragonflies, and fruit flies can perform impressive aerodynamic feats, particularly when seeking to escape predators or the movements of an annoyed human. Now Dutch scientists have built a flying robot capable of executing similar manoeuvers – despite being much larger…

Sphero unveiled the Bolt, its new and improved version of the spherical educational robot Spark+ from 2016. Its trademark see-through shell displays several innovations, like an 8x8 LED diode matrix making a screen that can display a smiling emoticon when a task is successfully completed. The Bolt…

Qualcomm has released a new processor for smartwatches and other wearables, the Snapdragon Wear 3100, intended to extend battery life, enhance always-on displays, and offer greater versatility. This new development was highly anticipated by the industry, which had been waiting for a new chip for…

It looks like the Cambridge Analytica debacle just won’t quit. A few months back, it was revealed that the former consulting firm had collected data on millions of Facebook users without their consent. Now, a recent survey shows that in the past 12 months, 74% of Facebook-using adults have adjusted…

For its tenth anniversary, Google’s Web browser, which dominates the market, has been given a new, minimalist look. Chrome’s new user interface, available on all Chrome-supported platforms, follows Google’s Material Design 2 system, for a more modern, elegant look, with rounded corners and subtle…

Lenovo has unveiled its second-generation Yoga Book, following up on the first version in August of 2016. The concept is original: the Yoga Book opens like a book, with a touchscreen on the left-hand side (LCD IPS, 10.8 inches, 2560 x 1600) and, on the right-hand side, a touch-sensitive electronic…

Last November, we celebrated the resurrection of Sony’s dog robot, Aibo, which was killed a dozen years ago. But the new Aibo ERS-1000 was unfortunately only available in Japan at the time. Now, there’s a new development: after selling 20,000 units in Japan, Sony has announced that it will now be…

Starting this week, residents of Scottsdale, Arizona, can get their groceries delivered by a self-driving vehicle. This on-the-ground experiment is the result of a partnership between autonomous vehicle builder Nuro, and Kroger, the U.S.’s largest retail chain, owner of the Fry’s banner in Arizona.

Google Chrome is slowly but surely taking over the world of desktop browsers. According to analytics vendor Net Applications, which keeps statistics on tens of thousands of websites all over the world, its main rivals have lost yet more ground over the last 12 months: Internet Explorer went from a…

On Thursday, in New York, Samsung unveiled 3 new products: the new Note 9 phone, a smart speaker called Galaxy Home, and the new Galaxy Watch. The Note 9, which will be available as of August 24, looks an awful like its predecessors, but is more powerful, with a 4,000mAh battery. The phone comes…

After raising some 2.3 billion dollars and working draped in secret for 8 years, the mysterious startup Magic Leap is finally releasing a product, the augmented reality headset Magic Leap One, for US$2,295. This headset is relatively light (415g) because the Nvidia Tegra X2 chipset micro-PC is…

The Naked 3D Scanner is a mirror that creates a 3D clone of your body. The integrated computer scans your body to produce some 4GB of data, compresses it down to a 4MB 3D model, then sends it to a mobile application that lets you see the changes in your body over time, which can be motivating for…

The worldwide tablet market has been declining for the last 4 years, and the second quarter of 2018 did nothing to reverse the trend. In fact, only Apple and Huawei were able to post modest growth, according to IDC’s latest report. The number of worldwide shipments was 33 million units over the…

Samsung launched its nifty Tab S4, the successor to last year’s S3. The S4 works in both classic touchscreen tablet and desktop modes thanks to Dex software that allows you to connect it to a keyboard, a mouse and a monitor, while offering an adapted interface. The S4 has a 10.5-inch, 2560x1600…

Windows 10’s next semi-annual update will use machine learning models to make update-related reboots less annoying for users. Currently, Windows can detect whether you’re working or not (inactive mouse and keyboard, no video streaming, etc.) and save reboots for inactive periods. However, at the…

Sony has introduced a new 48-megapixel sensor for smartphones. Current phones are usually equipped with 12 megapixel cameras (Apple, Samsung Galaxy), sometimes 20 megapixel. Sony’s IMX586 sensor is 6.4 x 4.8 mm with a pixel size of 0.8 micrometres. In low light, pixels are combined in arrays of 4…

Dale Sande and Kianosh Pourian, from Spiria Boston, recorded an hour-long podcast for the Internet show Shop Talk. Of course, it’s all about their passion and specialty: the Internet of Things. If you’re interested and want to know more, go listen to it!

Researchers have put together a kit that masquerades as a GPS satellite in order to lure receptors into sending drivers in the wrong direction. The team, made up of researchers from Microsoft and Virginia Tech in the U.S. and China’s University of Electronic Sciences and Technology, explained in an…

To celebrate the Infobar phone’s 15th birthday, Japanese company KDDI will be launching a third iteration of the handset in October, and it’s fair to say that third time pays for all. Of course, it’s still an Android phone with bare-bones capabilities (a “feature phone”), but its gorgeous design…

Big Clapper is a one-meter tall robot that looks like a stand-mounted tomato with hands coming out of its top. The robot’s main goal in life is to clap its hands in various modes: one clap, three claps, continuous clapping, on-demand claps, clapping to music, clapping and talking. Its eyes are…

Microsoft launched the Surface Go, a new entry-level tablet which is basically a smaller version of the Surface Pro, at a wallet-friendly price of US$400 (US$500 with the Type Cover keyboard). It features a 10-inch touchscreen with a 1800 x 1200 pixel resolution (217 ppi), an Intel Pentium Gold…

There’s competition for Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini…Today, MIT presented the Cheetah 3, a 40kg, four-legged robot similar to SpotMini. The major difference between the two robots is that the Cheetah 3 has no cameras to steer itself; it’s blind. It doesn’t even have environmental sensors, something…

The BASIC Engine is an open-source single-board nanocomputer the size of a Raspberry Pi, with functions based on PCs from the late 80s and early 90s, that will tickle those who yearn for that time and all things retro. It connects to a monitor or a PAL/NTSC television screen with an RCA cable…

Tesla announced that in the second quarter, it produced 53,339 vehicles, an increase of 55% over the first quarter. For the first time, production of Model 3s edged higher than the combined totals of the S and X models (28,578 vs. 24,761); the company’s production numbers for the Model 3 are three…

Several companies, like Nuro, are working on autonomous delivery vehicles. But Robomart is turning the idea on its head by bringing the entire grocery store to your doorstep. In the promo video, the autonomous vehicle is equipped with shelves stocking fresh produce, but other types of products…

Cemtrex has taken the idea of an all-in-one office desk to a whole new level. Its sleek SmartDesk features three 24-inch IPS touchscreen displays, a proprietary gesture recognition system which allows you to turn pages with a wave of the hand, a Windows Intel Core i7 PC, and a built-in keyboard and…

Unlocking your car with your smartphone and doing away with a bulky key is no longer the stuff of dreams. A consortium of automobile and smartphone builders recently published specifications for a digital key that would work on all phones and all cars. The group, called the Car Connectivity…

In San Francisco, in front of a small assembly of reporters, IBM Research displayed a new AI machine dedicated to the art of debate and argument. Two humans took on the machine to debate various issues, while the audience graded the human and machine debaters. At one point, the computer pleaded…

Things aren’t going so well at Tesla. On Tuesday, staff were told that the company would shed 4,100 jobs out of 46,000, or about 9% of its workforce. In mid-May, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, had warned that the company would undertake a “thorough reorganization” and flatten its management structure. “To…

The United States is back in supercomputer pole position since last week’s announcement, by the US Department of Energy and IBM, of the Summit, the world’s newest most powerful computer, lapping China’s Sunway TaihuLight. With a peak performance of 200 petaflops, the IBM AC922 uses 4,608 compute…

Google announced a new beta version of Android P which includes updates of existing emojis as well as 157 new emojis, like a skateboard and a lobster. Observant observers observed that the green salad emoji no longer includes a slice of hard-boiled egg; designer Jennifer Daniel, who works on user…

Security researcher Troy Mursch has found that over 115,000 Drupal Web sites — including those of large universities, government organisations and media companies — are wide open to hacker takeovers because they haven’t installed critical security patches released 10 weeks ago. Another researcher…

Microsoft has reached an agreement worth 7.5 billion dollars with GitHub, the source code repository and collaborative software development platform. The all-stock deal should close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval in the US and the EU. Since its inception in 2008, GitHub has…

Yesterday, Asus announced a new motherboard called H370 Mining Master. As its name suggests, it was developed specifically for mining cryptocurrencies. In fact, the motherboard sports a whopping 20 PCIe-over-USB ports supporting as many graphics cards! The arrival of cryptocurrency mining has…

After a long-drawn-out, seven-year battle in the courts, which included a retrial, Samsung has had to pay Apple US$539 million in damages for patent infringement. Samsung was found to have copied two utility and three design features of the ever-popular iPhone; the retrial was necessary to decide…

VPN Filter, a sophisticated malware, uses known vulnerabilities to infect routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, QNAP and TP-Link. Once installed, the malware uses a central infrastructure to install specialized plug-ins on the router. One plug-in allows hackers to listen to their victims’…

British on-line grocery store Ocado has developed an impressive robotic grocery order assembly platform. Videos of its Andover, Hampshire warehouse are mesmerizing: a swarm of 600 robots, coordinated through artificial intelligence, swish back and forth on a rail grid suspended above stacked…

BigRep is a German 3D printing company able to print objects of up to one meter per side on its proprietary large-scale 3D printer, BigRep One. Marco Mattia Cristofori, a designer at BigRep, has developed and printed a honeycomb bicycle tire with no inner tube, making flat tires a thing of the…

Today, Boston Dynamics released two YouTube videos showing the progress made by its Atlas and SpotMini robots. SpotMini’s is more interesting: you see the four-legged bot cruising around autonomously on a designated route across an office and a laboratory. Prior to the test, the robot is manually…

During its annual developer conference, Google officially announced the launch of its Internet of Things platform. Like Android TV, Android Automotive or Wear OS, Android Things is a version of the Android operating system specifically designed to work on connected devices, which don’t really need…

French website MacGeneration has developed a nifty graphic that plots iPhone, iPad and Mac sales from 2007 to today. It shows that sales of Apple phones from 2008 onwards exploded, but seem to have levelled off after 2016. Between 2017 and today, sales have stagnated, though at an astronomical…

On Tuesday, Facebook officially launched Oculus Go, the autonomous virtual reality headset that was first announced last October. Its $199 US price tag (for the 32 GB version) and its ease of use may well make it popular with the masses. You don’t need a high-end smart phone, like you do for the…

Have you ever dreamt about a real-life Transformer? If so, your dreams have come true. A team of three Japanese robotics and design firms has unveiled the J-deite RIDE, a car that transforms into humanoid form. It has been in development since 2014 and was designed by famous mechanical designer…

In 2016, Apple came up with the idea of replacing the handgun emoji with a green plastic water pistol. Now, the days are numbered for the lethal weapon across all platforms. Google has hopped on the bandwagon with its latest Android update, and in distinctive fashion, the water gun is orange. Since…

BBMW has unveiled a prototype motorcycle whose chassis and swingarm are entirely made by additive printing, using selective laser fusion. The company hasn’t yet released much information on this S1000RR Series motorcycle . The uber-futuristic and organic design of the chassis is unprecedented in…

To mark Earth Day, Apple has introduced Daisy, a new robot that disassembles old iPhones, making it easier to re-use and recycle their parts. Housed in an Apple factory in Austin, Texas, Daisy replaces her predecessor Liam, and uses certain components from the old machine. The robot is able to take…

Microsoft has introduced Azure Sphere, a new solution to create connected objects. It’s made up of three main components: microcontrollers (MCUs) which integrate Microsoft security technology (Pluton sub-system), Azure Sphere Security Service, a dedicated cloud service, and Azure Sphere OS which…

A phone manufacturer that innovates in the realm of design and that doesn’t jump on the Apple bandwagon with notches everywhere, is deserving of notice. This being the case, on a prototype of a Doogee phone, you’ll notice the screen slides down to reveal the cameras and the speakerphone. Thanks to…

The cat and mouse game between municipalities and recipients of parking tickets has heated up. Meet the lawyer bots who will challenge parking tickets on your behalf, and who could end up costing cities big bucks. DoNotPay, for example is a free online bot service that streamlines the way you…

In North America, like in Asia, more and more youth between the ages of 18 and 35 live alone. In Korea, this phenomenon is particularly widespread, and researchers are trying to find ways to minimize the sense of isolation. Last month, during the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot…

The BionicWheelBot is a new octopod robot whose design is inspired by the gymnast spider cebrennus rechenbergi, an arthropod discovered a decade ago in the southern Morocco desert, with locomotion that’s adapted to the dunes. The machine is developed by German firm Festo, which has previously…

After starting with Ubuntu, Microsoft has added other Linux distributions that can be used with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux): SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, openSUSE, Debian, Kali Linux. That’s great and all, but if Microsoft didn’t support your favourite distribution, you were out of…

Developed by a team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, SoFi is a soft-bodied robotic fish that can swim independently alongside real fish in the ocean. Its main use is as a research tool to observe marine life without disturbing it. In order to do this, SoFi’s…

This is the conclusion of a long-term study that was just published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. At a time when too many people, including the President of the United States, think that video games are a part of the cause of violence among youth and bloodshed in schools, this is a…

The foundation waited for Pi (π) Day to announce an updated version of Raspberry Pi 3, its first 64-bit ARM processor single-chip nano-computer. Dubbed the model B+, there are no changes to its dimensions, connections, or price ($35 USD, or $46 CDN from BuyaPi.ca and CanaKit). This new device is…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has just announced a milestone for the company’s heavy-duty electric trucks: the first production cargo trip for the Tesla Semi is now underway, with two trucks en route from the Sparks, Nevada Gigafactory, to the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. They are filled with heavy…

Or, to be precise, Microsoft is putting an end to Windows 10 S as a full-fledged operating system, and replacing it with a Windows 10 setting. Windows 10 S, which was launched last year, is a pared-down operating system primarily targeted towards schools, and likely created as competition for…

Two hardware hackers have created a robot that has broken the records for fastest solving of a Rubik’s cube — in 0.38 seconds, which is 40 percent faster than the previous record of 0.637 seconds. In contrast to a human player, who would use a looser cube, the robot works best when the cube was…

It looks like the US has hit peak Facebook and that it won't be getting more users anytime soon. According to new research from the Pew Research Centre, 68 per cent of Americans use Facebook, a number that has remained stagnant for two years. On the other hand, Instagram is growing in popularity -…

Waymo has released a new video that allows you to step into their driverless vans and see what it's like to experience a trip in one of their Chrysler Pacificas, providing a 360-degree view of what the car sees and how it works. Launched in 2009, the company has driven 5 million miles autonomously…

Samsung unveiled its new high-end phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. There weren't any surprises, as most of the Galaxy's features had already been leaked online. Externally, for the S9 as well as the bigger sibling the S9+, there's really not much difference between these models and…

Skydio, a startup launched four years ago by MIT researchers, has announced its first product: the autonomous R1 drone, which is able to automatically follow your movements and film them in 4K. The R1 is equipped with 12 small onboard cameras, and can recognize its environment with a high degree of…

AMD has launched two new four-core Ryzen processors (based on the Zen microarchitecture): the 5 2400G ($169 USD) and the 3 2200G ($99 USD). They are the first of their series to offer an integrated graphics processor (GPU), the Radeon Vega. Like other Ryzen chips, these new processors use the AM4…

In early February, iBoot, which is code from the secure boot-up part of Apple’s iOS mobile operating system, was leaked online and posted to GitHub. Apple sent GitHub a Digital Millennium Act takedown request, thus confirming it was indeed genuine code, and while GitHub did remove the code, it was…

Intel has released a prototype of their smart glasses that look just like a regular pair of glasses, which is good news if you don’t want to turn into a strange cyborg, as with the failed Google Glass. They’re connected via Bluetooth to a phone (Android or iPhone), weigh less than 50 grams, and…

We’re now convinced that the head of Tesla and Space X can sell absolutely anything. Last year, Musk sold 50,000 Boring Company logo caps for $20 each. “After 50k hats, we will start selling The Boring Company flamethrower,” he joked. Today, he made good on his word - he posted a video of himself…

Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, two roboticists who worked as engineers on Google’s autonomous vehicle project (now called Waymo), founded Nuro in 2016. This company is developing a completely autonomous electric vehicle, dubbed R1, that’s purpose-built for deliveries. Ferguson explains, “The last…

At an event in New York, DJI just announced the newest model to join its line-up of drones, the Mavic Air. On the DJI range it rests between the foldable Mavic Pro and the ultra-portable Spark, combining some of the best features of the two. The Mavic Air is equipped with a 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor…

Device manufacturer LG has filed a patent application for a phone with a foldable screen that can be opened like a book, turning into a tablet. The phone has an exterior display that shows the date and time, as well as notifications, when the device is closed. No actual information is available as…

The developers at Misty Robotics, who also brought you Sphero, have created Misty I, an adorable little “advanced personal robot, that’s affordable and easy to program.” It’s targeted towards developers, who can program the device using a JavaScript API. It features multiple sensors, is equipped…

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a firm called Furrion unveiled Prothesis, an enormous four-legged exoskeleton. This strange, mobile monster measures 4.5 metres, weighs in at a whopping 3,620 kilos (watch your toes…) and was clocked at speeds up to 32 km/hr. Its battery life is one…