Tech news in brief

Microsoft announced the release of Azure Dedicated Host. It gives you the option of leasing a physical server just for yourself to host one or more Azure virtual machines. This means that you don’t share any resources on this server with anyone else and you have full control over what is running on…

There’s a cheeky Microsoft advertisement going around that somehow revives the Get a Mac saga that pitted a Mac (played by Justin Long) against a PC (John Hodgman). Surface’s ad creatives found an Australian actor named Mackenzie Book ... “Mac” Book, get it? The whole schtick is based on Mac Book…

Drone delivery is not yet fully developed and this raises legitimate questions about safety. For example, Swiss Post suspended its pilot drone-delivery project following a second crash. For nearly a year, Swiss Post and California startup Matternet were working on a drone delivery service in three…

A leaked internal Windows 10 build (18,947) has revealed a brand new Start menu experience that replaces tiles with a more traditional grid of apps on a grey background. This Start menu, which looks like it’s still in the early stages of development, is believed to be the Start menu that Microsoft…

Apple is in the final stages of negotiations to buy the bulk of Intel’s modem chip business, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Journal says the deal, valued at $1 billion or more, could be finalized in the next week. The deal would involve the transfer of talent as well as modem-related patents.

Barsys, the robotic mixologist, is the perfect party host. It can hold 5 bottles of alcohol and has 3 insulated tanks for mixers (soda, carbonated water or fruit juice). You can control it with a phone or a tablet, via Bluetooth. The application (iOS and Android) offers cocktails based on the…

In August 2018, a reporter for The Intercept revealed that Google was working on an Android search engine for the Chinese market. Responding to the demands of the country’s authorities, the application was supposed to block searches on human rights, peaceful protests, political dissent, democracy…

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…

Nintendo unveiled a more affordable version of its Switch gaming console, which has sold more than 35 million units. Called Switch Lite, it’s for mobile use only (it can’t be plugged into a TV) and costs USD100 less than its older sibling. Also, Joy-Con controllers are built-in. Its screen is a…

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…

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…

The 10th version of the Android OS, dubbed “Q”, is expected to release in its definitive form in Q3 of this year. Reporters from Ars Technica sat down at length with Dave Burke, VP of engineering for Android, Iliyan Malchev, principal engineer at Android, and Anwar Ghuloum, senior director of…

Sony is celebrating the 40th birthday of one of its most iconic products, the Walkman: the first portable music player ever. Released on July 1st, 1979, it revolutionized the way we listen to music, even though we don’t use cassettes or CDs anymore. Nearly every mobile device we carry now can play…

At the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, Chinese builder Oppo unveiled the first-ever phone to have a camera hidden under the screen. Gone is the intrusive notch, thanks to a transparent area on the screen that still has pixels and touch sensitivity. Technologically speaking, Oppo used an…

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…

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed software that can create a 3D animation from a single image of a person. The Photo Wake-Up algorithm, which relies on artificial intelligence of course, also works with any drawing depicting a person and even with a cubist representation…

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…

Lumi is a light-up keyboard with 24 colorful keys that ties into an iPad app to teach you to play the piano, sort of like Guitar Hero. Multiple keyboards can be hooked up together for more octaves, and the unit also functions as a standard MIDI input, which is compatible with all of the usual…

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…

At the E3 show in Los Angeles, AMD unveiled the first two RDNA-architected 5700-series graphics cards. Available as of July 7, the 5700XT (USD450) and 5700 (USD380) are upper-mid-range cards intended to tackle the ever-popular Nvidia cards for gamers, the GeForce RTX 2070 (USD500) and the RTX 2060…

Stadia, Google’s new cloud-based gaming service, will be available as of November, just in time for the Holidays. To be among the first users of the service, you’ll need to pay USD130 up-front to purchase the Founder’s Edition gamepack (already available for pre-order on the Google Store), which…

TU Delft University, in the Netherlands, has unveiled a spectacular V-shaped long-distance commercial airplane. The aircraft’s design integrates the passenger cabin, the cargo hold and the fuel tanks in the wing structure. Its improved aerodynamic shape and reduced weight will mean it uses 20% less…

Chances are, you already know of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) for its Radeon cards. What you perhaps didn’t know is that its graphics technology is also found in the PS4 and Xbox One consoles, and that it will run Stadia, Google’s future cloud gaming service. And, as of tomorrow, AMD’s technology…

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…

Panic is a funny little company. Its creators established themselves thanks to their smart utilities for macOS developers, like the Transmit FTP client and the Coda text editor. Next, they conquered iOS with Prompt, an SSH client. Then, they launched into the realm of gaming – hey, why not? – with…

Autonomous delivery vehicles are nothing new: last August, we wrote about the Nuro delivery service in Arizona. But there was always a missing link – the final stretch from car to doorstep. Now, the Ford motor company has teamed up with Agility Robotics, creators of Cassie, to complement its…

Google’s AR glasses are back, in a enterprise-focused version. The latest Google Glass comes with a larger battery (820mAh, up from 570mAh), a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 processor (a VR/AR-specific SoC) instead of the previous generation’s Intel Atom, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and an 8MP camera. As…

DJI, the well-known drone manufacturer, is breaking into the sports camera market with the Osmo Action, positioned to compete directly with GoPro’s high-end Hero 7 Black. Indeed, all of the DJI’s technical features are equal or slightly superior to the Hero 7 Black: waterproof to 11 metres compared…

Razer’s BlackWidow is an excellent keyboard that comes in several different versions, including the Huntsman Elite, at USD200. As of this year, you can get a new, more affordable model: the BlackWidow Lite, for USD90. This keyboard doesn’t have a number pad, nor the RGB lights that gamers love, but…

After years of delays and problems with its 10nm processors, which had originally been announced for 2016 (Cannon Lake), Intel announced at an investor conference in Santa Clara that the Ice Lake processors will be widely available as soon as June for laptops. This new platform will provide 3 times…

At the I/O conference, Google announced the new Pixel 3a and 3a XL phones, the more affordable versions of the Pixel 3 and 3 XL. What does the A mean? No-one knows. But the point is that these phones keep the superb, high-end Pixel cameras (including the Google Night Sight feature). To make them…

The current Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a Microsoft-created emulation that translates Linux kernel APIs to Windows NT kernel APIs. It works pretty well, but has a few shortcomings in terms of compatibility and speed. But this will soon be a thing of the past: the new WSL will run a true…

Samsung has unveiled a rotating 43-inch TV that works vertically, allowing millenials to watch their vertically-filmed videos on the largest surface possible. The screen swings from portrait to landscape on inclined navy-blue stand. The company intends to sell the Sero for 1.89 million won…

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…

Zipline, the company we spoke of back in 2017, has continued its expansion in Africa, consolidating its success in vast countries with transport infrastructures not always adapted to the emergency delivery of medical products. After Rwanda and Tanzania, Zipline has now started operations in Ghana…

Who doesn’t have an old phone they’re not using, because it’s either obsolete or broken and not worth fixing? Why not turn it into wall art? This is what Reddit user TheIncorporeal has done, patiently taking apart an old iPhone, glueing the parts onto glass and framing it. The result is…

How many SpotMini quadruped robots does it take to pull a 26,000-pound truck across a parking lot? Just 10, shows the video that Boston Dynamics released recently. The company announced that these Spot robots are coming off the production line and will soon be available for all kinds of…

Surface Hub 2S is a Microsoft device that is intended for collaborative work in meetings. It combines several features, including a digital whiteboard and video conferencing, and comes with integrated Teams, Skype and OneNote software. The large 50-inch screen has a definition of 4K (3840 × 2560…

In its annual Theatrical Home Entertainment Market Environment report, the Motion Picture Association of America described an immensely sharp drop-off of physical media sales over the past five years. According to the data, global sales of video disc formats (DVD, Blu-ray, and UltraHD Blu-ray) were…

Close to 90,000 developers from all over the world participated in Stack Overflow’s 2019 survey. Here are the main findings: Python is once again the fastest-growing programming language; it is also the second most loved language, behind Rust. The most popular framework of the year is React.js…

Did you know that you can play Atari games on the dashboard display of a Tesla? This feature appeared last year with version 9 of Tesla’s system software. Back then, the initial list of games included Missile Command, Asteroids, Lunar Lander and Centipede. And since December, you can even connect a…

Between 2009 and 2016, in the United States, Office Depot and OfficeMax stores graciously offered their clients a free computer health check-up, using the PC Health Check software developed by Support.com. Problem is, the software was designed to always detect a virus, whether the computer was…

Chris Capossela, head of Marketing at Microsoft, issued a memo warning employees not to indulge in the traditional April Fool’s pranks on Monday, explaining that this kind of very public practical jokes has very little positive impact on the company’s image, and that they can even trigger bad…

Though fast-food companies often cannibalize each other, for instance when Burger King gobbled up Tim Horton’s in 2014 for 14 billion dollars, it is much rarer to see one scooping up a software development company. The fast-food world was therefore surprised when McDonald’s announced it had bought…

JetPack Aviation is taking advance orders for its flying motorcycle called Speeder, promising delivery next year. The aircraft, equipped with four turbojet engines, a stabilization system and a collision detection system, could reach an altitude of 4,500 m and a top speed of 240 km/h. A…

At the Game Developers Conference, Google introduced not a gaming console but Stadia, an online game service, along with an optional game controller. Stadia, which is based on Project Stream, runs games on Google’s servers and streams video on the Internet. Google promises a resolution of up to 4K…

In Los Angeles, Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off a prototype version of the Model Y, the fourth mass-produced vehicle that the electric car maker will bring to market. As expected, the vehicle will be a larger SUV take on the Model 3, much like the Model X was the larger, SUV version of the Model S.

Razer is launching three new gaming peripherals: a keyboard, a mouse and a headset, all of which are affordable, compared to the usual prices. The low prices don’t mean low quality, but rather reduced functionality in comparison to more expensive models. The mechanical keyboard is an update of…

All the signs suggest that Google might present a game console at the Game Developers Conference taking place March 18 to 22 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. First clue: Google published a video on YouTube that promises to reveal its “vision of the future of gaming” on March 19. Second clue…

Concerned about pollution, police in Fremont, California, have decided to convert their fleet to zero-emission vehicles, starting with no less than the Tesla Model S! Of course, the Tesla catalog doesn’t feature police cars. The administration purchased a second-hand 2014 model for US$ 61,480 and…

Two Azure data centers were brought online in South Africa--one in Cape Town and the other in Johannesburg. This makes Microsoft the first major cloud service provider to enter the African continent. Despite delays (the centers were to open last year), Microsoft still beat Amazon to the finish…

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is back with a new version of its Cheetah robot, the Mini Cheetah, which is unique in being able to do backflips, a first for a quadruped robot. This 9 kg robot is powerful and robust. It can reach speeds of 2.45 m/s (almost 9 km/h). Mini Cheetah…

You can now get a .dev domain name, no doubt the Holy Grail for developers, thanks to Google, which has just opened this extension to all. You can now reserve your .dev domain name through your registrar for the usual price, typically 12 to 15 USD per year. But that’s not all: Google is offering…

Foldable screens aren’t just for telephones anymore. Other applications are being dreamt up, like Nubia Alpha’s smart watch, unveiled at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress. The eSIM version could be thought of as an Android phone with a 960 x 192 OLED 4-inch screen that wraps around the wrist. But…

At the 2019 Unpacked event in San Francisco, Samsung’s presentation of its new collapsible phone stole the show, leaving the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus in the shadows. In shut phone mode, the device has a screen of 4.6 inches (840 x 1,960 pixels). Open in tablet mode, it deploys a 7.3-inch Infinity…

Sphero, known for its ball-shaped educational robots such as the Bolt, has introduced a new robot with a completely different design concept. Called RVR, it is a robust little four-wheeled tank with tracks. Unlike other Sphero robots, the RVR is very expandable: thanks to a universal expansion port…

Based in Seattle, start-up Xnor presented a prototype wireless mini camera that runs entirely on solar energy and can analyze the image captures. The sensor has a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels and is coupled with an FPGA integrated circuit to process images using artificial intelligence…

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…

Mozilla is in the process of deploying Clever-Commit, a machine-learning tool dedicated to hunting down bugs. This software was developed in Montreal by Ubisoft La Forge, the game developer’s research lab, in partnership with Concordia University. Clever-Commit analyzes code changes as developers…

The Raspberry Pi Foundation opened a boutique in the Grand Arcade shopping center in the heart of Cambridge, home of the world’s most famous nano-computer. You can buy the Raspberry Pi, of course, but also additional modules, accessories, books, magazines, objects and gadgets bearing the raspberry…

Unicode finalized a list of 230 new emojis for 2019. That might sound like a lot, but if we don’t count the new variations of colors, skin tones and gender, it’s actually only 59. But these are really essential emojis! How have we gotten this far without a cute otter, an endearing sloth, a sly…

According to the security company Trend Micro, Google has removed 29 malicious Android applications from its Google Play Store. These are applications that in appearance improve and transform photos, but in fact hide malicious features. Of the 29 applications, 11 were downloaded more than 100,000…

iRobot, the maker of the Roomba vacuum, announced Terra, its first autonomous lawnmower. While most autonomous lawnmowers require buried wires in order to define the boundaries of the area to be mowed, the Terra only requires wireless beacons around the perimeter of the lawn, which is much simpler…

Gadgets and gizmos have gradually worked their way into our homes. When they break down or need upgrading, we discard them. But there are unforeseen hazards to throwing out (or recycling, if you have a green conscience) a connected object such as a light bulb or a camera. Even without an electrical…

Apple News, the mobile news application launched in 2015 with iOS 9, was initially exclusive to customers in the United States. Since then, it has been made available in Great Britain and in Australia with iOS 9.1. Today, Apple announced that News will be offered in Canada with iOS 12.2, in English…

DxOMark is known for rigourously testing the quality of cameras and smartphones, but until now, it had ignored the front-facing cameras, mainly used for selfies. The new DxOMark Selfie listing, which scores the 12 most popular devices (for now), ranks the Google Pixel 3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note…

OLED (Organic light-emitting diode) screens for laptops are coming sooner than expected. Samsung’s Displays division announced that next month, it will start producing a 15.6-inch, 4K OLED display for premium laptops (OLED displays being much more expensive than LCD ones). The screen has a…

A youtuber, publishing under the pseudonym Electronic Grenade, designed an absurd laptop--a conceptual work of art, in fact. It’s a mouse that houses a computer with a keyboard and a screen, and the mouse-house doubles as the mouse for the mini computer. The machine consists of a Raspberry Pi Zero…

Bocco Emo is the new generation of emotive robots by the Tokyo start-up Yukai, the same one that designed Qoobo, the petting robot. This new little robot expresses its empathy through gestures and sounds, in response to the user’s voice or text messages. It can also react to emojis. When it…

With the long awaited ramp-up of its 10nm production, Intel was finally able to present some exciting new features at CES Las Vegas that will come out in 2019. The major announcement was the release of Ice Lake chips based on the new Sunny Cove microarchitecture. Look for laptops with Ice Lake…

Area-51m, unveiled at CES in Las Vegas, is going for the gamers’ hardware dream: a game-oriented laptop that lets them swap out the processor (CPU), the graphics card (GPU), the storage (HDD) and the memory (RAM). In short, a laptop that offers all the flexibility and scalability of a desktop…

To mark the end of the year, Google is offering a little game in the form of a multiple-choice quiz that lets you test your knowledge (or your hunches) about the most popular Internet searches in 2018. Did users google Justin Trudeau or Justin Bieber? Laurel or Yanny? You have 10 seconds to answer…

According to Bloomberg, next year, LG Electronics plans to start selling a 65-inch TV screen that can, at the touch of a button, roll up and disappear into a box. The device uses OLED technology, which makes for screens that are much more flexible than LCDs. LG showed a functional prototype at CES…

Serve is an experimental robot by Postmates, an American courier delivery company. The future of this kind of delivery robot outside of highly protected environments is doubtful, but with its design that is indubitably reminiscent of Wall-E, its big round eyes and its yellow body, it’s fetching.

SplashData analyzed more than 5 million passwords that were leaked on the Internet, and just like the seven previous years the company has reviewed the data, people continue to set predictable, easy-to-guess passwords that rely on strings of letters and numbers that are close to each other on…

Puma is reissuing a limited edition of its RS-Computer running shoe, originally released in 1986. These shoes, which wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Stranger Things, had a strange protrusion on the heel of the right shoe that housed an electronic pedometer recording the number of steps…

Cryptocurrencies are undoubtedly an idea before its time, but their potential has yet to show its value. These past weeks have been brutal on the stock market and cryptocurrencies are slipping as well. Ethereum network’s currency, ether, fell below USD 100 for the first time since May 2017. Its…

Qualcomm officially unveiled its new Snapdragon 855 SoC. It will ship with the next generation of top-of-the-line Android phones, most likely starting with the Samsung Galaxy S10. As with Apple’s A12, its 7 nanometer process will make the processor more energy efficient compared to the previous 10…

There’s a lot of talk about self-driving cars, but the revolution has also spread to other modes of transport. In Norway, the Folgefonn, an 85-meter ferry belonging to the Norled company, autonomously sailed to three different ports of call. All maneuvers, including the approach and docking, were…

Microsoft has won a $480 million contract to develop a HoloLens-type augmented reality prototype for use in combat and military training for the US Army. According to Bloomberg, the agreement could eventually lead to the purchase of over 100,000 units that would “increase lethality by enhancing the…

If you’ve been following us, you know how much we’re liking SpotMini, Boston Dynamic’s four-legged critter. So we sat up when we heard of the idea to transform it into some creepy centaur. The Italian startup Youbionic came up with a torso and two arms with hands that mount to the back of a…

Nera is an electric motorcycle that is entirely 3D printed. Like the bicycle tire we wrote about in May, this motorcycle is the work of BigRep, a German company that distributes big Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printers, which can produce objects as large as a cubic meter. Everything but the…

In a post published on his personal blog, Bill Gates admits liking Silicon Valley, the popular HBO series that follows the tribulations of the startup Pied Piper. “The show is a parody, so it exaggerates things, but like all great parodies it captures a lot of truths. Most of the different…

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+, a single-board nanocomputer using an ARM processor. Its goal is to offer something more affordable and less cumbersome than its Pi 3 Model B+. Introduced at US$ 25, it’s 10 bucks less than the Model B+ and its footprint is also…

Just over a month since its initial release, Microsoft is making the Windows 10 October Update (the new name for the old “Fall Creators Update”) once again available, but only for select customers (those skilled users who manually tell their system to check for updates). The update was withdrawn…

Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute (AIST) has developed a humanoid robot able to take on a variety of tasks typically performed on construction and renovation sites. Called HRP-5P, it can be seen putting up drywall in a video (link below). The work, though slow, seems…

Netgear unveiled its first 802.11ax-compatible routers, the new standard recently renamed Wi-Fi 6. Though the Nighthawk AX8 and Nighthawk AX12 are very high-end routers, we’re not impressed so much with their function as with their form: with their sleek “wings”, they look like they’ve come…

At Microsoft’s Future Decoded conference taking place in London, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that underwater server farms are part of the company's plans for future data centers. He cites the proximity of humans to water: half of the world's population lives within 200 km of a coast. Being…

IBM announced its intent to acquire Linux’s Red Hat for the handsome sum of $34 billion. Red Hat, started in 1994, made a name for itself with its eponymous Linux distribution which was widely used until its phase-out in 2004. With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution, the company focused on…

Following a rough patch caused by CEO Elon Musk’s series of bad PR moves, Tesla finally has some good news: it’s in the black. Last Wednesday, the electric car manufacturer published its quarterly returns, unveiling revenues of close to 6.8 billion dollars, far more than the forecast 6.33 billion.

Just like we do, IEEE Spectrum magazine loves robots. Its team just launched a new web site featuring about 200 robots that aims to be a core reference for robotics enthusiasts. For each robot, you’ll find a description along with photos and even videos. The collection includes Unimate (1961), the…

Apple is paying $300 million in cash for a portion of Dialog, including licensing power-management technologies, assets, and more than 300 employees. The company will advance an additional $300 million cash flow as an upfront for the components it will purchase over the next three years. The…

Since the departure of Steve Ballmer, who was of the opinion that Linux was the pox for anything related to intellectual property, it’s been a veritable honeymoon between Microsoft and Linus Torvald’s brainchild. Latest installment in this new love affair: the Redmond firm announces that it signed…

Though it’s been quiet, Google Plus, the social network launched in 2011 to counter Facebook’s dominance, still exists. But not for much longer. After the Wall Street Journal reported that Google exposed the private details of some 500,000 Google+ users from 2015 to March 2018, Google has decided…

According to a report by Sandvine, 15% of the total volume of data traffic is consumed by Netflix—an indicator of how video dominates the internet. And right behind Netflix’s number-one position worldwide--yet more video services. In second place, with 13% of the bandwidth, is what Sandvine calls…

HP unveiled a new ultra-thin laptop computer, usable as a tablet, with a leather cover on the outside. Integral to the design, the thick leather sheet is not removable. It even has a functional purpose: it attaches the screen to the body, acting as a stiff hinge at its midpoint. This is a striking…

Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially launched their company on September 4, 1998, headquartered in their friend Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park, California. Now, on Google’s 20th birthday, you can see the legendary garage on Street View, restored in all its…

The famous Rubik’s cube, invented in 1974 in Hungary by Ernő Rubik, an architect and professor of design, has been sold by the hundreds of millions. Today, it is practically being reinvented: thanks to the ingeniousness of a Japanese engineer, the puzzle now comes equipped with internal actuators…

Using Linux on Windows 10 has never been easier. With the Fall Creators update, the Hyper-V Quick Create function, which offers three-click creation of Virtual Machines, now offers a Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS system image specifically configured for this operating mode and ready to install. This VM builds…

Do you still have money to burn after you’ve purchased the new iPhone X? You now need a case worthy of your new device and we have it all dialed in for you: the Gray brand out of Singapore offers titanium cases with a starting price of CA$1,130 for the grey model, topping out at CA$3,900 for the…

In the upcoming version of Windows 10, set to launch in October, when you try to install Chrome or Firefox, a large window will pop up with the message, “You already have Microsoft Edge – the safer, faster browser for Windows 10.” You’ll then have two choices: the default option, in blue, “Open…

Samsung is releasing a tracker – a tag allowing you to locate the object it is attached to – that’s powered by LTE-M network, unlike other, competing trackers, like Tile Mate, that work with Bluetooth and have a limited range of a couple of hundred feet. LTE-M (or LTE Cat-M1) is a network…

The Scoobe3D is an affordable, handset-sized 3D scanner that is touted to be accurate to an outstanding 0.1mm. This accuracy is delivered through a combination of three technologies: time of flight, photogrammetry and polarized 3D. Scoobe3D can scan objects of up to two cubic yards, including those…

Just one month after Apple, Amazon passed a market value of 1 trillion dollars yesterday. After 24 years of operation, the company is the second in history to reach the symbolic milestone of 1,000 billion dollars (1012). Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, Amazon was initially an on-line bookstore…

Though this toy is ostensibly for children aged 8 and up, we believe that children of all ages will love it! Created by Mattel, Alpha Training Blue is a robotic velociraptor weighing 4lbs and standing a foot high with its beak turned to the sky. It is controlled with a real joystick with an…

At the IFA show in Berlin, Acer unveiled an impressive gaming armchair called Predator Thronos. It looks like a cockpit equipped with a seat that reclines to 140°, and three 27-inch screens providing a panoramic view that wraps around the player for a fully immersive sensation. A control panel…

Lithium-ion batteries have made headlines for the wrong reason: as a fire hazard. Lithium-ion batteries store much more energy than previous chemistries could manage, making them crucial to the future success of phones, drones, electric cars, etc. The hope is to develop batteries with at least the…

After a year of wild speculation that saw Bitcoin and Ethereum reach new highs, 2018 has been a disaster for cryptocurrencies. The trend was reversed at the beginning of the year and their value started dropping, and never stopped. Today, the market cap of all cryptocurrencies put together is 191…

“Where’s Waldo?” is a series of picture books created by Martin Handford. The idea is to find the main character, Waldo, in an image. The problem is that each image is crammed with hundreds of people and objects, making it tough to quickly find Waldo, and keeping the kids engrossed for hours. Now…

On Wednesday, Anki unveiled its new robot, Vector, which looks a lot like the adorable Cozmo. Just like Cozmo, Anki reminds us of a palm-sized WALL-E, but with far more features. Vector comes with a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon, a wide-angle HD camera, an infrared laser for mapping and…

To the dismay of those who still believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Earth is flat, Google has given up the Mercator projection for its mapping services. If you zoom out on the web version, you’ll find that Earth is now a globe. This has the advantage of avoiding many of the…

Last May, Google removed its long-time unofficial motto, “Don’t be evil”, from the company’s corporate code of conduct. Just wait until you know why. To satisfy the Chinese government’s strict Internet censorship rules, Google has developed a custom, China-only Android search application that…

In the late morning of Thursday, August 2, 2018, Apple made history when its share price hit US$207.05 on Wall Street, becoming the first company to ever be worth one trillion (1012) dollars. Not bad for a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s, when its founder, Steve Jobs…

This quarter, Facebook had 185 million users in the U.S. and Canada, roughly the same number as in the first quarter. North America is Facebook’s most lucrative market by far, with the average user generating US$25.91 in revenue. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that the number of users stays…

The first smart device running on Android Things is here. The “Smart Display” is a smart speaker with built-in touchscreen, like Amazon’s Echo Show, but using Google Assistant. Android Things is a lite version of the Android system, specifically developed for connected objects. Smart Display is…

Good news for gamers! Thanks to a dampening of speculation activity on cryptocurrencies, the price of graphics cards (which are used massively for mining) is coming back down from its stratospheric levels. The Radeon RX 570, a popular mid-range graphics card, had gone from under US$200 in April…

Behind the CurlicueCal handle is a Doctor in Entomology specialized in ant behaviour. Recently, CurlicueCal posted ratings of various ant emojis on her Tumblr page: Microsoft’s, Apple’s, Facebook’s, Twitter’s and others. From a myrmecological point of view, the worst emoji is Mozilla’s, since it’s…

Tuesday July 17 was World emoji Day, and to celebrate, Apple emojified its entire leadership team. From Tim Cook to Eddy Cue, through Craig Federighi and Jonathan Ive, every last director was replaced by memojis, avatars that can be personalised to turn people into emojis. Memojis came out with iOS…

It looks like Microsoft is out to overtake Slack on the enterprise chatting and messaging market, offering Microsoft Teams for free. Of course, the free version has some limitations, but they are far less restrictive than Slack’s. For example, Microsoft doesn’t limit the number of archived messages…

David Zarrouk, professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, unveiled Rising STAR, a robot with amazing locomotion skills that can crawl like a turtle or roll on wheels, as it pleases. The neatest aspect of its locomotion is its variable geometry, with allows it to select a locomotion strategy…

CNBC has produced a story on the world’s largest collection of Apple prototypes. Over the last 10 years, Henry “Hap” Plain collected over 250 prototypes of Apple products, which are rare items by definition. Aside from numerous Macintoshes, there are also Apple IIs, Lisas, Ipods, iPhones, a Newton…

What is old is new again, at least if you ask Amazon. After the demise of the Toys ‘R Us chain, the online retailer is stepping up to try to fill the void. This holiday season, the e retail giant is releasing a massive old-fashioned hard copy toy catalogue, which will be sent to “millions” of its…

Samsung smartphones are no longer spontaneously combusting, but another weird and disturbing quirk has arisen: some users have had their pictures randomly sent to others. According to complaints on Reddit and on official Samsung forums, several Samsung phone users, including those with recent…

After breaking his phone, Philip Frenzel, a 25-year-old student of mechatronics engineering at the University of Aalen, in Germany, invented a “mobile airbag” that automatically deploys when you drop your phone, protecting it from damage. Frenzel wanted a better system than protective cases, which…

Wi-Fi devices have been using the same security protocol for over a decade. But today, that’s about to change: the Wi-Fi Alliance, which oversees the adoption of the Wi-Fi standard, will start certifying products that support WPA3, the successor to the WPA2 security protocol in use since 2004. One…

At the University of Tokyo’s JSK Lab, roboticists have developed a robot called DRAGON. This flying, modular robot can literally transform on the fly, for example stretching out from a square to a snake to pass through a narrow opening, then changing shapes again on the other side. The modules…

To obtain quality slow motion in a 24 fps video, you need to film at a rate of 48 fps. And to capture split-second events like the bursting of a balloon, you will need thousands of frames per second using expensive, specialized equipment. This is why Nvidia created a new, deep learning-based AI…

There’s also good news in Elon Musk’s world: The Boring Company, its tunnel-boring outfit, has won its first contract. On Thursday, the City of Chicago announced that the Mayor’s office had chosen Musk’s company to build an express line from Block 37, downtown, to O’Hare International Airport. The…

Apple is planning to add a new feature to iOS, an enhanced version of the “USB Restricted Mode” that appeared in beta iOS 11.4.1, making it much harder for law enforcement officers to access data on locked iPhones. If your future iOS 12 remains locked for over an hour, the feature will…

The leak of internal Microsoft documents has given us an idea of what new hardware the company has in store for us. A new version of its HoloLens AR headset, code-named Sydney, should hit the market in the first quarter of 2019, for developers and maybe even for the public at large. The new headset…

Good news: Linux app support is now available for Samsung’s Chromebook Plus. Mind you, it’s still not standard, nor will most Chromebook users want it. To obtain it, you’ll have to specify you want the developer version of Chrome OS, enable beta and experimental things, and use the Terminal to…

At Computex 2018, Nvidia unveiled two new products: Nvidia Isaac, a new development platform, and the Jetson Xavier, an artificial intelligence computer, both designed to power autonomous robots that navigate the real world. The Isaac platform is a suite of software tools to develop and train…

Time magazine’s latest issue features a piece on the explosion of drones in our culture and, to illustrate the point, the cover was made with 958 illuminated drones, and a 959th one to take a photo of them. The drones all hover in formation to recreate a 100-meter high cover, complete with red and…

EDG, a New York architecture and engineering firm, has developed a 3D printing process to restore the city’s architectural gems. Thanks to a 3D scanning laser, software like 3DSMax and Rhino as well as specialized algorithms, EDG is able to print moulds for complex ornamental architectural details.

After the wheels comes the frame: Arevo, a Silicon Valley startup, has just unveiled a carbon-fiber bicycle frame fabricated using additive manufacturing, a world first. The company has taken a standard six-axis robotic arm and equipped it with a deposition head of their own design. The head can…

According to Bloomberg, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) started mass production of new generation processors ahead of the launch of the new iPhone later this year. The chip, which is expected to be called the A12, will probably be the first to use a 7-nanometre process in a mobile…

Russian handset company Caviar, whose claim to fame is flamboyant, pricy devices, has developed its “Tesla” model of the iPhone X, its first equipped with photoelectrical cells. The large solar panel on the back powers a dedicated battery, which in turn charges the iPhone X battery with a press of…

Researchers with the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and Intel have developed a deep neural network that brightens ultra-low light images without adding noise and other artifacts. The network was trained using over 5,000 pairs of images, each with an under-exposed and a longer exposure…

Chinese phone manufacturer ZTE Corporation, which was founded in 1985 and employs 75,000 people, has announced it’s shutting down operations, and is likely headed for bankruptcy, unless there’s a drastic turnaround from the Trump Administration. ZTE is the second largest player in the smartphone…

A new world record for the Rubik’s cube has been set by Feliks Zemdegs, who solved the cube in 4.22 seconds. This isn’t the first world record for the 22-year old professional “speedcuber” from Australia – he previously won the world record at 4.73 seconds back in 2016. This year he stepped up his…

Creating deep learning models is difficult and time-consuming. You’ll need the time to master many skills before you even start, and the learning curve for the techniques is quite steep. Some talented artificial intelligence engineers have recently unveiled the Lobe web application, which aims to…

Misty Robotics, an offshoot of Sphero, recently announced Misty II, the second generation of its programmable robot, which was first introduced at the CES last January. It’s a more refined version, targeted to a wider audience, but still heavy on the programming and the robotics. The robot is…

Her name is Vera, and she’s able to interview up to 1,500 candidates each day. She’s even able to check out profiles on employment websites, sift though applications and send out personalized emails. She can work 7 days a week, without the slightest sign of fatigue. Her secret? She’s a…

The next version of Microsoft’s Windows 10 will include a new “Lean edition” developed for devices with less storage space. It will be offered to OEMs for use in low-cost laptops and tablets. This slimmed-down Windows 10 is aimed at devices with 16 GB of storage space, as the Lean system only takes…

There are two kinds of people: those who love putting together Ikea furniture and derive a sense of pride and satisfaction from it, and those who absolutely hate it and find it a stressful, unnecessarily challenging experience. Now, thanks to Singaporean robotics researchers, we can add a third…

Researchers at the University of Maryland, with the US Army Research Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, have unveiled a new zinc and water “aqueous zinc” battery that combines the best properties of zinc and lithium ion batteries. The result is a battery with a long…

When giving directions, we often use landmark buildings and businesses: “You’ll be taking a left after the pharmacy,” “Take a right just after McDonalds,” “Once you get to the church, stick to the left,” etc. Google Maps has decided to test this way of doing things and users have been surprised by…

Yes, we totally agree, this type of geeky thing really serves no purpose, but it’s fascinating nevertheless. A French hacker came up with the idea of running Mac OS 8.1, which dates from 1998, on the iPhone X, with an emulation of a Quadra 900, a Mac from 1991 with a 68040 Motorola processor. The…

Louis Vuitton, the leather maker best known for its overpriced handbags and luggage emblazoned with loud monograms that turn you into a walking billboard for the luxury brand, is venturing into high tech with the same formula: overpriced and monogrammed. It has launched LV Echo, a $425 CAD luggage…

The storm clouds are gathering over Tesla. At the beginning of April, its stock tumbled below $260 US, wiping out all of its gains from the past year, while last June it was soaring at more than $380 US. Its market capitalization has dipped back below GM’s and is now at about the same level as…

Huawei presented its two new high-end phones in Paris in front of a crowd of 1500 journalists at the majestic Grand Palais. They both run on Android 8.1; the P20 Pro has an OLED screen and the P20 an LCD, but both display the same resolution (2,240 x 1,080). Like the iPhoneX and many other…

IBM has unveiled the world’s smallest computer — a device the size of a grain of salt. Presented at the Think 2018 conference in Las Vegas, the chip measures only 1x1mm, but has the processing power of an x86, i.e. that of the first IBM desktop computers from the 1990s, altogether respectable…

Bloomberg has revealed that Apple has a secret manufacturing plant in Santa Clara, California, where it designs and creates its own screens using MicroLED technology. It’s likely doing this to sidestep Samsung and its OLED screens in future devices. It’s well known that the company wants to…

Shelly is a South Korean robot-tortoise that was created to teach young children to respect robots. The idea is to reduce or eliminate aggressive behaviours during interactions with the creature. Shelly is a toy that’s fun to play with and that lights up when petted, but just like a real turtle…

Now you too can own a replica of HAL-9000, the evil supercomputer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is also a virtual assistant that can control your home. Employees from the now-defunct Master Replicas, which created a range of props from Star Wars and Star Trek, have created a new company that’s…

If you’re thinking of jumping into the cryptocurrency mining business, here’s an added bonus: you can heat your entire house by using a cryptocurrency mining rig with a wall-mounted radiator. Qarnot’s QC-1 “crypto heater” is one sleek-looking radiator, with a wooden top and matte-black finish, and…

Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) technology enables websites to load quickly on mobile devices. Today, the company announced that it is working to do away with the shortcomings of this technology by creating a standard that everyone can use. The main criticism levelled at AMP is that it uses…

Google’s Chrome browser is now compiled with Clang on Windows. It replaces the Microsoft Visual C ++ compiler; the same compiler will be used by Google going forward for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android. No doubt this makes Chrome the first major software project to use Clang on Windows. For a…

The new 4G LTE Light Phone 2 is simple and minimalist, radically design, equipped with a nice matte screen backlit with E-Ink, and weighs about 80 grams. The premise of this phone is to allow you to "reclaim your life", because without Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, and Candy Crush, Saga or…

Vulkan is the open graphics API that replaced OpenGL and is supported by all platforms, except iOS and macOS, as Apple uses its own Metal API. Game developers who want to create iOS or macOS versions have to use either Metal, which requires a lot of porting work, or OpenGL. Unfortunately, the…

Sony’s Koov is a kit made up of over 300 pieces (see-through bricks, wheels, gears, sensors, motors, etc.) created to teach robotics and programming to youth ages 8–14. The kit comes with 23 plans for robots, but nothing prevents users from developing their own plans —on the contrary. At its core…

Pixel phones generated a lot of buzz in the media, earning praise for their undeniable features, but the commercial success of the phones remains actually quite modest and has relegated Google to being a minor player in the market. According to Francisco Jeronimo, Research Director with IDC, Google…

Boston Dynamics has posted a video on Youtube depicting an interaction between two SpotMinis, those agile and graceful four-legged robots. The video, entitled, “Hey buddy, can you give me a hand,” shows a SpotMini heading towards a closed door and seeming vexed at not being able to open it. Then…

Cleo Robotics has released a tiny, donut-shaped compact drone that can fit in the palm of your hand (it measures 95 mm in diameter, 33 mm thick, weighing 90 grams). It’s got a single pair of propellers on the same axis, housed inside a ring-shaped casing; it can fit in your pocket without having to…

Nissan has developed a nifty system that sends slippers to their rightful place at the entryway of a traditional Japanese inn (or ryokan) all by themselves, with the click of a button. Each slipper is outfitted with tiny wheels, a motor and sensors, which enables it to cross the floor using…

At the beginning of last year, HMD Global, the Chinese manufacturer that exploits the Nokia brand, brought back the Finnish brand’s iconic model - the 3310, a sturdy, no frills and cheap phone which sold 126 million units during its heyday. After it came out with the 2G and 3G models, HDM Global…

Lixies are number displays modelled on good old Nixie tubes. They use WS2812B smart LEDs, the light from which is directed to a stack of acrylic sheets. The pros: they’re cheaper, sturdier, longer-lasting, multicoloured and only need a low voltage (5 V vs 170 V for a Nixie tube). They’re designed…

According to a report from the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, we now spend almost an entire day each week online. The 15th annual report sheds some light on how our online behaviours are changing. Since 2000, the amount of time we spend online every week has risen from 9.4 hours to…

Ars Technica looks back on a prediction made in 2012, which at the time generated a lot of press: that the era of video game consoles was coming to an end. Time has proven this wrong, of course, as the game console market is thriving these days. NPD analysts noted that the US market for videogames…

A new set of AR smart glasses, dubbed the Blade, was recently unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by display provider Vuzix. Unlike previous versions developed by the company, the entire display and its power source are contained within the eyewear frames. Vuzix worked with…

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Japanese startup Xenor unveiled a smart shirt with 14 sensors that can transform your torso into a video game controller. While the device seems limited in its current iteration, it’s clearly blazing a trail for future VR games. Even if Circuit…

After an agonizing six-year wait, a $1.9 B investment and development shrouded in secrecy, startup company Magic Leap has, at long last, unveiled the design of its AR headset. The company is playing it coy on the technology and how the headset actually works, which makes it difficult to envision…

Facebook is beefing up its use of facial recognition technology, and will now alert you if a friend, or a friend of a friend, uploads a picture with you in it, even if you weren’t tagged in the photo. If you aren’t OK with the publication of that photo, you’ll be able to hide it. If someone uploads…

Within the Apple family, the iMac has always been the all-in-one entry-level model, right from the birth of the “Bondi Blue” iMac G3 19 years ago, with its daring design and translucent enclosure. Now, the iMac is all grown up: the impressive Pro carries a price tag of 6,300 CAD for the base model…

Paper Signals is an open-source Google project that allows you to build voice controlled folded paper objects; origami you can direct vocally. Using your voice, you can order these cute little guys to track the weather, bitcoin or rocket launches, for example. Experienced techies use the open…

A web developer has just posted a video on DIY website howchoo, featuring his creation that’s a hybrid of Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa and Furby, the talking stuffed animal that was once on many children’s Christmas toy lists.

Remember last month’s brouhaha about the cheeseburger emoji for Android 8.0, when Google’s designers had the audacity to put the cheese slice under the beef patty? Right away, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was in full damage control mode; Google’s restaurant in Mountain View even temporarily adapted its…

Last June, it was rumoured that Toyota was on the verge of acquiring robot-maker Boston Dynamics, which at the time was a subsidiary of Alphabet-Google. SoftBank ended up sealing that deal, but that hasn’t dampened Toyota’s robotic ambitions, as shown by its continued heavy investment in robotics…

Last night, in an airport hangar in Hawthorne, CA., Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a stylish prototype electric semi-truck that he said will travel 800 km (500 miles) on a full charge of its lithium-ion battery pack, go zero to 100 km/h (60 mph) in 20 seconds fully loaded, and charge most of the way…

Robot-maker Boston Dynamics, which is now owned by Japanese tech giant SoftBank, just posted a short YouTube clip showing off a new version of its four-legged robot, SpotMini. This robot, first unveiled in June 2016, became famous for its dramatic wipeout on a banana peel.

Slovakian firm Kinazo Designs has unveiled the “Enduro e1”, a stylish e-bike, created using 3D printing and available for approximately $23,500 USD. Volkswagen Slovakia helped the firm develop the bike through the loan of their X Line 2000R 3D laser printer from Concept Laser, that uses…

Razer, the well-known gaming company, unveiled its first smartphone, simply called Razer Phone. The introduction of an Android phone by a company known for its gaming-oriented PCs, keyboards and mice is the result of Razer’s January purchase of Nextbit, a start-up founded by former Google and HTC…

Yamaha has developed a professional robot motorcycle rider. The robot hunches over an unmodified bike, sensing the environment, calculating what to do, keeping the bike stable, managing acceleration and deceleration—all the while factoring in road conditions, air resistance, and engine braking. The…

Google’s DeepMind lab has developed AlphaGo Zero, an artificial intelligence programme that is exceptional because it was able to teach itself to play Go. Google says the programme independently acquired “superhuman abilities”, becoming virtually unbeatable in just a few days.

Ever see a roach on its back, flailing its legs around helplessly? Ron Fearing, of UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, has the answer to their prayers: a tail. Biomimetic Millisystems has been working on cockroach robots for years. At IROS 2017, it presented a roach with a tail, able to…

Sony launched its original robot dog, Aibo, in 1999. It was lovable and was an immediate hit, especially in Japan, where 10 different models were available until 2005. But it wasn’t cheap. For example, the ERS-7 model, launched in 2003, cost US$1,600 (but still found 45,000 forever homes).

apanese company Omron has developed a table tennis robot called Forpheus, which will not only play with you but also teach, coach and encourage you along the way. Forpheus (“Future Omron Robotics technology for Exploring Possibility of Harmonized aUtomation with Sinic theoretics”) uses a robotic…

We didn’t expect a new Sphero robot so soon after the recent announcement of the BB-9E and R2-D2. Yet the company has just announced the arrival of a new addition to the Star Wars family: the R2-Q5, an Imperial Astromech Droid that made its debut back in 1983 in Return of the Jedi and looks like a…