Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads
June 24th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: Google is stopping one of the most controversial advertising formats: ads inside Gmail that scan users’ email contents. The decision didn’t come from Google’s ad team, but from its cloud unit, which is angling to sign up more corporate customers. Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud sells a package of office software, called G Suite, […]
Amazon: Delivery Drone ‘Beehives’?
June 23rd, 2017Via: The Verge: Amazon’s drone delivery program stopped being a joke a while ago, but the company still has to overcome serious challenges to make the technology actually work. One of these is getting drones near enough to large populations so they’re more efficient than regular road delivery. Amazon has an idea for that though: […]
Facial Recognition Is Coming to U.S. Airports, Fast-Tracked by Trump
June 21st, 2017Via: The Verge: Soon, it may be hard for visa holders to board an international flight without submitting to a facial geometry scan. Customs and Border Protection began testing facial recognition systems at Dulles Airport in 2015, then expanded the tests to New York’s JFK Airport last year. Face-reading check-in kiosks will be appearing at […]
How Just 14 People Make 500,000 Tons of Steel a Year in Austria
June 21st, 2017Via: Bloomberg: The plant, a two-hour drive southwest of Vienna, will need just 14 employees to make 500,000 tons of robust steel wire a year—vs. as many as 1,000 in a mill with similar capacity built in the 1960s. Inside the facility, red-hot metal snakes its way along a 700-meter (2,297-foot) production line. Yet the […]
Life and Death in Apple’s Forbidden City
June 18th, 2017In other news, Taiwan’s Foxconn, Assembler of iPhones, Considering Wisconsin Plant. Via: Guardian: In an extract from his new book, Brian Merchant reveals how he gained access to Longhua, the vast complex where iPhones are made and where, in 2010, unhappy workers started killing themselves. Research Credit: EG
Australia: Tesla Powerpack Trial on Transgrid Network
June 17th, 2017Via: Electrek: Now we learn that Tesla has won the latest contract with Transgrid, the company operating the NSW transmission grid, in order to deploy Powerpack stations at several sites across New South Wales. They announced this week that the first installation will be a relatively small 250kW/500KWh Powerpack station at the City of Sydney’s […]
Advanced CIA Firmware Has Been Infecting Wi-Fi Routers for Years
June 15th, 2017Via: Ars Technica: Home routers from 10 manufacturers, including Linksys, DLink, and Belkin, can be turned into covert listening posts that allow the Central Intelligence Agency to monitor and manipulate incoming and outgoing traffic and infect connected devices. That’s according to secret documents posted Thursday by WikiLeaks. CherryBlossom, as the implant is code-named, can be […]
Japan Passes Controversial Bill Boosting Surveillance Powers
June 15th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government passed controversial legislation that gives prosecutors the power to monitor and arrest people in the planning stages of crimes. As dawn broke in Tokyo on Thursday, bleary-eyed lawmakers voted to pass the so-called anti-conspiracy bill, which the government says is needed to bolster counter-terrorism precautions ahead of […]
Taiwan’s Foxconn, Assembler of iPhones, Considering Wisconsin Plant
June 14th, 2017I wonder if they’ll use the suicide prevention nets on the buildings? Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress. On a more serious note, my guess is that the plant will be centered around robotic manufacturing and the thousands of workers thing is being thrown out there […]
The Machine of Tomorrow Today: Quantum Computing on the Verge
June 14th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: These are early days, to be sure. As of late May, the number of quantum computers in the world that clearly, unequivocally do something faster or better than a classical computer remains zero, according to Scott Aaronson, a professor of computer science and director of the Quantum Information Center at the University of […]
