All Things Tech

When you think of an old radio it’s possible you imagine a wooden-cased tube radio receiver as clustered around by a 1940s family anxious for news from the front, or maybe even a hefty 19-inch rack casing for a “boat anchor” ham radio transmitter. But neither of those are really old radios, for that we must go back another few decades to the first radios. Radio as demonstrated by Giulielmo Marconi didn’t use tubes and it certainly didn’t use transistors, instead it used an induction coil and a spark gap. It’s a subject examined in depth by [The Plasma Channel] and [Blueprint], as they come together to build and test a pair of spark gap transmitters . This is a collaboration between two YouTube channels, so we’ve put videos from both below the break.They both build simple spark gap transmitters and explain the history behind them, as well as running some tests in RF-shielded locations. The transmitters are fairly crude affairs in that while they both use electronic drives for their in

Researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab developed a web tool that leverages AI to add, delete, and modify objects in photos. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2KOFt1c

For years, Google has been rumored to be working internally on a third operating system. Traces of this OS started to pop up in Google’s official source code repositories but third-party developers had to piece the clues together themselves. It was only at I/O 2019 last May that Google even acknowledged Fuchsia’s existence. Now the development engine may be picking … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/3035Rbj

Japan’s trade ministry said today that it will restrict the export of some tech materials to South Korea, including polyimides used in flexible displays made by companies like Samsung Electronics. The new rules come as the two countries argue over compensation for South Koreans forced to work in Japanese factories during World War II. The list of restricted supplies, expected to go into effect on July 4, includes polyimides used in smartphone and flexible organic LED displays, and etching gas and resist used to make semiconductors. That means Japanese suppliers who wish to sell those materials to South Korean tech companies such as Samsung, LG and SK Hynix will need to submit each contract for approval. Japan’s government may also remove South Korea from its list of countries that have fewer restrictions on trading technology that might have national security implications, reports Nikkei Asian Review. Earlier this year, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled several Japanese companies ,

Are you the type of mobile user who envisions greater productivity and creativity with a digital pen? Have you always dreamed of owning a Samsung Galaxy Note but left aghast at the never decreasing price tag? The good news is LG has been making affordable phones with very thin pointing sticks. Better news is that phone maker has just launched … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2xmQoqo

There are some features on Android that iOS users would have loved to be on their platform but there is one persistent iOS feature that has yet to take flesh on Google’s mobile OS. Sharing images and sometimes files to other apps and contacts within those apps are relatively easy on Android but doing the same between Android devices isn’t. … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2IZUyuA

Oculus and Force Field VR have ported their Anne Frank educational experience to Oculus Quest. It's free on Oculus platforms. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2XbqeB5

Even though machine learning AKA ‘deep learning’ / ‘artificial intelligence’ has been around for several decades now, it’s only recently that computing power has become fast enough to do anything useful with the science. However, to fully understand how a neural network (NN) works, [Dimitris Tassopoulos] has stripped the concept down to pretty much the simplest example possible – a 3 input, 1 output network – and run inference on a number of MCUs, including the humble Arduino Uno. Miraculously, the Uno processed the network in an impressively fast prediction time of 114.4 μsec! Whilst we did not test the code on an MCU, we just happened to have Jupyter Notebook installed so ran the same code on a Raspberry Pi directly from [Dimitris’s] bitbucket repo. He explains in the project pages that now that the hype about AI has died down a bit that it’s the right time for engineers to get into the nitty-gritty of the theory and start using some of the ‘tools’ such as Keras, which have now

At WWDC 2019, Apple was largely praised for turning privacy from an add-on feature to a service. The biggest proof of that was its “Sign in with Apple”, its attempt to overthrow Google and Facebook logins in iOS and macOS apps. Underneath, it used a version of the OpenID Connect specification to make secure logins possible. But according to the … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2JeAovR

Apple has just started its recall of a number of MacBook Pros yet here comes another problem ailing another set of Apple notebooks. Fortunately, it’s nothing dangerous to deserve a recall but probably still aggravating for owners. A number of MacBook Airs hailing from 2018 have been specifically marked as having issues with their logic board. And while Apple has … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2NmWeTf

Outside of the Apple Watch, the smartwatch market is still pretty much a Wild West, with every brand making their own take on the wearable product line. Most of them use Wear OS by Google but a few manage to exist without it. One of those is Samsung’s line of Tizen-powered timepieces, now rebranded under the Galaxy Watch name. Just … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2XDfuA2

For the last decade or so, we’ve been powering and charging our portable devices with USB. It’s a system that works; you charge batteries with DC, and you don’t want to have a wall wart for every device, so just grab a USB hub and charge your phone and you headphones or what have you. Now, though, we have USB Type C, with Power Delivery. Theoretically, we can pull a hundred Watts over a USB cable. What if we could tap into that with screw terminals? That’s the idea behind [Jakob]’s entry to the Hackaday Prize . It’s a USB 3.1 Type C to Type A adapter, but it also has the neat little bonus of adding screw terminals. Think of it as jumper cables for your laptop or phone, but don’t actually  do  that. [Jakob]’s board consists of a USB Type C receptacle on one end, and a Type A plug on the other, while in between those two sockets is an STM32G0 microcontroller that handles the power negotiation and PD protocol. This gives the USB Type C port dual role port (DRP) capability, so the power

Elon Musk beat the odds to bring electric vehicles into the mainstream. Can we achieve the same kind of digital revolution in farming? Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/320TwWX

Cory Barlog, creative director for God of War, spoke at Gamelab with Stuart Whyte of Sony London about the making of God of War. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2FIFbEO

The United States Army has started testing pocket-sized infrared drones in Afghanistan with the expectation that they will eventually become part of a soldier’s standard gear. The tiny drones, which are described as resembling miniature helicopters, were made by FLIR Systems. The drones can be deployed in less than a single minute and operated over a full mile. The US … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2KLBcMd

Haiti is a hotbed of applied blockchain projects, projects that are expanding our understanding of the technology’s potential. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2LtHDTs

We’ve all had that moment of seeing a product that’s an object of desire, only to realize that it’s a little beyond our means. Many of us in this community resolve to build our own, indeed these pages are full of projects that began in this way. But few of us have the audacity of [vcch], who was so taken with the QLockTwo expensive designer word clock that they built their own using the facsimile of its face on the front of QLock’s own catalogue . The claim is that this isn’t an unauthorized copy as such because no clock has been copied — as far as we’re aware there’s nothing against taking the scissors to a piece of promotional literature, and it certainly differs from the usual word clocks we’ve seen. So how has this masterpiece of knock-off engineering been performed? The catalog cover has a high-quality cut-out rendition of the clock face, and the pages behind are thick enough to conceal an addressable LED. By cutting slots through the pages enough space is created for strips of L

Mike Morhaime gave a fireside chat at Gamelab about his nearly 28-year career at Blizzard Entertainment, which created a culture for game development Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/303MezZ

Google is testing augmented reality filters similar to the kind found on Snapchat with its own messaging app, Android Messages. The test was discovered with five different filter options, including one that adds balloons to images and videos, another that adds glitter, and more. The AR filters aren’t available to all users at this time, but hint at future plans … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2XIz1Pe

In late 2013 and early 2014, in the heady days of the drone revolution, there was one killer app — the selfie drone. Selfie sticks themselves had already become a joke, but a selfie drone injected a breath of fresh air into the world of tech. Fidget spinners had yet to be invented, so this is really all we had. It wasn’t quite time for the age of the selfie drone, though, and the Lily camera drone — in spite of $40 Million in preorders — became the subject of lawsuits, and not fines from the FAA. Technology marches ever forward, and now you can build your own selfie drone. That’s exactly what [geaxgx] did , although this build uses a an off-the-shelf drone with custom software instead of building everything from scratch. For hardware, this is a Ryze Tello , a small, $100 quadcopter with a front-facing camera. With the right libraries, you can stream images to a computer and send flight commands back to the drone. Yes, all the processing for the selfie drone happens on a non-flying co

Microsoft has finally revealed its Xbox Games with Gold lineup for July 2019, and it includes hit title Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. As expected, the lineup includes two games for the Xbox One and another two games for the Xbox 306, both of which can also be played on the newer console. The games are free for Xbox Live … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2XemYoP

The Atelier series of role-playing games focus more on mixing and crafting and exploring than saving the world, and that's just fine for Koei-Tecmo's fans. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2XkeTDN

“How Will The Movies Survive The Next Ten Years?” demands the New York Times , in a series of interviews with 24 major Hollywood figures. Good question! I’ve been asking it myself , here , for six years now . Very unlike music, television , books , and home video, the theatrical movie experience has proved remarkably resistant to online disruption… …so far. I’ve argued before that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have many parallels: VCs are like studios, angel investors are like individual producers, founders are like directors, etcetera. However, they also have some striking differences. For most of the last 25 years, the cost to launch a groundbreaking, potentially world-shaking startup has decreased — though that may well be changing — whereas the total cost to make , market , and distribute a theatrical release has decidedly not . Furthermore, movie theaters, built around repeat screening of 90-to-180-minute self-contained films, face new direct-to-streaming-services competitio

Lucifer, the television series that started at FOX before making it way to Netflix, will end with its fifth season, the show’s executive producer Ildy Modrovich has revealed. There’s no use in trying to save the Netflix series, so don’t bother, Modrovich clarified on Twitter. The show is over for good and no amount of online campaigning will save it. … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2XC6yut

French startup Cozycozy.com wants to make it easier to search for accommodation across a wide range of services. This isn’t the first aggregator in the space and probably not the last one. But this time, it isn’t just about hotels. When you plan a trip with multiple stops, chances are you end up with a dozen tabs of different services — on Airbnb to look at listings, on a hotel review platform and on a hotel booking platform. Each service displays different prices and has a different inventory. While there are a ton of services out there, most of them belong to just three companies: Booking Holdings (Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak, Agoda…), Expedia Group (Expedia, Hotels.com, HomeAway, Trivago…) and TripAdvisor (TripAdvisor, HouseTrip, Oyster…). They all operate many different services in order to address as many markets and as many segments as possible. Cozycozy.com wants to simplify that process by aggregating a ton of services in a single interface — you can find hotels, Airbn

It’s not uncommon to drive around the neighborhood on trash day and see one or two ceiling fans haphazardly strewn onto a pile of garbage bags, ready to be carted off to the town dump. It’s a shame to see something like this go to waste, and [Giesbert Nijhuis] decided he would see what he could do with one. After some painstaking work, he was able to turn a ceiling fan into a wind turbine (of sorts) . While it’s true that some generators and motors can be used interchangeably by reversing the flow of electricity (motors can be used as generators and vice-versa) this isn’t true of ceiling fans. These motors are a type called induction motors which, as a cost saving measure, have no permanent magnets and therefore can’t simply be used as a generator. If you make some modifications to them, though, like rewiring some of the windings and adding permanent magnets around them, you can get around this downside of induction motors. [Giesbert] does note that this project isn’t a great way to

Hello, weekend readers. This is Week-in-Review where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged on TechCrunch this week to surface my favorites for your reading pleasure. Last week , I talked about how YouTube was letting its commenting system turn from a festering wasted opportunity into a liability. The big story Plenty happened this week, though most of the news signified something larger looming on the horizon, more on that in a bit. One undoubtedly meaty news item was that Jony Ive, Apple’s most iconic executive persona, announced that he was leaving the company this year. Ive has undoubtedly been a powerhouse of industrial design who has helped craft some of the most iconic products from one of the most influential tech companies. The issue is perhaps what Apple’s vision of industrial design transformed into in his final years at the helm. Jony Ive is leaving Apple to launch a ne

Mobile users around the world are finally getting a taste of 5G. Telcos in several major cities have launched their 5G infrastructure, letting select users with 5G-enabled phones experience its blistering data speeds. Cities include London, Manchester, New York City, L.A. and Sydney – a list that is sure to expand over the years. In case you’re new to 5G, … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2XCS9yo

Manus VR has a new set of Prime haptic feedback gloves. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2NiXFSG

Access to fast and affordable internet is a big issue in the USA, even in a major metropolis such as New York City. Amidst a cartel of ISPs who simply will not deliver, a group of NYC inhabitants first took it upon themselves to ease this situation by setting up their own mesh-based internet connections way back in 2013. Now they will be installing a new Supernode to take the installation base far beyond the current 300 buildings serviced. As a community project, NYC Mesh is run as a non-profit organization , with its community members supporting the effort through donations, along with partnerships with businesses. Its router hardware consists out of off-the-shelf equipment (with a focus on the Ubiquiti NanoStation NSM5) that get flashed with custom firmware containing the mesh routing functionality. As this article by Vice mentions, NYC Mesh is one of 750 community-led broadband projects in the US. Many of those use more traditional fixed wiring with distribution lines, but NYC

Full-sized arcade cabinets are undeniably cool, but take up a lot of space and can be somewhat of a handful. [PleaseNoFisticuffs] desired something a little more fun-sized, and so built a desktop arcade machine that has some serious style. It’s a build that’s remarkably accessible for even the inexperienced builder. Paper templates are used to cut out the plywood parts for the cabinet, and the electronic components are all off-the-shelf items. Assembly is readily achievable with high-school level woodworking and soldering skills. Like most similar builds, it relies on the Raspberry Pi running RetroPie, meaning you’ll never run out of games to play. Where this project really shines, however, is the graphics. Cribbed from Mortal Kombat II and looking resplendent in purple, they’re key to making this cabinet a truly stunning piece. The attention to detail is excellent, too, with the marquee and screen getting acrylic overlays for that classic shine, as well as proper T-moulding being us

Doctor Who: The Edge of Time Maze Theory is taking you a little deeper behind the scenes of the VR game for PSVR, Oculus Rift and Quest, and HTC Vive. Read More from VentureBeat https://ift.tt/2ZVP61x

The Food and Drug Administration has alerted the public to a new recall from Medtronic concerning the maker’s MiniMed insulin pumps. According to the company, some of these MiniMed pumps have a critical cybersecurity issue that cannot be patched, leaving them permanently vulnerable to hackers who wirelessly access them. These recalled pumps were sold in the United States and internationally. … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2YjUZoU

As autonomous cars and robots loom over the landscapes of cities and jobs alike, the technologies that empower them are forming sub-industries of their own. One of those is lidar, which has become an indispensable tool to autonomy, spawning dozens of companies and attracting hundreds of millions in venture funding. But like all industries built on top of fast-moving technologies, lidar and the sensing business is by definition built somewhat upon a foundation of shifting sands. New research appears weekly advancing the art, and no less frequently are new partnerships minted, as car manufacturers like Audi and BMW scramble to keep ahead of their peers in the emerging autonomy economy. To compete in the lidar industry means not just to create and follow through on difficult research and engineering, but to be prepared to react with agility as the market shifts in response to trends, regulations, and disasters. I talked with several CEOs and investors in the lidar space to find out how

For four months in 2018, U.S. prosecutors in Texas collected more than 9.2 million messages under a single court-authorized wiretap order, newly released figures show. The wiretap, granted by a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas, was granted as part of a narcotics investigation and became the federal wiretap with the most intercepts in 2018, according to the government’s annual wiretap report. Little is known about the case, except that 149 individuals involved in the case were targeted by the wiretap.  The wiretap expired last year, allowing the judiciary to disclose the case. To date, no arrests have been made Trailing behind it was another narcotics investigation in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania saw police obtain a three-month wiretap that collected 9.1 million text message from 45 individuals. No arrests were made either. The two cases represent the largest wiretap cases seen in years. Wiretaps are some of the most invasive kinds of lawful surveillance in

In what is seen largely as a reversal of its recent trade ban, President Trump has declared that China’s Huawei can once again purchase equipment from US suppliers. The decision was announced to reporters following the recent G20 summit in Japan, where Trump met with China’s President Xi Jinping to discuss the trade hostilities between the two countries. According to … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2NnryBv

We’ll all be familiar with Tic-Tac-Toe, or Noughts and Crosses, a childhood pencil-and-paper diversion which has formed the basis of many a coding exercise. It’s an easy enough task to implement in software, but how many of us have seen it done in hardware alone? That’s just what [Warren Toomey] has done using TTL chips , and his method makes for a surprisingly simple circuit. At its heart is an 8 kB ROM that contains precomputed move sequences that are selected via an address composed of the game states for both player and machine. A series of flip-flops control and buttons to make the board, and a 555 provides a clock. The technique of using a ROM to replace complex logic is a very powerful one that is facilitated by the low price of relatively large devices that would once have been unaffordable. We’ve seen the technique used elsewhere, including as an ALU in a TTL CPU , and even for an entire CPU in its own right . You can see the result in operation in the video below the break

A lack of advertising remains one of Netflix’s most appealing benefits, but questions remain over whether the streaming service will eschew advertisements forever. The company has raised its plan prices multiple times in recent years, and though it remains a great deal comparatively, some users have complained the new prices are too high. Amid that customer turmoil is a new … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2LsfagO

Private rocket launch startup Rocket Lab has succeeded in launching its ‘Make It Rain’ mission, which took off yesterday from the company’s private Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. On board Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket (its seventh to launch so far) were multiple satellites flow for various clients in a rideshare arrangement brokered by Rocket Lab client Spaceflight. Payloads for the launch included a satellite for Spaceflight subsidiary BlackSky, which will join its existing orbital imaging constellation. There was also a CubeSat operated by the Melbourne Space Program, and two Prometheus satellites launched for the U.S. Special Operations Command. Rocket Lab had to delay launch a couple of times earlier in the week owing to suboptimal launch conditions, but yesterday’s mission went off without a hitch at 12:30 AM EDT/4:30 PM NZST. After successfully lifting off and achieving orbit, Rocket Lab’s Electron also delayed all of its payloads to their target orbits as planned. Later th

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups & venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about scooter companies struggling to raise cash . Before that, I noted my key takeaways from Recode + Vox’s Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here . I’m sure you’re familiar with the co-working behemoth WeWork at this point but if not, here’s a quick primer: The real estate business posing as a “tech startup” offers office spaces to individuals and companies across thousands of co-working spots scattered across the globe. Led by an eclectic chief executive by the name of Adam Neumann, WeWork made headlines this week after announcing its acquisition of building access app Waltz . The deal