All Things Tech

A 9-year-old is smashing the shuttle far and wide, and frantically pacing back and forth on the court in Bangalore, India, as her competition refuses to back down. Her rival is not a human. She is playing against a machine that is mimicking the game of badminton legend P.V. Sindhu, toned down a few notches to adjust for the age difference. By the court, her father, Jayanth Kolla, is watching the game and taking notes. Kolla is a familiar name in the tech startup and business ecosystem in India. For the last eight years, he has been helming the research firm Convergence Catalyst , which covers mobility, telecom, AI and IoT. When his daughter showed interest in badminton, Kolla rushed to explore options, only to realize that the centuries old sports could use some deep tech. He reached out to a few friends to explore if they could build a device. “I have always wondered how a younger version of players who have made it to the professional arena must have played like,” he said in an i...

Sinclair Research was best known in the United States for the tiny ZX80, and the ZX81, under its Timex branding. However, they also made the ZX Spectrum which had many features that were — at the time — unusual. A few years ago there was a Kickstarter to recreate a modern version of the Spectrum, and [Nostalgia Nerd’s] new ZX Spectrum Next has finally arrived. As you can see in the first part of the hour-long video he was very excited about it. Almost too excited for YouTube. The new incarnation of the Spectrum claims to be fully compatible with the original but also offers improved graphics modes, SD cards instead of tape, and an optional 7 MHz clock speed. The 512K of RAM would have been sinfully luxurious back in the day when the original model came with 16K, although the most iconic Spectrums would be the 48K models. The new version even has the option of taking a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as an accelerator. Unlike its older siblings, the ZX Spectrum could output graphics at a w...

Amazon Web Services has entered a partnership with Safaricom — Kenya’s largest telco, ISP and mobile payment provider — in a collaboration that could spell competition between American cloud providers in Africa. In a statement to TechCrunch, the East African company framed the arrangement as a “strategic agreement” whereby Safaricom will sell AWS services (primarily cloud) to its East Africa customer network. Safaricom — whose products include the famed M-Pesa mobile money product — will also become the first Advanced Consulting Partner for the AWS partner network in East Africa. “The APN is…the program for technology…businesses who leverage AWS to build solutions and services for customers…and sell their AWS offerings by providing valuable business, technical, and marketing support,” Safaricom said. “We chose to partner with AWS because it offers customers the broadest and deepest cloud platform…This agreement will allow us to accelerate our efforts to enable digita...

It should probably no longer be a surprise nor a mystery. Any big gathering scheduled in the first quarter or even the first half of the year has a chance of being canceled or have its participants withdraw from attendance. That is especially true for conferences that open their doors to international participants. The latest to announce a cancellation is … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/39du1Fa

Apple may have its AirPods but not all Apple fans, even the hardcore ones, buy into it, whether because of its design or its audio quality. Fortunately for Apple, it also owns Beats, both the brand and the audio technology, to give consumers more options that still profit it in the long run. And those who prefer the audio company’s … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2I40OjW

The Raspberry Pi is one of those small yet brilliant ideas that changed the world. Thanks to its low footprint, its small size, and especially its affordable price, the RPi gave birth not just to a new market but also to a new maker culture. Times have changed, however, and so have the price of components, which is why the … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/389vSJw

The Arduino IDE has a bit of a split personality. On the one hand, it is a simple environment where you can just pick and choose a few libraries, write a few lines of code, and make lots of interesting things. On the other hand, it is also an ecosystem in which many different boards and libraries can be supported. Writing a great library that everyone can easily use takes a little forethought. There is an official style guide, but a recent post by [Nate] from Sparkfun points out lessons learned from writing more libraries than most people. Of course, as you might expect, some of this is a matter of opinion, and [Nate] admits that. For example, they always use the serial port at 115,200 baud, but they do note that 9,600 baud is also popular. They also suggest making code as readable as possible, which is usually good advice. In the old days, writing terse code might lead to higher efficiency, but with modern compilers, you ought to get a tight final result even when doing things in a ...