Geek News

The sea is potentially full of undersea military threats , and that makes it daunting to detect them all using hardware. The scale and cost would be utterly impractical. DARPA, however, has a potential workaround: make sea life do the work. It recently launched a Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors program (yes, that shortens to PALS) that will study the viability of using both natural and modified sea organisms to detect underwater vehicles. If the US military can translate the biological responses of this sea life into usable data, it could warn ships without needing conspicuous, expensive hardware -- the fish and plants would be enough. Well, mostly enough. The challenge is meeting DARPA's requirements. Any resulting system will ideally send data to devices as far as 500 meters (1,640 feet) away, and should be smart enough to distinguish between different objects. It wouldn't be very effective if enemies could see a transmitter bobbing on the water, or if it sounds the ala...

Verizon's latest unlimited plans may have some undesirable... limits , but at least you won't have to pay for the more expensive plan the next time you're on a North American vacation. As of January 25th, the $75 Go Unlimited plan will include calling, data and text while you're in Canada or Mexico. This applies to both new and existing customers, so you won't have to touch a thing to surf the web in Vancouver. As with the Beyond Unlimited plan, though, there are some gotchas to watch out for. The big catch: you can't use more than 512MB of LTE data per day, with speeds throttling to 2G after that. That's fine for Instagram photos or checking your email, but you won't be watching TV shows on your trip to Cancun. Also, if more than half of your calling, texting or data is in Canada or Mexico during a 60-day period, you might see those international features "removed or limited." This isn't for travelers who regularly spend their time out...