Geek News

While the survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shooting provided the nation with a master class in how to effectively articulate policy reform demands and ruthlessly drag talking heads of the political class, the tech industry had some communication issues of its own. Like the 1,600 911 calls a set of iPhones at a California repair center made, or the Tinder security flaw that enabled account access with only a phone number, or how the FCC is getting sued (again) for trying to roll back Net Neutrality rules. Numbers, because how else are you going to see how savagely the NRA is getting ratioed? 1,600 : That's how many calls a group of iPhones at a California repair center autonomously made to 911 over the last five months -- around 20 a day. Unfortunately, dispatchers stopped buying the "accidental butt dial" after the first four or five dozen incidents. 23 : The number of state attorney generals (well, 22 states plus DC) who have filed a lawsuit against the FCC to ...

Despite the hype and hoopla surrounding the burgeoning field of quantum computing, the technology is still in its infancy. Just a few years ago, researchers were making headlines with rudimentary machines that housed less than a dozen qubits -- the quantum version of a classical computer's binary bit. At IBM's inaugural Index Developer Conference held in San Francisco this week, the company showed off its latest prototype: a quantum computing rig housing 50 qubits , one of the most advanced machines currently in existence. Quantum computing -- with its ability to calculate and solve algorithms in parallel, at speeds far faster than conventional computers -- promises to revolutionize fields from chemistry and logistics to finance and physics. The thing is, while quantum computing is a technology for the world of tomorrow, it hasn't yet advanced far enough for anyone to know what that world will actually look like. "People aren't going to just wake up in three or...

There's good news for NASA in the Trump administration's proposed FY2019 budget and some bad. On the one hand, the space agency would receive a minor funding boost -- NASA itself would get $19.9 billion, a 1.3 percent increase over 2017, while its science directorate would receive $5.9 billion, a 2.3 percent increase. On the other hand, not only does the current administration want to cut funding for the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which would hunt for exoplanets and dark matter, it also wants to defund the International Space Station after 2024, when the US's current commitment to the multinational project expires. Instead, Trump's team hopes that a consortium of private businesses will take over running the station come 2025. The problem is, nobody really knows how (or even if) that would work. But don't worry just yet, according to NASA documents obtained by the Washington Post , it's not as if the ISS is going to come crashing out of ...

Mike Schultz was a professional snowmobile racer, and a damn good one at that. But in 2008, his life's course took a turn after a competition accident shattered his left knee and left him clinging to life. When his injuries began causing his kidneys to shut down, doctors decided to amputate the leg just above the knee. "I spent a total of 13 days in the hospital and was able to get back home on Christmas Eve to a whole new world of challenges," he told Engadget. "Later that spring, after learning how to walk on my everyday prosthetic leg, I realized pretty quickly that I needed a plan B to get back into sports and the fun activities that I wanted to do." That plan B turned out to be designing his own prosthetic leg -- one purpose-built to handle the rigors of extreme sports -- and starting a fabrication company, Biodapt, to produce it. Thus, the Moto Knee was created. Unlike the mechanical prosthetic that he relearned to walk on -- or even the powered, compu...

Not surprisingly, autonomy and electrification dominated transportation news at CES 2018. Toyota introduced its e-Palette concept mobility solution (which proceeded to dominate Engadget's Best of CES awards ), while Silicon Valley startup Robomart unveiled plans to bring produce shopping to your front door . Automakers also announced a slew of upcoming self-driving technologies, ranging from Alexa integration and automated emergency brakes to Level 5 personal transport pods that do away with the steering wheel altogether. But even among the most adventurous concepts floated at this year's trade show, Nissan's vision for the future stands out. One in which driver and vehicle could someday work in perfect harmony, thanks to a brain machine interface that instantly translates your thoughts into the vehicle's actions. It's one of a number of ideas the company is pursuing, Alfonso Albaisa, Nissan's global head of design, explained to Engadget as we walked ar...