Geek News

The Lunar Xprize is about to come to an anticlimactic end after more than a decade . Google has confirmed to CNBC that it doesn't plan to extend the $20 million competition past its March 31st deadline -- itself an extension well beyond the original 2014 end date. Given that all the finalists either don't have the funds to continue or don't expect to launch that quickly (the fastest, SpaceIL, might not launch before the end of 2018), the competition is effectively over with no winners. Not that Google minds, however. If anything, the company believes that the journey was more important than the destination. "We are so thrilled with the progress made by these teams over the last ten years," it said in a statement. And to a degree, it's right. The teams have make significant strides in designing practical lunar rovers without the resources of a massive government agency. Private space exploration is theoretically one step closer, even if the technology fro...

Microsoft introduced its Windows Mixed Reality platform in October, with headsets from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung. After only three months on the market, Amazon is offering some massive discounts on a range of Windows Mixed Reality headsets this week. Road to VR reports that the following headsets are discounted: Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset with Controllers - $218.99, discounted by 45 percent (usually $399) Lenovo Explorer with Controllers - $245.99, discounted by 39 percent (usually $399) Dell Visor with Controllers $219.95, discounted by 52 percent (usually $449) HP Windows Mixed Reality Headset with Controllers - $239, discounted by 47 percent ( usually $449) Unfortunately, Samsung’s Windows Mixed Reality headset... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2E0CXyT"

Montana’s governor signed an executive order today that would force internet service providers with state contracts to abide by net neutrality rules, even while the FCC has repealed those rules nationally. Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, said in a tweet announcing the order that “Montana’s future depends on a free and open internet,” and noted that it was the first state in the country to attempt the plan, which would go into effect July 1st. The New York Times reports that several major service providers, including Charter, AT&T, and Verizon, operate with state contracts. To obtain a state contract after July 1st, any service provider will have to follow core tenets of net neutrality, and agree to not block or degrade content, or allow... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2DrvcAT"

As a musician, knowing how your songs are performing on streaming platforms is important. Spotify brought real-time stats and demographic information to a dedicated app for artists this past October, while Pandora and YouTube have had similar dashboards for a while now. Finally, Cupertino is catching up with the beta launch of Apple Music for Artists , a dashboard that lets users drill down into various statistics on song performance from now to as far back as 2015, when the Apple Music service launched. According to Billboard , the service is rolling out to a few thousand artists at first, with a planned full launch to all who have tracks on Apple Music and iTunes. Billboard says the dashboard will show users the current number of plays, spins, song purchases and album purchases, while a special insights panel will provide information on key milestones, like cumulative plays and purchases for individual tracks. Artists can dig even deeper, too, with a global map to see how the...

Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of publishing empire News Corporation, issued a statement today proposing a new licensing deal between media organizations and platform-owning tech companies that would see entities like Facebook and Google pay fees to news outlets. Citing the popularization of “scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable,” Murdoch says Facebook and Google should pay money in an arrangement similar to so-called carriage fees. These fees are the money paid by cable and satellite television providers to local, over-the-air broadcast stations for the right to carry local transmissions. In the US, this is an industry norm, with the fees being baked into... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2F5HTlb"

Waymo started offering free autonomous rides in Phoenix last April as a way to promote its self-driving cars. The Alphabet-owned company has been trying to ramp up its own ride-sharing service to compete with Uber and Lyft, with a driverless taxi service with which the company hopes to cover a region larger than London. Now, Waymo is expanding beyond Arizona, with a test program set to launch in Atlanta, Georgia . Hello ATL! Metro Atlanta is the next stop for Waymo's test program. Now that we have the world's first fully self-driving vehicles on public roads in AZ, we're looking to take our tech to more cities. pic.twitter.com/YFLvxkVMMd — Waymo (@Waymo) January 22, 2018 According to The Verge , Waymo started mapping Atlanta's downtown areas last week for an up-to-date, accurate map of the area, an important dataset for self-driving cars. The test program has seen the Waymo fleet cover 4 million miles , with a million of those driven in the last six months of...

Technology Nintendo has a new toy, a new camera captures 400-megapixel photos, and there's a $200,000 smartwatch. Seriously, we want a Nintendo Labo. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2n2A1cD"

Thor: Ragnarok has quickly spread across torrent sites after customers were able to prematurely download the title an entire month before its planned mid-February digital release. The error is apparently the result of a miscommunication between Vudu and Apple. Both companies participate in the Movies Anywhere program, which lets consumers watch their digital movie libraries across devices and various apps such as iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, and others. It’s a fantastic idea that basically bulldozes any kind of ecosystem lock-in — at least when it comes to movies. According to TorrentFreak , some users on Reddit noticed that when placing a preorder for the well-received Thor: Ragnarok with Vudu, the movie showed up as... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2F46oiG"

Microsoft has a tumultuous relationship with smartwatches. Its bulky wrist-mounted wearable, the Band and Band 2 , saw limited success at retail but couldn't compete with sales of the Fitbit or the Apple Watch . As of October 2016, it seems the Band brand has been shut down for good . However, hands-on photos shared by Twitter user @Hikari_Calyx show Microsoft was prototyping another fitness tracker that incorporated Xbox-style tiles in a more traditional smartwatch package. The Xbox Watch - Pin Diagram Yes we successfully booted up an Xbox Watch. Video is processing now. pic.twitter.com/qwBtOOf5fs — Hikari Calyx (@Hikari_Calyx) January 22, 2018 According to the photos, the Xbox Watch was sports-focused, offering tabs for workouts, heart-rate monitoring and GPS tracking. It had a black, square screen with rounded edges, and would ostensibly connect to a variety of wristbands, much like the Apple Watch does. This is something Microsoft would have been working on around 20...

Intel has another Spectre patch in the works, after users reported that its last fix led to random rebooting issues. Consequently, the company is now recommending that its customers stop deploying that original patch, and instead start testing out the new and improved version. Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center group, said in a blog post today that the company has "identified the root cause" for system instability in its Broadwell and Haswell chips, and it started rolling out the new patch to partners over the weekend. For now, all consumers can do is wait for a final version of that fix. "We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior," Shenoy wrote. Last week, Intel said it was working on a fix for the buggy patches, but it wa...

Nokia has announced that it’s pulling the Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) feature from its Body Cardio smart scale due to regulatory approval issues. The removal will come in a mandatory software update on January 24th, and Nokia isn’t offering any details as to when (or even if) the feature will be returning. For now, the company has suspended sales of the Body Cardio, although it plans to resume them sometime in the first few months of the year with the feature removed. The Body Cardio scale first went on sale in 2016 , when it was called the Withings Body Cardio scale. It differed from the company’s original smart scale with the addition of the aforementioned pulse wave velocity tech, which measures the rate at which arterial pulse spreads... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2n0bt46"

Two-factor authentication only works if it's strictly enforced in software, and it sounds like Uber might have fallen short of that goal for a while. In a chat with ZDNet , security researcher Karan Saini has revealed a flaw in Uber's two-factor verification that reportedly rendered it useless. Saini has been keeping the exact details of the exploit under wraps to prevent abuse, but it revolved around a vulnerability in how Uber authenticates users when they sign in. The net effect was clear: an intruder might have only needed your username and password to sign in, giving them the chance to swipe personal info or misuse services. Saini characterized Uber's response as dismissive, although Uber is telling a different story. The ridesharing company initially told him that the issue wasn't "particularly severe" and was expected, marking it as "informative" -- that is, notable but not pressing. When we reached out to Uber, however, it said that it ...

Intel has a patching problem. All last week , users reported computers spontaneously rebooting after installing Intel’s Spectre/Meltdown patch. Now, Intel seems to be giving up on those patches entirely. In a post today , executive vice president Neil Shenoy announced that Intel had located the source of some of the recent reboot problems and is recommending users skip the patches entirely until a better version could be deployed. “We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors, and end users stop deployment of current versions on specific platforms,” Shenoy wrote, “as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior.” The guidance applies to at least some of... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2DWrqQV"

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