Geek News

‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means’ Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2G43DQ7"

Science Myths about migraines have been greatly exaggerated. Recent authors have acknowledged there is little evidence to suggest that trepanning was meant to cure headaches. So where did this persistent idea come from? via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2Ib9gfW"

Samsung just unveiled its 2018 lineup of QLED 4K TVs at an event in New York City. The company remains the world’s leading TV maker, and while this year’s sets make modest improvements to picture quality — mainly black levels — the major focus is intelligence and smart home control. The new QLEDs (never, ever to be confused with OLED) ship with Bixby and offer voice assistant capabilities right out of the box. And they also act as a centralized hub for Samsung’s SmartThings smart home platform, giving you on-screen control over all SmartThings-compatible gadgets. The 2018 QLED lineup includes the Q9, Q8, Q7, and Q6 (in descending order of price and image quality). Samsung still hasn’t given up on pushing curved TVs, as each series will... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2HdQJhJ"

Photographers for the now-defunct Life magazine produced some of the most iconic images of the 20th century and left behind an archive of around 6.5 million photos. It’s an important historical artifact, but it represents a big challenge for any human who wants to catalog and explore it. That’s why Google has stepped up to the plate and announced today that it’s used its AI skills to create Life Tags — a new, searchable archive of Life photographs. It’s an impressive feat and features hundreds of interesting tags — from abbey to aikido , and sailboat to Samoyed . It’s also a bit slow to load, makes easy mistakes (check the “ computer ” tag and you get plenty of pictures of pianos, for example), and misses many useful categories, including... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2oXpHUl"

You’ll have to hang tight for our full review of the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus , but in the meantime, we brought the two phones onto our YouTube live show yesterday to take a closer look at them. First, we put the phones side by side with the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus to examine the small physical differences (there’s not much, but at least Samsung moved the fingerprint reader); then we looked at the S9’s big camera upgrade; and of course, we closed out with a look at the phone’s two horrors: Bixby and AR Emoji. The dual-aperture camera (which lets the phone better control how much light it captures) is really the highlight of the S9’s changes, but we’ve been wondering how much of a difference it’ll actually make. By default, Samsung keeps the... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FlEaV9"

The number of websites hosting code that mines for crypto-coins using visitors’ CPU power went up a staggering 725% in a four-month period, Cyren reports. The massive increase took place between September 2017 and January 2018 and was observed upon the monitoring of a sample of 500,000 sites, the security company says. The firm also noticed that some websites would run the crypto-mining scripts on more pages, knowingly or not. The number of new mining sites registered a massive increase in October, plateaued in November, and then doubled in December and again in January, which suggests that the rate at which crypto-mining is spreading is accelerating. This jump in activity, however, isn’t surprising, considering the meteoric rise in crypto-currency values over the past months, Cyren points out . Most of the scripts were designed to mine for Monero, a virtual coin that increased by almost 250% in value recently, attracting a lot of attention. The spike in mining sites was also fu...

Google is rolling out a new update to its Google Home devices in the UK to enable free calls to landlines and mobiles. Voice calling was originally enabled in the US back in August , and it’s now making its way over the pond to Google Home and Google Home Mini devices in the UK. Brits will be able to place free calls by calling any contacts stored in a Gmail account, or by calling businesses. The voice calling is free as long as you’re calling UK landlines or mobile phones, but international calls aren’t included. Google originally launched its Home smart speaker in the UK last April, exactly six months after Amazon launched its own devices in the UK . Google undercut Amazon’s Echo pricing at launch in the UK, and the addition of free... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2HesjF7"

DIY Bookmark your favorite things. Sometimes you encounter a tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram photo that you know you'll want to revisit later. Here's how to bookmark those social media posts. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2FljfgR"

Newly unearthed photos of the upcoming Huawei flagship, the Huawei P20, show the device will have a three-lens rear camera system with AI features as well as a notch on the front. The renders were found on Chinese social media network Weibo and first unearthed by Dutch website Telefoon Abonnement . A teaser poster published on Weibo shows three rear Leica-branded lenses, a rear dual flash, and the notch. The phone looks like it will come in blue and black options. The poster has a tagline of “See Mooore with AI,” with the three “o”s likely representing the three rear camera lenses. It’s the same tagline seen on an invite to an upcoming press conference on March 27th in Paris, where Huawei is expected to announce the P20. It’s not clear... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2tnqgfM"

Facebook’s Messenger Lite app for Android is getting video chat , adding the final feature the slimmed-down app needed to become a truly viable replacement for the full-featured Messenger. It’s an addition that more or less makes Messenger Lite the perfect Facebook Messenger app. Cutting away all the accumulated integrations and features that Facebook has tacked on over the years, Messenger Lite offers simple, easy messaging. In theory, Messenger Lite is designed for “people with older Android devices and/or slower internet connections,” but it’s increasingly looking like the best option for any Android users. Now all we need Facebook to do is stop there and not add any new features — or else we might need a Messenger Lighter app in a... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FuoI8F"

AI is a problem for jobs, say the majority of Americans, but it’s someone else’s problem. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of US adults believe artificial intelligence will “eliminate more jobs than it creates,” according to a Gallup survey. But, the same survey found that less than a quarter (23 percent) of people were “worried” or “very worried” automation would affect them personally. Notably, these figures vary depending on education. For respondents with only a four-year college degree or less, 28 percent were worried about AI taking their job; for people with at least a bachelor degree, that figure was 15 percent. These numbers tell a familiar story. They come from a Gallup survey of more than 3,000 individuals on automation... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FmDx9H"

Science Swings in temperature are what the MJO does best. All in all, it’s made for a pretty satisfying winter, despite the La Niña conditions that normally would have made the past three months feel unseasonable most of the… via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2G2VSdg"

There’s so much going on in Apple’s latest HomePod ad that I don’t know where to begin. The four-minute quirky adventure into music is accompanied by a dancing FKA twigs, and a new track from Anderson .Paak. This talent is backed up by direction from Spike Jonze, famous for lots of off-beat music videos like Beastie Boys’ Sabotage , directing movies Her and Being John Malkovich , and even an amazing perfume ad . While the directing and dancing is impressive, it’s the music that Apple has exclusively sourced that has me gripped. The YouTube and TV ads debuted two days ago, and it’s already amassed nearly 5 million views on YouTube alone. I’ve had it on repeat ever since. I’d normally drop a fancy new song into a playlist on Spotify, but... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FvvA5I"

Even if your next phone isn’t a BlackBerry, BlackBerry is hoping to have a presence on it. The company is beginning to license its security tech to third-party hardware companies to be put inside phones and other smart devices. Its first deal, announced in September, was for phones and involved the Chinese company NTD, and today BlackBerry is announcing a new deal with the Swiss company Punkt, known for its minimalist cellphone . What Punkt will use BlackBerry’s tech for isn’t stated, but BlackBerry’s announcement suggests it’ll be used more broadly than just on phones, indicating it’ll likely end up on some sort of IoT device. Punkt doesn’t make all that many products — electronics-wise, it’s really just the one phone — so it’s not at... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Fi1t2a"

Microsoft says its plans to move Windows 10 S from a dedicated operating system to a special “S Mode” for versions of Windows 10 next year. While news leaked of the plans last month , Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore confirmed them on Twitter today. “Next year 10S will be a ‘mode’ of existing versions, not a distinct version,” says Belfiore. The new S Mode will lock down any copy of Windows 10 so it can only run apps from the Microsoft Store, and will work the same way as the dedicated Windows 10 S operating system was built to do. Microsoft is planning a new “S Mode” for Windows 10 Home, Enterprise, and Pro versions of the operating system. We use Win10S as an option for schools or businesses that want the 'low-hassle'/ guaranteed performance... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2tmWSpY"

Microsoft is altering the way you activate its Cortana digital assistant with your voice. The first Cortana-powered Invoke speaker now lets users simply summon the digital assistant using “Cortana” instead of the usual “Hey Cortana” command. The change isn’t live on Cortana for iOS, Android, or Windows 10, but it will likely appear there soon. Microsoft says it implemented the change last week for the Invoke speaker. Moving to just Cortana makes Microsoft’s assistant as easy to summon as Amazon’s Alexa. Microsoft and Amazon both partnered last year to further integrate Alexa and Cortana so both assistants can be used on rival devices. That work was supposed to be available before the end of 2017, but it’s clearly taken longer than... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2G11vso"