In 2011, Nicholas Carr summed up Facebook’s business model like this: “The desire for privacy is strong; vanity is stronger.” Carr spent the past dozen or so years making similar proclamations of high-tech heresy, questioning and often criticizing Silicon Valley billionaires and their armies of engineers and programmers for casting ... Read More »
Publishers are having second thoughts about using content-recommendation services, an industry dominated by two Israeli companies, The New York Times reported. The recommendations, which typically appear at the bottom of a story touting other articles from “around the web,” recently stopped appearing in Slate and The New Yorker amid concerns ... Read More »
It said that advances in the internet of things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, energy storage and quantum computing among others technologies “may transform the lives of everyone”. “These transformations wrought by these and other technological developments may mean that some businesses and products could become obsolete relatively quickly. “Successor businesses ... Read More »
The developed world may be facing another Malthusian moment. The first came at the end of the 18th century, when Thomas Malthus predicted dire consequences for humanity if population trends continued on their trajectory. But along came something no one predicted: technology that helped humans use resources more efficiently and ... Read More »
IBM has acquired Sanovi Technologies in order to ramp up the firm’s hybrid cloud disaster recovery facilities. Big Blue announced the buyout on Wednesday, stating the deal will “enhance IBM resiliency capabilities with the help of advanced analytics to meet complexities of hybrid environments.” Financial terms of the purchase were ... Read More »
Microsoft is getting artsy. The tech giant unveiled tools for artists and designers on Tuesday in Manhattan, including a smartphone app that allows users to scan 3D images of everyday objects and move them around in virtual or “mixed” reality. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said he anticipated a greater market ... Read More »
Jack Ma knows a thing or two about technological innovation and disruption. The founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group has built it into the world’s fifth-largest Internet company by revenue. In a letter to shareholders earlier this month, he had this to say: “Throughout history, technological disruptions have followed ... Read More »
Researchers at TU Delft have made flat surfaces that are 3-D printed and then ‘taught’ how to self- fold later. The materials are potentially very well suited for all kinds of medical implants. They report on their findings in the October 24th edition of Materials Horizons which features this research ... Read More »
Major internet services including Twitter, Spotify and Amazon suffered service interruptions and outages on Friday as a US internet provider came under sustained cyber attack. The internet service company Dyn, which routes and manages internet traffic, said that it had suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on its ... Read More »
Grab some popcorn—AT&T wants to take you to the movies. AT&T is buying Time Warner, the owner of the Warner Bros. movie studio as well as HBO and CNN, for $85.4 billion in a deal that could shake up the media landscape. The acquisition would combine a telecom giant that ... Read More »
The judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have been predicted to 79% accuracy using an artificial intelligence (AI) method developed by researchers in UCL, the University of Sheffield and the University of Pennsylvania. The method is the first to predict the outcomes of a major international ... Read More »
ny Corp will join the race for virtual reality (VR) dominance on Thursday with the $399 PlayStation VR, a headset the Japanese electronics group hopes will beat pricier rivals and revive its reputation as a maker of must-have gadgets. Emerging from years of restructuring, Sony is reshaping itself to focus ... Read More »
