Today’s Tech Sightings: Pakistani Roboteers Hunt Global Soccer Glory For the first time, students at Pakistan’s National University of Science and Technology will participate in the annual RoboCup tournament, held this year in Leipzig, Germany, June 30–July 4. The Pakistani ‘team’ of six humanoid robots was purchased from France, costing about $17,000 each. Russia’s State […]
Pakistan Goes for Robocup Glory; Russia’s New Online Spying Laws
Qatar 3-D-prints World Cup Stadiums; Google’s ‘Autism Glass’ Project
Today’s Tech Sightings: Qatar Uses 3-D Printers to ‘Desert-proof’ World Cup Stadiums Scientists at Qatar University are experimenting with 3-D-printed models of football stadiums to address concerns about summer heat when the country hosts the 2022 World Cup tournament. The researchers hope to test the durability of the models against summer heat and sand and […]
Tech Giants Look to DNA for Data Storage; Zuckerberg’s Webcam Tape
Today’s Tech Sightings: The Future of Storage May Be in DNA It used to be a big deal to have a hard drive with 20 or 40 megabytes of storage space. Now they can fit terabytes of data. But the sheer volume of space needed now and in the future to store all of humanities’ […]
Apple Pulls Refugee ‘I Sea’ App; Preserving Digital History
Today’s Tech Sightings: App That Falsely Claimed to Aid Refugees at Sea Pulled From App Store Apple has pulled from its App Store an app called I Sea that claimed it could help find refugees lost at sea by showing real-time satellite footage of the Mediterranean Sea. But developers found the app only shows the […]
Apple’s Youngest Developer; African Startup Wins Major US Investment
Today’s Tech Sightings: Meet Apple’s Youngest App Developer. She’s Nine. Her name is Anvitha Vijay. The nine-year-old who created an app about animals in Australia applied to a scholarship to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference. She was accepted – the youngest developer to attend – and got a shout-out from CEO Tim Cook himself. Scholarship […]
Facebook, India Push to Curb Suicide; Is Facebook’s Future All-video?
Today’s Tech Sightings: Facebook Launches Suicide Prevention Tools for 148 Million Indian Users India leads the world with depression rates and has more suicides than any other country, according to the World Health Organization. Mental illness topics remain taboo in that country and in other developing parts of the world. Facebook’s new tools help nudge […]
Millions of Twitter Accounts Hacked; Malware Plagues Cloud Apps
Today’s Tech Sightings: Russian Hacker Claims to Be Selling Millions of Twitter Accounts A Russian hacker known as Tessa88 allegedly is in possession of the email addresses, passwords and usernames of 379 million Twitter accounts – more than 10 percent of Twitter’s monthly active users. Breach notification website LeakedSource received the database from the seller. […]
India Tops World Smartphone Growth; The Most Hackable Nations
Today’s Tech Sightings: Ericsson: India Will Have 810 Million Smartphone Users by 2021 India already has the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, and that’s likely to continue. According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, India’s mobile subscriptions will grow to 1.37 billion by 2021. In the first quarter of 2016, India added 21 million new mobile subscribers, compared […]
Musk: We’re Probably Living in a Video Game; the Future With AI
Today’s Tech Sightings: Elon Musk: We’re Probably Living in a Video Game Speaking at California’s Code Conference, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk warned that the lines between the real world and increasingly-sophisticated simulated environments could become so blurred that it will be hard to distinguish reality from simulation. The scenario is not […]
Android’s Location Data Jackpot; Google Search Adds Privacy Controls
Today’s Tech Sightings: Police Filing Warrants for Android’s Vast Store of Location Data If you use Google Maps on your Android device, you should know the software has a feature that builds a comprehensive history of the places you visit. Google’s Location History system collects the information, which is then used in Maps. The resulting […]