While Google has talked about reducing the amount of memory its Chrome browser eats up in the past, progress has been fairly slow. Back in mid-2015, a Google engineer admitted that the Chrome team was looking into fixing RAM usage but this week, we finally got an update on the …
Read More »Amazon is putting a stop to incentivized reviews
Amazon has been clamping down on fake product reviews for a while now, even going as far as to file lawsuits against sellers for buying false endorsements. However, now the retailer is turning its attention to ‘incentivized' reviews as well, outright banning reviews tied to free or discounted products. In …
Read More »Amazon brings Twitch benefits to Prime subscribers
It has been around two years since Amazon acquired Twitch and in that time, it has mostly been business as usual for the streaming service. However, it looks like Amazon is stepping up its involvement in the gaming world now, not only did the retailer announce three brand new games …
Read More »Leaker of ‘The Revenant’ hit with $1.1 million fine
At the end of last year, in the build-up to the Oscars, we saw plenty of films leak online, some of which could be torrented before they had even hit the cinema. One such film was The Revenant but it looks like the leaker didn't cover his tracks well enough …
Read More »You will need an account to stream iPlayer shows from 2017
Earlier this month,the UK TV License rules changed, making it so that if you want to stream BBC iPlayer shows, then you need to have a valid TV license, even if you don't use a TV at all. We weren't sure how the BBC was going to enforce this at …
Read More »Report claims leading TVs are using ‘up to twice’ the energy claimed
While energy-efficiency isn't the sole reason to buy a new TV these days, it is certainly a good thing to consider, after all, using less energy is good for the environment and your power bill. Unfortunately, it looks like the energy rating system for TVs might be deeply flawed, with …
Read More »Space X fires its Mars mission Raptor rocket engine in first test
Space X has successfully fired its first test of its Raptor interplanetary transport rocket engine while grounded. Able to achieve more than three times the thrust of Space X's Merlin 1D engines used by its current-generation Falcon 9 rockets, the Raptor could further reduce space travel costs and make travel …
Read More »EU scraps 90-day limit on free data roaming
The European Commission is currently in the process of eliminating roaming charges for mobile customers travelling within the EU, which is great news. However, the Commission is also toying around with some safeguard ideas to ensure the new system isn't abused. Earlier this month, a draft proposal called for a …
Read More »Google has three EU antitrust charges to fight off in October
Update: Right now, the European Union has an anti-trust case out against Google over Android and the amount of Google-owned apps and services that come pre-installed with the OS. Google was initially supposed to present its defence back in July but had the deadline extended to September. However, it looks …
Read More »GM prices Chevrolet Bolt to go head to head with Tesla Model 3
The Chevrolet Bolt from General Motors, set to become available in late 2016, is being priced deliberately competitively with Tesla's upcoming Model 3. The fully electric Bolt will offer a range of 238 miles on a single charge, as well as a number of neat in-car features, all for just …
Read More »Two people charged over videogame gambling in UK
Gambling has been a big subject in the videogame world recently after it was discovered that a few large YouTubers were leveraging their influence to promote betting sites to a young, impressionable audience. Since then, authorities in the UK have been digging around and now, the first prosecutions have been …
Read More »Tesla to build a giant battery for Los Angeles peak usage
With the announcement that electric car maker, Tesla Motors, was set to swallow up SolarCity, it became obvious that Tesla was looking to do more than make cheap, environmentally friendly cars. Now it wants to help power cities during peak times, by building giant battery facilities. The first city that …
Read More »The EU will have 5G by 2025, free WiFi in cities by 2020
Back in July, we heard about a group of European mobile networks banding together, asking that the European Union weaken net neutrality laws in exchange for 5G connectivity by 2020. That plan, fortunately, didn't pan out but the EU has not given up on its 5G rollout plan, it'll just …
Read More »Musk claims new Tesla autopilot could have prevented death
Tesla's CEO and founder, Elon Musk, has said of the company's latest autopilot software update, that with the on board radar now utilised as a major sensor rather than a complimentary one, it's very possible that the recent in-car fatality of a Tesla customer could have been prevented. The incident …
Read More »Warner Bros flags its own site for piracy in new takedown requests
We often hear about the ridiculous number of DMCA Takedown requests Google has to process each day in an effort to clean search pages from links to pirated content. Unfortunately, copyright holders aren't particularly good at double-checking who they are going after, which led amusingly enough has led to Warner Bros …
Read More »Virgin Media wants gamers to buy its broadband
This week, Virgin Media announced that it would be launching its first broadband tier for online gamers. Essentially, it is the top tier broadband package with 200MB/s download speeds, but with an extra fiver tacked on to the price for 20MB/s upload instead of the usual 12MB/s upload speed. As …
Read More »Microsoft gives first look at the upcoming Surface Book 2
We have heard that Microsoft is working on new Surface devices for some time now and according to the current rumours, we will start to see new Surface tablets in early 2017, following the launch of Intel's new Kaby Lake processors. However, it looks like we can expect a Surface …
Read More »Google Fibre might be in trouble as service becomes too expensive
Google Fibre may have started off as an experiment in the US, but it has gained quite a bit of support over the years and the gigabit internet service has slowly expanded to more cities. However, all of that fibre optic cabling and infrastructure is expensive and now, Fibre is …
Read More »WhatsApp is going to start sharing user data with Facebook
It has been quite some time since Facebook shelled out $19 billion for the messaging service known as WhatsApp and now we are starting to see what Facebook plans to do with the app. Soon, the messaging service will be changing its privacy policy in order to share user details …
Read More »First consumer autonomous car trial to begin in Singapore
Cars that drive themselves is something that we're gradually easing towards with trials and tests, but nobody has begun a full commercial roll out of the technology, until now. In Singapore they've signed off on the first official test of autonomous taxis, with MIT spin off, Nutonomy, beating the likes …
Read More »Pizza by air: Domino’s New Zealand to start drone delivery
Drone delivery is something that many major companies are talking about doing, but nobody is quite there yet. The New Zealand branch of Dominos Pizza though, is looking to be the first, with a completed test delivery earlier this week and the announcement that it plans to roll out that …
Read More »CloudFlare faces lawsuit for helping protect piracy sites
CloudFlare is well-known for its anti-DDOS and website security services. The company has done business with plenty of legitimate sites but it also provides its services to some piracy sites, something it has been criticised over before. Now, CloudFlare is facing a lawsuit, as it continues to provide CDN and …
Read More »Tesla’s new batteries make Model S the fastest production car
Tesla's latest drive has been to bring down the price of electric vehicles, which it will officially do in spectacular fashion when the Model 3 is released at the end of 2017. But it's also working on improving range and performance and it's managed to do that with a new …
Read More »Anti-prison drone task force, Operation Airborne, set up by police
Forget Amazon deliveries, drug deliveries to jail are one of the hottest uses for drone technology right now and the British police are trying their utmost to stop it. To do so, they've launched “Operation Airborne,” a special task force to tackle drone deliveries into jails around the UK. This …
Read More »LG’s portable projector lets put a giant display almost anywhere
Having a big display is awesome in most cases but they aren't particularly easy to move around. That is where LG is stepping in with its new battery-powered MiniBeam projectors, which can give you an 80-inch display almost anywhere, and you can drag it around with you fairly easily. While …
Read More »Virgin Media will be increasing its prices in November
It looks like Virgin Media customers here in the UK will soon be notified of an upcoming price hike as the company confirmed today that from November this year, line rental costs will be going up, alongside broadband packages and bundles. Letters are said to start going out to Virgin …
Read More »Airlander 10 test flight successful, could usher in new Airship age
Although the airship might be an iconic design of the past, perhaps most thought of as a flight option around the first World War, it's showing a lot of potential for the future too. Having completed the first flight test of the Airlander 10, the largest aircraft in the world, …
Read More »USB Forum steps in to certify Type-C cables
Over the last year or so, we have heard plenty of horror stories about dodgy USB Type-C cables that don't quite meet the required spec for powering or charging devices properly. These cables have been known to cause damage, one particular cable even killed off a Google engineer's Chromebook but …
Read More »Ford plans to release car without steering wheel by 2021
Although current legislation still mandates that all vehicles must have some form of manual control, Ford is planning to mass produce a car without a steering wheel or pedals by the time 2021 rolls around. This is an accelerated development, considering fully autonomous cars have often been slated to arrive …
Read More »Microsoft to bring Windows Holographic to Windows 10 PCs next year
Microsoft has been working on Augmented Reality technology for a while now but it looks like things are going to pick up again next year with the launch of the WIndows Holographic platform, which aims to make all Windows 10 PCs compatible with devices like the Hololens, or even Intel's …
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