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General Tech

generalised tech from across the globe

Computers are now better than you at recognising stuff

ILSVRC

On average, us flesh sacks can recognise stuff in pictures pretty well, with an error rate of around 5.1% according to a recent study. Previously computers could come pretty close to that, getting around 6.66% of objects wrong. Now however, a new computer vision system from Microsoft Research is actually managing to …

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Qualcomm has made a Snapdragon 4K streaming stick

Qualcomm has announced its new entry in to the streaming market with its new Snapdragon-based Chromecast competitor, capable of streaming 4K. Unfortunately, Qualcomm's streaming stick won't be made available to consumers and is instead there as a reference design for third-parties to license out. Third-party manufacturers will be able to …

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Toshiba starts making cameras for Project Ara

Toshiba has shown off two new camera modules that it is developing for Google's modular smartphone, currently named ‘Project Ara'. There are two versions at present, a 5 megapixel camera module and a 13 megapixel one. These cameras can be swapped in and out of the handset, allowing for easy …

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Project Ara may appear at MWC next month

Google has been showing off more and more of Project Ara during recent months and we may get to see even more of the modular smartphone at the Mobile World Congress, which starts next month, in Barcelona. Around 50 of the device's modular components are also due to be displayed …

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Virgin Media to spend £3 billion improving fibre network

Virgin Media has today announced plans to spend £3 billion improving its fibre-optic broadband network, creating 6000 jobs in the process. These improvements will roll out over the next five years and is the largest investment in the UK's broadband infrastructure made in the past decade. The investment is currently …

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Mozilla to block unsigned add-ons from Firefox

It turns out that Mozilla is planning to tighten up its security restrictions regarding add-ons for the Firefox browser. In a blog post the company said that the decision to block unsigned add-ons was made to reduce a user's chances of installing a dodgy add-on that can do dodgy things …

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Android Wear shipments only hit 720,000 last year

Android Wear smart watches have gotten off to a slow start as multiple companies only managed to ship a total of 720,000 units during 2014, according to analyst firm, Canalys. The company also revealed that the Moto 360 was indeed the most popular device. 4.6 million wearable devices were shipped …

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Samsung Smart TVs inserting ads in to third-party apps

It turns out that Samsung's smart TVs are inserting unwanted adverts in to TV shows and movies played on third-party apps. Several owners have begun complaining about a silent Pepsi advert interrupting playback every ten minutes or so. Obviously this isn't supposed to be happening, so Samsung has launched a …

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Swatter arrested, faces five year prison sentence

19-year-old American, Brandon Wilson, was recently arrested and had his Las Vegas home raided in connection to several incidents of swatting. Swatting has become a significant problem for live streamers over the last year or two. For those who don't know, swatting is a ‘prank' in which a hoax call is …

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Samsung denies that its TVs are invading your privacy

News broke recently about Samsung's new Smart TV privacy policy, which was unfortunately poorly worded and made it sound like the TVs were transmitting your conversations to a third-party via voice recognition software. This stirred up a bit of controversy but the Korean device maker is looking to clear things …

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Microsoft and Samsung settle patent dispute

Microsoft and Samsung have settled their patent dispute over royalty payments, which became an issue once Microsoft bought Nokia. Samsung had previously declined to pay Microsoft a patent fee and share sensitive commercial smartphone information after the company bought Nokia. The firm argued that the acquisition of Nokia would invalidate a …

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Collision resistant Drones for Good

Gimball

Drones can be pretty easy to crash, whether you know what you are doing and have had plenty of practice flying them, or if you decide to try out your friends drone while drunk and fly it into the Whitehouse. A small Swiss team called Flyability think it has the answer to …

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Google dropping SPDY support for HTTP/2

HTTP

Support for Google's home-grown experimental networking protocol SPDY (pronounced speedy) will soon be dropped by browser vendors and eventually Google itself, as they move on to the new standard, HTTP/2. While this second version of the well-known hyper text transfer protocol has been a long time coming, we can in part thank …

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Google and LG to launch VR headset

Google and LG are teaming up to launch their own Samsung Gear VR competitor for the LG G3 handset. It is inspired by the Google Cardboard VR headset design, which was shown off last year. The headset will turn the LG G3 into a virtual reality device, essentially doing the …

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KickAss Torrents taken down by domain seizure

The Pirate Bay might be back in some shape or form, but KickAss Torrents is now down following a domain name seizure. The .so Somalian domain of the heavily visited torrent site is now listed as banned by the .SO registry, meaning that the site's operators will need to find …

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Twitch streamer swatted in front of 60,000 viewers

A Runescape Twitch streamer was swatted last week in front of 60,000 viewers. Last Thursday, an armed SWAT team turned up at Joshua Peter's (KoopaTroopa on Twitch), home following a fake emergency service call. The streamer's ten year old brother was unfortunate enough to answer the door. Peters left the …

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Facebook’s new privacy policy is worrying

Facebook has once again updated its privacy policy but it may be taking things too far in an effort to show you targeted ads. The new policy allows Facebook to check up on what you are doing on other apps and websites that have nothing to do with the social …

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Google Glass 2.0 to be re-designed from scratch

A while back Google made the decision to end production on the current Google Glass model that we have come to know since its launch back in 2013. The company has since taken Glass development behind closed doors and will be redesigning the next model from scratch. Speaking to The …

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Twitch hits 100 million views a month

Twitch managed to surpass the 100 million unique monthly views milestone last year, the video game streaming service has announced today. Twitch launched a new site yesterday, commemorating all of the milestones that the service has managed to surpass since its launch just a few years ago. Other stats from …

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Sony has sold SOE

Sony has sold off Sony Online Entertainment to an investment management firm known as Columbus Nova. The developer will now be re-branded as Daybreak Game Company and will finally be able to make games for other platforms. SOE has been responsible for many multiplayer titles, including DC Universe, EverQuest, the …

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Reddit putting cryptocurrency plans on hold

Reddit has put its plans to launch its own cryptocurrency, dubbed ‘Reddit Notes', on hold after the project's lead engineer was let go. Reddit originally announced its plan to launch its own digital currency last year, this was the company's way of giving its users back 10 per cent of …

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