Posts Tagged ‘events’

US Congressman Anthony Weiner New York’s thriving tech sector may wish Mayor Michael Bloomberg would keep extending those term limits. Come January 1st, the country’s largest and most influential city, as well as its second largest hub for tech companies, will have a new leader. Judging from a panel discussion last night between four of the candidates, not one of them appears ready to fill Bloomberg’s shoes when it comes to thinking creatively about technology. Continue reading…

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For New York’s tech scene, Mayor Bloomberg is a tough act to follow

AMD is finally set to release an all-ARM processor next year, but rather than a low-power chip made for smartphones and tablets, “Seattle” is a 64-bit processor intended for use in servers . The American chipmaker, which has been Intel’s understudy in the x86 market for decades, previously announced it would integrate ARM into its processors , and has already done so with an x86-ARM hybrid chip meant for the “embedded ” market. “Seattle,” however, represents the first time the company has moved away from x86 entirely for a processor. It’s set to debut in 2014. Continue reading…

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AMD moves away from Intel with its first ARM processor

While TiVo’s Premiere DVR hardware line is moving past its prime, signs indicate new, higher-performance models are headed to store shelves this fall. TiVo first alluded to “several” new devices earlier this year when petitioning the FCC to waive an archaic analog tuner requirement . Beyond supporting digital cable via CableCARD, TiVo intends some of these new products to also tune digital over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts via antenna.

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TiVo prepping next-generation DVRs with new remote control, up to six tuners

The NSA has the authority to get the gelocation info from your phone, but it chooses not to exercise it, reports The Wall Street Journal . Citing a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), it writes that the NSA program doesn’t collect “any cell phone locational information.” An unnamed official stated that location data doesn’t provide enough intelligence to justify the amount of resources that would be required to manage it. Earlier this month, a leaked secret court order exposed a secret NSA intelligence program for compiling ” telephony metadata ” such as time and duration of calls, IMEI numbers, and “comprehensive communications routing information,” the latter of which could be used to track…

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Report: NSA doesn’t collect citizens’ geolocation data because it would cost too much

Google is working on a new plan that would help to wipe child porn from the web. The upcoming technology will allow websites, law enforcement agencies, and charities to build a collective database of abusive imagery that should be hidden and removed, according to The Telegraph , which has been briefed on the plan. These groups have already been identifying and blocking abusive content individually, but so far there’s been no easy way for each group’s knowledge to be shared. Google’s new plan simply creates an open database, allowing any group to easily contribute its findings. The plan comes on the heels of recent pressure by British politicians for Google and other search engines to step up their filtering.

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Google to battle child porn with new industry-wide image blocking tool

Since the story broke last week of the NSA’s secret compilation of Americans’ phone call metadata , the overwhelming response from government has been ” nobody is listening to your telephone calls ” — that the data being collected is limited to things like phone numbers and call durations. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it now looks like the feds are listening. Or at the very least, they don’t require a court order just to do so. Continue reading…

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Report: NSA briefing reveals agency can listen in on your phone calls without court approval

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The Verge reads: Vonnegut’s ‘Cat’s Cradle,’ part three

Following continued demands for more transparency, the Obama administration is said to be considering declassifying a secret court order that would shed light upon recent leaks. According to NPR , the administration may release an order that permits the NSA to gather phone call records on millions of American citizens. The order would apparently expand upon the leaked Verizon court order by explaining specific constraints on the surveillance program, as well as the safeguards in place to protect US citizens’ rights and privacy.

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Obama administration may declassify key court order on NSA surveillance, says NPR

Microsoft has slowly been catching up on filling the Windows Phone store with big-name apps, and according to Bloomberg Businessweek , that may be thanks to some financial encouragement. Microsoft is reportedly paying some companies $100,000 or more to build apps for its mobile OS. Though no specific apps are named, Microsoft has landed a number of favorites in just the last few months, including Pandora , Temple Run , and Jetpack Joyride . Of course, Temple Run ‘s arrival came five months after Temple Run 2 hit iOS .

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Microsoft reportedly paying developers $100,000 or more to build apps

Google has unveil what it’s calling its “latest moonshot” out of the Google X labs. It’s called “Project Loon,” and as reported last month , it involved sending up a huge number of giant balloons to beam down internet access to remote regions around the globe. Google says that balloons make sense for this purpose — they’re cheap to deploy and can provide wireless coverage in areas that would otherwise be difficult to serve due to geography. Like Google’s driverless cars, Project Loon is very much an experiment that’s in “very early days.” Google says that it has already built the system, however, carrying balloon at 60,000 feet, providing internet speeds “similar to today’s 3G networks or faster.” Balloons drift, of course, so Google..

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Google unveils ‘Project Loon,’ an experiment to bring balloon-powered internet to ‘the entire world’

Harmonix, famous for originating the modern music game genre with Guitar Hero , then following that with Rock Band , and Dance Central after that, seems like the perfect developer to bring Walt Disney’s Fantasia to life as a video game set to pop music. It doesn’t sound sacrilegious to me, it sounds like a lot of fun. Harmonix has always had a way of making me feel at one with the music — not entirely in control, but at least in sync. I wasn’t having any fun In a meeting room in the back of Disney Interactive’s E3 booth, I stood in front of the Xbox One’s Kinect sensor. A moving silhouette of myself appeared on the famous conductor’s platform, and I almost got chills

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‘Fantasia’ for Kinect has big ambitions, old constraints

Microsoft has confirmed that the games it releases for the Xbox One will sell for $59.99, just like those for the Xbox 360, and Sony has previously suggested that it will also be sticking to the old price point. A spokesperson told Polygon that Microsoft Studios games will have a standard price of $59.99, meaning that we won’t be seeing a premium for the extra work of making next-gen titles, despite what developers have said about the increased complexity of building for the new console. It’s been a long time since the last generation of Microsoft and Sony consoles was released; that jump in specs came with a price hike of $10, bringing the cost of the average game from $49.99 to $59.99. Sony hasn’t officially confirmed a next-gen price..

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Microsoft says games for the Xbox One will still cost $59.99

Earlier this week I stood in line outside a food bank in downtown Los Angeles. People chattered in my ears, but those in front of me didn’t move. I walked several steps down the line, leaning into the face of a stoic woman. Behind me I head the sound of commotion

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Digital empathy: how ‘Hunger in Los Angeles’ broke my heart in a virtual world

Facebook has sent invitations — by physical snail mail — to members of the press announcing a media event scheduled for June 20th. Joanna Stern of ABC News received one such invite, with Facebook’s letter claiming “a small team has been working on big ideas.” The event will take place at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters. As for what Mark Zuckerberg and Co. have in store, the rumor mill has been fairly quiet of late following the high-profile launches of Graph Search , a redesigned news feed , and Facebook Home . We’ve reached out to the company for more details on the June 20th event.

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Facebook hosting mysterious June 20th event, says it’s been working on ‘big ideas’

I played a hundred new huge-budget video games this week, but the only one that really made sense to me was a cellphone and Vita game called RYMDKAPSEL . Like many tower-defense games the primary objective of RYMDKAPSEL is to grow and defend your population. But when designer Martin Jonasson set out to make a viable StarCraft for mobile, he discovered that StarCraft probably isn’t something you’d want to play on your phone, and its most memorable component would probably be how much it crashed your OS.

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‘RYMDKAPSEL’ mixes Tetris and StarCraft into one great mobile game

Even as the Oculus Rift has gotten tremendous attention from the gaming world (among other things, Epic announced a partnership with it for Unreal Engine 4), designing a good game for it has proved difficult. Virtual reality throws a wrench in well-established genres like the first-person shooter, turning something as simple as aiming into a conundrum. Oculus itself has suggested things like exploration games, but EVE Online studio CCP thinks it’s found another answer: send everyone to space. At E3, I got a chance to try EVR , a dogfighting game built to take advantage of the Rift’s capabilities. After strapping on the headset, you’ll find yourself inside a tiny spacecraft’s cockpit, virtual body manning the controls

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The Oculus Rift was made for space battles: inside the virtual cockpit of ‘EVR’

Yahoo failed to overturn a government order in a court dispute that ultimately led the company to join PRISM, the NSA and FBI’s controversial surveillance program , the New York Times reported . A heavily redacted document from 2008 shows a company — identified by the Times as Yahoo — petitioning the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review an order from the government based on a belief that it violated the Fourth Amendment. The FISC called Yahoo’s concerns “overblown” in its decision, saying it is “settled beyond peradventure that incidental collections occurring as a result of constitutionally permissible acquisitions do not render those acquisitions unlawful.” Continue reading…

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Yahoo fought back against ‘unconstitutional’ government order before joining PRISM: NYT

With titles like Quantum Break and the upcoming Halo series , the convergence of gaming and narrative storytelling has become an intense focal point — but the men behind Indiana Jones and Star Wars think gaming will never be able to provide the same type of rich experience traditional storytelling does. Speaking Wednesday at a panel at the University of Southern California — joined by Microsoft’s Don Mattrick — George Lucas and Steven Spielberg argued that introducing the concept of interactivity fundamentally changes the experience. “They’re always going to be different,” Lucas said when asked if movies and games were going to become more similar. “They’re never going to be the same.” “Storytelling is about two things,” he..

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Lucas and Spielberg on storytelling in games: ‘it’s not going to be Shakespeare’

US officials have revealed that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was able to smuggle the classified documents out of a Hawaii facility using a thumb drive, which are banned inside of agency locations, reports the Los Angeles Times . Reportedly, investigators were able to discern what documents Snowden took and which server he took them from. However, it has not been made public whether or not Snowden is in possession of additional documents.

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used banned thumb drive to smuggle documents

One of Nintendo’s strongest traditional partners has said that it won’t create exclusive titles for the Wii U as long as the system’s poor sales continue. Speaking to Kotaku at this week’s E3 conference, CEO Yves Guillemot said “We need more sold.” Ubisoft is one of the few publishers to release a bona fide Wii U exclusive — horror action game ZombiU launched with the system last year — and Nintendo has historically enjoyed solid third-party support from the company. Guillemot expressed hope that Nintendo’s own titles might spur further sales of the struggling system. Nintendo typically releases the best-selling games for its own consoles, and this week showed off new entries in the Super Mario , Legend of Zelda , Mario Kart , Super… Continue reading…

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Ubisoft won’t develop Wii U-exclusive games until Nintendo sells more systems

For over a century, the United States Navy has written its communications using only capital letters, but that tradition is now going through a sea change. The Navy has finally allowed lowercase letters to find their way into official communications, meaning sentences from here on out should largely use conventional capitalization. Navy Times reports that the all-caps format was a holdout from early telecommunication systems that only supported capital letters. The Navy began use of such systems around the 1850s, but has finally made the change in response to younger sailors’ preference for the more readable mixed-case formatting

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US Navy drops all-caps communication requirement

Samsung is taking the wraps off its new Galaxy S4 Zoom variant today, the latest in a series of spinoffs for its flagship handset. The phone features a 10x optical zoom lens in front of its 16-megapixel CMOS sensor, with a Xenon flash for adding some extra light to your images. Like we’d heard last week , the newest S4 has a 4.3-inch qHD (960×540) Super Amoled display and 1.5GHz dual-core processor, runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and supports LTE. Predictably, it’s big and heavy, at 208 grams and 15.4 millimeters thick — nearly double the thickness of the original Galaxy S4

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Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Zoom official: 16-megapixel cameraphone with 10x optical zoom

Traktor DJ for iPhone and iPad showed that Native Instruments could bring a strong DJ experience to iOS, but the apps were inherently limited by the complete lack of physical controls. To try and answer that concern, the company is launching the Traktor Kontrol Z1 — it’s a small, physical, two-channel mixer that works with the Traktor DJ app and lets you free up the screen of your iOS device to focus specifically on manipulating the “waveform.” (Traktor DJ’s visual for the songs you have cued up; it replaces the more traditional virtual turntable similar apps use.) Once you’ve set up your iOS device with the Kontrol Z1, you can use it to manipulate faders, filters, effects, and the EQ without having to change the interface on your… Continue reading…

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Traktor Kontrol Z1 brings physical controls to your iPad DJ setup for $199.99

The US National Security Agency’s recently revealed internet surveillance program PRISM has been broadly condemned by tech companies, even those whose networks were allegedly involved . But now some organizations and companies are going further, sending a letter to Congress today calling upon lawmakers to immediately halt PRISM and other forms of internet surveillance. Mozilla , Reddit, 4Chan, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are among the 86 different organizations that have co-signed the letter, and they have also launched a new campaign online, “StopWatching.US ,” which invites web users to add their signatures to the petition as well.

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Mozilla, Reddit, 4Chan join coalition of 86 groups asking Congress to end NSA surveillance

Before yesterday’s E3 keynotes from Sony and Microsoft, opinion was split on the very different paths each company is taking. Some found the PlayStation 4 the more appealing proposal on paper — a more powerful, developer-friendly box that seemed to be created with gamers’ best interests in mind. Others, however, were more impressed with the Xbox One’s expansive entertainment options and Microsoft’s audacious plan to take over the living room. Now that both companies have played their hands at the biggest gaming show of the year, where do they stand?

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PlayStation 4: Sony outmaneuvers Microsoft on price, design, and DRM