Excerpts from Brilliant Brunch at SXSW 2013 in Austin featuring: Jake Lodwick (Vimeo and Elepath, Founder) Carla Diana (Creative Director, Carla Diana Design)Bre Pettis (Makerbot, Founder)Beth Comstock (GE, CMO)
Artificial intelligence
Danny Hillis: The Internet Could Crash. We need a Plan B
In the 1970s and 1980s, a generous spirit suffused the Internet, whose users were few and far between. But today, the net is ubiquitous, connecting billions of people, machines and essential pieces of infrastructure — leaving us vulnerable to cyber-attack or meltdown. Internet pioneer Danny Hillis argues that the Internet wasn’t designed for this kind […]
Bribery Probe Targets Microsoft Partners
Microsoft is entangled in a U.S. government investigation into whether the software maker and some of its business partners resorted to bribery to close deals in China, Romania and Italy, according to a report published Tuesday. Citing anonymous people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal said the Justice Department and the Securities and […]
Michigan Files $3.1M Tax Lien Against Google
The Michigan Treasury Department has filed a $3.1 million tax lien against Google Inc., which has an advertising sales office in Ann Arbor. The Lansing State Journal reports (https://on.lsj.com/Y0ziJW ) that the lien includes two Michigan business tax assessments for $1.7 million and $1.4 million. The notice was signed Nov. 27 by Deputy Treasurer Richard […]
The Feminine Pad (A Tablet for Women)
Just as I was about upgrade to the LeapPad2, Eurostar Group has released the new ePad Femme Tablet for Women. “The Tablet comes preloaded with applications so you can just turn it on and log in to cooking recipes or yoga,” says Mani Nair, Associate Vice President for Marketing at Eurostar Group. The ePad was […]
U.S. Justice: Email Snooping Law No Longer Sensible
The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday it supports rewriting 26-year-old legislation that has allowed law enforcement to read a person’s emails without a search warrant so long as the email is older than six months or already opened. The law has long been criticized by privacy advocates as a loophole when it comes to protecting […]
Ericsson, STMicroelectronics to Cut 1,600 Jobs
Swedish wireless equipment maker Ericsson and Switzerland’s STMicroelectronics say they will lay off up to 1,600 workers globally as part of a plan for splitting up their unprofitable joint venture. STMicroelectronics, one of Europe’s largest chipmakers, announced in December that it wanted out of ST-Ericsson as it struggled with a downturn in global demand. […]
Wireless Charging for Devices Smaller than Mobile Phones
Wireless charging will soon be available for more and more mobile phones. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is working with the industry’s leading technological companies and standardisation bodies to expand the scope of application of wireless charging technology to other, smaller portable devices, such as mobile phone accessories, wrist devices, wireless mice, and sensors. […]
HotSpot Episode 4: Leap Motion Control
This week on WDD’s HotSpot: Neurowear has adapted its brainwave-reading technology to create Micro Headphones for a project called Zen Tunes. The newly EU-funded Mindwalker project is routing brain signals directly to a robotic exoskeleton in the hope of giving patients suffering from paralysis the ability to walk again. Qualcomm is putting wireless charging platforms […]
Self-Assembled Nanostructures Enable Low-Power Phase-Change Memory
Nonvolatile memory that can store data even when not powered is currently used for portable electronics such as smart phones, tablets, and laptop computers. Flash memory is a dominant technology in this field, but its slow writing and erasing speed has led to extensive research into a next-generation nonvolatile memory called Phase-Change Random Access Memory […]