Never one to make conservative predictions, Google engineering director Ray Kurzweil thinks that humans will soon develop technology advanced enough to keep us alive forever. CNBC reports that Kurzweil told the Global Future 2045 World Congress this week that life expectancies “will go into high gear within 10 and 20 years from now” and that within “probably less than 15 we will be reaching that tipping point where we add more time than has gone by because of scientific progress.” In other words, Kurzweil thinks that within 15 years we’ll have technology that will let us add years to our lives at a pace that’s faster than the years we lose through natural aging. Achieving immortality has long been one of
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Everybody wins when NASA does something good, and the news that the program selected its highest percentage, ever, of female astronauts for its new class is no exception. The eight new astronaut candidates — four of whom are women — could join the 49 active astronauts already working at NASA. 
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T-Mobile previously announced that it plans to shut down MetroPCS’s CDMA network by 2015 and repurpose the spectrum to expand its 4G LTE coverage. The carrier revealed last week that its plan to migrate subscribers from CDMA to HSPA+ and devices is already ahead of schedule, however, and it’s trying to entice customers to switch networks by launching a “Bring Your Own Phone” program in Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas and Hartford that allows customers to bring an unlocked smartphone to use on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile previously said that it is on pace to cover 100 million people with LTE by the end of June and 200 million by the end of 2013. Additionally, the company has combined its 1700 MHz AWS spectrum
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By Jonathan Stempel and Sruthi Ramakrishnan (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp on Monday said it has sued Dish Network Corp to block its tender offer for Clearwire Corp, on the eve of a key deadline in a takeover battle that also includes Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank Corp. The lawsuit filed on Monday in Delaware Chancery Court accuses Dish of trying to "fool" and "coerce" Clearwire shareholders into tendering their shares, and rejecting Sprint's competing effort to buy the 49.8 percent it did not already own of the wireless broadband provider. ...
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BEIJING (AP) — China has built the world's fastest supercomputer, almost twice as fast as the previous U.S. holder and underlining the country's rise as a science and technology powerhouse.
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Google has settled a lawsuit brought on by shareholders after the company announced plans for a stock split earlier this year, Reuters reported. Investors were initially upset with Google and claimed the split would give founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin more control of the company. Google announced plans to issue a new class of nonvoting stock that would be issued as a dividend to investors, that would be used for future acquisitions and that would not take away from Page and Brin’s control of the company. Google’s current setup gives Class A shares one vote, while Class B shares, such as those owned by Page and Brin, carry 10 votes each. The settlement will give Class C stock holders a cash or
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TOKYO (Reuters) - New York-based hedge fund company Third Point said on Tuesday that it had raised its stake in Sony Corp and asked for an opportunity to present its proposal for a partial spin-off of the company's entertainment unit to Sony's board. In a letter to Sony Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, Third Point said it had increased its stake in Sony to 70 million shares, valued at $1.4 billion. "Given our large stake, we reiterate our offer to serve on Sony's board of directors," the fund said in its letter reviewed by Reuters. (Reporting by Chikafumi Hodo; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
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(Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp has filed a lawsuit against Dish Network Corp and Clearwire Corp to prevent the completion of Dish's offer for Clearwire's shares. The lawsuit details how Dish has "repeatedly attempted to fool Clearwire's shareholders into believing its proposal was actionable in an effort to acquire Clearwire's spectrum and to obstruct Sprint's transaction with Clearwire," Sprint said in a statement on Monday. The complaint has been filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery. ...
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In addition to all the other controversies surrounding the Xbox One, we’re now hearing grumblings from independent developers who are unhappy that Microsoft is telling them that they need to have a publisher to sell their games on the Xbox One marketplace. Eurogamer last week talked with Lorne Lanning, the head of independent game developer Oddworld Inhabitants, who said that Microsoft’s new restrictions on independent studios mean that his company won’t release any new games for the Xbox One or the Xbox 360. “Why do we need a publisher when we self-finance our games, we build our own IP, we manage our own IP and we’ve turned nearly two million units online as indie publishers sold — not free downloads?” Lanning asked rhetorically,
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Gamers hoping that Nintendo would try to boost poor Wii U sales by slashing the console’s price are in for a disappointment. In an interview with VentureBeat last week, Nintendo marketing executive Scott Moffit said that the company has “no plans to change the price of Wii U,” which he described as a “great value” for gamers. Instead, Moffit said he expected sales for the console to increase once new games for Nintendo’s popular Mario, Zelda and Super Smash Bros. franchises get released in the coming months. Moffitt’s remarks echo those made by Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who recently blamed the Wii U’s poor sales on its lack of top-notch games.
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A new study published by PCMag on Monday found that AT&T has the fastest 4G LTE network in the United States. The website used eight identical Samsung smartphones to test the networks of all four major carriers in the U.S. across 30 cities. AT&T’s 4G LTE was found to be the fastest, although Verizon’s network was on the whole more reliable. T-Mobile’s 4G LTE network “looked great,” although its availability was scarce, while Sprint was said to be on an “upward trend” as it continues to debut new LTE markets. “The speeds we saw on AT&T’s and Verizon’s nationwide LTE networks look spectacular, but they aren’t the whole story, as neither network is able to deliver a completely consistent or affordable home
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Netflix's deal to air original television programming from Dreamworks Animation is a major coup for both companies.
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Consumers are still buying larger tablets but it seems as though they’re now more drawn to cheaper, smaller models such as the iPad mini and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. Research firm DisplaySearch has found that “LCD tablet PC panel shipments reached 27 million units in March… primarily driven by 7-inch panels, which accounted for 48% of total tablet PC panel shipments.” The rise of smaller tablets is hardly surprising given the aggressive pricing that both Google and Amazon have established with their $200 7-inch tablets. However, DisplaySearch says that some of biggest growth is coming from emerging markets where white label manufacturers are selling 7-inch tablets for as little as $69 and putting significant pressure on established tablet manufacturers’
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While the HTC One may not be posting Apple or Samsung-type sales, it seems to be settling in as the third-most popular smartphone in the United States. Barron’s reports that R.W. Baird analyst William Power has found that “the HTC One continues to be noted frequently as the third-best-selling device behind the iPhone and S4″ on AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. Power’s report is just the latest indicating that HTC’s flagship smartphone has been a reasonably strong seller so far, as a report released earlier this month estimated that HTC is selling around 1.2 million units of the device per month and sales of the device could pick up even more when it comes to Verizon in the coming weeks.
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When looking for a way to digital detox most of us — besides the likes of Woody Allen — aren't going to pay people to do our Internetting for us. The 25 days disconnected from the Internet that "performer, writer, CEO, youngest child" Baratunde Thurston chronicles over at Fast Company would not have been possible without the help of his "chief of staff" Julia Lynton Boelte, who he had check his email every few days. ...
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Smartphone vendors are under increased pressure to implement anti-theft solutions that will help make smartphones a less appealing target for thieves. According to a recent report from Korean-language MK, Samsung may already be working on a smartphone “kill switch” that it plans to roll out as soon as next month. The feature will reportedly allow Samsung or its carrier partners to remotely lock, wipe or completely disable smartphones that have been reported lost or stolen by their owners.Once disabled, stolen phones would be rendered completely useless and would not operate even when new SIM cards are installed.
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By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. security expert says he has identified ways to remotely attack high-end surveillance cameras used by industrial plants, prisons, banks and the military, something that potentially would allow hackers to spy on facilities or gain access to sensitive computer networks. Craig Heffner, a former software developer with the National Security Administration who now works for a private security firm, said he discovered the previously unreported bugs in digital video surveillance equipment from firms including Cisco Systems Inc, D-Link Corp and TRENDnet. ...
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Google is developing a new technology that will help search engines and other Internet companies collectively remove child pornography from the Web, The Telegraph reported. The database will remove images from the Internet that have been “flagged” by organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation. A Google spokesperson explained that the “industry-wide global database” will “help all technology companies find these images, wherever they might be,” and “they will then be blocked and reported.” To assist in its goal of eradicating inappropriate images of children, Google also plans to set up a $2 million fund for independent software developers to aid them in creating new ways of preventing the spread of child pornography. The database is expected to be operational
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Chat with Yahoo! News technology editors and the co-founders of Whistle, the new wearable health gadget for pets.
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Facebook will reportedly be adding Vine-like, short video clips to its Instagram service later this month. This follows an important cross-over moment — earlier in June, Vine surpassed Instagram in Twitter shares. But perhaps even more worryingly, Vine has become the fastest growing top iOS app in America measured by engagement. According to Onavo Insights, Vine has tripled its monthly engagement  to 10.7% of all iPhone owners in just a few months. Instagram remains far ahead with 35.5%, but it’s engagement growth has slowed to a crawl. This could be a pivotal moment in the obscure and potentially highly annoying art of posting seven-second stop motion video clips of people re-enacting the Siege of Gondor on their coffee tables. A Facebook/Instagram entry
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LONDON (AP) — Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks to the Guardian newspaper have thrown back the curtain on the world of diplomatic espionage, revealing — in explicit detail — how British spies monitor enemies and allies alike. So what does GCHQ, Britain's eavesdropping agency, actually do? And how does it do it? And is any of this really all that surprising?
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BlackBerry’s comeback efforts are now fully underway, but the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 are just the beginning. According to a new report from Digitimes, BlackBerry still plans to launch as many as four additional BlackBerry 10 smartphones before 2013 is over. We already know the recently announced BlackBerry Q5 will be among the new handsets BlackBerry is prepping for the second half of 2013, and recent rumors suggest the BlackBerry A10 will launch in November as a sequel to the full-touch Z10. That still leaves one to two additional BlackBerry phones that will launch later this year according to Digitimes’ unnamed supply chain sources, though no details on the mysterious handsets were reported.
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Netflix on Monday announced a blockbuster deal that will bring no less than 300 hours of original content from DreamWorks to its streaming video service. That means Netflix will have the rights to premier new series with characters from franchises that might include Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and Casper the Friendly Ghost. A deal of this magnitude with a leading animation house could be extremely expensive and no details about actual programming have been divulged at this point. That’s why it’s fascinating that Netflix’s share price soared by as much as 8% on Monday. Wall Street loves the content deals Netflix is now striking; apparently the success of House of Cards and Arrested Development has convinced investors that original content is
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Digg’s RSS news reader will launch in beta next week, and everyone will have access by June 26, the company announced in a blog post Monday. It will provide a closer look at company’s effort to capitalize on the demise of Google Reader.
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Microsoft doesn’t exactly need any more negative publicity for the Xbox One, which is why the company was eager to quash rumors that it would start charging more for games on its next-generation console. A Microsoft representative told Polygon late last week that it will sell new Xbox One games for $60 each, the same price that it charges for Xbox 360 games and the same price that Sony will charge for games on the PlayStation 4. The Xbox One has generated quite a bit of controversy in the gaming community for its connectivity and used games policies, and it has also been criticized for being $100 more expensive than the Playstation 4 because of the mandatory inclusion of its next-generation
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