Alice Hill
C.S. Magor
Cat Miller
David Brumbaugh
David Chie
Dawn Kawamoto
Don Willmott
Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Lekan Oguntoyinbo
Leslie Stevens-Huffman
M Noivad
Mark Feffer
nick kolakowski
Stephen Lahanas
Susan Hall
Vincent Chow
Swipe Glitch Spotted in iPhone 5
As users become increasingly habituated to the iPhone 5, new ticks are bound to be discovered. Most recently a scrolling glitch, possibly hardware-related, has been revealed. The glitch manifests itself during repeated, rapid diagonal swiping. When two iPhone 4s units and two iPhone 5 units, one of each running iOS 6 and iOS 6.01 are being tested side by side, repeated diagonal swiping on the iPhone 4S causes no issues, while on both iPhone 5s, the screen lags intermittently before… continue…
Navy SEALs Disciplined for Video Game Work
Seven U.S. Navy SEALs received letters of reprimand and had their salaries reduced for two months for spending two days as paid consultants on Electronic Arts’ single shooter game Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The men were all members of the elite SEAL Team Six, and one of them was said to be on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, they broke with military policy by not following the chain of command and asking permission before agreeing to participate… continue…
New Amplifiers Could Double Smartphone Battery Life
Power drains got you down? A new type of power amplifier could double your smartphone battery life. While there’ve been significant improvements in battery technology over the last few years, most of these have translated into incremental performance increases. For the most part, longer battery life has required higher-capacity batteries. But as battery capacities have increased so have screen sizes, and that pretty much negates any gains. So what’s using all the battery power? The signal power amplifier accounts for… continue…
Nissan Infinitis Will Soon Steer By Wire
Nissan is looking to significantly upgrade its Infiniti sedans by adding a steer-by-wire system. Somewhat similar to the fly-by-wire system found in planes, the new tech will mostly dispense with the age-old mechanical apparatus. In steer-by-wire, control signals are transmitted electronically. Since electrical signals are transmitted faster than mechanical instructions, drivers can expect better response time and easier turning. The downside is that if the car’s electrical system fails, so does the steering. Nissan has worked around this by including… continue…
Why Apple Lightning Connector Crack Is Good News
The word on the street is that Apple’s new Lightning connector for the iPhone has already been cracked, raising the possibility that cheap, but functional, knockoff cables will soon be a reality. A recent teardown of the Apple Lightning cable revealed the presence of what looked like an authentication chip. The chip in question was a Texas Instruments BQ2025—conspicuously absent from the company’s published datasheets. ChipWorks explained: “TI does have published datasheets on the BQ2022, BQ2023, BQ2024, and BQ2026. These… continue…
Has Sony’s PlayStation 3 Finally Been Hacked For Good?
Sony’s PlayStation 3 has had its share of security meltdowns, of course, but a recent development might mean that the aging console is hacked for good. In the past, PS3 security has been something of a cat and mouse game. Sony’s had to deal with a range of piracy-enabling firmware and USB dongles, not to mention Geohot’s release of the “metldr” root key. The release of firmware 3.60 largely patched things up and security systems were implemented to keep those… continue…
Pandora Stock Dives on Apple Music Service Rumors
Reports that Apple is preparing an Internet streaming-radio service fed a plunge in Pandora Media’s stock price Thursday — 9 percent to hit a record low of $7.50 before finishing the day at $8.20. That’s a far cry from the company’s $16 IPO price in June 2011. It might be premature to call 2012 Pandora’s annus horribilus, a lot can change over the next two months and 2013, when Apple’s music streaming service is expected to launch, could prove things… continue…
AMD’s Trinity Hits 7.3GHz. (LOX Not Included)
A team of overclockers at PCGamesHardware.de appears to have managed to overclock AMD’s most powerful Trinity APU variant, the A10-5800K, to a spectacular 7.3GHz. The CPU typically runs at speeds of 3.8GHz – 4.2GHz. While it can be comfortably overclocked to about 4.5GHz without any elaborate cooling mechanisms, to achieve 7.3GHz you have to jump through a lot of hoops. The team managed two impressive feats: hitting 5.1GHz through air cooling and reaching 7.3GHz with liquid nitrogen, by ramping up… continue…
New Glasses Protect Pilots from Laser Strikes
Britain’s Ministry of Defense is developing a novel type of eyewear that’s capable of reflecting certain wavelengths of laser light. For pilots and passengers, the dazzling effect of a bright laser light directed into a darkened cockpit could have lethal consequences. It’s fair to say that this is facing a growing problem.In 2005, 283 incidents of laser cockpit strikes were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This year, the FBI expects complaints to top 3,700. In response, the FBI… continue…
Google Said to Be Readying iOS 6 Native Maps
A set of mysterious screen shots that surfaced on Sunday are reported to belong to an alpha version of a native Google Maps app running on an iPhone 5. If the whole Apple Maps fiasco is getting you down, take heart. If a recent rumors is to be believed, Google’s hard at work on a native version for iOS 6. According to San Francisco developer Ben Guild, the application is vector-based, features two-feature rotation to any angle, and supports the full… continue…
