Chris PeBenito

 Ready to feel bad for a pile of circuit boards? Wait ’til about a minute and twenty seconds into this video. That robot you see being pushed around is the latest generation of Atlas, the insanely advanced humanoid robot as built by the Google-owned Boston Dynamics. (Don’t feel too bad, by the way: they’re hitting stuff out of Atlas’ hands and pushing him around to test… Read More

Microsoft really, really wants you on Windows 10. We noticed last month that it was downloading the optional Windows 10 updater whether you asked for it (and had space for it) or not. Now it's actually pre-ticking the update box, as Ars Technica re...

For the past three years, London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has maintained a 24/7 presence outside the Ecuadorean embassy in an attempt to arrest Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange on sexual assault charges. It's been a costly operation:...

Vox parsed out the Bureau of Justice Statistics' numbers on incarceration in prisons (excluding jails) and produced this ghastly visualization tracking the transformaiton of America into the country with the highest rate of incarceration in the history of the world. (more…)

Mostly it's your record locator and frequent flier number, but with that, an attacker can access the ticket record, see your future flights, your email address, and the details of the emergency contacts you'd added to the reservation. (more…)

You can't actually dig to China.

On Jan. 1, 2016, your driver's license issued in Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire or New York will not be enough to board your flight. Domestic travelers from those four states, no matter where they are, will need to bring a second form of identification such as a passport or U.S. military...

This is a video demonstration of Lafarge Tarmac's Topmix permeable concrete drinking up 4,000 liters of water poured onto it. That is impressive. The concrete in my apartment building's parking lot? It could drink 4,000 liters too, but only beer and liquor. It has a drinking problem but nobody in my building wants to talk about it. Keep going for the video.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 10 is being downloaded to computers whether or not users have opted in. An INQUIRER reader pointed out to us that, despite not having 'reserved' a copy of Windows 10, he had found that the ~BT folder, which has been the home of images of the new operating system since before rollout began, had appeared on his system. He had no plans to upgrade and had not put in a reservation request. I'm sure this is somehow my fault.

Holly Salzman of Albuquerque, New Mexico went to court to resolve coparenting issues with her ex-husband. The judge ordered Salzman to attend 10 sessions with a counselor named Mary Pepper (Photo).

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How do you compare?

Image: Redditor Cheez4444 

Dear reader, I know you were sitting around anxiously awaiting information regarding the latest entry on the fast food wars menu. Well, wait no longer. Taco Bell would like to introduce their strong-stomached customers to fried chicken taco shells, which they refer to as Naked Crispy Chicken Tacos.

According to FoodBeast, the only known locations serving this rare, crispy unicorn are Lost Hills and Bakersville, California. I can imagine an entire country of fast foodies on edge as they wait for extensive U.S. distribution. Via Uproxx
  Image: Jonny Arguello, Foodbeast

The new generation of millimeter-wave body scanners from the convicted war-criminals at L-3 were supposed to replace the useless, expensive backscatter radiation machines from Rapiscan with a more robust, less privacy invasive alternative. Read the rest

A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have proposed a camera that can take a perfect picture, even in extremely contrasty lighting conditions.

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An electronic vehicle immobilizer used in popular car models has proven vulnerable to hackers with laptops

The next time you go out to eat, consider ordering a lollipop to wash down your chicken caesar salad.

Sure, you loved those old games—but did you know Microsoft was really tricking you into learning how to use their system?

UCSD computer scientist Stefan Savage and colleagues will present their work at Usenix Security: they were able to disable the brakes on a 2013 Corvette by breaking into a Mobile Devices/Metromile Pulse dongle, used by insurance companies to monitor driving in exchange for discounts on coverage. Read the rest

(Photo: Robert Crouse-Baker)

Why on Earth would anyone have a use for a portable computer instead of or in addition to a desktop model? In a December 8, 1985 column in the New York Times, Erik Sandberg-Diment is dismissive of arguments that laptops just haven't become small and powerful enough to be useful. They're fundamentally a bad idea:

The limitations come from what people actually do with computers, as opposed to what the marketers expect them to do. On the whole, people don't want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper. Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.

-via David Thompson

A Houston deputy who pulled over Charnesia Corley, a 21-year-old black woman on her way to the store to pick up medicine for her sick mother, thought he smelled weed in Corley's car.

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The easiest way to test how humans react to autonomous cars is by getting them to believe they're in one

HTC, one of the biggest Android OEMs on the planet is essentially worthless. The company has taken a massive hit, losing 60% of its stock’s value. Currently the troubled tech giant has more cash on hand than the value of it’s stock which means investors think that the assets the company owns are essentially worthless. HTC’s assets are not only physical things like factories, building and their current stock of products but also their brand which has taken a huge hit in the last year.

HTC had NT47.2 billion cash on hand and their market price has fallen to NT47 billion ($1.5 billion). This counts as a 60% drop in the company’s value this year and almost 10% since June. HTC had been valued as high as NT900 billion in 2011 about two years before the release of the redesigned HTC One M7.

Since then a series of strange advertising choices, small evolutionary changes in their flagship devices and changes at the top of the company have signaled to investors that the path forward for HTC is going to be rocky, if there is one at all. In the third quarter, HTC is forecasting sales as low as 48% below analyst estimates.

In the early days of Android, HTC was the best selling brand in the United States. Google thought so much of the company that they’ve partnered with them on several projects including the Nexus One in 2010 and Nexus 9 in 2014. But after the failure of the One, Butterfly and Desire lines to gain any traction in globally, HTC now sits in peril. It should be no surprise that they’re in trouble right now.

They bet big on the HTC One M9 which many people have seen as a step back from the HTC One M8 and sales back that up. Many tech sites have panned the camera as a regression and the processor, a Snapdragon 810, as reason to avoid the newest flagship. In a day when one failed launch can significantly hurt you, the consequences loom large.

Source: Bloomberg

The post HTC “worthless” – Tech giant trading below cash appeared first on AndroidGuys.

This French #Scrabble champion doesn’t speak the language. Wait, what?! http://t.co/JJ4eoIwcBGpic.twitter.com/nbG03WmZXV

— CNN International (@cnni) July 22, 2015

Nigel Richards of New Zealand entered the French-language Scrabble tournament in Louvain, Belgium, and took first place. But he doesn’t speak a word of French. Instead, he memorized a French dictionary.

"He can say 'Bonjour' and count from one to ten, so he can give the score to his opponents" said Liz Fagerlund, a friend, Scrabble aficionado, and longtime supporter. "I believe it took him about nine weeks to memorize all the French words for the tournament."

The trick to his success is learning the words without taking up the brain-space to remember their definitions.

"For Scrabble, there is a dictionary of words without their meanings," says Fagerlund. "It's most likely that he's wired differently; he doesn't even study the pages word by word. He can look at a page full of words and absorb them all."

Richards knows his Scrabble, though, and how to win. He’s held several English-language U.S. and world championships.