MOSCOW At least twenty-five residents of the Siberian city of Irkutsk have died after drinking bath oil, hoping it would give them the same sensation as alcohol, Russian investigators said on Monday. Use of counterfeit or surrogate alcohol is rife in Russia’s regions, where two years of economic pain have pushed more people below the poverty line, though the death toll from this latest incident is unusually […]
The evidential burden for cases brought under proposed changes to the Privacy Act — that criminalise the intentional re-identification and disclosure of de-identified Commonwealth datasets — would be reversed, such that defendants would need to prove their innocence. “The defendant entity or agency bears the evidential burden for each of these exceptions, which reverses the criminal law principle that the prosecution must prove every element of the […]
On a clear afternoon on September 28, 2008, Elon Musk was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Years earlier he had sunk most of his internet fortune into a commercial space company – SpaceX – and was now vying for a lucrative deal with NASA to resupply the International Space Station. There was only one problem: the last three attempts to send a rocket into space […]
On Saturday morning, the Pentagon was eager to announce that China would return a U.S. Navy underwater drone after its military scooped up the submersible in the South China Sea late this week and sparked a row that drew in President-elect Donald Trump. As previously reported, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said that “through direct engagement with Chinese authorities, we have secured an understanding that the Chinese will […]
Image: Sarah Tew/CNET Every week, we sound off on the most important technology trends in our Monday Morning Opener. Looking back on 2016, we’ve identified the five tectonic plate shifts that have made the biggest impact on the industry and our readers who use these tools to drive the progress of the planet. So, without further ado, here are the five big tech trends of 2016 according […]
Kevin and I have been out and busy for the last few weeks so we hope you enjoy the rather long MobileTechRoundup show #387 that catches us up with the latest mobile news. Image: ZDNet Matt finally got a Pixel: What does he think? Moto Z Force Droid is another good Android choice for Daydream VR Google WiFi is a hit for Kevin Super. Mario. RUN! Why […]
MANILA, Philippines – Hours after threatening to scrap the country’s Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States after the US-led Millennium Challenge Corp. deferred voting on its assistance to the Philippines, President Duterte imposed one condition on Washington if it would want the deal retained. “You want to come back here? You pay us. You want bases here? Pay us. Transaction tayo, pera-pera na lang tayo, […]
Kickstarter campaigns sometimes never deliver, Pebble Time 2 and Pebble Core, but we also see successfully funded products that end up providing what was promoted. The Ticwatch 2 campaign began in late July and reached its funding goal of $50,000 in just 10 minutes. While I surprisingly did not back this new smartwatch, I was recently sent an evaluation Ticwatch 2 Active to test out. I’ve used […]
Apple’s competitors have clearly got a bit of an obsession with the MacBook Air. Following the ASUS ZenBook UX330UA, which blatantly copied the fruity ultraportable’s design, Acer has now released the TravelMate X349-M, a more affordable alternative with a similarly familiar look about it. With prices starting at less than £600 (inc. VAT), the TravelMate X349 inevitably lacks some of the finer features and superior performance of […]
18 December 2016 Roads and Transport Authority – Manal Khaled: The proceeds of the 93rd Public Distinctive Number Plates Auction held by Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) the day before yesterday (Saturday) at the Emirates Towers Hotel clocked AED42 million. Three licensing plates accounted for the lion share fetching AED15 million. The plate I 10 was the auction topper selling for AED6.7 million. Ahmed Bahrozyan, CEO of RTA […]
Digitizing analog processes can have steep learning curve. Robin Harris Even as a kid, I could see the visual difference between TV sitcoms – shot on videotape – and films. Video had a jarring sharpness that, paradoxically, made the picture less real. Films, with much higher resolution than video, looked more real, even though the motion blur and background softness – among other artifacts – are a […]
(Image: file photo) An advisor working for financial planning giant Ameriprise has inadvertently exposed hundreds of investment portfolios, worth tens of millions of dollars. The data was found on an internet-connected backup drive at the advisor’s home, which was set to synchronize over the internet with his primary backup drive at his office. But neither drive had a password, allowing anyone to view sensitive client data. The […]
MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte predicted Saturday night that neophyte senator and boxing champion Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao would become president and even gave him an advice in the event that he occupies Malacañan. In a freewheeling speech delivered during Pacquiao’s 38th birthday celebration in General Santos, Duterte referred to the senator as “president-to-be.” “I asked permission from President-to-be Manny Pacquiao. Ako, nagbitaw na ako ng […]
Facebook on Thursday unveiled a multi-part plan to fight fake news that includes teaming up with fact-checkers in the United States to cut down on the reach of bogus stories. The plan (which Poynter’s International Fact-checking Network is involved with) represents the first time Facebook has given fact-checkers the ability to verify news on its platform, and comes after months of public debate about the social media […]
(Image: Uber) Uber will continue operating its Volvo self-driving cars on San Francisco, California streets, despite repeated warning from state regulators the ride-hailing service doesn’t have proper permits to do so. In a letter obtained by the Associated Press, California’s Department of Justice said “the attorney general will seek injunctive and other appropriate relief,” if Uber doesn’t get the special permit to allow for self-driving vehicles. The […]
It was a clear and chilly afternoon in Moscow – March 18, 2014 – when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the documents to formally annex the Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine. Frustrated Western governments soon began rolling out the only response they could agree on to Mr. Putin’s brazen redrawing of Europe’s borders: economic sanctions. Over the next two days, the United States would designate 27 individuals […]
Image from Istockphoto In part one of my conversation with Kim Stevenson and Adriana Karaboutis, we discussed the challenges and opportunities facing women in technology Also read: Women in technology: Advice from Intel and Biogen This second post offers advice from Andi and Kim on how CIOs can add value to their organizations. Both women have years of CIO experience; Kim was CIO at Intel and Andi […]
Photo Minnesota football players spoke with the media on Friday. Credit Jeff Wheeler/Star Tribune, via Associated Press The University of Minnesota football team on Saturday rescinded its threatened boycott of a bowl game, a protest that had been intended to persuade the administration to lift the suspensions of 10 players entangled in a sexual assault inquiry. Team leaders continued to say that the 10 players, whose suspensions […]
Microsoft is building out a number of “graphs,” or data indexes, across the company. There’s the Bing knowledge graph, the Office Graph, and now, the LinkedIn professional graph. This week, the company announced plans to add another graph to its stable: A “world graph.” It’s partnering with HERE, TomTom, and Esri to build this geographic data index. The data in the coming world graph isn’t just about […]
A version running Google’s Chrome OS could join the Windows and Android editions of the Lenovo Yoga Book 2-in-1. Lenovo has a critical darling on its hands with the Yoga Book, a 2-in-1 hybrid that uses a “Create Pad” instead of a traditional laptop keyboard. That feature — which allows the user to switch easily between typing and pen input modes (including writing directly on paper that’s […]
Wherever she travels, Christine Lagarde receives head of state treatment. But back home in Paris this week, in the chamber where Marie-Antoinette was sentenced to death by guillotine during the French Revolution, the chief of the International Monetary Fund faced unimpressed judges and uncompromising former colleagues. For five days in the small, wood-panelled room, she gave evidence and listened to damning testimonies that pointed to her alleged […]
TELUK INTAN: The Home Ministry has been asked to review outdated laws to allow heavier penalties to be imposed on offenders as a deterrent sentence. Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the law review process in collaboration with the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) was needed to provide legislation and punishments that were deemed “futuristic” and rational to be applied in the future. “I have […]
When it emerged from stealth in 2011, MapR was an outlier in the Hadoop community. At the time, Hadoop was defined largely by two projects adapted from Google research: MapReduce, which introduced highly linear, massively parallel processing to big data, and the HDFS file system, which could accommodate data by the petabyte. And at the time, Hadoop was defined as an Apache open source platform. MapR’s message, […]
Image: ZDNet [This article has been updated several times since its initial publication to incorporate changes in Windows 10. Last updated: December 16, 2016] Over the past year, I’ve read countless “privacy guides” for Windows 10. Most are well-intentioned, but they invariably take a simplistic approach to privacy: Just turn off every switch in the Privacy section of the Settings app. If you do that, you’re not […]
