Latest Technology News & Updates

At Consumer Electronics Show 2015, Dell’s XPS 13 2015 edition swept the awards for laptops, particularly in the $800 price range. Considering the sheer quality of its competition, this was no easy feat. But, dude, are you getting a Dell? Read on to find out. Before going private, Dell’s sales weren’t doing great. It had slipped from the top PC seller to somewhere near sixth place in 2007. After a contested buyout in November of 2013, Dell’s future looked uncertain. However, its movements following the acquisition proved shrewd. Rather than releasing a deluge of models, as they had under public ownership, Dell refocused its efforts on building better products. The Dell XPS 13 2015 edition is part of the first line of laptops and tablets released following its departure from public ownership. The new line of Ultrabooks still use Dell’s made-to-order approach. Buyers configure their device online, selecting from a large number of parts and value-added options, with a base price of ...

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to preempt state laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that prevent municipal broadband providers from expanding outside their territories. The action is a year in the making. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced in February 2014 his intention to override state laws designed to protect private cable companies and telcos from public sector competition. Wheeler took his cue from the federal appeals court ruling that overturned net neutrality rules; tucked away in that decision was one judge's opinion that the FCC has the authority to preempt "state laws that prohibit municipalities from creating their own broadband infrastructure to compete against private companies." Nineteen states have such laws, often passed at the behest of private Internet service providers that didn't want to face competition. Communities in two of the states asked the FCC to take action. The City of Wilson, North Carolina and the Electric Pow...

People love taking shortcuts in all aspects of life; computers are no exception. Shortcuts, particularly ones performed by keyboard, can save you hours of time once applied properly. We’ve rounded up some of the most common keyboard shortcuts in the past, but today we’re here to produce the ultimate guide on Windows shortcuts. After examining how useful shortcuts can be, we’ll first look at universal shortcuts that perform the same function in pretty much every program you could use. We’ll dive into specific programs after that, and finish up with a selection of alternative tricks. Stay on board and you’ll be mastering these tricks in no time! Why Bother with Shortcuts? If you’re not accustomed to using them, keyboard shortcuts might seem like a waste of time. After all, you can use your mouse to make selections, use the toolbar options (like File, Edit, and Tools), launch programs, and navigate websites. In actuality, though, a mouse isn’t required to use your computer at all; ...

When it comes to modern technological conveniences, there are a number of things that irritate people above all others: unhelpful error messages, dead batteries, and cumbersome digital rights management (DRM). A company that puts DRM in place on their products is very clearly telling consumers that their freedoms will be sacrificed so that corporate execs can make more money — and consumers don’t tend to react very well to this message. Keurig is the most recent company to learn this lesson the hard way. Keurig: Hero to Zero Keurig had the misfortune of being in the news over the past few months for their attempt to add a form of DRM to their coffee makers. In previous versions of the Keurig machine, you put in a small plastic cup that contains coffee grounds, called a K-cup, into the machine. You press a button, wait a moment, and then you have a cup of coffee. It doesn’t get easier (especially for caffeine addicts like me, who don’t generally go for really high-quality coff...

Things have been pretty slow in the world of Steam Machines. Valve announced the initiative and the impending push on its Linux-based Steam OS, but then things went quiet. Alienware decided to take matters into its own hands with the release of the Alienware Alpha. It’s small PC designed to be used with a TV, but it comes with its own Alpha UI and Windows 8.1 installed. That’s right, no Linux-based Steam OS here to limit your PC adventures. Is the Alienware Alpha a worthwhile gaming PC? How does it compare to owning an Xbox One or PlayStation 4? All of these questions and more shall be answered today. Best of all, we have an Alienware Alpha to give away to one lucky reader! Keep reading all the way through the review to find out how to enter for your chance to win! Read More

Notey, a Hong Kong-based startup that wants to help internet users discover more original content and blogs, has closed a $1.6 million seed round to build out its service. The money comes from a collection of angel investors, including Infoseek and CoinTrust founder Steve Kirsch, Xiaomi VP Hugo Barra, and Hootsuite CEO and founder Ryan Holmes. The service itself is akin to an RSS reader at first glance, but with an emphasis on discovery and curation — and a really slick design. The likes of Feedly and co provide a place for users to read their favorite websites and blogs, but Notey is an option if you don’t necessary know what you want. The service showcases content using more than 500,000 curated topics. Users can select those that they like, read sources within them or pull them into their home-screen for easy access. Notey founders Catherine Tan and Kevin Lepsoe (a husband-wife duo, no less) said that they combed through more than 20 million blogs and websites, whittling th...

The Internet Engineering Task Force's HTTP Working Group has finalized its work on Hypertext Transfer Protocol 2, the successor to the HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 protocols that are the core of the Web. The working group has actually finalized two closely related specifications. The first is HTTP/2 itself. The second is called HPACK, a specification for compressing HTTP/2 headers. Work on HTTP/2 began in 2012 in response to the development of Google's SPDY protocol. Google created SPDY to address a number of performance gripes that the company had with traditional HTTP. Perhaps the biggest issue with HTTP/1.x was its use of multiple connections to load resources in parallel. While a single HTTP/1.x connection between a client and a server can be used to request multiple different objects (the images, CSS, and JavaScript that an HTML page may require), those objects have to be served up in order, one after the other. If one object takes a long time, perhaps because it's ver...

On Wednesday, Amazon's Prime Instant Video selection officially grew with five series plucked from the platform's public "Pilots" preview program. Among the series launching exclusively on the Prime platform "later this year and in 2016" is the most ambitious series yet from Amazon Studios: The Man in the High Castle, an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel. The alternate-reality sci-fi series, based on the 1962 novel of the same name, imagines a version of the United States that must deal with the Third Reich having won World War II. While the series lacks star power (unless you count DJ "Road Trip" Qualls as a star), the pilot's production values and quality writing (led by longtime X-Files scribe Frank Spotnitz) put it over the top—and led to what Amazon has called "our most watched pilot ever." That series joins a mini-documentary series The New Yorker Presents, dark middle-aged criminal comedy Mad Dogs, and two kids' s...

The proposed rules, which apply to drones that weigh less than 55 pounds, will restrict commercial drone operators to flights during daylight hours and to heights under 500 feet. Pilots will have to a visual line of sight with the drone (or work with an observer who does so). They will also have to pass a knowledge test and drones will have to be registered (for a fee) with the FAA. The proposed rules, which apply to drones that weigh less than 55 pounds, will restrict commercial drone operators to flights during daylight hours and to heights under 500 feet. Pilots will have to maintain a visual line of sight with the drone (or work with an observer who does so). They will also have to pass a knowledge test and drones will have to be registered (for a fee) with the FAA. The leaked document analyzes the economic impact of the proposed drones. Written by the FAA’s George Thurston, an economist with the FAA’s Office of Aviation Policy and Plans, the document argues that the positiv...

After a number of delays, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today officially announced its proposed rules for small commercial drones. Most of the proposed rules already leaked earlier this weekend. Overall, the proposed rules are pretty straightforward and more lenient than expected, but while they open up a number of use cases, they are still strict enough to make it impractical to operate the kind of delivery drones Amazon and others have envisioned. Here are the basics of the rules, which will apply to drones weighing fewer than 55 pounds: pilots will have to pass a knowledge test (but not a practical test) to get a newly developed drone operator license and will have to be vetted by the TSA. They will have to take a recurrent test every 24 months and be at least 17 years old. Pilots will only be allowed to fly during daytime hours and must be able to see the drone at all times (though they can also use a second operator as an observer). Once an operator has this ...

Here’s good news for owners of the Pebble, the original smartwatch, who also have an Android device. Now your watch can take advantage of apps that support Google’s Android Wear platform, in addition to those within Pebble’s own app store. Pebble first added this support back in December, but it was limited to beta testers at the time. Now anyone can take advantage of the tie-in. For example, TechCrunch’s Romain Dillet last year bemoaned the fact that his Pebble didn’t support the “nifty” Capitaine Train ticket booking app, but now it does thanks to today’s update. Pebble’s integration actually supports a wider selection of Android devices than Android Wear itself — Android 4.0 versus Android 4.3 — but the company still faces a huge task to stay relevant in a rapidly competitive space. Indeed, a recent Canalys report noted that Android Wear utterly dominated the 720,000 smartwatches that were estimated to have shipped last year. The analyst firm did say that Pebble’s focus on ...

Apple has improved the security of FaceTime and iMessage, its voice/video and multimedia chat communication tools. The services received two-factor authentication today as an option for users to enable, meaning that even if someone uses their Apple ID email and password to enable iMessage or FaceTime on a new device, they’ll still need to use a PIN from an existing trusted device to gain access to those services. You may recognize the system from iCloud’s two-factor authentication, or if you’ve tried to set up Keychain to keep your passwords in sync between Apple devices. If you’ve previously enabled two-factor for iCloud, it’ll also be enabled to FaceTime and iMessage. The additional level of protection applied to these services helps ensure that people will have a harder time grabbing potentially private images from your iMessage history, or pretending to be you via online communication methods. Two-step comes into play when users log out of an account on their device and try t...

The algorithmic logo design startup Tailor Brands has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from Disruptive Fund and various angel investors. We first wrote about the beta launch of Tailor Brands at Disrupt San Francisco this past fall. It tested various branding concepts in beta. It’s now ready to use the new funding to build upon those concepts and for the public to access its logo and design services. The goal of the startup is to reduce the cost of design by letting a machine create the look of logos and various branding items. These include business cards, bags, mugs, pens and various online materials such as social media profiles for smaller businesses that can’t afford to hire a graphic designer to do the work. A graphic artist might charge anywhere from $1000 on the lower end to upwards of $10,000 for the design of all branding material, depending on the job. The Tailor Brands site will design and let you download the logo for free for your own use. It will also allow yo...

LG was among the first wave of smartphone makers to venture into smartwatches. The G Watch and G Watch R are probably among the best in the market right now — not that this statement says much — but LG just announced its latest addition, the LG Watch Urbane, as Apple prepares to enter the space. Unlike its previous watches, LG is positioning this new one as a classic timepiece that — it believes – will appeal to both sexes, rather than just the geeky, male audience that has largely adopted the industry’s first smartwatches. The LG Watch Urbane is available in silver or gold and comes with a natural leather strap, but owners will have the option to switch it with any 22mm-wide band for regular watches. The watch keeps the 1.3-inch, circular plastic OLED face of the G Watch R, but is the Korean company’s first all-metal smartwatch. The device runs Android Wear and is powered by a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip. “The LG Watch Urbane’s classic design and smart features mak...

News In Shorts, an India-based company that operates a news digest app for iOS and Android, has raised a $4 million Series A round led by Tiger Global. The funding round for the New Delhi-based startup included participation from Japan’s Rebright Partners and existing investors Sachin and Binny Bansal, the founders of e-commerce firm Flipkart. The startup raised an undisclosed seed round last June, and counts media firm Times Internet among its backers. News In Shorts is an interesting service that has comparisons with Yahoo’s News Digest app and mobile news startup Circa. It provides its target audience in India with 60-word summaries of the day’s top stories, that’s typically 60 summaries spanning a range of categories including sports, entertainement national and international news. Each summary is written by its in-house team of editors, and includes a single link out to a story with further information, while readers can opt in for push notifications. “The idea is that re...

Apple’s touch-based devices have changed the way we interact with computers entirely, but that hasn’t stopped users from occasionally thinking wistfully of the days when physical keyboards ruled the roost. Tactus has taken that desire to heart, and the startup’s first consumer product, the Phorm, is about to bring a tactile experience back to your iPad mini’s software keyboard. Tactus co-founders Dr. Craig Ciesla and Dr. Micah Yairi have been working on technology that can generate physical keys from a flat surface on demand, giving you a smooth, unbroken surface for general touch-based interaction, and a physical keyboard when you need one. The company’s innovation uses a microfluidic panel to achieve its magic, routing liquid through invisible channels to expand specific areas of the top layer of a touch panel, producing protrusions and bumps where previously there were none. Phorm is the first product from Tactus that is ready for the consumer market, and it’s available for p...

Now you can give someone power of attorney over your digital life. Today Facebook began letting users select a “legacy contact” who can partially control their Facebook profile after they die. Previously when you bit the dust, your friends could notify Facebook to lock your profile into a memorial page. But now if you’ve set a legacy contact, that person can pin an announcement to the top of your profile to provide details for memorial services, approve friend requests and change their profile and cover photo. Alternatively, if you’d rather banish your Facebook profile to the shadow realm alongside your soul, you can tell Facebook to permanently delete your profile when you go to the big social network in the sky. Facebook product manager Vanessa Callison-Burch tells me that the company’s community operations team that responds to people’s requests to memorialize profiles heard “a number of poignant stories of what a legacy contact needs to do.” For example, one mother wrote...

Rely on VLC as your primary media player? It’s a more powerful media player than you might realize. For many users, VLC is one of the first applications in line to be installed on any new machine. It’s a great choice for a free, no-nonsense media player — but it also has plenty of tricks up its sleeve, if you’re prepared to dig below the surface. Here are some more things you can do with VLC, including some functionality that you might never have thought possible from a humble piece of media player software. Control Playback Speed Ever been listening to an audio file or watching a video clip and found yourself struggling to keep up? If you have any experience transcribing audio, or you’re a student who records your lectures, you may very well have had this problem — and it’s something easily fixed by VLC. Click on Playback in the VLC toolbar and then select Speed. You’ll be given options to increase or decrease the speed of playback by a little or a lot, or to return to the ...

From gizmos to trinkets: the era of smart jewelry is upon us, with makers and businesses of all stripes and sizes busy mixing electronics and sensors with ‘fashion-friendly’ designs intended to be displayed proudly on the person. Sure your Fitbit wristlet is technically a wearable but it’s not going to be garnering aesthetic attention and is probably intentionally tucked under your cuff. (Perhaps to hide the rash it’s given you…). And so another category of wearables is hoping to push in here — trying to convince consumers to shell out for a trinket whose primary ‘smart’ is the ability to change how it looks, mostly just for kicks and/or notifications. Last fall, for instance, Sony outed a minimalist e-paper smartwatch, called the FES Watch. It’s due to ship later this year. The watch face and band designs can customizable by the user, thanks to the use of low-power e-ink tech. This is e-ink as a fashion fabric. And that’s just the vanguard. E-ink’s low power consumption gets ...

After buying Travelocity earlier this month for $280 million, Expedia continues its online travel acquisition spree. Today, the company announced an agreement to acquire Orbitz for $1.6 billion — or $12 per share — in cash, a premium of 29 percent on Orbitz’s current share price. The deal speaks to ongoing consolidation in the market, but also Expedia’s bigger competitive threat in the form of Priceline, which owns Kayak and other large travel properties, and the fact that perhaps Orbitz saw the consolidation writing on the wall itself. Expedia says that the boards of both publicly traded companies have approved the deal, which will now be put to Orbitz shareholders for approval. Expedia will be buying both Orbitz’s portal plus a lot of other brands that it owns. “We are attracted to the Orbitz Worldwide business because of its strong brands and impressive team. This acquisition will allow us to deliver best-in-class experiences to an even wider set of travelers all over the...

Facebook revealed the final piece in its scalable data redesign today, one that completes its vision of redefining traditional hardware and software to make it more flexible to meet the needs of Facebook’s scale. To that end, they announced a new open-source modular switch platform called 6-pack. The key piece to understand is that Facebook has focused on separating the hardware and software, making each part of the system fully programmable, thereby giving Facebook the flexibility it requires. Facebook plans to contribute the entire design to the Open Compute project, where engineers will be free to build, configure and design these components as they see fit. Last June, Facebook began this journey by redesigning the top of rack switch ( the so-called Wedge), and developing a version of Linux called FBoss to run it. This was the first step in separating the hardware from the software, which was key to building the more flexible network required for computing at Facebook sca...

If you’ve ever filed a public records request with your local police department to learn more about how cell-site simulators are used in your community—chances are good that the FBI knows about it. And the FBI will attempt to “prevent disclosure” of such information. Not only can these devices, commonly known as "stingrays," be used to determine a phone’s location, but they can also intercept calls and text messages. During the act of locating a phone, stingrays also sweep up information about nearby phones. Last fall, Ars reported on how a handful of cities across America are currently upgrading to new hardware that can target 4G LTE phones. The newest revelation about the FBI comes from a June 2012 letter written by the law enforcement agency to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. It was first acquired and published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in December 2014—similar language likely exists between the FBI and other local authorities that use stingrays....

The cable lobby is opposed to a Federal Communications Commission plan to define "broadband" as speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps up. Customers do just fine with lower speeds, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) wrote in an FCC filing Thursday (thanks to the Washington Post's Brian Fung for pointing it out). 25Mbps/3Mbps isn't necessary to meet the legal definition of "high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology," the NCTA said. "Notably, no party provides any justification for adopting an upload speed benchmark of 3Mbps," NCTA Counsel Matthew Brill wrote. "And the two parties that specifically urge the Commission to adopt a download speed benchmark of 25 Mbps—Netflix and Public Knowledge—both offer examples of applications that go well beyond the ...

Don't look now, but Google's Project Zero vulnerability research program may have dropped more zero-day vulnerabilities—this time on Apple's OS X platform. In the past two days, Project Zero has disclosed OS X vulnerabilities here, here, and here. At first glance, none of them appear to be highly critical, since all three appear to require the attacker to already have some access to a targeted machine. What's more, the first vulnerability, the one involving the "networkd 'effective_audit_token' XPC," may already have been mitigated in OS X Yosemite, but if so the Google advisory doesn't make this explicit and Apple doesn't publicly discuss security matters with reporters. Still, the exploits could be combined with a separate attack to elevate lower-level privileges and gain control over vulnerable Macs. And since the disclosures contain proof-of-concept exploit code, they provide enough technical detail for experienced hackers to write mal...

Pity the audiophile. The term should be an aural counterpart to "cinephile"—as that word means a person who greatly appreciates movies, so "audiophile" should refer to a person who pursues a pure music listening experience. "Audiophile" should properly refer to someone who appreciates listening to music as it was recorded and who isn’t afraid of paying extra for high-quality equipment to chase after a "live" sound. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. "Audiophile" has become synonymous with "person who spends hundreds of dollars on magic rocks." While the magic rocks might be a bit much for all but the craziest of audiophiles, one area where even mainstream audiophiles have demonstrated an unswerving desire to spend lots and lots of money is on interconnection devices—cables, to you and me. The most recent audiophile interconnect to draw fire (on Reddit, among other sites) is the AudioQuest Diamond RJ/E Ethernet cable, which at 12 ...

For the first year after its official release, Microsoft will offer Windows 10 upgrades to current Windows 7 and Windows 8 users completely free of charge. Windows upgrade licenses currently start at $119.99—discounts from that MSRP are pretty common, sure, but there's no discount that can beat a 100-percent discount. The intent behind this move is to unify the Windows ecosystem. "With Windows 10, we think of Windows as a service," said Microsoft Operating Systems Group VP Terry Myerson at the Windows 10 Consumer Preview event earlier today. "The question 'what version are you running' will cease to make sense." That's a noble goal. It's a good reason to offer Windows upgrades for free. It's also completely unrealistic, at least for the foreseeable future. Sometimes you can't even give away upgrades We can't predict the future, but there are a few desktop operating systems out there that can show us how users treat free u...

On Tuesday, George Lucas continued making the promotional interview rounds for his latest film, the digitally animated musical Strange Magic, which meant interviewers made sure to ask slightly irrelevant questions about the next Star Wars film. In one of those interviews, Lucas disclosed a surprise tidbit about the upcoming film Star Wars: The Force Awakens: he had a lot less to do with it than his title as "creative consultant" might make you think. "The [story ideas] I sold to Disney, they [made] the decision that they didn't really want to do those, so they made up their own," Lucas said in an interview with Cinema Blend. "It's not the ones I originally wrote." This only adds to the list of things we know will not be involved in Episode VII's plot, which also includes the entire "expanded universe" of the series that won't factor into the new film (and in our opinion, that's great news). As Cinema Blend's report ...

A new report from security firm Avast out this morning reveals the discovery of a new form of malware on the Google Play store, which begins to display advertisements disguised as warning messages to end users when they unlock their Android smartphones. What’s interesting about this malware – or adware, as it’s better known – is that some of the applications where it was discovered already have a large number of installs. For instance, a card game app called Durak has 5 to 10 million installs, according to the data on Google Play. Explains Avast researcher Filip Chytry, the malware was first brought to the company’s attention by way of a comment on the Avast forums, and, initially, he didn’t think much of it. However, when he examined it further, he realized that the apps where the malware was found actually have a fairly large target audience. The apps are available in English-speaking countries and in other language versions as well, and have been downloaded by millions of...

A new report from security firm Avast out this morning reveals the discovery of a new form of malware on the Google Play store, which begins to display advertisements disguised as warning messages to end users when they unlock their Android smartphones. What’s interesting about this malware – or adware, as it’s better known – is that some of the applications where it was discovered already have a large number of installs. For instance, a card game app called Durak has 5 to 10 million installs, according to the data on Google Play. Explains Avast researcher Filip Chytry, the malware was first brought to the company’s attention by way of a comment on the Avast forums, and, initially, he didn’t think much of it. However, when he examined it further, he realized that the apps where the malware was found actually have a fairly large target audience. The apps are available in English-speaking countries and in other language versions as well, and have been downloaded by millions of use...

Everyone hates Flash, right? You have to install a plug-in, it's resource intensive, it doesn't work on mobile, and it causes all sorts of security problems. YouTube has been working on ridding itself of Adobe's ancient Web plug-in for several years now, and while the whole site has been slowly transitioning away from Flash, today YouTube announced that it finally serves HTML5 video by default. Users of Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8, and "beta versions of Firefox" will all have a Flash-less experience. YouTube's transition seems to have been pretty straightforward. Four years ago, YouTube laid out a laundry list of problems it had with HTML5, and today it has a blog post explaining how it has worked with the Web community to solve each issue. MediaSource Extensions have enabled YouTube to add adaptive bitrate streaming, which can change video quality on the fly without having to stop and rebuffer the video. YouTube says this has reduced buffering by "50 p...

Today at its Windows 10 event, Microsoft riffed about holograms for a lengthy period. It then announced that it had build a holographic headset that appears to fuse the real world with the digital realm. Windows 10 will contain holographic capabilities in its every permutation, according to the firm. The headset is called the HoloLens. Microsoft promised that it would be released inside of the Windows 10 “timeframe.” The headset is wireless, and does not need to pair with either a computer or a phone. It has its own CPU, and GPU, plus a new ‘Holographic Processing Unit’ designed specifically for this new kind of computing. Here’s what it looks like: The product, of course, is comparable to Google’s Glass project, the Oculus headset, Magic Leap’s eventual hardware (though that’s still under wraps), the Sulon Cortex and other similar projects. Like Glass, the hardware is transparent, providing a live view of the real world. Salon’s tech does the same, but uses a fully enclosed vis...

The Chromecast is already a damned great little device. Pretty much the only thing* that would make it better is if Google randomly gave you free money for owning one. (*EXCEPT FOR 5GHZ WIFI SUPPORT, THAT’D BE GOOD TOO.) What do you know! That’s what they’re doing today. As noted by Android Authority, Google is giving out $6 in Google Play credits to Chromecast owners. One catch: it seems to be U.S.-only as far as I can tell. The idea is that you’ll use the $6 to rent some ooey-gooey romance movie over Valentine’s weekend… but you’re also free to use it to beef up your Clash Of Clans village, if that’s more your thing. Redeeming the offer is super straightforward: Make sure you’re connected to the same network as your Chromecast. Open the Chromecast iOS/Android app Tap your device, then find the “Check For Offers” button (it should be hiding behind the three-dot button in the upper-right) Confirm your Chromecast serial number with Google Tada! You can also do this f...

Netflix is said to be working on a new series that uses Nintendo’s beloved ‘Legend of Zelda’ games as their source material. The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s in the early stages of development, and that it will follow the basic premise of familiar hero Link being tasked with rescuing Zelda in the kingdom of Hyrule. This could be the greatest thing ever, or the worst thing ever. WSJ’s source says it’s essentially “Game of Thrones,” but with much more family-friendly content. That means probably nixing the nudes, as well as the ultraviolence. It will probably retain the fantasy elements, including magic, bows and arrows, and possibly even a dragon or two. Presented for your enjoyment, the first episode of the animated Legend of Zelda series, which was part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show! from the late eighties and early nineties. The animated show was actually one of the better parts of the series, according to my memory of it which is pretty certainly warped by nos...

Amazon is setting down roots in U.S. college campuses, and today it is celebrating the grand opening of its first ever staffed location at one of those schools. Purdue is the site of Amazon’s first campus drop-off and pickup location operated by actual amazon employees, and while it is in part a way for Amazon to expand its presence in the educational textbook market, the more impactful payload may be that it also effectively acts as a catalog sales-style retail store embedded right where students need it most. Through the new staffed location, Amazon students who use the purdue.amazon.com version of the retail portal can find books assigned to classes via a Purdue logo badge, and they can also buy any Amazon item, as well as Prime Campus-eligible items that will be available for pickup in just one day. Once they checkout, they can select Amazon@Purdue as the shipping destination, and then they’ll receive an email or text when the item actually arrives at the locale. Pick-up whene...

Apple will build a $2 billion global command center located in Mesa, Arizona, the company revealed on Monday (via CNBC). It will employ 150 full-time personnel, and will also result in between 300 and 500 construction and trade jobs, and will play host to the company’s data operations across the globe. Apple’s arrangement involves repurposing a facility that previously housed GT Advanced Technologies facilities, which was an Apple supply partner involved in the production of sapphire glass materials that declared bankruptcy last year. Apple had acquired the 1.3 million sq ft facility back in 2013 to lease to GTAT for its sapphire supply facilities, which were to be exclusively for Apple’s benefit. Apple’s investment includes a pledge to power the new facility completely using energy derived from renewable sources, which is in keeping with its commitment to green power, and as part of the project the company will be building out new solar collection facilities. As part of its ban...

Driver-on-demand service Uber is building a robotics research lab in Pittsburgh, PA to “kickstart autonomous taxi fleet development,” sources close to the decision have confirmed to TechCrunch. They say the company has hired talent from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, including lead engineering and commercialization experts. No one at Carnegie Mellon or Uber agreed to discuss the deal on the record but an announcement should be forthcoming. Update: Uber published a blog post today outlining its partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, confirming our reporting. Sources tell us Uber is hiring more than fifty senior scientists from Carnegie Mellon as well as from the National Robotics Engineering Center, a CMU-affiliated research entity. Carnegie Mellon, home of the Mars Rover and other high-profile robotics projects, declined to comment at this time, as did scientists mentioned by our source. Uber has “cleaned out” the Robotics Institute, said the source. The...