54553301
submission
iONiUM writes:
Today BlackBerry announced a $4.4 billion loss, and a deal with Foxconn to outsource hardware manufacturing. One interesting stat is that 75% of sales were actually older BB7 devices. That said, CEO John Chen says "We are very much alive, thank you." as well as "Our 'for sale' sign has been taken down and we are here to stay. BlackBerry recently announced it has entered into an agreement to receive a strategic investment from Fairfax Financial and other institutional investors, which represents a vote of confidence in the future of BlackBerry."
54553115
submission
iONiUM writes:
Today in Canada, the supreme court struck down the prostitution laws as unconstitutional in a 9-0 ruling. While prostitution has always been legal in Canada, all activities surrounding it such as brothels, or making a living from the avails of it, have been illegal. As such, it has resulted in dangerous working conditions for prostitutes, which violates the Canadian charter of rights. The court has given parliament 1 year to draft new laws surrounding prostitution.
53208361
submission
iONiUM writes:
On the heels of the Cyprus University accepting BitCoins, Virgin Galactic has now announced they too will accept it for trips to space. From the article: "A lot of the people who have joined Bitcoin are tech-minded people, as are many of our current future astronauts."
52657597
submission
iONiUM writes:
As a follow up to LG's announcement of mass flexible OLED production, and as a competitor to the limited Samsung Round trial which was only available in Korea on SK Telecom, LG has released the G Flex phone which is curved vertically (instead of the Round's horizontal bend, which many thought was the 'wrong way'). In addition, the G Flex can actually be flexed, as shown in the video in the article.
51788515
submission
iONiUM writes:
Much like how Voyager 1 left and then it didn't for the umpteenth time, climate change is now a grave concern again. From the article: "Scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa calculated that by 2047, plus or minus five years, the average temperatures in each year will be hotter across most parts of the planet than they had been at those locations in any year between 1860 and 2005." It also appears there is no way to stop it: "The models show that unprecedented temperatures could be delayed by 20 to 25 years if there is a vigorous global effort to bring emissions under control.", but delay is the only thing we can do. It will affect the tropics first, "Unprecedented climates will arrive even sooner in the tropics, Dr. Mora’s group predicts, putting increasing stress on human societies there, on the coral reefs that supply millions of people with fish, and on the world’s greatest forests." This comes on the heel of a Canadian Arctic report that claims "In a paper released Tuesday, they say their research provides evidence “that we are witnessing the transformation of the Arctic at an exceptional pace.”" Is it time to more-or-less give up on stopping carbon emissions, and just focus on how to handle the income changes?
51749843
submission
iONiUM writes:
Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Round phone with a curved 5.7" display today. It comes with a hefty $1,000 USD price tag. This is a follow-up to the 55" curved TVs it began selling in June, and is most likely the first step before fold-able phones hit the market. Considering the recent LG announcement of mass OLED flexible screen production, it seems that we are indeed getting very close to flexible phones. One question I wonder is, will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens.
50855841
submission
iONiUM writes:
Today the new Blackberry Z30 was announced today (release coming in the next "few weeks"). It has a 4.97" 16:9 screen running at 720x1280. The CPU also got an upgrade, at 1.7Ghz. The news claims that the battery is a 2880maH with up to 25 hours of use. I'm not really convinced this is enough of a differentiation between the Z10 to save Blackberry, and as someone who owns a Z10 and Q10 (but uses an S3 instead), I don't see how this addresses any of the real issues Blackberry is facing, the biggest being a lack of apps.
48878331
submission
iONiUM writes:
From the article: "A German cryptographer has uncovered a security bug in mobile phones that could enable hackers to remotely attack at least half a billion phones." More technically, from the register: "Pedigree security researcher Karsten Nohl has apparently discovered two unrelated flaws in implementations of the GSM standard that (when combined) could leave millions of SIM cards vulnerable to attack."
46989589
submission
iONiUM writes:
From the article: "An in-depth statistical analysis of ozone depletion, temperature changes, gasses and cosmic rays by University of Waterloo professor of physics and astronomy Qing-Bin Lu suggests that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have been the key cause of global warming since the 1970s."
And the good news: "By the middle of this century we should have recovery of the ozone hole to the 1980s level," Is it really possible we've already solved man-caused global warming?
