”Smartphone zombies”, they are called – people who walk the streets with their heads bent down to their smartphone screens, unaware of their environment. They are prone to walking into other people or objects on their way, sometimes saying ”Excuse me” before going back to whatever their smartphone’s screens offer them at the moment. These zombies are more and more often the cause of traffic accidents, especially when they walk the crosswalk without looking around – after all, why waste valuable time when they can instead gawk at their 5.5′ ...

Hurray! Or not, if you like it. I am the one writing this article, though, and I utterly hated Instant Search, so deal with it. Again, hurray!Introduced to Google in 2010, Instant Search is a feature that you all know, even if not by name. You know how, when typing something into a Google Search Engine, suggestions used to appear under the text window, changing depending on what you type further on? That was the Instant Search. Spearheaded by Marissa Mayer, vice president of search and user experience back in the day, Instant Search’s point was to save the user’s time by ...

It seems that China believes all of its Uyghur muslim minority to be possible terrorists. Chinese government have just passed a bill which forces all the Uyghurs – denizens of the north-western province Xinjiang – to install an official spyware application on their mobile devices. Putting technical details aside, that app’s job will be to feed the government with much of the owner’s private information – all of his or her WeChat history, their Weibo activities and more. If someone tries not to install the app, they will be facing a ten days of lock-up (and ...

Lenovo P2, one of (so I heard) UK’s most famous budget phones, is not being sold anymore. P2 was a TechRadar exclusive, and the carrier has recently informed the public that it will not continue selling the device. After being available for half a year for the price of £199.99, only two units of the phone are left in the whole of Great Britain (!). These two units can be bought from Amazon for a much less considerable price of £360.Taking even a budget phone off the shelves after mere six months seems like a rash thing to do. Then again, perhaps it happens more often than I ...

According to Gizmodo, a technology and science website, Parity Wallet service has been struck by hackers. Parity Wallet is basically a virtual currency bank, working as a storage for bitcoins, ether and other kinds of cryptocurrency. Ether coins was what this group of hackers were after – three consecutive attacks netted them a sum of 153 thousand ether units (ethers?). Not impressed? Well, this amount of ether translates into roughly 32 million dollars. There. Parity Wallet’s losses would be much greather were it not for a group of so-called white hat hackers, people who beat ...

Facebook’s last attempt at the mobile industry, Chacha and Salsa phones, was not a success. Devices were quirky and did not offer much in return for putting up with them. This was years ago, though, and Facebook seems to once again be confident enough to try its hand in making smartphones. According to the latest news, Facebook has patented a design of a modular phone. Cool? I guess.Anyway, patent itself does not mean much. Device may be in production or it may be in early development stage. It can come out by the end of this year or never. Whatever happens, ...

Tomorrow, on July 22nd, a global Pokemon Go event will begin. The goal of the event will be to catch a given, presumably large, amount of Pokemon. If enough pocket monsters are caught (sounds dirty), the first Legendary Pokemon ever will be revealed in the Grand Park, Chicago. If that beast will be defeated by the end of the day, it will begin to appear in Pokemon Raids even after the Go Fest is over.If you cannot attend the event for one reason or another (for example you do not live in Chicago), you can watch it being streamed live on ...

Long story short, australian government prepares to present a new bill which, if passed, will allow its intelligence agencies access to all messages sent using web communicators such as Facebook. How? By forcing FB and other such companies to decrypt communication of any of their users suspected of terrorist activity. Companies, Google among them, defend against it, saying that decrypting messages will create backdoors that can be used by hackers to commit their illicit activities.Who is right? Who is wrong? You be the judge. Who will win, the government or the companies, security (and ...

Smartphone, originally shipped with Android 6.0 and then updated to 7.0, is getting another OS update, this time to 7.1.1. Right now the update is available to the users living in Hong Kong and Indonesia, but rest of the world will probably not have to wait long for its turn. Update includes July 2017 security update, use of round icons, Duo video chat app, sending gifs on Allo, Messenger and Hangouts directly from the keyboard & more.Updating your phone should take around fifteen minutes of uninterrupted Internet connection. Make sure to have your phone powered up when it happens! ...

Yeah, Internet in China. We have all heard the stories of Chinese government blocking content that it deems unfit for its citizens. Facebook? No dice. Twitter? Please. Any information that puts the government in a bad light? You are just asking for trouble. Well, now it seems that a very special bear has been, just for a day, a number One enemy of the Chinese government.Someone on Weibo (basically a Chinese Twitter) took it upon him/herself to create a meme comparing Chinese President Xi Jinping and former US president Barack Obama. The picture went viral fast (do not ask me why, I ...