Category Archives: Uncategorized

Bug-infested phone or eew, just eew

This one is a quickie. A man in Sydney has been working on renovating a property. When getting around removing the stationary phone, the man took off its lid. What he found inside was, well… there is no way getting round it… a thick layer of sticky, long-dead cockroaches. See it for yourselves – do not let me be the only one who had to endure it. Tweet Vote on HN ...

IBM Q System One, the first commercially available quantum computer

Another piece of CES 2019 news. This time IBM has presented us the first commercially available quantum computer. While the device will hardly be available to an average user and will probably cost an arm and a leg (we do not know the exacy price), it will still be finally available outside the laboratories’ walls. Quantum computing is based on qubits, which allow the data to exist as both 0’s and 1’s simultaneously, which in turn allows for processing much more complex data. No, I do not understand it either – the gist of the story is that the quantum ...

Flights from Heathrow have been temporarily called off due to a drone

Perhaps you remember a story from few weeks ago about how some idiot/s with a drone have locked one of London airports for 36 hours. Well, a similiar, albeit much lighter, story have repeated itself. Flights from Heathrow have been called off around 17:05 due to sightings of a drone flying in the area of the facility. We do not know the details of the actions taken against the mechanical menace – police was probably involved, as perhaps was even the military – but the drone must have been caught fast, as first planes took off as early as 19:20.Heathrow airport now considers ...

Japanese billioner is throwing money away on Twitter

Yusaku Maezawa, the owner of the online fashion store Zozotown, has recently announced that he will pay 1 million yen to the 100 people who retweet his message. The message states that Zozotown has made 10 billion yen during the new year’s sale-off – no wonder Maezawa feels like splurging a hundred million on some PR :D. His message has been retweeted 4.5 million times so far, which sets a new Twitter record.And yet, this is not even the most outrageous of billioner’s ideas; on 2023, Yusaku Maezawa will be the first tourist to board Elon Musk’s space ...

Alien: Blackout, or watch out, your phone has bugs

Wanted a proper sequel to Alien: Isolation? Well, you will have to wait. Still, Alien: Blackout may be a cool game, even if it is just a mobile one. Judging by info available online, A:B is a variant on the ”Five Nights at Freddy’s” gameplay, with added element of friendly NPCs which have to be helped in navigating the map and who in turn can help the player. A:B’s plot revolves around Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley and the protagonist of Isolation; unlucky Ripley finds herself on a xenomorph-infested Mendel station owned by, of course, Weyland-Yutani ...

Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 out in Europe

Italy is the first country where the phone is available. Its price is set at 549 euro, although it will be only 499 if you buy it from the official store on January 9th. We do not know when will Mi Mix 3 reach other countries.Specs:– 6,39′ AMOLED display, Full HD+, 19,5:9,– 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 CPU, GPU Adreno 630,– 6, 8 or 10 GB RAM, 128 lub 256 GB space,– 24 Mpix + 2 Mpix selfie shooter, 12 Mpix f/1.8 + 12 Mpix f/2.4 camera, LED flash,– 3200 mAh battery,– Wi-Fi 802.11ac,– Bluetooth 5.0, GPS/GLONASS, NFC, modem 4G/5G,– dual ...

IKEA smart shades

… so, yeah, smart shades. We are currently living in an era of smart devices; smart windows, smart fridges, smart TVs et cetera. IKEA looked upon this and thought ”why not shades?”. In response, TRÅDFRI manufacturers, known largely for their smart lighting systems, have come up with the aforementioned smart shades. KADRILJ and FYRTUR are wireless, charged by a battery. They are compatible with TRÅDFRI systems as well as Alexa, HomeKit and Google Assistant. Shades are being moved by a mechanized engine, although they can be pulled manually as well. Shades can be ...

Drug dealers will not go to prison because they write their texts with proper grammar

And people wonder why I take care when typing… Two young criminals from the US, Luke Rance (19) and Brandon Kerrison (21), have been caught by the police when attempting to sell their product. Interestingly, their selling spot was located next to the public library – look what all those books do to people. When searching through Rance’s living place, police have found 1.5 thousand dollars worth of drugs. That is a relatively small amount, but U.S law is hard on drug dealers, so normally the two would receive a considerable sentence nevertheless. Normally.Judge David Hale, ...

Facebook-fortuneteller, or how FB patents tech that allows them to know what you will do in the future

Zuckerberg’s company has just filed a patent for a tech that might allow them to correctly foretell our future actions. The goal of this rather dark-sounding technology is to be able to give us more personalized ads (want to buy a book? Maybe this one. Want to go out? Maybe there), but it is difficult to not think of any other, less benevolent ways it can be used in; it would certainly make us even more dependable on computers, and since computer tech is controlled by corporations like Facebook, more dependable on those corporations.Facebook has released a statement according to which ...

Snowman in space, or how NASA published pictures of the furthest away from Earth object in space yet

American space probe New Horizons has recently sent NASA the pictures of a very particular space object. Dubbed Ultima Thule, it is the most distant space body found yet. The rather atypical thing, which official name is a ”contact binary”, has also been given a nickname ”Snowman” for its shape. It is placed 6.5 billion kilometers away from Earth, in a so-called Kuiper belt, which is said to be a collection of rocks and planetoids remaining after the forming of the Solar System.Of course, the above picture may have been fabricated, NASA is really a group of ...