Solar eclipse gives NASA a rare opportunity to study Mercury The jets, a pair of modified WB-57F‘s from the 1960s, will get a nice view of the eclipse at 50,000 feet. Up there, there’s less atmosphere to distort the view and scatter light (the sky is around 25 times darker), giving them possibly the world’s best …
Barclays customers can now ask Siri to make payments for them In today’s edition of companies making it all too easy for us to spend money, Barclays has added a feature to its iOS app that will debit your account after hearing you utter but a few words. Or, less sinisterly put, Barclays’ mobile banking app …
FBI reportedly advising companies to ditch Kaspersky apps It appears that olive branch went unnoticed. Throughout the year, the FBI has been meeting with US firms to convince them to remove Kaspersky Lab’s tools from their systems, according to officials that spoke to CyberScoop. In view of the cyberattacks that crippled Ukraine’s power grid in 2016, …
HTC cuts the Vive VR headset’s price to $599 The company tells us this isn’t about clearing inventory, so this isn’t an indication of how well the Vive is selling. It’s strictly a competitive move, in other words, and it’s probably not an indication of new Vive hardware on the horizon. It’s hard to imagine HTC …
Replacement screens can be used to hijack your phone Scariest of all, the researchers claim these hazardous screens can be made to look identical to the real thing — meaning even handset technicians may not be able to distinguish the difference. Furthermore, the entire process is file-less, allowing it to go undetected by anti-virus software. This …
Watch Microsoft’s Gamescom event at 3PM Eastern Germany’s Gamescom expo may not capture as many eyeballs as E3 does, but it’s still crucial to the gaming industry. The event offers a better look at the titles and hardware that you first saw at E3, not to mention plenty of its own surprises. It’s a particularly big …
The best ice cream maker Who should get this An ice cream maker isn’t an essential kitchen tool, but if you love ice cream and like experimenting with unique flavor combinations, investing in one is worthwhile. Which type you should buy depends largely on how often you plan to use it and how much you want …
Ben Heck’s ‘IoT on Wheels’ Ben and Felix are taking part in element14’s IoT on Wheels design challenge with help from a local electrical engineer, Bob Baddeley, to use ST Microelectronic’s Nucleo microcontroller board and Bluetooth module. The team decided to work on an Internet-of-Things project for use with a bicycle, perhaps to notify your local …
Google tests tools that encourage you to pay for news Most notably, Google would help publishers find out who might subscribe, determine how much those people are willing to pay and accelerate the subscription process. While it’s not clear exactly how this would work, the company tells Bloomberg that it would involve both ad targeting and …