As Amazon prepares its drone-based delivery service Prime Air for the United States, the company has been looking for ways to keep its drones safe while they’re flying to and from their destinations. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark…
China Plans To Land Probes On Far Side of Moon, Mars By 2020
China has revealed some ambitious plans for space domination in the 2020s. On Tuesday, China set out its plans to become the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon, in around 2018, and launch…
Apple Working With Consumer Reports on MacBook Pro's Battery Issue
Last week, Consumer Reports concluded that it won’t be recommending Apple’s new MacBook Pro models. The American magazine published since 1936 by Consumers Union, a nonprofit organization, cited inconsistent battery issues for not recommending the MacBook Pro for the first…
Microsoft Could Be First Tech Company To Reach Trillion-Dollar Market Value: Analyst
Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn could help the Redmond company become the first technology giant to reach a market value of $1 trillion, or so thinks a notable analyst. Analyst Michael Markowski believes that Microsoft will be able to…
Apple Publishes Its First AI Research Paper
When Apple said it would publish its artificial intelligence research, it raised at least a couple of big questions. When would we see the first paper? And would the public data be important, or would the company keep potential trade…
The Farmer Who Built Her Own Broadband
An anonymous reader writes from a BBC article: “I’m just a farmer’s wife,” says Christine Conder, modestly. But for 2,300 members of the rural communities of Lancashire she is also a revolutionary internet pioneer. Her DIY solution to a neighbour’s…
Top Spotify Lawyer: Attracting Pirates is in Our DNA
Spotify is not only one of the world’s most popular music services, it’s also one that’s proven particularly popular with both current and former pirates. From a report on TorrentFreak: Today Spotify is indeed huge. The service has an estimated…
FreeDOS 1.2 Is Finally Released
Very long-time Slashdot reader Jim Hall — part of GNOME’s board of directors — has a Christmas gift. Since 1994 he’s been overseeing an open source project that maintains a replacement for the MS-DOS operating system, and has just announced…
Facing Layoff, An IT Employee Makes A Bold Counteroffer
ComputerWorld reports: In early December, Carnival Corp. told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini, a large IT outsourcing firm. The employees had a choice: Either agree to take a job with the contractor…
You're An Adult, But Your Brain Might Not Be, Researchers Say
“The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons that make it up continue to change for years after that,” reports the New York Times, citing a new paper by neuroscience researchers that questions when “adulthood”…