What's unusual isn't the size of the cuts but the timing, Nikkei sources noted. Contracts would normally be renewed every month between August and mid- to late January, so dismissals before the end of the year are "quite different," one source said. Similar layoffs are happening at other companies in the iPhone supply chain, such as at fellow assembler Pegatron, which began terminating monthly contracts in November.

An under-development drone powered by a hydrogen fuel cell beat its hour-long flying time target in recent testing, staying aloft for over 70 minutes with a 5 kg payload. Dubbed Project Rachel, the British drone is a collaboration between engineering firm Productiv, UAS videography company BATCAM and fuel cell provider Intelligent Energy, with support from Innovate U.K., a group set up with British government money to stimulate growth by providing grants to business ventures with new ideas.

Pitched internally as an answer to the competitive threat posed by Facebook, project “Emerald Sea” eventually became Google+. I remember Joseph Smarr and Chris Messina writing back in 2011 something to the effect that ‘sharing on the web was broken,’ which was what first gave me the sense that this team wasn’t only interested in building a Facebook killer. They wanted to use Google’s strengths in processing information to reinvent what it meant to share information on the web.

I am really sad about Facebook. I got involved with the company more than a decade ago and have taken great pride and joy in the company’s success … until the past few months. Now I am disappointed. I am embarrassed. I am ashamed. With more than 1.7 billion members, Facebook is among the most influential businesses in the world. Whether they like it or not–whether Facebook is a technology company or a media company–the company has a huge impact on politics and social welfare.

A federal appeals court has upheld a landmark patent judgment brought by VirnetX against Apple, affirming a $440 million judgment in a years-long patent dispute. On Tuesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied Apple's efforts to overturn a 2016 verdict that imposed $302 million in damages. That figure has since risen to encompass enhanced damages, interest, and more. Many would dub the Nevada-based VirnetX a "patent troll," as it has no meaningful source of income outside of patent litigation.

Microsoft is set to debut a new Xbox Insider build for select Xbox One owners, packing a refined on-screen keyboard. Rolling out to Skip Ahead and Alpha rings of the test program, the addition falls under the console's next planned feature update, internally codenamed "19H1." While details on the Xbox One's next OS refresh are limited, today's release focuses on a revamped virtual keyboard. Dubbed the "Mini Keyboard," its redesign aims to condense occupied screen space, paired with adaptive positioning.

It doesn’t matter if we buy them less often, we’re all going to continue to buy smartphones. The congregation of loyal iPhone users will continue to grow, which means Apple’s biggest challenge isn’t mobile – it’s Mac.

Longer life times, larger ranges and faster recharging—developments such as electric mobility or the miniaturisation of electronics require new storage materials for batteries. With its enormous storage capacity, silicon would potentially have decisive advantages over the materials used in commercial available lithium-ion batteries. But due to its mechanical instability, it has so far been almost impossible to use silicon for storage technology.

The head unit, made with help from Lockheed Martin (which designed the F-35) is way more than a protective shell. Built around a custom-fitted insert based on a 3-D scan of the pilot's noggin, it combines noise-canceling headphones, night vision, a forehead-mounted computer, and a projector---not so different from the one in your office's conference room---that displays live video on its clear visor.

Venezuela’s currency, the Bolivar, is worthless due to hyperinflation that shows no sign of stopping. Venezuelan citizens are starving, forcing them to resort to rationing the little bit of food they have and stealing food that they can find. The crisis is constantly evolving due to the failed policies of the Maduro regime, but with the help of the blockchain, the situation could become stabilized, saving the families of the nation.

The one thing no one expects on a job interview is North Korean hackers picking up on the other line. But that’s apparently exactly what happened to a hapless employee at Redbanc, the company that handles Chile’s ATM network.

The whole multiple-camera zoom thing started with the iPhone 7 Plus back in 2016. Phil Schiller mistakenly calls it Optical Zoom even though it’s actually just switching between multiple cameras that have lenses with different focal lengths. Saying that switching between multiple cameras is “Optical Zoom” is completely incorrect and that should be obvious to anyone who knows what optical zoom means. Apple has once again spread their reality distortion field and is perpetuating incorrect information to sell products.

The baby boomers have entered their golden years and medical advances are helping people to live longer; the combination is leading to an aging U.S. population. Statistics tell the story clearly. In 2000, slightly more than 12 percent of the U.S. population was over the age of 65. By 2020, that number will be close to 17 percent and by 2050 it will likely reach 22 percent. Our society must find ways to financially support this segment of the population for more years than ever before as life expectancy increases.

I flew across the country to Portland to experience the Adapt BB, Nike’s new self-lacing, Bluetooth-enabled sneakers, but the guy showing me around campus is wearing a pair of Zoom Flys that refuse to stay tied. Within 10 minutes of tying them, they’re untied again, flailing all over. I hate when people point out my untied shoes, but his feel intentional. Of course I notice the laces. Of course I point them out. He laughs and swears he’s not doing this on purpose, that Nike hasn’t deliberately set up my visit with a scene out of an infomercial fail.

YouTube already frowns on challenges and pranks that put people at risk, but it's making that policy more explicit in light of the recent rise of Bird Box-inspired dares. The service has updated its guidelines to directly ban all challenges and pranks that are dangerous or harmful, including activities that cause "severe emotional distress" for kids or make any target think they're in "serious physical danger."

The next time you hop on a ferry, take a look at the captain’s bridge. There may not be a human at the helm much longer. Ships around the world are beginning a transformation into autonomous machines, leveraging the same advances in artificial intelligence that are shaking up the automotive world. In 2017, Ugo Vollmer and his friend Clement Renault were working on self-driving cars in Silicon Valley when an article on autonomous shipping caused them to make a sudden change in direction.

Apple may have had to replace as many as 11 million iPhone batteries under its heavily discounted $29 replacement program, according to John Gruber over at Daring Fireball. According to Gruber, Apple would typically expect to perform between one and two million replacements during the same period. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently cited the program, alongside a slowdown in the Chinese economy, as one of the reasons for the the company’s slashed earnings outlook for Q1 2019.

A router that's also a speaker. A mirror that’s also a lamp. A picture frame that charges your smartphone. Welcome to the hybrid gadget revolution! It’s a little bit Swiss Army knife, a little bit Island of Doctor Moreau. Convergences have long been a staple of progress, from multitools to kitchen implements to every other As Seen on TV striver. Surely some medieval archer fashioned a backscratcher out of a bow. But over the past year or two, the combinations have come more quickly and grown both increasingly outlandish and outrageously useful. For that you can thank—or curse, depending on your tolerance for novelty—a confluence of factors.

A California judge has ruled that American cops can’t force people to unlock a mobile phone with their face or finger. The ruling goes further to protect people’s private lives from government searches than any before and is being hailed as a potentially landmark decision. Previously, U.S. judges had ruled that police were allowed to force unlock devices like Apple’s iPhone with biometrics, such as fingerprints, faces or irises. That was despite the fact feds weren’t permitted to force a suspect to divulge a passcode. But according to a ruling uncovered by Forbes, all logins are equal.

Come one, come all and behold the future of space travel: steam power! No, seriously; half a century after the world's first manned space mission, it seems that interplanetary travel has finally entered the steam age. Scientists at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have teamed up with Honeybee Robotics, a private space and mining tech company based in California, to develop a small, steam-powered spacecraft capable of sucking its fuel right out of the asteroids, planets and moons it's exploring.

According to a new report from supply chain blog Macotakara, Apple could be in the process of developing a revised iPod touch. Further, the report says the 2019 iPhone might make the jump to USB-C, just like the 2018 iPad Pros. The report is rather vague, with Macotakara citing supply chain sources. Details on what changes a new iPod touch might feature are unclear at this point, but it is long overdue for an update. The 6th generation iPod touch was released in 2015 and for $199 with 32GB of storage.

In the ongoing legal tussle between Qualcomm and Apple, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf has testified at a federal courthouse in San Jose, California, that Apple demanded a $1 billion 'incentive payment' for a chance to supply the iPhone modems. The payment would ease the technical costs Apple would face switching from its then current supplier Infineon Technologies.

The workforce is getting Uberized. The gig economy is taking over the world. Independent contractor jobs are the new normal. In the post-recession years, this became conventional wisdom, as more and more Americans took jobs—well, “jobs”—with companies like Postmates, Fiverr, TaskRabbit, and Lyft. But the gig economy was then and is now a more marginal phenomenon than it might have seemed.

Israeli startup Coral Detection Systems unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week a product that it says is able to quickly detect drownings in swimming pools and alert rescuers. The product, Coral Manta, which the company calls “the first of its kind,” is a hexagonal-shaped device — the same shape as the large flattened manta ray fish it’s partly named after — powered by solar panels covering its surface.

A collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and two energy companies is encouraging interdisciplinary research to fast-track the development of practical fusion power. Mechanical engineer Caroline Sorensen told an MIT blogger about her work on a “liquid immersion blanket,” which is a pool of molten salt that converts fusion reactions into heat and protects the rest of the reactor from damage.

Google (Alphabet Inc.) has reportedly blacklisted keywords mentioning Ethereum (ETH) on its advertising platform Google Ads, smart contract auditing startup Decenter tweeted on Jan. 10. The official Google Ads account replied to the tweet stating that cryptocurrency exchanges targeting the United States

Coming off the back of a dark year for smartphone design, the View20 is a reason to be optimistic. Notched phones have never been aesthetically pleasing nor functionally ideal, but thankfully that design trend is on its way out. We’ve seen a number of novel attempts to produce bezel-free phones, including sliders and motorized pop-ups, but a few of the big players have decided there's another way.

When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 it sent significant numbers of businesses to the wall. Investment banks had been encouraging enormous investment in dot-com ventures by launching Initial Public Offers (IPOs) allowing investors and entrepreneurs to cash in on vast fortunes by selling off shares in their companies. Most of the dot-coms which listed on stock exchanges had done little more than consume vast amounts of investor cash and showed little prospect of achieving a profit. Traditional metrics of performance were overlooked and big spending was seen as a sign of rapid progress.

Late in 2018, the gravitational wave observatory, LIGO, announced that they had detected the most distant and massive source of ripples of spacetime ever monitored: Waves triggered by pairs of black holes colliding in deep space. Only since 2015 have we been able to observe these invisible astronomical bodies, which can be detected only by their gravitational attraction.

For cord cutters and streaming lovers, 2019 will mean two things: A raft of new streaming services will hit the scene, and users will see major changes to viewing libraries. Two major new streaming services will launch this year from Disney (DIS) and WarnerMedia, the parent company of CNN. That means more movies, TV shows and originals, but also greater stratification.

Apple stole the limelight at CES without even appearing as an exhibitor, thanks to a series of announcements from Samsung and a series of other television makers incorporating Apple's AirPlay 2 wireless streaming in their products, including LG, Sony and Vizio. This news was cynically portrayed as a "strategy reversal" and a new effort at "copying Microsoft" by the Wall Street Journal -- and out here in the real world, it is nothing of the sort.

You may not give your grip strength much thought, but it's important for many daily tasks, and for lessening the chances of developing repetitive strain injury. A new "smart" squeezable stress ball is intended to help you build that strength – and the device is known as Squegg.

Whether by choice or a lack of options, more people are working in the “gig” economy. Gig work is different from joining a company as a “permanent” employee, so it is important to manage your career well if you are — or aspire to be — a gig worker. From Grab drivers and cleaners to website developers and lawyers, online platforms and more flexible systems are enabling people to take part in short-term digital-enabled jobs, or “gigs”, and get paid for their work.

Facial recognition technology has progressed to point where it now interprets emotions in facial expressions. This type of analysis is increasingly used in daily life. For example, companies can use facial recognition software to help with hiring decisions. Other programs scan the faces in crowds to identify threats to public safety.

Parts of the world will be excluded from the internet for decades to come without major efforts to boost education, online literacy and broadband infrastructure, experts have warned. While half the world’s population now uses the internet, a desperate lack of skills and stagnant investment mean the UN’s goal of universal access, defined as 90% of people being online, may not be reached until 2050 or later, they said.