New Posts to Wired.co.uk - News on Mar 25, 2014:
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1) Facebook buys virtual reality specialist Oculus VR
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/facebook-buys-oculus-vr
Facebook is to acquire Oculus VR, the company that makes
the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, in a cash-and-stock
deal worth around $2 billion (£1.2 billion).
Announcing the news in a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg
explained that the acquisition marked part of Facebook's strategy
to "start focussing on what platforms will come next to enable even
more useful, entertaining and personal experiences", having spent
the last few years mostly building mobile apps.
By: Olivia Solon, Continue reading...
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2) Watch a blowfly's internal flight muscles flutter in 3D
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/blowfly-muscles-3d-videos
The humble blowfly is able to beat its wings 50 times in the
same time it takes a human to blink just once. Its muscles are
controlled by many tiny steering muscles that are not only as tiny
as human hairs, but also hidden well away within the insect's
thorax.
Now, for the first time, zoologists have managed to create 3D
videos that show the blowfly's flight muscles in action -- the
details of which have been published in the journal PLOS
Biology. Using the Swiss Light Source, a powerful x-ray tool
housed at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the secret workings of
the insect's complex motor have been captured, and can now be
examined in detail.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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3) Students hack Waze, send in army of traffic bots
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/waze-hacked-fake-traffic-jam
Two Israeli students have successfully hacked popular
social GPS map and traffic app Waze, causing it to report a
nonexistent traffic jam.
The attack, somewhat reminiscent of the wonderfully
ridiculous Die Hard 4.0 plot, was carried out by Shir
Yadid and Meital Ben-Sinai, two software engineering students in
their fourth year at the Israel Institute of Technology.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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4) Homeopathic remedies recalled for containing real medicine
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/homeopathy-contains-medicine
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recalled
homeopathic remedies made by a company called Terra-Medica
because they may contain actual medicine -- possibly penicillin or
derivatives of the antibiotic.
Terra-Medica creates a range of homeopathic capsules,
suppositories and ointments under clinical-sounding brand names
including Pleo-Fort, Pleo-Quent and Pleo-EX. The FDA has found that
56 lots of the drugs may contain penicillin or derivatives of
penicillin, which may have been produced during fermentation. This
is a problem, because Terra-Medica says that its products don't
contain antibiotics. Pleo Sanum range of products, for example,
"can address acute and chronic inflammations and infections without
the use of traditional antibiotics". Homeopathic remedies are
generally highly diluted substances (in fact the more a substance
is diluted, the more effective homeopaths deem [...]
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5) Check out Niklas Roy's ball-sucking machine
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/this-machine-sucks-balls
This art installation literally sucks balls. Niklas
Roy is the designer of what is an extraordinary kinetic art piece,
made for and exhibited at Goethe-Institut Krakau, Poland.
The exhibit consists of a ball pit and an 80 metre
long pneumatic tube, which fills up the entire historic staircase
of the Potocki Palace in Kraków. When entering the pit, the lights
switch on and a vacuum cleaner whirs into action. Visitors are then
invited to get hands-on with the machinery and operate the suction
spout themselves.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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6) Disney buys YouTube content network for $500 million
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/disney-maker-studios
Maker Studios, one of the largest networks on YouTube,
has been acquired by The Walt Disney Company for $500 million (£303
million), making Disney a major presence in the online video sector
and further expanding their multinational mass media
corporation.
Should Maker Studios achieve specific undisclosed
performance goals, the buyout could be as large as $950 million
(£575 million), according to Reuters.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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7) Layoffs strike Sony's UK game studios
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/sony-layoffs
Layoffs have been confirmed at a number of Sony's UK game
development studios.
The affected developers are Evolution Studios, Guerilla
Cambridge and SCE London asSony confirmed
to Videogamer. The scale of the layoffs is unclear
but they come as part of a restructuring effort.
By: Philippa Warr, Continue reading...
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8) HTC One M8 revealed: hands-on preview
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/htc-one-m8-preview
HTC has announced its new flagship smartphone -- the HTC One
M8.
In the battle of the high-end smartphones, this is the third
contender alongside the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy
S5 and Sony Xperia Z2. They're all tricked-out, top-spec
systems with the latest Qualcomm CPUs.
Each manufacturer wants to separate itself from the market
though (Samsung: health, fitness, lifelogging; Sony: photography,
gaming, entertainment) and HTC's angle on this harks back to
its Evo 3D from 2011 -- it features two cameras on the
rear.
By: Nate Lanxon, Continue reading...
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9) HTC's One M8 versus Sony's Xperia Z2 versus Samsung's Galaxy S5
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/htc-one-m8-vs-galaxy-s5-vs-xperia-z2
After holding out on us at Mobile World Congress this year, HTC
has finally shown off its latest entry into the high-end Android
market. We've taken an in-depth look at how the HTC One M8 weighs
up against the competition.
Ever since the S2 burst onto the scene a few years back, setting
a precedent for swanky, premium Android devices, Samsung has
remained the company to beat. Its latest top-tier phone, the Galaxy
S5 puts up a good fight, although it's rivalled by the equally
enticing Sony Xperia Z2, and now the HTC One M8.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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10) Help Nasa design its next spacesuit
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/nasa-z2-suit
Nasa is letting members of the public vote on its next
spacesuit design, the Z-2. A prototype and follow up to the popular
Z-1, the Z-2 boasts a number of new features, bringing it closer to
approaching a final flight-capable design.
The suit boasts a number of important milestones for
Nasa, including: first surface-specific planetary mobility suit to
be tested in full vacuum; first use of 3D human laser scans and
3D-printed hardware for suit development and sizing; most advanced
use of impact resistant composite structures on a suit upper and
lower torso system; first integration of the suit-port concept with
a hard upper torso suit structure; most conformal and re-sizeable
hard upper torso suit built to date.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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11) Refocus smartphone photos with six-pence filter
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/tesseract-imaging
Being able to refocus a photograph after it has been captured is
becoming a key trait of new smartphones. But a masters graduate of
MIT's Media Lab thinks he can do it better -- with a camera filter
that costs less than ten pence.
Kshitij Marwah's technology is called Tesseract and stems from a
technology he and colleagues developed at the Media Lab around
three years ago for SLR cameras. It was a filter produceable from
high-resolution inket printers that was inserted into a camera
between the light sensor and the lens. Called Focii, it allowed the
camera to record depth information into an image, which was then
manipulable by software created for desktop computers by Marwah's
team -- points of focus could be altered, or special effects could
be applied to specific parts of an image such as a person in the
foreground.
Now he has developed the same technology in miniature [...]
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12) Promo: Wired Money 2014's first speakers announced
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/speakers-wired-money-event
Wired Money, Wired's 1 July summit focusing on innovation in
banking, finance and money has announced the first confirmed
speakers.
Following on from the successful inaugural event, Wired Money
2014 -- to be held at Canary Wharf's Level 39 -- will examine how
the topics discussed in 2013 have developed and identify the new
trends beginning to emerge.
By: Dan Smith, Continue reading...
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13) Turkish PM's social media clampdown backfires
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/what-its-like-to-live-under-erdogan
The people of Turkey are waiting and watching to see what
Sunday's municipal elections will bring. And while they wait, their
phones do not leave their sides.
"The Twitter ban has made sure that we don't leave our phones,
and we do not miss any tweets," Eran Filiba, product manager at an
Istanbul ecommerce company, tells Wired.co.uk.
Since the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan promised to wipe out the social media platform in
the wake of leaks about government corruption, the tweeting public
has been circumventing the ban with Google DNS, VPN services and
even Tweetdeck.
By: Liat Clark, Continue reading...
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14) Biologists interrupt fly sex with lasers. For science
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/laser-flies-change-behaviour
Despite its small size and relatively compact nervous system,
the standard lab fruit fly Drosophila manages to engage in some
fairly sophisticated behaviours, including a courtship ritual.
Researchers have also trained the Drosophila to associate an
irrelevant event with an unpleasant experience, causing the fly to
form lasting aversions to the event.
Now, researchers have managed to bring all that together and mix
it with computing, molecular biology, and lasers. The end result is
a system that tracks the flies in real time and targets laser
pulses to specific body parts. It can be used to create averse
associations so strong that male flies will flee an otherwise
available female.
By: John Timmer, Continue reading...
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15) #nomakeupselfie raises 'unprecedented' £8m for cancer research
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/nomakeupselfie-donation-mixup
Cancer Research UK didn't actually start the #nomakeupselfie
campaign, whereby women share a bare-faced picture of themselves
and pledge a donation to charity. However, it has been the main
beneficiary, receiving more than £2 million in just 48 hours. Six
days on, and it's been announced that it has raised a whopping £8
million.
The meme appears to have been born when a US crime author called
Laura Lippman posted a picture of herself without makeup to
support 81-year-old actress Kim Novak, whose appearance was
criticised at the Oscars. She took the picture in early March and
"stuck it up on Facebook" using the hashtag #itssokkimnovak in
solidarity. Many people copied Lippman, by posting
unflattering pictures of themselves. Over the weekend of 15-16
March, people started tagging Cancer Research UK in their posts,
saying they were posting their photos to raise awareness. By
Tuesday 18 [...]
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16) Double Fine dips hoof into publishing with Escape Goat 2
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/25/escape-goat-2
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Game development studio Double Fine has made its first foray
into publishing with the release of Escape Goat 2.
The puzzle platformer sequel was created by indie team
MagicalTimeBean (Ian Stocker and Randy O'Connor) and follows the
original Escape Goat in which a goat was escaping imprisonment for
witchcraft.
By: Philippa Warr, Continue reading...
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