New Posts to Wired.co.uk - News on Apr 2, 2014:
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1) Suck on these air bags for a taste of smog-free heaven
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/china-air-bags
Chinese citizens have been inhaling bags of air to escape
pollution.
A persistent and ubiquitous problem in some of China's densely
populated cities, pollution is a concern for many of its citizens,
with some residents of Beijing recently comparing a surge of
smog to the apocalypse.
In what appears to be a peculiar PR stunt from a local travel
agent, blue bags of air the size of pillows have been shipped into
the city of Zhengzhou, one of the most polluted areas of China, for
residents to inhale. Yes, we thought
of Spaceballs too.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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2) Microsoft unveils Windows 8.1 with Cortana voice assistant
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/windows-phone-8-1-cortana
Meet Cortana, Microsoft's answer to Siri. Named after an
artificial intelligence character from Halo, the voice assistant
was introduced today during Microsoft's Build Developer Conference
in San Francisco as part of an overhaul of its mobile operating
system, which will be upgraded to Windows Phone 8.1.
Cortana will supposedly be highly customisable and you'll be
able to teach it who your close friends and family are so that only
they will be able to disturb you in moments of quiet. Obviously it
will also be able to perform web searches (powered by Bing -- sad
face), set calendar appointments and reminders, operate apps
including Facebook and Skype and complete a range of other basic
tasks.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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3) Photographing all New Zealand's meteorites
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/photographing-meteorites
London-based photographer Casey Moore likes to
photograph meteorites. So much so that he's travelled the world in
order to find them and document them using his large-format Sinar
camera.
His interest in meteorites was piqued on Father's Day 2013 when
he made a trip to Greenwich Observatory and came across a section
of meteorite that featured the Widmanstätten pattern, a unique
structure found in iron-based meteorites. "I was blown away by it,"
Moore told Wired.co.uk.
By: Olivia Solon, Continue reading...
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4) Amazon fights Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast with Fire TV
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/amazon-fire-tv
Amazon has today announced its own little nugget of hardware,
Fire TV, to take on the array of other devices that plug into your
telly to make it "smart".
In terms of design, it's not a terribly original offering. It's
a little black box, that looks like Apple TV but with pointed
corners. Inside is a quad-core processor that Amazon claims will
rival the CPU in your smartphone. It offers the same Wi-Fi as a
Kindle Fire and comes with 2GB of RAM, which Amazon boldly claims
will make it three times as fast as rival products. It'll stream
video in 1080p, which also helps to keep it competitive with the
best players already available.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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5) Samsung Galaxy Tab4 series of tablets announced
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/samsung-galaxy-tab4
How many Galaxies does it take to make a full product range?
This is the question we feel like we'll be forever asking
of Samsung, which has just taken the lid off the Galaxy Tab4
Series.
Adding to its already extensive tablet selection, Samsung
is introducing three new slates today at 7 inches, 8 inches and 10
inches. These replace the Galaxy Tab 3 Series and offer only
incremental improvements over their predecessors.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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6) How to fix NHS care.data
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/fixing-caredata
"Tell people what you're doing, how you're doing it and when
you're doing it." This was the simple advice on sharing patient
data that Dawn Monaghan, group manager of public services at
the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), gave healthcare
practitioners, while speaking at a Westminster forum.
It might sound obvious, but it's exactly what the
government failed to do with its care.data initiative. There
are plenty of benefits to synching up hospital and GP data, as
care.data was designed to, including bettering service, care and
even drug delivery. Failing to clarify exactly what data would be
made anonymous or pseudonymous, failing to tell the public who that
data would be shared with and how, and failing to explain the
entire process, was how the initiative fell short of realising its
duty of care to the public at every stage. Because it was a legal
failing, not just a PR [...]
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7) Space surgery robot will enter astronauts via the belly button
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/belly-button-surgery-bot-space
What happens if an astronaut develops appendicitis halfway
through the journey to Mars? He or she may be saved by a surgery
robot that enters the body via the belly button.
At least that's the aim of a Nebraska-based company called
Virtual Incision, which has developed a miniature robot
surgeon designed to slip into the body via an incision in the
abdomen. Once inside, it can work at removing the infected appendix
or part of a diseased organ.
By: Olivia Solon, Continue reading...
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8) Square Enix investigating wiped Thief save files
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/thief-save-files
A number of players are reporting that their Thief save files
have become corrupted with older saves being wiped of some data and
some manual saves disappearing entirely.
According to Game Informer, Square Enix is investigating
the issue and trying to work out what's causing it.
By: Philippa Warr, Continue reading...
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9) George Lucas reveals history of the lightsaber
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/lightsaber-history-george-lucas
Of all the amazing ships, droids, and weapons in the Star Wars
franchise, the lightsaber is the most iconic. Along with the Death
Star. And the Millennium Falcon. And R2-D2 and Threepio. And? well,
picking the best Star Wars doodad is like picking a favorite child.
In any event, we now have the full history of the lightsaber, from
George Lucas himself.
By: Angela Watercutter, Continue reading...
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10) EA apologises for 'unnecessary' and 'stupid' April Fool
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/frostbite-apology
EA has apologised for April Fool's tweets that came from
the Frostbite game engine's Twitter account.
The tweets have since been deleted but originally offered such
snippets as:
"Frostbite now runs on the #WiiU since it is the most powerful
Gen4 platform, our renderer is now optimized for Mario and
Zelda."
By: Philippa Warr, Continue reading...
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11) Zebras use stripes to fend off bugs
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/zebra-stripes
Zebras have stripes to confuse predators, right? Wrong,
according to biologists from the University of California, Davis,
who believe their stripes exist to fend off bugs.
The team found that biting flies were responsible for the
evolutionary direction of the zebra's markings. Previous hypotheses
for the famous stripes claim they exist for the purposes of:
camouflage, confusion, heat management and as some form of social
function. However, all of these are now believed to be
incorrect.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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12) It's human vs robot in the joke wars
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/man-vs-robot-the-comedy-war
Over the years, we've become accustomed to computers besting
humans in tests of raw intelligence. Deep Blue out-maneuvered world
chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, and in 2011 Watson trounced
Jeopardy! winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Sure,
computers can play the Sicilian Defense better and have a firmer
grasp of obscure geography -- but facts and analysis aren't
everything. We wanted to establish a different litmus test for
computer supremacy, so we devised a new matchup between man and
machine to establish once and for all who's funnier. Your
contestants in the bout: stand-up comic Myq
Kaplan versus Manatee the joke-telling computer.
By: Joel Warner and Peter McGraw, Continue reading...
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13) Gmail still delivering 10 years on
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/gmail-ten-years-on
Google loves to unveil a good gag product on April
Fool's Day. Remember 8-bit
maps? YouTube DVDs?
But despite arriving on April 1, 2004, its webmail
service was no joke. Google's simple, browser-based inbox helped
seed several ideas that have become so commonplace over the
intervening decade, they practically define modern computing as we
know it.
By: Michael Calore, Continue reading...
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14) Nest brings Learning Thermostat to the UK
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/02/nest-learning-thermostat-uk
Nest is finally launching its sleek Learning Thermostat in the
UK, following a series of delays caused partly by our slightly
awkward way of doing central heating in this country. It's
simultaneously launched its first utility partnership in the UK
with energy provider npower.
The Learning Thermostat has been available for some time in the
US and Canada and has been widely praised both for its bold design
and connectivity capabilities that allow users to remotely monitor
and control the temperature in their house using an app.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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