Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer who started his career on PC World and has written for dozens of computer and technology magazines, as well as numerous national newspapers, business and in-flight magazines. He has also written two novels.
He thinks wires are evil and had a custom desk made to hide them, known as the OC Desk for obvious reasons.
He considers 1000 miles a good distance for a cycle ride, and Chernobyl a suitable tourist destination. What can we say, he’s that kind of chap.
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
When you need a spacecraft to fire its rocket for 35 minutes some five years after it left Earth, there has to be an anxious moment or two wondering whether it will work – all the more so when it’s been subjected to a radiation dose equivalent to a million dental x-rays. But NASA’s Juno probe performed perfectly, and Google is celebrating the fact with an animated Doodle …
Android malware known as HummingBad has so far infected 85M devices, putting data at risk, installing further malware and displaying ads sold by the Chinese company controlling it. The claims appear in a blog post by CheckPoint, the security company that first detected the malware.
The group tries to root thousands of devices every day and is successful in hundreds of attempts. With these devices, a group can create a botnet, carry out targeted attacks on businesses or government agencies, and even sell the access to other cybercriminals on the black market. Any data on these devices is at risk, including enterprise data on those devices that serve dual personal and work purposes for end users …
If you live or work in NYC, you may have already seen the LinkNYC kiosks that offer free gigabit WiFi access, USB charging ports and more, funded by the ads they display on the embedded screens. But Alphabet-owned Sidewalk Labs believes they can do much more.
According to documents obtained by Re/code, Sidewalk Labs wants to embed into the kiosks a whole range of sensors designed to improve safety and quality of life …
If you’re an Amazon Prime member in the market for a low-cost unlocked Android phone, the company is offering $50 off the full retail price of two models. The budget BLU R1 HD, normally $99.99, is available for $49.99, while the 4th-gen version of the popular Moto G is down from $199.99 to $149.99.
Each phone is offered unlocked, with no commitment to a contract, giving Prime members the flexibility to switch between wireless carriers and service options to best fit their needs. The BLU R1 HD and Moto G feature Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Google Mobile Services, including Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, and Google Play …
Google has been rolling out more and more instant answers – where the search-engine provides the answer immediately, rather than requiring you to click on an external link. Just yesterday it added song lyrics, and it now appears to be testing a built-in Internet speed test …
Noise-cancelling headphones are great when you just want to eliminate all outside noise, as you might on board a plane, but there are times when you want to be able to block most outside noise, but not all. Being able to hear car engines while cycling, or announcements while on a train, for example. That’s what the Here One wireless earbuds are designed to do.
The company says it uses smart noise filters to provide what it calls ‘layered listening.’
Control the volume of streamed audio and ambient sound simultaneously. Safely listen to music while riding your bike, or access live commentary at a game while still experiencing the cheering crowd. Unlike normal headphones, Here One doesn’t isolate you from the world […]
Selectively filter out an airplane engine, office chatter, a siren, and more. Amplify speech to tune into every word at a crowded restaurant or party …
If you’ve ever Googled for song lyrics, you know what a messy experience it can be – half the sites proving to be just links to other sites, others looking really sketchy. For those in the US, though, things should be much simpler. Google has licensed lyrics from LyricFind, which in turn licenses them from labels, so that a search for a song title with ‘lyrics’ on the end should generate an immediate link.
Of course, Google is arriving rather late to the party …
The European Union has already filed two sets of antitrust charges against Google, the first accusing it of manipulating search results to favor its own products, the second alleging that Google forces Android device manufacturers to install its own apps and set Google search as the default.
Last summer, it was reported that the company may face a third antitrust case in Europe, this time for abusing its dominant position in advertising, and the WSJ reports that the EU is currently preparing to files these charges, possibly next month …
Google Trends tells the story of the result of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. Trending searches include a 500% spike in ‘buy gold,’ a doubling in searches on getting an Irish passport and some people apparently wondering what just happened …
Google’s machine-learning head, Jeff Dean
A long-form Backchannel post by Steven Levy gives a fascinating insight into Google’s vision of the future of machine-learning. While it’s currently a specialist field, Google believes that one day it will be used by all software engineers no matter what the field, and that it will ‘change humanity.’
Google is starting small. It invites just 18 software engineers a year to join its Machine Learning Ninja Program, where they work alongside expert mentors for six months before going back to apply the approach to their own work. But Google’s machine-learning leader Jeff Dean estimates that around 10% of its 25,000 developers are proficient in the field, and he’d like that number to be 100%.
What’s notable is that all involved, from those in the Ninja program to the company’s key experts in the field, see machine-learning as something transformative …
If you’re one of the 2.5M Americans planning a European vacation this summer, T-Mobile has a pretty sweet deal for its Simple Choice customers: free unlimited speed data throughout July and August, up from the normal 128Kbps limit.
The Un-carrier today announced it’s unleashing summer travel, giving customers unlimited high-speed data, up to 4G LTE speeds, throughout Europe all summer long […]
Starting July 1st all the way through August 31st, T-Mobile’s giving Simple Choice customers unlimited high-speed data across all of Europe (except Andorra) – all at absolutely no additional cost – so you can share, Skype, snap and scope every moment of your European holiday …
Facebook has offered automatic translation of posts and comments for some time, so it’s no surprise that Instagram – owned by Facebook – is following suit. Instagram has announced that the new feature will roll out sometime next month.
YouTube appears to be having major problems this morning, completely down for some people, intermittently so for others …
Any SF fan will be familiar with Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics, designed to ensure that robots were safe to be around. Scientists at Google, OpenAI, Stanford and Berkeley have just published a paper proposing the real-life equivalent for AI systems.
In a blog post summarising the proposal, Google Research’s Chris Olah says that while the team believes that AI will greatly benefit humanity, the risks do also need to be considered …
A webpage discovered by a tech consultant and confirmed as official by TechCrunch indicates that Tumblr is planning its own Periscope-style live video platform later today.
After Android Pay finally launched in the UK last month, Google is doing its best to encourage Brits to give it a try. It’s announced a monthly Android Pay Day, offering discounts for using the service to pay, with the first of these taking place today.
If there’s one thing guaranteed to eat your data plan’s allowance at an alarming rate, it’s streaming video. T-Mobile has been gradually adding more services to its Binge On program – which allows customers to stream lower-quality video from specific services without using up any of their data – and Re/code reports that Facebook video may be next in line.
Some stories just make you grin. The BBC reports that Google has thanked a British grandmother who conducted the politest ever search after thinking that the answers were provided by a person.
Twitter has updated both iOS and Android apps with a Live button that starts a Periscope broadcast. It’s actually a bit of a cheat, though, as all the button does is open the Periscope app – or prompt you to download it if you don’t already have it installed.
Update: A YouTube spokesperson responded to us with the following statement: The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them. Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry – and that number is growing year on year.
Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has told Billboard that YouTube is built on stolen content.
Personally, I find YouTube’s business to be very disingenuous. It is built on the backs of free, stolen content and that’s how they got that big. I think any free-tiered service is not fair. It’s making their numbers and getting them a big IPO and it is built on the back of my work and that of my peers. That’s how I feel about it. Strongly.
Samsung’s executive VP for global marketing Younghee Lee has told AdWeek that its ad campaigns mocking Apple products were ‘relevant, bold and right.’
It wasn’t that long ago when creating 360-degree photos that you could share with others online required special camera kit, and you had to post them on websites that supported the feature. It’s since got much easier, and as of the latest update to the Android Facebook app, you don’t need anything more than a Samsung Galaxy phone and the stock camera app.
Simply take a panorama with your phone […] and then post it on Facebook as you would a normal photo. From there, we’ll convert it to an immersive 360 photo that people can explore, similar to how people experience 360 videos on Facebook …
Learning to play Go well enough to beat a professional champion and preparing to take on the world champion has to be hard work for an AI system, so Google’s DeepMind team decided to let it try something a little less highbrow.
DeepMind had already learned how to play 49 different Atari 2600 games, in each case figuring out the gameplay on its own, but had reportedly given up on Montezuma’s Revenge. The issue, apparently, was that it got bored. In order to persuade it to keep trying, they had to program it with artificial curiosity …
