Items tagged with NYT
Light a candle for the 300-word news bite. The New York Times has announced its initiative to produce an app for the soon-to-be-everywhere (or not) Apple Watch that will offer all the news you need when you need it, in the form of one-sentence stories that are curated by an editorial team dedicated to the task. The New York Times Apple Watch app — a free extension of the NYTimes on iPhone app — will provide news, accompanied by The Times's photography, from among many Times sections, including Business, Politics, Science, Tech, and The Arts. And readers who find a story to be worth more than just a cursory glance will be able to use Apple's Handoff feature...
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The New York Times’ website is having a rough month. Only a couple weeks after maintenance troubles caused several hours of downtime, the iconic paper has again experienced a major disruption. This time, the outage is clearly the result of an attack. The hacker group known as SyrianElectronicArmy claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as attacks on Twitter and The Huffington Post UK. The attack took place Tuesday afternoon, knocking out the site for readers. As a precaution, The New York Times limited email use for its staff and journalists. In the case of each website, the hacker changed the DNS information to reflect its victory. The New York Times posted an article on the hack,...
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There have been two major leaks this past week that we want to talk about. First, news that Verizon turns over all phone call metadata -- the numbers called, dialed, and the duration of the phone call in question -- to the NSA. Second, news that the NSA has agreements with major tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, that require those companies to turn over information. Every firm named in these slides has come out and said it does not reveal information about US citizens without an appropriate court order. The NSA has released a statement confirming this, saying: "It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located...
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Apple recently took a PR hammering after the New York Times published a report claiming that labor conditions at the company's Chinese partner Foxconn continued to be poor--and that Apple knew about it and chose to do nothing. CEO Tim Cook blasted the allegations at the time, but has followed up nonetheless. Apple announced today that the Fair Labor Association will conduct "special, voluntary audits" of Foxconn facilities in Shenzhen and Chengdu. Unlike the suicides of 2009-2010, the recent accusations of poor monitoring relate to aluminum dust explosions at two Foxconn factories in May and December of 2011. Such risks are a known manufacturing hazard, and are seen as something which Apple,...
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According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, you better keep your iPad out of the bedroom if you need to get up early in the morning. The reason? Light emitted from the bright touchscreen display stimulates your brain telling it to stay alert rather than drift off into unconsciousness. It isn't just the iPad that has this effect, but all abnormal light sources, including cell phones, televisions, computer screens, and so forth. Sleep experts claim that exposure to abnormal light sources inhibits the secretion of melatonin, a chemical which is secreted in darkness and regulates the sleep-wake cycle by causing drowsiness. "The take-home lesson is that insomnia and electronics gadgets emitting...
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Sony Pictures Television, like every branch of the Sony world, always seems to be swimming around in a pool of twenties. They arrive late, bring money, and buy whatever they like. They apparently like the semi-snarky vlog news site Rocketboom.com a lot; they've acquired the rights to distribute it in all media platforms. They plan on plopping it into their existing Crackle site, which has a large network and is no doubt hungry for things to show to web-savvy hipsters. But seriously; seven figures for Rocketboom? Andrew Baron, owner of Rocketboom, explains: Upon becoming free to make a move, we signed up with Creative Artists, and engaged in months of talks about possible partnerships with traditional...
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Sometimes journalists don't just report the news, they become a part of it. Such is the case with New York Time reporter Saul Hansell. Back in May, Hansell reported on a spat between Google and the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) trade group over Google's refusal to add a link to its privacy policy on the Google homepage. The NAI felt that such a link was part of it charter, and Google was applying to become a member of the NAI. Google, on the other hand, was adamant about keeping its homepage as sparse as possible and didn't want to mar its clean page with even one more word. Three days later, Hansell reported that he stumbled upon a California Law that implies that Goolge must link to...
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The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign is a hotbed of high-tech research these days. They've recently demonstrated a process for "growing" upright copper nanowires on surfaces made from a wide array of materials. These nanowires could be used to make Field-Emission Displays, brighter and sharper than existing flat panel displays, by using the nanowires to shoot electrons at phosphor particles on a screen. The copper nanowires are suitable for use in FEDs because they are uniform and have a very pointed tip. "The smaller the tip size the stronger the electric field," Kim says. "That is why even with a very small voltage...they will become very efficient electron emitters."...
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While AMD is frantically trying to ramp up the speeds of their existing Phenom designs, we’re starting to get a slightly clearer picture of what the company plans on offering next. AMD’s technical director of sales and marketing for EMEA, Giuseppe Amato, told Custom PC that ‘if I look at the next generation architecture of our CPU, then it will definitely not be, how can I say, comparable with the Phenom. It will look completely different.’ Amato was unable to give us any specific details of the new architecture, but did add that it would ‘solve problems that today we think can never be addressed by hardware.’ We’re waiting with baited breath to discover what kinds of problems AMD is planning...
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Nokia announced they were shipping the new N810 Internet Tablet yesterday. It's not really a phone unless you've got some sort of VoIP arrangement, but it's a nice little UMPC. Or it's a PDA on steroids. Well, at any rate, you can slide out the keyboard and type, surf the internet on its touchscreen if you can find a WiFi hotspot or can finagle a Bluetooth phone, or maybe just use it for music playback for a week at a stretch.With up to 45 hours of music playback, storage for up to 7,500 songs* and built-in GPS, the Nokia N810 is perfect for the person on the go. The Nokia N810 comes with free maps preloaded for users to browse detailed locations, search for street addresses, find various...
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Samsung announced Friday they'll be selling a disc player that will play either HD DVD or Blu-ray discs. Should be available by the end of the year. "Consumers are hungry for more HD content but are currently confused about competing formats," Dongsoo Jun, executive vice president of the Digital AV Division at Samsung," said in a statement."Samsung's Duo HD player will allow consumers access to every HD movie title available regardless of the authoring format."Samsung is not the first to announce it would offer a duo-format player. LG Electronics, also based in Korea, unveiled its device in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Still nothing that will play your Criterion...
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