You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The wait for the Moto X may soon be over.
In an earnings call on Thursday, Patrick Pichette, Google’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, dropped a hint that the highly anticipated smartphone from Google-owned Motorola is weeks away.
“I’ll leave it to the coming quarters to demonstrate the new Motorola that’s showing up, and you’ll see that in the coming weeks actually,” he said on Thursday, responding to a question from an analyst.
DETROIT — The city of Detroit, which for years paid its bills with borrowed money, is the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy protection. Here’s a look at how the city spiraled into financial ruin and why it’s in so much trouble:
WHAT HAPPENED?
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A prototype software interface shows how the Kinect tracks sign language.
(Credit: Screenshot by Christopher MacManus/CNET)
Earlier this week at Microsoft’s DemoFest in Redmond, Wash., the company’s research arm showed off an incredible union of technologies that could finally usher in an inexpensive solution for people who want to communicate with a computer through sign language.
Dreamed up by researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Microsoft Research Asia, the system involves the use of a Kinect camera sensor, Bing’s translation services, and some recognition software that detects American and Chinese sign language and converts it into computer text — all on the fly.
Kinect’s advanced b… [Read more]
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Have you ever wondered what would happen if you mixed Mercury(II) thiocyanate (Hg(SCN)2) and Ammonium chromate (NH4)2CrO4 together and then lit it on fire? NO?! What’s wrong with you? It’s unbelievably hellish and impossibly alien combined with one burning force of what the horrifically kraken insane.
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“Shall we begin?” Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela asks in the first trailer for “Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom.” As it turns out, marketing for the Weinstein Company release already began last week, when an international teaser for the Oscar hopeful debuted online. That clip showed precious little in the way of Elba, though it did feature his uncanny vocal impersonation of the South African leader; the “Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom” trailer that debuted on Thursday provides interested parties a whole lot more in the way of Elba and the film’s story.
Based on an original screenplay by William Nicholson and directed by Justin Chadwick, “Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom” focuses on Mandela’s younger days. “Public Enemy No. 1,” “Hunted By Police,” “Feared By The Government” read title cards in the beginning of the clip, before words like “Liberator” and “Revolutionary” flash across the screen. (“The Social Network” trailer still has an influence on modern movie marketing, it seems.)
For his part, Elba looks strong. He’s been mentioned as a possible Best Actor contender, and this trailer does nothing to deter that excitement.
In the spirit of San Diego Comic Con, the White House is set to host a special geek-themed Google+ Hangout tomorrow, July 19th, at 12:00 PM ET to celebrate the geniuses pioneering real-life superhero-style technology. The event, part of its “We the Geeks” series, will cover recent innovations in materials science that could potentially take us to infinity and beyond, like impenetrable liquid armor, self-healing and touch-sensitive synthetic skin. Joining the Hangout are notable experts including (but certainly not limited to) James Kakalios, author of The Physics of Superheroes, Nathan Landy, a Duke University graduate student working on an invisibility cloak and Nate Ball, host of PBS’s Design Squad Nation and inventor of the Batman-like Ascender. Got a question for these real world Tony Starks? Share it via Twitter or Google+ using the hashtag #WeTheGeeks.
Source: White House
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan Senate accord supported by the White House to overhaul the federal student loan program is forecast to boost government profit and increase borrowing costs in the coming years, leading student groups and some Democrats to denounce the deal.
The compromise, reached by eight senators and blessed by the White House on Thursday, would result in an immediate reduction in borrowing costs under the federal student loan program — temporary savings that would be paid by graduate students and parents beginning in 2015, according to estimates derived from the White House’s most recent budget update.
Some undergraduate students will immediately pay more relative to borrowing costs that prevailed during the most recent school year, while the vast majority are forecast to pay more in the next five years, perhaps as early as 2016.
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In the battle for enduring fame, sometimes the more interesting story belongs to the guy who came in second. Thomas Edison’s name is known to every American child. Nikola Tesla was his great rival.
“Tesla’s Wonderful World of Electricity” opened earlier this month at the New York Hall of Science. The 14-week exhibit contains models from the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and is sure to fascinate the same fans who recently helped raise more than $1.3 million to build the first U.S.-based Tesla museum.
One of the greatest technological minds of all time, Telsa invented the induction motor, the Tesla coil, radio, neon lighting and many other devices. He was born in modern-day Croatia in 1856, immigrated to the United States in his late 20s, and became a U.S. citizen at age 35. He obtained hundreds of patents worldwide — and also tried to unlock the secrets to teleportation and time travel.
Possibly seeking to combat the perception that they’re unproductive and obstructionist, House Republicans convened about six hours of debate Thursday on an education bill that has almost no chance of being signed into law.
The House discussed the Student Success Act, a Republican-written update to the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB is a bipartisan bill that was supported by President George W. Bush, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) when it was passed in 2001.
While NCLB dramatically expanded the federal government’s role in the nation’s public schools, the Student Success Act, written by House Education Committee Chair Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), would dramatically constrict it. The bill pulls back from the annual performance goals required by NCLB and consolidates federal programs dedicated to English-language learners and neglected children into a program devoted to helping schools with low-income students.
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