Rocks mined from the seafloor have been confirmed as a viable source for rare earth metals, and thus a tiny piece of the ocean might soon find its way into a cell phone or computer chipboard near you. The finding, published in the April 2014 issue of Applied Geochemistry, all but guarantees a new round of focus on overcoming the challenges—both industrial and environmental—of extracting mineral riches from the ocean depths.
Facebook is a powerful tool when it comes to connecting with people that you’ve met, as well as being arguably the most important social networking site on the planet. This can be both good and bad, and while I’m not sure if I want to share my location at all times on my timeline, I’m sure that it could be useful in some cases.
Facebook’s new Nearby Friends feature is disabled by default. It allows you to get alerts when some of your FB friends are nearby. It could definitely makes things easier when you’re out on the town, in the same general area, but have trouble actually locating your friends, something that actually happened to me today.
While I can also see the possible problems of such a feature, when it comes to stalkers, etc, at least it’s fully optional, and defaults to being switched off. The problem is that a lot of people aren’t going to remember to switch back off when they don’t want it running. They’ll just leave it on once they set it and forget it. At least you can choose who you do and don’t share your location with, so that should help some.
What do you think of this feature? Are you going to enable it on your phone?
[via Facebook]
It’s been nearly three years since I reviewed the Xperia Neo, manufactured by what was then Sony Ericsson. The Neo represented just the second generation of Xperia phones running on Android, from a period when Sony was finding its feet in the world…
On a recent trip home to Knoxville, Tennessee, I had a flashback. Not an acid flashback (I don’t think). We were weaving through the hilly streets of downtown in the shadow of the Sunsphere, a discoball of a monument built for the 1982 World’s Fair, and suddenly I was there in the crowd, staring at the future.
The human lower leg is a marvel of biological engineering—it lets you have a long, strong stride while minimizing exertion and joint strain. But conventional spring and hydraulically-driven prosthesis worn by amputees offer no such benefit and can cause osteoarthritis-inducing skeletal strains. The BiOM T2 system aims to rectify that.
I recently changed smartphones after I had lost mine whilst after dropping it from my motorcycle, consulting it for directions when I was stopped. A few cars drove over it, and I was surprised that it still worked with a completely shattered screen. Nevertheless, I was happily surprised when I no longer had to fight the autocorrect on my new phone. If you’re going to change phones, check out the new and affordable LG Lucid 3.
The LG Lucid 3 is powered by Android and comes free with on a 2-year contract with Verizon, or you can get the contract-free version for $299.99(USD). The 4G LTE phone runs the latest and greatest Android version 4.4.2 KitKat, has a 4.7-inch screen with a 960 x 540 display, a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal memory, a 5MP camera and a 2,440 mAh battery.
The Lucid 3 won’t impress you if you want the latest and greatest, but it will get the job done in most situations, and is an inexpensive way to get a phone running the latest version of Android.
The US’ special operations forces frequently can’t rely on conventional ground transportation for their covert ops — a loud engine is guaranteed to blow their cover. To tackle this problem, DARPA has just awarded Logos Technologies a contract to…
Google’s Chromecast has gained another service, with the streaming media dongle now adding live MLB.TV support for baseball games. As with other Chromecast integration we’ve seen, the functionality relies on … Continue reading
Last month, Samsung introduced a Milk Music
Microsoft’s console ambitions continue to lag behind Sony’s PlayStation 4, with concerns that the gulf in sales between the Xbox One and its key rival could be a trend of … Continue reading
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
