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Saturday, April 16th, 2016
| Time | Event |
| 1:53a | Sharp Unveils Cute Robot Phone At A Not-So-Cute $1,800 Price An anonymous reader writes: Japanese manufacturer Sharp officially launched a small robot named RoboHon that doubles as an Android smartphone. The foot-tall robot phone features a two-inch, QVGA display on its back, and a 720p projector embedded in its head. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor powers the robot with Android 5.0 Lollipop running on the software side of things. It can be controlled by voice commands, allowing it to walk and dance -- features like taxi hailing and recipe assistance are apparently in the works. But here's the catch -- RoboHon costs $1,800 or 198,000 yen. If you want to have access to the 3 different voice recognition technologies found in the RoboHon, you'll have to pay an additional "small monthly fee." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.  |
| 3:31a | Apple's Recycling Initiatives Recover $40 Million In Gold An anonymous reader writes: Apple released its latest annual environmental report yesterday with numbers detailing how much the company has been able to recover from old devices. Business Insider notes that Apple was able to recover over 61 million pounds of steel, aluminum, glass, and other materials from its computers and iPhones. This includes a total of 2,204 pounds of gold worth $40 million at current prices ($1,229.80 per troy ounce of gold). Cult of Mac ran the figures quoted by Apple through today's metal prices, and came up with individual figures for copper ($6.4 million), aluminum ($3.2 million), silver ($1.6 million), nickel ($160,426), zinc ($109,503), and lead ($33,999). Last month, Apple unveiled an iPhone recycling robot, named Liam, that salvages old parts.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 7:01a | Obama Urges Opening Cable TV Boxes To Competition An anonymous reader writes: President Obama is publicly supporting the FCC's proposal to help viewers buy cable boxes to spur competition and help subscribers save money. Basically, the proposal would require TV channels to sell their content to third-party groups, like Google and others who would sell their own devices. The president's backing of the FCC proposal is part of a broader White House initiative to spur competition. In a Yahoo News interview, Obama compared the cable box issue to earlier moves by the government to open up the telephone system in the 1980's. Obama said, "Across the board, if we have more players who can potentially participate, fewer barriers to entry, the rules aren't rigged, then you get more people trying to get your business and you get better products at cheaper prices."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 1:01p | New Full Duplex Radio Chip Transmits and Receives Wireless Signals At Once Wave723 writes: A new chip by Columbia University researchers uses a circulator made of silicon transistors to reroute signals and avoid interference from a transmitter and receiver that share the same antenna. This technology instantly doubles data capacity and could eventually be built into smartphones and tablets. The chip enables them to work around the principle of Lorentz Reciprocity, in which electromagnetic waves are thought to always travel along the same path both forward and backward. Traditionally, electronic devices required two antennas -- a transmitter and receiver -- that took turns or operated on different frequencies in order to exchange signals.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 4:30p | Apple Expects Users To Replace Their iPhone, Apple Watch After Three Years Apple says it expects its users to replace their iPhone and Apple Watch after (more like, every) three years. The company adds that it expects a Mac user to replace their computer after four years. The iPhone maker shared the expectations in a recently released document as part of its latest environmental push. In the document, Apple underscores how much its products contribute to the greenhouse gas lifecycle. The Guardian reports: Within a new question and answer section Apple said: "Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices." That assessment doesn't take into account the recycling of devices, their reconditioning and their resale, of course, but when you buy a new iPhone 6S for $649 (starting price, off-contract), Apple expects it to last three years, something many suspected. Apple has been accused of intentionally slowing down iPhones every time a new one is released, although there is little evidence to support the theory.Also see: Apple's Recycling Initiatives Recover $40 Million In Gold
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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