London startup Curve launches new card that will allow consumers to combine all their payment cards February 17, 2016 London-based startup Curve launched today, the latest in a string of new companies in the payments technology sector, with the aim of allowing consumers to combine all their bank cards into one payment card. The card, which is supported by a mobile app, will be accepted everywhere that MasterCard is. According to the company, the service "offers [...]
It’s official: Twitter’s getting Gifs with search support for web, iOS and Android from Giphy and Riffsy February 17, 2016 Twitter is adding a new feature which will likely please most of the internet this time: gif support. Users will be able to search for and add gifs to their tweets directly in Twitter. "Whenever you're composing a tweet or direct message, you can search and browse the gif library. So if you're looking for the [...]
Why Tim Cook is totally right on encryption and “backdoors” in his letter opposing FBI court request for access to iPhone of San Bernadino shooter February 17, 2016 FBI investigators investigating the San Berdanino terrorist attack have hit a stumbling block: Syed Farook, who killed 14 people, used an iPhone to communicate. The FBI believes that valuable information is stored on the Farook’s phone. Yet they can’t get at it. Putting the wrong password into an iPhone a few times wipes the phone, [...]
Street Fighter V review: a promising but unfinished update that’s plagued by gargantuan bosoms February 17, 2016 The Street Fighter franchise is so iconic to a generation of players, so steeped in warm, fuzzy nostalgia, that updating it requires a surgeon's touch. You can't keep making the same game, but its success lies in its simple mechanics, stored deep in the muscle memory of our fingers. If a Street Fighter II aficionado can’t pick [...]
Google Ideas think tank becomes Jigsaw in latest Alphabet renaming February 17, 2016 First Google surprised us with a name change to Alphabet, now, it's taken further inspiration from the kids' playroom with its latest renaming. Google Ideas, the search giant's think tank, will be called Jigsaw from now on and will expand its focus to become a technology incubator. "The team’s mission is to use technology to tackle [...]
Is your city most or least at risk from robots taking jobs? February 17, 2016 The robot overlords are taking your jobs, so we've been told time and time again. But there are some places in Britain where that's more likely to happen than others. Exeter, Crawley and Norwich have the highest number of job vacancies which are at the greatest risk of automation in the future, according to new research. It [...]
Tim Cook: Apple won’t unlock San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone with “backdoor”, responding to FBI court ruling, and warns of weakened encryption risks February 17, 2016 Apple boss Tim Cook has said the company will contest a US court ruling forcing it to break the encryption on the iPhone of one of the San Bernadino shooters. "The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far [...]
US private equity giant Apollo buys ADT to create $15bn security firm February 16, 2016 US private equity firm Apollo today said it is taking security equipment firm ADT private and merging it with another security company in a deal valued at $15bn (£10.5bn). Apollo said it will pay $42 per share for ADT, representing a premium of around 56 per cent over ADT's closing share price on 12 February [...]
Mobile World Congress 2016: What to expect – biometrics, virtual and augmented reality and Chinese smartphone brands February 16, 2016 Mobile World Congress 2016 always brings with it a flurry of new mobile gadget announcements – here are some of the trends to expect. The smartphone is quickly becoming an integral part of a bigger continuum of devices and smart objects as users increasingly live their lives in a "device mesh." This is an environment, [...]
Ordnance Survey map of Mars is an intergalactic guide for ramblers February 15, 2016 Never get lost again with this handy map of, er, Mars. The bastion of British mapping, Ordnance Survey, has created a new guide for ramblers, hikers and drivers to use for future journeys around the red planet. You can stroll past the canyons of Hydraotes Chaos and Aureum Chaos or the Martian crater Schiaparelli with the guidance from [...]
