Tech

NASA announces that liquid water flows on Mars

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Via: The Verge

They alluded to the fact that they had some big news over the weekend, and now NASA has formally announced the results of a massive, on-going study that had been operating outside of the public eye on Mars for a number of years now. There is indeed flowing water on Mars, a fact that goes against virtually everything we thought we knew about the Red Planet. But what exactly does this mean for us, and for the search for intelligent life?

Liquid water on the surface of Mars. (via NASA)

This new information comes courtesy of of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which studies the planet while orbiting it within its gravitational pull. NASA had been attempting to analyze strange, dark streaks which appears on the planet during its warmer months. After years of study, it has been confirmed that those dark streaks are indeed flowing water. Briny, or salty water, at that, but flowing water nonetheless. As for the source of the water? NASA is not entirely sure yet, but scientists at the organization have called this finding unambiguous proof of water.

Does this mean that Mars could have, at one time, supported large life forms? NASA is of course mum on any speculation on that subject, and realistically, these findings create more questions than answers at the moment when pondering the larger ramifications, if any.

Instagram surpasses 400 million active users, surging past Twitter

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Via: Business Insider

Long positioned as one of two social media platforms vying for the number one spot after, of course, the tech juggernaut that is Facebook; it may be time to give that #2 title completely to Instagram.

In a recent blog post on their website, the company formally announced that they had surpassed the 400 million active user mark, only a few months after they announced that they had hit the 300 million mark last December. This type of growth is not only the exact type that Twitter interim CEO Jack Dorsey, and CFO Anthony Noto were very open about not having on their site at the time of their last earnings call, but also places the usership itself of Instagram ahead of Twitter, which has been hovering around 300 million active users for the past year or so.

(Via heidicohen.com)

Beyond creating an interesting contrast to the growth of Twitter, this news is interesting for a number of other reasons. It is surely good news for Facebook, who actually purchased Instagram for $1 billion back in 2012, and has been looking to monetize the app in a number of ways in recent months. These include sponsored ads, and soon a targeted ad program will be rolled out. Advertising revenue generated by Instagram this year will be around $600 million, and is projected to as much as double in 2016 as well. Also, the app has gone truly global, as Instagram reports that most of the most recent 100 million adopters of the app live in Europe, Asia, or South America.

Instagram is the only other Facebook-owned property that generates advertising revenue at this time, and is rated very positively by clients thus far.

Porsche unveils Tesla-rivaling all-electric E Concept car at Frankfurt Auto Show

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Via: Architectural Digest

Exciting news to report here today out of the Frankfurt Auto Show, as it appears that Tesla will soon have another competitor in their now somewhat-lonely luxury electric car market.

Indeed, making the debut at the biggest auto show in their home country of Germany, legendary automaker Porsche has announced an all-electric new concept model, the very first in the automaker’s illustrious 84 year history.

The new all-electric concept model from Porsche. (via Tampabay.com)

Indeed, Tesla has exploded in popularity in recent years, with some Wall Street analysts as much as doubling their forecasts for the automaker over the next 3-5 years. However, there is a lot to be impressed with on this new Porsche concept as well. The model, pictured above, featured a beautifully modern, windswept design; evocative of their classic Porsche 911 design, but also distinctly more modern. In terms of the technical specs, there is a lot to impressed with as well. The model will be able to travel up to 310 miles between charges, and its two motors equally distribute no less than 600 horsepower to the four wheels. This massive amount of power will give the new car a 0-60 time of only 3.5 seconds as well, besting most of even the most powerful traditional muscle cars.

But what about in terms of competing with Tesla? In terms of a side-by-side comparison, the Porsche is a bit more powerful, but the Tesla has a substantially longer range, with drivers reporting over 450 miles traveled between charges before. Time will certainly tell which luxury-electric model strikes the long term chord with consumers, but for now, Tesla still maintains a pretty lengthy lead on establishing itself as the leader in that market.

A full one day old, the new NFL season sparks controversy

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Via: Source

It has been a tumultuous few years for the NFL. Not that any of their recent PR afflictions have hurt ratings, or the bottom line much or at all, there certainly has been no shortage of embarrassments for the largest American sport.

Last year, prominent players like Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice were suspended for lengthy amounts of time for violent indiscretions, and despite an amazing 2014 season and Super Bowl, literally the only thing talked about in relation to the NFL for the past 7 or so months was Deflategate; the-tongue-in-cheek term that the public and media had come to refer to the ball-deflating scandal that engulfed Tom Brady, and the rest of the NFL this offseason.

Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was less than pleased at the headphone situation last night. (Via: CBS Sports)

So, when actual football kicked off last night, I’m sure it was quite a relief to the NFL PR department and everyone else with more than a rooting interest in the sport. Or, at least it should have been.

Indeed, less than one full day into the new season, the league, even more ironic; the Patriots, are involved in a new controversy. This one centers around malfunctioning headphones. As most even casual NFL fans know, play calls are communicated to the players on the field via electronic headsets, which are inside the helmets for some players, and visibly worn by coaches on the sideline. Coaches also communicate with one another via these same helmets. Well, during the game last night it became apparent that the Steelers headphones were not working, and the coaches and players were hearing the Patriot’s radio broadcast of all things, instead of the vital information they were seeking to communicate. The implications of this are obvious, and pretty devastating. If one team can communicate on the fly, and the other is forced to use hand signals, or even forced to run a player from the sideline and back to the huddle every play, there is an obvious advantage on one side.

And of course, because its the Patriots, the most successful, and controversial NFL team of the past decade; other players have chimed in with their complaints as well. Jack Del Rio, ex-coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars has claimed he experienced similar issues while playing at the Patriot’s stadium, as has linebacker Karlos Dansby, ex-linebacker for the Arizona Cardinals.

In the opinion of this writer, only one thing can be said for certain about all this; football is BACK, baby!

1st Apple Watch sales metrics start to accumulate

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Via: Source

For well over a decade now Apple has seemed to be able to do now wrong. Preceding even the iPod was the legendary series of colorful iMac computers which really put the company back on the map following Steve Jobs’ return after his previous ousting.

Remember these? (Via Creative Review UK)

Then, in 2001, began the reign of ‘i’ products, a reign which continues to this day as the iPhone continues to absorb an ever-increasing share of the smartphone market. The traditional iPod is actually now out of production, but other versions of the product like the Touch continue to be a solid revenue stream for the tech giant.

However, one of Apple’s most recent products may not be joining the legendary ranks of these products that became so successful and popular that they have quite literally changed the way we live our lives everyday. And that entry is the Apple Watch.

While Apple has released no official sales numbers on their watch as of this writing, their suppliers have been releasing data, and it’s not painting the prettiest of pictures for the success of the watch thus far.

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, a Taiwan-based company that packages and produces semiconductors for Apple products, has recently announced that they did not hit their break-even mark of 2 million units per month in the second quarter, and that it also did not expect to hit that mark during the holiday-laden third quarter, either.

In terms of what this means for Apple, there are a few theories. Perhaps wearable technology is still a year or two away from true market integration? Perhaps the functions of the device have not been made impactful enough? Would calling the device an ‘iWatch’ have helped with branding? Either way, the success of any one Apple product does not make or break the company. Not even close.

FINALLY a real-life hoverboard is set to debut

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As one astute comedian recently observed on Twitter, “They should go back and remake Back to the Future except instead of having hoverboards in 2015, everyone’s just offended by everything.”

That iconic movie sees Marty McFly travel ahead to 2015 (or was that Back to the Future 2?), where he uses, amongst other awesome things we don’t have yet, a hoverboard. But it appears that fact has finally caught up to fiction, and a real-life hoverboard will be arriving soon. Developing by Lexus, not too much is known about the device as of this writing. But, a new teaser video dropped online ahead of the products August 5th launch, which we have here for you below.

Google to decouple a number of features from Google+

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It goes pretty much without saying at this point that Google+ hasn’t quite evolved into what Google had probably hoped it would have when they launched the site back in 2011. And now, a little more than four years after the initial launch date (there was an invite-only structure for a number of months before), it appears that the company might be making some moves to scale back that operation.

Via Social Media Biz

As reported by Tech Crunch, a number of functionalities and features are being disconnected from the site. In a few months, you’ll no longer need a Google+ profile to comment on Youtube videos (congratulations, trolls), and Google Photos is being phased out of the site as well.

Google+ will continue on though, with a closer focus on “becoming a place where people engage around their shared interests, with the content and people who inspire them,” as according to Google VP of Streams, Photos, and Sharing, Bradley Horowitz. This likely means a renewed focus on Google+ Collections and Hangouts.

Cheaters on blast: Hackers threaten to out entire Ashley Madison usership

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Via: Source

Who needs the wild west when we all have the internet, right?

The latest addition to stories that could truly only occur in 2015, the website Ashley Madison has been hacked, with the culprits threatening to disclose the identities of every user on the site.

Why would that be so bad, you ask? Well, you’re a good person if you thought that. Ashley Madison is Tinder for married people; a website and app set up exclusively for people to coordinate affairs.

The fact that Ashley Madison provided a subtle, neat way for these people to…well, do what they wanted to do, the site has become incredibly popular in recent years, boasting close to 40 million active users this year.

However, the secure platform that made the site so popular in the first place, has come up short in relation to this most recent attack by hackers. We will have updates on this story as it develops.

Billionaire investor Yuri Milner to invest $100 Million to find alien life

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Via: Source

In what appears to be one of the more obscure (i.e. awesome) investments in an already stellar investment and entrepreneurial career, Yuri Millman, an early investor in, or co-founder of companies like Uber, Air Bnb, Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other billion-dollar-valued tech companies, will be turning his attentions to the skies above.

“Are you there ET? It’s us, humans.”

Indeed, Mr. Millman was a scientist before he was an investor and tech entrepreneur, and it now appears as if he will finally be getting the chance to meld his passion for science with his incredibly successful business career.

His new, $100 million project is entitled Breakthrough Initiatives, and was announced just today at the Royal Society in London. The project has a number of other prominent names attached to it, including Stephen Hawking himself. The program will coordinate two of the most powerful telescopes man has ever produced, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

The program will survey the closest 100 million stars to our own sun, and will also extend beyond the reaches of the Milky Way, looking for conditions that are suitable for life. To help aggregate and analyze the massive amount of information these telescopes will help to collect, the program will tap the innovative SETI@home program, a computer program distributed by Berkeley in California, which will allow some 9 million people to use their home computing power to help push the project forward.

Indeed; an absolute ton of cash, and some of the best minds of a generation are all coalescing now in the name of one of the most important questions to ever face our species; Are we alone?

New iPhone commercial throws some serious shade

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It is a debate that is seemingly less and less raging all the time, and a new iPhone commercial just may take the Android vs. iOS argument a step closer to the grave. Check it out, below.

And honestly, the ad makes some good points. The complete, inalterable integration of hardware and software has been a core tenet of Apple since the earliest, now legendary days of both Steves; Jobs and Wozniak. This design and construction philosophy has resulted in some of the most fluid, and revolutionary products our world has ever known. As a now famous example, Jobs would not let the original iPod be released until users could get from one point in the interface, to any other, in 3 ‘clicks’ or less. Thus, the ingenious wheel system was born; perfectly melding the exterior hardware with the internal, operative software.

But of course, this hardline approach to product construction does have it’s naysayers (remember the days when you could pop the back off your phone, and remove the battery? Not with an iPhone, obviously), and also, for the sake of competition, don’t we want a healthy smart phone market with a number of able competitors?

We absolutely do. But this writer for one, just can’t imagine ever switching away from an iPhone, and that seamless, integrated hardware and software experience that Steve Jobs mandated all those years ago. A mandate that reaps benefits to this day.

What do you think? Do you like the extra freedom that Android allows its developers and users? Or do you prefer the near-flawless user experience of iPhone ownership?