The war against hackers has become a global war of economics and politics. This in-depth Vanity Fair article takes a penetrating look at the grossly underreported impact of Chinese hackers on the US economy.
Category: -Updates
People use eBay and other auction sites for C2C transactions involving material goods. TaskRabbit is a C2C clearinghouse for services. Need somebody to run an errand or put together your new desk? Ask TaskRabbit.
This year Watson, an IBM computer, beat two champions on TV’s Jeopardy. This PBS Nova program goes behind the scenes and explains how Watson’s creators pulled it off.
This summer some consumers will be able to pay for some of their purchases by waving their phones instead of swiping their cards. Google Wallet is an Android App that uses near-field communication technology to send transaction information from phone to merchant terminal. This kind of technology could eventually change the way we do most of our face-to-face shopping.
This New York Times article includes a demo video.
The microprocessors that power today’s computers are running out of space. For decades engineers have found ways to shrink the circuitry that’s etched onto each chip’s surface, but that trend will soon collide with hard laws of physics. Intel engineers may have found a way to continue the relentless march toward ever-faster computers: 3D circuitry containing tiny fins of silicon that rise above the chip’s surface. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/05chip.html
Intel co-invented USB. Apple invented FireWire. Now the two companies have collaborated to produce Thunderbolt, a fast, flexible technology that may eventually make both of those earlier technologies obsolete. Born in Intel’s research labs, Thunderbolt first appeared earlier this year in Apple’s Macbook Pro. Thunderbolt will provide lightning-fast connection speeds for monitors, hard drives, input devices, and other types of peripherals, once those peripherals are redesigned with Thunderbolt interfaces.www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm