eBay is taking on Amazon Warehouse with a new destination called Certified Refurbished, selling used goods from brands like Lenovo, Microsoft and Makita. The idea is that you can buy second-hand products at significant discounts over new, but still get a two-year warranty (from Allstate), a money-back guarantee and 30-day “hassle-free” returns, along with new Read more about eBay makes a dedicated portal for officially refurbished gear[…]

FreedomFi Gateway is the easiest path towards your open source Private LTE or 5G network. Be it for Fixed Wireless Access, Enterprise Cellular or Mobile Broadband, just plug in any commodity small cell into a FreedomFi Gateway and start managing your private cellular network via a SaaS-hosted portal. Project sponsorship options start at $300.   Read more about FreedomFi – open source 5G MAGMA software on a hardware gateway[…]

Tokyo’s Stock Exchange (TSE) went offline for most of Thursday, its longest-ever outage and a very unwelcome one as it is the world’s third-largest bourse, when measured by market capitalisation. The exchange yesterday morning posted news that “a technical glitch occurred to distribution of market data,” and the market therefore stopped all trading. Later in Read more about Tokyo Stock Exchange breaks new record. Sadly, not a good one… its longest ever outage[…]

Transistors based on carbon rather than silicon could potentially boost computers’ speed and cut their power consumption more than a thousandfold — think of a mobile phone that holds its charge for months — but the set of tools needed to build working carbon circuits has remained incomplete until now. A team of chemists and Read more about Metal wires of carbon complete toolbox for carbon-based computers[…]

Samsung may have first made an ECG-capable smartwatch with the Galaxy Watch Active2, but it wasn’t until earlier this summer that it actually got clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to enable the medical-grade feature. That announcement came in dramatic fashion at its Unpacked event in August, where the company unveiled yet another Read more about Samsung Is Rolling Out Its ECG App to Its Smartwatches Today – and only for Samsung phone owners[…]

A rural village in Wales has been suffering through internet outages and slowdowns for 18 months. The situation baffled technicians until they realized that turning off one man’s TV solved everything. On Tuesday, U.K.-based broadband provider Openreach explained in a release that every morning, around 7 a.m., residents of the Aberhosan village found themselves experiencing Read more about Village Traces 18 Months of Internet Outages to Old TV Set[…]

Scores of websites and services went down Friday afternoon due to problems with Cloudflare’s DNS service, sparking rampant speculation about the cause. After all, a global DDOS attack would totally fit the real-life apocalypse movie that 2020 is increasingly turning into. The outage, which started shortly after 5 p.m. ET, brought down popular sites and Read more about Issue with Cloudflare’s DNS service and crappy router shuts down half the web. Again.[…]

Designers often rely on their smartphones for snapping a quick photo of something that inspires them, but Pantone has found a way to turn their smartphone into a genuine design tool. As part of a new online service, it’s created a small card that can be used to accurately sample real world colors by simply Read more about The Cheap Solution for Pantone Color Picking[…]

T-Mobile’s network is having an issue with voice and data service. There was a huge spike in outage reports on Down Detector starting at around 1 PM ET today, with many people across the US suggesting on that site and Twitter that they’re having problems. By around 3:30 PM ET, Down Detector had collected more Read more about T-Mobile US outage finally ends after more than twelve hours (updated)[…]

A scientist at the University of Sydney has achieved what one quantum industry insider has described as “something that many researchers thought was impossible”. Dr. Benjamin Brown from the School of Physics has developed a type of error-correcting code for quantum computers that will free up more hardware to do useful calculations. It also provides Read more about A drastic reduction in hardware overhead for quantum computing with new error correcting techniques[…]

Amazon built robot that is designed to kill the novel coronavirus with ultraviolet light. The robot looks a little like a hotel luggage cart, with a tall metal frame attached to a rectangular wheeled bottom. One side of the frame is outfitted with at least 10 ultraviolet tube lights. In a video shared with CBS Read more about Amazon builds UV-light robot to kill coronavirus on surfaces[…]

Oh look, here’s another cautionary tale about buying cloud-based IoT kit. On 29 May, global peripheral giant Belkin will flick the “off” switch on its Wemo NetCam IP cameras, turning the popular security devices into paperweights. It’s not unusual for a manufacturer to call time on physical hardware. Like software, it has a lifespan where, Read more about Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes, and cloud-based IoT gear bricked by vendors. Looking at you, Belkin[…]

Storage vendors, including but reportedly not limited to Western Digital, have quietly begun shipping SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) disks in place of earlier CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) disks. SMR is a technology that allows vendors to eke out higher storage densities, netting more TB capacity on the same number of platters—or fewer platters, for the Read more about Buyer beware—that 2TB-6TB “NAS” drive you’ve been eyeing might be SMR – and won’t work in your NAS[…]

Modern transistors, which function as a computer’s brain cells, are only a few atoms long. If they are packed too tightly, that can cause all sorts of problems: electron traffic jams, overheating, and strange quantum effects. One solution is to replace some electronic circuits with optical connections that use photons instead of electrons to carry Read more about After 50 Years of Effort, Researchers Made Silicon Emit Light, could improve computer speeds vastly[…]

Purism has dropped the veil on the latest computer in its privacy-focused lineup – a small form-factor PC designed for space-conscious free software enthusiasts. Available to pre-order now, the Librem Mini packs an eighth-generation, quad-core Whiskey Lake i7-8565U processor, modified with Purism’s Pureboot technology. At its heart, this aims to minimise any potential third-party interference Read more about no Intel Management Engine: Purism lifts lid on the Librem Mini, a privacy-focused micro PC[…]

The repurposed industrial robot serves drinks in is own corner of a Japanese pub operated by restaurant chain Yoronotaki. An attached tablet computer face smiles as it chats about the weather while preparing orders. The robot, made by the company QBIT Robotics, can pour a beer in 40 seconds and mix a cocktail in a Read more about Japanese robot could call last orders on human bartenders[…]

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence just published a statement on the company’s website to try to clear up an announcement made earlier this week: on Tuesday, Sonos announced that it will cease delivering software updates and new features to its oldest products in May. The company said those devices should continue functioning properly in the near Read more about Sonos CEO apologizes for confusion, says legacy products will work ‘as long as possible’ – however long that is[…]

The Open Book Project was born from a contest held by Hackaday and that encouraged hardware hackers to find innovative and practical uses for the Arduino-based Adafruit Feather development board ecosystem. The winner of that contest was the Open Book Project which has been designed and engineered from the ground up to be everything devices Read more about An Open Source eReader That’s Free of Corporate Restrictions Is Exactly What I Want Right Now[…]

Earlier today, Apple confirmed it purchased Seattle-based AI company Xnor.ai (via MacRumors). Acquisitions at Apple’s scale happen frequently, though rarely do they impact everyday people on the day of their announcement. This one is different. Cameras from fellow Seattle-based company Wyze, including the Wyze Cam V2 and Wyze Cam Pan, have utilized Xnor.ai’s on-device people Read more about Apple’s latest AI acquisition leaves some Wyze cameras without people detection[…]