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UK telecom regulator gets nearly $1M to put phone numbers on the blockchain

Oct09
by on October 9, 2018 at 9:54 am
Posted In: Around the Web, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Hard Fork


The United Kingdom’s telecommunications and broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has received $915,000 (£700,000) to explore blockchain as a potential solution to the nation’s telephone number management woes. The money from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will fund research and development into telecom technologies used in the management and delivery of landline telephone numbers, Ofcom announced yesterday. “Between now and April 2020, we’ll be inviting industry participants to trial the porting and management of millions of telephone numbers using blockchain and ledger technology,” the announcement reads. “We’ll be co-ordinating this work across industry, universities and other third-party providers.” There…

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Google pulls plug on $10 billion Pentagon cloud deal

Oct09
by on October 9, 2018 at 8:53 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Google


Google will ditch its bid for a cloud computing deal worth $10 billion with the Pentagon, as its new ethical guidelines don’t align with the requirements from the US Department of Defense (DoD). The company said in a statement: We couldn’t be assured that [the JEDI deal] would align with our AI Principles and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications. Google came under fire when details about the company working with the Pentagon first went public back in June. While the company said it would just help…

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Devialet’s Phantom Reactor is a tiny speaker that can out-bass most subwoofers

Oct09
by on October 9, 2018 at 8:06 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Plugged


When you listen to new, fancy  audio gear every few days, it’s easy to become jaded. There are so many good headphones and speakers outs that very few ever make think ‘wow’ anymore. Devialet’s Phantom Reactor, a tiny, $999 speaker with unreasonably deep sound, is one of those products. I realize the apparent hyperbole above, but in a market with as much snake oil as audio, I don’t take that wow factor lightly. The Reactor takes everything that made the original Phantoms (and the higher-end variants) so impressive and miniaturizes it to almost absurd levels. I couldn’t help but laugh…

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HP’s x360 14 is a $599 Chromebook with solid specs and thin bezels

Oct09
by on October 9, 2018 at 7:24 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, Plugged


The day before Google is expected to reveal two new Chrome OS devices, HP just revealed its own: the x360 14. At first glance it’s an attractive package; it’s HP’s thinnest Chromebook to date, comes with fairly thin bezels, and starts at $599. But in case you were wondering, no, there’s no leather on this one. You can choose between i3 and i5 8th-gen Intel processors, but both versions otherwise share a 14-inch 1080P display, 64 GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM. There’s also a fair selection of ports, with two USB-C, one USB-A 3.1, and a MicroSD slot.…

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