Group items tagged

a new kind of Silicon Valley parent. Instead of tricking out their homes with all the latest technology, many of today's parents working or living in the tech world are limiting — and sometimes outright banning — how much screen time their kids get.

short-term consequences among teens and adolescents who are heavy users of tech. These include heightened risks for depression, anxiety, and, in extreme cases, suicide.

parents told Business Insider that it's often hard to strike a balance in limiting tech use, since kids quickly begin to feel left out of their peer group. The longer parents try to impose their restrictions, the more they fear they're essentially raising a well-adjusted outcast.

Launched last week, Hanx Writer turns your iPad into an old-fashioned typewriter, offering a pseudo-analog typing experience. The bangs of key presses, hard returns and the chimes that sound when you reach the end of a new line now sit alongside modern conveniences 

- Honda Motor plans to offer cars that can drive themselves on highways by around 2020

With Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor having announced their plans, the three largest domestic carmakers now have timelines for self-driving vehicles.

Honda this year started adopting what it calls Sensing technologies

Tesla is rolling out version 7.0 of its software, and with it new autopilot features that allow the car to stay in its lane, change lanes, and parallel park itself.

the new Autosteer feature. This is designed specifically for highway driving, and when engaged keeps the car in its lane. When you need to change lanes, you flip your turn signal and the car will move over on its own when it determines it’s safe to do so.

That "hands-on" detail is an important one. CEO Elon Musk emphasizes that the update is a public beta. "We say keep your hands on the wheel because it’s very important to exercise caution at this early stage,"

The term “enhancing underwear” might summon images of go-go-gadget pants that help you run faster and jump higher, but it actually refers to a new breed of briefs that promise you a bigger bulge. Push-up bras and “butt-lifters” have long been a staple of women’s lingerie aisles, but genital scaffolding has now spread to menswear. Featured in the V&A exhibition, the “Wonderjock” is the work of Australian company AussieBum and aims to do for men’s bits what the Wonderbra did for women’s busts – hoisting them up and thrusting them out.

US army researchers have developed smart underwear, with sensors secreted inside elastic waistbands that track heart rate, body temperature and perspiration, and beam the stats back to a central monitor. This “wear-and-forget” sensory system is also designed for stressful training situations, identifying which soldiers remain more balanced, so they can be picked for the harder missions.

Underwear is already a common place for smuggling drugs of the illegal variety, but a recent pharmaceutical innovation could soon make putting pills in your pants a legitimate activity. Swiss textile giant Schoeller has developed a fabric that administers drugs to the surface of your skin over time, and thinks the best place to put it is in your undies – as those are the garments you’re least likely to forget to put on.

131 women who signed up for a Self-Defense Force “Talking Festival,” a social gathering to promote matchmaking between Maritime SDF personnel and women interested in dating, and maybe even marrying, men in uniform.

61 couples claim to have gotten married as a result of linking up at the events

The number of applicants seeking to attend each event rose to around 300 from 200 or so previously.

Microsoft unveiled a new hologram platform today as part of its new operating system

The holographic software is built into Windows 10 already, the company said. Though Microsoft is working on its own hardware, the platform will also work for other virtual reality software like Oculus Rift and Google Glass

Microsoft executive built a virtual flying drone, which the company then showed could be 3D printed. Alex Kipman, who helped lead the project, called it “print preview for 3D printing”.

Hundreds of people at Apple are said to be secretly working on a design for an electric people-carrier which has been given the code name “Titan”. So far, the technology firm has declined to comment on the project

The Titan project was reportedly signed off almost a year ago by Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, who has assigned vice president of product design, Steve Zadesky, to lead the group

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem

Yet many are realising that the gadgets we chuck away can be ripped apart and transformed into something new – brand new technology, or even art.

In 2012, we discarded 48.9 million tonnes of electrical and electronic products. If current trends continue, by 2017, the annual amount of e-waste produced globally will reach 65.4 million tonnes – that’s roughly 20% of the weight of all the people living on Earth.

Realeyes last year received a near £3m grant from the The European Commission help develop its technology, which claims to track the ‘likability’ of brand’s marketing efforts by measuring people’s emotions via standard webcams as they watch video content.

Tools such as Realeyes allow us to get behavioural information upfront, so we can optimise and measure content before launch.

This enables us to deliver more effective video and more efficient distribution, making the message more impactful and delivering increased business advantage for our clients

Google is working to create a new product in the home services market

Calif.-based technology giant is working on an offering through its ads team that will allow customers to connect with roofers and repairmen and put it in direct competition with Thumbtack and Amazon.com

As Buzzfeed reported, there will likely be some integration with Google Ad Words, which will likely create targeted ads for users searching for certain services that will allow them to receive direct quotes.

Because of these patent wars and patent trolls, technology companies are divesting huge resources to defend themselves rather than advancing their innovations. This is the equivalent of nuclear arms race and is a lose-lose situation.

do we even need patents in an era in which technology is advancing so rapidly that it makes entire computing platforms obsolete in less time than it takes to be awarded a patent?

This happens in the pharmaceutical industry when a company is allowed to exclude competitors for a fixed period of time to recoup its sizable investment in research.

"There's a certain class of content which is only going to come onto Facebook if there's a good way to compensate content owners for that,"

"We've recently rolled out the business model for this. We'll give a revenue share on a portion of the views to content owners

To grasp the scope of change unraveling in content creation, which is increasingly fragmented, consider all the mobile apps on your smartphone.

The rich have grown afraid of screens. They want their children to play with blocks, and tech-free private schools are booming. Humans are more expensive, and rich people are willing and able to pay for them.

classes have been replaced by software, much of the academic day now spent in silence on a laptop. In Utah, thousands of children do a brief, state-provided preschool program at home via laptop.

And children who spent more than two hours a day looking at a screen got lower scores on thinking and language tests,

A poll has found that half of U.S. teens report feeling heavily dependent on their mobile devices, while more than half of parents know about such addiction of their teens

multitasking can harm learning and performance

increasing desire to “up” one’s smartphone dose

a new generation of even more ambitious theaters — possibly even including cinema's first holodeck — is waiting in the wings.

The first Escape theaters — which will include the Cinemark 18 & XD at the Promenade at the Howard Hughes Center in Los Angeles — will open Sept. 19, showing a special edition of Fox's new young adult thriller The Maze Runner

Escape theaters showing The Maze Runner will project the live-action movie on to the center screen, and the side screens will feature additional visual effects

A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google's search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo

a portable speaker with voice assistant tech

voice search and intelligent personal assistance will occupy center stage at the company's splash show

Guests get their own bunk with a TV, towel, outlets, and more for between $40 and $50 a night, depending on the location. They can also share the community fridge, food, bathrooms, toiletries, and work space areas.

Four years after launch, Podshare has hosted over 5,000 guests and has a loyal fan base. The company has a near-perfect five-star review on Yelp, 4.5 stars on TripAdvisor, and 16 members love it so much they had the logo tattooed on their body. Keep reading to see what it's like inside.