Seth Colaner
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
The good news, if you can call it that, is that after polling hundreds of technology experts, the Pew Research Internet Project found that they don’t believe that cybercrime or hacking are the chief problems facing the Internet by 2025. Unfortunately, that’s because they believe there are other problems...
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Video game broadcaster and community-builder Twitch is poised for big things. The company is rumored to be working a billion-dollar acquisition by YouTube, making it a Google-owned entity, and in the meantime it’s building a studio in San Francisco to take its enterprise to new level. According to Reuters...
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Months after first announcing the availability of the $350 Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, the new device is now shipping. More to the point, some 10,000 DK2s are shipping from the factory this July, and a Team Oculus post on Oculus’ developer forums stated that more than half of the units will be through distribution...
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As the Internet of Things trend continues to evolve, there are several questions that the industry must answer, not the least of which is “How will everything talk to everything else?” The AllSeen Alliance is looking to answer that question by developing an open source consortium of partners companies, and...
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SFF (small form factor) rigs can be tricky; depending on the configuration, they can be decent if underpowered machines or performance beasts, and although many system builders are putting out whole lines of the compact computers, you’ve in some cases only been able to configure them so much, often limited by...
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If there was any doubt that Chinese smartphone and tablet maker Xiaomi was the real deal, have a look at the company’s sales numbers for the first half of the year. Hugo Barra, who left Google and his position on the Android team last year to become Xiaomi Global’s Vice President, posted on Google+ that sales have exploded. “In...
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So it’s not just us then. While we seethe over NSA spying allegations here in the U.S., ISPs across the pond who believe they were spied upon by the UK’s intelligence agency GCHQ in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks are taking action. According to BBC News, seven Internet providers, in conjunction...
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Perhaps Facebook is conducting a meta-experiment. The first part of it was the emotional contagion experiment we covered yesterday, wherein Facebook manipulated close to 700,000 users’ emotions via their Newsfeeds without any apparent knowledge, consent, or reasonable ethical oversight. The real experiment...
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How does one even begin a post with the above headline? In what is either a massive troll or an uncomfortable sign of the times, a pair of Brits named Matt Gray and Tom Scott are touting a new social network launching soon that will use only emoji. Dubbed “emoj.li”, the social network contains no words--no...
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The oft-rumored Samsung Galaxy S5 mini is now official. Samsung posted a press release today announcing the smaller version of its flagship Galaxy S5, a 4.5-inch HD Super AMOLED (1280x720) device that’s dwarfed a bit by its 5.1-inch big brother. This handset has the same design as the full-size S5, including the perforated back and soft...
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We first caught wind of Microsoft’s next version of its Windows OS back in December (and learned a bit more in January), and Redmond’s strategy for unifying the Windows experience across various types of devices is becoming more clear. According to a report from ZDNET’s Mary Jo Foley, Windows...
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There are many ways to get beer from a container into your mouth, but the founders of a curious machine called SYNEK believe they’ve developed the best method of all time. SYNEK is a portable (all you need is an outlet) machine that dispenses cold beer on demand, like a tap, but without the need for a keg. The...
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Android TV is coming, and as we mentioned earlier, one of the killer features of the product will be the ability to play Android games on a nice, big TV. It appears that Android TV will ship on certain devices, but apparently there will also be a standalone Android TV box, and there’s a controller that will ship with said box. Google...
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Here’s an interesting psychological factoid: Emotional states can be transferred to other people via text-based messages on social media, such as Facebook. That means that if, for instance, you view a bunch of sad posts, you’re more likely to pen a sad post yourself shortly thereafter even though you...
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Google had a whopper of an I/O conference last week, and if there was one prevailing theme from the whole event, it is this: Android has evolved. Already a mature mobile OS that is one of the two dominant operating systems in a huge and still-growing mobile market, Android is officially not just for phones and...
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Google’s Android Wear is now a Real Thing, and there’s no doubt that a slew of manufacturers will be jumping on the bandwagon. (That is to say, more of them will.) You can count ASUS in that number, as the manufacturer is reportedly going to release an Android Wear-based smartwatch in September. According...
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AT&T and DirecTV are trying to convince lawmakers that a proposed $48.5 billion merger between the two companies--that’s forty-eight and a half billion dollars--and so far the best argument they have going in their favor is the promise of lower costs when comes to pricey negotiations for rights to video...
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While Tesla is making waves with its all-electric fleet of cars, Toyota is exploring a non-fossil fuel alternative vehicle as well. The company announced that it will release a hydrogen fuel cell sedan next year, coming to Japan by April and in the U.S. and Europe sometime next summer. Why hydrogen? “Hydrogen is a particularly promising...
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Google may be whiffing badly in terms of marketing for Google Glass, but at least there are plenty of solid updates coming out, both in terms of the actual hardware and available apps. Google noted in a Google+ post that it’s already improved battery life by 20% and increased voice search speed by 10% along with...
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Google is undeterred; after brilliantly failing to wedge itself into our living rooms with Google TV (though it’s made modest inroads with the Chromecast dongle), the company is rumored to be mounting another effort by partnering with other companies to put out set-top boxes loaded with Android. According to...
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The one-upmanship between mobile providers continues. Just days after T-Mobile announced its “T-Mobile Test Drive” program that lets you try out an iPhone 5s and the associated 4G LTE network free for seven days, Sprint announced a 30-day risk-free trial. You can try out Sprint’s service for a month...
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Typically with every iPhone release, the rumors trickle in months ahead of time, and the release of the iPhone 6 has been no different. We’ve heard that the iPhone 6 will come in two sizes, 4.7- and 5.5 inches, we know that it will have some health-related features thanks to iOS 8, and we’ve seen leaked photos or the new handsets....
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