James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Intercepted IoT: The unsecure sex toy that snitches on its users
The security of a sex toy is very serious business. This is the conviction of a New Zealand hacker that goes by the name of Follower. The hacker, speaking at a talk named Breaking the Internet of Vibrating Things at Def Con in Las Vegas earlier this month, is talking about the We-Vibe 4 Plus ...
Google Now wants to get personal, experiments with touching second base
Google’s digital assistant for Android, Google Now, might not have been given a proper human-sounding name — but in terms of intimacy it could soon be graduating to another level. Google Now is already at the very least an adequate app that can pull up information for you on demand, such as flight times, can buy movie tickets and ...
Experience floating in space from your living room with world’s first virtual reality satellite
Imagine drifting through space and not having to leave the cloisters of your familiar armchair. That could soon be a reality following a deal struck up between SpaceVR and NanoRacks LLC – a company that develops products and offers services for the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceVR, whose mission is to bring space tourism to ...
Pokémon Go won the West, but will struggle with world domination
If we look at the stupendous rise of Pokémon Go in the U.S., we might have thought the mobile game would experience a similar meteoric ascent in the rest of the world. Nothing that good could surely not catch on, right? Nonetheless, the numbers right now are telling us Pokémon Go is pretty much a U.S. ...
The scariest thing right now about AI is the slasher movie it’s writing
A naked, bloody body in a bathtub, a large knife and a kid singing a nursery rhyme in creepy cadences not exactly as it should be sung. Sound like a cliché? Of course, and in this particular film for good reason as the script was partly written by a computer … and the computer basically ...
The Microsoft beat-down of Google Chrome continues
Microsoft doesn’t want you to use Google Chrome because apparently it’s bad for your battery, and in turn your well-being; Microsoft wants you to use its own browser, Edge. Edge is good, says Microsoft. Chrome is bad, says Microsoft. Google Chrome is quite notorious for sucking your device battery juice, in spite of Google’s promise ...
Microsoft is finally letting HoloLens loose on the public with a view to the enterprise sector
Let’s face it, if you’ve not been living under a rock for the last year then you’ve probably heard about Microsoft’s augmented reality headset HoloLens. Much of the world might be entranced right now with a little AR game called Pokémon Go, but it was Microsoft’s demos of its own AR reality headset that really blew ...
New York Governor says sex offenders could be luring their prey by playing Pokémon Go
Registered New York sex offenders will not be able to join the madding masses and play the augmented reality game, now a global phenomenon in terms of online gaming, Pokémon Go. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has asked the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to ban sex offenders from playing the game ...
This could catch on: Microsoft sued again for sneaky Windows 10 upgrade tactics
It’s happening again, not once, but twice! Microsoft is being sued for its highly questionable tactics in persuading people to upgrade to Windows 10. This follows a similar case in which a Californian business woman was awarded $10,000 earlier this year after she said her business lost money due to an upgrade to the new OS that she claimed ...
Netflix announces the arrival of the latest season of arguably the best dark-side-of-tech series ever made
Firstly, if you haven’t seen the first two seasons of Black Mirror, you should do that immediately. The previous seasons of the show, dubbed “the Twilight Zone for the digital age”, have garnered widespread acclaim from critics and the public, are available on Netflix. The streaming service just announced the U.S. version of the show will arrive October ...