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Showing posts from October, 2018

How the Internet of Things will transform consumerism, enterprises, and governments over the next five years

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The Internet of Things is fueling the data-based economy and bridging the divide between physical and digital worlds. Consumers, companies, and governments will install more than 40 billion IoT devices worldwide through 2023. The next five years will mark a pivotal transformation in how companies and jurisdictions operate, and how consumers live. Being successful in the digital age doesn’t just require knowing the latest buzzwords; it means identifying the transformational trends – and where they’re heading – before they ever heat up. Take the Internet of Things (IoT), for example, which now receives not only daily tech news coverage with each new device launch, but also hefty investments from global organizations ushering in worldwide adoption. By 2023, consumers, companies, and governments will install more than 40 billion IoT devices globally. And it’s not just the ones you hear about all the time, like smart speakers and connected cars. To successfully navigate this changin

Australia's top spy says Chinese tech is too good to be allowed near Canberra's key infrastructure and that's a hard truth China's state media will find harder to spin

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Australia's chief spy says Chinese telecoms are a threat to critical infrastructure and that's why they were banned from Canberra's growing 5G network. That news may not come as a surprise to China, but the Ministry of Commerce and the Global Times expressed some shock, confusion, and hurt this week. The problem China faces is this: it has built an incredibly elaborate and successful technocracy with state-embedded digital brands like WeChat, but uses them to help monitor its own population. Those efforts are likely to make it difficult for China to gain the trust of other countries. The top spy in Australia has explained why Huawei and ZTE have been barred from the country's 5G network and China is unimpressed. Mike Burgess, the director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate, said in Canberra on Monday that the ban on Chinese telecom firms like Huawei Technologies and ZTE was in Australia's national interest and would protect the country's cri

Helium is apparently kryptonite for the iPhone

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The series of events we're about to recount for you that happened recently at a Chicago-area hospital might sound like a gas, but they most definitely weren't for the iPhone and Apple Watch owners whose devices suddenly -- and seemingly inexplicably -- freaked out and died. We've since come to find out that helium is the equivalent of kryptonite for iPhones, which can become temporarily bricked in its presence. Who knew? Allow us to explain. Continue reading... BGR Top Deals: This $30 Alexa ready LED light strip is a great alternative to the $90 Philip Hue version Bose’s newest earbuds claim to help you sleep better – and people say they actually work Trending Right Now: Samsung and Huawei both just lost the race to unveil the first phone with a foldable screen Walmart’s early Black Friday deals are now live New details leak about the first ‘Avengers 4’ trailer Helium is apparently kryptonite for the iPhone originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 31 Oct 2018

You can now bid on Stephen Hawking’s old wheelchair, if that’s your thing

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Stephen Hawking, world-famous physicist, writer, and thinker, passed away back in March (on Pi day, no less), but his body of work will live on for a long, long time. As far as scientists go, he was one of the most well-known, so it's probably no surprise that some of his personal effects have found their way to the auction block. In a Christie's auction that opened today , a number of the late scientist's possessions are available to the highest bidder. There are a number of interesting items, including Hawking's personal script for the episode of The Simpsons in which he was featured, as well as some awards he won and a bomber jacket that he owned. There's also a wheelchair. Continue reading... BGR Top Deals: This $30 Alexa ready LED light strip is a great alternative to the $90 Philip Hue version Bose’s newest earbuds claim to help you sleep better – and people say they actually work Trending Right Now: Samsung and Huawei both just lost the race to un

Model S owner sues Tesla after crashing into a stationary car while on Autopilot

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Earlier this month, a Tesla owner in Florida had the Autopilot feature engaged when his Model S rammed into a stationary vehicle that was left abandoned on a highway. The Model S owner -- one Shawn Hudson -- is now suing Tesla over claims that the company's Autopilot feature is not nearly as reliable as Tesla leads consumers to believe. Originally brought to light by the Orlando Sentinel , Hudson describes how he was going about 80 MPH before crashing into an empty and disabled car in a passing lane. Continue reading... BGR Top Deals: This $30 Alexa ready LED light strip is a great alternative to the $90 Philip Hue version Bose’s newest earbuds claim to help you sleep better – and people say they actually work Trending Right Now: Samsung and Huawei both just lost the race to unveil the first phone with a foldable screen Walmart’s early Black Friday deals are now live New details leak about the first ‘Avengers 4’ trailer Model S owner sues Tesla after crashing into a

These 3 charts show why there's more good days ahead for e-commerce — and more bad times for traditional retailers (AMZN)

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Traditional retailers have been struggling, in part due to competition from online rivals. That competition is getting tougher; online stores are continuing to gain share against their brick-and-mortar counterparts, Morgan Stanley details in a new report. Worse, the pace of online retail's share gains is increasing, according to the report. Traditional retailers have already lost billions of dollars worth of sales to online rivals such as Amazon. Unfortunately for them, things may soon get worse. Online stores are continuing to steal sales from their brick-and-mortar counterparts. The bad news for traditional retailers, is that e-tailers' market share gains are increasing, according to a new report from Morgan Stanley. "We expect e-commerce to continue to accelerate," Morgan Stanley analysts Kimberly Greenberger, Brian Nowak, Simeon Gutman, Vincent Sinisi, and Lauren Cassel said in the report. American consumers are likely to spend about $2.6 trillion on wha

Samsung may be working on a hybrid smartwatch, according to this patent

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Samsung is one of a very small number of number of hardware makers, along with the likes of Apple and a few others, that's still bullish about the smartwatch market. 9to5Google has gone so far as to argue that Samsung's Galaxy Watch is the king of the Android smartwatch hill -- though Samsung, it seems, might be planning to try something new with a future smartwatch release. A just-published patent seems to indicate Samsung is looking into the idea of a smartwatch that also has a separate analog mode. Per Phone Arena , this would be a bit of a departure from the more traditional idea of the digital smartwatch segment that Samsung first entered five years ago. Continue reading... BGR Top Deals: This $30 Alexa ready LED light strip is a great alternative to the $90 Philip Hue version Today’s best deals: First Fire TV Stick 4K sale, Tide detergent, 100MB/s microSD cards, bed sheets, more Trending Right Now: Samsung and Huawei both just lost the race to unveil the first

Apple confirms recent iPhone models might see CPU throttling, but you probably won’t notice

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Late last year, users discovered that an iOS update resulted in their old iPhones getting slower than before. It turned out it was an intentional iOS feature, as Apple tried to prevent older iPhones from unexpectedly shutting down under heavy load. Throttling the speed of the processor, it turned out, would prevent shutdowns. In the months that followed that discovery, Apple apologized to users, implemented a cheaper battery replacement program for the iPhone, and fought allegations that such features are part of a planned obsolescence strategy to convince buyers to upgrade to newer iPhones. Apple even had to address questions from Congress on the matter, explaining how its CPU throttling works. In one letter to lawmakers, Apple explicitly noted that newer devices like the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus won’t be affected by slowdowns in the future. But it turns out that’s not quite so. Continue reading... BGR Top Deals: This $30 Alexa ready LED light strip is a great alt

The investor behind Thread and Chargemaster is looking to raise $100 million

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Startup backer Beringea plans to raise up to £80 million ($100 million) in new funding. Beringea is a long-established investment company in the UK and the US, and has backed startups including men's fashion service Thread and electric car charging company Chargemaster. Beringea, which has backed men's clothing startup Thread and electric car charging firm Chargemaster, plans to raise up to £80 million ($100 million) in new capital by issuing new shares. The investment firm runs two publicly listed funds in the UK, known as venture capital trusts (VCTs), which invest in fast-growing startups and which any investor can put money into. This is slightly different to traditional venture capital funds, which are closed to direct public investment and have limited lifecycles. The firm plans to raise the funding from December for its two VCTs listed on the London Stock Exchange, adding to its current $700 million (£549 million) under management across the US and the UK. Bering

Investors are worried about Amazon — these 4 charts show why its growth is slowing (AMZN)

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Investors are concerned about Amazon's growth rates. Sales growth in the company's core e-commerce has slowed and the company warned that it could post disappointing revenue results for the holiday quarter. Amazon is running into the "laws of large numbers," Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak said in a report Wednesday. The company is so dominant in so many areas that it's finding less and less room to grow, he said. Amazon's  extra-large size may finally be catching up with it. The tech giant has seen slowing revenue growth in its core online retail business in recent quarters. Last week, it reported disappointing overall sales for the third quarter and warned that its fourth-quarter results might fall far shy of Wall Street's expectations. The problem the company is running into is that it already dominates the e-commerce market, particularly in the US, and there isn't a lot of room left to grow, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak said in