Driving long distances (or using New York City’s subway system) used to be a much more complicated affair, generally requiring maps, a sense of direction, some luck and the occasional stop to ask questions of strangers. Turn-by-turn navigation apps have changed all that: You may still take a wrong turn along the way, but the…
Apple has a new high-flying project in the works. According to Bloomberg, Apple is getting involved in launching satellites that would beam down broadband Internet access. Recently, Apple poached two Google satellite executives to form a new hardware team within the company. John Fenwick led Google’s spacecraft operations and Michael Trela was head of satellite…
WebAssembly, the portable binary format for improving web application performance, is being tweaked by Microsoft for its Edge browser. With the browser featured in the recent Windows 10 Creators Update, the Chakra JavaScript engine defers parsing WebAssembly functions until called; other engines parse functions at start time. [ Use JavaScript in your dev shop? InfoWorld…
A Microsoft document detailing the minimum hardware specs for Microsoft Windows 10 Cloud-powered laptops seems to be the best evidence yet that Microsoft plans to launch a Chromebook competitor on May 2. Windows Central obtained a “recommended minimum spec” document, presumably handed out to Microsoft’s partners. The document outlines what Microsoft hopes to achieve with…
Many of the most popular smartwatches have been languishing without the Android Wear 2.0 update. Google has finally chimed in with details about the timing of when the Huawei Watch, Moto 360 second-generation, and others may get their turn. Each week, we round up all the major software updates to hit the Android ecosystem, including…
The latest version of Google Chrome, released earlier this week, restricts how domain names that use non-Latin characters are displayed in the browser. This change is in response to a recently disclosed technique that could allow attackers to create highly credible phishing websites. The ability to register domain names made up of characters like those…
A funny thing happened on the way to the hybrid cloud: Building the infrastructure was a pain in the neck. That’s what enterprise IT people in the Open Networking User Group have discovered Last year, public cloud providers persuaded C-level executives to move significant corporate workloads to the cloud, but the tools weren’t there to…
Researchers have built a primitive microprocessor out of a two-dimensional material similar to graphene, the flexible conductive wonder material that some believe will revolutionize the design and manufacture of batteries, sensors and chips. With only 115 transistors, their processor isn’t going to top any benchmark rankings, but it’s “a first step towards the development of…
Apple’s Mac Pro has been ignored for so long that even Windows 10 mobile workstations are catching up on features and performance. Take HP’s latest Zbook laptop workstations , which were announced on Friday. These heavy built laptops — which is why they are called mobile workstations — have comparable memory and storage capacity technology to…
The Node.js Foundation was formed in 2015 to serve as a steward over the Node.js sever-side JavaScript platform, providing a new governance model and taking over leadership from Joyent. Now, the foundation has hired its first executive director, Mark Hinkle, who had been vice president of marketing at the Linux Foundation. Hinkle will work to…