General Tech

It looks like Microsoft's upcoming Surface Book 2 might take a bit longer than expected. We previously heard rumours that Microsoft might be planning to launch its next-generation laptop at its next event in April but reports this week point towards that not being the case, with reliable sources coming forward …

It looks like Ofcom and BT are still slugging out out as this week, the telecoms regulator hit BT with a £42 million fine and ordered the company to set aside £300 million to compensate competing ISPs, which have been held back by slow upgrades and BT/Openreach's failure to meet …

While other TV makers are giving the Curved TV craze a rest, Samsung is doubling down. This year, LG and Sony have already opted to start producing less curved displays but over in South Korea, Samsung is cooking up a batch of 22 new models for 2017. According to a …

It looks like Ofcom has some new ideas in mind for UK-based internet providers as this week, the regulator put forward a new proposal under which ISPs would be required to give customers compensation for loss of connection, slow repairs and missed engineering appointments. The proposal, which is bound to upset …

A few weeks ago, Microsoft services suffered an outage, affecting services like Skype, Outlook, Office 365, Xbox Live and more. This week, those service outages appear to be popping up again, with users across Europe and the US complaining about issues connecting to Microsoft services. These issues first appeared yesterday …

At this point, it seems that software tinkerers will stick an emulator on just about anything. Previously we have seen versions of Windows, Doom and even Minecraft running on smartwatches and now, you can turn the Apple Watch into a Game Boy if you really wanted to. This week, iOS …

Following a slew of rumours published on the web earlier this morning, Intel has confirmed its plans to acquire Mobileye, a company that specialises in self-driving cars and has teamed up with the likes of Tesla and BMW in the past. The Israeli firm will be bought in a deal currently …

Over the years, BT has often come under fire for its operation of Openreach, the backbone of the UK's internet infrastructure. Upgrades to the lines have been slow and other ISPs who rely on OpenReach have also accused BT of providing a poor service. Now, after a lengthy regulatory battle, …

Update: Yesterday, we learned that many users across the world were having issues with Microsoft's account-based services, with customers unable to login to Xbox, Outlook, Office 365 and even Skype. At the time, we didn't have official acknowledgement from Microsoft on the wide-spread issue but today, the company finally got …

Following last week's arrest of acting head and heir to Samsung Lee Jae-yong, the company has finally spoken out on the bribery charges. It turns out Samsung's head was embroiled in a bribery scandal involving politicians over in South Korea, in response, Samsung is now promising greater transparency and oversight with …

Earlier this week, we learned that a huge number of websites had been knocked offline due to an Amazon Web Services outage. Since then, Amazon has been investigating exactly what brought down its widely used platform, finding that a small typo actually caused the downtime. It turns out that some …

It looks like Ofcom still has a score to settle with BT, with the regulator today revealing that it believes more than two million BT landline customers are getting a bad deal on their contracts, proposing that bills be lowered by at least five pounds per month for those affected. …

Back at the start of the year, Bitcoin hit its highest peak since 2013 only to drop back down in value a week later. Now this week, Bitcoin has shot back up once again, with the digital currency almost hitting an all-time high point but coming just three dollars short. …

Tesla has pledged to hit a production target of 5,000 Model 3s every week by the end of 2017 and even plans to increase that to 10,000 a week at some point in 2018. While a massive increase over its traditional production levels, it will be necessary, as Tesla has …

Toymail, the company that makes plushies which feature smartphone connectivity so that kids can stay in touch with their parents without staring at a screen, has now introduced an app store for its fuzzy little smart-toys. The Toymail Cloud store features audio-exclusive apps, which can help kids sleep, or alter …

The robot revolution isn't quite here yet but it looks like Bill Gates is thinking ahead by proposing a ‘robot tax' to offset the job losses that will occur as machines start carrying out more tasks and replacing humans. The idea seems to be, since we tax human workers on their …

Voice commands for televisions are now smarter than ever and hardly expensive, with Amazon debuting the first of its Fire TV sticks to support its Alexa vocal assistive service. Priced at just £40, the sticks are now available to pre-order, with the first ones set to ship out in April …

It looks like Google is going to be doing away with one of the less enjoyable aspects about YouTube- the unskippable 30 second ads. Google announced this week that pre-roll advertisements would be skippable going forward, making it less of a hassle while streaming YouTube to a TV, console or …

There are a lot of problems associated with drone delivery, from safe landings and take offs, to the family dog attacking it. But a new patent filed by Amazon suggests that dropping parcels by parachute could be a way to alleviate most of the issues and maybe even ditch the …

Earlier this morning we learned that Disney-owned YouTube MCN ‘Maker Studios' had dropped PewDiePie, the biggest channel on the platform due to some recent controversy surrounding some of the humor he has presented in recent videos. Since then, YouTube has given a statement of its own, cancelling the second season of …

Over the last six months, there have been plenty of tech companies increasing their pricing here in the UK, ranging from Microsoft and Apple to Dell and One Plus. Last week, Adobe joined the list and this week, Sonos has announced that its speakers will also be getting a UK …

The facility at Samsung SDI which produced some of the batteries for the Note 7 smartphone that had difficulties with surprise combustion, has now itself caught fire. The factory blazed for a few hours, requiring 110 firefighters and 19 fire trucks to put out the flames as they raged at the Chinese …

The European Union is about to make video streaming across borders a lot easier as this week plans were drawn up to enforce new laws that do away with geo-blocking content once and for all. These new laws will affect services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and could come …

Pixelated images, ‘potato' cameras, and pictures deliberately blurred to hide people's faces, could become a thing of the past thanks to Google's latest algorithm development. The company's neural network can now take an image of just eight by eight pixels and use clever guesswork, to work its way back to …

If you bought a PC between 2003 and 2008, then chances are your system contained a DVD drive. Now it looks like you may be able to claim back some money on that ancient purchase as a recent class action lawsuit revealed that drive makers like Sony, NEC, Panasonic and …

It looks like Vizio has some explaining to do as the Federal Trade Commission has found that the US TV seller illegally tracked its customer's viewing habits and then sold that information on all without any form of consent. Vizio is said to have installed software on 11 million of …

Uber has hired on on an ex-NASA engineer who previously developed concepts for personalised air vehicles, which could allow for an airborne taxi system. He will now begin work on Uber's flying car project, called Uber Elevate, which the company outlined in a white paper in October 2016. The idea …

The U.S.' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has created a new carrier-like crane system for catching drones mid-flight. This isn't like the eagles police have been training, but an aircraft carrier-like system of providing a safe ‘landing' point for drones to return to. This could expand the effective range …

Late last year, Netflix finally gave subscribers something they had been wanting for years- the ability to download movies and shows for offline viewing. Unfortunately, it hasn't taken long for patent trolls to start gunning at Netflix over this new feature as this week, ‘Blackbird Technologies' filed a lawsuit against …

Our cousins across the pond celebrated their biggest ‘football' event this weekend and that means that the internet has largely ignored the results and spent a lot of time talking about the entertainment offered elsewhere during the game. The half-time show, for example, featured singer Lady Gaga doing her thing, …