Japanese automaker Nissan and NASA are teaming up to advance the technology behind cars that drive autonomously. Yokohama-based Nissan Motor Co. and NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, announced Thursday a five-year research-and-development partnership for autonomous vehicle systems so they can eventually be applied to commercially sold cars. Nissan is excited about the potential of self-driving cars, which executives say could lead to improved safety, a pillar for future autos along with low emission technology. NASA researchers will be working with Nissan’s research unit in Silicon Valley, they said in a joint statement. Researchers from the two organizations will test a fleet of zero-emission autonomous vehicles that can be used to transport materials, goods, payloads — and people. NASA says the tests will mirror the way the engineers operate rovers in space from a mission control center on Earth. They said that the first vehicle of the fleet is expected begin testing at the facility by the end of 2015. The maker of the Leaf electric car and Infiniti luxury models aims to introduce autonomous driving technology to consumers between 2016 and 2020. Ames developed the Mars rover software and robots onboard the International Space Station. “The partnership brings together the best and brightest of NASA and Nissan and validates our investments in Silicon Valley,” said Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn. This is not the first time Nissan has looked to NASA for help and guidance. In 2005, the company used NASA’s knowledge of what it calls the […]

Who — or what — might have caused North Korea’s Internet outage? The mystery has all the trappings of an international spy thriller, all the more so now that some people claiming links to Anonymous are seeking credit for the disruption. A shadowy hacker clan taking down the IT infrastructure of the world’s most secretive regime? It’s just too good. But although analysts largely believe some hacktivists were involved, it’s unlikely anyone from Anonymous was actually responsible for taking down the Hermit Kingdom’s systems. Here’s why. We know at least a few things about the 9.5-hour outage, even if we can’t pinpoint the culprit. The break in service coincided with a number of denial-of-service attacks recorded by Western network researchers. These attacks are designed to flood a network with bogus traffic so that the target’s systems are forced to shut down. The denial-of-service attacks targeted two servers responsible for routing Internet traffic to North Korean Web sites, along with a number of actual sites belonging to a North Korean university and the government’s official public portal, according to IT analysts at Arbor Networks. The surge in fake traffic also took place at roughly the same time that Twitter accounts claiming to represent Anonymous announced #OpRIPNK, a retribution campaign against North Korea. All these signs point to the work of hacktivists — not the U.S. government, researchers say. “If the government wanted to do something about this, I would suspect they would do something more targeted toward the leadership rather than […]

Sometimes, it is hard to avoid the lazy and very dull periods that you may look for; literally anything to get you busy; something that is fun and enjoyable and at the same time waste most of your idle time. You might be asking yourself what you can do to take up that time when you feel like not sleeping. One way you can “waste time” is going online and either play some hearts with some dummy opponents or chat with a familiar friend on Skype. But for how long will you chat with your friend; Minutes? Hours? This sounds very boring and lacks the fun you might be looking for. On the contrary, you can combine these two features into one thing and do something different from it. While chatting on Skype, you can also play games with your chat mate. You can challenge your online friend to play with you a one-on-one game of chess and for sure, this will spice up things a little bit as opposed to having plain chats or playing with some dummies. There are several games you can enjoy online while chatting with your friends on Skype. You can get these games by visiting the Skype Shop for Apps. Here you’ll find both free and premium games to download. The FireArc Arcade Using this application, you can play classic games with your online friends on Skype. This software application is a freeware. Furthermore, you don’t have to worry about anything to do with […]

Shopping for holiday gifts usually goes something like this: Check to see if the same item is cheaper on Amazon. Buy the better deal. But what if there’s a better deal at another store close by or even online? A new app from Savings.com called PriceJump does just that. It helps shoppers cover all their bases by scanning local stores and 5,000 online retailers in real time to get the best price. After downloading the app (only available on the iPhone for now), users can scan a bar code and instantly find the best price for that item. The result will display the best local and online price and also Amazon’s. Amazon doesn’t always win. This summer, PriceJump launched a website that tracked Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) prices and found that the site offered the best deals 51% of the time. On items that cost more than $100, PriceJump found lower prices than Amazon 70% of the time. But hunting for deals could save people a lot of money, particularly during the holiday season. Savings.com found that many popular holiday gifts wildly fluctuate in price during the last three months of the year. One Disney doll (Elsa, of course), was available on Amazon for $14.99 on Oct. 17 and shot up to $20.39 on Oct. 18. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart (WMT) and Target (TGT) both offered the same doll for $12.79. Savings.com also found that Microsoft’s (MSFT, Tech30) Surface tablet was being simultaneously being offered for $336 from one retailer and $524 from […]

The explosion of an unmanned Antares rocket bound for the International Space Station taught a hard lesson to students across the country whose science experiments were included in the payload: In science and in space, failure sometimes comes with the territory. “I think the lesson is, sometimes in life things don’t go the way you think they’re going to go,” Randy Speck, the superintendent of Madison District Public Schools in Michigan, told NBC News. That’s especially true for a quartet of students in Speck’s district: Four Iraqi refugee girls whose project was one of the 18 student flight experiments aboard the cargo ship attached to Orbital Sciences’ failed Antares rocket meant to carry supplies to the International Space Station. The projects were chosen from among nearly 1,500 proposals submitted by students in school districts in the U.S. and Canada under the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. Speck’s Iraqi student foursome at Wilkinson Middle School designed an experiment that would have tested whether iodine tablets can purify water in space. Instead, they watched in shock as the rocket — and their project that took four months of collaboration done in both Arabic and English — burst into flame. “When the rocket started going up and there was a lot of fire, I was surprised,” said Regina Alsabagh, 14, who watched the launch at her brother’s house. “I was sad and scared if there was a person on the rocket. I didn’t know.” Regina and her three teammates — all of whom fled […]

NEW YORK — With Apple’s release of larger-screen iPhones last month, Samsung’s flagship Galaxy phones no longer have the distinction of being “the next big thing,” as Samsung’s ads like to tout. But there’s still plenty to like in Samsung’s phones, including the new Galaxy Note 4 phone out this week. Sharper resolution, better cameras and battery life give the Note 4 a stronger edge than the phone’s previous incarnation. However, just like the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, the 5.7-inch Note 4 will be too big for a lot of customers, unless you want to watch lots of video but not carry around a large tablet. Many people will be happier holding and carrying the 5.1-inch Galaxy S5 or the 4.7-inch iPhone 6. The Note 4 will cost $300 with a two-year service contract. Contract-free prices range from $700 with Verizon to $826 with AT&T. The Note comes with 32 gigabytes of storage, which is starting to become the standard starting point. THE DISPLAY The Note’s screen resolution is sharper than most other phones, though it doesn’t make a lot of difference when viewing video, as the quality of streaming video is often poorer than what the screen can display. What matters more is Samsung’s use of AMOLED display technology, which produces richer colors than conventional LCD screens. The better resolution does help with smaller text, but with such a large screen, you rarely need to read text that small. THE CAMERA Like the iPhone 6 Plus, the Note has […]