Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, have garnered many eyeballs in recent years. The drones have steadily gained popularity worldwide with companies such asQualcomm now manufacturing its own flight platform to allow designers and developers to make their own drones. This year, we saw Chinese drone maker Ehang launching what it claimed as the world’s first drone …

The government has struck a deal between BT-owned Openreach and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) which aims to deliver superfast broadband to all newly built homes. BT said more than half of new homes would now be connected free of charge, with the rest co-funded by developers. It follows criticism about a backlog of properties waiting for broadband services. The …

A team of researchers has developed a new type of radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that is virtually impossible to hack, thus preventing your credit card number or key card information from being stolen. According to Chiraag Juvekar, graduate student in electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the chip is designed to prevent so-called side-channel attacks. Side-channel attacks …

Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) software will go head-to-head with the world’s highest ranked Go player Lee Sedol, the firm has said. It comes a week after the search giant announced that AlphaGo had beaten French Go champion Fan Hui. That was seen as a pivotal moment for AI, similar to IBM’s Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess. Jump media …

ZTE Corporation is set to launch a slew of smartphones in India under its own brand in the coming months. ZTE, which also owns the Nubia brand, is already selling smartphones in India but now it plans to re-enter the Indian market with different business strategies using the same tactics that have helped it gain some foothold in the US …

Twitter says it has suspended more than 125,000 accounts since mid-2015 “for threatening or promoting terrorist acts”. In a blog, the US-based firm said the accounts “primarily related to ISIS” (the so-called Islamic State group). “We condemn the use of Twitter to promote terrorism,” it said, adding that it had increased its report reviewing teams to react faster. Twitter has …

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be allowed to go free from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and be awarded compensation for what amounts to a three-and-a-half-year arbitrary detention, a U.N. panel ruled on Friday. Assange, a computer hacker who enraged the United States by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, has been holed up in the embassy …

Virtual reality company Wevr raised $25 million (roughly Rs. 170 crores) from investors including HTCCorp and Samsung Ventures to fund the launch of a new platform for VR creators to distribute content, executives said on Friday. The platform, called Wevr Transport, is available now to a limited number of users in a test phase. It is designed to run on …

Repairing an iPhone is an expensive proposition. Often Apple doesn’t even entertain repairs but instead offers users a new phone for an substantial amount. In many countries, Apple’s products are available though their after sales is not in place, so often users revert to getting their iPhones repaired from third parties. A report by the Guardian , however, claims that …

BlackBerry Ltd is cutting 200 jobs at its hometown headquarters in Ontario and in Florida in order to trim costs, it said on Friday, as the smartphone maker moves to turn around its fortunes and put more emphasis on its enterprise software business. “As BlackBerry continues to execute its turnaround plan, we remain focused on driving efficiencies across our global …