Technology

The next generation of WiFi will be available by spring, 2024. WiFi 7 should be up to four times faster than the previous generation. The theoretical maximum speed of 46 Gbps (gigabit) is not something anyone is likely to see in their home setup. ... However, it could make it more likely that users will be able to take full advantage of even the fastest home broadband connections. For those unaware, one gigabit is equal to 125 megabytes. Therefore, 46 gigabits is 5750 megabytes. Most standard hard drives today transfer speeds of around 100+ megabytes per second (not includes NVMe or SSD). For ... (view more)

DNA and ancestry site 23andMe has admitted nearly 7 million customers are affected by a data breach. Both the breach itself and the way the site organizes its data contributed to what could be a legal disaster for the company. 23andMe is named after ... the number of segments of DNA that people share with each parent. The service involves customer submitting a DNA sample to be used either to check for genetic health conditions, get information about ancestry such as ethnic origin, or both. Customers can also agree to be put in touch with other customers when a DNA match suggest a possible family ... (view more)

Video calls could cause more mental fatigue than in-person events according to a recent study. Although the study was on a very small scale, the researchers said the differences were "notable." Austrian academics said they wanted to find out if ... widespread anecdotal reports of "videoconferencing fatigue" were true. They defined the effect as "somatic and cognitive exhaustion that is caused by the intensive and/or inappropriate use of videoconferencing tools." In other words, the exhaustion affected both the mind and the body. The researchers asked 35 students to wear heart monitoring and ... (view more)

A Google-owned map tool will now warn drivers about known accident hotspots. But the information might not be all that useful for now. The new feature is in Waze, a GPS navigation tool that began in 2006, with Google buying it out in 2013. It's ... original selling point was that it combined data from multiple users to spot where they were driving slower than expected, indicating congestion. It then adjusted its recommendations for the quickest routes. Although Google owns Waze, it still operates as a separate service. That lets Google use it as a smaller scale test ground for features that might ... (view more)

A proposed new smartphone would include two physical switches to control privacy. The Murena 2 would run Android apps, but use its own operating system. The makers have reached a (very low) funding goal on the Kickstarter site with around 450 sales ... at the time of writing. That theoretically means the project can go ahead, though without any legal guarantee it will do so. The main selling point of the phone is a privacy-focused design, which the makers say is to tackle data being collected on Android and iPhones even when the owner isn't actively using the handset. The most eye-catching part ... (view more)

Samsung and Apple are both reportedly working on "smart ring" fitness trackers. They're designed as an alternative to smart watches, though with some inherent limitations. Several companies already sell smart rings to wear on the finger, but none ... are household names. The likes of Apple and Samsung getting into the market could be a breakthrough, particularly for people with the relevant brand mobile phones. The logic behind the devices is that some people want to track fitness measures such as step count and heart activity, but don't want to wear a special watch. For example, they may already ... (view more)

Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, is set to reduce its robotaxi fleet by 50% in San Francisco, according to information from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). ( Source: cnbc.com ) The decision follows a series of mishaps ... involving Cruise's autonomous vehicles in the city. These incidents include instances where the self-driving cars halted in intersections and a collision with a fire truck. The move is a setback for Cruise, as it had recently launched a paid robotaxi service in San Francisco, operating alongside Google parent company Alphabet's Waymo. Driverless ... (view more)

A new form of computer memory has won an award for innovation. UltraRAM combines the performance of ordinary computer memory with the long-term storage of flash. Most memory in a computer is DRAM (dynamic random access memory). This holds data that ... the computer processor is most likely to need to access imminently. It's a little like having paper documents on a desktop rather than in a filing cabinet: the cabinet has much more room, but it takes some time to walk to the cabinet to get the information, versus having it right on the desktop. One of the key drawbacks of DRAM is that it stores ... (view more)

The FTC is asking the public whether facial "age estimation" is a smart way to make sure games companies don't break privacy rules for children. The tool would be used to check the age of adults giving consent, not to check the age of the player. ... The proposal originally caused some major confusion as it comes from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which rates games for age suitability in a similar way to the Motion Picture Association's movie ratings. However, this proposal has nothing to do with checking whether somebody is old enough to play a game. Instead, it's to do with ... (view more)

Two sets of researchers into quantum computing have announced very different sets of results. One claim they've already achieved more powerful performance than a traditional computer, while the others say they've confirmed the potential for ... performing genuinely useful tasks. Quantum computing aims to take advantage of the way particles can exist in more than one state at a time. That compares with traditional computers which store data in bits, each of which is either a 0 or a 1. In principle at least, a quantum computer could be made up of "qbits" and perform calculations dramatically faster ... (view more)