Daily News Courier

Earthquake rattles Philippines

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck Saturday near the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Adventures in Infinite File Storage

Bitcasa’s limitless storage service is a cool idea, but it needs work.

Imagine never having to worry about running out of space on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone for pictures, videos, or documents; or even having to remember where you saved a file. It’s a wonderful idea and we’re getting closer, but we aren’t there just yet.

Reminder: HTC wants to show us something tomorrow, and we’ll be there blogging it live

HTC keeps trying to tease everybody about what may be in store for tomorrow's event, and you can find out just as soon as they tell the world by tuning in to the live blog tomorrow. We'll be on-site in both New York and London, giving you the play-by-play as it happens.

While the details are all still shrouded in rumor, we expect to see HTC latest Android phone in all it's glory. Whether it be called the M7 or the HTC One, we're all sure to find plenty to love or hate about the device before we ever get our hands on it. 

So be there at 10 AM Eastern tomorrow, and let's talk a little bit about phones.

Suicide bomber kills dozens

Pakistani police have revised the cause of a blast that killed 83 people on Saturday, saying a suicide bomber was behind the attack that pulverized a busy marketplace.

The Brain is Not Computable

A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen. Instead, humans will assimilate machines.

Miguel Nicolelis, a top neuroscientist at Duke University, says computers will never replicate the human brain and that technological Singularity is “a bunch of hot air.”

Monday Brief: More webOS drama, a BlackBerry Z10 Oreo, the Nokia Lumia 620 review, and more!

Graphene And The EmergingTechnology of Neural Prostheses

Neural implants are set to be revolutionised by a new type of graphene transistor with a liquid gate, say bio-engineers

Syrian official: ‘We have already won’

As both sides in Syria’s bloody civil war claimed advances, one high-ranking member of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime expressed confidence in ultimate victory.

Gundotra: ‘Committed to making Nexus phones insanely great cameras’

'Just you wait and see,' senior VP of engineering replies on Google+

Google's Senior VP of Engineering at Google, Vic Gundotra, took to Google+ this morning in a photography-themed post to reply to comments about the quality of Nexus phone cameras. The Nexus 4 is a pretty notable improvement in camera quality over what we saw on the Galaxy Nexus, but it's no secret that Nexus devices have lacked in the photography department. As you can see below, in response to a comment about just carrying a future Nexus device as his only camera Vic had this to say:

It's clear with Google's improvements to the stock Android camera UI since Ice Cream Sandwich — and the inclusion of Photo Sphere with Jelly Bean — that a lot of focus is being put on the camera of Nexus devices, but it takes more than just a good UI to take good pictures. It really takes the combination of a quality camera sensor and great image processing software on the back end to have the end result of great pictures. While many Android manufacturers will pay to license image processing software from camera companies — or in some cases borrow from the camera divisions of their own companies — Google has historically kept things open-source in the camera department, which conflicts with paying for closed-source camera software.

Now no one likes to just "wait and see," but it's our only option at this point. It's comments like this from high-ranking Googlers that make us hopeful for the future of Nexus camera capabilities though.

Source: Vic Gundotra (Google+); Thanks, Grant!

Ambri’s Better Grid Battery

A tiny startup called Ambri wants to transform our energy system with massive liquid-metal batteries.

Standing next to the Ping-Pong table in the offices of the battery startup Ambri, chief technology officer David Bradwell needs both hands to pick up what he hopes will be a building block for a new type of electricity grid. Made of thick steel, it’s a container shaped like a large round cake pan, 16 inches in diameter. Inside it are two metal pucks and some salt powder; a round plate has been welded to the top to make a 100-pound battery cell.