The High Tech Society’s Tech News Recap

January 19th – 25th 2013

By Trish Rounsaville

This week has seen some very exciting news in the tech world, and with The High  Tech Society.  Here at The High Tech Society we have launched a new blog (Mac911), and in the tech arena we have seen a new space liner concept that could make world travel much faster, cryopreservation, U-verse outage, Atari filled for bankruptcy, and the Elder scrolls Online game in beta. With this article, we are going to give you a quick recap of all the interesting tech news that has occurred during the week of January 19th through 25th.

HTS Mac911 Blog

The High Tech Society has done it again, with a brand new tech area for our readers to enjoy. Earlier this week, we released the Mac911 blog section of the website. This area is dedicated to news, information, how to’s, and reviews of Mac computers and other Apple gadgets. You can even post your Mac or Apple questions there, and one of our writers will give you an answer.

*From the owner of TheHighTechSociety.com: “I made Mac911 for our Mac girl, who just so happens to also be the one that writes this news recap for us each week, Trish Rounsaville. We are all so excited about her new blog. She is so great at answering Mac or Apple questions and if she doesn’t know the answer she finds it because she is an excellent researcher. I will be helping Trish from time to time is she needs it, but if you have Mac questions, you can feel confident in asking Trish!

Space Liner Could Make World Travel Easier

A new concept ship could be shuttling passengers at hypersonic speeds around the world by 2050. The SpaceLiner uses these speeds to work as an on earth shuttle. In theory, it could fly between Europe and Australia in about an hour and a half. The shuttle would launch from the Earth, and then break into space before coming back down to Earth at its destination.
The German Aerospace Center is responsible for this innovative new project which is based on the FAST20XX (Future High-Altitude, High-Speed Transport 20XX) project which was funded by the European Union.

Steve Jobs Threatened Palm with Lawsuit

It has recently been revealed that Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple had threatened to hit Palm with patent litigation if they do not stop poaching employees, according to a recently unsealed court filing. The document is part of a lawsuit between old employees of companies like Google, Apple, and Intel over their no poaching agreements. District Judge Lucy Koh denied parts of a request to keep many of the documents sealed.

According to the unsealed document, both Palm and Apple hired each other’s employees often between 2003 and 2009. Edward Colligan, the CEO of Palm at the time stated that Jobs called him in 2007 proposing an agreement to stop hiring each other’s employees. Colligan also stated that Jobs hinted that if Palm didn’t agree to the agreement, Palm could face patent infringement lawsuits.

Reddit Campaign Funds Cryo-Preserved Student

We have seen cryo-preservation in science fiction movies for many years, but it has always been fiction and many found it hard to believe it could ever really happen. However, today more and more people are electing to be cryo-preserved in the hopes that they will one day be restored to life, or simply because the entire process interests them.

Cryogenics is the process of freezing something in order to preserve it, while (hopefully) preserving important details such as brain patterns and waves, allowing the person to be resuscitated at a later time.
Reditt, has decided to use some if its funds to grant a 23 year old neuroscience students dying wish, and will fund her cryogenic preservation. Kim Suozzi, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2012 and announced her plans of preservation after death. She passed away on January 17th, 2013 and is currently stored at the Alcore Life Extension Foundation in Arizona.

U-verse Outage Hits Thousands

Service was restored to AT&T’s U-verse internet, phone, and TV customers on Thursday after an outage that lasted for days.
A spokeswoman for AT&T said that the outage hit a limited amount of customers in the south, and some had been without service since Monday. AT&T also stated that the outage affected less than 1% of their 7.4 million subscribers. The outage was caused by a software upgrade, and the problem was fixed Thursday morning. The outage did not affect AT&T’s wireless or landline subscribers.

Elder Scrolls Online Beta Open for Signups

If you are a gamer, and a fan of the Elder Scrolls franchise, you may want to sign up for their beta to help test their newest game. You are able to sign up using Bethseda’s Elder Scrolls Online website, but signing up doesn’t guarantee you a spot in the beta. The company has hinted that if you fill out the form, you have a higher chance of being selected for the beta, but, as they will only need a few thousand testers, it is unlikely that everyone will be accepted.However, for avid gamers, and beta testers, the chance of being selected to test a great new game is always worth the effort of filling out a form.

 

Atari Files Bankruptcy

Like other things we grew up with that were once iconic and a part of our everyday life, Atari has seen better days. Like Hostess, Atari is filling for bankruptcy. Will Atari come back like Hostess says that they will by having others make their recipes? It’s too soon to know for now, but with the games that started out the gaming industry that we couldn’t get enough of, like centipede and pong, guesses would be that they will still be in the industry for years to come.

That concludes our tech news update for this week. Please feel free to leave any comments or questions and don’t forget to check out the other areas of our website.

 

Please join us every week for a quick recap of the past week of tech news, delivered by The High Tech Society’s

Trish Rounsaville.

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Check out this weeks Tech News starting here: http://thehightechsociety.com/tech-news/