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News

• Google wants you to design the Internet of Things

  Have an idea for how the much-anticipated Internet of Things should operate? If the idea is good enough, Google may pay you to see it to fruition.

• Startup wants to be the Zipcar for scooters

  A San Francisco startup has solved one of the drawbacks with a lot of car-sharing services -- though you'll have to make do with two wheels instead of four.

• Close shaves between aircraft and drones on the upswing in US

  Near misses between drones and aircraft are on the increase, with pilots of airplanes sometimes having to take evasive action, according to data released by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to some news outlets.

• New cruise ship a floating heaven for tech geeks

  Walking up the gangway to board Royal Caribbean's tech-laden Quantum of the Seas, it was hard not to marvel. Across the harbor was Manhattan, and at 348 meters the new ship is almost as long as the Empire State Building is tall. But it's what the ship contains that made my inner geek salivate.

• US safety board backs FAA on regulation of reckless drone use

  The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has ruled that drones are aircraft for the purpose of the Federal Aviation Administration's prohibition of their careless or reckless use, but skirted other issues on the regulation of drones.

• Researchers push supercomputing's bleeding edge with diverse applications

  While raw supercomputing performance may be not be advancing as quickly as it has in the past, researchers putting the most powerful systems to work continue to discover new ways to make them more powerful and versatile, judging from this year's finalists for the Association for Computing Machinery's Gordon Bell Prize.

• Ballmer says machine learning will be the next era of computer science

  The former CEO of Microsoft said the next era of computer science is going to focus on machine learning.

• Google signs 60-year lease to do research at NASA's Moffett airfield

  Google is paying US$1.16 billion over 60 years to lease from NASA the Moffett Federal Airfield in California.

• Why Amazon Echo is the future of every home

  Amazon surprised everyone Thursday by unceremoniously launching a product called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo">Echo</a>.

• HP's radical new Machine could start computing by 2016

  Hewlett-Packard's efforts to usher in an entirely new computer architecture, one potentially much faster and simpler, may bear fruit by the end of 2016, when the company's lab expects to have the first prototype machine based on its design.

• Google AI project apes memory, programs (sort of) like a human

  The mission of Google's DeepMind Technologies startup is to "solve intelligence." Now, researchers there have developed an artificial intelligence system that can mimic some of the brain's memory skills and even program like a human.

• Earth imaging start-up lost 26 satellites in Antares explosion

  Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based start-up that wants to provide daily images of every spot on earth, lost 26 micro satellites when an Orbital Sciences rocket exploded shortly after lift-off Tuesday.

• Google working on nanoparticles to detect cancer

  Google is developing tiny magnetic particles that could help detect cancer and other health problems by coursing through a patient's bloodstream.

• Sensitive crypto gear could slow recovery of Cygnus spacecraft cargo

  Sensitive technology on board an Antares rocket that was headed for the International Space Station could slow investigation into its explosion shortly after lift-off on Tuesday evening.

• Scientists harness smartphones as cosmic ray detectors

  Your phone can receive messages from around the world. But how about emanations from beyond our solar system?