Techno World

Facebook has responded to a former executive who said the social network, and other services like it, was "ripping society apart". Chamath Palihapitiya  made the comments last month  but were circulated widely online on Monday. Facebook took the unusual step of issuing a statement to defend itself. A spokesperson said Mr Palihapitiya had not worked at Facebook for more than six years. "When Chamath was at Facebook we were focused on building new social media experiences and growing Facebook around the world. Facebook was a very different company back then and as we have grown we have realised how our responsibilities have grown too." 'You are being programmed' Facebook: Now for children too Jeremy Hunt hits out at Messenger for Kids Mr Palihapitiya, who was Facebook's vice-president for user growth, is now a prominent venture capitalist. He is the latest member of an influential chorus worried about the true impact of the "like...

Nintendo is to release some of its popular games on a rival manufacturer's console for the first time in decades. Some of the company's older games from the discontinued Wii console will appear on the Nvidia Shield set-top box in China.   Historically, Nintendo has rarely licensed its original games and characters to rival console-makers. The Japanese gaming giant does not currently sell its latest console, Nintendo Switch, in China. The video games market in China was valued at $24bn (£18bn) in 2016.  However, most people play on PCs or mobile devices, despite China relaxing its rules on the sale of foreign consoles in 2014. Among the Nintendo games being made available on the Nvidia Shield are The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, first released in 2006, and New Super Mario Bros Wii, from 2009. Nintendo has not previously released the games for consoles other than its own devices. However, it has experimented with mobile games such as Super Mario Run...

A method for scrambling data to protect it from the super powerful computers of the future has received a speed boost from a team of researchers from Duke and Ohio State universities and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The method uses quantum key distribution to guard data from prying eyes, wrote Nurul T. Islam, Charles Ci Wen Lim, Clinton Cahall, Jungsang Kim and Daniel J. Gauthier in an article published in ScienceAdvances . The problem in the past with the technology is it's slow, they explained. Transfer speeds typically are measured in kilobits per second. However, the researchers found a way to increase key transmission rates between five and 10 times, bringing them into the megabit per second range. Making quantum key distribution practical is viewed as a way to counter the future threat to encrypted data. "One powerful aspect of quantum encryption is that it is secure against quantum computers," said Kevin Curran, a senior member of the IEEE an...

The world's largest lithium ion battery has begun dispensing power into an electricity grid in South Australia. The 100-megawatt battery, built by Tesla, was officially activated on Friday. It had in fact provided some power since Thursday due to demand caused by local hot weather. South Australia has been crippled by electricity problems in recent times. Tesla boss Elon Musk famously vowed to build the battery within 100 days - a promise that was fulfilled. "This is history in the making," South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said on Friday. The battery would prevent a repeat of a notorious incident last year where the entire state lost power, Mr Weatherill said. Mr Musk has described it as three times more powerful than the world's next biggest battery From Twitter bet to reality The idea began when Mr Musk was asked on Twitter if he was serious about helping to resolve South Australia's electricity woes. Mr Musk said he was - adding...