IEEE sets new Ethernet standard that brings 5X the speed without disruptive cable changes As expected the IEEE has ratified a new Ethernet specification – IEEE P802.3bz - that defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, boosting the current top speed of traditional Ethernet five-times without requiring the tearing out of current cabling. The Ethernet Alliance wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps... Network World

Stewardship of IANA functions transitions to global internet community as contract withith U.S. government ends Today, 1 October 2016, the contract between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), to perform the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, has officially expired. This historic moment marks the transition of the coordination and management of the Internet's unique identifiers to the private-sector, a process that has been committed to and underway since 1998. ICANN

The cobalt pipeline The sun was rising over one of the richest mineral deposits on Earth, in one of the poorest countries, as Sidiki Mayamba got ready for work. Mayamba is a cobalt miner. And the red-dirt savanna stretching outside his door contains such an astonishing wealth of cobalt and other minerals that a geologist once described it as a "scandale geologique." This remote landscape in southern Africa lies at the heart of the world's mad scramble for cheap cobalt, a mineral essential to the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries... The Washington Post

What HP must do to make amends for its self-destructing printers I write to you today on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to defending technological freedom, human rights and privacy in courtrooms, legislatures, and online. Like many others, we are alarmed by reports that HP has activated a dormant feature in Officejet Pro printers (and possibly other models), so that the printers now automatically verify whether its ink cartridges are official HP ink and not competitors' products or even refilled HP cartridges. EFF

Also read on TechSpot: HP 'apologizes' for blocking third-party ink cartridges in its printers, fix on the way

Amazon's newest ambition: Competing directly with UPS and FedEx Just before the morning rush hour on a recent Thursday, a brigade of vans rolled up to a low-slung warehouse near Los Angeles International Airport. Workers in bright green vests crammed some 150 Amazon.com packages into each truck before the fleet headed through the urban sprawl to customers' doorsteps. This logistical dance wasn't performed by United Parcel Service Inc., FedEx Corp. or the U.S. Postal Service, all longtime carriers for the online retailer. The WSJ

Patent troll tales #01: Lee Cheng, Newegg This is the first one of a series of stories on the most outrageous patent troll abuse situations we are familiar with. Today we talk to Lee Cheng, the most prolific patent troll killer. He runs corporate development at Newegg where he also serves as Chief Legal Officer. We are extremely lucky of having him onboard as an Advisor to Unpatent, his experience and insights are truly invaluable. Unpatent

Apple loses patent retrial to VirnetX, owes $302.4 million A federal jury in Texas on Friday night ordered Apple Inc to pay more than $302 million in damages for using VirnetX Holding Corp's patented internet security technology without permission in features including its FaceTime video conferencing application. Reuters

The city VR experience Amber Garage is a Silicon Valley based creative art & tech studio. We love photography, nature, new media art, and robotics. As artists, we're creating our own art language to bridge the gap between virtual world and reality. As photographers, we're exploring a solution to put our camera anytime anywhere on the planet to capture the beauty of our beloved world. As roboticist, we're thinking how robotics technology can revolutionize the process of creative works. Amber Garage

Oculus Pi [WayneKeenan] wrote a proof-of-concept virtual reality system that used a Raspberry Pi and an Oculus Rift. It was about a thousand lines of Python and with a battery pack it was even portable. The problem was that the Pi was struggling to create the 3D views. [Wayne] recently revisited the demo and found that just about everything has gotten better: the Pi 3 is faster, and the Python libraries have become better. He spent some time building a library – VR Zero – and then recreated the original demo in 80 more lines of Python. Hackaday

Unity at 10: For better – or worse – game development has never been easier These days, one tool has essentially unlocked the world of game development for the masses. Since it was introduced in 2005, Unity has tried to make creating video games possible for everyone regardless of technical know-how or budget. Upon hitting a stable release, Unity took home an award at Apple's 2006 Worldwide Developer's Conference after being showcased as the first fully powered game engine... Ars Technica

Survey says: Your bills are going up, but 82% of households still pay for cable It may seem like the golden age of cable and the age of internet TV is upon us, but when you get right down to it, a whole lot of households still subscribe to monthly pay-TV. That said, the latest edition of an annual survey does indeed find that both cable prices and cord-cutting are on the rise – a completely coincidental pair of facts, we're sure. Consumerist

A neural network for machine translation, at production scale Ten years ago, we announced the launch of Google Translate, together with the use of Phrase-Based Machine Translation as the key algorithm behind this service. Since then, rapid advances in machine intelligence have improved our speech recognition and image recognition capabilities, but improving machine translation remains a challenging goal. Google

The 24-year feud that has dogged Star Citizen Chris Roberts is in trouble. It's just before Christmas 2015, and the legendary designer of early-'90s classic Wing Commander is live on the air, ready to give a demonstration of his new space sim: Star Citizen. Even though a firm release date seems as distant as another galaxy, the game itself is already more famous than its creator, widely hailed as the most successful crowdfunding project ever. Kotaku

Volvo plans to offer fully self-driving car to luxury buyers The self-driving car that Volvo Car Group plans to offer in five years will be sold to individual buyers, with the autopilot features adding about $10,000 to the vehicle's cost, the company's top executive said. Bloomberg