Bytes: What’s new in tech
An autonomous drone carrying a defibrillator saved a man’s life in Sweden last month, said Jasmine Hicks in TheVerge.com. “The 71-yearold man experienced a cardiac arrest while shoveling snow in December.” A bystander attempted CPR and told another bystander to call the Swedish emergency number for help. Within minutes, a drone carrying an automated external defibrillator landed, “kick-starting the lifesaving process before the ambulance arrived.”The maker is Everdrone, a Swedish firm that “allows emergency dispatchers to send a drone carrying the device to a caller’s home.” In a pilot experiment last year, Everdrone received 14 cardiac arrest alerts, sending out drones 12 times and successfully delivering the machines 11 times.
Sound for your ears alone
Mind-controlled earbuds and invisible headphones were among the sci-fi highlights at this year’s CES, the giant annual electronics show in Last Vegas, said Shara Tibken and Dalvin Brown in The Wall Street Journal. The annual tech event is always an opportunity to view some “flat-out bonkers” tech projects. This year, French startup Wisear unveiled earbuds that are programmed by a neural interface that “can let you do things like play music or answer a call without having to physically move at all.” Tiny electrodes in the buds record your brain and facial activity, and AI “transforms the signals into controls.” But if you’re sick of wearing anything in your ears at all, Noveto has a solution. Its product looks like a soundbar sitting on your desktop, but it sends audio in a focused beam directed at your ears that nobody around you can hear.
BlackBerry finally hits its last stop
It’s the end of the death throes for BlackBerry, said Cheryl Teh in Business Insider. On Jan. 4, the company officially decommissioned the use of its software, “meaning classic BlackBerry devices running on the company’s operating system will no longer work.” New devices running on Android software will continue to work—for now. Once a de rigueur accessory for business executives and Washington power brokers—former President Barack Obama “famously fought to hold on to a strippeddown version of his BlackBerry in 2008”—the company is no longer even in the smartphone business. It has not launched a new version of its OS since 2013, stopped manufacturing its own smartphones in 2016, and recently recast itself as a cybersecurity firm.
Air safety spat slows 5G rollout
Verizon and AT&T agreed to delay the rollout of their 5G networks by two weeks to review concerns raised by aviation safety experts, said David Shepardson in Reuters. Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration “warned that interference from the planned use of 5G wireless posed an air safety risk and could result in flight diversions,” citing evidence that 5G could counteract “sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters.” The telecom companies initially balked at a request from airlines and air regulators to delay a rollout of 5G services across a band of spectrum the carriers bought last year in an $80 billion government auction, but Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg brokered a pause to “look at ways of minimizing the potential impact.”