Technology

Devpost, which has just changed its name from ChallengePost, has identified the main technologies used in student hackathons. Some are more surprising than others. The top products include HTML/CSS and JavaScript, jQuery, Node.js, MongoDB, Venmo and PayPal, Google Maps, Android Studio, Microsoft Azure and Sublime Text.

Facebook beat Twitter as the top Social API, while Spotify came ahead of Echo Nest as the main Music API. Unity was the top Game Engine.

Back in March, we introduced a chip upstart taking aim at the efficiency of future exascale systems called Rex Computing. The young company is now armed with $1.25 million to hire another few engineers to move the Neo chips from concept to production—and also has a sizable DARPA contract to match the early interest it found with select national labs in the U.S..

The U.S. Defense Department recently began testing a laser that might someday be affixed to drones to knock incoming missiles out of the sky.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, nominated by the Obama administration to replace Army Gen. Martin Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he agrees with Navy Adm. William Gortney, head of U.S. Northern Command, on the need for the military to develop ways to thwart ballistic missiles earlier in flight, possibly with lasers.

It's hard not to view Google as an 800-pound gorilla, beating competitors at every turn thanks to its vast mountains of cash and engineering talent. But there's one field where the Mountain View-based search giant has frequently stumbled: repeated attempts to build a foothold in the biomedical realm have either failed or not borne fruit yet. Now it's trying again.

Facebook knows who you are even if you're not showing your face. Using artificial intelligence (just to make things extra dystopian), Facebook can identify and tag you by things like the way you stand, the type of clothing you wear, and your hair.

Facebook isn't putting the algorithm into practice yet, but its mere existence is worrisome to many, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the various people who have filed lawsuits over the years.

Toshiba has developed a new method of utilizing random telegraph noise (RTN) originating from insulating material faults to implement a physical unclonable function (PUF), an important security technology.

The method, which will contribute to the creation of safe and secure cloud services for smart communities, was announced at the VLSI Technology Symposium, a conference on semiconductor devices that was held on June 16 in Kyoto, Japan.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk introduced a new family of batteries designed to stretch the solar-power revolution into its next phase. There's just one problem: Tesla's new battery doesn't work well with rooftop solar—at least not yet. Even Solar City, the supplier led by Musk, isn't ready to offer Tesla's battery for daily use.

A centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones, and other devices has been developed by researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

"The future of integrated electronics is the future of electronics itself."

Fifty years after Gordon Moore first described the trend that has driven technology, Intel says scaling is same as it ever was. But other chipmakers, who are struggling to realize the same benefits from good old-fashioned scaling, are increasingly looking for less-expensive alternatives.