Oculus Rift sells out in 14 minutes after $599 price announced

Pre-orders for Facebook-owned virtual reality headset have opened, though it's already sold out

Photo: © 2015 Bloomberg Finance LP

Oculus Rift will finally go on sale for $599 (£499), and is expected to ship from March, the company confirmed.

Earlier this week the company confirmed it would start taking pre-orders for the virtual reality headset from Wednesday, and that orders would ship with with Lucky's Tale game and CCP's EVE: Valkyrie. Those who backed the headset in its early developmental years will receive a free headset, it added.

The headsets sold out just 14 minutes after being made available.

However, initial orders will not come with the system's Touch controllers after the company decided to redesign them, containing an Xbox One wireless controller instead. the new models will become available in the second half of the year, Oculus said in a blog post.

A worldwide VPN just became the best Netflix accessory ever

Travel the world from your very own couch

Netflix just announced that it's launching in 130 countries around the world today — adding countries like India, Russia, and South Korea to the service footprint. That's kind of amazing; Netflix CEO Reed Hastings straight up called it the launch of "a new global internet TV network."
And that's true, from a certain perspective: Netflix is making more and more original content than ever, so shows like Jessica Jones and Narcos will indeed be available around the world simultaneously, because Netflix owns all the rights. That's unprecedented, and pretty cool.

There's a ton of stuff on Netflix that's only licensed in various regions
But there's also a ton of stuff on Netflix that's only licensed in various regions: Better Call Saul is available in the UK, but not in the US, for example. So now that Netflix is everywhere, it's even more tempting to mask your location and watch things that might not otherwise be in your market — both for Hollywood movies not available in the States and local content from other countries that might not ever show up at home.
I personally use a VPN service called TunnelBear and it works great, but simpler services that just mask your location and don't affect data speeds are simple to try out as well — most offer free trials. Thomas Ricker wrote about services like  Unblockus, Getflix, and Media Hint last year — they get around geoblocking by tricking websites and internet services into thinking you’re still at home, or wherever you want to pretend is home. You just pick a country and then point your laptops, tablets, and smartphones to the chosen service’s DNS servers to start watching localized Netflix content.
Of course, it's possible Netflix could get wise to this trick and shut it down in some way, but so far the company has been pretty tolerant of people doing things like sharing passwords and masking their locations. Even still, if you're interested in exploring the international side of Netflix, the window might never be as open as it is right now.

HACKTIVISM Seven years of malware linked to Russian state-backed cyber espionage

For the past seven years, a cyber-espionage group operating out of Russia—and apparently at the behest of the Russian government—has conducted a series of malware campaigns targeting governments, political think tanks, and other organizations. In a report issued today, researchers at F-Secure provided an in-depth look at an organization labelled by them as “the Dukes,” which has been active since at least 2008 and has evolved into a methodical developer of “zero-day” attacks, pulling together their own research with the published work of other security firms to provide a more detailed picture of the people behind a long-running family of malware.

Audi’s e-tron quattro electric SUV: 310 mile range, arrives in 2018

Audi

The Audi e-tron quattro concept. A production version is due in 2018.

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Over in Europe, the annual Frankfurt International Motor Show is taking place, and several of the brands that live under the Volkswagen AG umbrella have used the show to reveal electric vehicle (EV) concept cars that trail future production models. One of these is the Audi e-tron quattro, a 310-mile (500km) SUV that will reach the showroom by 2018.

The Audi e-tron quattro has a pair of electric motors driving the rear wheels and another motor driving the front wheels. These give the car a total of 429hp (320kW), with an extra 67hp/50kW available as a boost function for short periods. Coupled with an extremely low drag coefficient of just 0.25, it should be good for 0-62 mph (0-100kp/h) in 4.5 seconds, making it one quick SUV.

Japan to promote high tech strategies for future growth

TOKYO —

The government launched a new panel on Thursday to discuss strategies for utilizing leading technologies to achieve economic growth in the years ahead, given the rapid graying of Japan’s population and the decline in its labor force.

During its first session, the panel of economists, business people and academics under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry discussed what measures Japan should adopt to ride the wave of a so-called “fourth industrial revolution” characterized by innovations brought about by robotics, artificial intelligence, big data and other new technologies.

The panel focused on how such technologies could change the structures of industry and employment in Japan towards the 2030s, with members agreeing to draw up a road map for development of cutting-edge technologies.

Technology doesn't make school pupils smarter: study

Study finds that education systems which have invested heavily in information and communications technology have seen "no noticeable improvement" in results for reading, mathematics or scienceAFP

Computers do not noticeably improve school pupils’ academic results and can even hamper performance, an OECD report said Tuesday that looked at the impact of technology in classrooms across the globe.

While almost three quarters of pupils in the countries surveyed used computers at schools, the report by the the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found technology had made no noticeable improvement in results.

Conversely, in high-achieving schools in parts of Asia, where smartphones and computers have become an integral part of people’s everyday lives, technology was far less prevalent in the classrooms.

In South Korea, students used computers for an average of nine minutes at school and in Hong Kong, only 11 minutes—just a fraction of the 58 minutes spent in Australia, 42 in Greece and 39 in Sweden.

“Where computers are used in the classroom, their impact on student performance is mixed at best,” OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher said in a foreword to the report, the think-tank’s first on the topic.

Tech job posting board touts Kansas City lifestyle to draw talent here

An online technology job posting board called Chute markets Kansas City to entice prospective hires to live here.A new online job posting board seeks to draw technology talent to the Kansas City area as a way to fill thousands of current and future jobs.

Chute, as the site is called, is the product of KCnext with help from large area employers Cerner, DST Systems, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Garmin and Sprint. KCnext is a trade association for area technology companies and Chute currently is pitching employers to sign up and post jobs.

“U.S. cities are in a global race for tech talent, and with the launch of Chute, the KC region is about to get a lot more competitive,” Ryan Weber, president of KCnext said in an announcement. “In addition to filling the thousands of tech jobs open in the KC region today, we have to further position this market as a destination for tech talent to meet projected workforce needs for the future.”

Chute lists jobs in various technology fields and offers information about companies’ culture, the region’s “unique tech scene,” as well as Kansas City’s lifestyle. The idea, in part, is to help job seekers “envision themselves living in Kansas City and working at a specific company,” the announcement said.

KCnext plans to demonstrate Chute Thursday at the Techweek hiring fair set for KCLive at the Power & Light District in downtown. The job fair is open to the public but requires registration to get a free expo pass from Techweek.

Chute also will be featured at upcoming Techweek events in New York and Los Angeles and other events that draw tech-oriented companies.LINKEDIN

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