The Switch: How the Internet may be shifting innovation away from big cities

Today's technology and tech policy news  •  Wed., Feb. 18, 2015 View in your Web browser

How the Internet may be shifting innovation away from big cities Think of the device you're reading this on. It's the culmination of hundreds, maybe thousands, of inventions that all got added together to form a computer, tablet or smartphone. Most of this technology came out of Silicon Valley, one of the world's greatest hubs for innovation. But what is it about that place that makes it such a fruitful breeding ground for ideas?  Read full article »

The Switchboard: Obama administration to permit export of armed drones to allies

Published every weekday, the Switchboard is your morning helping of hand-picked stories from the Switch team.Obama administration to allow sales of armed drones to allies. "The Obama administration will permit the widespread export of armed drones for the first time, a step toward providing allied nations with weapons that have become a cornerstone of U.S. counterterrorism strategy but whose remotely controlled power to kill is intensely controversial," reports the Post's Missy Ryan.  Read full article »

Innovations: The weird way that climate change could lead to new disease outbreaks around the world

Climate change could be behind more than just rising ocean levels, melting polar ice caps, and extreme weather events — it could also be creating the ecological basis for infectious diseases to spread to new places and new hosts. Writing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, two prominent zoologists, Daniel Brooks of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Eric Hoberg of the U.S. National Parasite Collection of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, warn that outbreaks of infectious diseases such as West Nile virus and Ebola are just the start — global warming could enable similar types of diseases to emerge and thrive in places you might not expect.  Read full article »

Twitter’s new tool should help curb those embarrassing social media hacks

Twitter just made it a whole lot safer to be a professional on its social network. On Tuesday, the company introduced a new feature that allows users to share Twitter accounts without also having to share passwords. The feature was added to TweetDeck, the account managing software that Twitter acquired in 2011.  Read full article »

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