Author: Dan Graziano

The United States government on Thursday issued a rather odd recommendation for consumers who are interested in sitting behind the wheel of a driverless vehicle. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration believes drivers should be required by to receive extra training and get special licenses to operate a self-driving vehicle on public roads, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Driverless cars have the potential to drastically reduce accident rates and saves hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide each year. Google has been hard at work making autonomous vehicles a reality but its fleet of vehicles is equipped with a large array of bulky cameras and sensors that cost thousands of dollars, making mass production unlikely. Due to the high cost, earlier reports claimed the technology isn’t expected to go mainstream until 2025, however an Israeli company has created a relatively low-cost system that could see self-driving cars come to market sooner than we thought.

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The controller for Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox One console can be mashed and smashed by gamers for the next decade. Microsoft accessories and hardware manager Bob Brown revealed in an interview with Pocket-Lint that there have been numerous rigorous tests the company put the Xbox One’s controller through during its development. Microsoft tested 20 controllers over the past six months, pressing their buttons repeatedly between 4 to 5 times per second for a total of 2 million taps apiece. The thumbsticks are also worked over and over again to ensure reliability and the company even conducts a series of drop tests to ensure the controllers remain intact. The executive noted that controllers should last between seven and 10 years, or in some cases even longer. Given that Microsoft usually updates its console every five to eight years, the Xbox One’s controller should still be alive and well when the company’s next-generation system is released.

Tim Cook revealed on Tuesday at the AllThingsD: D11 conference that Apple has now sold more than 13 million second-generation Apple TV devices. Even more impressive, the CEO noted that roughly half of those devices were sold in the past year alone. Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune crunched the numbers and found that Apple controls more than half of the digital media receiver market. Not including dedicated gaming systems such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Apple TV has a 71% share of the market. The popular Roku box has sold more than 5 million units, giving it a 27% share of the market, and the Boxee Box sold about 200,000 units, for a 1% share, before it was discontinued last summer.

It had been reported that Facebook was looking to acquire social navigation company Waze for between $800 million and $1 billion. The talks were said to have hit a major roadblock in recent weeks, however, as Facebook was reportedly interested in shutting down Waze’s research and development center in Israel and transferring employees to the United States. According to AllThingsD, the talks have dissolved in recent days and the billion-dollar deal may no longer be on the table. The latest report reiterates earlier claims that Waze was uncomfortable having its employees transferred to work at Facebook’s headquarters in the United States. A deal with Waze would help Facebook continue its push into mobile, while complementing its already popular photo and messaging applications.

Microsoft has been accused of being misleading regarding the way it has advertised the internal storage in its Surface tablets. The 64GB Surface Pro model ships with only 23GB of useable space, while the 128GB model has just 83GB of available storage. Microsoft’s bloated operating system contains a number of preloaded applications and programs that take up more than 40GB of space, and consumers are filling up their devices quicker than anticipated. It would appear the company is ready to address its critics, however.

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The U.S. International Trade Commission announced on Tuesday that it will take a second look at two recent rulings between Samsung and Apple, Reuters reported. The full panel will review an earlier decision that found Samsung had infringed upon Apple’s technology relating to selecting text, and a second ruling that found the company did not infringe on Apple’s patent for detecting microphones. The ITC has the power to ban imported goods from entering the United States. Apple’s complaint concerns older Galaxy devices such as the Galaxy Nexus. The panel is expected to make a final ruling on August 1st.

Sprint on Wednesday confirmed that it has received the go-ahead from the U.S. government to merge with Japanese carrier SoftBank. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) had been investigating the proposed acquisition to ensure that it doesn’t pose a risk to national security. The government was worried about the use of telecom equipment from ZTE and Huawei, however SoftBank’s CEO confirmed there are no plans to use Chinese equipment. Sprint and SoftBank have entered into a National Security Agreement with the U.S. government and now only await the green light from the Federal Communications Commission. According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal requires the two companies to have a four-member national security committee, which will include a security director on Sprint’s board of directors that has the power to veto equipment purchases. Sprint’s press release follows below.

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Sony and Microsoft have left a lot of question marks surrounding the used game policies for their PlayStation 4 and Xbox One video game consoles. Earlier rumors suggested that Microsoft is looking to take control of the used game market and may only allow certain retailers to sell pre-owned products. TV host and industry pundit Geoff Keighley recently said that Sony may also incorporate some form of digital rights management (DRM) for used games, a policy that didn’t sit well with PlayStation enthusiasts. A thread on video game message board NeoGAF suggested that Sony fans reach out to executives through social media and email to try to reverse the company’s still unconfirmed stance on used games. The thread has since garnered nearly 5,000 responses and was successful in getting Sony’s attention.

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