NYC replaces payphones with touchscreens,

By RyanKamauff

via GigaOM

Here are the top tech news and stories of the day.

• New York City replaces 250 public pay phones with iPad-like screens – after the effects of Superstorm Sandy, regular phone booths were suddenly hubs for communication. NYC will be installing smart screens that will “provide city information, emergency broadcasts and local business deals.” Via GigaOM, more here.
• How ISPs will do “six strikes”: Throttled speeds, blocked sites –
  ISPs will begin their “six strikes” program soon. Customers will get notices, have to acknowledge them and mitigate via punishments. Independent arbitration is possible, and costs $35 per case. Via Ars Technica, more here.
• Miner problem: big changes are coming for Bitcoin’s working class – in the near future, Bitcoin will be cutting the value of Bitcoins mined. Miners use specialized equipment to run hashes and try to earn Bitcoins. In addition, there are new chips being created that will change mining works (increasing the number of gigahashes per second by magnitudes). Via The Verge, more here.
• Opower, the big data energy player to beat – Opower is a big data startup that is processing data from more than 50M homes. Opower builds on top of Hadoop, and is now in version 4. It collects data from 75 utilities and 96B meter reads. Opower now offers digital connections to consumers, allowing them to be alerted when they are running high bills or the like. Via GigaOM, more here.
• Guy Responsible for HP’s Humiliating $11 Billion Autonomy Purchase: Don’t Look at Me! – Well the HP Autonomy purchase (once thought to be one of their top assets) is turning out to be a huge error. The company falsified records, and is worth only 1/10th of its advertised (and paid for) value. Via Gizmodo, more here.
• IBM supercomputer simulates 530 billion neurons and a whole lot of synapses – IBM is working with DARPA (the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics -SyNAPSE- program) to create a brain simulation. They have reached a milestone in which the program simulated 530B neurons, 2B+ neurosynaptic cores, and 100T synapses. Via Endgadget, more here.
• Shrinking Big Data Challenges: Enterprise Storage Startup, Qumulo, Raises $24.5M Series A Led By Highland Capital Partners – Qumulo is based in Seattle and was only founded back in March. The goal of Qumulo is to ‘to solve the “manageability, scalability and efficiency problems that plague the $35 billion enterprise data storage market”.’ Via TechCrunch, more here.
• Rumor: OS X 10.9 Will Get Siri and Apple Maps Integration – Apple seems to be testing Siri and Apple Maps integration in the next version of their PC operating system. While they already have dictation capabilities, Siri could really change things (if it gets better). Via Gizmodo, more here.

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