NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is delivering amazing images of Pluto, but receiving them from 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) away is no easy feat. The strength of the radio signals, the time it takes the signal to travel back and forth and the speed of the data flow all …
Oculus VR came under fire last week after its CEO said the company will fund development of about two dozen “Oculus-exclusive” games for its virtual reality headset. The company has now responded to the complaints, saying some of those games may eventually come to other VR platforms. The spat started …
ZTE isn’t exactly what one would call a household name in the U.S., although it has made a number of inroads into the pre-paid phone market. The company is now attempting to make itself more visible by offering a higher-end device with its new flagship phone Axon, which it introduced …
A Vietnamese man linked to a data breach of 200 million personal records at a subsidiary of credit monitoring firm Experian has been sentenced to 13 years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Hieu Minh Ngo, 25, was sentenced Tuesday on charges including wire fraud and identity fraud …
I’ve ventured into new territory lately: cyber-insurance. Here’s why. Hotel chains. Zoo gift shops. Amusement parks. Our own U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management. Security breaches continue to abound, apparently undiminished. And they are all over the news, which is causing me no end of headaches at work (especially with …
A reported buyout attempt by China’s largest computer chip maker of U.S. based Micron Technology isn’t likely to succeed, according to industry analysts. Micron is one of the top five semiconductor makers in the world, and it has a lot to offer Tsinghua Unigroup, which has reportedly bid $23 billion …
The founder of the Italian surveillance software company that suffered a disastrous data breach last week sought to reassure clients on Tuesday about the gravity of the intrusion, insisting that Hacking Team’s anti-terrorism work has not been jeopardized. “If the client has followed our instructions there are no problems for …
A U.S. appeals court should immediately shut down the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records because the practice is illegal, the American Civil Liberties Union said. The ACLU, in a request for an injunction filed Tuesday, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to …
Facebook is reportedly working on a virtual assistant for its Messenger app. According to a report in The Information, the world’s largest social network is working on the virtual assistant, which has been internally dubbed Moneypenny, presumably after the fictional secretary in the James Bond books and movies. Facebook is …
Looking for some Black Friday kind of deals in the middle of July? If you are, this is your week. Online retailer Amazon.com has dubbed Wednesday as “Amazon Prime Day,” to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the website. That means any of the company’s Prime users will have access to …
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged 15 individuals and 19 entities for their roles in alleged schemes to manipulate the trading of microcap stocks. The 34 defendants include six firms alleged to have acted as unregistered broker-dealers catering to customers who sought to conceal their stock ownership and manipulate …
Adobe today patched Flash Player to quash a pair of zero-day vulnerabilities found in the massive cache of documents hackers stole from the Hacking Team surveillance company. Earlier Tuesday, Google patched its Chrome browser with an updated version of Flash, signaling that Adobe would soon follow suit. But Microsoft dropped …
Twitter’s stock spiked in midday trading Tuesday after a fake Bloomberg news report said the company had received an offer to be acquired for $31 billion. The story appeared convincing, with a Bloomberg Business logo, but Bloomberg quickly tweeted that it was fake. There were some telltale signs it wasn’t …
A new feature of Wi-Fi could help people find both each other and things nearby, without being near a hotspot. The group that puts the Wi-Fi badge on phones, laptops and countless other gadgets is starting to certify products for Wi-Fi Aware, a way for apps to make their presence …
I am a big fan of walking into a retail store versus buying things online. This is specifically true for clothes from my favorite retail chain since it gives me access to physically see a wide variety of options combined with great ambiance, music, and sales assistants who go the …
SanDisk today announced the newest addition to its wireless storage line – the SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick. The Connect Wireless Stick ranges in capacity from 16GB to 128GB and in price from $30 to $100. SanDisk The SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick To read this article in full or to leave …
Surveillance software maker Hacking Team has provided its government customers with the ability to infect the low-level firmware found in laptops and other computers that they wanted to spy on. The company developed a tool that can be used to modify a computer’s UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) so that …
One of the coolest things about Android Wear is the ever-expanding array of face designs you can find for your watch. I’ve already put together a collection of some of my favorite Android Wear faces, but there’s a more specialized category that also deserves to be addressed: watch faces that …
Microsoft on Monday suspended delivery of new preview builds of Windows 10, saying that it was “very close” to wrapping up the operating system. “We’re suspending the availability of Windows 10 builds briefly while we prepare for [using the official roll-out process], and the next build that we flight to …
Mozilla Firefox now blocks Adobe Flash, thanks to its horrible ongoing security problems. Not the least of which are the three plugin bugs exploited by Italy’s now-notorious Hacking Team, which we covered yesterday. The block will last until you’re running a version with all known vulnerabilities patched. After the earlier revelations …
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged OZ Management LP with providing inaccurate trade data to four prime brokers, causing inaccuracies in the brokers’ books and records and in data provided to the SEC in investigations. OZ Management, an investment adviser for numerous Och-Ziff funds, admitted wrongdoing and agreed to …
Big data is around us. However, it is common to hear from a lot of data scientists and researchers doing analytics that they need more data. How is that possible, and where does this eagerness to get more data come from? Very often, data scientists need lots of data to …
Корпорация Samsung зарегистрировала патент на технологию анализа количества жировой ткани в теле человека с помощью мобильного устройства. Данная информация была опубликована на веб-портале Всемирной организации интеллектуальной собственности. Представители Samsung утверждают, что новый способ сможет определять количество жировых отложений в человеческом теле. Для этого владельцу смартфона необходимо будет просто держать аппарат на вытянутых руках перед …
Apple’s HomeKit plans are being impacted by manufacturers reluctance to deliver solutions sufficiently secure for the new connected age. That’s why only a few have been introduced so far. The Register reports Apple is demanding hardware makers use HomeKit certified chipsets and specialized firmware for security reasons (also reported here). …
C++ is making big gains in the monthly Tiobe language popularity index, while JavaScript continues to rule the day. The venerated C++ language has been Tiobe’s biggest climber so far since July 2014, according to a report accompanying the July index. “Compared to last year, C++ gained more than 3.1 …
Sometimes, emotions make it difficult to see the most effective way of accomplishing an objective. And emotions can definitely arise when the subject is underage cyberthieves. Security blogger Brian Krebs (KrebsOnSecurity) recently took a hardline stance in opposition to the lenient sentencing of a Finnish 17-year-old, who was found guilty …