Archive

It was once the case that computer viruses and other malicious software were written primarily by hobbyist hackers. Their motivations, for the most part, were simply bragging rights and the respect of their peers -- desirable rewards, to be sure, but certainly not the sole focus of any career. The r...

Facebook's entry into the smartphone handset business is being reported like it's a done deal. It's a deal, however, in which critics say Facebook has more to lose than gain. The Facebook phone project already has a code name, "Buffy," a reference to the famed vampire slayer of film and television, ...

Microsoft will release an update to the Xbox 360 dashboard for all Xbox Live members on Dec. 6. The update is reportedly modeled after Microsoft's new Metro user interface, which is used for Windows Phones and will be part of Windows 8. It will offer new personal and social features, cloud storage, ...

Six degrees of separation may be good enough for most people, but for Facebook members, it's only 4.74 degrees, according to a study conducted jointly by the social networking giant and the University of Milan. Conducted earlier this year, the study examined all 721 million active Facebook users, wh...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Bad Security Moon Rising

All things considered, this past week has been hell on security professionals. On Monday, AT&T Wireless announced that hackers used automatic scripts to target some subscribers in a bid to steal information stored in their online accounts. They apparently didn't succeed. Hackers have breached se...

Following a one-day delay, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission featuring its new Curiosity rover is now scheduled for launch on Saturday, Nov. 26, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Representing the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to the Red Planet, the automobile-sized C...

A small water utility in Illinois has been hacked, reportedly leading the FBI and the United States Department of Homeland Security to look into the matter. The attack came from Russia, according to control systems cybersecurity expert Joseph Weiss, who publicized the matter in his blog. He suggeste...

The Fretful Future of Flash

What's the future for Flash devs now that Adobe has turned its back on Flash Player for mobile devices and has shifted focus to HTML 5? Will Flash for the desktop survive or will it die out too? Adobe has pledged to enable Flash devs to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major mobile app...

OPINION

The Technology Scandals of 2012

Next year is an election year, and there is no doubt we will have plenty of examples of politicians who should have had their hormones either surgically removed or had someone wiser make their decisions for them. On the other hand, the technology market has certainly had its fill of scandals over th...

The international research team that found neutrinos traveling faster than light has done it again. It conducted another set of experiments and again found neutrinos that exceeded the speed of light. As in the first experiment, the researchers fired high-intensity, high-energy beams of muon neutrino...

A team of researchers led by Tobias Schaedler of HRL Labs has developed an ultralight metallic microlattice that's 10,000 times lighter than ultralight aerogels and carbon nanotube foams. Ultralight cellular materials weigh less than 10 milligrams per cubic centimeter. "An ordered lattice is inheren...

Android malware has increased 472 percent since July, a new report from Juniper Networks warned earlier this week, with the months of October and November shaping up to see the fastest jump in Android malware ever discovered, the company stated. The number of Android malware samples identified in Se...

On the heels of the apparent success of Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, which one analyst estimates will sell more than 5 million units in three months, comes speculation that the online retail giant might come up with its own smartphone next. Citigroup analysts Mark Mahaney and Kevin Chang have report...

The Microsoft Surface 2.0, a coffee-table-sized, tablet-like touchscreen computer, is ready for preorder in 23 countries, including the United States. The Surface first emerged in 2007 and used cameras and its touchscreen to interact with people and objects. The model available for preorder is calle...

AOL Takes Another Shot at AIM

AOL has updated its longstanding AIM instant messaging service and rolled out a preview for the public. The new AIM automatically displays photos, videos and tweets even when users are writing or reading IMs. It also has a chat feature and syncs messages onto all a user's devices. AIM is available i...


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