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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff gave a speech in which she -- well, maybe it's best to just let her say it. "What we have before us, Mr. President, is a serious case of violation of human rights and civil liberties," Rousseff said, addressing the UN General Assembly mere moments before President...
China is lifting its ban on a handful of heretofore banned websites within the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. Included among those now considered acceptable are Facebook and Twitter. The Shanghai Free Trade Zone, announced in July, has more free market-friendly policies than China at large. To that end, ...
The Chaos Computing Club, a group of German hackers, claimed to have cracked Apple's new iPhone fingerprint scanner. The scanner is one of the distinguishing features of Apple's new iPhone 5S. It was not immediately clear whether CCC's claims were true, but two prominent iPhone security experts repo...
A couple of years ago, I wrote on the beginning of my long-term plan to eventually retire in Belize. My wife and I just came back from our latest update trip. Our house plans are nearly finished, and we should start building within 12 months. There have been a lot of impressive improvements since we...
Tencent Holdings' WeChat mobile messaging service, which is akin to WhatsApp, stands to gain more users as China makes it more and more risky to vent opinions online. Long a hotbed for censorship, China has been turning up the heat even further on netizens believed to be spreading "rumors." China's ...
In a loud declaration of, "Because we can!" plans have been hatched to build a skyscraper in South Korea that will be able to turn invisible. The skyscraper's invisibility function will work by having cameras on the tower take pictures of the sky behind it. Those images will then be transmitted to t...
Syrian rebels have taken to using an iPad app to help guide mortar fire. Rebels were photographed using an iPad reportedly equipped with the iHandy Level Free app, deployed as a method for ensuring that the mortar tube is level. Novel though this may be, reporter Paul Szoldra, who served in the U....
Facebook and Twitter were widely available to Iranian netizens on Monday. Come Tuesday, however, things were back to normal: The sites were blocked. Faulty Internet filters reportedly caused the sites to become available -- not some newfound progressive streak in Tehran. Western-born social media si...
A Google Street View car dinged a pair of public transport buses and a truck in Bogor, Indonesia. The Google driver hit one bus and then tried to skedaddle when the driver got angry, police reported. Alas, the getaway was thwarted when the Street View vehicle hit a second bus -- and then a truck, ac...
This year, Intel held its IDF during the same week as Apple's iPhone launch, and it's not the first time these events have coincided. However, I could count the number of times Intel has had something more interesting to present than Apple on one hand -- and have five fingers left over. That was tru...
Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei is taking a PR victory lap following reports suggesting that the National Security Agency spied on the company. Earlier this week, Brazilian TV network Globo revealed a raft of documents that purportedly came from Edward Snowden. The files implicate the NSA, al...
The National Security Agency's efforts to include "backdoors" in U.S. companies' security products, networks and devices -- thereby making it easier for the NSA to snoop around -- could hurt business abroad. Specifically, foreign countries could come to view U.S. firms' relationship with Washington ...
Smugglers who have long taken advantage of delays in Apple product releases in China will have a harder go of it when the company launches its newest iPhone models. The devices, the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, will be launched almost simultaneously in the U.S. and China. This will complicate the practi...
China's Supreme Court announced new guidelines for Internet use, including years-long jail stints for people who author "online rumors" that are viewed more than 5,000 times or reposted 500 times. Such a post would qualify as defamation, which in China carries a max sentence of three years in jail.
Shi Tao, a Chinese reporter who was incarcerated in 2005 after Yahoo divulged his email details, has been released from prison. Shi was first arrested in 2004 and charged with disclosing state secrets, namely emailing details of a government memo about keeping a lid on news coverage of the anniversa...