Tech Blog

Britain is simultaneously investigating and praising Chinese telecommunication firm Huawei. OK, so the UK didn't out and compliment Huawei. Less than a week after British authorities launched a cybersecurity review of the company, however, Prime Minister David Cameron said that British telecommunica...

Long known for its out-and-out censorship, Beijing now appears to be filling Chinese social media with pro-government messages. The new tack was on full display after the Thursday indictment of fallen Communist Party member Bo Xilai, who was busted for corruption and abuse of power in 2012. While Ch...

Lawmakers in Finland will vote on a crowdsourced legislative proposal that, if approved, would change the nation's copyright laws. Last year, Finland's constitution was modified to allow citizens to submit proposals to Parliament, so long as said proposals obtained 50,000 supporters within six month...

In a nod to developing nations like India and Brazil, Facebook will unveil plans for "Facebook for Every Phone," which is designed to make Facebook accessible on technologically humble feature phones. Facebook, which already boasts more than 1.1 billion users, now wants to target the 100 million peo...

TECH TREK

Germany Caught Nuzzling With NSA

It turns out that Germany, Europe's most outspoken critic in the wake of U.S. snooping revelations, has itself used a National Security Agency spying program and collaborated with the NSA on surveillance. Takes one to know one. Germany's foreign intelligence service, called the "BND," and its dome...

OPINION

Beating Apple 101

This could just as easily be "Beating Microsoft 101" or "Beating ARM 101" -- basically how to beat any vendor that is dominant in a particular market. There is a way to beat a dominant vendor, but it's almost never by chasing that vendor from behind. Apple didn't beat Microsoft by tying to build a b...

TECH TREK

Rain Forest 1, Amazon 0

A group of countries in Latin America seems to have successfully blocked online retail giant Amazon from using ".amazon" as an Internet address suffix. A committee from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees top-level domain names, recommended that .amazon be preclud...

Jack Ma, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group, said that China's move to violently squelch Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989 was "the most correct decision," adding that "a leader needs to make this kind of decision." The remarks -- made in May and...

Devout followers pay heed: The Catholic Church is offering indulgences for those who take the righteous step of following Pope Francis on Twitter. The granting of indulgences, a centuries-old practice, is believed to reduce the time that one must spend in purgatory. Traditional means of obtaining in...

European Union justice commissioner Viviane Reding implored EU member states to get on board with Germany's call for tougher and more unified data protection laws. German chancellor Angela Merkel spent the weekend clamoring for EU-wide regulations that would force more transparency from Internet com...

Ma Ailun, a 23-year-old woman from northwest China, died after being electrocuted by her iPhone, according to relatives. Ma reportedly died while using the device, which was charging at the time. Local police confirmed that electrocution was the cause of death, but stopped short of pinning blame on ...

What you are going to see in a few days, when Dell stockholders get to vote on Michael Dell's plan to buy back his company, is a war of perceptions -- and perhaps a revelation on the state of the U.S. investor. Both ISS and the Chancery Court have clearly come down on Michael Dell's side, arguing th...

Intrepid hikers and garden-variety Internet addicts now have 4G access on top of Japan's famous Mt. Fuji. Japanese telecom NTT DoCoMo has equipped the 12,388-foot summit with high-speed LTE connectivity. The access will run now through August, the height of the tourist season on the mountain. Fuji h...

In Japan, a flubbed privacy setting made public a Google Groups chat among Japanese bureaucrats, allowing any-and-everyone to see internal memos, including negotiating positions for an international treaty. The default settings for Google Groups, which are established by the party that started the c...

France has abandoned a law that called for copyright infringers' Internet connections to be cut off upon a third offense. The law stipulated that letters be sent the first and second time people illicitly downloaded copyrighted material; the third time around, an offender's Web access would be disco...

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