The wearable technology getting attention now is products like Google Glass, fitness trackers, and smartwatches, but more gadgets will arrive soon with practical applications and perhaps lower price tags.
The Direct Marketing Association last week released a 105-page report detailing is to the future of our economy and the safety of the free world—and thus should be free from any government oversight. Forgive me if I sound a mite skeptical. Data is, of course, like oxygen to the Internet. It would not survive long without it. But that doesn’t mean information can’t and shouldn’t be regulated. First, you have to consider the source. The is the umbrella lobbying/PR group that represents major purveyors of junk mail, telemarketing, mail order catalogs, email spam, Web ads and other assaults on our personal privacy. (Or, conversely, helpful marketing materials that enable consumers to make better choices in how they spend their money. See, I can be fair when I want to.) Historically, the DMA has been staunchly opposed to any measure that restricts the activity of its member companies or offers some level of control to consumers. Thus , easily the most successful pro-consumer initiative ever enacted by our government.
It's National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and security firm Rapid7 has released an awareness note focused on passwords, something that can either make or break a person's overall level of security. is such a big deal in the security world. password once and use it everywhere. While security professionals can enforce policy on a password's length, expiration and use of character types, only educated users can create truly strong passwords that they will remember and avoid using elsewhere.
The average size of is still climbing with the number breaching 20Gbps around four times the level seen a year ago, according to Arbor Networks. The firm's numbers of the first three quarters of 2013 show a rising curve with average attack sizes reaching 3-3.5Gbps, compared to 1.48Gbps for the same period in 2012. For the year as a whole, the average was now 2.64Gbps. Although no attack in the third quarter reached the extreme scale of March's the firm's Atlas system did record one of 191Gbps in August, which suggests that the new traffic ceiling is shifting from 100Gbps to 200Gbps. Probably more significant was the more than fourfold rise in the number of attacks over the 20Gbps threshold compared to 2012 with three months of the year still left to run, Arbor said.
Google Chrome users should take extra precautions when using the browser to type personal data, such as credit card numbers, into website forms, experts say. Additional steps are necessary because Chrome in plain text in its web history log on the hard drive. The browser retrieves the information as needed to avoid having the user retype the same data into other forms. Researchers at Identity Finder created proof-of-concept malware that could take the data and send it to a third party. The security vendor claims Google could for hackers by having the browser encrypt the data before it is stored. Chrome lets the operating system encrypt the data, if that's how the user has the OS configured. With Windows, Microsoft offers full disk encryption through its BitLocker feature.
The European Commission claims that basic broadband is now available to everyone in Europe. The Commission said the 100 percent coverage milestone has been made possible as a result of the availability of satellite broadband in all 28 member states. This means, in theory, that everyone can achieve a connection of at least 2Mbps, but given the relatively high costs of satellite broadband, it may not be affordable for everyone. According to the Commission, 30 million people across Europe do not have access to fixed or mobile broadband networks because they live in rural or isolated areas. But it says these people can now get internet access via satellite in their respective countries. To help European residents find out what satellite broadband options are available to them the Commission has launched a that allows people to find services they can use to get online.
As growth slows and vendors make less money on each sale, mobile operators will need to identify other services and perks to make money, according to researchers at Ovum.
Microsoft's new update for Windows Phone 8 added support for larger phones and higher-resolution screens, a move analysts hoped would soon put the operating system onto small-sized tablets, a market Microsoft and its hardware partners have largely ignored. Last week, Microsoft announced that —like many from Redmond, a mouthful—will roll out to current customers in the next several months. While Update 3 included several additions and enhancements, the one Microsoft chose to tout first was support for larger-sized Windows smartphones. "The update paves the way for future Windows Phone devices with 5- and 6-inch touchscreens," said Darren Laybourn, who leads the Windows Phone engineering team, in a post. Update 3 also supports 1080p displays with resolutions of 1920 by 1080 pixels, nearly a doubling of the current resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. Microsoft's update to Windows Phone came just a week before an October 22 event slated by Nokia, where it's expected to unveil —a so-called "phablet"—sporting a 1920-by-1080-pixel screen, the first for a Windows Phone device.
Third-party products and SnapChat options are eroding the privacy of the photo app beyond ten seconds of fame.
Earlier this month, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Patrick Leahy pressed the NSA's director, General Keith Alexander, on whether the figures that are used to support data collection programs, notably the bulk collection of phone records, are accurate. Throughout the summer, the Obama Administration and NSA officials have repeatedly told the public how the controversial Sections 215 and 702 ( that such intercept programs are managed with strict oversight. At the Black Hat/Defcon security conference, General Alexander that 54 terror plots were stopped because of records collected under Sections 215 and 702, and of those 13 of them were in the U.S. Moreover, General Alexander noted that of the 13 plots halted in the U.S., 12 of them were directly linked to the intercept programs. However, when questioned by Senator Leahy, General Alexander confirmed that only "one, perhaps two" terror plots were halted by business records collections.
If you were looking forward to updating your Windows RT tablet to . Microsoft didn't provide any further details, but it appears that people upgrading to Windows RT 8.1 are experiencing boot configuration data errors, which result in blue screens of death appearing on startup. Oops. Fortunately, the issue doesn't appear to be widespread. Mashable editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff ran into the problem while attempting to install Windows RT 8.1 on his Surface RT. Here's what it looks like: The Windows 8.1 RT update just cooked my original Surface RT
Up to one million free Jamba Juice smoothies will go to Isis mobile wallet smartphone users later this year, when Isis takes its NFC-ready technology to the national stage.
The idealism and convenience behind virtual currencies such as is at risk of being undermined as abuse by professional criminals grows to unacceptable levels, a report by security firm McAfee argues. The catalog of practical and conceptual problems listen in the firm's Digital Laundry overview is perhaps not particularly original—numerous critics have spotted systems—but serves as a timely reminder of their growing importance to cybercriminals. Only two weeks ago, "We include it [the hitman example] to demonstrate that confidence in the privacy of virtual currencies has enabled the sale of some frightening services," said McAfee's authors.
Microsoft last week said it will start selling gift cards good for purchases on its digital content market, taking a page out of Apple's iTunes playbook. Amazon.com listed digital cards Thursday in denominations of $15, $25, and $50, and said started taking orders Friday for delivery as soon as Monday. The cards have been in the wind for months. In May, virtual currency. And in a last week, Microsoft mentioned gift cards in a long missive about changes to the Windows Store, the app distribution mart for Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 RT.
Sophisticated attackers could soon adopt an innovative technique for bypassing one of the most effective mechanisms for preventing a Windows security breach, researchers say. The protective technique is called the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). ASLR scrambles the memory positions of key elements of a program, such as the base of the executable and the positions of the stack, heap and libraries. This makes it difficult for an attacker to guess where these elements reside in order to exploit them. Current trends in malware show attackers moving toward an that takes advantage of common programming errors that lead to memory corruption, which is when the contents of a memory location are unintentionally modified. Nearly 10 percent of application crashes on Windows systems are due to memory corruption. If the corruption exists, then the attacker's malware tries to guess where an application's library is in memory, researchers with security vendor FireEye said.
GTA V is a game with an awe-inspiring open world and a troubling narrative.
. It might now wish that it hadn’t—thousands of users have taken to the Web to complain about things they don’t like. With more than 100 million daily users, Mail is important for Yahoo. It’s one of the company’s most prominent services, and CEO Marissa Mayer has said it’s one of the top things she wanted to improve to attract new users. . They’re also a reminder that Mayer, a former Googler, can’t fix Yahoo by simply carrying over things that Google does well.
In the fiercely competitive world of Internet services, Google constantly seeks ways to speed up the delivery of content to its hundreds of millions of users. At the O’Reilly Velocity conference , two Google engineers presented some of their favorite tips and research for expediting delivery of web pages and applications. Such knowledge could be handy for other web developers looking to make their products more responsive. Google developer advocate and for mobile web developers today: JavaScript performance. Web-based JavaScript applications can suffer from performance issues, especially on mobile clients, because JavaScript parsing engines use garbage collection (GC) to manage memory. “You shouldn’t rely on garbage collectors,” McAnlis told the audience of web developers.
The chips in the new consoles likely will be upgraded every two to three years, much like in past consoles, analysts said.
Although production of Intel’s next-generation Broadwell chip won’t begin until the first quarter of 2014, PCs using the chip won’t appear until the second half of 2014, Intel disclosed Friday. in the 14-nm process that the Broadwell chip uses had delayed its expected manufacturing date from the fourth quarter of 2013 until the first quarter of 2014. PCs based on a chip in full production usually ship a quarter or two later. Until now, however, Intel had never clarified the date. Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich didn’t discuss Intel’s launch plans in what he actually said during the earnings call. “We continue to make progress with the industry’s first 14 -nanometer manufacturing process and our second-generation 3D transistors,” Krzanich said. “Broadwell, the first product on 14 nanometers, is up and running as we demonstrated at the Intel Developer Forum last month. While we are comfortable with where we are at with yields, from a timing standpoint, we are about a quarter behind our projections. As a result, we are now planning to begin production in the first quarter of next year.”
Fresh from its acquisition of Sprint, Japan’s SoftBank plans to take control of Brightstar, the dominant distributor of mobile devices in the U.S. and a global player serving more than 200 carriers. SoftBank has reached a definitive agreement to invest $1.26 billion in Brightstar and immediately gain a 57 percent stake in the company. It will have the option later to raise its ownership to 70 percent. The cash transaction, which SoftBank announced on Friday, will be carried out through a U.S. subsidiary. a partnership with singer and actress Jennifer Lopez and a major Verizon Wireless retailer to set up Viva Movil, a chain of Latino-focused Verizon stores across the U.S. The company calls itself the world’s largest mobile device distributor, with annual revenue above $7 billion and operations in more than 50 countries. The SoftBank deal values Brightstar at $2.2 billion, including its outstanding debt.
Samsung is taking preorders on an updated version of its Ativ Book 9 Plus Ultrabook, which features a Core i7 processor and a touchscreen display with a native resolution of 3200 by 1800 pixels. The company expects to ship the new notebook in early November. a fourth-generation Core processor (code-named Haswell). Samsung, on the other hand, hasn’t announced any plans to match the lavish tech-support and customer-service offerings Toshiba gives to Kirabook buyers. , is outfitted with an Intel Core i5-4200U and has half as much memory and storage. But the new model will also command a higher price tag: $1799, versus $1399 for the current machine. The rest of the new laptop’s specifications are very similar to those of the earlier model, including its 0.54-inch thickness and 3.06-pound weight. The new Plus will have an 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi adapter, gigabit wired ethernet (using a dongle), Micro HDMI-out, two USB 3.0 ports, an integrated 720p webcam, and a multiformat memory card reader. Samsung says the new Ultrabook’s fully charged battery will deliver up to 7.5 hours of productivity.
The alpha for Double Fine’s Spacebase DF-9 has arrived on Steam--$25 gets you in the door.
Microsoft announced Friday that Xbox Live Gold members will continue receiving two free games per month indefinitely, as its Games with Gold promotion is now a permanent feature.
With in-home streaming technology, Nvidia wants to give PC gamers the freedom to leave their computing caves. Dubbed . The idea is that users could set up a powerful gaming PC somewhere in the house, and then use Wi-Fi to stream those games to handheld devices and televisions. Nvidia first launched in-home streaming with its Shield Android gaming handheld in July, but the feature was advertised as a beta, with limited game support. On October 28, Nvidia will launch GameStream and presumably drop the beta tag. More than 50 top PC games will be supported at launch, and certain Wi-Fi routers will be labeled “GameStream Ready.” Nvidia says it will also improve navigation and controls, and promises low-latency gaming at 60 frames per second.
Traditional electric-car batteries that are bulky may soon be a thing of the past.
Amazon Web Services has added the option to use its Elastic Transcoder for audio-only conversions.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has begun to send more than 58,000 refund checks to consumers who lost money to Green Millionaire, a company that promised a free book explaining how to power cars and homes at no cost, but then billed customers for an online magazine they never ordered. . The amount recovered represents about 54 percent of consumers’ estimated loss in the case, the agency said. Victims of the operation will receive an average of $33.88 from the FTC, based on individual loss. People receiving checks from the FTC should cash them within 60 days, the FTC said. against the San Francisco-based operation in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in April 2012.
Just in time for the , Microsoft released its own remote desktop client for Android and iOS devices. The free download lets anyone who’s enabled remote desktop functionality on their Windows PC (Pro versions only) connect to their desktop from afar. That’s the theory, anyway. In my hands-on time with the app on a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 4, I concluded that most users needing remote desktop access are better off with simpler third-party options. To use remote desktop, you must configure the settings in your Control Panel to allow remote connections. Microsoft has a straightforward tutorial on . Once that’s done, you can find the Android and iOS apps on . Both apps work on either smartphones or tablets.
Here's a second dose of early Halloween fright, with 13 scary movies streaming on Netflix.
