A surveillance law rushed through the French parliament in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris in January is constitutional, the country’s highest court ruled late Thursday. The decision gives law enforcers and intelligence agencies the power to gather communications metadata—who is communicating with whom, where, and when—in real time, with few restrictions. As the law on surveillance progressed through parliament, the government declared it “urgent”, meaning elected representatives in the Senate and National Assembly had only one opportunity to amend it instead of the usual two. They waved it through anyway. Some parliamentarians challenged parts of the law on constitutional grounds, calling on the Constitutional Council to give its verdict.
Windows 10 is just about here—and many users (especially those who have been wrestling with Windows 8) are probably eager to upgrade. But even if you can get it now—the upgrade will be sent first to Here are nine reasons you might want to put off a Windows 10 upgrade. This may seem obvious, but sometimes it’s the obvious that gets missed. In order to run Windows 10, you need a PC or tablet with a 1GHz processor or faster, 1GB of RAM for 32-bit machines or 2GB for 64-bit machines, 16GB hard disk space for 32-bit machines or 20GB hard disk space for 64-bit machines, a DirectX 9 or later graphics card with a
As I climbed into the car, I didn’t have high hopes. I was trying out Honda’s Dream Drive, a prototype technology that pairs an Oculus Rift headset with data about the car’s movements to produce a virtual reality simulation. The car (an Acura MDX from Honda's luxury line) was going to drive around the parking lot at Honda’s new R&D center here in Mountain View, California, and the headset would let me gaze into another world as we drove along. “I bet it will be a race track with cars whizzing by,” I thought as I put on the headset. Perhaps I’m jaded, but I’ve tried many VR demonstrations and while fun, they often feel a bit lacking and uninspired.
We’re almost there. In the distance you can hear the soft whisper of the fall release season. “I’m coming,” says But until then, it’s still boring ol’ summertime. Here’s gaming news for the week of July 20. Remember Scratch that. It’s
Welcome to Five to Try, our weekly look at the new apps and games worth grabbing on your Android devices. Games take the larger focus this week, as Away from gaming, Jet is the biggest launch this week—it’s an upstart Amazon rival that hopes to take down the online leader with bulk deals and a solid app. And Pause delivers curated music magazines that can turn you onto great new tunes. Clear some space and grab these apps for the weekend ahead.
It was fun while it lasted, but with If you check out the Apple Store online or in-person, you won’t find the famous smart thermostat co-created by former Apple exec Tony Fadell. In its place, the Apple Store is now selling the That’s not to say that you can’t find non-HomeKit devices in Apple’s connected home section, but the Nest Thermostat isn’t most smart home devices, as
We've seen Siri awkwardly avoid our marriage proposals, Cortana fill us in on If you ask that question enough times in a row, Google Maps navigation will finally put its proverbial foot down and respond, "If you ask that again, we won't stop for ice cream." It takes about four repeated tries before Google Maps will come back with this parental classic.
Imagine you’ve got a (DRM-free) movie saved on your PC and you want to watch it on your Android tablet. There are numerous ways to transfer that movie, such as a USB cable, AirDroid, or BitTorrent Sync. But all of those solutions require you to take action on your PC, and since it’s Friday and you’re already on the couch and your PC is all the way upstairs...forget it. Well, not if you’ve embraced the magic of free Windows folder sharing. With this built-in feature enabled, that movie is only an app download and a few taps away. This post is a little meaty, but the process is very quick and simple—it just takes a while to explain. Here’s how I did it on Windows 8.1—Windows 7 users will follow a similar if not identical process.
While Microsoft has been busy putting the finishing touches on Windows 10—the new operating system for PCs, tablets, the Xbox, and phones—Daniel Rubino over at The new phones are reportedly working under the codenames Cityman and Talkman, Windows Central reports. Keen observers will note that we've been hearing those codenames for at least a year. They first popped up in
On Thursday, an Intel spokesman confirmed that the company is working to patch a minor bug that will reduce the battery life of some Windows 10 machines by less than 10 percent. The good news is that, once fixed, Intel expects the battery life of a Windows 10 PC to be on par with a Windows 8 system, the Intel spokesman said. With the Windows 10 launch just days away on July 29, Intel, Microsoft, app developers, and hardware makers are working to finalize drivers and fix bugs. Microsoft, for example, issued an update for Intel’s HD Graphics integrated GPU on Thursday for its Surface line—along with a firmware update that failed to update for many people.
This breathing monitor can help you recognize and better manage your stress level.
You might think you’re only going to pay $50 per month, but you’re wrong.