58855859
submission
itwbennett writes:
Following the contentious and ultimately failed appointment of Brendan Eich as CEO last month, the Mozilla Corporation has appointed board member Chris Beard as interim CEO. Beard starting working as chief marketing officer for Mozilla in 2004, and oversaw the launch of its current browser, Firefox, in 2005. Beard also managed the launches of Firefox on Android and the Firefox OS for mobile phones.
58814435
submission
jfruh writes:
'So-and-so is about to release a smartphone' is one of the oldest tech rumors around, and most of the time nothing comes of it. But Stephen Lawson of the IDG News Service argues that if anyone non-phonemaker were going to dip their toes into that treacherous water, it'd be Amazon. The company hasn't been afraid to take on incumbents in the tablet and TV set-top box markets, and the financial rewards for breaking out of the content ecosystem imposed by other providers are too great to ignore.
58702803
submission
itwbennett writes:
According to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, people who text and drive increase their chances of 'safety-critical events' by a multiple of 23.2. And new research is constantly rolling out, showing the same thing: 'We can't handle the visual, manual, and cognitive commitment of using a phone while driving,' writes blogger Kevin Purdy. What's needed, Purdy suggests, isn't more laws that will go ignored, but phones that know enough to stop giving us the distractions we ask them for:I think the next good phone, the next phone that makes some variant of the claim that it "Fits the way you live," needs to know that we don't know what is good for us when it comes to driving. We want to be entertained and shown new things while doing the often mundane or stressful task of driving. More specifically, those phones should know when we are driving, quiet or otherwise obscure updates from most apps, and be able to offer their most basic functions without needing to turn on a screen or type a single letter.
58691261
submission
jfruh writes:
While much criticism and praise for Apple comes with its engagement with the larger world — politics, charity, labor practices, and so on — there hasn't been much discussion of how Apple contributes to the open source and standards communities of the tech world. It turns out the world's most valuable company doesn't give back much. Despite widespread reliance on open source software, Apple isn't a major corporate sponsor of any open source proejcts — for instance, Microsoft gives more to the Apache Foundation, despite selling a Web server that competes against Apache's free flagship product. Considering the fact that open source and open standards were all that kept Apple from extinction during the dark days of Microsoft dominance, you'd think they'd be more grateful.
58687999
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the intriguing angles of Facebook's multi-billion dollar acquisition of WhatsApp was in the realm of privacy: Facebook is a free service that makes all its money by selling user information and attention to advertisers and marketers, while WhatsApp is a paid service that makes extravagant claims about protecting the privacy of its users. Now the FTC is telling Facebook that it must make good on WhatsApp's current privacy promises. Doing otherwise would constitute a deceptive or unfair practice under the FTC Act.
58648115
submission
itwbennett writes:
When Jose Vildoza's father became the victime of ransomware, he launched his own investigation. Diving into CryptoDefense's code, he found its developers had made a crucial mistake: CryptoDefense used Microsoft's Data Protection API (application programming interface), a tool in the Windows operating system to encrypt a user's data, which stored a copy of the encryption keys on the affected computer. Vildoza and researcher, Fabian Wosar of the Austrian security company Emsisoft, collaborated on a utility called the Emsisoft Decrypter that could recover the encrypted keys. In mid-March Vildoza had launched a blog chronicling his investigation, purposely not revealing the mistake CryptoDefense's authors had made. But Symantec then published a blog post on March 31 detailing the error.
58607571
submission
itwbennett writes:
Intel and SGI have built a proof-of-concept supercomputer that's kept cool using a fluid developed by 3M called Novec that is already used in fire suppression systems. The technology, which could replace fans and eliminate the need to use tons of municipal water to cool data centers, has the potential to slash data-center energy bills by more than 90 percent, said Michael Patterson, senior power and thermal architect at Intel. But there are several challenges, including the need to design new motherboards and servers.
58563265
submission
jfruh writes:
Graphene, a carbon-based crystalline lattice that is extremely strong, lightweight, and an excellent conductor of electricity and heat, is coveted as a potential base for semiconductor chip design, and Samsung, working with the Sungkyungkwan University School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, has claimed a big jump towards that goal. With IBM also making progress in this realm, the days of silicon could actually be numbered.
58563111
submission
itwbennett writes:
On Tuesday, China's Ministry of Commerce gave conditional regulatory approval to Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's Devices & Services business. The $7.2 billion deal means that Microsoft could very soon produce its own smartphones using the Windows Phone operating system. In return, China is requiring Microsoft and Nokia to make promises on fair patent use, fearing that the proposed acquisition between the two companies could spell trouble for the nation's Android device makers.
58405589
submission
itwbennett writes:
Attackers exploited a vulnerability in a popular video-sharing site to hijack 22,000 browsers and launch a large-scale DDoS attack, according to researchers from Web security firm Incapsula. The attack happened Wednesday and was the result of a persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. The XSS flaw allowed attackers to create a new account with rogue JavaScript code injected into the img tag corresponding to its profile picture. 'As a result, every time the image was used on one of the the site's pages (e.g., in the comment section), the malicious code was also embedded inside, waiting to be executed by every future visitor to that page,' the Incapsula researchers said Thursday in a blog post.
58366573
submission
itwbennett writes:
Hackathons have stirred up their share of controversy — mostly around too-big prizes and the inevitable cheating that follows. But for some developers they also can be the ultimate job interview — not just a coding test, but an opportunity to show off your people skills. Take the case of the January 2014 GlobalHack contest in St. Louis that was initially attended by several hundred programmers. The story of the contest isn't who took away the top $50,000 prize but about the other participants who didn't finish in the money but came away with something else that is arguably more important.
58358647
submission
itwbennett writes:
In a new white paper based on an Internet survey of 'thousands of Americans', the consulting firm Endeavor Partners has concluded that wearables (at least in their current incarnation) may already be on their way out. The survey found that one-third of American consumers who have owned a wearable product stopped using it within six months. Meanwhile, eBay is rapidly filling with second-hand smartwatches: At the time of this writing, an eBay search turned up 2,465 results for 'Samsung Galaxy Gear'.
58352831
submission
jfruh writes:
Bitcoin has made many governments and regulators uncomfortable, and the Chinese government is responding to the challenge it poses with its usual lack of subtlety. Two Chinese bitcoin exchanges have found themselves cut off from the money economy, as Chinese banks, under pressure from the government, refuse to do business with them.
58321727
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the storylines of the rise of smartphones and tablets has been the collapse of Intel's near-monopolistic dominance of the chips that power everyday computing devices. The chipmaking giant isn't taking this all lying down, though, as it tries to fight its way into the mobile market using any means available, and the company's software chief Doug Fishe hinted at one troubling-sounding method: creating exclusive content that only works on Intel-powered gadgets. Fisher gave the example of more detailed backgrounds on games, but otherwise was short on details of what sort of content might be used in this program and how artists would be coaxed into providing it and locking it down.
58321407
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the things Tesla owners love about their cars is that you can connect your teslamotors.com account to a smartphone app that can remotely unlock the car's doors, locate it, close and open its roof, flash its lights or honk its horn. But considering how much control your account gives you, that account is far too easy to hack, says security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani. Among other problems, Tesla doesn't impose adequate complexity requirements on passwords, and doesn't lock the account after a certain number of failed attempts.
