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The Internet is lighting up with warnings about Superfish, an adware program that came preinstalled on many Lenovo laptops in the past six months. Like a lot of the bloatware that comes on new computers, Superfish exists to help push advertising, not to serve any real consumer need. That would be annoying enough, but Superfish seriously undermines the user's safety, according to many security experts. Superfish is a piece of third-party software that Lenovo installed to, as it says in its apology to consumers, “enhance the shopping experience.” That means it's meant to help advertisers target potential customers. But security...

After years of fence-sitting, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has come down strongly in favor of Net neutrality, which in some sense must mean the equal treatment of all Internet data packets. The FCC plans to vote on a proposal on 26 February. -snip- “There’s a lot of complexity here at a technical level that is absolutely lost in the policy conversations,” says Fred Baker, a distinguished engineering fellow at Cisco Systems and former chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force. Getting the technology right is crucial for the future of the Net. -snip- Engineers decided that the best way to...

President Obama talked a surprising amount of common sense on his trip last week to Silicon Valley, where he spoke at a "cybersecurity" gathering at Stanford University. But he undermined some noteworthy remarks about strong encryption--we need it, he said--with the kind of fear-monger hedging that has become almost every politician's refuge from telling the hard truth.... The first was Obama's clear statement that he, personally, favors ubiquitous strong encryption. He thinks everyone should use it but hedges that by saying law enforcement needs a way to break into communications and data.... [W]e need leaders who'll tell the truth--that we...

Cyberspace is the new “Wild West,” President Barack Obama said Friday, with everyone looking to the government to be the sheriff. But he told the private sector it must do more to stop cyber attacks aimed at the U.S. every day. “Everybody is online, and everybody is vulnerable,” Obama said during a White House cybersecurity summit at Stanford University, just miles from Google, Facebook, Intel and other internet giants. “The business leaders here want their privacy and their children protected, just like the consumer and privacy advocates here want America to keep leading the world in technology and be safe...

Apple is recruiting experts in automotive technology and vehicle design to work at a new top-secret research lab, said several people familiar with the company, pointing to ambitions that go beyond the dashboard. Dozens of Apple employees, led by experienced managers from its iPhone unit, are researching automotive products at a confidential Silicon Valley location outside the company’s Cupertino campus, the people said. Sir Jonathan Ive’s team of Apple designers has held regular meetings with automotive executives and engineers in recent months, in some cases trying to hire them. Recent recruits to Apple’s team include the head of Mercedes-Benz’s Silicon...

Newsweek’s Twitter account was hacked Tuesday morning by a group describing itself as “CyberCaliphate,” the latest in a series of high-profile hacks by apparent cyber jihadists. During the 14-minute hack, the group praised “cyber jihad” and threatened Michelle Obama and her family. “Bloody #Valentine’s Day Michelle Obama! We’re watching you, your girls, and your husband!” it tweeted, via the @Newsweek account. […] The hackers briefly changed the account’s profile picture and banner to an image of a masked man and the black standard that is the symbol of the terror organization. The profile also bore the message “Je suIS IS.”...

Why worry about Big Brother? It's your big Samsung TV that's watching you. Oh, and listening to you. That seems to be the conclusion from reading the privacy small print offered by the company. (Samsung's motto: TV has never been this smart.) It concerns the voice-recognition feature, vital for everyone who finds pressing a few buttons on their remote far too tiresome. The wording, first spotted by the Daily Beast, first informs you that the company may "capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features." This...

AUSTIN — Elon Musk is the successful inventor who played a role in the creation of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. In 2013, he made national headlines by proposing an air-tube transit system. Called Hyperloop, it was essentially a futuristic-looking train that traveled through a pressurized tube similar the ones you use at the drive-through of your local bank. As described by CNN, the Hyperloop would be powered by “a series of electric motors.” Solar panels on the top of the tube would provide the energy necessary to keep things moving. While the concept may sound bizarre, it’s believed to...

A Chinese drone maker which created the small quadcopter that recently crashed on White House grounds said Wednesday it is updating its drones to prohibit flight over the US capital.

Sen. Rand Paul yesterday introduced S. 2644, the FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act, which would protect the rights of citizens and restore the Fifth Amendment’s role in seizing property without due process of law. Under current law, law enforcement agencies may take property suspected of involvement in crime without ever charging, let alone convicting, the property owner. In addition, state agencies routinely use federal asset forfeiture laws; ignoring state regulations to confiscate and receive financial proceeds from forfeited property.

I’ve already spoken about one of the plays made by Apple and Tim Cook to damage Android. This was the push to 64-bit computing in the iPhone 5S. As that smartphone was announced, the roadmaps for Android devices did not have 64-bit computing planned in the near future. Manufacturers and component suppliers were bounced into making bold claims that they would join Apple in the 64-bit world. They had no choice but to do this. Android’s success was built around the promise of being faster, better, and stronger than its rival OS. If Apple was 64-bit, Android had to be...

Today, it was announced that the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory  (ORNL) in Tennessee is partnering with Canadian nuclear company Terrestrial Energy Inc. (TEI) to assist with TEI’s new Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR). The engineering blueprint stage for this GenIV reactor should be reached in two years. The reactor should come online in less than ten.

Apple delivered the greatest earnings report in history on Tuesday. That's not hyperbole. Apple earned $18 billion in net income over the three-month period of October to December 2014. That's more than any other company has ever earned over a three-month span. Apple earned those mind-melting profits thanks mostly to the iPhone, which is an incredible business. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, up 46% from the year prior. The iPhone generated $51 billion in revenue, giving each iPhone an average selling price of $687.

Sony announced on Wednesday that it will be shutting down its Music Unlimited on-demand streaming music service ahead of launching Spotify on PlayStation Music. Music Unlimited will shut down in all 19 countries it operated on March 29, 2015, with nearly all of the countries among the 41 regions that Spotify for PlayStation Music will be available upon launch, including the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Music Unlimited launched in December 2010 on PlayStation Network in several countries worldwide, and the service was later extended to iPhone [Direct Link], Android, PlayStation Vita and other devices and platforms. In February...

Forget the post-PC era. The Mac just continues to get bigger. For its fiscal 2015 first quarter that ended Dec. 27, 2014, Apple sold 5.5 million Macs. That’s up 9% year-over-year and up 14% from the previous quarter and brought in revenue of US$6.9 billion. Apple has gained market share verses Windows PCs in all quarters since 2005 but one. The Mac has surpassed overall PC growth for 34 of the last 35 quarters.The Mac’s unit share of the worldwide PC market has grown from 2.1% in 2005 to 5.5% in 2013. Apple’s U.S. market share is somewhere between 10%...

A new procedure can quickly and efficiently increase the length of human telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that are linked to aging and disease, according to scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Treated cells behave as if they are much younger than untreated cells, multiplying with abandon in the laboratory dish rather than stagnating or dying. The procedure, which involves the use of a modified type of RNA, will improve the ability of researchers to generate large numbers of cells for study or drug development, the scientists say. Skin cells with telomeres lengthened by...

A top EU official wants internet and telecommunication companies to hand over encryption keys to police and spy agencies as part of a wider crackdown on terrorism. The EU’s counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, in a document leaked by London-based civil liberties group Statewatch, says the European Commission should come up with rules that require the firms to help national governments snoop on possible suspects. “Since the Snowden revelations, internet and telecommunications companies have started to use often decentralized encryption, which increasingly makes lawful interception by the relevant national authorities technically difficult or even impossible,” notes de Kerchove in the...

BlackBerry's CEO John Chen wants companies to stop "discriminatory practices" against BlackBerry by not allowing them to use certain apps. Chen called out Apple and Netflix in a blog post about net neutrality and what he called a "two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem" where developers create apps only for iOS and Android devices. "Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple's iMessage messaging service," he wrote. Apple's iMessage service is only available to customers using the company's ecosystem of devices. Calling out Netflix, Chen said...

At Microsoft’s Windows 10 event today, the company shared that all Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users will be able to upgrade to Windows 10, for free. Microsoft said that the free upgrade will be valid for the first year immediately after the release. Those on Windows Phone 8.1 will also get the update. Terry Myerson, VP of Windows at Microsoft said that the company wanted to make it a “seamless upgrade” for those users when Windows 10 is released.

Despite predictions to the contrary, it seem there is still plenty of life left in the PC market. PC shipments across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) reached 25.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014, a two percent increase on the same quarter a year ago, according to calculations by IDC. It said strong consumer demand during the holiday season meant the PC market racked up a third consecutive quarter of growth - albeit modest and patchy. PC sales across the region grew by 5.5 percent across the year, with 93.3 million PCs shipped. But the researchers...