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For years, people have wondered if Google would merge its Android and Chrome operating systems, and the company has steadfastly held to them important but distinct pieces of its strategy. That might be changing: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google has been working for two years to merge Chrome OS and Android.

Google will fold its Chrome operating system used in personal computers into the Android mobile OS, according to The Wall Street Journal. Beginning in 2017, Google will only have a single operating system on the market, with Android featured on tablets, smartphones, and notebook computers. Google will show an early version of the new unified Android OS next year, The WSJ said, citing anonymous sources. The move should help unify Google's software efforts and make its platform more appealing to third-party software developers. Until now Google has maintained a clear delineation between its two operating systems, The Chrome OS, based...

Ars Technica UK published an article that might be of interest to those of you considering purchasing or already owning a Tablet. In summary, and in comparison with other similar tablets the Fire tablet comes out surprisingly well.

Apple's Siri will listen to anyone — even hackers. French researchers have discovered a way to remotely gain access to Siri and Google Now on iOS and Android, respectively. The research team from ANSSI — a French government agency specializing in information security — were then able to control the intelligent personal assistants by using headphones with built-in microphones as antennas. Hackers could use radio waves transmitted from the antenna of the headphones to eavesdrop on private conversations, send the device browser to a malware site or shoot spam and phishing messages through email and social media sites — such...

Who is getting what, and when — ANDROID PING!Android Ping! If you want on or off the Android Ping List, Freepmail me.

Researchers have discovered a second set of serious vulnerabilities in Google's Android mobile operating system, leaving over a billion new and old devices open to attack. Dubbed Stagefright 2.0, the newly discovered vulnerabilities stem from two flaws in how Android handles audio and video files. It was found by Joshua Drake of security vendor Zimperium, who also discovered the original Stagefright vulnerability affecting just under a billion Android devices in July this year. The first Stagefright flaw in the Android media processing software library allowed attackers to send a specially crafted multimedia messaging service (MMS) missive which, when received in...

Analysts and industry insiders predict that Apple will unveil updated iPhones along with an Apple TV revamp that may signal a push into the online television streaming sector, dominated by Netflix.

A malicious Android app that held people to ransom has been found by US security firm Zscaler. Adult Player appeared to offer pornography, but secretly took pictures of users with the phone's front-facing camera. It then locked the user's device and displayed a demand for $500 (£330) which was difficult to bypass. One security expert told the BBC that ransomware was a lucrative and growing area of cybercrime. Ransomware The Adult Player app demanded a payment of $500 (£330). Apps which demand money from people with a threat to release private information, or wipe a device, are known as ransomware....

Apple fanboys have often been accused of worshipping anything that comes from the brand, even though the rest of the world is saying it sucks or it’s nothing special anymore (I guess that’s why they call them fanboys). Some Dutch humor artists decided to test this out, pretending to show them the new iOS9, which is in fact just an Android OS loaded onto an iPhone, Predictably, the results were hilarious. Well, it would be funny if you were an Android fan or even user, not so much if you were one of said fanboys. What these humor artists did...

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech for the three months ending July 2015 shows continued market share losses for the Android OS across Europe’s five largest markets. Europe’s big five markets are Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.“Android market share in Europe was negatively impacted by challenging market dynamics in Germany, France, and Great Britain,” reported Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, in a statement. “In the U.S., performance was more of a level field between the two leading operating systems, as the iOS market share decline and Android share gain both decelerated.”“The...

Android users will now be able to use Microsoft’s digital assistant on their devices. After announcing in May, software giant Microsoft has officially rolled out the beta version of its voice-based assistant Cortana to Google’s popular platform. The Cortana app on Android will basically extend the digital assistant’s functionality across any device you carry and will do most of the things it does on your PC or Windows Phone. It will now allow Android users to easily search the web on-the-go, track flight details, set reminders, and also complete tasks across all the devices. You can now change the home...

The search giant unveils the name of its next update for smartphones and tablets. Some key features include a new mobile payments system and some tricks for the company's digital assistant, Google Now. Google's update for Android, its mobile software for smartphones and tablets, officially has a name: Marshmallow.The software, previously only referred to as Android M, was announced in May during Google I/O, the search giant's annual developer conference.The moniker follows Google's whimsical naming convention for new versions of Android. The company typically names its software updates alphabetically and after sweets. For example, the most current version of Android...

Faulty Stagefright patch and newly reported sandbox bypass leave users exposed. Link only due to copyright infringement issues from Ars Technica. Read more at the link. READ THE ARTICLE AT ARS TECHNICA: Android security on the ropes with one-two punch from researchers

Supported Android 5.1 Devices that might be updated to patch security issues and All Others that will not be updated. LINK TO THE ARTICLE: Editorial: Android's update strategy doesn't scale, and that's recipe for disaster. Read the article at the link above. . . cannot be posted on FreeRepublic due to copyright issues.

Android biometric banks more Fort Nope than Fort Knox. Four FireEye researchers have found a way to steal fingerprints from Android phones packing biometric sensors such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One Max.The team found a forehead-slapping flaw in HTC One Max in which fingerprints are stored as an image file (dbgraw.bmp) in a open "world readable" folder. "Any unprivileged processes or apps can steal user’s fingerprints by reading this file," the team says, adding that the images can be made into clear prints by adding some padding.It is one of four vulnerability scenarios in which biometric...

Check Point today released details about Certifi-gate, a previously unknown vulnerability in the architecture of popular mobile Remote Support Tools (RSTs) used by virtually every Android device manufacturer and network service provider. The Check Point mobile threat research team disclosed its findings at a briefing session at Black Hat USA 2015 in Las Vegas, NV this morning.What is Certifi-gate?Certifi-gate is a set of vulnerabilities in the authroization methods between mobile Remote Support Tool (mRST) apps and system-level plugs on a device. mRSTs allow remote personnel to offer customers personalized technical support for their devices by replicating a device’s screen and by...

Nvidia Corp. has recalled about 88,000 of its Shield tablets sold in the U.S. and Canada because the lithium-ion battery can overheat and become a fire hazard. The products recalled are, specifically, eight-inch tablets sold between July 2014 and July 2015 at places such as Amazon.com, BestBuy.com and GameStop. The model numbers, seen are on the left-side edge of the devices, P1761, P1761W and P1761WX. Nvidia didn’t say how many...

This is a link only due to copyright considerations, please read the article at the original website: New vulnerability can put Android phones into permanent vegetative state — Malformed video files can be used to crash half of all Android phones.

Excerpt per posting rules: In this attack, the target would not need to goof up — open an attachment or download a file that's corrupt. The malicious code would take over instantly, the moment you receive a text message.

Crossy Road on Mac with BlueStacks BlueStacks, a free desktop Android emulator that lets users play any mobile game or app on the big screen with a mouse and keyboard, has mostly been limited to PC users until today. But Mac users are about to get access to the software that the company says already has around 90 million users on Windows. While the app arrived briefly as an alpha release of Mac users back in 2012, this morning the company is launching an official release of the popular BlueStacks App Player software for Mac for the first time, allowing...