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Apple instructs users on how to recover from a crash Softpedia was among the first to report a couple of days ago that a newly discovered iOS bug in the Messages app will crash or reboot any iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch device that receives a specially crafted text message.We have also told our users how to prevent their iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch devices from getting crashed by the nasty Messages bug in the iOS 8 or later mobile operating system from Apple.On May 27, WSJ reported immediately after talking with Apple representatives that the Cupertino company is aware...

Hot on the heels of news that OS X topped the vulnerabilities charts in April comes Dr. Web's virus activity review for May which shows increasing quantities of adware and unwanted applications targeting the Apple operating system. The company reports several programs aimed at OS X that either install adware, install other applications or inject JavaScript code into webpages. Adware.Mac.InstallCore.1 cannot only install unwanted programs on the user's computer but also change the browser home page and the search engine used by default. The program incorporates debugging functions too -- once launched, it scans the system for the presence of...

Check out the free Pluto Safari app now available from the developers that brought us the award winning astronomy app ‘SkySafari 4.’ It is available in both iOS and Android. The fully interactive Pluto Safari provides a countdown in time and distance for when New Horizons will reach Pluto on July 14, 2015. It will also give you the latest position of New Horizons and Pluto, providing 3-D views of the Solar System and the Pluto system, as well as 3-D models of the spacecraft. By using the Time Controls, you can run through the mission, backwards or forwards, to...

In Unix, what do some obscurely named commands stand for? A list of some of the more obscurely named Unix commands follows: awkAho, Weinberger, and Kernighan The awk scripting language was named by its authors, Al Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan. For more, see What is awk, and how do I use it?grepGlobal regular expression print The grep command comes from the command used by the ed program (a simple and venerable Unix text editor) to print all lines matching a certain pattern: g/re/p For more, see What is grep, and how do I use it?fgrepFixed grep The...

I might be wrong, but I get the impression that my Windows friends — which would be most of the people I see on a daily basis — think of Linux as this incredibly geeky system from another planet. I think most of them don’t understand why I use it and why I don’t just stay in the known world — which to them would be Windows. Paradoxically, however, they do get why some folks use Macs.Quite simply, most of us use desktop Linux because it’s superior to all other brands, including Windows and OS X — even including Unix...

I might be wrong, but I get the impression that my Windows friends — which would be most of the people I see on a daily basis — think of Linux as this incredibly geeky system from another planet. I think most of them don’t understand why I use it and why I don’t just stay in the known world — which to them would be Windows. Paradoxically, however, they do get why some folks use Macs.Quite simply, most of us use desktop Linux because it’s superior to all other brands, including Windows and OS X — even including Unix...

Apple is outraged about the conduct of Michael Bromwich, who was assigned to investigate its antitrust practices. On Thursday, the iPhone maker got some vindication. A New York appeals court had harsh words for the lawyer assigned to monitor Apple’s compliance with an antitrust program, which was imposed on the company in the wake of a price-fixing conspiracy between Apple AAPL -0.14% and five book publishers. In a ruling published on Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the conduct of the monitor, Michael Bromwich, gave “pause” and was “the opposite of best practice” but nonetheless refused to...

SAN FRANCISCO — Google has seen the future, and it is littered with cardboard boxes. At its Google I/O developer conference here on Thursday, the search giant announced several programs that aim to put its virtual reality viewer, called Cardboard, at the center of a growing online world in which people can use their smartphone and YouTube to watch videos rendered in 3-D.

I need some advice. I want to get "hands free" use of my iPhone in my 2003 Honda Accord. It's a 32 GB iPhone 4, NOT 4s. The car has a "cigarette lighter" power source, but DOES NOT HAVE Aux In. I'd like to hear the phone over the car's speakers (AM/FM/CD) with NO Aux In. I don't care about playing music from my iPhone. If it comes with whatever I buy, that's fine, but I really only care about using the phone hands free. I would strongly prefer a solution that does not require anyone to install anything, beyond...

Apple CEO Tim Cook with IBM CEO Ginni Rometty After inking a deal with Apple to push iOS devices and enterprise apps to its customers, IBM today started offering all employees Macs for the first time. We’ve seen the official IBM notice, and several IBM employees on Twitter are praising the decision after years of PC hell: John Collins (@johncollins2014) May 28, 2015 Benefits of #IBM #Apple partnership. Employees can now choose between MAC or PC. #betterwaytowork In a memo to employees, IBM notes that starting today all employees (not just some select developers like in the past) can...

The elephants in the room lumber about, undisturbed by politicians or people of vision. The hard issues of the economy are well known. Politicians, bureaucracies, CEOs and trade union leaders have dealt the the issues of productivity, unemployment, competition from east and west, the collapse of industries through the decades of the 20th, and now the 21st, centuries. Yet these are harder now. Intelligent systems, robotic manufacturing, driverless vehicles, online services, all carve deep into established trades. In the post-war decades, every time a new technology came along, the feared bonfire of jobs didn’t happen — or only briefly and...

My old computer died; my new computer came without any extras (I thought I would install them from my backups). Problem is, my Office 2013 came with my old computer and I bought the product key to activate it. So now I have the product key and no Office to activate. Where can I go to download it? Funny replies like "put it in the trash and go to the Apple store for a real computer" will get an appreciative chuckle, but not much more :)

Thomas Edison is usually thought of as the greatest inventor ever, bringing the automatic telegraph, the phonograph, and alkaline battery into the world. His Menlo Park, New Jersey, lab was so productive that he promised "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so." All together, he had 2,332 patents to his name. But according to Stephen Fry at the Telegraph, Apple chief design officer Jony Ive has been way more prolific than Edison. You — and your friends and family — live their lives surrounded by things his inventive hands have touched. The...

A sizable Internet advertising campaign is planned to alert people to a proposed class-action settlement over MacKeeper, a security program for Macs accused of deceptive practices. MacKeeper’s developer, ZeoBit, was sued in May 2014 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Filed on behalf of Pennsylvania resident Holly Yencha, the class-action suit alleges MacKeeper was deceptively marketed and did not fully function as advertised. Under a proposed settlement, ZeoBit—a company started in Ukraine but now based in California—will put $2 million into a fund to reimburse customers but admit no fault, which is customary in class-action settlements....

In 1983, when I started the free software movement, malware was so rare that each case was shocking and scandalous. Now it’s normal. To be sure, I am not talking about viruses. Malware is the name for a program designed to mistreat its users. Viruses typically are malicious, but software products and software preinstalled in products can also be malicious – and often are, when not free/libre. In 1983, the software field had become dominated by proprietary (ie nonfree) programs, and users were forbidden to change or redistribute them. I developed the GNU operating system, which is often called Linux,...

Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage through a popular vote last week, prompting emotional celebrations, outpourings of support and, yes, a little bit of hate. The Westboro Baptist Church already stumbled over an attempted diss of the Irish referendum, mistakenly chastising the Ivory Coast instead. But when they tried to take on J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author had nothing but ire for the hate-mongers ..."I don't care about WBC. I think it's important that scared gay kids who aren't out yet see hate speech challenged."...

A nasty computer bug in Apple’s iOS allows anyone who sends an iPhone a certain text message — with specific Latin and Arabic characters — to shut it down. The worst part? You don’t even need to open the text message. Your device just needs to receive it. That means anyone can pull off this prank — and anyone whose mobile number is known by someone else is susceptible

If you search the Loudoun County Public Library website for Ann's book, "!Adios, America!" you come up with NOTHING. No combination of those words will bring you to her book. Search by author brings you to her book, UNDER THE TITLE "OFFENSIVE" Curious, yes?

...This month, painter and photographer Richard Prince reminded us that what you post is public, and given the flexibility of copyright laws, can be shared — and sold — for anyone to see. As a part of the Frieze Art Fair in New York, Prince displayed giant screenshots of other people’s Instagram photos without warning or permission. The collection, “New Portraits,” is primarily made up of pictures of women, many in sexually charged poses. They are not paintings, but screenshots that have been enlarged to 6-foot-tall inkjet prints. According to Vulture, nearly every piece sold for $90,000 each. How is...

What would you say if I told you I could get your Social Security Number if you gave me your name and birth date? And sometimes I don't even need your birth day. How easy is it? How many people know your name and birth date? I imagine quite a few. And if you have your birth date available on Facebook, LinkedIn or any number of other services online which ask for and publicly display your birth date then A LOT more people have your birth date. The second half of the equation is finding an online service which you...