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[T]he Indian intelligence agencies could be looking to acquire know-how not just target-specific, but the ability to throw a sweeping net of surveillance over a large number mobile phones. ... This also means the agencies could be looking to side-step the need to get written permission of the Union home secretary before carrying out any interception. Every single case of telephone interception can be done only with the written permission of the home secretary at the Centre or his counterpart in a state.... ... In an email sent to Maharashtra police, one of its senior officials claims that their solution,...

Microsoft has released a new preview build of Windows 10 Mobile, the version of the new OS for phones, and it has the same build number as the current version for desktop PCs. That doesn't mean it's equally close to release, though. While Microsoft has committed to a July 29 release date for the PC version, it has made no promises about the mobile version. And with good reason; Windows 10 Mobile is still in much rougher shape than the desktop OS. Build 10166 of the PC version of Windows 10, released on Thursday, was mostly about "bug fixing and...

A few years ago, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology demonstrated that graphene could be used to cool silicon-based electronics. “But the methods that have been in place so far have presented the researchers with problems,” explained professor Johan Liu of Chalmers University of Tech. “It has become evident that those methods cannot be used to rid electronic devices off great amounts of heat [sic], because they have consisted only of a few layers of thermal conductive atoms.” According to Liu and colleagues, adding additional layers of graphene to the surface leads to less adhesion. The researchers have overcome this...

The apps and games you use every day don't exist in a vacuum — someone, somewhere, wrote the code. That also goes for the underlying platforms and hardware that those apps run on. And the web. And the entire Internet itself. Even the programming languages that people use to build this stuff first had to be written by somebody else. So who's at the top of the programming pyramid? 1) Linus Torvalds created Linux, a free operating system, in his dorm room at the University of Helsinki. Today, Linux is the operating system of choice for data centers, supercomputers, and...

Sales of Apple’s Mac hardware have fallen by 2.5 percent in the United States, even though its market share actually increased during the same period. This is because overall the PC industry contracted between this time last year and now, with a 5.8 percent dip in overall sales. While not official, this data is based on shipping information compiled by Gartner (via Macrumors). It suggests that Apple managed to ship 1.92 million PCs throughout the second quarter of 2015, compared with 1.97 million during the same period in 2014. Even so, its market share increased from 12.3 percent to 12.7...

Retina MacBook Pro owners plagued by supposed screen coating damage, call on Apple to take action A small cadre of Retina MacBook Pro owners are calling for Apple to replace or repair their laptops after discovering what appears to be irreparable damage to an antireflective screen coating layer, a problem the group has dubbed "staingate." Source: Staingate.org Staingate problems manifest in splotches, streaks and other surface anomalies attributed to faults in the antireflective coating applied to a Retina MacBook's display surface. The origin of this "staining" is unknown, though some have speculated a combination of high humidity and over cleaning...

WHEN APPLE FAILS AT UX DESIGN AND FASHION DESIGN, DO WE STILL CALL IT GOOD DESIGN? The Apple Watch, despite years of hype before it was even announced, appears to be flopping after all. It wasn’t a good sign when Apple announced shortly before the Watch release that they weren’t going to be breaking out sales numbers. Now, a new report from third-party analysts Slice Intelligence not only show that Apple Watch sales are down 90% since launch—a big deal, since it implies early adopters aren't regaling more cautious buyers with glowing word-of-mouth—but also that Fitbit is outselling Apple in...

Reddit's embattled interim CEO, Ellen Pao, has stepped down from her lead position at the popular social media site, the website announced Friday. "In my eight months as reddit’s CEO, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly on reddit. The good has been off-the-wall inspiring, and the ugly made me doubt humanity," Pao wrote in a post on the site. "I just want to remind everyone that I am just another human; I have a family, and I have feelings. Everyone attacked on reddit is just another person like you and me. When people make something up to...

Reddit interim CEO Ellen Pao has resigned from the company in the wake of an insurrection last week in which moderators shut down many of the site's most popular sections following the still-unexplained dismissal of a popular figure in the site's r/IAmA section. Reddit made the announcement on its website and said Steve Huffman, the founder and original reddit CEO, is returning to the helm. "We are thankful for Ellen's many contributions to reddit and the technology industry generally," the statement said. "She brought focus to chaos, recruited a world-class team of executives, and drove growth. She brought a face...

The title will give the multiplayer-focused zombie battles a 1940s noir-inspired makeover, complete with femme fatales and dapper outfits. Playable characters will include a magician, a femme fatale, a cop and a boxer. If a trailer is any indication, look for period-specific burlesque clubs amid all the supernatural activity and semi-automatic gunfire. ... If your gaming room needs some more home appliances, a limited edition set of "Black Ops 3" will come complete with a working mini-fridge branded after the game's fictional power-boosting soda Juggernog. ... The core game will be set in 2065 after “Blacks Ops 2,” and take...

Lost phone service for days and internet has not returned for a month now. It's area wide and I believe it was a cyber attack. I now have a new internet provider that does not provide an e-mail address. Recommendations & reviews from Freepers for an e-mail service would be appreciated. Oh and I am now logged on:)

Continuing to buck trends, Mac sales rose 16.1 percent year-over-year in the June quarter even as the PC industry as a whole shrank 11.8 percent, according to new estimates published on Thursday by research firm IDC. Source: IDC Apple is believed to have sold just under 5.14 million computers, putting it in fourth place under leaders Lenovo, HP, and Dell. Those companies sold 13.44 million, 12.25 million, and 9.56 million units respectively. Below Apple were Acer and ASUS, both roughly at 4.33 million, with a slight edge given to Acer. In all, IDC estimates that some 66.14 million computers were...

Disruptive technology doesn't come along often, and is often initially dismissed because it's easy to ignore something you've lived an entire life without. But every once in a while a bit of tech comes along that makes it easier to do what you're already doing.This is the Apple Watch.I wasn't always sold on the concept. Aside from issues related to appearance/style, functionality, personalization, fitness tracking, and useful interaction methods, my big concern was this: What real-world problem would an Apple watch solve? Knowing the obstacles was one thing; solving those problems was something else entirely. I was skeptical.The engineers at...

Two heads are better than one, and three monkey brains can control an avatar better than any single monkey. For the first time, a team has networked the brains of multiple animals to form a living computer that can perform tasks and solve problems. If human brains could be similarly connected, it might give us superhuman problem-solving abilities, and allow us to communicate abstract thoughts and experiences. "It is really exciting," says Iyad Rahwan at the Masdar Institute in Dubai, UAE, who was not involved in the work. "It will change the way humans cooperate." The work, published today, is...

Widely publicized study data reported by clickbait sites as evidence that Apple Watch sales have "plunged" and "are tanking" actually shows something completely different: that Apple has launched the most successful smartwatch product by a vast margin. Apple hasn't yet given any figures on Apple Watch sales (after noting last year that it would not be publishing unit sales of the new device in its quarterly earnings reports), but Slice Intelligence compiled some questionable figures from "e-receipt" data it gleaned from a large group of consumers who volunteer to share their purchasing information. Slice obtains much of its consumer data...

It’s the moment robot fan boys have been waiting for. American firm MegaBots, which builds giant fighting robots, is gearing up for an epic battle against a creation from its Japanese rival Suidobashi Heavy Industry. San Francisco Bay area-based MegaBots threw down the gauntlet in a YouTube video last month, pitting its 12,000-pound Mark II robot against Suidobashi’s Kuratas machine. “You have a giant robot, we have a giant robot - we have a duty to the science fiction lovers of this world to fight them to the death,” growled MegaBots, in a YouTube post accompanying the video. “Prepare yourselves,...

Adobe Systems Inc. says its plans to issue a patch on Wednesday to fix a zero-day vulnerability in its Flash Player software that is reportedly being exploited in active attacks.

You never want to end up on a list of the most bizarre sports injuries, but San Antonio Spurs forward Matt Bonner may have earned a spot with his tennis elbow problems last season. In a great interview with the Concord Monitor, Bonner revealed that the elbow pain in his non-shooting arm was a huge distraction. “You’re about to get an exclusive here,” Bonner said. “I hate to make excuses, I was raised to never make excuses, but I went through a two-and-a-half month stretch where I had really bad tennis elbow, and during that stretch it made it so...

Every time I've looked at Windows 10, it hasn't been long before I've run away screaming. As recently as May the ISO was nowhere near ready for prime time. Testing Windows 10 seemed to me like volunteering to be an unpaid drug trial guinea pig – it would be painful and could potentially give you horrible side effects, and you wouldn't even have an envelope of cash at the end to show for it. Keeping my distance from the very bleeding edge betas gives me some advantages, though. Like a sense of perspective. While bloggers and fanbois get excited over...

Sometimes, in order to truly appreciate life with modern day conveniences, we have to be reminded of what life was like before them. As an experiment for the last week, I decided to live without the thoroughly modern convenience of the Apple Watch. I was lucky enough to be included in the first group of folks outside of Apple to get an Apple Watch. I’ve been wearing the watch all day, every day since April 1st. Here, I shared my thoughts after my first week. Since April 1st, I have deeply integrated the Apple Watch into my everyday life. I...