Free Republic

Windows 10 is a potentially great upgrade – that’s not quite great yet.The new Microsoft operating system is an essential redesign. That alone makes it worth the upgrade, as I wrote last week. This week, however, I’m offering a reality check.After a week of constant use, I’ve found it to be buggy compared to Windows 8.1. While not surprising for a new operating system, the point is that some less-adventurous consumers may want to wait to upgrade. Windows 10 users have been documenting their challenges with the new Microsoft OS using the hashtag #Windows10Fail.I won’t go into the entire litany...

Microsoft's Windows 10's global usage share has quintupled since its July 29 launch, according to new data. Usage share, a measure of how active Windows 10 users have been on the Internet, stood at 3.2% at the end of Wednesday, data from analytics vendor StatCounter showed. That was a five-fold increase over the 0.6% logged by Windows 10 a week before, the first day Microsoft started serving the upgrade to members of its Insiders testing program. Wednesday's 3.2% was Windows 10's highest post-launch point so far, edging out the 3% milestone reached on Sunday, Aug. 2. In the following days,...

Why you shouldn't freak out about this week's scary-sounding Mac exploits Researchers document two OS X security flaws that shouldn't cause you to lose sleep, as severe as they sound. These cats aren't worried. Glenn Fleishman | @GlennF Senior Contributor, Macworld Aug 5, 2015 2:05 One set of researchers explains how a modification to your Macintosh’s boot-up firmware can persist undetectably and spread through peripherals to other computers. Another researcher’s work from a month ago is found in the wild, installing adware through a hidden escalation in user privileges. Both sound terrible, but neither is quite what it seems. De-escalate...

DETROIT, MI - A report in the Financial Times says cyber security researchers were able to hack into and gain control of a Tesla Model S and shut the vehicle down at a low speed. The electric car was going about five miles an hour when Marc Rogers, principal security researcher at Cloudfare, and Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer at Lookout, shut the car down, causing all of its screens to go black and the handbrake to come on.

Are you a Windows 10 convert responsible for young computer users? Be on your guard. Child-friendly Family Features from Windows 7 and 8 won’t be recognised or accepted in the new operating system. Rather, children using Windows 10 PCs are seen as standard users; no dedicated child-user account exists. That means any existing age-related website controls, app and game restrictions, PC time limits, plus your ability to view recent activity, won’t work on Windows 10. Adults must now create a completely new set of family settings through a long-winded procedure in Windows 10 that requires the child’s participation. Microsoft had...

Android Device Fragmentation is worse than ever—August 2015Source: OpenSignal Android devices come in all shapes and sizes and may run any one of more than a half-dozen active versions of Google’s operating system.This diversity is both a blessing and a curse, as OpenSignal reported Wednesday in its latest survey. On one hand, fragmentation gives app developers a wide audience to build for—far wider than Apple’s iOS. On the other, trying to develop an app that will run on the entire range of Android devices can be a nightmare. One striking finding in this year’s report is the increased fragmentation of...

Researchers at MIT and Google have created an algorithm that uses multiple images taken from different angles to separate foreground obstacles from the subject that's in the background — anything from your favorite view or a sign in a window on a bright day.

With Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) share price already down 15% from its high in April, numerous business articles have announced that Apple is in a "correction". By the usual definition, corrections occur to adjust for overvaluation of a stock. Even at its all-time high, Apple wasn't overvalued, making this a false correction.(summary of the article's major points which parallel the points I've made on FreeRepublic — Swordmaker) Disappointing iPhone sales: How disappointed can you be over a 35% y/y increase in unit sales? Declining market share in China: The focus on sequential changes in product shipment or market share has often been...

Microsoft would never say that Sway, its new presentation app that you can download starting today, is going to kill its much-maligned cash cow PowerPoint. So I will: Microsoft Sway is a PowerPoint killer. Today, Sway goes into general availability, meaning that users of Office 365 in business and education can get it. Plus, Microsoft is releasing the official Sway app for Windows 10, alongside an update to all versions of the tool. And it's still free for consumers. Technically, you've been able to get Sway since last October when a preview version came out. At the time, Business Insider...

The world's most valuable public company saw its stock price drop for a fifth straight day on Tuesday Apple shares are down 14 percent since closing at a record $133 in February That loss breaks down to $113.4billion in paper wealth iPhone sales were not as good as some analysts predicted, and the lukewarm forecast for the current period is causing the drop World's most valuable public company saw its stock price drop for a fifth straight day on Tuesday, falling as much as $5.19 or 4.4 percent, to $113.25 as investors fretted over China's economy and whether Apple can...

Drones and driverless tractors – is this the future of farming? With more than half of the British countryside being managed by precision farming methods, is the new agricultural revolution gathering pace? Peter Moore Monday 20 July 2015 07.30 BST Last modified on Monday 20 July 2015 07.33 BST On 7 July 1964 the Daily Express published a satirical cartoon, a send-up of Britain’s farming community as it struggled to adapt from its old, rustic world to a new, technological one. The cartoon was set at a Royal Show at a point in the near future. One side of the...

The terms Deep Web, Dark Web and darknet have begun piercing the bubble of popular culture. They’re used continuously in shows like CBS’ “CSI: Cyber” and “Mr. Robot” on the USA Network. While not quite as popular as terms like malware, give them some time and they’ll get there eventually. The Deep Web is typically referenced as a place where criminals meet and sell various illegal wares first and foremost. My previous report, “Dangers of the Deep, Dark Web,” demonstrates this is indeed true. It is, however, also a place from which cybercriminals issue attacks. Onions Have Layers One very...

The new EcoTank printers cost more up front but can churn for years without running dry Epson's new printers change the ink-onomics of your home office. WSJ's Wilson Rothman explains why paying more will make your ink-cartridge hassles disappear. It was after midnight, and I was facing a ticking-clock real estate transaction. All I had to do was print 15 pages of black-and-white contract, sign it and fax it back. Only halfway through, my printer ran out of ink—magenta ink! Thus began a chain reaction culminating in my nearly throwing the printer out the window. I ended up at Kinko’s....

Physicists say there is a possibility that our world is merely a simulation They claim there may be evidence of this if only we know where to look For instance, some of the laws of physics may not quite add up, they say The year is 2050 and super-intelligent robots have taken over the planet. Except you have no idea, because you're living in a computer simulation, depicting what life was like in 2015. Everything you see and touch right now has been created by robotic overlords who are using humanity as playthings in their virtual game. That's the radical...

Much has already been said about the new mullet watch by Nico Gerard. The watch, called the Pinnacle, costs $9,200 and is essentially a metal band with two watches attached to it. On one side you have an automatic three-handed “chronograph” with Swiss movement and, on the other side, an Apple Watch. The entire thing is so ludicrous that I suspect someone in Switzerland is trolling us all today but, on the other hand, it is completely indicative of why Switzerland is losing the battle for our wrists.But while knee-jerk assessments are certainly fun, I’d like to make a more...

Researchers have spotted a wave of attacks targeting Macbook users.Hackers are exploiting a critical vulnerability in Apple’s OS X operating system to install malware on Macbooks.Malwarebytes Apple security expert Thomas Reed reported uncovering the attacks in a threat advisory.The vulnerability was uncovered by security researcher Stefan Esser at the end of July. It relates to the way Apple OS X version 10.10 logs software errors and can be used by hackers to forcibly install software on Macbooks.Reed said the current attacks targeting the flaw install a variety of malicious programs. These include the VSearch and Genio adwares and MacKeeper junkware.Adware...

Researchers Trammel Hudson and Xeno Kovah have built a self-replicating Apple firmware malware that can infect peripherals to spread to new computers. The ThunderStrike 2 malware is the second iteration of the attack forged earlier this year and liberates the requirement for attackers to have physical access to machines. Hudson says while his proof of concept is deliberately noisy, displaying a logo during boot, a real attack could be made surreptitious through virtualisation or system management mode."Thunderstrike 2 starts with a local root privilege exploit that can load a kernel module to give it access to raw memory [and] can...

<p>First things first. “HitchBOT,” for all practical purposes, was a garbage can with an iPhone in it.</p>

Consider this article a thought experiment. Rather than exploring individual vulnerabilities or examining named exploits, let's explore what aspects of modern technology define our Information Age, and what might happen if some of those relied-upon technologies were no longer available to us. For the purpose of our exploration, we will assume that cyberwar doesn't lead to a nuclear or biological war, that the effects resulting from the conflict remain within the bounds of digital means of destruction rather than traditional NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) warfare.

Microsoft advises you to sweat it out MICROSOFT is warning customers that their free upgrade to Windows 10 may complete but not be activated for several days. A statement on the company website advises customers to "wait a few days and try again or just leave it and let it activate on its own. The activation servers might be overwhelmed." The advice is hollow succour for those who, perhaps less tech-savvy, want the reassurance of knowing that they definitely have a working Windows. Microsoft revealed just a day after the launch of Windows 10 that the OS has already been...