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WASHINGTON — Months before its technology became the centerpiece of Samsung’s new mobile payment system, LoopPay, a small Massachusetts subsidiary of the South Korean electronics giant, was the target of a sophisticated attack by a group of government-affiliated Chinese hackers. As early as March, the hackers — alternatively known as the Codoso Group or Sunshock Group by those who track them — had breached the computer network of LoopPay, a start-up in Burlington, Mass., that was acquired by Samsung in February for more than $250 million, according to several people briefed on the still-unfolding investigation, as well as Samsung and...

The Review: Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs is a lightning bolt of pure cinematic energy. Rather than lay out the complete career and/or life of its protagonist, the three-part film distils an essence, an interpretation from three pivotal moments, offering key snapshots that race along on a quickened pace and a propulsive moment that rarely lets up. Yes, it’s Aaron Sorkin doing Aaron Sorkin to the point of near self-parody, but the cocktail works. Filled with superb performances and lively exchanges with the hindsight of history in a bottle, Steve Jobs is genuinely electrifying entertainment that never lets...

Dongle Apps, a Belgian tech company, has introduced a new system which alerts a car owner if the vehicle’s driver is breaking the speed limit. The ‘Rookie Dongle’, founded by engineer Paul Janssens and automotive expert Christophe Neyt, connects to the vehicle’s on-board diagnostics (OBD II) port, used by garage staff to identify issues and assess speed, mileage and performance in all modern cars. Initially designed for parents and guardians to keep an eye on their young ones behind the wheel, the device employs internal GPS and mobile technologies to push real-time data to the cloud and send notifications to...

I just clicked on a thread titled 'Steve King Endorses Daniel Webster for Speaker of the House' posted by E. Pluribus Unum from Breitbart, and both times, my Avast virus protection popped up with 'threat detected'. Anyone else get this when clicking on this title? First time I've EVER gotten this while browsing FR.

If there's one message that stands out from Microsoft's big device day launch on Tuesday it's this: stop thinking about Redmond as the cheap option, because it wants to be seen as the premium brand. For years Microsoft has sold itself as the dominant ecosystem for computing that won't cost you too much. The device day focus, however, shows that Microsoft is intent on going after the big spenders in the IT industry. Take the Surface Book, for example. Again and again Microsoft hammered the message that this was the ultimate laptop, with no expense spared. That's reflected in the...

Woman could face jail on defamation charges: lawyer A Saudi woman could be jailed for up to one year for publishing a film showing her husband flirting with his housemaid in the kitchen, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. The unnamed wife had caught her husband flirting with the maid in the kitchen at their house in the Gulf Kingdom and secretly filmed him with her mobile phone. She then published the film on social media and wrote a caption saying: “the minimum punishment for this husband is to scandalise him.” ‘Sada’ newspaper said the film went viral on social media...

Microsoft did something shocking last night. It launched something people might actually lust over, something sleek, something powerful, something innovative. The Surface Book. At an event in New York rammed with press and industry types and live-streamed to the world, Microsoft confidently and defiantly unveiled its grand vision of Windows 10 devices. Some of the products the company unveiled were expected: an updated Surface Pro 4 tablet, the second generation of the company’s Microsoft Band fitness tracker and two new Lumia smartphones. But it was the Surface Book, Microsoft’s first laptop and a big bet for the company, that drew...

Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled its first laptop: the Microsoft Surface Book, a 13-inch touch-screen device that also comes apart to become a tablet. "This is the ultimate laptop," Microsoft's Panos Panay said. It has two processors and a dedicated graphics-card system. Microsoft says the laptop is twice as fast as a Macbook Pro. Pricing starts at $1,499, and the laptop will be available on October 26. As with many devices in the Surface line, the Surface Book can detach from its keyboard to become a tablet. The keyboard can then dock on the back of the tablet to keep it...

Redmond's shoving its chips all in on this $1,500 PC As expected, Microsoft has updated its Surface Pro fondleslab with a new model powered by Intel's latest silicon. But unexpectedly, it has also produced a laptop version of the platform that is going to make Apple sick. "The Surface Book is the ultimate laptop," gushed Panos Panay, Microsoft's veep of Surface computing. "Ounce for ounce, it's the fastest laptop ever made – twice as fast as the MacBook Pro." The laptop's 13.5-inch screen is detachable, and on its own acts as a tablet. The machine has two batteries and twin...

Today is one of the biggest days of the year for Microsoft and to start out the event they rattled off some impressive numbers. The most impressive is 110 million installations of Windows 10. This lines up well with the reports we had already heard but this 110 million number is officially from Microsoft on the biggest stage. Here are some other impressive stats mentioned by Terry Myerson. * 1 billion visits to Windows 10 app store * Developer revenue has increased four times since Windows 10’s launch * 650 billion web pages viewed with Microsoft Edge * 1 billion...

Well this came out of nowhere. After years of pleading from PC enthusiasts, Microsoft finally revealed an ultra-premium Surface laptop, dubbed Surface Book, at its hardware event on Tuesday—a portable PC designed to embrace Windows 10’s most cutting-edge features, and one that’s just oozing style. If the Surface Pro is a tablet that can replace your laptop, as Microsoft’s marketing crowed last year, does that make the Surface laptop a laptop that can replace your tablet that replaces your laptop? Not quite. Both aim for different targets. While the Surface tablets were initially introduced to highlight the sort of mobile...

It's easy to forget how intimidating it can be when trying something completely new for the first time. This is especially true when a power-user comfortable with Windows tries Linux. Since I'm a power user of various Linux distros, Windows and OS X, I have some insights that I think people looking to migrate to Linux need to read. Let's get started, shall we?Linux is not Windows The first thing that people who migrate from Windows need to understand is that Linux is not Windows. People seem to forget this fact when they experience something completely foreign while using Linux....

Windows 10 looks to have won about seven per cent of the world's desktop operating system market. That's The Reg's back-of-the-spreadsheet calculation after running our eye over September’s data from Netmarketshare and StatCounter, the two services we regularly eyeball to see what's going down on the desktop. Remember that Windows 10 launched on July 29th. With that in mind we can see that August saw plenty of growth, but things slowed rather markedly in September. The losers are Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, as the graphs below show both have dipped markedly since Windows 10's debut. When we crunch the...

Apple has purchased Perceptio, a small startup focused on artificial intelligence, reports Bloomberg. Founded by Nicolas Pinto and Zak Stone, Perceptio was developing technology that would let smartphone companies create advanced artificial intelligence systems "without needing to share as much user data" in the cloud. Perceptio's goals were to develop techniques to run AI image-classification systems on smartphones, without having to draw from large external repositories of data. That fits Apple's strategy of trying to minimize its usage of customer data and do as much processing as possible on the device.According to Bloomberg, both Stone and Pinto are established artificial...

World where only jailbroken iThings were vulnerable is 'thing of the past' The first iOS malware capable of attacking both non-jailbroken and jailbroken devices has surfaced online.The mobile malware nasty - YiSpecter - hooks into private APIs in the iOS system to implement malicious actions has been in the wild for at least 10 months, mostly in China and Taiwan, since November 2014 if not earlier. YiSpecter uses a battery of unusual tricks to spread itself. Distribution tactics include hijacking of traffic from nationwide ISPs, a worm on Windows, and an offline app installation and a community promotion. Initially the...

The other evening a bunch of us were sitting in a friend's living room while a series of photos scrolled across her TV. The photos were a screen saver served up by her new Apple TV box. Some of the pictures were of people, birds, flowers, cats and other typical stuff. But in the mix were also shots of price tags, bar codes, bags of mulch and other stuff she had thought about buying at some point. "What are those doing there?" somebody asked. "I don't know," she said. "I thought I threw those away." "That's scary," somebody said. "What...

Linus Torvalds The Linux community often recognizes two anniversaries for Linux: August 25th is the day Linus Torvalds first posted that he was working on Linux and said “Hello, everybody out there…” and October 5th is the day he released the first kernel.To mark the anniversary of the first kernel release in 1991, we look at some facts and consider the progress that has been made since that early version. Version 0.01 of the Linux kernel had 10,239 lines of code (source: Wikipedia). Version 4.1, released in July 2015, has more than 19 million lines of code (source: Phoronix). ...

Can churches engage transhumanism, which may very well be the next big science vs. religion battle, positively or should they absolutely resist this movement, an academic institution in Alabama asked during a multi-day event focused on whether Christianity and Transhumanism could co-exist. Samford University's Center for Science and Religion held the event, titled "Transhumanism and the Church," which took place from Sept. 24-26 and featured 27 presentations with approximately 120 attendees for the opening lecture alone. Transhumanism is the theory that science and technology can be used to advance the evolution of human beings beyond current physical and mental limitations....

Photo credit—CNet: Josh Miller I get the sense that the FBI doesn't entirely appreciate Apple CEO Tim Cook.I get that sense from an interview he gave to NPR on Thursday. In it, he cogently explained Apple's attitude toward security in general and national security in particular.Cook repeated his view that Apple isn't interested in tracking its customers as infinitum from app to app."If you buy something from the App Store, we do know what you bought from the App Store, obviously," he said. "We think customers are fine with that. Many customers want us to recommend an app. But what...

Xbox's Major Nelson has just revealed another slew of features for the New Xbox One Experience, a.k.a. the NXOE, but this time around not all of them are good news. Well, to be fair, only one isn't. Despite having hyped about how Cortana will help gamers stay on top of things even in the middle of gaming, it seems that such gamers will have to wait a bit longer to experience that. When Microsoft releases NXOE later this year, Cortana will only be available as a preview, with a full rollout happening only next year. Delays are a fact of...