April 16, 2012
Online protests to controversial CISPA bill begin, amid changes
The Business Software Alliance and the Center for Democracy and Technology met Monday, Apr. 16, to discuss the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a new bill intended to regulate the flow of information online and make it easier for the government to communicate with companies in the event of a cyber threat.
“We agreed that the definition of what constitutes cyber threat information could benefit from sharpening,” the software alliance said in a statement. “We also discussed clarifying limitations on how threat information will be handled and used by government.”
Read more in the full story at FoxNews.com.
March 28, 2012
Amazing! Google's self-driving car allows the blind to drive
"This is some of the best driving I've ever done," Steve Mahan said the other day.
Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the Taco Bell drive-in for a snack.
He also happens to be 95 percent blind.
Mahan, head of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, “drove” along a specially programmed route thanks to Google’s autonomous driving technology.
Look, ma! No hands. And no feet!” Mahan jokes at one point in a video of the event, posted online Wednesday by Google. “I love it,” he added.
Read more in my full story at FoxNews.com.
Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the Taco Bell drive-in for a snack.He also happens to be 95 percent blind.
Mahan, head of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, “drove” along a specially programmed route thanks to Google’s autonomous driving technology.
Look, ma! No hands. And no feet!” Mahan jokes at one point in a video of the event, posted online Wednesday by Google. “I love it,” he added.
Read more in my full story at FoxNews.com.
March 20, 2012
New Apple iPad hits 116 degrees, Consumer Reports says
Using a thermal imaging camera, engineers with the consumer watchdog group recorded the soaring temperatures as on both the front and rear of the new iPad while playing the graphics intensive game Infinity Blade II. These temperatures were much warmer than the iPad 2, said Donna L. Tapellini, an analyst with Consumer Reports.
"In the past, we've tested the heat from laptops. When those hit 120 degrees, we found that could cause problems when exposed to bare skin,” Tapellini told FoxNews.com.
Read the full story at FoxNews.com.
March 6, 2012
EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the world’s most wanted hacker
“I’m Hector,” he said.
The agents were suddenly face-to-face with “Sabu,” the computer genius they had stalked for months, a quarry so elusive they hadn’t pinned down his identity and location until just weeks before. The suspected ringleader of the Anonymous offshoot group LulzSec, Hector Xavier Monsegur and his web minions had just completed a month-long reign of terror, hacking the CIA, Fox, Sony and several financial institutions, causing, according to some estimates, billions of dollars in damage around the world.
Read more in the full report at FoxNews.com.
EXCLUSIVE: Inside LulzSec, a mastermind turns on his minions
Like a Mafia don who wears a wire to ensnare his own soldiers, Hector Xavier Monsegur, aka “Sabu,” has been helping the FBI track down and gather evidence against his associates, tweeting out misinformation and even protecting the CIA among other government and financial institutions from hacks, according to sources close to the LulzSec leader and law enforcement officials in charge of the months-long international hacking probe capped by international arrests of the remaining LulzSec leaders on Tuesday morning.
Flipping Monsegur wasn’t easy. But with a charge of aggravated identity theft and a two-year prison sentence to hang over his head, the FBI forced Monsegur to weigh the political beliefs that drove him and his allegiance to cohorts around the world against his desire to be with his kids—he is the guardian of two children—and his extended family.
Read more in the full story at FoxNews.com.
EXCLUSIVE: Infamous international hacking group LulzSec brought down by own leader
Charges against four of the five were based on a conspiracy case filed in New York federal court, FoxNews.com has learned. An indictment charging the suspects, who include two men from Great Britain, two from Ireland and an American in Chicago, is expected to be unsealed Tuesday morning in the Southern District of New York.
“This is devastating to the organization,” said an FBI official involved with the investigation. “We’re chopping off the head of LulzSec.”
Read the full story at FoxNews.com.
February 29, 2012
Hands on with Windows 8 Consumer Preview
The Windows 8 Consumer Preview -- released to the public for free download following its unveiling at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona, Spain, on Wed., Feb. 29 -- turns the familiar Windows desktop on its ear. It introduces a completely new way to interact with your computer and an entirely new vision for the desktop, thanks to the tile-based “Metro” interface the company created for its Windows Phone platform.
You can download a free version of the operating system yourself at preview.windows.com.
Metro has been widely hailed for changing the way we think about smartphones, much as the iPhone did in 2007. Thanks to it, Windows 8 will actively present information to you from your first power on, via tiles that flip and transform by themselves rather than waiting for you to, say, launch a website and visit Facebook or open your inbox to check for new email.
Read more in the full hands-on at FoxNews.com.
Microsoft releases Windows 8 Consumer Preview to public
The pre-release version of the operating system -- available for free download at preview.windows.com -- introduces a completely new way to interact with your computer and an entirely new vision for the desktop, thanks to the tile-based “Metro” interface the company created for its Windows Phone platform.
Metro has been widely hailed for changing the way we think about smartphones, much as the iPhone did in 2007. Thanks to it, Windows 8 will actively present information to you from your first power on, via tiles that flip and transform by themselves rather than waiting for you to, say, launch a website and visit Facebook or open your inbox to check for new email.
Read more in the full news story at FoxNews.com.
February 22, 2012
Google to offer ‘Terminator’ style smartphone glasses later this year
Facebook on your face?
A pair of futuristic Google spectacles that stream your smartphone from your pocket directly to your eyes will go on sale by year’s end, according to reports from the New York Times.
Google’s new Android-powered glasses will allow you to check your email, update your Facebook, or even check-in to your favorite restaurant. The device creates a direct link to your smartphone, providing real-time information in a heads-up display (HUD).
February 17, 2012
Google Tracked iPhones, Bypassing Apple Browser Privacy Settings
Google and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple's Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.
The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple's Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default.
Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
The Google code was spotted by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer and independently confirmed by a technical adviser to the Journal, Ashkan Soltani, who found that ads on 22 of the top 100 websites installed the Google tracking code on a test computer, and ads on 23 sites installed it on an iPhonebrowser.
February 15, 2012
25 million tons of tsunami debris floating toward US shores
But no one's tracking the debris, Jim Churnside, a physicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency's (NOAA) Marine Debris Program, told FoxNews.com.
"It would be really nice, but it’s really difficult," Churnside expained.
The wreckage from the March 11, 2011, disaster could include virtually anything that floats, according to oceanographer and beachcomber Curtis Ebbesmeyer -- and that includes portions of houses, boats, ships, furniture, cars and even human remains.
Read more in the full story on FoxNews.com
February 3, 2012
The Jumanji effect? Extra warm winter playing havoc with hibernating animals
Call it the “Jumanji effect.”
It will cause bat populations to crater and deer herds to double. It had famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil stirring days or even weeks early, before seeing his shadow at 7:25 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 2 -- meaning "winter" will continue for six more weeks.
But rather than hibernating through freezing snowstorms, nature is being awakened by the weird warmth. Even black bears are likely to rise early from their October to March slumber -- and they’ll be ravenous, said Paul Curtis, a professor of natural resources and wildlife specialist with Cornell University.
Read more in the full story at FoxNews.com.
Missing scientists mystery deepens in frozen Antarctica
The team from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) have been drilling for weeks in an effort to reach isolated Lake Vostok, a vast, dark body of water hidden 13,000 ft. below the surface of the icy continent. Lake Vostok hasn't been exposed to air in more than 20 million years.
The team’s last contact with colleagues in the unfrozen world was six long days ago, and scientists from around the globe are unsure of the fate of the mission -- and the scientists themselves -- as Antarctica’s killing winter draws near.
“When you’re outside, it’s extremely cold -- minus 30, minus 40,” microbiologist Dr. David A. Pearce told FoxNews.com. “If you left your eyes open the fluid in them would start to freeze. Your nostrils would start to freeze. The moisture in your mouth would start to freeze,” he said.
Read more in the full report at FoxNews.com.
January 31, 2012
WikiLeaks to move servers offshore, sources say
Multiple sources within the hacker community with knowledge of day-to-day WikiLeaks activities say Assange’s financial backers have been working behind the scenes on the logistics of moving the servers to international waters.
"Then they can keep running WikiLeaks and nobody can touch them,” one source told FoxNews.com. “If you get a certain distance away from any land, then you're dealing with maritime law ... They can't prosecute him under maritime law. He's safe. He's not an idiot, he's actually very smart."
Read more in the full report at FoxNews.com.
January 12, 2012
Rebirth of the Laptop PC
Forget those crummy netbooks. Think of the new batch of systems as what laptops should have been from the very start: Functional. Powerful. Insanely great. And affordable.
It’s called the ultrabook. It’s the personal computer, and if you thought the PC was dead, you’d better think again.
“There hasn’t yet been a really stunning PC,” says Vizio CTO Matt McRae, whose company wants to change all of that. Vizio dropped a bombshell on Monday at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, announcing plans to jump into a market that other companies have been eager to get out of.
Read more in my full report at FoxNews.com.
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