http://www.pcworld.com en-us Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:59:54 -0800 Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:59:54 -0800 Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:05:11 -0800 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro North Korea's Internet was restored Tuesday local time, after an outage that lasted for 9 hours and 31 minutes, according to a company that monitors Internet performance. Dyn Research had earlier reported that the four networks in the country were down. The cause of the outage is not known, but led to speculation that the U.S. may have retaliated for North Korea's alleged role in the hack of Sony Pictures in late November. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday it held North Korea responsible for the attack, which came ahead of the planned release by Sony of a comedy movie about a plot to assassinate the country's leader Kim Jong Un. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Sony has asked Twitter to suspend the account of a person who is alleged to have posted internal company documents and information released by hackers. Twitter has also been asked to destroy the "stolen" documents that are in its possession or control. A letter sent Monday by Sony Pictures Entertainment's attorney David Boies to Twitter General Counsel Vijaya Gadde, and obtained by some news outlets, claimed that someone using the Twitter handle @bikinirobotarmy is in possession of, and is using the account to publish "stolen documents and information" from the recent hack. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Science may have confirmed what parents of gadget-loving children have long suspected: Using light-emitting gadgets just before bedtime can interfere with sleep. Using an electronic book reader or another portable electronic light-generating device prior to going to sleep can disrupt regular sleeping habits, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have found. "The take-away is, however unpopular, to avoid use of these devices before bedtime," said Anne-Marie Chang, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University's Department of Biobehavioral Health, one of the authors of the study. The researchers will publish their findings in the December 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you've ever felt too lazy to reach for the mouse and keyboard, you can now use an Android Wear smartwatch to control your PC instead. The latest version of Unified Remote includes Android Wear support, letting you manipulate your PC's cursor from your wrist and use voice commands to control specific programs and websites. The Android Wear features require the full version of Unified Remote, which is a $4 upgrade from the basic free version. But as futuristic as wrist-worn PC controls seem, keep in mind that the software still needs some serious polish. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you were hoping for a cooler look for Google's car, you'll have to settle for cute. The search giant has unveiled a finalized version of its self-driving concept car, which it calls "our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving,". While it gave few details about the changes it has made to its initial prototype over the past seven months, the completed vehicle seems to have working headlights and a somewhat more streamlined LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensor on its roof. Overall, though, it still looks like a toy. Researchers at GoogleX, the company's moonshot lab, have been tinkering with the vehicle since the two-seater without a steering wheel was first shown off in May. Google had announced plans to build 100 prototypes and begin a small pilot program in California over the next few years. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will soon decide whether to lay down rules regarding hotels' ability to block personal Wi-Fi hotspots inside their buildings, a practice that recently earned Marriott International a $600,000 fine. Back in August, Marriott, business partner Ryman Hospitality Properties and trade group the American Hotel and Lodging Association asked the FCC to clarify when hotels can block outside Wi-Fi hotspots in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services. In that petition, the hotel group asked the agency to "declare that the operator of a Wi-Fi network does not violate [U.S. law] by using FCC-authorized equipment to monitor and mitigate threats to the security and reliability of its network," even when taking action causes interference to mobile devices. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here African Internet, software and ecommerce startups are meeting increasing success in obtaining early-stage funding and generating revenue, according to a report from by startup funding initiative VC4Africa. The number of applications for VC funds on VC4Africa has grown by 640 percent in just three years, according to VC4Africa research team leader, Thomas van Hale. "Over 70% of the respondents already generate revenue and 44% is successful in securing external capita, van Hale said by email. "This is a critical economic contribution when taking into account that 43.3% of the Sub-Saharan African population is under the age of 14. In many ways, the future of the continent will be shaped by the continued success of its entrepreneurs," Van Hale said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung's Tizen-powered flagship may not be vaporware after all. The first Tizen phone may launch as soon as January, according to a leak from an online retailer. SamMobile reports that the phone is called the Samsung Z1, and it's expected to launch in India first. The Z1's specifications are decidedly low-end: a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 768MB of RAM, 4GB of onboard storage, a 3-megapixel front-facing camera with flash, and a 1500mAh battery pack. It will also come equipped with a 4-inch WVGA TFT display, which is a far cry from the vibrant and highly saturated AMOLED displays Samsung normally utilizes for both its mid-range and high-end smartphones. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here North Korea's Internet connection with the world has been hit by a series of outages in the last 24 hours, according to a researcher. Problems began on Monday morning, local time in Korea, when the handful of websites hosted on servers in Pyongyang became unresponsive. Over several hours, connectivity was spotty with connections sometimes succeeding but sometimes not. "I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in [North Korean Internet space] before," said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research. "Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Cheap Android kids' games are here, just in time to distract them while you wrap presents. The Google Play Store is offering titles like the popular Rayman Jungle Run for 10 cents, while Amazon's Appstore for Android has many games from Sega and Rovio (the maker of the Angry Birds franchise) discounted or free. Some of the highlights from the Play Store include: To take part in Amazon's fire sale, you'll need to sideload the new Amazon app. Then you can download the games directly from the app or send them to your device from Amazon's Appstore website. The shopping behemoth is also throwing in a 30-percent discount on Amazon coins, which lets you upgrade in freemium games like Candy Crush Saga. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here DirecTV, the biggest satellite TV operator in the U.S., says it won't be offering "The Interview" to its customers. The movie was pulled from theatrical release last week by Sony Pictures after threats that followed a massive hack and the release of sensitive and embarrassing corporate documents. Sony's action has been widely criticized by free-speech advocates, Hollywood film-makers and President Obama, but Sony says it had no choice after movie theater chains got cold feet about showing the film. In a TV interview with CNN on Friday, Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton said the company is now looking to video-on-demand services, but none are willing to touch the movie. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The settlement between Hewlett-Packard and shareholders of a lawsuit centering on the 2012 botched Autonomy acquisition hit a snag late Friday, when a federal judge rejected HP's proposal for being too broad, potentially releasing the company from potential liabilities beyond Autonomy. "The shareholders appear to be relinquishing a whole universe of potential claims regarding HP governance and practices with no factual predicates that overlap the Autonomy acquisition," wrote Charles Breyer, judge for the U.S. District Court for Northern California. HP lawyers, while expressing disappointment over the decision, pointed out that the judge's ruling also presumes a lack of culpability on the part of HP executives. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung Electronics continues to struggle to attract users to its own apps and services, forcing the company to focus on more on collaborating with other companies and stepping up efforts to offer better-looking devices. Smartphone manufacturers develop apps and services to attract new buyers and convince old ones to remain faithful. However, with the exception of Apple, this has proven very difficult, even for a company with huge resources like Samsung. Last week, Samsung announced it was pulling the plug on its ChatOn messaging app. The company also plans to shut down the WatchOn TV guide app in all countries except the U.S. and Korea on Dec. 31. Earlier this year, Samsung also gave up on its Hub line of services, including Books, Music, Video, and Media, which had failed to compete with Web-based offerings from the likes of Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Asus is taking another stab at the American smartphone market, showing off a peculiar video that looks and sounds like a spy film trailer. Asus' Facebook page features a 10-second spot with glimpses of a new Zenfone that has some kind of dual-camera configuration on the back.
Blink and you'll miss it—it takes some quick reflexes just to pause on a spot where you can pick out any substantial details.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2862126/asus-teases-dual-camera-zenfone-in-cryptic-new-video.html#tk.rss_all Phones Mon, 22 Dec 2014 09:43:00 -0800 Gregg Keizer Gregg Keizer Chrome security engineers have proposed that all websites that don't encrypt traffic be marked as insecure by browsers. The proposal, which was floated earlier this month, would dramatically change the visual signals in a browser's address bar, which now shows an indicator—a "lock" icon in some cases—when a website is encrypted with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) or TLS (Transport Security Layer), SSL's replacement. Those sites' domains are prefaced by https rather than the more common http. Unencrypted sites do not display any special visual sign. "We, the Chrome security team, propose that user agents (UAs) gradually change their UX to display non-secure origins as affirmatively non-secure," the engineers said in messages spread across several discussion forums, including Google's own Chromimum project. "The goal of this proposal is to more clearly display to users that HTTP provides no data security." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Sony still plans to release The Interview in some form after hackers pressured the studio and theater owners into dropping the film. The studio has told the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets that it's evaluating its options for the over-the-top comedy, which stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as two American journalists tasked with assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during an interview. Theaters originally planned to screen The Interview starting December 25, but abandoned those plans after Sony suffered a devastating hack that may or may not have involved North Korea. The hackers threatened violence if theaters showed the movie, prompting Sony to leave the decision up to theater operators. They immediately caved, and the entire situation drew some scorn from President Barack Obama, who said canceling the release was "a mistake." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Sierra Wireless has acquired Swedish company Wireless Maingate to build a more complete machine-to-machine communications platform and better connect cars, industrial devices, smart meters and other sensors. Together, the two companies will develop a platform that offers connectivity and device management from one user interface. Sierra currently offers a cloud-based application development platform and Maingate supplies wireless services in Europe. The M2M, or Internet of things, sector continues to mature with operators and vendors working to offer more complete communications platforms, and Sierra is no different. The company is best known for its modems, but has also developed a device management tool and a platform for easing the development of connected M2M applications. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A sophisticated group of cybercriminals has stolen over US$25 million by hacking into the infrastructure of numerous financial institutions in Russia and former Soviet Union countries, as well as into point-of-sale systems belonging to U.S. and European retailers. Researchers from Russian cybercrime investigations firm Group-IB and Dutch security firm Fox-IT have dubbed the cybercriminal group Anunak, after the primary malware program in its toolset. Unlike most cybercrime operations where attackers target the customers of financial institutions, the Anunak group targeted the institutions themselves, compromising their internal networks, workstations and servers. This access allowed them to transfer funds to accounts under their control and in some cases even to compromise ATMs, which they then used to withdraw money fraudulently. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Snapchat doesn't offer a Windows Phone app, and the popular messaging platform doesn't want third parties building Windows Phone apps for its service either. At least for the time being. Over the weekend, a number of imitation Snapchat apps on the Windows Phone Store disappeared—apparently at Snapchat's request. Unlike many popular online networks, Snapchat doesn't yet offer a public application programming interface (API) to allow developers to build apps for the service. A third-party Twitter client, for example, uses Twitter's API to provide your timeline, direct messages, and so on. Lacking a proper API, developers still figured out ways to access Snapchat data unofficially, but that technically violated Snapchat's terms of service—a situation that Snapchat ignored until recently. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Half the money spent on advertising is wasted—the question is, which half? That's the age-old question in adland. Now Oracle is hoping to help its customers answer that question with the acquisition of Datalogix, which collects offline consumer spending data in a bid to help online advertisers pick the right targets. Many behavioral advertising targeting systems track only consumers' online behavior—but, according to Oracle, that accounts for just 7 percent of consumer shopping: the other 93 percent is spent offline, and must be tracked in other ways. Datalogix aggregates data from 1,500 partners on the US$2 trillion spent each year by 110 million households, and uses it to help its customers target advertising based on other purchases to improve their sales. Those partners provide it with information on 99 percent of U.S. automobile sales and a 20-year history of vehicle ownership, and it also tracks spending at 50 grocery chains and 1,400 other retailers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The Google+ Photos app is giving users one more reason to store their memories in the cloud by extending one-click enhancements to video. With Auto Enhance turned on, Google will automatically scan any uploaded videos, looking for potential improvements to lighting, color and stability. Users can then compare the original and enhanced videos and choose which version to keep. It's worth noting that Google doesn't apply the improvements to video automatically, like it does with photos. Instead, users must select which videos to enhance through the Google+ Photos desktop Website. Google's Tim St. Clair also points out that the comparison video will have a much lower resolution than the actual footage. That's because Google is applying the effects in real time, and presumably uses lower quality to speed up the preview process. Once users decide to enhance a video, Google redoes the improvements at the video's original quality. (You can see an example on YouTube: While the quality is low, the enhanced version shows deeper blues and considerably less shake than the original.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Norm Denard is using non-HP, third-party ink in his HP printer. "My printing is interrupted by warnings and urging to buy their ink." Should he switch to the safer but more expensive HP option? Few items in this world are as pricey as printer ink. You can easily spend $20 or more for a small cartridge of colored liquid, whose chemical content and actual cost are closely guarded secrets. There are other options, but they can be scary, as we found when we tried several options in our real-world "Portrait of a Serial Refiller" series a few years back. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.] To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Virgin Media has teamed up with two teenagers to create a wearable that even Homer Simpson would love. Called KipstR, the 3D-printed wristband can tell your DVR to pause or record what you're watching if you happen to fall asleep in front of the TV. To figure out whether you're asleep or in a TV-induced coma, KipstR ("kip" is british slang for nap) monitors you via a pulse oximeter. If the gadget determines you're asleep, the wearable can mimic a DVR remote to tell it to pause or record whatever you were watching. There's also a resume feature that presumably will switch the program back on if you wake up again. KipstR was designed to work with TiVo DVRs. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The appeal of the Internet of Things is more than just being able to control gadgets and home appliances from the cloud. The bigger benefit comes when the devices interact and share information with each other. Today's joint announcement from Jawbone and Big Ass Fans is a case in point. Jawbone manufactures wearable fitness trackers, and Big Ass Fans builds high-end ceiling fans. Jawbone's UP-series fitness trackers have a built-in accelerometer that helps the wearer measure their quality of sleep. You can measure the amount of time you slept as well as how often you tossed and turned. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here South Korea's state-run nuclear power plant operator said it started a two-day drill on Monday to prepare for a potential cyberattack, after a series of online document leaks caused increasing security concerns. The stolen documents include blueprints of climate control systems, floor plans, software program manuals and personal information of employees. The leaked documents, however, do not have classified information and pose no threat to the safety of the nuclear plants, said Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. The leaks, posted online by the self-proclaimed "anti-nuclear reactor group," included a statement that 100,000 more pages of documents will be posted and a "second round of destruction" will be launched if the government fails to close down three nuclear plants by Christmas. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Remote code execution vulnerabilities in the standard implementation of the network time protocol (NTP) can be exploited by attackers to compromise servers, embedded devices and even critical infrastructure systems that run UNIX-like operating systems. The flaws, which can be exploited by sending specially crafted packets to machines running a vulnerable version of the NTP daemon (ntpd), pose a greater threat to systems where the service runs under a highly privileged user account such as root. However, even if the ntpd user has limited privileges, attackers could leverage other privilege escalation flaws to gain root access after exploiting the NTP flaws. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here This wasn't the pined-for year of the Linux desktop, but 2014 was still huge for the anything-but-Windows PC universe. Chrome OS made massive strides in 2014, and so did more traditional Linux distributions. SteamOS remained in hibernation after a launch delay, but it's getting ready for a big 2015. Heck, even Microsoft couldn't resist getting in on the open-source action—or miming many of Linux's killer features in Windows 10. Let's get retrospective! Valve's SteamOS operating system—basically a specialized Linux distribution built around living-room gaming—and the accompanying Steam controller generated a ton of enthusiasm for a 2014 launch. And then, nothing: Both were delayed until 2015. It feels like a long wait, but hey, gamers have been waiting for Half-Life 3 for more than seven years. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Google's Chromecast is the perfect gadget to have if you're looking for the simplest way to stream movies, TV shows, YouTube (and other web videos), and music from your mobile device to a TV. Just plug the Chromecast into one of your TV's HDMI inputs, download the official app, and start streaming. Whether you're new to the Chromecast party, or the device is a permanent part of how you watch content, you should have this collection of apps in your library. You can find even more by searching the Google Play store for titles that support "Google Cast" (the official name of Google's streaming technology). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Image by Microsoft That image of Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella slouching casually in a hipster hoodie says so much about the company's aspirations. But inside it's the same old Microsoft. Or is it? Challenged to reinvent itself in the face of a new breed of mobile apps and services, Microsoft's $2.5 billion purchase of Minecraft developer Mojang makes more sense. So does Microsoft's Cortana. Or Sway. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click hereSteamOS lags, but Steam Machines move forward
http://www.pcworld.com en-us Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:59:54 -0800 Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:59:54 -0800 Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:05:11 -0800 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro North Korea's Internet was restored Tuesday local time, after an outage that lasted for 9 hours and 31 minutes, according to a company that monitors Internet performance. Dyn Research had earlier reported that the four networks in the country were down. The cause of the outage is not known, but led to speculation that the U.S. may have retaliated for North Korea's alleged role in the hack of Sony Pictures in late November. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday it held North Korea responsible for the attack, which came ahead of the planned release by Sony of a comedy movie about a plot to assassinate the country's leader Kim Jong Un. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Sony has asked Twitter to suspend the account of a person who is alleged to have posted internal company documents and information released by hackers. Twitter has also been asked to destroy the "stolen" documents that are in its possession or control. A letter sent Monday by Sony Pictures Entertainment's attorney David Boies to Twitter General Counsel Vijaya Gadde, and obtained by some news outlets, claimed that someone using the Twitter handle @bikinirobotarmy is in possession of, and is using the account to publish "stolen documents and information" from the recent hack. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Science may have confirmed what parents of gadget-loving children have long suspected: Using light-emitting gadgets just before bedtime can interfere with sleep. Using an electronic book reader or another portable electronic light-generating device prior to going to sleep can disrupt regular sleeping habits, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have found. "The take-away is, however unpopular, to avoid use of these devices before bedtime," said Anne-Marie Chang, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University's Department of Biobehavioral Health, one of the authors of the study. The researchers will publish their findings in the December 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you've ever felt too lazy to reach for the mouse and keyboard, you can now use an Android Wear smartwatch to control your PC instead. The latest version of Unified Remote includes Android Wear support, letting you manipulate your PC's cursor from your wrist and use voice commands to control specific programs and websites. The Android Wear features require the full version of Unified Remote, which is a $4 upgrade from the basic free version. But as futuristic as wrist-worn PC controls seem, keep in mind that the software still needs some serious polish. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you were hoping for a cooler look for Google's car, you'll have to settle for cute. The search giant has unveiled a finalized version of its self-driving concept car, which it calls "our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving,". While it gave few details about the changes it has made to its initial prototype over the past seven months, the completed vehicle seems to have working headlights and a somewhat more streamlined LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensor on its roof. Overall, though, it still looks like a toy. Researchers at GoogleX, the company's moonshot lab, have been tinkering with the vehicle since the two-seater without a steering wheel was first shown off in May. Google had announced plans to build 100 prototypes and begin a small pilot program in California over the next few years. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will soon decide whether to lay down rules regarding hotels' ability to block personal Wi-Fi hotspots inside their buildings, a practice that recently earned Marriott International a $600,000 fine. Back in August, Marriott, business partner Ryman Hospitality Properties and trade group the American Hotel and Lodging Association asked the FCC to clarify when hotels can block outside Wi-Fi hotspots in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services. In that petition, the hotel group asked the agency to "declare that the operator of a Wi-Fi network does not violate [U.S. law] by using FCC-authorized equipment to monitor and mitigate threats to the security and reliability of its network," even when taking action causes interference to mobile devices. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here African Internet, software and ecommerce startups are meeting increasing success in obtaining early-stage funding and generating revenue, according to a report from by startup funding initiative VC4Africa. The number of applications for VC funds on VC4Africa has grown by 640 percent in just three years, according to VC4Africa research team leader, Thomas van Hale. "Over 70% of the respondents already generate revenue and 44% is successful in securing external capita, van Hale said by email. "This is a critical economic contribution when taking into account that 43.3% of the Sub-Saharan African population is under the age of 14. In many ways, the future of the continent will be shaped by the continued success of its entrepreneurs," Van Hale said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung's Tizen-powered flagship may not be vaporware after all. The first Tizen phone may launch as soon as January, according to a leak from an online retailer. SamMobile reports that the phone is called the Samsung Z1, and it's expected to launch in India first. The Z1's specifications are decidedly low-end: a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 768MB of RAM, 4GB of onboard storage, a 3-megapixel front-facing camera with flash, and a 1500mAh battery pack. It will also come equipped with a 4-inch WVGA TFT display, which is a far cry from the vibrant and highly saturated AMOLED displays Samsung normally utilizes for both its mid-range and high-end smartphones. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here North Korea's Internet connection with the world has been hit by a series of outages in the last 24 hours, according to a researcher. Problems began on Monday morning, local time in Korea, when the handful of websites hosted on servers in Pyongyang became unresponsive. Over several hours, connectivity was spotty with connections sometimes succeeding but sometimes not. "I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in [North Korean Internet space] before," said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research. "Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Cheap Android kids' games are here, just in time to distract them while you wrap presents. The Google Play Store is offering titles like the popular Rayman Jungle Run for 10 cents, while Amazon's Appstore for Android has many games from Sega and Rovio (the maker of the Angry Birds franchise) discounted or free. Some of the highlights from the Play Store include: To take part in Amazon's fire sale, you'll need to sideload the new Amazon app. Then you can download the games directly from the app or send them to your device from Amazon's Appstore website. The shopping behemoth is also throwing in a 30-percent discount on Amazon coins, which lets you upgrade in freemium games like Candy Crush Saga. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here DirecTV, the biggest satellite TV operator in the U.S., says it won't be offering "The Interview" to its customers. The movie was pulled from theatrical release last week by Sony Pictures after threats that followed a massive hack and the release of sensitive and embarrassing corporate documents. Sony's action has been widely criticized by free-speech advocates, Hollywood film-makers and President Obama, but Sony says it had no choice after movie theater chains got cold feet about showing the film. In a TV interview with CNN on Friday, Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton said the company is now looking to video-on-demand services, but none are willing to touch the movie. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The settlement between Hewlett-Packard and shareholders of a lawsuit centering on the 2012 botched Autonomy acquisition hit a snag late Friday, when a federal judge rejected HP's proposal for being too broad, potentially releasing the company from potential liabilities beyond Autonomy. "The shareholders appear to be relinquishing a whole universe of potential claims regarding HP governance and practices with no factual predicates that overlap the Autonomy acquisition," wrote Charles Breyer, judge for the U.S. District Court for Northern California. HP lawyers, while expressing disappointment over the decision, pointed out that the judge's ruling also presumes a lack of culpability on the part of HP executives. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung Electronics continues to struggle to attract users to its own apps and services, forcing the company to focus on more on collaborating with other companies and stepping up efforts to offer better-looking devices. Smartphone manufacturers develop apps and services to attract new buyers and convince old ones to remain faithful. However, with the exception of Apple, this has proven very difficult, even for a company with huge resources like Samsung. Last week, Samsung announced it was pulling the plug on its ChatOn messaging app. The company also plans to shut down the WatchOn TV guide app in all countries except the U.S. and Korea on Dec. 31. Earlier this year, Samsung also gave up on its Hub line of services, including Books, Music, Video, and Media, which had failed to compete with Web-based offerings from the likes of Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Asus is taking another stab at the American smartphone market, showing off a peculiar video that looks and sounds like a spy film trailer. Asus' Facebook page features a 10-second spot with glimpses of a new Zenfone that has some kind of dual-camera configuration on the back.
Blink and you'll miss it—it takes some quick reflexes just to pause on a spot where you can pick out any substantial details.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2862126/asus-teases-dual-camera-zenfone-in-cryptic-new-video.html#tk.rss_all Phones Mon, 22 Dec 2014 09:43:00 -0800 Gregg Keizer Gregg Keizer Chrome security engineers have proposed that all websites that don't encrypt traffic be marked as insecure by browsers. The proposal, which was floated earlier this month, would dramatically change the visual signals in a browser's address bar, which now shows an indicator—a "lock" icon in some cases—when a website is encrypted with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) or TLS (Transport Security Layer), SSL's replacement. Those sites' domains are prefaced by https rather than the more common http. Unencrypted sites do not display any special visual sign. "We, the Chrome security team, propose that user agents (UAs) gradually change their UX to display non-secure origins as affirmatively non-secure," the engineers said in messages spread across several discussion forums, including Google's own Chromimum project. "The goal of this proposal is to more clearly display to users that HTTP provides no data security." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Sony still plans to release The Interview in some form after hackers pressured the studio and theater owners into dropping the film. The studio has told the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets that it's evaluating its options for the over-the-top comedy, which stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as two American journalists tasked with assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during an interview. Theaters originally planned to screen The Interview starting December 25, but abandoned those plans after Sony suffered a devastating hack that may or may not have involved North Korea. The hackers threatened violence if theaters showed the movie, prompting Sony to leave the decision up to theater operators. They immediately caved, and the entire situation drew some scorn from President Barack Obama, who said canceling the release was "a mistake." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Sierra Wireless has acquired Swedish company Wireless Maingate to build a more complete machine-to-machine communications platform and better connect cars, industrial devices, smart meters and other sensors. Together, the two companies will develop a platform that offers connectivity and device management from one user interface. Sierra currently offers a cloud-based application development platform and Maingate supplies wireless services in Europe. The M2M, or Internet of things, sector continues to mature with operators and vendors working to offer more complete communications platforms, and Sierra is no different. The company is best known for its modems, but has also developed a device management tool and a platform for easing the development of connected M2M applications. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A sophisticated group of cybercriminals has stolen over US$25 million by hacking into the infrastructure of numerous financial institutions in Russia and former Soviet Union countries, as well as into point-of-sale systems belonging to U.S. and European retailers. Researchers from Russian cybercrime investigations firm Group-IB and Dutch security firm Fox-IT have dubbed the cybercriminal group Anunak, after the primary malware program in its toolset. Unlike most cybercrime operations where attackers target the customers of financial institutions, the Anunak group targeted the institutions themselves, compromising their internal networks, workstations and servers. This access allowed them to transfer funds to accounts under their control and in some cases even to compromise ATMs, which they then used to withdraw money fraudulently. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Snapchat doesn't offer a Windows Phone app, and the popular messaging platform doesn't want third parties building Windows Phone apps for its service either. At least for the time being. Over the weekend, a number of imitation Snapchat apps on the Windows Phone Store disappeared—apparently at Snapchat's request. Unlike many popular online networks, Snapchat doesn't yet offer a public application programming interface (API) to allow developers to build apps for the service. A third-party Twitter client, for example, uses Twitter's API to provide your timeline, direct messages, and so on. Lacking a proper API, developers still figured out ways to access Snapchat data unofficially, but that technically violated Snapchat's terms of service—a situation that Snapchat ignored until recently. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Half the money spent on advertising is wasted—the question is, which half? That's the age-old question in adland. Now Oracle is hoping to help its customers answer that question with the acquisition of Datalogix, which collects offline consumer spending data in a bid to help online advertisers pick the right targets. Many behavioral advertising targeting systems track only consumers' online behavior—but, according to Oracle, that accounts for just 7 percent of consumer shopping: the other 93 percent is spent offline, and must be tracked in other ways. Datalogix aggregates data from 1,500 partners on the US$2 trillion spent each year by 110 million households, and uses it to help its customers target advertising based on other purchases to improve their sales. Those partners provide it with information on 99 percent of U.S. automobile sales and a 20-year history of vehicle ownership, and it also tracks spending at 50 grocery chains and 1,400 other retailers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The Google+ Photos app is giving users one more reason to store their memories in the cloud by extending one-click enhancements to video. With Auto Enhance turned on, Google will automatically scan any uploaded videos, looking for potential improvements to lighting, color and stability. Users can then compare the original and enhanced videos and choose which version to keep. It's worth noting that Google doesn't apply the improvements to video automatically, like it does with photos. Instead, users must select which videos to enhance through the Google+ Photos desktop Website. Google's Tim St. Clair also points out that the comparison video will have a much lower resolution than the actual footage. That's because Google is applying the effects in real time, and presumably uses lower quality to speed up the preview process. Once users decide to enhance a video, Google redoes the improvements at the video's original quality. (You can see an example on YouTube: While the quality is low, the enhanced version shows deeper blues and considerably less shake than the original.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Norm Denard is using non-HP, third-party ink in his HP printer. "My printing is interrupted by warnings and urging to buy their ink." Should he switch to the safer but more expensive HP option? Few items in this world are as pricey as printer ink. You can easily spend $20 or more for a small cartridge of colored liquid, whose chemical content and actual cost are closely guarded secrets. There are other options, but they can be scary, as we found when we tried several options in our real-world "Portrait of a Serial Refiller" series a few years back. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.] To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Virgin Media has teamed up with two teenagers to create a wearable that even Homer Simpson would love. Called KipstR, the 3D-printed wristband can tell your DVR to pause or record what you're watching if you happen to fall asleep in front of the TV. To figure out whether you're asleep or in a TV-induced coma, KipstR ("kip" is british slang for nap) monitors you via a pulse oximeter. If the gadget determines you're asleep, the wearable can mimic a DVR remote to tell it to pause or record whatever you were watching. There's also a resume feature that presumably will switch the program back on if you wake up again. KipstR was designed to work with TiVo DVRs. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The appeal of the Internet of Things is more than just being able to control gadgets and home appliances from the cloud. The bigger benefit comes when the devices interact and share information with each other. Today's joint announcement from Jawbone and Big Ass Fans is a case in point. Jawbone manufactures wearable fitness trackers, and Big Ass Fans builds high-end ceiling fans. Jawbone's UP-series fitness trackers have a built-in accelerometer that helps the wearer measure their quality of sleep. You can measure the amount of time you slept as well as how often you tossed and turned. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here South Korea's state-run nuclear power plant operator said it started a two-day drill on Monday to prepare for a potential cyberattack, after a series of online document leaks caused increasing security concerns. The stolen documents include blueprints of climate control systems, floor plans, software program manuals and personal information of employees. The leaked documents, however, do not have classified information and pose no threat to the safety of the nuclear plants, said Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. The leaks, posted online by the self-proclaimed "anti-nuclear reactor group," included a statement that 100,000 more pages of documents will be posted and a "second round of destruction" will be launched if the government fails to close down three nuclear plants by Christmas. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Remote code execution vulnerabilities in the standard implementation of the network time protocol (NTP) can be exploited by attackers to compromise servers, embedded devices and even critical infrastructure systems that run UNIX-like operating systems. The flaws, which can be exploited by sending specially crafted packets to machines running a vulnerable version of the NTP daemon (ntpd), pose a greater threat to systems where the service runs under a highly privileged user account such as root. However, even if the ntpd user has limited privileges, attackers could leverage other privilege escalation flaws to gain root access after exploiting the NTP flaws. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here This wasn't the pined-for year of the Linux desktop, but 2014 was still huge for the anything-but-Windows PC universe. Chrome OS made massive strides in 2014, and so did more traditional Linux distributions. SteamOS remained in hibernation after a launch delay, but it's getting ready for a big 2015. Heck, even Microsoft couldn't resist getting in on the open-source action—or miming many of Linux's killer features in Windows 10. Let's get retrospective! Valve's SteamOS operating system—basically a specialized Linux distribution built around living-room gaming—and the accompanying Steam controller generated a ton of enthusiasm for a 2014 launch. And then, nothing: Both were delayed until 2015. It feels like a long wait, but hey, gamers have been waiting for Half-Life 3 for more than seven years. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Google's Chromecast is the perfect gadget to have if you're looking for the simplest way to stream movies, TV shows, YouTube (and other web videos), and music from your mobile device to a TV. Just plug the Chromecast into one of your TV's HDMI inputs, download the official app, and start streaming. Whether you're new to the Chromecast party, or the device is a permanent part of how you watch content, you should have this collection of apps in your library. You can find even more by searching the Google Play store for titles that support "Google Cast" (the official name of Google's streaming technology). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Image by Microsoft That image of Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella slouching casually in a hipster hoodie says so much about the company's aspirations. But inside it's the same old Microsoft. Or is it? Challenged to reinvent itself in the face of a new breed of mobile apps and services, Microsoft's $2.5 billion purchase of Minecraft developer Mojang makes more sense. So does Microsoft's Cortana. Or Sway. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click hereSteamOS lags, but Steam Machines move forward
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