Month: January 2014

Security

White hat hacker says he found 70,000 records on Healthcare.gov through a Google search

By admin | by admin

As reported on The Verge. By Adrianne Jeffries The federal health insurance marketplace at Healthcare.gov still has major security issues according to some experts, including a flaw that allows user records to show up in Google results. At least 70,000 records with personal identifying information including first and last names, addresses, and user names are accessible by using an advanced Google search and then tweaking the resulting URLs, according to David Kennedy, founder of the security…

Continue reading

Microsoft

Microsoft Gives Its Office Web Apps A New, Flatter Look

By admin | by admin

As reported on TechCrunch. by Frederic Lardinois Microsoft is giving its Office Web Apps a new look today, it seems. While the company hasn’t done all that much to promote its Office Web Apps lately, they are pretty capable online versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote that are free for anyone to use. Today, the company is giving all of these apps a user interface overhaul that brings an even flatter design, some new features and easier…

Continue reading

Business

IBM Dumps Its Server Business On Lenovo For $2.3B

By admin | by admin

As reported on TechCrunch. by Pankaj Mishra IBM has finally managed to sell its low-margin server business to the world’s largest PC maker Lenovo. The two companies have been negotiating this deal for past few years, and a potential sale fell off last year when Lenovo did not agree to pay what IBM wanted — $6 billion. Now, Lenovo has informed the Hong Kong Stock exchange that it will pay $2.07 billion in cash to IBM for…

Continue reading

Science

World’s most precise atomic clock will still be spot-on in 5 billion years

By admin | by admin

As reported on Engadget. BY CHRIS VELAZCO Most of us only pay attention to time when it’s causing headaches, but the same can’t be said of a team of researchers working out of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Led by National Institute of Standards and Technology fellow Jun Ye, they’ve crafted an atomic clock that can keep precise time for billions of years, a world record. This hefty new timekeeper can tick off the seconds…

Continue reading

Security

Independent federal review board calls for NSA to end ‘illegal’ phone call data collection

By admin | by admin

As reported on Engadget. BY RICHARD LAWLER Following up on what we’ve learned about the NSA’s various spying activities over the last year, the aptly-named Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is apparently ready to issue a report on the mess. Established in 2004 (but only fully operational since November) within the executive branch to serve as an independent source of advice to the president on… privacy and civil liberties, it has arrived somewhat late to the party (President Obama announced reform…

Continue reading

Entertainment Film

How Peter Jackson’s team created the Oscar-nominated soundscape of ‘Smaug’

By admin | by admin

As reported on The Verge. By Nathan Ingraham The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was just nominated for two Oscars relating to its sound design — it’s up against some tough competition in the form of Gravity and a number of other excellent films, but a new mini-documentary from SoundWorks makes a good case for Peter Jackson’s latest adventure into Middle-earth. The video contains interviews with a number of sound mixers at Park Road Post Studios in Wellington, New Zealand who…

Continue reading

iPhone

WobL Smartphone Stand And Alarm App For iPhone Ensure You’ll Snooze Forever

By admin | by admin

As reported on TechCrunch.  by Darrell Etherington I have an iPhone, and like most adult humans I imagine, I use that as my alarm clock in place of one of those quaint old-fashioned pieces of dedicated hardware we used to use. But it’s not always ideal: you can’t just smash a button to get it to stop trying to wake you up, for instance. The wobL, a new Kickstarter project launching today, hopes to fix that. As its…

Continue reading

SmartPhone

LG’s Curved Display G Flex Smartphone Will Go Up For AT&T Pre-Order On January 24

By admin | by admin

As reported on TechCrunch. by Jordan Crook Curved displays are officially a thing. The LG G Flex, the Korean company’s latest attempt to battle back Samsung, is going to be available for pre-order at AT&T starting this Friday, January 24. Sprint pulled the trigger last week, announcing that the phone would be available for pre-order on January 31, but AT&T has obviously beaten the yellow carrier to the punch by a week. Still, AT&T never mentioned in its announcement…

Continue reading

Google

Google tests the performance limits of D-Wave’s quantum computers

By admin | by admin

As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS We’ve long known that D-Wave’s quantum computers are specialized tools rather than Swiss Army Knives, but just how good are they at their intended tasks? Googlehas just conducted some benchmarking to find out, and the short answer is that these systems are very good — but they have definite limits. A current-generation D-Wave 2 is about 35,500 times faster than a generalized problem-solving computer when both are running standard software. However, some of that advantage…

Continue reading

Environmental Tech

Heat-sensitive solar cell could lead to much more on-demand energy

By admin | by admin

As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS It’s tough to build solar cells that capture both heat and light — most of these multi-talented devices can’t trap more than one percent of the energy they receive. However, MIT has just blown past that limitation with a prototype chip that absorbs warmth through an outer layer of carbon nanotubes. The tubing heats up photonic crystals so much that they glow with an intense light, giving an attached solar cell more energy than…

Continue reading