After PAX ended this year I made the four-hour drive from Seattle to Spokane to meet up with the team over at Cyan, famous for making the PC gaming classics I got
When Microsoft announced message encryption for Office 365 in November, it came with a potentially annoying requirement: People receiving the encrypted messages had to be logged into a Microsoft account to view them. That was all well and good if they were a Microsoft customer, but everyone else had to sign up for a Microsoft account before they could view their encrypted messages. Perhaps realizing this was an inconvenience—because, as it turns out, not everyone on Earth uses Microsoft’s services—the company has removed this requirement. Now, recipients who don’t have a Microsoft account—or who have one but aren’t logged into it—can view their encrypted message using a one-time passcode that Microsoft will send to them via email. They’ll then have 15 minutes to use the passcode to view their encrypted message.
Unlike Apple, Facebook doesn’t want to track your vitals. Yet.
In a gambit aimed at driving manufacturers to beef up protections for USB flash drive firmware, two security researchers have released a collection of tools that can be used to turn those drives into silent malware installers. The code release by researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson comes two months after researchers from Berlin-based Security Research Labs (SRLabs) demonstrated The BadUSB attack showed how a USB thumb drive connected to a computer can automatically switch its profile to a keyboard—and send keystrokes to download and install malware—or emulate the profile of a network controller to hijack DNS settings.
Ummmmm....
Microsoft's Bing has no plans to rank websites higher if they use HTTPS encryption, unlike rival Google. Instead, Bing prefers to “give searchers content they want,” said Vincent Wehren, the lead program manager for Bing Webmaster Tools. Search Engine Land HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, which is a way of encrypting communications over a network. In exchange for a slightly slower connection, HTTPS provides an added layer of security, so it's widely used by e-mail services, financial institutions and social networking sites. While some sites only turn on HTTPS during login, others such as Google and Twitter have enabled HTTPS on a site-wide basis. Sites that use encryption show "https" in the URL bar and have a padlock next to them.
“Internet of things” standards groups are rallying the troops for efforts to make thermostats, door locks, sensors and other connected devices find each other and share information. On Thursday, the Open Interconnect Consortium announced it has gained 27 new members, including Cisco Systems, Acer, chip maker Mediatek and home IoT hub maker SmartThings, since The group’s founding members include Intel, Samsung Electronics and Dell. The OIC also named its board of directors, which will be led by Jong-Deok Choi, the deputy head of Samsung’s Software R&D Center.
Don't store your movies on your phone or tablet—store them on this instead.
It's truly stunning to think about how many cloud storage and sharing services are out there. And on the free tier, they're all pretty much the same, offering free accounts with 2GB to 7GB of storage and apps for all the various mobile and desktop platforms. But there's one relatively new service that makes it ridiculously easy to share files with others: At first glance, Jumpshare appears to be nothing special. The service doesn't even have mobile apps yet, and is on the lower end of free storage, offering just 2GB to non-paying users. Jumpshare also limits individual file uploads to 250MB.
The results are in and the recent The only catch is BitTorrent's one million figure counts both free and paid downloads. The free version offers one single and accompanying video from the album, while the $6 paid version offers the entire album of eight songs, as well as the video for the single
Schwedische Mediziner berichten von einer Sensation: Nach ihren Angaben hat in Göteborg weltweit erstmals eine Frau mit fremder Gebärmutter ein Kind zur Welt gebracht.
Die Hoffnung war gross, dass mit einer Therapie gleich nach der Geburt HIV-infizierte Kinder geheilt werden könnten. Nun ist dieser Ansatz auch beim zweiten vermeintlich geheilten Kind fehlgeschlagen.
Ein Kanufragment, das an der Westküste Neuseelands gefunden wurde, liefert neue Informationen zur Technologie prähistorischer Wasserfahrzeuge.
In der Physik wird das Lösen von Gleichungen immer mehr durch das Instrument der Simulation verdrängt. Die erkenntnistheoretischen Folgen dieses Paradigmenwechsels sind noch viel zu wenig erforscht.
Seit zwei Jahren tüftelt das IBM-Forschungslabor mit der Firma Airlight Energy an einem Solarkonzentratorsystem, das Strom und Wärme produzieren soll. In drei Jahren soll das System marktreif sein.
2012 vermassen die Zwillingssonden «Grail» das Schwerefeld des Mondes; nun liegen die Daten vor. Bei der Analyse stiessen die Forscher völlig unerwartet auf eine annähernd rechteckige Struktur.
Ozon war bisher ein Sommerproblem. Im US-Gliedstaat Utah wurde der Grenzwert 2013 aber auch an Wintertagen überschritten. Eine wichtige Rolle könnte die Öl- und Gasfördermethode Fracking spielen.
Mit einem Feldversuch mit Sandkörnern haben Forscher die Bedeutung des Pflanzenwuchses als Erosionsschutz nachgewiesen. Aus der Studie könnten Empfehlungen zur Renaturierung abgeleitet werden.
Fritjof Helmchen von der Universität Zürich erhält 750'000 Dollar aus den USA. Der Hirnforscher entwickelt ein neues Verfahren, um den Informationsaustausch zwischen den Hirnarealen zu erforschen.
Nach einem chirurgischen Eingriff erholen sich nicht alle gleich schnell. Ein Bluttest könnte Auskunft über die individuelle Genesung geben.