Articles by Katherine Noyes

"Is that a phablet in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" ...

ComputerCOP software, a parental monitoring application that long has been recommended and distributed by law enforcement agencies, is little more than spyware with significant potential for abuse, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported Wednesday The software includes a keylogger that could expose a family's personal information by transmittin...

Darkcoin this week announced that it has exited beta and is now ready for mainstream use. Also, the software's code is now open source Darkcoin -- a Bitcoin competitor -- is the first fully open source cryptocurrency with financial privacy built directly into the software, its developers claimed....

Google's Niantic Labs last week announced a new Missions feature that can incorporate user-generated content in its Ingress augmented reality game Now available to Android users -- and coming soon on iOS -- Missions challenges players to visit a series of places, complete a game action such as hacking or capturing a portal, or use clues to solve a ...

Facebook may have garnered 1.3 billion users since its inception a decade or so ago, but today there's an upstart contender that has set its sights on much of that same social networking world "Simple, beautiful and ad-free" is Ello's tagline, and the new social network is gaining considerable attention. Though it's still in invitation-only beta, i...

Facebook on Monday announced Atlas, a rebuilt ad platform that gives marketers access to its vast troves of user data and helps them direct highly targeted ads across the Web "Atlas delivers people-based marketing, helping marketers reach real people across devices, platforms and publishers," explained Erik Johnson, head of the new Facebook service...

The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday gave the green light for six aerial photo and video production companies to begin using unmanned aircraft systems, also known as "drones." To incorporate the devices in film and TV production, the companies will be required to hold private pilot certificates, keep their drones within line of sight at ...

Comcast on Tuesday lashed out at critics of its US$45.2 billion bid for Time Warner Cable, including accusing Discovery Communications of making "extortionate demands." The proposed merger would result in increased investment, innovation and competition and so is pro-consumer and in the public interest, Comcast maintained.

Google on Monday publicly denounced the conservativeAmerican Legislative Exchange Council for lying about climate change. "We funded them as part of a political campaign for something unrelated," Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told a caller to NPR's Diane Rehm Show. "I think the consensus within the company is that was sort of a mistake. We're tr...

Attackers for months have been using eBay listings to redirect visitors to password-harvesting scam sites, the BBC reported. They use cross-site scripting to hijack eBay shoppers and trick them into handing over personal data Smartphones, televisions, hot tubs and clothing are among the items supposedly for sale in listings infected with malicious ...

Hard on the heels of increased security measures in Apple's newly released iOS 8, Google this week confirmed that encryption will be turned on by default in the next release of Android Android has offered encryption for more than three years, and keys are not stored off the device, so they can't be shared with law enforcement, Google said. In the n...

The Federal Trade Commission has updated a longstanding rule governing mail- and phone-based retailers to explicitly include e-commerce vendors as well, meaning that online retailers now must abide by a 30-day shipping requirement or refund customers' payments if they can't Since 1975, buyers from mail- and phone-based sellers have been entitled to...

A new, flexible robotic suit funded by the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency could enable soldiers to walk longer distances with less fatigue and also improve mobility for disabled civilians Called the "Soft Exosuit," the biologically inspired device is made of flexible textiles woven together into a piece of smart clothing ...

Google on Thursday announced its acquisition of online polling startup Polar "I'm thrilled to welcome [Polar founder] Luke Wroblewski and the talented Polar team to Google!" wrote Dave Besbris, vice president of engineering for Google+, in a post on the social network. "They'll be joining our team and helping us make G+ even more awesome."

Verizon in the first half of next yearwill launch an Internet TV service that offers a selection of custom channels as well as a bundle of content from the Big Four networks, according to reports Represented in the mobile-minded bundle will be not only content from ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, but also millennials-focused programming from DreamWorks Anim...

Comcast has begun using JavaScript injection to serve ads for its services to devices connected to its publicly accessible Xfinity WiFi hotspots across the United States The ads are fleeting, but they can appear roughly every seven minutes, according to Ars Technica, which first reported the practice.

HP on Monday unveiled the Windows-based Stream laptop some have referred to as a "Chromebook killer," but instead of sporting the US$199 price that was expected, it will cost $299 Featuring a 1366 x 768 display, 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of local storage, the new 14-inch machine is powered by an AMD A4 Micro processor with a fanless design.

It's a trivial matter to send a message to someone halfway around the world these days, but just imagine trying to do it without speaking or writing. That is just what an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers recently achieved in an experiment that successfully transmitted a message directly -- and noninvasively -- from the brain of one person to that of another some 5,000 miles away...

Google this week announced a hardware initiative to design and build new quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics. The effort is related to the launch last year of its Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab Physicist John Martinis, winner of the 2014 Fritz London Memorial Prize, leads a group of scientists from the Universi...

Domain name registrarNamecheap on Monday reported that it was besieged Sunday night by cyberattackers who employed username and password data possibly stolen by the so-called CyberVor hacker gang. "Overnight, our intrusion detection systems alerted us to a much higher than normal load against our login systems," explained Matthew Russell, Nameche...