Articles by Richard Adhikari

The Obama administration threatened Yahoo with fines of US$250,000 daily if it wouldn't comply with demands to hand over user information to the United States National Security Agency, Yahoo has disclosed Yahoo had filed suit against the demands in 2007, citing the Fourth Amendment....

Google has purchased Lift Labs, which produces battery-operated utensils that make it easier for people with essential tremor or Parkinson's disease to eat their meals Parkinson's patients' hands shake, making it difficult for them to eat or drink. Lift Labs' products, offered under the "Liftware" name, cancel more than 70 percent of tremors....

It seems no one's quite sure what to think of Apple's newly launched iPhone 6 family Apple's share price shot up when CEO Tim Cook announced Apple Pay, then spiraled down when he announced the Apple Watch, and reportedly continued to fall after the band U2 performed, closing down $1.05 Tuesday at $99.95. By Wednesday's market close, the stock had r...

A notification that UC Berkeley this October will host the first executive program dedicated to teaching major corporations how to tap into the US$80 billion crowdfunding marketplace recently kicked off an email exchange between ECT editor Mick Brady and me about issues raised by the program. Me: Hey, Mick... Coke Dodge and other F500 companies ar...

About 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords have been published on a Russian bitcoin security forum as a text file Sixty percent of the 4.93 million credentials in the file were valid, claimed the poster, who used the online handle "tvskit." ...

United States lawmakers were getting an estimated 1,000 calls a minute from constituents concerned about Net neutrality by noon Pacific Time on Internet Slowdown Day, an online demonstration held on Wed., Sept. 10 "We've set a new record for FCC comments and beat Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction,'" said David Moon of Demand Progress....

Hot on the heels of hackers stealing celebrities' nude photos from their iCloud accounts and posting them on the Web comes news that iCloud users are being targeted again -- this time by a botnet The Kelihos botnet is sending emails purporting to be from Apple, informing targets they have purchased the film Lane Splitter through their iTunes accoun...

Intel on Tuesday made a mobile splash as it kicked off IDF 14, the Intel Developer Forum being held in San Francisco through Thursday It announced the commercial availability of Intel Edison, its postage stamp-sized System on a Chip, and of its second-generation Intel XMM 7260 and 7262 LTE modem. It also unveiled the MICA (My Intelligent Communicat...

Excitement is mounting as the countdown to Apple's mysterious Tuesday event ticks away Apple is widely expected to unveil two new iPhones -- one in the usual smartphone form factor and the other a phablet. There's also a good deal of anticipation for an iWatch that will kick the sector into high gear....

Apple is taking steps to improve security in the wake of the furor generated by hackers' posting nude photos of celebs on the Internet, CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal Apple will alert users via email and push notifications when someone tries to restore iCloud data to a new device, Cook said....

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled the Nokia Lumia 830, 730 and 735 smartphones, along with several accessories and feature updates, at the IFA 2014 consumer electronics show in Berlin The 830 is the thinnest and lightest member of the Lumia family. It has a 10mp camera....

More than 99 percent of the 800,000 or so comments on Net neutrality the FCC released last month were in favor of an open Internet, according to the Sunlight Foundation'sanalysis of the comments. At least 60 percent of the comments, or more than 484,000, were form letters written by organized campaigns, although that is a lower percentage than is...

Samsung and Oculus on Wednesday unveiled the Gear VR -- a virtual reality wireless headset optimized for Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 phablet, also announced Wednesday The Gear VR -- or "Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition," as Oculus describes it -- will be compatible with a wide range of film, gaming, 360-degree video, and educational and experiential c...

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration next month will reformat the flash memory of the Mars exploration rover Opportunity Opportunity's been undergoing computer resets with increasing frequency -- it had 12 in August alone....

Apple on Tuesday issued a statement blaming the posting online of more than 100 celebrities' photos in various stages of dishabille on a highly targeted hack attack to gain access to their usernames, passwords and answers to security questions. None of the cases investigated resulted from any breach in the company's systems, including iCloud or F...

People have been reluctant to discuss whistle-blower Edward Snowden's revelations about the United States National Security Agency's surveillance activities in social media, the Pew Center Internet Project reported last week. Only 42 percent of the 1,800 adults interviewed by the center were willing to post their views on the topic on their Faceb...

Leap Motion last week announced a virtual reality headset developer mount for Oculus Rift and a new API that together will take the VR game to new heights The API feeds raw infrared imagery straight from Leap's sensors to the controller on the headset, giving users a real time view of the environment....

Twitter this week announced that its analytics tool, first made available to advertisers, Twitter Card users and verified users, now can be used by everyone Twitter's analytics tool lets users click on any tweet to see how people engage with it in real time. They can compare their tweet activity month over month and see how they trend over time. Us...

Time Warner Cable suffered a massive service outage in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, leaving an unknown number of its nearly 12 million customers nationwide without service for hours "As of 6 a.m. ET, services were largely restored ... . As of 8 a.m., all services were back to normal," TWC spokesperson Eric Mangan told the E-Commerce Times....

A team of university researchers have been busy building Robo Brain, a large-scale computational system that collates information from the Internet, as well as data from computer simulations and real-life robot trials, and learns from it That knowledge base will be used to drive prototypes for robotics research, household robots and self-driving ca...