Articles by Richard Adhikari

Lumbering like the old-school technology firms it sometimes derides, Google has finally issued a patch for a master key vulnerability in Android that Bluebox called to its attention back in February "Is Google eating their own dog food?" asked Randy Abrams, a research director at NSS Labs....

Google's so-called driverless car has sparked speculation that it will bring about drastic changes in our cities Some prognosticators foresee new cities with narrower streets, fewer parking spaces, and hidden sensors instead of traffic lights, while others fear there might be a new flight to the suburbs like the 1960s exodus. It's a battle between...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to exercise authority over the surveillance activities of the United States government, has been issuing rulings that assess broad constitutional questions and establish judicial precedents, all without oversight, The New York Times has reported...

The UK and Germany have become the latest European countries to demand that Google amend the privacy policy revamp it launched in April 2012, which consolidated user data across all its services The Information Commissioner's Office in the UK announced that it has sent a letter to Google notifying it that its changes raise "serious questions" about...

The United States' Voyager 1 spacecraft is close to becoming the first human-made object to travel between the stars The spacecraft, which is now more than 11 billion miles from the sun, has entered the so-called "magnetic highway," showing scientists two of the three signs they believe will confirm it has entered interstellar space: the presence o...

A U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner is urging consumers to take more control over their data.The call to action comes as revelations that the NSA is spying on Americans to an unprecedented degree continue to shake the country. Unease has been mounting over the amount of data companies are handing over to the agency. Commissioner Julie Brill on Wedn...

The first human-robot conversation in space will take place later this year aboard the International Space Station ...

Microsoft kicked off its Build 2013 developers conference on Wednesday with the announcement that its highly anticipated Windows 8.1, aka "Windows Blue," has arrived ...

Firefox 22, launched by the Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday, supports voice calling, video chat and peer-to-peer file sharing through the browser without plug-ins, thanks to full support for the WebRTC application programming interface ...

Sony on Tuesday announced the Xperia Z Ultra, which it bills as having the world's slimmest and largest full HD smartphone display, and the third generation of its SmartWatch -- the SmartWatch 2 ...

Samsung on Monday announced pricing and other details for its 7-, 8- and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3 family All three are WiFi-enabled and will be available from major retailers in the United States on July 7. Samsung began taking preorders on Tuesday. Pricing ranges from US$200 to $400....

A bug that has been in Facebook's network for about a year has exposed private information on about 6 million of its users to other users during that period. This has revived concern that the company maintains a database of shadow profiles of members and their friends, even if the latter are non-members Since Facebook has more than 1 billion member...

Google is internally testing a new service, Google Mine, that will be integrated with Google+, according to the Google Operating System unofficial blog. It will let users list their belongings, post photos to a Mine album, and share and track their belongings with friends Think of it as Craigslist on steroids with a homey touch....

In a remarkable display of creativity, the University of Maryland has portrayed a prototype nanobattery created by researchers as being made of wood, sending the blogosphere into a tizzy "A sliver of wood coated with tin could make a tiny, long-lasting, efficient and environmentally friendly battery," the university claims. A video strengthens tha...

Facebook's Instagram on Thursday launched a video app, as had been widely expected. Instagram video is available now in the iTunes App Store and on Google Play for iOS 4.0 and Android 4.0 respectively "130 million people from day one are going to have access to video the way they have access on photographs," said Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom....

Google is asking the secretive United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to let it disclose information about its orders Such disclosures would be made without violating FISA or the Court's rules of procedure, Google said....

The United States and Russia are going to cooperate more closely on cybersecurity, the White House has announced They are setting up a new working group under the auspices of the Bilateral Presidential Commission, set up in 2009 by President Obama and then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, to assess emerging threats to information and communicatio...

A cyberdrill for financial services companies that was originally to be conducted on June 28 has drawn such a strong response that the organization sponsoring it has had to reschedule the event "Given the industry's robust interest in this program and the expanding number of individuals who wish to participate, we are working to reschedule the exe...

Huawei on Tuesday announced the Ascend P6, its first high-end smartphone. The China-based company is the largest telecommunications equipment provider in the world, but it also has a device manufacturing business among its many operations. In the smartphone realm, it is perhaps best known for its low-end line. That could be about to change....

Buzz is building over Facebook's rumored plan to launch a mobile video app for Instagram. The mobile video app might be unveiled at a Facebook event on Thursday, according to TechCrunch. Video functionality in Instagram, the company Facebook purchased for US$1 billion in April of last year, would be a direct challenge to Twitter's Vine app. Vine l...