Uber Technologies’ autonomous cars could be returning to California soon after state authorities permitted the company to test the vehicles. The ride-hailing company is now listed by the California Department of Motor Vehicles as one of over 20 companies, including Waymo, Tesla and Baidu, that have been issued autonomous vehicle testing permits as of Wednesday.…
WikiLeaks has attracted plenty of haters over its controversial disclosures. But the site may be in a unique position to help tech vendors better secure their products. That’s because WikiLeaks has published secret hacking tools allegedly taken from the CIA, which appear to target smartphones, smart TVs and PCs. Companies including Apple and Cisco have…
Renault is making electric cars look good. The French automaker’s Trezor electric coupé has a low, wide body that resembles a stalking predator, and given that it goes from 0 to 100km/h in less than 4 seconds, the prey won’t be able to run very far. The vehicle borrows its electric motor and regenerative breaking…
Determining the value of some of that old gear taking up space in your closet or garage might become a lot easier if you have a Google Home. In an onstage demo at Google Cloud Next, eBay chief product officer RJ Pittman showed how the online auctioneer might tie into Google’s digital assistant. He started…
Facebook on Wednesday rolled out some staggering statistics related to its social networks. Each day, users watch 100 million hours of video, 400 million people use Messenger, and more than 95 million photos and videos are posted on Instagram. That puts a heavy load on Facebook’s servers in data centers, which help orchestrate all these…
The National Science Foundation today announced that it would hand out a total of $6.1 million in research funding for Northeastern University and US Ignite, Inc in a partnership designed to hasten the development of advanced wireless technologies. US Ignite is a non-profit dedicated to creating uses for futuristic wireless technology, and it will pair…
It was unclear today exactly what kind of edge Microsoft might gain by partnering with Qualcomm and others to run Windows Server on ARM processors, an analyst said. “Microsoft must see something that is interesting enough to port over Azure and Windows,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in a Wednesday…
More homeowners now choose to buy solar panel systems rather than lease them, according to a new report. Solar leases, which typically last up to 20 years and keep the ownership of solar rooftop panels in third-party supplier hands, peaked in 2014, with 74% of solar-panel home customers choosing that option. In the fourth quarter…
Confide, a messaging app reportedly used by U.S. White House staff, apparently had several security holes that made it easier to hack. Security consultancy IOActive found the vulnerabilities in Confide, which promotes itself as an app that offers “military-grade” end-to-end encryption. But despite its marketing, the app contained glaring problems with securing user account information,…
Purported CIA documents leaked Tuesday appear to confirm that the U.S. National Security Agency and one of CIA’s own divisions were responsible for the malware tools and operations attributed to a group that security researchers have dubbed the Equation. The Equation’s cyberespionage activities were documented in February 2015 by researchers from antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab.…