Microsoft’s push into the connected car space has moved up a gear with a new patent licensing agreement with Toyota. The world’s second-largest auto maker will have access to a range of Microsoft patents as part of the deal announced this week. Rather than trying to build a high-tech automobile of its own, Microsoft is…
When in doubt, blur it out. That’s how Instagram is handling any controversial photos that surface on its platform. On Thursday, Instagram announced a new policy to blur out “sensitive” content that users have flagged as either offensive or disturbing. The blurred photos and videos do not explicitly violate Instagram’s content guidelines, so they don’t warrant…
A group of hackers threatening to wipe data from Apple devices attached to millions of iCloud accounts didn’t obtain whatever log-in credentials they have through a breach of the company’s services, Apple said. “There have not been any breaches in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud and Apple ID,” an Apple representative said in an…
Nearly three-quarters of Android devices on the five biggest U.S. carriers are running on security patches that are at least two months old, putting them at greater risk of being hacked. That finding was made in an analysis released Thursday by Skycure, a mobile threat defense vendor. The report also found that the city of…
A lawsuit that challenged the fairness and legality of the H-1B lottery system, describing it as a “never ending game of chance,” has been thrown out by a federal judge. The case was heard by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon in Oregon; in a 31-page opinion, Simon said that the government’s random visa distribution…
Google engineers yesterday acknowledged that half of all Android devices had not received a security update in the past year, even as they argued that the firm has made progress in streamlining the open-source operating system’s patching process. “About half of devices in use at the end of 2016 had not received a platform security…
Facebook has incorporated new features into its Messenger app, and they may seem familiar to iMessage users. Facebook Messenger now lets users add emoji reactions to individual messages, just how Facebook users can “react” to posts in their News Feeds. Facebook is also giving users the ability to include @mentions in their messages. Both of…
The new Raspberry Pi Zero W was designed to be a board to make internet-of-things devices, but a key OS from Google won’t work on the hardware. Google’s Android Things IoT OS will not work with the small developer board, which is partly a wireless board, partly a gadget development tool. The Zero W is…
The U.S. CIA has had tools to infect Apple Mac computers by connecting malicious Thunderbolt Ethernet adapters to them since 2012, according to new documents purported to be from the agency and published by WikiLeaks. One of the documents, dated Nov. 29, 2012, is a manual from the CIA’s Information Operations Center on the use…
Intel’s artificial intelligence efforts have been scattered over many different units but are now being united into a single operating group. The Artificial Intelligence Products Group will focus on the development of chips and software products tied to machine learning, algorithms, and deep learning. The new group could become Intel’s single most important group as…