Lenovo’s ThinkPad P71 is one superfast laptop that can work with HTC’s Vive and the Oculus Rift VR headsets. It’s technically a workstation and is targeted at professionals creating VR content, editing movies, or running engineering applications. Headsets are needed to create VR content. The laptop, which weighs 3.4 kilograms, has a 17-inch screen and is…
Quicken last month moved to a software-by-subscription model for Canadian customers, and may do the same for those in the U.S. who rely on the personal finance program. Unlike a pilot program that launched in April 2016, the Quicken subscription is not a pure cloud-based service, but relies on software installed locally on a Windows…
Samsung has scrapped its Raspberry Pi 3 competitor called Artik 10 as it moves to smaller and more powerful boards to create gadgets, robots, drones, and IoT devices. A last remaining stock of the US$149 boards is still available through online retailers Digi-Key and Arrow. Samsung has stopped making Artik 10 and is asking users to…
In a few months, Bluetooth 5 will finally arrive in smartphones and tablets. But you can already test the technology on developer boards being shipped by hardware makers. Bluetooth 5 is a major step ahead for the venerable technology, which was introduced in 1999 to hook up devices wirelessly. It is two times faster than predecessor…
Western Digital today announced that it has kicked off production of the industry’s densest 3D NAND flash chips, which stack 64 layers atop another and enable three bits of data to be stored in each cell. The 3D NAND flash chips are based on a vertical stacking or 3D technology that Western Digital and partner…
Mozilla in four weeks will bar plug-ins built using a decades-old technology from Firefox, ending a years-long process designed to make the browser more secure. The single exception to the ban: Adobe’s Flash Player, which will continue to run, with limitations, in Firefox. Mozilla’s plug-in prohibition will apply to NPAPI plug-ins, (Netscape Plug-in Application Programming…
A hacker is proving that sites on the dark web, shrouded in anonymity, can easily be compromised. On Friday, the unnamed hacker began dumping a sizable database stolen from Freedom Hosting II onto the internet, potentially exposing its users. The hosting service, Freedom Hosting II, was known for operating thousands of sites that were…
Popular smart TV maker Vizio will pay US $2.2 million to settle complaints that it violated customers’ privacy by continuously monitoring their viewing habits without their knowledge. Beginning in February 2014, the California TV maker tracked what TV shows customers were watching on 11 million TV sets sold in the U.S., the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and…
After aggressively using JavaScript email attachments to distribute malware for the past year, attackers are now switching to less suspicious file types to trick users. Last week, researchers from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center warned about a new wave of spam emails that carried malicious .LNK files inside ZIP archives. Those files had malicious PowerShell…
It wasn’t live, but Intel’s 300 drones in the sky behind Lady Gaga at the start of the Super Bowl Halftime Show were impressive nonetheless. What started out as a sea of floating lights came together by the end of the bit to form an American flag. It was impressive, cool, and it was all…