Any reform of a controversial U.S. law allowing the National Security Agency to spy on people overseas will likely focus on its impact on U.S. residents, without curbing its use elsewhere. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires on Dec. 31, and some digital rights groups are calling on Congress to overhaul the law to…
Twitter is taking the offensive in its ongoing battle online trolls and keep users from being abused. “We’re continuing our work to make Twitter safer, moving faster than ever to do so,” Ed Ho, Twitter’s vice president of engineering, wrote in a blog post. “This week we’re introducing additional updates that leverage our technology to…
Windows 7’s decline in user share, driven for a year by desertions to Windows 10, has stalled for the last eight months, data published today showed. According to analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Windows 7 — an estimate of the proportion of the world’s personal computer owners who ran that operating system…
A lucky few developers will be able to get their hands on a low-cost Windows virtual reality headset starting this month. Microsoft announced Wednesday that the Acer Mixed Reality Developer Edition headset will start rolling out to a handpicked batch of software makers starting the end of March, with more coming later. This marks the…
Microsoft unveiled the first Windows Mixed Reality headset Wednesday, and an early look at a prototype version of the hardware shows promise, along with room for improvement. The Acer Mixed Reality Development Edition headset will start rolling out to developers later this month, but Microsoft offered a demo of a pre-release prototype during the Game…
Now that the dust has settled from Mobile World Congress, we can turn our attention to the next big thing: Samsung’s Galaxy S8 event. Samsung opted to skip its usual Barcelona unveiling, but it won’t be too much longer until we can get our hands on the most anticipated Android phone in years. After the…
Azure Stack, Microsoft’s hybrid cloud system, is getting close to release. On Wednesday, the tech giant unveiled the third major public beta for customers that want to test it out. The new release brings a handful of additional capabilities for users to test, like support for Azure D-Series virtual machine sizes and deployment with ADFS…
Twitter’s escalating its fight against abusive behavior once again by introducing new tools and officially announcing older ones. The company confirmed that it’s taking punitive actions against harassers, which were spotted in the wild earlier in February. When Twitter’s algorithms discover an abusive tweeter, the company will temporarily reduce that person’s reach. Anyone who doesn’t…
Palo Alto Networks has bought LightCyber for its behavioral analytics platform that can speed the time to detect intrusions that have already breached networks and are looking around for ways to carry out exploits. The $105 million cash deal brings LightCyber’s ability to analyze behavior of devices to discover reconnaissance by malware inside networks and…
An analysis of robots used in homes, businesses and industrial installations has revealed many of the same basic weaknesses that are common in IoT devices, raising questions about security implications for human safety. The robotics industry has already seen significant growth in recent years and will only further accelerate. Robots are expected to serve in…