News
New app helping Venezuelans find scarce items
June 10, 2013 12:10 pm | by FRANK BAJAK, AP Technology Writer | CommentsHarried Venezuelans who devote hours scouring supermarkets for increasingly scarce food basics and toilet paper have just received some digital help thanks to a young software developer. A free application for mobile devices written by Jose Augusto Montiel lets people notify one another where flour, sugar, milk, cooking oil and toilet paper are for sale.
NSA claims know-how to ensure no illegal spying
June 10, 2013 12:07 pm | by KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer | CommentsThe supersecret agency with the power and legal authority to gather electronic communications worldwide to hunt U.S. adversaries says it has the technical know-how to ensure it's not illegally spying on Americans. But mistakes do happen in data-sifting conducted mostly by machines, not humans.
Intelligence chief defends Internet spying program
June 10, 2013 11:59 am | by JIM KUHNHENN LARA JAKES, Associated Press | CommentsEager to quell a domestic furor over U.S. spying, the nation's top intelligence official stressed Saturday that a previously undisclosed program for tapping into Internet usage is authorized by Congress, falls under strict supervision of a secret court and cannot intentionally target a U.S. citizen.
Obama: US, China sailing 'uncharted' cyberwaters
June 10, 2013 11:48 am | by JULIE PACE, AP White House Correspondent | CommentsThe United States and China are in "uncharted waters" as they tackle the contentious issue of cybersecurity, President Barack Obama said following the opening round of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in the California desert.
Globally, people resigned to little privacy online
June 10, 2013 11:29 am | by FRANK BAJAK & JACK CHANG, Associated Press | CommentsU.S. government snooping does not surprise global Internet users, who say they already have few expectations of online privacy as governments increasingly monitor people's digital lives and Internet companies often acquiesce. Concerned privacy activists called on people to better protect their digital data.
NSA revelations force question: What do we want?
June 10, 2013 11:06 am | by ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer | CommentsWe knew that the technology was there. We knew that the law might allow it. As we stood under a security camera at a street corner, connected with friends online or talked on a smartphone equipped with GPS, we knew, too, it was conceivable that we might be monitored.
'One giant leap' toward a NASA Armstrong center?
June 10, 2013 10:37 am | by ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer | CommentsNeil Armstrong's name is attached to a lunar crater, an asteroid, more than a dozen schools and a museum, but not a single NASA facility is christened in honor of the man whose "giant leap" made him the first to walk on the moon. All that could soon change on the fringes of the Mojave Desert...
Denials in surveillance program require decoding
June 10, 2013 10:29 am | by MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer | CommentsGoogle CEO Larry Page and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg are denying reports that depict two of the Internet's most influential companies as willing participants in a secret government program that gives the National Security Agency unfettered access to email and other personal information transmitted on various online services.
Leak of NSA programs tests US, China ties
June 10, 2013 10:14 am | by GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press | CommentsA day after the presidents of China and the United States ended their first summit, pledges of cooperation by the two leaders faced an early test from an unexpected quarter -- an American intelligence contractor was leaking highly sensitive U.S. surveillance programs from his hiding place in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.
Securing the cloud
June 10, 2013 12:00 am | by Massachusetts Institute of Technology | CommentsHomomorphic encryption is one of the most exciting new research topics in cryptography, which promises to make cloud computing perfectly secure. With it, a Web user would send encrypted data to a server in the cloud, which would process it without decrypting it and send back a still-encrypted result. Sometimes, however, the server needs to know something about the data it’s handling. Otherwise, some computational tasks become prohibit...
Music service, mobile software expected from Apple
June 9, 2013 11:24 am | by ANICK JESDANUN - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | CommentsA digital radio service and changes to the software behind iPhones and iPads are among the features expected Monday as Apple opens its annual conference for software developers in San Francisco. Apple is expected to unveil a simplified look to iOS, the software that runs iPhones and iPads. If the...
Microsoft, HP make laptop pitch to Maine educators
June 8, 2013 10:46 am | by DAVID SHARP - Associated Press - Associated Press | CommentsRepresentatives of Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are making the rounds to build support as Maine educators decide which laptops or tablets they're going to provide to more than 70,000 middle and high school students this fall. Microsoft Education's chief technology officer Cameron Evans...
Denials in surveillance program require decoding
June 7, 2013 8:22 pm | by MICHAEL LIEDTKE - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | CommentsGoogle CEO Larry Page and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg are denying reports that depict two of the Internet's most influential companies as willing participants in a secret government program that gives the National Security Agency unfettered access to email and other personal...
Is Big Data turning government into 'Big Brother?'
June 7, 2013 3:08 am | by MICHAEL LIEDTKE - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | CommentsThe revelations that the National Security Agency is perusing millions of U.S. customer phone records at Verizon Communications and snooping on the digital communications stored by nine major Internet services illustrate how aggressively personal data is being collected and analyzed.
Promising material for lithium-ion batteries
June 6, 2013 3:26 pm | by Technische Universitaet Muenchen | CommentsSo far, the negative electrode typically consists of graphite, whose layers can store lithium atoms. Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have now developed a material made of boron and silicon that could smooth the way to systems with higher capacities.
