Verily is stepping up its debugging game by focusing on eliminating a real, dangerous bug: the mosquito. At the end of 2014, Google started exploring what it could do about problems caused by mosquitos. At the same time, Verily (initially Google Life Sciences) was founded to solve the problems of preventing disease on a global scale, … continue reading
Personal privacy vs. national security. That’s the issue at stake today as the FBI has asked Apple to hack into the phone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack in December. On the face of it, the stance by Apple’s Tim Cook seems genuine enough. People have come to trust … continue reading
I’m hoping that, by now, you’ve heard of “Let’s Encrypt,” a free project by the non-profit Internet Security Research Group. The project is currently in public beta, but sometime in the new year, we can expect it to launch for everyone. And the timing couldn’t be better. First, let’s catch everyone up. The EFF, Mozilla, … continue reading
Microsoft is reportedly investing as part of a US$70 million funding round in Cyanogen, an Android ROM company, aiming to wrest control of the open-source operating system away from Google. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft would be a minority investor in the company, and a source stated Microsoft’s interest is … continue reading
Google released a list of its must-have Android apps, rattling off 127 of the most highly recommended and highest rated apps in the Google Play Store. The apps, most of them free, range from popular favorites including Netflix, Shazam and Spotify to mobile applications with fast-growing user bases such as Quip, Pushbullet and Lumosity. Google’s full … continue reading
Today I wear the hat of SD Times ombudsman, peeling back the curtain to reveal some of the thought processes behind what we do. Somewhere between creepy and courteous lies the current state of the media business. What with visitor tracking refined down to the article being read, even to the line of an article … continue reading
