Articles by David Jones

Nintendo, riding high off of record-shattering sales of its Switch gaming console, on Wednesday announced an out-of-the-box addition to the family, Nintendo Labo. With its Toy-Con creations, Labo could rewrite the script on the way gaming companies expand their audience to the children's market. Nintendo Labo, a do-it-yourself cardboard kit, offer...

IBM and A.P. Moeller-Maersk on Tuesday announced a joint venture to create a platform based on Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, with the goal of creating huge efficiencies in the global supply chain IBM and Maersk, one of the world's leading shipping container firms, have teamed up to provide a more efficient method of standardizing shipping logistics using...

Facebook once again has found itself at the center of a media storm, following Mark Zuckerberg's recent announcement of plans to shift its focus away from promoting news and business content and more toward emphasizing interactions from friends and family. The shift follows more than a year of heavy criticism directed against Facebook. It has been...

Many in the open-source community worked feverishly this week to respond to heightened fears that software updates to fix the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities would put millions of computers at risk of slowdowns or even total disability Updated kernels were released for mitigation of Meltdown variant 3, or CVE-2017-5754, for X86-64 architecture...

Major tech companies, including Intel, Microsoft and Google, scrambled to calm the mood this week after a large number of computer users reported performance problems linked to security updates for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities A firestorm of criticism has erupted over the response to the chip flaws, which researchers at Google's Project...

Since launching the original Echo smart speaker in 2014, Amazon has expanded its line of Alexa voice-activated devices to reach a dominant position in the marketplace. Realizing it has a bit of catching up to do and possibly may need to redefine the ground rules, Google this week put the consumer electronics world on notice that this no longer is ...

Artificial intelligence dominated CES 2018 in a big way on Monday with major announcements on connected car advances and home system technologies. Google all but declared war on Amazon with its Google Assistant voice technology making its presence known at nearly every turn on the showroom floor. LG rolled out a new lineup of high-end AI OLED and ...

A renowned Linux innovator has developed a new mobile operating system, called "Project eelo," in an effort to provide a level of data privacy that traditional Android and iOS devices fail to offer The new eelo system will allow mobile phone users to regain control over their personal information at a price they can afford, said Gael Duval, who cre...

Roku on Wednesday announced new software and a licensing agreement for OEMs to develop smart speakers, soundbars and multiroom audio systems that will allow customers to control their home entertainment devices with simple voice commands. The company also introduced Roku Entertainment Assistant, a new smart speaker technology that allows customers...

Germany on Monday began enforcing its new Network Enforcement Act, or NetzDG, which imposes a fine of up to 50 million euros (US$60 million) on social media networks that fail to remove hate-inciting posts promptly. The controversial law, adopted in mid 2017, just entered its formal enforcement phase. It is designed to help combat hate and fake ne...

A new Apache Struts campaign that researchers named "Zealot" has come to light in recent weeks. Zealot loads Windows or Linux-based machines by installing a miner for Monero, which has become one of the hottest cryptocurrencies used in recent malware attacks. Zealot uses NSA-linked EternalBlue and EternalSynergy exploits, according to the F5 Labs...

Open Garden on Monday announced the launch of a new peer-to-peer service that allows users to share Internet connections and unused plan data for free, with compensation in a new Ethereum cryptocurrency as an extra incentive The company is offering the service through an app that can be downloaded from Google Play. The system requires no hardware o...

Sixty percent of the digital marketing professionals who responded to a recent survey reported difficulty in reaching their target audiences with messaging and content. Only 19 percent of those surveyed were "very familiar" with how automation could help drive marketing campaigns, according to the report Ytel released Wednesday.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted 3-2 to repeal Obama-era Net neutrality rules that prevented Internet service providers from blocking, throttling or otherwise giving preferential treatment to customers. Backers of the repeal characterized it as promoting greater technological innovation and freedom to conduct business. FCC C...

ExpressVPN on Tuesday launched a suite of open source tools that let users test for vulnerabilities that can compromise privacy and security in virtual private networks. Released under an open source MIT License, they are the first-ever public tools to allow automated testing for leaks on VPNs, the company said. The tools are written primarily in ...

A group of 21 leading technology pioneers, including Apple Computer cofounder Steve Wozniak and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, this week penned an open letter to key congressional leaders asking them to pressure FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to cancel Thursday's planned vote to repeal Net neutrality. The process is severely flawed, they argued, ...

Microsoft announced a raft of new Kubernetes-related projects at the KubeCon conference in Austin, Texas, this week, demonstrating its growing commitment to the technology It launched a new version of its experimental Azure Container Instances for Kubernetes, the Virtual Kubelet....

A long-simmering dispute between Google and Amazon this week escalated into a front-burner feud, following Google's decision to block its YouTube video service from Amazon's Echo Show, effective immediately, and from its Fire TV, effective Jan. 1. Google apparently decided to cut off YouTube as retaliation for Amazon's refusal to carry its product...

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's long-brewing plan to repeal Net neutrality has the broadband, telecom and entertainment worlds at loggerheads. The commission's expected Dec. 14 vote could result in a complete rewrite of the script for the Internet's competitive landscape and consumer protection models. The repeal of Net neutrality would end restrictions i...

Amazon Web Services shone a spotlight on Internet of Things and machine learning technologies earlier this week, with the announcement of a new operating system and several new services designed to encourage radical expansion of their deployment and use across multiple industries. The new OS, Amazon FreeRTOS, simplifies development, deployment, se...