Articles by Katherine Noyes

A fledgling website created last fall connects hackers with clients willing to pay for their services. Nearly 50 hackers have listed their services onHacker's List so far, for tasks including data recovery, penetration testing and computer forensics.

The average American worker spends almost half an hour commuting each day, but virtual traffic lights could cut that almost in half If traditional traffic lights were replaced with virtual ones, the results could include not only a reduction of up to 40 percent in urban workers' commute times, but also lower carbon emissions, less congestion and fe...

Facebook on Tuesday announced that it has begun a new effort to help find missing children by incorporating Amber Alerts into the news feeds of its 185 million U.S. users. Through the effort, which is part of a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the alerts are sent only to users in targeted search areas. They'...

Google has shed fresh light on Project Ara, its modular Android smartphone initiative, including plans to pilot the project in Puerto Rico through food truck-style stores Project Ara will offer a smartphone endoskeleton; users will be able to add the functionality they want piece by piece, rather than being confined by the hardware configurations d...

The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday invited the Obama administration to weigh in on whether it should hear arguments in the ongoing dispute between Google and Oracle over Java copyrights U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr. "is invited to file a brief in this case expressing the views of the United States," reads the SCOTUS memo...

Google reportedly is gearing up to launch a shopping and comparison site for auto insurance in the United States The company has been operating such a site in the UK, dubbed "Google Compare," for the past two years.

Astronomers on Tuesday announced the discovery of eight new potentially habitable planets beyond our solar system, including two that are the most similar to Earth of any discovered so far First identified by NASA's Kepler mission, all eight of the planets are located in their distant suns' "habitable zone," or the region where liquid water might e...

Sony on Monday debuted a new Walkman at CES that's as notable for its hefty price as for its high-end features Listed at US$1,119.99, the new Walkman NW-ZX2 is several hundred dollars more than last year's Walkman NW-ZX1. In return, it promises "high-resolution audio like never before," thanks to Sony's new S-Master HX digital amplifier -- designed...

Gogoro on Monday took to the stage at CES to unveil a zero-emissions electric scooter. The Smartscooter is designed to be powered by batteries available via subscription from a network of vending machines in urban areas around the world. Equipped with 30 onboard sensors, cloud connectivity and an integrated mobile app, the Gogoro Smartscooter allo...

SpaceX next week will attempt a feat with odds of success of just 50 percent. Specifically, it will try for the first time to land the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on a custom-built ocean platform in the Atlantic Ocean. The experiment originally was scheduled to take place in mid-December but was postponed to Jan. 6....

China last week apparently began blocking Gmail, and the outage was still in effect on Tuesday, although to a lesser degree, according to reports. A sharp drop in traffic from China to Google services began last Friday, according to its Transparency Report, and the company could find no explanation in its own systems....

Amazon is working on a second iteration of its Fire Phone but doesn't plan to release it until 2016, according to reports Following the disappointing performance of the phone's first generation -- Amazon reported a US$170 million charge in unsold inventory in its third quarter -- the company has gone "back to the drawing board," VentureBeat report...

Google on Friday filed a lawsuit against Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, the latest salvo in its battle with the Motion Picture Association of America over piracy Hood targeted Google with an "unreasonable, retaliatory and burdensome" subpoena, the complaint alleges.

Mojang has partnered with Telltale Games to create a brand new Minecraft game that will be narrative-driven Dubbed "Minecraft: Story Mode," the series will be set in the world of Minecraft, but it will feature an original story that combines new characters with familiar themes and is driven by player choice. It will be a separate standalone product...

Apple, Amazon, AT&T, CNN, National Public Radio and The Washington Post were among numerous technology and media companies to support Microsoft this week, as it battled U.S. efforts to seize a customer's emails A coalition of supporting organizations filed 10 amicus briefs with the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case challenging a U.S. g...

Google last week announced an updated app for its minimalist Cardboard virtual reality viewer, as well as software development kits for both Android and the Unity game engine It also published new building specifications for those interested in making their own Cardboard viewers and announced that it's hiring more people to work on the project, wit...

The Internet should be a basic human right, but access to it is increasingly unequal around the globe, said Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, as he launched its annual Web Index last week The Web has the potential to be a great equalizer, Berners-Lee asserted, but only "if we hard-wire the rights to privacy, freedom of expr...

The Google-supported FIDO Alliance this week achieved a key milestone in its mission to end the use of passwords by releasing version 1.0 of its namesake open standard "Today, we celebrate an achievement that will define the point at which the old world order of passwords and PINs started to wither and die," said Michael Barrett, president of the a...

Facebook on Monday made it possible for users to perform keyword searches for individual posts on the social network "With a quick search, you can get back to a fun video from your graduation, a news article you've been meaning to read, or photos from your friend's wedding last summer," said Tom Stocky, Facebook's vice president of search....

Grooveshark on Monday confirmed that it will launch a new mobile app that allows subscribers to chat while listening to user-created music stations Dubbed "Broadcasts," the new app will debut next month, offering an ad-free social radio listening experience on both Android and iOS....