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Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey on Wednesday said the company did a poor job of communicating the price of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset However, similarly priced products, such as TVs and smartphones, cost less to manufacture than the Rift VR headset, he said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything, or AMA, session....

TheTaxpayer Advocate Service on Wednesday released its annual report to Congress. Among other things, the report warns that a five-year plan to revamp how the Internal Revenue Service operates may result in a substantial reduction in telephone and face-to-face interactions with taxpayers "Based on our internal discussions with IRS officials, TAS ha...

Samsung on Wednesday unveiled the Family Hub Refrigerator at CES, ongoing in Las Vegas through Saturday The new refrigerator sports a 21.5-inch full HD LCD screen on the upper right outside door, which doubles as a communications center....

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday announced a deal that would require Uber to encrypt geolocation information about its riders, as well as enhance its data security practices The AG opened an investigation into Uber in 2014, in response to allegations that the service had tracked riders and displayed their locations in an aeri...

Activist investorStarboard Value, which has dogged Yahoo over the years, on Wednesday sent a letter to the company demanding it make changes or face a proxy fight Yahoo "made the right decision" bysuspending the Alibaba spinoff, but "the continued downward spiral of Yahoo's core Search and Display advertising businesses" has been "frustrating for u...

Apple on Wednesday announced that customers spent a record US$1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases during the holidays Jan. 1 was the App Store's best day ever, with consumers spending about $144 million, the company said....

Hacking teamfail0verflow last week demonstrated a hack of Sony's PlayStation 4 game console that allows anyone running the modification to run the Linux OS on the appliance The demo was part of a lightning talk session at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress....

Security researchers atSentinelOne on Wednesday revealed a vulnerability they discovered in the Blackphone The flaw -- an obscure socket -- lets an attacker take over and control communications on theBlackphone, a highly secure Android smartphoneSilent Circle developed and marketed in reaction to news of government surveillance of people's communic...

Just days before Christmas, a rare event occurred: the report of a successful intrusion into America's infrastructure by overseas hackers Although the event -- penetration of the control system of a dam 20 miles from New York City -- was more than two years old, it just made it into the public light last month....

Why do so many companies fail at industry analyst relations? Since the best answer might come from an industry analyst, I'll share a few thoughts with you. I'll also share some secrets for building a successful long-term technology analyst program. Hint: It's about being on the growth side of the wave. This is a good week to address this issue, si...

Netatmo on Monday announced a smart security camera and floodlight combo at CES 2016 The Presence camera is designed for outdoor use and can identify objects such as people, animals and vehicles....

Yahoo has shut down its Yahoo Screen on-demand streaming video hub, according to news reports The hub's offerings included a National Football League game played in London, licensed clips of shows such as Saturday Night Live, and a number of original series, including Community....

The release last month ofElementary OS Freya version 0.3.2 showed little has changed in this new-style Linux distro that wraps its own lightweight desktop design around the Ubuntu core....

A room-sensing camera planted on the front of the Vive Pre was the reason the release ofValve andHTC's virtual reality headset was delayed, the companies revealed Tuesday at CES 2016 The Vive VR headset was supposed to beat Oculus VR and Sony to the punch, coming out in the last quarter of last year instead of launching well into 2016....

China'sState Administration for Industry and Commerce on Tuesday launched the latest in a series of investigations against Microsoft for possible violations of the country's antimonopoly law Back in July 2014, about 100 SAIC officialsburst into four Microsoft offices in various parts of China and copied contracts and records, downloaded data from c...

I've been trying to analyze modern rewards programs and customer loyalty recently for a project. It's a complex issue and so it is tricky to tease apart -- nothing like trying to defuse a bomb, but intellectually challenging for sure At the heart of the issue is a body of research that says rewards, as currently configured, don't work in the ways w...

Before the Internet, messages were spread by television and newspaper ads and highway billboards. Today that is done through social media. Virtually everyone knows about it, and many people use it. Does it make any sense that a U.S. government agency could violate any laws for using social media to carry out its mission? Doesn't make sense to me. H...

One of the highlights of Ford's Tuesday CES event was its announcement of plans to connect its Sync smart car technology with smart home applications from Amazon and Wink. The integrations will give consumers remote control of things like home security and lights from their vehicles, along with the ability to unlock car doors and turn on the ignition from their living rooms...

Will 2016 be a breakaway year for virtual reality technology? Exhibitors at CES 2016 this week seem to think so. More than three dozen of them will be flogging their VR wares at the show, more than double the number from last year....

Combining human and computer intelligence could help solve the world's most vexing problems, researchers envisioned in an article published Monday in the journal Science Researchers from Cornell University and the Human Computation Institute want more humans to help out in accelerating research and finding solutions to life's most difficult problem...