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The Federal Trade Commission last week charged DirecTV with deceptive advertising practices in a complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division. DirecTV, which has been in discussions over a potential merger with AT&T, currently has more than 20 million subscribers across the Uni...

Steve Jobs' Apple displayed a rather fascinating balance between design and utility. Granted, it often shifted more toward the design side, which resulted in problems like Antennagate, but that tended to happen when Jobs wasn't around. He made sure the products worked well and looked good -- he understood the need to do both. After Jobs left ...

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that separates the diamonds from the rough when it comes to new gadget announcements. Nothing happened this week in the gadget world, so we're definitely not going to be taking a look at the Apple Watch. Other items we certainly won't probe are an overhauled MacBook and a pancake-making robot....

Nvidia on Thursday launched the latest in its GTX 900s series of mobile GPUs -- GTX 960m and 950m -- designed to make a gaming laptop as future-proof as possible. Asus' recently unveiled GX501 is one of the machines that already has incorporated the latest Nvidia tech The new GPUs include such gaming-enhancing features as BatteryBoost, ShadowPlay a...

Microsoft later this year will offer its Cortana personal assistant as a standalone app for iOS and Android devices, Reuters reported on Friday The Cortana personal assistant evolved from the AI character Cortana in the Halo video game series....

Twitter this week updated its rules to combat online abuse and revenge porn, in the wake of continuing outrage among netizens The most significant change is a new statement that users may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject's consent....

The American Civil Liberties Union earlier this week filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the National Security Agency from indiscriminately snooping on United States Internet traffic Using a technique called "upstream" surveillance, the NSA does a spinal tap of the Internet's U.S. backbone, which carries the communications of millions of Americans, the...

Apple earlier this week announced ResearchKit, an open source framework that will let medical and health researchers gather data through iPhone apps. ResearchKit will be released in April Apps to monitor asthma patients and for studies on breast cancer survivors, cardiovascular health and Parkinson's Disease, already have been developed using Resea...

We see it all the time: a glowing 5-star comment on Yelp about our favorite neighborhood restaurant. At first glance, it looks authentic. However, what if the review actually were purchased by the restaurant? Would that change your perspective on the review or the restaurant? Of course, paying for advertising is hardly new. Celebrities for years...

Movie star Anna Kendrick managed to say something in a single tweet that instantly nails anyone who would buy a gold Apple Watch Edition: "We should be thanking Apple for launching the $10,000 'apple watch' as the new gold standard in douchebag detection." Right on....

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday released the final version of its controversial open Internet rules In the introduction to the some 400 pages of new rules, which cover both wired and wireless broadband, the commission stated its "carefully tailored rules" would prevent specific practices that are harmful to Internet openness,...

The United States' Central Intelligence Agency for years has been working to break iOS security, according to a report published Tuesday in The Intercept. The allegations are based on documents provided by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden....

Some 60 Linux kernel developers last week adopted a small "patch," called the "Code of Conflict," that attempts to set guidelines for discourse in the kernel community and outlines a path for mediation if someone feels abused or threatened Linux creator Linus Torvalds posted the appeal for good behavior on his personal git.kernel.org page.

Samsung this week opened its Milk Music streaming music service to anyone via a Web browser, one year after introducing it on its mobile devices There's just one catch: Consumers have to sign up for a Samsung account in order to use the Milk Music Web Player....

The wearable technology marketplace is already in place and growing. Now, enter the Apple Watch. Although it will speed up growth, this new space will be very different from the iPhone and iPad markets Large companies like Google, Samsung and Sony, and smaller companies like FitBit and others have already thrown their hats into the ring and seen li...

The Apple Watch may have dominated Apple's Spring Forward event earlier this week, but an unexpected new MacBook could herald the future of mobile computing. It will be available April 10, both online and at Apple retail stores and select authorized resellers Thinness, lightness and tomorrow's technology are its salient features.

Google on Wednesday launched a public beta version of Nearline Storage, the latest addition to the Google Cloud Platform. Nearline seeks to reel in enterprises to the wider Google Cloud Platform with the promise of low-cost, low-latency storage for limitless amounts of data.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in hot water over her use of a private email server for official business during her time in office. Aside from the apparent violation of federal rules, the practice is very risky cybersecurity behavior for everyone involved, critics have alleged In taking her mail outside the State Department's systems,...

Google last week launched an auto insurance rate comparison site in California Mercury Insurance, MetLife and 21st Century Insurance are among the 14 firms already signed up as partners, and Google promises more will follow....

Fueled solely by the sun, the Solar Impulse 2 has completed the second leg of its historic journey around the world, landing in Ahmedabad, India. A decade-old dream is actualizing for the team The solar plane began its historic flight in Abu Dhabi on Monday and landed early Tuesday at Muscat, Oman. The second leg took 15 hours, with the Solar Impul...