Mike Wheatley
Latest from Mike Wheatley
F#@* It! Russia Wants to Ban Swearing on the Web
“Mother Russia” is certainly living up to its nickname of late. About a nine months ago Russian lawmakers first introduced their controversial “blacklist law,” which gives authorities the power to block access to websites that are deemed to promote drug use, suicide and porn (for the kids, of course). Oddly enough, that same law was ...
Death By Internet of Things: How Smart Gadgets Kill
Amidst all the excitement over the Internet of Things and how our cars and homes and factories are going to vastly improve our lives by talking to each other, you might want to take a step back to consider the kinds of security risks that this new level of connectedness will pose. Very few of ...
Video Ads In Your News Feed – Facebook’s Latest “Great” Idea
So some bright spark at Facebook has come up with yet another inventive way to bombard its users with advertising. According to “sources familiar with the matter” who spoke to Bloomberg, the social media giant is about to unleash TV style video commercials onto everyone’s news feed by the end of the year. The idea ...
Intel’s Insane DVR Will Record Every TV Show That’s Ever Broadcast
It seems like just about anyone who’s anyone in the tech world is desperate to get in on the TV act these days, but few companies efforts seem quite as intriguing as Intel’s, which unveiled plans for a connected set-top box earlier this year. The chip maker’s ambitions to assault the TV business were the ...
Will an Ubuntu Superphone Give Enterprises the Edge?
Canonical’s bold effort to crowdsource $32 million to fund its Ubuntu Edge ‘superphone’ has generated a wave of excitement since its launch seven days ago. The company’s marketing team has been pulling out all the stops to try and reach its lofty target, offering a number of discounted ‘perks’ to try and tempt backers, while ...
Lenovo Joins Huawei & ZTE on the US Government’s Blacklist
When it comes to computer hardware western governments aren’t enamored with the idea of using equipment supplied by Chinese companies. Concerns that such gear could allow the Chinese government a secret back door into government servers have been raised time and time again, with companies like Huawei and ZTE usually bearing the brunt of the ...
Russia Plans To Spy on Its Citizens with Subway SIM Card Trackers
If you thought that the NSA’s motivations for running its PRISM program and gathering metadata about your communications was bad enough, just wait till you see what they’re doing in Russia. According to a report in the Izvestia newspaper, one of Russia’s most widely read news publications, the Moscow Metro Police have just announced a ...
Oh No, Thailand’s Just Banned Bitcoin!
Its emerged that the authorities in Thailand have effectively banned Bitcoin, ruling that the cryptocurrency is “illegal” due to an apparent incompatibility with local laws. The report came from a local Bitcoin startup, www.bitcoin.co.th, which said that the Bank of Thailand, the governing body that regulates financial transactions in Thailand, announced the ruling following a ...
PRISM Fallout Leaves Black Clouds Looming Over US Tech Firms
Whether or not Ed Snowden’s revelations that the NSA has been secretly monitoring web traffic have harmed national security remains a matter of debate, but there’s one thing that doesn’t appear to be in doubt any more – the existence of PRISM has had a negative impact on US cloud service providers, which have reportedly ...
Homes Are Getting “Smarter”, But How Will They “Think”?
Editor’s Note: the following is an excerpt from an interview with Zonoff CEO Mike Harris. Zonoff provides a comprehensive software platform for electronic devices that makes it possible to do things like turning on the coffee pot automatically when your alarm clock goes off, or a mobile notification to a parent when their child gets ...