Mike Wheatley
Latest from Mike Wheatley
Ubuntu Touch and Tizen phones a no-show for 2014
Will anyone ever be able to break Android and iOS’s stranglehold on the mobile landscape? Last year we saw signs that ‘someone’ might just be able to threaten them, with the first demonstrations of phones running Firefox OS, Tizen and Ubuntu Touch. But just when we were hoping that 2014 might be the breakthrough year, ...
The NSA reads up to 200 million SMS messages every single day
The NSA’s gobbling up millions upon millions of emails and communications every single day. It’s hoovering up cellphone metadata faster than you can say “sorry, wrong number”. It’s building a quantum code-cracker. Hell, it’s even using radio waves to hack into offline PCs. But apparently even that isn’t enough to satisfy it’s insatiable hunger for ...
Bitcoin to hit $100,000? Maybe one day…
Just how high can the value of Bitcoin go? That’s a matter of debate, but if your name happens to be Chris Dixon, then your most optimistic answer would be “really, really high”. As far as the Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalist is concerned, the cryptocurrency is only in its infancy, and it’s value should sky-rocket ...
Microsoft hands Windows XP a lifeline, but the clock’s still ticking
Microsoft has thrown a lifeline to the millions of users who’re still running the decrepit Windows XP operating system on their computers, by announcing it’ll be extending anti-malware support for an extra year. This means that Windows XP computers will continue to receive updates until April 2015. Previously, Microsoft had insisted that support for Security ...
US Appeals Court tosses the FCC’s Net Neutrality laws into the garbage
A landmark ruling in the Appeals Court has just seen the FCC’s net neutrality rules thrown in the garbage, and it could be bad news for smartphone-wielding internet users in the US . The rules would have meant it was against the law for telecoms companies to favor certain kinds of web traffic ahead of ...
The NSA uses good, old-fashioned radio waves to hack offline computers
If there’s one way to protect your privacy from the prying eyes of the NSA, surely it’s by keeping your computer permanently offline, right? Well, you might have thought so – but you’d be dead wrong! According to a new report from the New York Times, that simply isn’t the case – the NSA now ...
When’s the best time to launch a cyber-attack?
When the perpetrators of the Stuxnet worm decided to launch their attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, timing was everything. Designed to disrupt Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, Stuxnet wreaked havoc on the Natanz uranium-enrichment plant, shutting down a fifth of its centrifuges and setting its progress back by several months. But how did the hackers ...
Google’s Nest acquisition will speed up the ‘smart grid’, but it’ll come at a cost
Google has just bought Nest, maker of the smart thermostat, for a whopping $3.2 billion. It’s not immediately clear what’s motivated this acquisition, but with it Google is getting its hands on a relatively rare and untapped source of data – detailed information about your home’s power consumption. This could herald both good and bad ...
Facebook kills ‘sponsored stories’ but your face will still be used in its ads
Facebook has made good on an earlier promise to kill off its so-called “sponsored stories”, those annoying ads that use your friend’s identities and likes to promote various brands and pages. Last year, the social media giant updated its privacy policy, making clear that it would nix the sponsored stories language. But while its ads ...
It’s about time Microsoft got into bed with Android
Last week’s CES was notable for the conspicuous absence of one of the world’s largest consumer electronics firms – Microsoft. Having pulled out of CES 2013, devices running Windows software were almost totally absent at this year’s edition. Instead, CES 2014 saw Android-based desktops and laptops begin to gain momentum, and they’re now shaping up ...
