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Although long talked about, the Ubuntu Edge campaign exemplified the concept best with its "super phone" boast: your phone would hook up to a monitor, mouse and keyboard and become a fully functioning Ubuntu desktop PC. Phone apps would run on the desktop in an appropriate guise like responsive websites do on phones.Today, ahead of Mobile World Congress next month, Ubuntu Desktop Manager Will Cooke has posted a three-minute video that shows how Canonical's engineering team is progressing.My dream smartphone would be a phone that automatically turns into a PC the moment I get home. It knows I'm home, wirelessly and automatically hooks up to my display, mouse, and keyboard in my office, and done. Of course, it'd also automatically detect other displays and input devices in my house - say, a remote control and my TV.Ubuntu is working on it.

With version 15.02, the Genode OS project complements its existing virtualization support for the x86 architecture with virtualization on ARM by turning their base-hw kernel into a microhypervisor. Besides virtualization, the most prominent underlying theme of the current release is the project's increasing focus on test automation and optimization.Virtualization has a long history within the Genode project. After originally focusing on paravirtualized Linux kernels (L4Linux and OKLinux), the added support for the NOVA kernel and the Vancouver VMM in 2011 cleared the way towards hardware-based virtualization on the x86 architecture. In 2012, the project started exploring ARM TrustZone as another flavour of virtualization. With the Noux runtime, Genode introduced their take on OS-level virtualization. Finally, the transplantation of VirtualBox to NOVA last year marked the project's most ambitioned virtualization-related work. It enables VirtualBox to run as unprivileged user-level program on top of the NOVA microhypervisor.During 2014, the Genode developers used those accumulated experiences to conquer another ground, namely the ARM virtualization extensions. The current release extends their custom kernel (called base-hw) with support for hosting virtual machines and adds a user-level virtual machine monitor that is capable of running an unmodified Linux-based system as guest OS. At a high level, it mirrors NOVA's virtualization architecture but for ARM-based systems. The microkernel/hypervisor implements merely the VM world switch and the virtualization of memory but leaves all the complex work to untrusted user-level virtual machine monitors. In fact, the added kernel complexity on account of virtualization support is less than 1,000 lines of code.Besides the virtualization-related work, the base-hw kernel gained a further improved scheduler that takes IPC relationships into account, which is inspired by the pioneering work of NOVA. Furthermore, the project is happy to announce the principal ability to run Genode as secure-world OS on the upcoming USB Armory hardware platform.Most of the other topics of the current release are concerned with improving the performance and stability of Genode-based system scenarios. The centerpiece of these efforts is a new tool kit for automating tests on a large variety of kernels and hardware platforms. In line with this overall theme, the new version vastly improves the user experience of VirtualBox on NOVA, comes with updated rump-kernel-based file-system support, and lifts long-standing scalability limitations on PC platforms.More background information about all the improvements of version 15.02 are available in the extensive release documentation.

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut "Star Trek," died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83."Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... Human."

Fascinating inside scoop by WPCentral. According to them, there were very advanced talks between Microsoft and Pebble to come to a close partnership between the two companies. Microsoft built a fully functional Pebble application for Windows Phone with complete integration, offered to bundle Pebble devices with Windows Phone sales through Microsoft stores and carriers, and a whole lot more. All this was set to be announced at BUILD 2014.However, it did not come to pass.There is just one problem: Pebble founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky.Despite Microsoft's attempts to win over Pebble, Migicovsky is reportedly not a fan of the company nor their mobile operating system. The young entrepreneur reportedly nixed any partnership.Growing up in a world where Google and Apple have dominated the mobile scene, this perception that Microsoft is old and out of touch is seemingly more frequent these days. Particularly with those under 30 (see Snapchat's Evan Spiegel for a similar attitude). Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was unable to persuade him personally.If I were to take an uneducated stab at why Pebble didn't go through with this, I think we need to look no further than Apple. Apple has its watch coming, and that alone would be incentive enough for Apple to start making the life of other smartwatch makers who want to be compatible with iOS very difficult. Now imagine if Pebble, to boot, had a close partnership with Microsoft, including preferential treatment for Windows Phone? Apple is not exactly know for not being incredibly petty.I think Pebble made the wise choice here.

Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) is on the wishlist of AmigaOS users for quite some time now, and while progress has been made, we're still not there yet.To explain the progress, let us first look at the concept, and then point to where we are in the whole.AmigaOS developer Thomas Frieden goes in-depth in the work currently under way to bring SMP to AmigaOS.

Now, more than a year into the SteamOS era (measuring from that beta launch), the nascent Linux gaming community is cautiously optimistic about the promise of a viable PC gaming market that doesn't rely on a Microsoft OS. Despite technical and business problems that continue to get in the way, Valve has already transformed gaming on Linux from "practically nothing" to "definitely something" and could be on the verge of making it much more than that.Progress has been amazing, and once Valve gets its SteamOS and Steam Machines, things should pick up even more.

Google is bringing one familiar feature of Web search to its Google Play store: Paid search results.The company said it will begin testing what it calls "sponsored" search results within its app store in the coming weeks. The move is intended to help developers better promote their apps in a store that boasts more than a million choices. Of course, it will also generate more revenue for Google.Application stores are already completely and utterly useless and broken for application discovery, so I couldn't care less about this.

Pebble has unveiled its new smartwatch - the Pebble Time. From an article The Verge published about the company and this new watch:But this watch has a few tricks up its sleeve. For the first time, Pebble's smartwatch has a color e-paper LCD screen, replacing the black-and-white panels used on the Pebble and Pebble Steel. Itâs not the same kind of display you'll find on an Android Wear watch or the Apple Watch; only 64 colors are available, and it has much less contrast, saturation, and resolution than other screens. It's more like a Game Boy Color screen than a modern smartphone display. But it uses very little power and is visible in bright daylight, letting Pebble keep the display on all the time without using a lot of battery life. That helps preserve one of Pebble's strengths over the competition: the company says the Pebble Time can last up to seven days between charges, far longer than other smartwatches.Be sure to watch the video atop the article to get an idea of the awesome interface they have devised. The timeline concept, the distinctive animations - it's got some real personality and character. If you want a utilitarian smartwatch and don't care too much about looks, the Pebble seems to run circles around the charge-everyday, platform-locked competition.

Did you ever wish you could sync up your iPad's drawing or painting app directly with your Mac? Now you can with Astropad, a brand new app that literally mirrors your Mac desktop via Wi-Fi or USB.Created by two ex-Apple engineers - Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli - Astropad works with several popular brands of pressure-sensitive pens to create a pro-level drawing tablet that pairs with your Mac for illustration, sketching, painting and photo editing.This always seemed like such a no-brainer to me. In fact, I'm surprised this kind of 'tethering' functionality isn't built into iOS+OS X themselves by Apple.

A U.S. federal judge has dismissed an antitrust lawsuit that charges Google harmed consumers by forcing Android handset makers to use its apps by default, but gave the plaintiffs three weeks to amend their complaint.The two consumers who filed the suit failed to show that Google's allegedly illegal restrictive contracts on manufacturers of Android devices resulted in higher prices on phones, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman said in a Feb. 20 ruling.Handset makers are free to release Android handsets without Google's applications, however, if you want one Google Android application, you got to have them all. I don't know if the latter is harmful in any way for consumers, but the plethora of insanely cheap - and sometimes, cheap and still really good - Android devices seems to contradict the complaint from the plaintiffs that it drives up prices.

For Windows to be a truly global product, anyone in the world should be able to type in their language. The first step to unlocking text input for the world is to be able to display any of the world's languages. This is a challenging task, one which most people don't need to worry about because their language is already supported, but for millions of people around the world getting basic text support has been a problem. The stumbling block in most such cases is a little-known component called a "shaping engine". A shaping engine is used for so-called complex text layout, which is needed for about half of the world's writing systems. For many years, Windows customers have been able to install their own fonts and keyboards but before Windows 10, if there was no shaping engine for your script things wouldn't look right.Windows 10 contains a brand new shaping engine which covers many more complex writing systems than the ones that came before. As someone who's into languages (I earn my living with them), this stuff makes me giddy - even if these complex writing systems are beyond my comfort zone. Props to Microsoft for investing in this.

Hollywood 6.0 has been released. Since I'm not so sure most of you know what it is, here's the official description.Hollywood is a multimedia-oriented programming language that can be used to create graphical applications very easily. It was designed with the paradigm to make software creation as easy as possible in mind. Thus, Hollywood is suited for beginners and advanced users alike. Hollywood comes with an extensive function library (encompassing almost 700 different commands) that simplifies the creation of 2D games, presentations, and applications, to a great extent. It has been in development since 2002 and hence is today a very mature and stable software package.

As mentioned earlier, I bought an iBook G3 so I could play around with Mac OS 9 some more - one of my favourite operating systems. This time around, I'm also taking a look at HyperCard, something I never experienced but am quite interested in. Since I know many of you grew up with Apple machines and possibly HyperCard, I was wondering if any of you have any recommendations for fun, interesting, or otherwise fascinating HyperCard stacks.I can see the potential all over HyperCard from the mere demos alone - and now I want to see what smart people could do with it.

When Teddy Roosevelt declared the Grand Canyon a national monument, in 1908, he famously said: "Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it." In that sense, the Escalade is a thumb in TR's eye. Covering hundreds of acres on Navajo Reservation land, it is arguably the most intrusive development ever proposed for the Grand Canyon - a $500 million to $1.1 billion recreation and transport facility featuring a 1.4-mile tramway equipped with eight-passenger gondolas that would carry as many as 10,000 people a day down to the river confluence, with new roads, hotels, gift shops, restaurants and other attractions. The developer - Confluence Partners LLC, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based investment group whose members' ventures include real estate, resorts and theme parks - says construction of the Escalade could begin as early as this year.I've been to the Grand Canyon. It is one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring, unforgettable, and, well, grand pieces of nature our planet has to offer. My friends and I stood on one of the edges, at six in the morning, off-season in late October, without any other people around, and we slowly watched the sun rise over the Canyon, slowly lighting afire the reddish rocks as the shadows of night made way for the Arizona sun.It's not something you can describe in words or capture in a photograph. It's something you have to experience. Something emotional, and, I'm sure, for some people, something spiritual.This project should not continue. Ever. The Grand Canyon must not turn into the horrid Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

The Dell XPS 13 ends up being responsive, small, light, and well built. Dell has crafted what I am sure most people were hoping for when the original Ultrabook specification was announced. On top of that, they have designed a laptop with class-leading battery life, and plenty of choice to let people buy as little or as much as they need. Considering the competition, this is clearly the Ultrabook of the Broadwell-U generation to beat, and from what we saw at CES it may very well go unchallenged for the remainder of the year.This is the kind of stuff Dell should restrict itself to. Looks like a winner - that battery life is exceptionally amazing.

In the last few months, Cloanto started distributing Amiga System Software - the publisher traditionally refers to it as "Workbench" instead of "AmigaOS" - on CF cards, Floppy Disks and as a downloadable Workbench Disk Image Pack. Approached by Amiga-News, Cloanto's Michael Battilana confirmed that the company owns the copyrights for all works created by the Commodore/Amiga companies up to 1993.That seems like Cloanto now owns everything - but nothing could be farther from the truth, as the article details. Pieces of Amiga-related intellectual property are currently owned by three different companies, and there are also a few things with an unclear status.Cynically, you could rephrase the headline as 'Amiga IP ownership situation gets little less messy'.

As promised with the new early access program, Jolla has released the latest Sailfish update for, well, early adopters. Assuming no major issues are found, this release will be pushed to all Sailfish users soon. The highlights (some screenshots):New weather application with events feed integration available through storeBrowser received a new interfaceColours in ambiences can be adjustedEmail authentication capabilities can be autodetectedImproved low memory handling, now swap is properly taken into accountThe new browser interface is very welcome - the old one was quite cumbersome at times - so that alone makes it a worthwhile update.

In an effort to eliminate bugs from upcoming iOS versions ahead of their general releases, Apple plans to launch the first-ever public beta program for the iOS operating system, according to multiple people briefed on the plans. Following the successful launch of the OS X Public Beta program with OS X Yosemite last year, Apple intends to release the upcoming iOS 8.3 as a public beta via the companyâs existing AppleSeed program in mid-March, according to the sources. This release will match the third iOS 8.3 beta for developers, which is planned for release the same week. Apple then expects to debut iOS 9 at its June Worldwide Developer Conference, with a public beta release during the summer, and final release in the fall.Hopefully this will help address the many iOS bugs people are currently complaining about endlessly.

American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the worldâs cellular communications, including both voice and data.The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.The Americans and British hacking into a Dutch company's private network to steal information so they can spy on pretty much everyone. And we call them our "allies". This is way, way worse than whatever the North-Koreans supposedly did to Sony.In a just world, the people responsible for this act of aggression would be dragged to The Hague to face justice. Alas - we do not live in a just world. My own Dutch government will sweep this under the rug after some fake posturing for the electorate, and that's that.

Sony announced last night that it's spinning off its audio and video divisions, much like it spun off its television division last year. That won't mean much right now; Sony still displayed interesting new Android-powered TVs at CES, and we're sure to see new crazy high-end Walkmans and camcorders with Sony branding from the newly independent AV division as well.But the long-term reality is far more stark: after years of promising "One Sony," CEO Kaz Hirai appears to be systematically breaking the company up for sale. The VAIO PC division was sold last year and just announced its first hybrid laptops as an independent company, and Hirai told investors that he has to consider spinning off the smartphone business and possibly selling the TV business outright.From one Sony to no Sony.

LG today has unveiled its latest Android Wear building on the original LG G Watch R and coming up with a more stylish and formal and all-metal "LG Watch Urbane" that's "designed for a sophisticated and cosmopolitan wearer." Available in gold or silver, it's still a standard 22mm model, so you'll be able to swap out straps if you like. LG's slimmed down the bezel, as well as the overall size and thickness. The stainless steel handle also has improve protection against scratches and corrosion.This is starting to look quarterway decent, but it's still Android Wear, and Android Wear sucks, so it still a long, long way off from passing the funeral test. I'm glad LG is taking the smartwatch in this direction though - a little less computer, a little more watch. The competition - including Apple - can learn from this.

In 1989, Commodore began an endeavor which was way overdue. The creation of a near Amiga-quality computer that is 8-bit in spirit, compatible with the popular Commodore 64 (through an emulation mode), and containing a built in disk drive. Assuming that the price range could have been set below $499, and assuming that this project had been done back in 1985 instead of 1989-1991, I believe this would have been an big seller for Commodore, and would have breathed life into them which would have extended CBM beyond 1994.I never knew they tried to create the Commodore 65. Fascinating. There's even an emulator for it.

It's pure arrogance for Silicon Valley to imagine that it can make wearables cool by hiring a few fashion people, putting the product on a runway, or throwing money at "collaborations" with brands. This is a new game they're trying to play, one with different rules. The rollout of the Apple Watch would look much different if it were orchestrated by a brand like Chanel. Instead of being released at $350, it would hit stores with a price tag in the thousands. Consumers would clamor to get their hands on one, only to be stymied by limited runs, which would further stoke desire. Only after a few years of artificial scarcity would it enjoy wider release.Obnoxious? Maybe. But to do cool right, brands have to jettison tech world values like accessibility and utopianism. Cool isn't fair. You can't have it both ways.We'll see how it goes. The Apple Watch will sell pretty well early on - but I have no idea how well it will do in the long term. Most wearables end up inn drawers, uncharged, forgotten. Time will tell if the Apple Watch will be any different.

A very long portrait of Jonathan Ive. There are way too many things to quote here, so I'm picking this one.One morning at Appleâs headquarters, a few weeks earlier, Ive recalled how, in 1997, the company seemed to be dying around him. "Every story you'd read, every morning before coming to work, started with the phrase 'The beleaguered computer maker, Apple,' " he said. Ive was then thirty; after five years at the company, he had become its head of industrial design. âThere was a Wired cover that had a big Apple logo with a crown of barbed wire, as thorns, and underneath it just said, 'PRAY.' I remember this because of how upsetting it was. Basically saying: either it's going to just go out of business or be bought."It's remarkable how Apple went from effectively bankrupt (no joke: the company was 90 days from going bankrupt) to what it is today. A lot of Apple fans like to make fun of Michael Dell's comment that Apple should just shut down and give its money to shareholders, but at that time, that comment was entirely, 100% accurate.The only reason Apple got back up on its feet was Steve Jobs, and nothing else. This recovery was a miracle, and nobody - nobody - saw it coming. This miraculous recovery will be taught in schools and universities for centuries to come.

XDA forum member RustyGrom has already figured out how to install Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones onto non-approved Lumia devices. As always with Windows - it's a simple registry switch.From a high level this works by using FiddlerCore to intercept the traffic going to the Microsoft WPflights server that controls the Insider app and responds with our own custom data. The app accepts registry editing information from the web responses and acts upon that. This allows us to write stuff to select locations in the registry. In the case of the Windows 10 Preview, it appears to only look for your phone's PhoneManufacturerModelName to decide if it should be offered previews. Windows Update also checks this value. Other devices like Samsungs or HTCs may need different settings.The hack is still in its early stages, and really, don't do this if you have no idea what you're doing, but there are already reports of success.XDA is a magical, magical place.

Hyperion Entertainment Cvba in Sint-Agatha-Berchem (Brussel) was declared bankrupt by the court in Brussel on 27-01-2015. The appointed curator is Bert Dehandschutter. The company number is 466380552. The (main) activity of Hyperion Entertainment Cvba is computer programming, consultancy and related activities.Hyperion is the company that developers AmigaOS 4.x. I've never quite understood how, exactly, the licensing situation was arranged - the owned the right to develop the operating system, but did not own the brands and operating system itself etc. etc. - but let's just hope this isn't the end of the road for AmigaOS.

Following a report today that Apple was hiring experts from the automotive industry for a new research lab, The Wall Street Journal adds to the story claiming Apple has several hundred employees working on an Apple-branded electric car:Apple has several hundred employees working secretly toward creating an Apple-branded electric vehicle, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the project, code-named "Titan," has an initial design of a vehicle that resembles a minivan, one of these people said.The report adds that CEO Tim Cook approved the project close to a year ago with product design Vice President Steve Zadesky leading the group, lining up with rumors that Apple is working on something that will "give Tesla a run for its money."Apple as a car company.

Wow. There are quite a few people talking about yesterday's Canalys estimate of 720,000 Android Wear shipments in the last six months of 2014. And most of that talk is ridiculous, with little to no perspective on the market itself. All of the doom and gloom Iâm reading about Android Wear may yet come to pass, but to base it on shipment data at this point in time is premature for several reasons.It's an interesting perspective, and the author certainly makes some good points, but disappointing or no, the real problem for me is still that Android Wear and current smartwatches in general are, simply, shit.I've never based my opinions on popularity, and I don't intend to start now.

Microsoft has released Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones, but only for a very small number of low-end devices (Lumia 630, 638, 635, 730, 636, 830), so most of us are out of luck. The reason for this limited initial release is technical in nature.Some context on why we chose these and not higher end phones like the 930/Icon or 1520: We have a feature that will be coming soon called âpartition stitchingâ which will allow us to adjust the OS partition dynamically to create room for the install process to be able to update the OS in-place. Until this comes in, we needed devices which were configured by mobile operators with sufficiently sized OS partitions to allow the in-place upgrade, and many of the bigger phones have very tight OS partitions.I only have an HTC 8X, which technically should get Windows 10 eventually, but since it's not a Microsoft device I doubt it's very high on the priority list.

This spontaneous anti-green-bubble brigade is an interesting example of how sometimes very subtle product decisions in technology influence the way culture works. Apple uses a soothing, on-brand blue for messages in its own texting platform, and a green akin to that of the Android robot logo for people tweeting from outside its ecosystem.Believe it or not, these are people going batshit crazy because they are texting with someone who doesn't have an iPhone. And people espousing a certain pride over this shallowness.These are probably the same shallow people who threatened to kill their parents or kill themselves when they didn't get an iPhone for Christmas. For once, I'm glad everyone in The Netherlands uses WhatsApp because we're an 85% Android country.

Very interesting interview with Adrian Ludwig, lead engineer for Android security at Google. There are a lot of fascinating answers to quote here, and I'm going for this one - do you need antivirus crap on your Android phone?In 2014, according to Verify Apps data collected by Google and ignoring rooting apps that were intentionally installed by users, fewer than 0.15 percent of Applications installed from outside of Google Play to U.S. English devices were classified as Potentially Harmful Applications. Given the built-in protection provided by Verify Apps and the low frequency of occurrence of installation of PHAs, the potential security benefit of an additional security solution is very small.I - and many others - have been saying this for ages, but let me just repeat it: do not install third-party security solutions on your Android phone. They are useless resource hogs that provide no additional security, and are built by scammy, untrustworthy, and needlessly alarmist software peddlers.That being said, it'd be great if Google released more information about these background security tools in Android - more specifically, numbers, numbers, numbers.

JanOS is an operating system designed to run on the chipset of mobile phones. It runs without a screen, and allows you to access all phone functionality, from calling to the camera, through JavaScript APIs.Why?Current development boards for Internet of Things solutions have one big problem: they are very expensive. Boards like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino have a limited feature set and simple extensions, like a GSM shield, can cost $80. That is a shockingly high price when a full smartphone can be available for just $30. Why not break out the mainboard from a mobile phone and use that to develop embedded projects? Cheaper and more powerful.It's built on top of Gecko, so you can use Firefox OS APIs. Interesting.

In past years Apple has said it's cracking down on the manipulation of App Store rankings through bot programs, but a recent image from Chinese social media site Weibo suggests the trade is alive and well using actual iPhones. The photo is captioned "hardworking App Store ranking manipulation employee," and shows a young woman sat in front of a bank of around 50 iPhone 5cs, all hooked up with a nest of cables. There's an identical bank of iPhones on her right and what looks like two more smartphone-laden desks facing away from her on the other side of the room.On some sites, the photo is being paired with an alleged price list for the services (above), with Tech in Asia reporting that it will cost customers RMB 70,000 ($11,200) to get into the top ten free apps (that's the option at the top), while keeping it there will cost RMB 405,000 ($65,000) each week. The third column reportedly shows the monthly price for these services, while the fourth gives potential customers a contact number on QQ - a popular messaging app run by Chinese internet giant Tencent.Wait, you mean to tell me the popularity contest that is the application store rewards quantity, not quality?Say it isn't so.

Software increasingly defines the world around us. It's rewriting everything about human interaction - I spend a lot more time on my iPhone than I do at my local civic center. Facebook, Apple, Tinder, Snapchat, and Google create our social realities - how we make friends, how we get jobs, and how mankind interacts. And the truth is, women don't truly have a seat at the table. This has disastrous consequences for women that use these systems built by men for men. I must use Twitter, as it's a crucial networking tool for a software engineer, yet I must also suffer constant harassment. Women's needs are not heard, our truth is never spoken. These systems are the next frontier of human evolution, and they're increasingly dangerous for us.You can close your eyes for this. You can cover your ears, shouting "LA LA LA LA!" at the top of your voice. You are free to do so.Until it's your daughter, and you realise that your refusal to acknowledge this huge problem will have consequences.

Over 720,000 Android Wear devices shipped in 2014 out of a total of 4.6 million smart wearable bands. Though the Moto 360 remained supply constrained through Q4, Motorola was the clear leader among Android Wear vendors. LGâs round G Watch R performed significantly better than its original G Watch, while Asus and Sony entered the market with their own Android Wear devices. Pebble meanwhile shipped a total of 1 million units from its 2013 launch through to the end of 2014.That's not a whole lot, but that doesn't surprise me considering how terrible Android Wear and current smartwatches are.

Today, Microsoft released their latest Patch Tuesday. This Patch includes a fix for vulnerability CVE-2015-0057, an IMPORTANT-rated exploitable vulnerability which we responsibly disclosed to Microsoft a few months ago. As part of our research, we revealed this privilege escalation vulnerability which, if exploited, enables a threat actor to complete control of a Windows machine. In other words, a threat actor that gains access to a Windows machine (say, through a phishing campaign) can exploit this vulnerability to bypass all Windows security measures, defeating mitigation measures such as sandboxing, kernel segregation and memory randomization.Interestingly, the exploit requires modifying only a single bit of the Windows operating system.Fascinating.

Samsung's smart TVs have already come under fire this week for a poorly-worded privacy policy that apparently let the devices listen in on owners' conversations. Now, there are reports that the sets are inserting ads "every 20-30 minutes" into users' own, locally-stored content. There's been a string of complaints online by customers using third-party video apps such as Plex and Australian service Foxtel, with most referring to rogue Pepsi ads interrupting their viewing. "After about 15 minutes of watching live TV, the screen goes blank, and then a 16:9 sized Pepsi ads (taking up about half the screen) pops up," wrote a professed Samsung smart TV owner on Foxtel's support forums. "It's as if there is a popup ad on the TV."If you're into Android, don't buy Samsung. There are enough better alternatives.

After a number of delays, BlackBerry is ready to begin the rollout of BlackBerry OS 10.3.1 on 19 February. This release has already been available for Passport and Classic users, and starting 19 February, it will be available for other BlackBerry users too.

Tim Cook spoke at length during today's Goldman Sachs conference on Apple's insane first quarter, China, the Apple Watch, and so much more. Here's a transcript of his remarks, with occasional interjection by the Goldman Sachs interviewer.A lot of ground is covered, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

The start of something beautiful.I have become completely dependent on my computer for all sorts of things. Obviously, I use my computer to develop software, but I also use my computer for banking, email, my personal phone book, my appointment schedule, playing games, and so on.I am not quite at the point where I leave my machine on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but soon I will be able to carry a computer in my pocket during those rare hours my desktop machine is not at easy reach (like when I'm flying back and forth between Seattle and San Francisco). This computer's official name has not been announced yet, but its codename is Pegasus. It's being created by Microsoft with six hardware partners. I'll start by showing you the Pegasus hardware from the user's perspective. In the second part of this article I'll dive into the details of the software platform and discuss the programming issues you need to understand to write cool Pegasus apps.Don't believe the haters and retrospective I-bought-my-first-smartphone-in-2009-and-now-I-know-everything naysayers - PocketPC was an amazing platform that put so much functionality and awesomeness in your pocket back when Google was still Altavista and Apple had just started peddling music players.Palm OS may have been my dressage show horse, but PocketPC was my trusty workhorse.

Linux kernel 3.19 has been released.This release adds support for btrfs scrubbing and fast device replacement with RAID 5&6, support for the Intel Memory Protection Extensions that help to stop buffer overflows, support for the AMD HSA architecture, support for the debugging ARM Coresight subsystem, support for the Altera Nios II CPU architecture, networking infrastructure for routing and switching offloading, Device Tree Overlays that help to support expansion busses found on consumer development boards like the BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi, support for hole punching and preallocation in NFSv4.2, and the Android binder has been moved from the staging area to stable; it also adds new drivers; and many other small improvements.Here is the full list of changes.