Weed. Apparently marijuana is the key to a bright, cyber crime-fighting future for the FBI, according to statements made on Monday by FBI Director James B. Comey at the annual White Collar Crime Institute held at the New York City Bar Association in Manhattan.
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It’s getting much harder for smartphone companies to really differentiate their products, especially if they don’t already have a loyal user base like the ones Apple and Samsung enjoy. In various marketing campaigns, HTC has tried pushing the high quality of its smartphones’ hardware, Nokia has tried selling us on its killer camera and LG has tried hyping up buttons that live on the back, and not the front, of the smartphone. However, there’s one spec that matters to users more than any other than many smartphone vendors have seemingly overlooked in their ad campaigns: Battery life.
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The kitschy triumph of bad taste gaming, “Castle Wolfenstein”, debuted on Apple II 33 years ago (in case you weren’t already feeling old today). The smash hit spawned a series of jaw-droppingly tacky sequels, remakes and spin-offs, including “Spear of Destiny” where the player tries to locate the weapon that pierced the chest of Jesus Christ to prevent Hitler from leveraging its supernatural power. Because it is widely known that Christian relics are easily converted into weapons of mass destruction.
There have been no German releases of any kind for a fairly good reason: The use of Nazi imagery in Germany can result in prison sentences of up to three years.
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One of the biggest stories of 2014 so far has been the death of net neutrality. After the FCC voted last week to move forward with Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality plan, several tech companies released statements in which they reaffirmed their long-held positions opposing the proposed changes. Netflix especially has stood out as a figurehead for the net neutrality movement in recent weeks and on Tuesday, BTIG Research reported that Netflix CFO David Wells was asked about “the FCC’s view that peering and interconnection are not the same issue as net neutrality and are more like cousins or siblings.”
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Heartbleed, the massive security threat that has recently affected millions of websites, was patched by most large Internet companies and by many site owners, but regular Internet users failed to grasp the significance of the threat, a new Avast study revealed. Furthermore, less than half of those people who knew about Heartbleed failed to take any action once sites fixed the problem.
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Silent Circle started as an app developer dedicated to creating secure messaging and voice communications solutions. Following last year’s revelations surrounding PRISM and other NSA spying programs, the company decided to take things a step further and develop the “Blackphone” Android smartphone that focuses on security and privacy above all else. Apparently there is quite a bit of demand for such a device, because Silent Circle on Wednesday announced a big new funding round.
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Motorola on Wednesday kicked off an interesting Moto 360 contest, which encourages potential smartwatch buyers to submit their watch face designs in hope of winning Motorola’s first Android Wear device. However, the company also inadvertently revealed how much the Moto 360 will cost in the contest’s rule section.
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Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service won’t give you everything you can get on HBO… but it will still give you a lot. Amazon on Wednesday announced the first batch of shows that its Prime Instant Video and it includes every season of The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Rome, Eastbound & Down, Enlightened and Flight of the Conchords. You’ll also be able to watch at least some early seasons of current shows such as True Blood, Boardwalk Empire and Treme, although sadly for fantasy fans there’s no Game of Thrones on this list just yet. Other HBO content available through Amazon Prime Instant Video includes original movies Mary and Martha, Temple Grandin and You Don’t Know Jack, as well as original miniseries Band of Brothers, The Pacific, John Adams, Parade’s End and Angels in America. Amazon’s full press release announcing the available shows follows below.
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Unit converting apps are an interesting breed in the iOS App Store. While most app categories contain a few real gems buried beneath a mountain of garbage, well-designed unit converter apps are much easier to come by. We recently covered one example here on BGR, and now we have another to share that has just been made available for free for a limited time.
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Do you want a quick way to zip files from your iPhone or iPad to your PC that doesn’t involve carrying a Lightning cable around with you everywhere? Then you might want to check out the iStick, a new USB flash storage drive that has both a standard USB connector and an approved Apple Lightning connector as well. The iStick, which is being developed by the Sanho Corporation, has launched a Kickstarter page where so far it’s raised close to $600,000, more than 6 times the $100,000 it had set out to raise and it still has 26 days to go.
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