Current News/Innovations

Flash Software To Be Killed Off by 2020, Adobe Announces   Adobe has announced it is to axe its Flash Player, confirming the long-awaited end of a once essential piece of software. In a short blog post on Wednesday, the software giant announced that it was planning to "end-of-life" the once-ubiquitous plugin by 2020. It will be replaced by more open standards such as HTML5, which provides many of the same functions as Flash but does not require users to install a specific plugin. Adobe will be working with tech leaders like Facebook, Apple and Google to encourage creators to make the move to the new software. The companies announced their support for Adobe's move in separate blog posts. "For 20 years, Flash has helped shape the way that you play games, watch videos and run applications on the web. But over the last few years, Flash has become less common," Google said, adding that open-web technologies were faster and more power efficient than Flash. ...

ET deals: 1TB of iDrive cloud backup for 75% off   Data redundancy is critically important. Sure, having a local backup of your hard drive is a good first step, but that’s just not enough. If you use a service like IDrive to keep all of your important information in the cloud, you can rest easy knowing that you won’t lose your data in a fire or robbery.   On Windows, macOS, and mobile, IDrive will store up to 1TB of data securely and privately in the cloud. Stuck with a slow internet connection or terrible bandwidth caps? Fear not, the IDrive Express service has a great workaround. Simply request a drive, plug it into your machine, transfer your data, and then send it back. It’s simple, and the first use of the service is included in your yearly fee. Over at PCMag, IDrive   was scored with an excellent rating   of four and a half out of five. The review calls out the low asking price, the robust feature set, and the superb user interface. Take advantage of ...

Google Backup and Sync Lets You Back Up Everything on Your PC  W hatever digital data you have on whatever device, Google has a new way for automatically backing up those files in the cloud: Backup and Sync. Announced last month, the new backup service, available to anyone with a Google account, combines the capabilities of two previous Google apps: the Mac or PC app for the cloud-based data storage service Google Drive and the desktop uploader Google Photos. The new Backup and Sync, which Google said yesterday was now live for most users, is an app for both Mac and PC that also backs up data on any device regularly connected to a desktop, including phones, digital cameras, and SD cards. Users can specify which folders on their desktops to automatically and continuously back up, while USB devices and SD cards can be backed up and synced when they're connected to desktops. 'Simpler, Speedier, More Reliable' Backup and Sync is a "simpler, speedier and more relia...

Beware: Virtual Kidnapping Scams Are on the Rise The caller who rang Valerie Sobel's cellphone had a horrifying message: "We have Simone's finger. Do you want to see the rest of her in a body bag?" Then came the sound of her daughter, screaming in terror. "She called me Mom (and said) 'I'm terrified, please help,' " Sobel recalled. In the hours that followed, the kidnappers talked her into wiring $4,000 for ransom. Only later did she find out there had been no kidnapping. It was a scam. "I was in bad shape for days," she said. On Tuesday, police and federal agents warned that so-called virtual kidnappings are on the rise, and dozens of people already have found themselves terrorized into giving money to con artists. Los Angeles police alone have received more than 250 reports of such crimes in the past two years, and people have wired more than $100,000, said Capt. William Hayes, who commands the Robbery Homicide Division. ...

Rolls-Royce Unveils Its $450,000 Phantom VIII Luxury Car Rolls-Royce has unveiled its new Phantom, the flagship of the British luxury brand. In introducing the Phantom VIII on Thursday, Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Torsten Müller-tvös called the eighth-generation vehicle an icon, an artwork, "a dominant symbol of wealth and human achievement" -- a   car   fit for "a connoisseur of luxury in the extreme." Originally launched in 1925, the Phantom is one of the longest-running automobile nameplates in the world and one of the most recognizable. For its latest iteration, Rolls-Royce kept the car's powerful, beefy look and distinctive grille, but made significant design and technological changes. At a media preview last month in Hollywood, Müller-tvös said the company created the Phantom VIII -- which starts at about $450,000 -- to be "a completely new Phantom....and not a facelifted seventh-generation." Among the upgrades: a new 6.75-liter t...

Tech Firm To Implant Microchips in Employees A Wisconsin company wants to surgically implant microchips in its employees to make it easier to buy snacks in the break room. "It's the next thing that's inevitably going to happen, and we want to be a part of it," said Todd Westby, the CEO of River Falls, Wisc.-based Three Square Market, a company that supplies technology for micro markets and company break rooms, according to KSTP. Westby said the implanted microchip makes it easier for people to pay for items at work. Instead of looking for coins, cash or a credit card, they would only need to place their hand in front of a scanner and electronically pay for their item. The microchip would have other uses, as well, like serving as an electronic key to open doors and identify the user to login at a computer. Three Square Markey is planning to sell the technology to other companies and has partnered with a Swedish firm, BioHax International, to make the c...

Hackers plan to break into 30 voting machines to put election meddling to the test   LAS VEGAS – Think of it as a stress test for democracy. Hackers plan to spend Friday trying to break into more than 30 voting machines used in recent elections to see just how far they can get. U.S. election officials have consistently said that despite Russian attempts to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, no votes were tampered with. Prove it, say organizers of DefCon, an annual hacker convention held in Las Vegas each July. The idea is to “start hacking on (the machines) to raise awareness and find out for ourselves what the deal is. I'm tired of reading misinformation about voting system security,” Jeff Moss, DefCon founder, wrote on the conference blog. One of the event organizers is Matt Blaze, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who's been working on making election software more secure since the mid-2000s. The the best of hi...

Kaspersky Labs offers free antivirus amidst Russian influence concerns LAS VEGAS — Russia-based Kaspersky Labs released a free version of its antivirus software program Wednesday, just as Congress was working on an amendment to the defense policy bill that will ban the use of the company's software on Department of Defense networks because of concerns over possible company ties to the Russian government. Kaspersky is one of the world's largest cyber firms, with as many as 400 million users worldwide. The program will be rolled out globally over the next four months. Offering a stripped-down version of commercial software for free makes economic sense because the data Kaspersky can gather will positively affect the protection it can offer all users by better honing its machine learning capabilities, he wrote. Concerns that Kaspersky Labs might have connections to Russian intelligence or military have dogged the company since its f...

US-based Nigerians develop free TV, movie streaming App Two US-based Nigerians, Bamidele Adetayo and Suleiman Nadabo, have developed a Web App, “Entertale’’ to give TV audience in Africa and the world quality experiences. Adetayo on Tuesday in Abuja said “Entertale’’ was an online live TV and movie streaming services. “It allows users to watch multiple live TV stations for free. “The story of Entertale begins due to lack for African valued TV contents to enable people connect with what are happenings and watch movies and TV shows with friends they are already connected with. “The App which is set for launch later in the month does not require monthly subscription, and the live channels would comprise international and African TV stations,’’ Adetayo said. Also speaking, the co-founder, Nadabo stressed that the web service which solely focused on TV, allow users to also rent movies that they were only interested in watching He said that users would also get notifications on...

World's Smallest Satellites Launched into Orbit Breakthrough Starshot, the  $100 million initiative  aiming to send robotic missions to nearby stars by the mid-21st century, has achieved what might prove to be a "Sputnik moment" in successfully lofting its first spacecraft — the smallest ever launched and operated in orbit. In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world by flying the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 , a 183-lb. (83 kilograms) metallic orb about twice the size of a basketball that broadcast a radio message to anyone listening down on Earth. On June 23, Breakthrough Starshot sent not one but six satellites into low-Earth orbit, riding as supplementary payloads on an Indian rocket launching two other educational satellites built by the European space company OHB System AG. These six satellites are comparatively dainty, but punch far above their weight. Called "Sprites," each is a 0.14-ounce (4 grams) flake of circuit-board j...

This New Cellphone Uses Such Little Power It Doesn't Need a Battery Imagine being out and about, only to realize that your phone's battery life is running dangerously low and there's nowhere nearby to charge it. Now imagine how liberating it could feel to not have to worry about that. A new cellphone prototype could one day provide such relief because it doesn't need a battery at all, according to a new study. The phone, a voice call-only device, is by no means the sexiest cell on the block — the calls crackle and the phone only works within a stone's throw of a computer that serves as a sort of cell tower. But how does the device work without a battery ? The cellphone requires such little power — only a few microwatts rather than the 100 microwatts a smartphone uses for voice calls —  that the power it does need can be collected from the environment, according to the researchers. A tiny photodiode, smaller than an adult's pinky nail, collects...