Articles by Richard Adhikari

The Linux Foundation last week announced it was teaming up with a group of high-tech and financial giants on a project to advance the blockchain technology made famous by bitcoin virtual currency IBM, Cisco and Intel have agreed to collaborate with financial institutions including startup R3 CEV, the London Stock Exchange Group, J.P. Morgan, Wells ...

Congress on Friday passed an omnibus budget bill that included the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA TheSenate earlier this year passed CISA, which many conservative and liberal politicians, high-tech firms, and privacy and civil liberty advocates oppose....

Germany on Tuesday announced that Google's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have agreed to its demands to remove hate speech appearing on their networks within 24 hours after a removal request has been made That follows a sharp increase in anti-foreigner statements on the Internet in Germany as refugees from the Middle East stream into the country.Mor...

Temkin Group on Tuesday predicted 2016 will be the year of emotion That's one of 11 customer experience trends to watch for in the coming year, managing partner Bruce Temkin wrote in a blog post....

A Brazilian judge on Thursday lifted the ban a different judge had imposed on WhatsApp hours earlier, according to reports. It did not seem reasonable to affect millions of users to penalize Facebook, WhatsApp's owner, for failing to cooperate with judicial rulings, the judge reportedly said, suggesting that the imposition of a larger fine would ...

The aim of OpenAI, which launched last week, is to use artificial intelligence to benefit society. The fledgling project has drawn $1 billion in funding from some of high tech's most recognizable names to help it achieve that goal The nonprofit organization seeks to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as...

UK police on Tuesday arrested a 21-year-old man as part of their investigation into last month's hack onVTech's systems The man was arrested in Bracknell, 30 miles west of London, on suspicion of unauthorized access to a computer to facilitate the commission of an offense and suspicion of causing a computer to perform functions to secure or enable ...

Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy S7 smartphone will have several new features, including a pressure-sensitive display like the one available on the iPhone 6s, according to a report published Monday in The Wall Street Journal The S7 also will have a USB Type-C port, which will make for faster charging; a camera optimized for low-light photography; and p...

Yahoo last week announced that it had integrated Gmail with the online version of Yahoo Mail, just two months after integrating Outlook.com, Hotmail and AOL Mail in a major redesign It also has integrated Gmail support in Yahoo Mail for Android 5.1 and Yahoo Mail for iOS 4.0.4....

Atlassian last week exceeded expectations with its initial public offering, beginning trading at more than US$27 per share, about 30 percent higher than the $21 issue price That means the company -- trading under the ticker "TEAM" -- was valued at about $5.6 billion Thursday....

Google has filed for a patent on needle-free blood-drawing technology, described in a USPTO application published last week Application 20150342509 suggests four potential implementations of the technology, including its use in a device that has an evacuated negative-pressure barrel with a membrane sealing an aperture at the far end containing an a...

Sage Software on Wednesday announced that it has launched Sage Live on the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace Sage Live, built on the Salesforce AppCloud, gives small businesses real-time data connecting CRM, accounting and financial data, and can scale with a business....

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday posted a message of support to Muslims in the Facebook community and around the world Zuckerberg's post stands in stark contrast to presidential candidate Donald Trump's verbal attacks on all Muslims, including his call earlier this week to ban them from entering the United States.Supporters cheered when Tr...

Mozilla on Monday launched Focus by Firefox, a free ad blocker for Safari users on iOS 9 It lets users block the same trackers blocked by Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Android platforms. The protection is based onDisconnect's open source block list....

Yahoo on Wednesday announced that its board of directors decided to suspend plans to spin off its Alibaba holdings and instead will undertake a reverse spinoff, transferring its other assets and liabilities to a newly formed company The stock of the newly formed company will be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders, resulting in two separate p...

Microsoft last week revealed that it will release the core components of its Chakra JavaScript engine to open source as ChakraCore It will be available next month on GitHub under the MIT license....

Apple on Tuesday unveiled its own battery case for the iPhone 6s Offered in white and charcoal gray, it has a silicone exterior and a microfiber lining. In addition to offering protection, it increases iPhone usage times....

New security issues that surfaced last week in connection with Mattel's Hello Barbie doll, which talks back to kids, have heightened fears that hackers could use the toy to steal information about its owners and their families The Hello Barbie app, which is available for iOS and Android, uses an authentication credential that can be reused by hacke...

Facebook last week launched a beta of its Live Video service for a small percentage of iPhone users in the United States. Live Video reportedly will be available for the Android platform at a later date. Facebook also has launched a pilot to make it easier to share videos from mobile devices. Some iPhone and Android device users can tap the "What'...

VTech on Thursday revealed it has hired FireEye's Mandiant to help improve security after reaction from parents around the world over news that itsservers were hacked It also is cooperating with law enforcement agencies worldwide to investigate the incident and has temporarily shut down several websites, its Learning Lodge app store, and its Kids C...