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One of Microsoft's main goals with 'Threshold,' the next major version of Windows, is to win over Windows 7 hold-outs. Windows "Threshold," the next major version of Microsoft's Windows operating system due to hit around the spring of 2015, is coming into focus. And not too surprisingly, one of the Microsoft Operating Systems Group's main goals in designing and developing the coming operating system (OS) release — which may or may not ultimately be branded as "Windows 9" — is to try to make it more palatable to hold-out Windows 7 users. In order to do this, Microsoft is working...

Apple today released OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 which is recommended for all Mavericks users. It improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. This update: • Fixes an issue that prevented some Macs from automatically connecting to known Wi-Fi networks • Fixes issue causing the background or Apple logo to appear incorrectly on startup • Improves the reliability of waking from sleep • Includes Safari 7.0.5For detailed information about the security content of this update, see Apple security updates.

The TV reporter was caught up in a discussion about the rarity of openly gay CEOs when he said, ‘I think Tim Cook is open about the fact he’s gay.’ Simon Hobbs is likely wishing he could press rewind. The CNBC co-anchor spoke too soon during a live segment of "Squawk on the Street" Friday when he accidentally outed Apple CEO Tim Cook. New York Times columnist and CNBC contributor James B. Stewart spoke about his recent column dealing with the "tortured life" former BP chief John Browne led as a closeted gay CEO. "I just found it very, very...

A relic from long before the age of supercomputers, the 169-year-old math strategy called the Jacobi iterative method is widely dismissed today as too slow to be useful. But thanks to a curious, numbers-savvy Johns Hopkins engineering student and his professor, it may soon get a new lease on life. With just a few modern-day tweaks, the researchers say they've made the rarely used Jacobi method work up to 200 times faster. The result, they say, could speed up the performance of computer simulations used in aerospace design, shipbuilding, weather and climate modeling, biomechanics and other engineering tasks. Their paper...

Looking to get Android cell phone on T-Mobile, maybe Google Nexus 5. Any thoughts about T-Mobile network reliability or Nexus 5? Thanks.

Maybe the only thing Americans agree on anything when it comes to the Second Amendment is that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” is all about guns and gun control. We’re very used to seeing that language invoked around incidents of gun violence. So it was striking to see the logic of the National Rifle Association applied to a completely different context in a piece about cybercrime in the New York Times on June 21, in which Jeffery Stutzman, the vice president of the cybersecurity intelligence sharing consortium Red Sky Alliance, is quoted as saying, “I...

It seems like Google Maps is getting more new features every day. And now, according to The Daily Dot, the companies that provide satellite images to Google just got approval to take higher-resolution photos. Meaning that your prize rose garden will be crisply broadcast to anyone who happens upon your neighborhood’s Street View. But there are some things that most would prefer not to air to the entire Internet. Those being your car’s license plate, the facade of your house, your visitors, and — of course — your face. The good news: There are tools in place to allow you...

I'm having more and more trouble keeping track of passwords on multiple sites. I would appreciate any advice someone might have on an app that would help me to do so securely and efficiently. I'm posting this because Freepers have an astonishingly wide range of knowledge and have helped me a lot in the past. Here's what I'd like: Android app that allows me to store all passwords and usernames securely, behind a single master password. Easy, preferably automatic, syncing to my PC and the cloud. Access to the stored info by phone, PC or by any computer or other...

Over 600,000 Facebook users have taken part in a psychological experiment organized by the social media company, without their knowledge. Facebook altered the tone of the users’ news feed to highlight either positive or negative posts from their friends, which were seen on their news feed. They then monitored the users’ response, to see whether their friends’ attitude had an impact on their own. “The results show emotional contagion,” wrote a team of Facebook scientists, in a paper published by the PNAS journal—Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists of the United States. …

In an effort to get a glimpse of how the world thinks about beauty, the journalist Esther Honig sent out a photo of herself to graphic designers in more than 20 countries. Their task: to edit the photo to make Honig look "beautiful" — however the designer defined the term. The results are telling. Each photo represents the personal and cultural beauty standards of the designer, with the American editor giving Honig bright blue eyes and long hair, and the Israeli designer darkening her eyes and skin. You can read more about the project at Honig's website. Click below to...

In the past, one thing that’s always separated Google from its rivals has been the ability to use Google services across many platforms. Whether you owned an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac, or a Windows PC, you always had access to Google services like Search, Maps, and Docs. Of course, Google would prefer that you use Android and Chromebooks, but that rarely felt like a requirement. At this year’s Google I/O conference, we’re starting to see a different strategy emerge. Google is now making the case that if you want the full Google experience, you need to use Android devices...

In the days and weeks since Apple’s WWDC keynote, something’s been bugging me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then, recently, while sitting at the airport, I launched Safari and pulled up Apple’s official privacy policy. At first glance, it seemed to be the standard boilerplate issued by the gray suited legal department of a large enterprise, full of the same legalese you see on nearly any site that collects your personal information. But then I focused on some of the details, and a certain simplicity emerged: Personal information will only be shared by Apple to provide...

For years, Linux has ruled supercomputing. So, it came as no surprise to anyone at the Linux Enterprise End-User Summit near Wall Street that once again the Top500 group found in its latest supercomputer ranking that Linux was the fastest of the fast operating systems. With 97 percent of the world's fastest supercomputers running Linux,the open-source operating system has eliminated almost all its rivals. As one Red Hat representative said, "The only thing that would be surprising about Linux being the top dog would be if anything else even came close." He doesn't have any reason to worry.In the latest contest, not only...

Hmmm.. The excuse given tonight at the hearings

Mint KDE 17 is finally released!

Researchers have discovered a crucial security problem in Google Play, the official Android app store. The study is the first to make a large-scale measurement of the huge marketplace, using PlayDrone, a tool they developed to circumvent Google security to successfully download Google Play apps and recover their sources. Some of the secret keys, including Facebook and LinkedIn, were discovered by PlayDrone, a tool developed by Columbia Engineering researchers that uses hacking techniques to circumvent Google security to successfully download Google Play apps and recover their sources. In a paper presented -- and awarded the Ken Sevcik Outstanding Student Paper...

Apple announced a new lower-cost dual-core iMac today, and Geekbench 3 results for it are already appearing on the Geekbench Browser. Let's see how the new iMac performs compared to other iMacs. When compared to the rest of the iMac lineup, the new iMac has reasonable single-core performance — it's almost identifcal to the entry-level quad-core iMac. Multi-core performance is significantly lower due to the lower number of cores (2 cores vs 4 cores). One interesting thing about the new iMacs is that they use a low-voltage i5-4260U "Haswell" processor (the same processor is used in the MacBook Air). Why...

Insiders also tell the New York Post the naked pictures were allegedly posted on a blog purportedly belonging to Morales, and it's illegal in California to falsely impersonate others online. More woes for Charney: On Friday, a video of him dancing naked in front of two female employees surfaced.

Waste coffee grinds could be turned into a sustainable fuel to power vehicles, scientists have found. Oil can be extracted from coffee grounds by soaking them in an organic solvent, before being chemically transformed into biodiesel via a process called 'transesterification', according to researchers from the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies at University of Bath. As part of the study, the researchers made biofuel from ground coffee produced in 20 different geographic regions, including caffeinated and decaffeinated forms, as well as Robusta and Arabica varieties. "Around 8 million tonnes of coffee are produced globally each year and ground waste coffee...

South Korea’s current fetish with ‘watching people eat’, or ‘dinner porn’ as the crazy is now known has uncovered a new star. The dinner porn craze involves no sex of course, but simply watching other people eat – online, on TV, wherever. According to a report on asiaone.com, quoting Elite Daily, Tae Ryun Huh is the new and emerging Korean sensation. No just because she eats, but because of how much she eats. And then this amazing fact – the school worker weighs 48kg. Tae Ryun Huh invited TV cameras to watch her eat and the South Korean show discovered...