John Lister

Facebook is introducing new rules governing the way its users can offer to sell guns online its website. While it's not banning such posts altogether, Facebook is taking steps to ensure its users are complying with the law. According to Facebook ... policy chief Monika Bickert, the subject of gun sales means the site faces "a difficult challenge balancing individuals' desire to express themselves on our services, and recognizing that this speech may have consequences elsewhere." (Source: fb.com ) Facebook already has several policies on the sale of goods, which don't always ... (view more)

Computer researchers have created an 'airborne' computer virus that takes advantage of WiFi (wireless Internet) routers. The point of the study is to highlight the many ways in which wireless routers are open to abuse. The research studied wireless ... access points, and was completed by the University of Liverpool. Access points are electronic devices that relay information from a local wireless network to another (typically the Internet). For example: a PC or laptop connected to a wireless router (which is then connected to the Internet) would be considered an access point. The goal of ... (view more)

Facebook is said to be buying a company that makes airborne drones. It seems it's not an attempt to carry out snooping or attack rivals, but rather a plan to extend Internet access to places it's impossible to reach at the moment. The company in ... question is Titan Aerospace, which manufactures what it calls "atmospheric satellites." Unlike traditional satellites, they operate around 20 kilometers (12 miles) above Earth, which is just short of the point of being in orbit. Drones such as the Solara 50 look and operate similar to an airplane, but have solar panels on its wings, ... (view more)

One of the largest businesses that allowed people buy the online currency Bitcoin is filing for bankruptcy protection. The collapse means customers have almost certainly lost nearly half a billion US dollars in "real money." Mt Gox is a Tokyo-based ... business founded in 2009 as a trading card exchange (Source: wikipedia.org ). It has recently filed for bankruptcy protection because it has debt worth $63.6 million, but assets worth only just half over that. Customers had a total of around 750,000 Bitcoins stored in the Mt Gox equivalent of a bank account, which translates to around $ ... (view more)

A newly-published study shows fifteen percent of online Americans believe the Internet is a bad thing for society. The study also found most users generally think the Internet is a good thing in terms of benefitting themselves. The study comes from ... the Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys the public about the use of and attitudes to online services. Its latest survey came to mark the fact that the World Wide Web was created 25 years ago, in March 1989. (Source: pewinternet.org ) Although the Internet itself (I.E.: the physical connections between computers) has been in existence for ... (view more)

Security firm Kaspersky has released a special web browser for Windows phones aimed at blocking unwanted threats. The browser, "Kaspersky Safe Browser for Windows Phone" app, is available to download free of charge from the official Windows Phone ... Store. The main security feature is to block web links that may take a user to a harmful site. This isn't just sites that house malicious software that could damage a phone, but also "phishing" sites. (Source: kaspersky.com ) A phishing site is one that is set up to look like the real website of a legitimate company, for ... (view more)

Google is adding a 1-click link for Gmail users to stop unwanted marketing messages. But the system won't work in all cases, especially when it comes to dealing with the worst spam offenders. The new service works along the same lines as the ... unsubscribe link which many legitimate websites use in their bulk email messages. More often than not, however, the unsubscribe link is often difficult to find. Typically, it's buried at the bottom of a lengthy email that the recipient didn't want to read in the first place. Another problem is that the unsubscribe link isn't always a one- ... (view more)

A popular tech firm plans to offer a smartphone that costs just $25. The offering will initially be aimed at poorer countries, though could spread to more countries if the idea proves to be successful. The $25 phone is from Mozilla, the company best ... known for making the Firefox browser. Mozilla has created its own Linux-based operating system to run on the phone, which supports many commonly used smartphone features. $25 Smartphone Boasts Impressive Hardware By most definitions, the classification of a smartphone is the ability for the user to download and install software programs onto the ... (view more)

Microsoft has released a temporary fix to an important security bug affecting two recent versions of Internet Explorer. The exploit has been linked to attacks that compromised a website for US military veterans. The bug affects Internet Explorer ... versions 9 and 10. It does not affect version 11, nor anything previous to version 9. That said, using an earlier version Internet Explorer less than what is currently available (depending on which version of Windows you're running) is definitely not advised. JavaScript Bug Exploits Drive-by Download Attack The exploit involves JavaScript, a ... (view more)

Google has named 34 cities where it hopes to offer its super-fast broadband service. Google Fiber customers can get speeds as high as 50 times more than that which is currently offered by most cable providers. Typical Broadband Versus Google Fiber ... Typical Internet broadband over an ordinary copper phone line means speeds of a few megabits per second. For services over the same fiber-optic cables as cable TV companies, speeds of 10 to 20 megabits per second are more common. For a numbers comparison, a 10 megabit connection is equal to 1280 kilobytes per second. That said, Google Fiber offers ... (view more)