Owl hopes to do for the dashboard-camera market what the iPod did for portable audio players. That might seem like a tall order for a fledgling startup, but the ambition makes sense for a company led by Andy Hodge, who served as the iPod product lead at Apple for a decade.

After a stint at Dropcam, he realized that there's another area where a smart security camera could be useful: inside your car. Given the ever-present threat of accidents, break-ins and mysterious parking lot dings, a cloud-connected dashcam seems like something every driver would want. 

Cybersecurity researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev say that medical imaging devices, such as CT scans, are vulnerable to cyber-threats, and manufacturers and healthcare providers must therefore be more diligent in protecting them.

During the years it takes to get MID machines from development to market, cyber-threats can change significantly, leaving the devices exposed, the researchers said. In their paper, “Know Your Enemy: Characteristics of Cyber-Attacks on Medical Imaging Devices,” the researchers show how easy it is to exploit unprotected medical devices.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis is actively considering banning US military and civilian personnel from bringing their personal cell phones into the Pentagon, the world's largest office building, according to three US defense officials familiar with an ongoing review of the issue.

The officials told that while the issue is under review and a final decision has not been made, the recent revelations that a fitness tracking app that maps people's exercise habits could pose security risks for US troops has only underscored the need for the review. The officials added that the review was ordered after Mattis expressed his intent to ban personal cell phones in the Pentagon.

Donald Trump’s national security team is looking at options to counter the threat of China spying on US phone calls that include the government building a super-fast 5G wireless network. The official said the option was being debated at a low level in the administration and was six to eight months away from being considered by the president himself. 

The 5G network concept is aimed at addressing what officials see as China’s threat to US cyber security and economic security. The Trump administration has taken a harder line on policies initiated by predecessor Barack Obama on issues ranging from Beijing’s role in restraining North Korea to Chinese efforts to acquire US strategic industries. 

Usenix Enigma It has been nearly seven years since Google introduced two-factor authentication for Gmail accounts, but virtually no one is using it.

In a presentation at Usenix's Enigma 2018 security conference in California, Google software engineer Grzegorz Milka today revealed that, right now, less than 10 per cent of active Google accounts use two-step authentication to lock down their services. He also said only about 12 per cent of Americans have a password manager to protect their accounts, according to a 2016 Pew study. 

During the past five years, electric cars have made an incredible journey, from seeming a bit futuristic and impractical to being something that you want to own. With prices having decreased significantly, the number of electric cars sold hit 2 million by the beginning of 2017, and it is still growing.

The infrastructure for electric cars is developing rapidly, so charging stations in your neighborhood don’t look so odd anymore, either. But, as usually happens with a rapidly developing economic opportunity, manufacturers are jumping into the competition, trying to get as big a piece of the market as they can, and not thinking too hard about what happens next. 

The first “this could change everything” AI story of the year comes to us in the form of (yet another) AI that’s supposed to read minds. This time however, there’s no parlor trick. We’re one step closer to being able to broadcast our thoughts to a screen, thanks to artificial intelligence.

Japanese scientists have created AI capable of reading a person’s brainwaves and displaying an image based on what they’re looking at. If a person is staring at a picture of the letter “A” the AI will successfully create an image that resembles a fuzzy version of that. It’s actually reading the person’s mind – sort of. 

From afar, it looks like a steampunk chandelier. An intricate collection of tubes and wires that culminate in a small steel cylinder at the bottom. It is, in fact, one of the most sophisticated quantum computers ever built.

The processor inside has 50 quantum bits, or qubits, that process tasks in a (potentially) revolutionary way. Normally, information is created and stored as a series of ones and zeroes. Qubits can represent both values at the same time (known as superposition), which means a quantum computer can theoretically test the two simultaneously. Add more qubits and this hard-to-believe computational power increases.

Wow, that 2017, though. Quite a year. Let's grab a Juicero and take a moment to reflect on the utter dumpster fires that we've witnessed over the past 12 months. No, we're not talking about the political scene, though that certainly factors in here somewhere.

But even in times with a somewhat upward economic trajectory, there are those in the tech industry that seemed to have existed solely to be a cautionary tale to others. Some of the companies previously on Deathwatch radar didn't survive long enough to even make final 2018 list. Pour out one for Radio Shack, which died even faster the second time around after what looked like a brave reboot. 

A French prosecutor has launched a preliminary investigation of U.S. tech giant Apple over alleged deception and planned obsolescence of its products following a complaint by a consumer organization, a judicial source said on Monday.

The investigation, opened on Friday, will be led by French consumer fraud watchdog DGCCRF, part of the Economy Ministry, the source said. Apple acknowledged last month that it takes some measures to reduce power demands - which can have the effect of slowing the processor - in some older iPhone models when a phone’s battery is having trouble supplying the peak current that the processor demands.