News

The massive hurricane that devastated the East Coast in early November revealed important shortcomings in our technology infrastructure. And unlike past storms, the especially high degree of damage to power lines and electrical systems meant that recovery took longer than expected for many.

While power outages are common during any major weather event, few were prepared for nearly all of Manhattan below 38th Street to be completely blacked out, thanks to the flooding of underground power facilities. With the lights, so went Internet access and cable TV, cutting off major sources of information for those affected. The push to digital … Read more

The luster came off Netflix in 2011. A bungled price increase and an aborted attempt to spin off DVD operations made the company appear poorly managed. That triggered an 18-month-long slide in the company's stock, and Netflix looked ripe for an acquisition. But the Web's top video-rental service is leaving 2012 on a high note. In November, the company implemented a "poison pill," provisions designed to make acquiring the company very expensive, and girded itself against a possible hostile takeover attempt from corporate raider Carl Icahn.

Then, earlier this month, Netflix leaders pulled off a whopper … Read more

Sometimes it takes a little nudge to do what we know we should.

After a blogger disclosed that photo-sharing service Path was uploading and storing people's complete contacts lists without having asked permission, user outrage ensued. A month later, a group filed suit against Apple, Path, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and eight other sites for doing the same.

The scandal led to Apple saying any apps that collect user contact lists without permission are in violation of its app guidelines. It then rolled out a software change to begin actively enforcing stronger contacts protection.

At the time, Path founder Dave … Read more

Newsflash: Macs do have security vulnerabilities. While people who understand how viruses and malware work have understood this for ages, Mac vulnerabilities became big news as the Flashback malware tore through the Apple community. At its peak, Flashback and its variants had infected an estimated 1 percent of the worldwide Mac population.

This one was a particularly nasty wake-up call known as a drive-by download, as it required only that you go to a Web page to become infected. Apple malware could be unusually lucrative for malware makers because Apple owners have been told implicitly for years that Macs don'… Read more

Since taking over as the CEO of Research in Motion in January, Thorsten Heins has opted to go in a different direction than his predecessors. Aside from a few missteps here and there, Heins has been more open, held himself more accountable, and shown an enthusiasm when touting the BlackBerry 10 devices. He spent the first few months cleaning house and swapping in a new management team.

Of course, there's still that bit of old RIM, with the company yet again delaying the launch of BlackBerry 10 until next year. It's a disappointment for many faithful BlackBerry fans … Read more

For nearly a decade, think tanks and government officials in Washington, D.C., have been wrestling with the question of what cyberwar will look like.

In 2012, we learned the answer: Stuxnet, the malware that infected Iran's Natanz plant in a bid to slow the nation's nuclear effort, which was developed by the U.S. and Israel. Security researchers had speculated those governments were the most likely Stuxnet suspects, and a New York Times report in June confirmed it.

Flame, the name given network-sniffing, audio-recording, keystroke-logging malware that infected Iranian oil ministry computers, was discovered in May. At … Read more

Yes, there was an Apple TV released in 2012 -- but it was just a slight refresh of Apple's venerable $99 video-streaming box -- a great gadget, to be sure, but not the game-changing television product that dominates the fantasies of the Apple faithful.

It's that "real" Apple TV -- a smart TV designed from the ground up by the wizards who developed the iPhone and iPad -- that's spawned a cottage rumor mill industry, with nary a week passing in 2012 without a new story from a tech blog, wire service, or (worst of … Read more

James Cameron is a man who clearly likes to collect records. Already, the famous film director has twice broken the record for highest-grossing movie of all time, first with "Titanic," and later with "Avatar." But in 2012, he went for a very different kind of mark: the deepest solo sea dive in history.

On March 25, Cameron piloted a submersible known as the Deepsea Challenger to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, fully 35,756 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. He was not the first to make that dive -- Navy Lt. Don … Read more

There were few sights as thrilling -- or as terrifying -- this year as that of Felix Baumgartner stepping out of a balloon gondola at 128,100 feet (24 miles) above the Earth. The 43-year-old Austrian daredevil was on a singular mission: to become the first person ever to go faster than the speed of sound in freefall. Why? Essentially, just because. Oh, Baumgartner and his backers at Red Bull Stratos talked a good game about the contributions to scientific understanding of human exposure at such a rarefied and deadly altitude (the "edge of space" they called it, … Read more