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Jason Snell

RT @sengineland: .@GoogleMaps Travel By Loch Ness Monster Easter Egg by @rustybrick

Google launched a two-pronged attack against unencrypted email on Tuesday, divulging which webmail providers don't encrypt their customers' webmail in a new Transparency Report update, while making it easier for individuals to implement the tough email encryption standard known as Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, with a new browser add-on called End-to-End.

Today, we’re adding to that list the alpha version of a new tool. It’s called End-to-End and it’s a Chrome extension intended for users who need additional security beyond what we already provide. “End-to-end” encryption means data leaving your browser will be encrypted until the message’s intended recipient decrypts it, and that similarly encrypted messages sent to you will remain that way until you decrypt them in your browser.

iOS8, the new iPhone operating system that's coming out later this year, will let you scan your credit card when buying something in Safari. Instead of typing in numbers, you'll be able to hold up your card and have the iPhone automatically recognize the numbers and punch them in for you.

Things changed in 2012, though, when Beats decided to transition its business model to actually producing its hardware. The challenge there is that operating a licensing business and running a physical consumer-electronics company are very, very different. The latter requires significant working capital to manage inventory, pay suppliers, and handle retail distribution, among other things, and margins are much slimmer. All the while, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine were extracting cash in the form of hefty dividend payouts. Much of the revenue growth that Beats touted at this time was just a consequence of its business model transition, since now it would recognize revenue on the products themselves instead of just royalty income.

RT @TUAW: Skype for iPhone is getting a major update next week -

Skybox’s satellites will help keep Google Maps accurate with up-to-date imagery. Over time, we also hope that Skybox’s team and technology will be able to help improve Internet access and disaster relief — areas Google has long been interested in.

The spike in dead record locks wasn’t from increased Web traffic or a fundamental technical problem with the FCC’s website, sources said. Rather, the site was hit by a sustained effort from unknown digital assailants who were trying to hobble the agency’s database, in an apparent attempt to make the FCC and its IT systems look bad.

Now, the massive industrial conglomerate / prototypical thermostat maker Honeywell is rethinking the way it tackles home automation with Lyric. It’s a $279 Wi-Fi thermostat (available today to purchase through HVAC contractors; it’ll be available in Lowe’s stores by August) that is one of the most visually appealing products in the space, as well as an obvious response to the Nest Learning thermostat. But perhaps more importantly, Lyric is also a platform. The company’s ambition is to launch a full suite of Lyric products that can all be controlled your smartphone.

Oh, and the biggest red flag of all. The event was organized by Kevin Warwick at Reading University. If you've spent any time at all in the tech world, you should automatically have red flags raised around that name. Warwick is somewhat infamous for his ridiculous claims to the press, which gullible reporters repeat without question. He's been doing it for decades. All the way back in 2000, we were writing about all the ridiculous press he got for claiming to be the world's first "cyborg" for implanting a chip in his arm. There was even a -- since taken down -- Kevin Warwick Watch website that mocked and categorized all of his media appearances in which gullible reporters simply repeated all of his nutty claims. Warwick had gone quiet for a while, but back in 2010, we wrote about how his lab was getting bogus press for claiming to have "the first human infected with a computer virus." The Register has rightly referred to Warwick as both "Captain Cyborg" and a "media strumpet" and has long been chronicling his escapades in exaggerating bogus stories about the intersection of humans and computers for many, many years.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the right of universities, in conjunction with Google, to scan millions of library books without the authors' permission.

RT @hackernewsbot: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman passing the Turing test...

RT @EdibleApple: FDA details 2013 meeting with Apple

. The FISA Court, however, has broadly (mis)interpreted the law, but done so in secret, such that the NSA now believes it can get basically any phone record (and lots of other kinds of records as well). The EFF filed a lawsuit after its attempt to get access to the relevant FISA Court interpretations (five of 'em) was denied, and the judge is now ordering the DOJ to let them see the rulings in question, after a heavily redacted deposition wasn't satisfying enough. The ruling is worth reading. The judge basically says that the DOJ has very little credibility on these things, having withheld info it should have released in the past.