Defcon A hacker competition that challenges contestants to trick employees of large companies into divulging potentially sensitive information aims to show how human gullibility is the biggest security vulnerability of all. During its first day at the Defcon hacker contest in Las Vegas, it had clearly achieved its goal.…

A trio of Apple filings seek to patent mobile-application "systems and methods" for travel and online shopping — and to move us three steps closer to a Google-free world.…

Microsoft is so committed to the cloud that it's throwing everything at rivals like Google to crack open the door on sales and gain momentum online.…

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BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is preparing to launch an iPad competitor in November, and it will be called the BlackPad, according to a report citing two people familiar with the company's plans.…

When AMD spin-off GlobalFoundries broke ground on its fab in upstate New York last year, the chip manufacturer boasted it was "closing the gap" on Intel. "We were a year behind Intel at the 45nm node, and that difference will be cut significantly at the 32nm generation," said vice president of manufacturing systems technology Tom Sonderman. "By 22nm, there will be no difference. It will be in the noise level."…

More evidence has surfaced that Apple's beleaguered Judas Phone does, indeed, have serious reception challenges — and today's facts and figures come from a sophisticated source.…

Warning of an uptick in attacks, Microsoft plans to issue an emergency update to patch a critical Windows vulnerability that hackers are exploiting to seize control of PCs.…

Microsoft will try to stop Yahoo! from hooking up with Google in Japan.…

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Leaving aside the creepy privacy aspects, Street View is one of Google's most valuable services. The ability to familiarise yourself with somewhere strange, before you arrive, is genuinely useful.…

A futurologist has defended his controversial warning that "smart dust" is liable to become a future information stealing threat.…

A mainframe cloud may seem oxymoronic like a lead Zeppelin ("a" included on purpose), or intuitively obvious (given the virtualization and metering capabilities that have been in mainframes for decades). But Unisys has nonetheless fluffed up a mainframe cloud for its ClearPath mainframe customers.…

BlueArc, the hardware-accelerated NAS array supplier startup, has pocketed another $20m in a seventh funding round, taking total funding to around $225m.…

The US House of Representatives has passed a law which will render libel rulings from the English courts unenforceable there. The bill has already been passed by the Senate and will go to US President Barack Obama to be signed into law.…

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Spar is going contactless, attracted by the four pence per transaction the company could save by not asking shoppers for their PINs.…

Open...and Shut When the mouthpiece of American capitalism calls a company a dog, it's time to re-evaluate that company's chances.…

Mozy says that the bugs reported by users concerning repeated full backups were not bugs at all, instead reflecting a feature of the product.…

Security shortcomings in Black Hat's newly established streaming media service allowed a security consultant to hack into the system and see presentations for free.…

Beer drinkers in the Czech Republic, and that's most of country, will be raising a glass today to celebrate a local victory against Anheuser-Busch, the maker of US "beer" Budweiser.…

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Word has reached us of a development project codenamed Katana inside Xiotech, with hints that the project involves HDD and SSD hybrid craftsmanship.…

The UK's Cyber Security Challenge has announced the winner of its prologue crypto puzzle, as well as the solution - for anyone still struggling to find an answer.…