Dozens of iOS Apps Vulnerable to WiFi Snooping

Dozens of applications for Apple's mobile devices are vulnerable to WiFi snoopers, according to Will Strafach, CEO of the Sudo Security Group. He identified 76 popular iOS apps available at Apple's App Store that were vulnerable to wireless eavesdroppers, even though the connections were supposed to be protected by encryption. There have been 18 million downloads of the vulnerable apps, he said. Strafach categorized 33 of the vulnerable apps as "low risk." Another 24 iOS apps were "medium risk," and the remaining 19 were "high risk."

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Twitter Steps Up Efforts to Silence Trolls

Twitter on Tuesday announced yet another crackdown on abusers. With the goal of making Twitter a safer place, it has come up with new ways to prevent the creation of new abusive accounts; make search safer; and collapse potentially abusive or low-quality tweets. Twitter also pledged to persist in its anti-abuse endeavors, saying it would keep rolling out product changes, some more visible than others, and updating users on its progress every step of the way. Twitter "is more vulnerable than other social media," noted tech analyst Jim McGregor.

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How Linux Helped Me Become an Empowered Computer User

If you were to ask any of my friends, they could readily attest to my profound passion for Linux. That said, it might surprise you to know that hardly two years ago, I barely knew what Linux was, let alone had any earnest interest in switching to it from Windows. Although a shift as dramatic as this seem astonishing when considered in hindsight, analyzing my path from one push or influence to the next paints a more telling picture. I want to share my story of how I came not only to use, but indeed champion, the Linux desktop.

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Anonymous Hacker Pulls Plug on Thousands of Dark Net Sites

Twenty percent of the Dark Net was taken offline last week, when a hacker compromised a server hosting some 10,000 websites on the Tor network. Tor, designed to hide the identities of its users, is widely used on the Dark Web, which serves as a hub for illegal online activities. Visitors to the affected pages were greeted with the message, "Hello, Freedom Hosting II, you've been hacked." The attacker reportedly took Freedom Hosting II offline because 50 percent of its sites contained child pornography.

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SalentOS Switchers Will Have No Regrets

SalentOS is a Linux distro that easily can put a smile on your face. It is a flexible and accommodating desktop platform that balances demands on system resources with efficient performance. SalentOS is not well known, but it has much to offer. This distro makes it easy to leave behind whatever other computing choice you currently use. Salent has been around for the last few years on the Ubuntu base. Its latest release shifts its foundation with an approach that includes elements of GNOME and XFCE desktops. However, it uses neither.

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Was Apple's Outstanding Q1 a Fluke?

Apple had a good quarter, but if you look under the numbers there is a ton of trouble. It just dropped behind Google in brand value, and some analysts have predicted valuation will crater in a few months. The iPhone 7 did well, but that shouldn't be a surprise, given that its biggest competitor, Samsung, saw its phone literally go up in flames last quarter. The Galaxy 8 is coming, though, and it looks really impressive. This suggests Apple's one-up quarter is not repeatable, unless Samsung decides burning phones is a feature.

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Tech Industry Reacts to Trump's Immigration Order

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has resigned from President Trump's business advisory council amid fierce blowback against the recent executive order on immigration, and in the wake of reports that several major Silicon Valley firms, including Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google, have been circulating a draft letter opposing Trump's action. Kalanick said he no longer would participate in the council after consumers railed against Uber for continuing to operate at JFK International Airport over the weekend in spite of a strike by taxi drivers.

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LibreOffice Update Offers Fresh Experience

The Document Foundation has announced the general availability of LibreOffice 5.3, one of the office suite's most feature-rich upgrades since 2010, when it forked from OpenOffice at version 3.3. Dubbed "5.3 Fresh," this latest release takes the development of LibreOffice in a new direction with a focus on updating the user experience, according to Italo Vignoli of the Document Foundation. The 3.x Family centered on code cleanup, while the 4.x Family focused on code Refactoring. LibreOffice 5.3 extends the UI with an experimental Notebookbar.

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Facebook Aims to Carve Out a Spot in the Living Room

Facebook is working on a video app for set-top boxes, according to a Wednesday report. The social network wants to deliver longer-form video content -- and with it video ads -- to the living room TV, the one screen it has been unable to reach. The Facebook app soon could be available on a variety of set-top boxes, including Apple TV. The initiative reportedly began in earnest last summer, after incubating for years as a concept. News of this effort follows Facebook's recent announcement that it was refining its News Feed to favor longer-form videos, which can include mid-roll ad breaks.

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3 Teams Advance in Hyperloop Competition

Elon Musk's hyperloop dream began to take shape in reality last weekend as 27 teams, including six from outside the United States, participated in a competition to create the mass transit vehicle of the future. The competition in Hawthorne, California, sponsored by SpaceX, which Musk founded, attracted teams made up mostly of students who created pods designed to run on hyperloop transportation systems. In a hyperloop system, the vehicles, or pods, travel in a vacuum in tubes at speeds close to the speed of sound.

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