John Lister

Amazon will have to go to court to defend claims that the search tool on its site misleads customers about the products it stocks. Watchmaker Multi Time Machines (MTM) wants Amazon to make it clearer that it doesn't sell its watches. MTM specializes ... in selling expensive watches which are particularly sturdy and water resistant. They are designed to display the time in a way that's easy to read with very little light used; however, some models also have an option to switch on an extremely bright light. Although sold to the public, many of the watches are designed for and used by the ... (view more)

A business which makes spying software for governments and police has been hit by a major hacking attack. The company has recommended customers temporarily stop using its products in case the attack compromises security. The business is named ... "Hacking Team," and is based in Italy. It specializes in software that can monitor the online activities of computer users and even retrieve data from their computers. Critics claim the software often uses the same tactics as malware created by cyber criminals. The firm says its situation is different as it only sells its products to public ... (view more)

Google has apologized after its new Photos app for mobile devices labeled two black people as gorillas. It says it is taking both immediate and long term steps to make sure the mistake never happens again. The software bug follows a series of ... incidents in which searching for racist terms on its mapping service brought up the White House as the top result, though that particular incident was a "social prank," rather than a genuine bug in the software. The Photos app for mobile devices is designed to be a single online storage place for pictures, accessible from any computer or device ... (view more)

Apple has lost a federal appeal against a ruling that it conspired to keep e-book prices artificially high. The verdict means it will have to pay $450 million in penalties and compensation. It marks the ending of a case dating back to 2012 based ... around two different models of pricing for electronic books. Amazon, which dominated the market before Apple started selling ebooks, uses the same model as with print books: the publisher sets a wholesale price and then the retailer decides how much to charge customers. Apple instead pushed for the "agency model" in which the publisher ... (view more)

British news agency BBC has published a list of its articles which are no longer linked to through Google, due to a controversial European law. The move means that the people who requested the pages be removed may have actually made things worse. ... The situation involves the " right to be forgotten ", a policy introduced last year by the European Court of Justice . It rules on those laws that apply across the 26 countries that are part of the European Union. The policy applies in cases where people want pages with embarrassing, outdated or privacy-threatening information about them ... (view more)

The US Navy has paid $9.1 million for ongoing support for Microsoft Windows. What makes it really amazing is that the ongoing support is for Windows XP. The payment comes from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. It covers support for ... XP, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003. It only covers a temporary extension and there's an option for the Navy to extend the support coverage until 2017 with a total price of $30.8 million. The Navy isn't completely clueless about how outdated the software is. It's running a program to upgrade to more recent software and previously ... (view more)

A Chinese company has developed a wireless router with a setting that supposedly protects pregnant women. Rivals have accused Qihoo 360 of using bogus science to try to scare customers into purchasing the device. The router has three settings with ... names that translate as "wall penetration", "balance", and "pregnant women." The difference between the 3 settings has to do with the signal strength, with the "wall penetration" setting having the highest, and the "pregnant women" setting having the lowest. According to the Qihoo, the signal ... (view more)

The issue of exactly who gets a free copy of Windows 10 has continued to confuse the tech community. It now appears a couple of loopholes have been closed, restricting the pool of people getting the free upgrade. Windows 10 will bring us very close ... to the end of the era of having to pay to use the operating system. Not only will it be the last completely new edition of Windows (with future changes made through major incremental updates), but it will also be a free upgrade in the first year for those running Windows 7 or 8.1. In March, Microsoft also revealed that users in China will be able ... (view more)

Amazon is reportedly exploring the idea of paying members of the public to deliver packages to their neighbors. It appears to be a bare bones idea that may not lead to anything. According to sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the project is ... codenamed On My Way. The basic idea is for Amazon to pay retail stores to act as a delivery hub for their neighborhood, working either on a flat rate for a certain time period, or a per-delivery fee. (Source: wsj.com ) The stores would then hold the parcel until a local citizen using a dedicated app saw there was a parcel available in their area ... (view more)

Plans to draw up guidelines for how firms use facial recognition technology have fallen apart after civil liberties groups withdrew from talks. They say businesses aren't making a serious offer at an acceptable compromise. Businesses and consumer ... groups have been taking part in facial recognition guideline talks since early last year. They've been organized by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a government agency. The idea behind the talks was to avoid the need to draw up and implement legislation, something that could be politically tricky. The ... (view more)