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"The criminals were able to send banner ads and javascript to their targets' computers by pushing both into ad networks. These networks aggressively scan advertisers' javascript for suspicious code, so the criminals needed to sneak their bad code past these checks."

"Computers can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts, according to the latest research attempting to apply artificial intelligence to health."

"In response, the architects of the internet developed a kind of digital Esperanto: a common language that enabled data to travel across any network. In 1974, two Arpa researchers named Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf published an early blueprint. Drawing on conversations happening throughout the international networking community, they sketched a design for "a simple but very flexible protocol": a universal set of rules for how computers should communicate."

"There's an increasingly popular solution to this problem: why not let an intelligent algorithm make hiring decisions for you? Surely, the thinking goes, a computer is more able to be impartial than a person, and can simply look at the relevant data vectors to select the most qualified people from a heap of applications, removing human bias and making the process more efficient to boot."

"With all the personal data it collects, your wrist-mounted wearable computer is almost definitely going to betray you at some point, whether that's a reminder to get up and do another 5,000 steps this afternoon or accidentally giving away your ATM PIN. According to a new paper, ominously titled "Friend or Foe?: Your Wearable Devices Reveal Your Personal PIN" it is surprisingly simple to determine your PIN or password by reverse-engineering motion sensor data from a smartwatch or fitness tracker."

"The malware was delivered through multiple ad networks, and used a number of vulnerabilities, including a recently-patched flaw in Microsoft's former Flash competitor Silverlight, which was discontinued in 2013. When the infected adverts hit users, they redirect the page to servers hosting the malware, which includes the widely-used (amongst cybercriminals) Angler exploit kit. That kit then attempts to find any back door it can into the target's computer, where it will install cryptolocker-style software, which encrypts the user's hard drive and demands payment in bitcoin for the keys to unlock it."

" In other words: get ready for an era when even the most plausible videos aren't safe from a little computer trickery."

"In just a few short years, ransomware -- malware that encrypts all the files on the computer and then charges you for a key to restore them -- has gone from a clever literary device for technothrillers to a cottage industry to an epidemic to a public menace. "

"A man appears to have deleted his entire company with one mistaken piece of code. By accidentally telling his computer to delete everything in his servers, hosting provider Marco Marsala has seemingly removed all trace of his company and the websites that he looks after for his customers."

"Participants used an app on their phones to record 30-second intervals of themselves reading a piece of text, describing a positive experience, then describing a negative experience. Doctors also took recordings from a control group of 25 patients who were either healthy or getting non-heart-related tests. The doctors found 13 different voice characteristics associated with coronary artery disease. Most notably, the biggest differences between heart patients and non-heart patients' voices occurred when they talked about a negative experience."

"Those changes happened relatively slowly, but it seems to me that employment disruption is accelerating. A large reason for this is that what used to be a room-sized super computer now fits in my pocket. Over the last two decades, I have observed a fundamental change in how we can apply advanced algorithms to sensing and controlling systems-the kinds of technology that enable more sophisticated robotic manufacturing. I can remember discussing various algorithms and believing they were well beyond what we could ever implement. Now these same algorithms are considered elementary. They are just some of the changes that have fueled the revolution in manufacturing."

""If their website goes down as a result of an attack, they can lose their SEO ranking or it could have an effect on their brand, there is a lot at stake aside from revenues," he said."

""Not just here in this country, or in the United States, but virtually every adult human in the world has a cellphone, and they're all putting out data about where they are, what their preferences are, who they talk to and that data will run the world. That's why I call it the decade of data. "This is the beginning of it, not the end of it, we're just at the start," Pentland added. "

"Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's Office suite alone since 2010. But the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude believes a significant proportion of that outlay could be cut by switching to software which can produce open-source files in the "open document format" (ODF), such as OpenOffice and Google Docs."

"Excluding mobile operating systems for tablets and smartphones, Windows still owns about 90% of the global computing market, so it's no surprise it remains a prime target for malware. That doesn't mean other operating systems are perfectly safe, however, as they too can prove easy pickings."

"The secure email service used by US whistleblower Edward Snowden has shut down rather than comply with orders from US security services - and is also legally barred from speaking out. The owner and operator of Lavabit, Ladar Levison, took the service down yesterday "for maintenance" before revealing today that the real reason was demands from US intelligence."