Fairphone 2 hands-on: Modular phones are finally here

(credit: Andrii Degeler)

The Fairphone 2 is launching only in select European countries. The company says it plans to bring the device to other countries in 2016.

AMSTERDAM—With more and more similarly priced and specced Android smartphones arriving on the market, unique selling points are becoming increasingly rare. There’s nothing bad about selling a decent phone with an attractive price tag, but it’s always more interesting to take a look at something that stands out.

You don’t have to add a plethora of unnecessary features or keep pumping the display resolution up, though. You can also stand out by changing the way a device is manufactured and sold. That’s what Dutch startup Fairphone has been doing for a while now.

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Fairphone 2 hands-on: Modular phones are finally here

Apple fishes for apps for updated Apple TV

The company wants to stock up on games and other apps for the streaming-media box, which launches next week.

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Apple fishes for apps for updated Apple TV

Walmart goes to war with Amazon over open source

Walmart is open sourcing its cloud code to compete with AWS. Here’s why it’s heading in the wrong direction.

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Walmart goes to war with Amazon over open source

This new ad will convince you to never again judge a mom

We might not admit it, but we’ve all judged a mom at least once in our lives

We’ve looked down on the woman whose 2-year-old is crying on a plane, the friend who has a cesarean section, the co-worker who leaves early for her kids, the family member breastfeeding her toddler, the mom at the park whose children wander off

See also: Finding hope when a pregnancy suddenly ends

It’s human nature to see someone else’s choices, make a personal comparison and feel smug or superior — even if for a brief moment

But this habit is particularly ugly when it comes to motherhood, and the formula maker Similac is weighing in for the second time this year with its own emotional call to “end the mommy wars.” …

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This new ad will convince you to never again judge a mom

Daniel Radcliffe on masturbation: 'I started very early'

LONDON — There are so many possible puns here about wands, wand-waving, and that special flick of the wrist you have to do to really get the magic started that — to be quite honest — we’re not really sure where to start with this one.

See also: 11 very strange ‘Harry Potter’ reveals made by J.K. Rowling

We’ve all known for awhile that the Harry Potter books are riddled with innuendos — “Stand up and take out your wand, Potter,” etc., etc. — but the simple, innocent magic of the stories has always managed to counter this.

Now, though, Harry Potter himself has started casually talking about masturbation — in an …

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Daniel Radcliffe on masturbation: 'I started very early'

Uber arrives in Croatia despite taxi drivers' vow to revolt

Passengers in Croatia’s capital Zagreb have a new travel option starting Thursday — an Uber ride

Launching at noon local time, the service will initially only be available in its UberX variant, with licensed drivers working for the company as independent contractors. Per Uber’s official page, the ride start costs 8 HRK ($1.2) with each additional kilometer costing 4 HRK ($0.6) and minute 0.5 HRK ($0.07). The minimum fee for a ride is 10 HRK ($1.5), and the cancellation fee is 15 HRK ($2.2).

See also: ‘Dinocorns’ is the sad new name for big, aging startups like Uber and Snapchat

The arrival of one of the world’s …

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Uber arrives in Croatia despite taxi drivers' vow to revolt

Dutch sun-powered car wins World Solar Challenge by racing across Australia

Speeding off from Darwin on Oct. 18, 42 futuristic solar cars from more than two dozen countries competed in the 2015 World Solar Challenge.

Teams came from as far away as the United States, Belgium and Iran, but it was the Nuon Solar Team from the Netherlands’ Delft University that emerged victorious on Thursday, crossing the finish line in Adelaide after more than 3,000 kilometres (1864.11 miles) on the road

See also: Photos of solar-powered cars racing across the Australian desert

Starting in 1987, the World Solar Challenge is a biennial event that aims to promote solar-powered car research. The Nuon Solar Team were competing in the event’s top Challenger class, where the purpose-built car must travel across Australia in a single stage. Their only fuel? Sunlight …

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Dutch sun-powered car wins World Solar Challenge by racing across Australia

All major US carriers now support Samsung Pay

Samsung has announced that all major carriers in the United States, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon, now support its mobile payments service Samsung Pay, which was launched in the country on September 28.

“Starting today, October 21, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note5 users on the major U.S. wireless networks will be able to download and install the Samsung Pay application directly from Google Play,” the South Korean company said.

Samsung specifically mentioned that those on Verizon, which recently jumped on the bandwagon, with devices that need to be updated to work with the service will be automatically prompted for the update when they install the Samsung Pay…

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All major US carriers now support Samsung Pay

Pepper the humanoid robot debuts in France

Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank is testing its Pepper robot in France after four months of sell-outs in its homeland.

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Pepper the humanoid robot debuts in France

Smartphones, iPads okay for early developing children, with guidance, experts say

In what ranks as something of stunning reversal, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has changed its stance on the potential harm smartphones and iPads can do to developing children.

Based on research culled from a meeting of educators, pediatricians, neuroscientists, educators, media researchers and social science experts in May, the organization now takes a more permissive stance on the issue of allowing children access to computers at a young age

See also: Are Kids With Gadgets More Likely to Have ADHD?

The findings were presented during an event called …

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Smartphones, iPads okay for early developing children, with guidance, experts say

Samsung Galaxy On5 and Galaxy On7 coming soon: two affordable Android smartphones

Samsung is getting ready to release two new handsets with rather unusual names: Galaxy On5 (model number SM-G550) and Galaxy On7 (model number SM-G600). Previously, these smartphones were known as Galaxy Mega On and Galaxy Grand On.

While the two devices haven’t been announced yet, their support pages are available over at Samsung India’s official website. Moreover, we can already see press renders of the On5.

The Galaxy On5 and Galaxy On7 share many of their features, including quad-core Exynos 3475 processors, Android Lollipop, LTE, 5 MP front-facing cameras, 1.5 GB of RAM, 8 … – Source      

Samsung Galaxy On5 and Galaxy On7 coming soon: two affordable Android smartphones

Don't worry, the Halloween asteroid won't ruin your trick-or-treating

An asteroid that was only discovered 11 days ago will make its closest pass by Earth on Halloween (Oct. 31), making your holiday extra spooky.

Luckily, the holiday won’t also be filled with a fiery impact of the space rock, since this asteroid will safely steer clear of our planet, according to calculations from NASA scientists

See also: A huge asteroid just zoomed past Earth, but everything’s fine, NBD

An asteroid-hunting observatory called Pan-STARRS in Hawaii discovered the …

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Don't worry, the Halloween asteroid won't ruin your trick-or-treating

New attacks on Network Time Protocol can defeat HTTPS and create chaos

(credit: Matteo Ianeselli )

Serious weaknesses in the Internet’s time-synchronization mechanism can be exploited to cause debilitating outages, snoop on encrypted communications, or tamper with Bitcoin transactions, computer scientists warned Wednesday.

The vulnerabilities reside in the Network Time Protocol, the widely used specification computers use to ensure their internal clocks are accurate. Surprisingly, connections between computers and NTP servers are rarely encrypted, making it possible for hackers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks that reset clocks to times that are months or even years in the past. In a paper published Wednesday titled Attacking the Network Time Protocol, the researchers described several techniques to bypass measures designed to prevent such drastic time shifts. The paper also described ways to prevent large numbers of computers from successfully connecting to synchronization servers.

The attacks could be used by malicious actors to wreak havoc on the Internet. An attack that prevented sensitive computers and servers from receiving regular time-synchronization updates could cause malfunctions on a mass scale. In many cases, such denial-of-service hacks can be carried out even when attackers are “off-path,” meaning the hacker need not have the ability to monitor traffic passing between a computer and NTP server.

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New attacks on Network Time Protocol can defeat HTTPS and create chaos