Smart credit cards, or chip cards, were popular in Europe long before they debuted in the U.S. Here, financial institutions were complacent and believed that existing technology was secure. Now chip cards use integrated circuits to provide greatly enhanced security. One common problem they are designed to circumvent is credit card skimming, a process that hacks a card […]

Microsoft went into Windows 10 with low expectations from the public. After the Windows 8 debacle, just about anything would present an improvement. Indeed, the key feature of the forthcoming Windows refresh appears to be the return of a fully-enabled Start menu. The word “pathetic” comes to mind, that a feature mistakenly removed (or at […]

So CEO Satya Nadella has only led Microsoft for a few weeks, so it would be unfair to judge his performance. He deserves to chance to prove his mettle. At the same time, the company remains in deep trouble, despite still delivering decent sales and profits, particularly for software and services. And, yes, the Xbox […]

In the wake of revelations about the notorious SSL bug last month, there was plenty of fear-mongering. One online commentator suggested that Apple knew about the “gotofail” bug since Mavericks first came out in October 2013 but, unaccountably, failed to fix it. That was never proven, and it’s not at all certain that the commentator […]