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Google intros a way to run Android apps on desktop platforms

A handful of Android apps made their way to Chrome OS last year, thanks to Google’s native client called App Runtime for Chrome (ARC). Now, Google is giving all Android developers access to ARC and not just well-known ones like the creators of Evernote and Vine (two of the apps ported in 2014). To be exact, Mountain View has released an app/browser extension called ARC Welder that packages Android APKs into applications for Chrome OS and other desktop platforms. Yes, these converted apps could work even on Mac, Windows and Linux computers loaded with the Chrome browser. We say “could, ” because the final products don’t always work. Ars Technica put a few applications to the test and found that a lot of them don’t run on computers, because, well, they were designed for smartphones and tablets. Developers can tweak their creations if they stop running after going through ARC Welder, though. Once they’re done, they can upload the files directly to the Chrome Web Store. Even if you’re not a developer, you can still use ARC Welder to convert APKs on your own, but as we said, don’t be surprised if some of them don’t work. Filed under: Laptops , Google Comments Via: OMG! Chrome! Source: Chrome Developers , ARC Welder

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Google intros a way to run Android apps on desktop platforms

BMW can’t build its $135,000 plug-in hybrid fast enough

Gas may be cheap right now, but even the well-to-do prefer not to burn it. BMW is doubling the production pace of its 357 horsepower i8 plug-in hybrid car — which runs 23 miles or so on electricity alone — to around 20 vehicles per day. The automaker is bumping the numbers to meet demand and cut the four-month waiting list in half. As our sister site Autoblog pointed out, that’s a mere .04 percent of an F-150’s production, but then again the i8 costs around four times as much. A more apt comparison might be against the Tesla Model S , with sales of 35, 000 units last year, compared to 18, 000 BMW i3 EVs and i8 plug-in hybrids, combined. At the same time, Chevy sold nearly 19, 000 copies of its plug-in hybrid Volt in 2014, while Nissan sold 30, 000 Leaf EVs for a combined 7 percent bump over 2013. That shows not only that BMW is holding its own in the clean vehicle market, sales-wise, but that the overall market is growing — even in a time of $2 per gallon gas. [Image credit: Autoblog] Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Autoblog Source: Automotive News Europe

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BMW can’t build its $135,000 plug-in hybrid fast enough

Comcast’s new broadband service is twice as fast as Google Fiber

Comcast has drawn a new battle line against Google Fiber by launching a 2Gbps fiber broadband service called Gigabit Pro . It arrives next month in Atlanta and will be available in 18 million homes across the US by the end of the year. The package will deliver symmetric uploads and downloads like Fiber does, but at twice its 1Gbps speed. Mountain View had already announced that it would bring Fiber to Atlanta, but Comcast will now beat it to the punch both in timing and data rates. Comcast also tweaked Google’s nose by saying “our approach is to offer the most comprehensive rollout of multi-gigabit service to the most homes as quickly as possible, not just to certain neighborhoods.” That’s a reference to the search giant’s glacially slow rollout of its highly-sought service. However, most consumers don’t mind dealing with Google, something Comcast certainly can’t say. It’s been mired in bad press over customer service issues , and has adamantly opposed new net neutrality rules that are favored by consumers. That said, the sheer speed of the service is impressive. Comcast emphasized that you’ll need to be in an urban center near its fiber network and will require a “professional-grade” installation. It hasn’t revealed pricing yet, but given similarities to its business-grade service, we’d expect it to be costly. However, you might get a break if you’re in a city that also has Google Fiber. Filed under: Internet Comments Via: The Verge Source: Comcast

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Comcast’s new broadband service is twice as fast as Google Fiber

Google Chrome will banish Chinese certificate authority for breach of trust

Google’s Chrome browser will stop trusting all digital certificates issued by the China Internet Network Information Center following a major trust breach last week that led to the issuance of unauthorized credentials for Gmail and several other Google domains . The move could have major consequences for huge numbers of Internet users as Chrome, the world’s most widely used browser, stops recognizing all website certificates issued by CNNIC. To give affected website operators time to obtain new credentials from a different certificate authority, Google will wait an unspecified period of time before implementing the change. Once that grace period ends, Google engineers will blacklist both CNNIC’s root and extended-validation certificates in Chrome and all other Google software. The unauthorized certificates were issued by Egypt-based MCS Holdings , an intermediate certificate authority that operated under the authority of CNNIC. MCS used the certificates in a man-in-the-middle proxy, a device that intercepts secure connections by masquerading as the intended destination. Such devices are sometimes used by companies to monitor employees’ encrypted traffic for legal or human resources reasons. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google Chrome will banish Chinese certificate authority for breach of trust

California Has Become the First State To Get Over 5% of Its Power From Solar

Lucas123 writes: While the rest of the nation’s solar power generation hovers around 1%, California clocked in with a record 5% of power coming from utility-grade (1MW or more) solar power sources, according to a report from Mercom Capital Group and the Energy Information Administration. That’s three times the next closest state, Arizona. At the same time, 22 states have yet to deploy even one utility-grade solar power plant, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. Meanwhile, the rest of the world saw a 14% uptick in solar power installations in 2014 for a total of 54.5GW of capacity, and that figure is expected to grow even faster in 2015. While China still leads the world in new solar capacity, Japan and the U.S. come in as a close second and third, respectively. In the U.S. distributed solar and utility-grade solar installations are soaring as the solar investment tax credit (ITC) is set to expire next year. The U.S. is expected to deploy 8.5GW of new solar capacity in 2015, according to Mercom Capital Group. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California Has Become the First State To Get Over 5% of Its Power From Solar

“Unquestionable greed,” the startup CEO who stole $765k from his friends

SAN FRANCISCO—Dressed in matching yellow scrubs from the nearby Alameda County Jail, Jon Mills looked resigned to his fate. After taking a plea deal on two felony counts of wire fraud, the young former startup CEO appeared in federal court Tuesday afternoon for sentencing. Mills had moved to California five years ago with a dream to hit it big in Silicon Valley. The company he founded, Motionloft , uses small sensors to perform analytics on in-store foot traffic. Everything worked. The company continues to succeed, and celebrity venture capitalist Mark Cuban remains its sole investor. But that success wasn’t enough. In early 2013, Mills told at least five people that if they gave him relatively small amounts of money, they would own stakes in the company. He claimed that a Cisco acquisition worth hundreds of millions of dollars was supposedly imminent, so Mills and all Motionloft shareholders others would stand to make a tidy profit. In reality, Mills knew the deal didn’t exist. Read 52 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Unquestionable greed,” the startup CEO who stole $765k from his friends

Google kills 200 ad-injecting Chrome extensions, says many are malware

Google is cracking down on ad-injecting extensions for its Chrome browser after finding that almost 200 of them exposed millions of users to deceptive practices or malicious software. More than a third of Chrome extensions that inject ads were recently classified as malware in a study Google researchers carried out with colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley. The Researchers uncovered 192 deceptive Chrome extensions that affected 14 million users. Google officials have since killed those extensions and incorporated new techniques to catch any new or updated extensions that carry out similar abuses. The study also found widespread use of ad injectors for multiple browsers on both Windows and OS X computers. More than five percent of people visiting Google sites have at least one ad injector installed Within that group, half have at least two injectors installed, and nearly one-third have at least four installed. Google officials don’t bar such ad injectors outright, but they do place restrictions on them. Terms of service for Chrome extensions , for instance, require that the ad-injecting behavior be clearly disclosed. Customers of DoubleClick and other Google-operated ads services must also comply with policies barring unwanted software . Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Judge rejects AT&T claim that FTC can’t stop unlimited data throttling

A federal judge has rejected AT&T’s claim that it can’t be sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which is trying to put a stop to the carrier’s throttling of unlimited data plans . The FTC sued AT&T in October 2014, saying the company deceived customers by offering unlimited data plans and then throttling data speeds once customers hit certain usage thresholds, such as 3GB or 5GB in a month. AT&T claimed in January that because it is a common carrier, it isn’t subject to FTC jurisdiction. In a decision out of US District Court in Northern California yesterday, Judge Edward Chen refused to dismiss the lawsuit. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Judge rejects AT&T claim that FTC can’t stop unlimited data throttling

Uber driver arrested for trying to burglarize passenger’s house

An Uber driver was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of attempting to break in to the residence of a woman he had just brought to the Denver International Airport. Gerald Montgomery The 51-year-old driver, Gerald Montgomery, allegedly used what the police described as “burglary tools” to try to open the back door of the Colorado woman’s house. The victim’s roommate was home and confronted Montgomery, the Denver Police Department said. Uber said it has “deactivated” Montgomery’s “access to the platform, pending a full investigation.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Uber driver arrested for trying to burglarize passenger’s house

New Firefox version says “might as well” to encrypting all Web traffic

Developers of the Firefox browser have moved one step closer to an Internet that encrypts all the world’s traffic with a new feature that can cryptographically protect connections even when servers don’t support the HTTPS protocol. Opportunistic encryption, as the feature is known, acts as a bridge between plaintext HTTP connections and fully compliant HTTPS connections based on transport layer security or its predecessor, protocol secure sockets layer. These traditional Web-based encryption measures require site operators to obtain a digital credential issued by a browser-recognized certificate authority and to implement TLS protection through OpenSSL or a similar code library. Even then, many sites are unable to fully encrypt their pages because they embed ads and other third-party content that’s still transmitted in plaintext. As a result, large numbers of sites (including this one) continue to publish some or all of their content in HTTP, which can be readily manipulated by people with the ability to monitor the connection. OE, as opportunistic encryption is often abbreviated, was turned on by default in Firefox 37, which was released this week. The move comes 17 months after an Internet Engineering Task Force working group proposed OE become an official part of the HTTP 2.0 specification . The move garnered critics and supporters alike, with the former arguing it may delay some sites from using the more secure HTTPS protections and the latter saying, in effect, some protection is better than none. The chief shortcoming of OE is its lack of authentication for cryptographically validating that a connected server is operated by the organization claiming ownership. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Firefox version says “might as well” to encrypting all Web traffic

Ken May

Author: kenmay