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Operating system vendors, cloud storage providers and other tech firms are scrambling to mitigate the affects of serious CPU vulnerabilities affecting servers, desktops and even mobile devices.

The hardware bugs have been dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown is named for the metaphorical melting of security boundaries that are taken as a given because they are enforced by hardware itself. Spectre is named based on the root cause of the bug; speculative execution.

Both are very serious and are almost certain to affect you. Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) breaks the isolation between user applications and the operating system. Applications that exploit the hardware bug can access the OS / System memory and the memory of other applications. In essence, this means a malicious (though seemingly benign) application can steal sensitive data from memory. Applied to cloud services, this brings up the possibility of sensitive information being stolen from other customers, though cloud providers have already addressed the issue for the most part.

Spectre (CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715) breaks the expected isolation between different applications. If exploited, it allows a malicious application to trick error-free programs into leaking sensitive information. What makes it even worse is that the discoverers of Spectre say the safety checks of said best practices actually increase the attack surface and may make applications more susceptible to Spectre.

SpaceX is preparing to finally test its Falcon Heavy rocket later this month, and has released a video showing the powerful vehicle sitting on the pad.

Falcon Heavy is SpaceX' super heavy-lift launch vehicle based on its Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon Heavy features a strengthened Falcon 9 rocket core and two additional Falcon 9 boosters as strap-on stages. It will produce 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, or the equivalent of 18 Boeing 747s on full power.

Max payload to low-Earth orbit reaches 140,700 (63,800kg) maximum. The core and side stages are designed to be reused to bring costs down considerably per launch.

Here it is:

With more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff--equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft at full power--Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.

A post shared by SpaceX (@spacex) on Jan 2, 2018 at 6:03pm PST

The test flight will go ahead this month provided Falcon Heavy passes all pre-flight checks, including a static fire of its 27 Merlin 1D engines. If successful, it will blast off with Elon Musk's own Tesla Roadster electric vehicle, which will be put on course to orbit Mars. However, even Musk himself has warned that there is a very real possibility that the initial launch will fail.

The World Health Organization is set to class gaming addiction as a mental health condition for the first time.

The classification is part of the organization's 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD) that will be published this year. It refers to gaming habits so severe that they take complete precedence over other life interests.

Abnormal gaming behavior should persist for more than twelve months for a diagnosis to be made, except if symptoms were severe. Associated symptoms would include impaired control over gaming frequency, intensity and duration, as well as escalating gaming habits even as negative consequences mount.

Some countries around the world have already been treating excessive gaming as an addiction problem and responding with public policy, including time limits enforced on online gaming for minors.

In the UK, some private addiction clinics treat patients for digital addiction.

Music streaming giant Spotify was hit with a $1.6 billion copyright lawsuit for allegedly streaming thousands of songs without permission.

Wixen Music Publishing Inc filed the lawsuit against the Swedish streaming service last week in a California federal court. The lawsuit alleges that Spotify failed to negotiate a direct or compulsory license that would allow it to reproduce and distribute songs for which Wixen is an exclusive licensee.

Among the catalog of songs that Wixen alleges Spotify illegally distributed are "Light My Fire" by the Doors, and "(Girl We Got A) Good Things" by Weezer.

According to the lawsuit, Spotify outsourced work to a third party, Harry Fox Agency, which Wixen alleges was ill-equipped to obtain all the necessary mechanical licenses.

Spotify counts more than 140 million users, 60 million of whom are paying customers, as of mid-2017. It is planning a stock market listing this year.

The South Korean consumer electronics firm will put its new 88-inch screen with 16 times more pixels than Full HD on display in Las Vegas.

It is the largest OLED display in the world with the highest resoltuion, packing 33 million pixels onto the 88-inch display. To put that into persective, it is sixteen times more than Full HD (1920x1080) and four times more than Ultra HD (3840x2160).

To increase the resolution of the display it is necessary to reduce the size of each pixel and in turn aperture ratio, which results in a reduction of brightness. However, self-emissive OLEDs are less affected by aperture ratio and so are optimal for higher resolution.

By contrast, an LCD display would need improved backlights to compensate for the drop in brightness, increasing material cost and power consumption.

OLED displays also remain comparatively light when the resolution is kicked up, whereas LCD screens can be anticipated to increase in weight.



"The successful development of the world's first 8K OLED display is a milestone for the 8K era and underscores the exciting potential of OLED," said In-Byung Kang, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at LG Display.

Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter can be hit with fines of up to €50 million if they fail to remove 'hate speech' in Germany.

The Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) has been in effect since October last year, but there has been a grace period up until now. Under the law, social networks face fines of up to €50 million for failing to remove posts that contain 'hate speech' within 24 hours.

For 'complex cases', the networks have up to seven days to comply.

The law has prompted concerns about censorship in Germany and throughout Europe, with critics worrying about the impact on free speech and the potential for content being removed accidentally. The task could also be staggering for social media platforms to comply with.

Germany is not the only country that is pushing social networks to do more about certain types of content on their networks.

Early this year Amazon revealed its first cashier-free store in Seattle. While it seems to have been only a one-off for now, many expect for the concept to expand, especially now that the e-commerce giant owns Whole Foods.

Amazon's innovations with such stores has been picked up by Walmart, which is developing a similar concept, Recode reports.

Amazon has awoken the sleeping giant in many respects. Walmart has been trying to claw away Amazon's electronic retail advantages by introducing two day free shipping. Now it seems Walmart is worried about not only Amazon Prime perks but possible cashier-free brick-and-mortar stores.

The new store concept, known as Project Kepler, has been developed in Walmart's innovation department, Store No. 8, that is responsible for many of the startup offshoots of Walmart. One of these new concepts also includes a retail service for "high net worth urban consumer", or, as some Recode sources have described it, a service for busy NYC moms.

According to the rumors, the concept known as Code Eight will be a membership (with a fee) that offers 24 hour delivery for household items and 2 day delivery for other items. You can also order things by text messages or even just by snapping a picture.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page. People know those two men built the Google empire from ground up, but it was Eric Schmidt that was in the spotlight most of the important years. Now after being the CEO of Google for a decade and serving as the executive chairman of Alphabet since of its inception, he is stepping down.

While Schmidt is moving on and leaving the role of executive chairman, he'll still be helping Larry and Sergey out in some respects. After stepping down as the executive chairman he'll be considered a technical adviser that will share his insight in scientific and technological problems.

Schmidt's role was extremely important in the early years of Google. He was recruited from a US software company, Novell Inc., in 2001. At that time Google founders were looking for an experienced leader to guide them and their roughly 200 employees.

Since Google, and later the parent company Alphabet, have grown to employ roughly 150 000 people and develop products and services for billions more.

Alphabet is expected to replace Schmidt's executive chairman positions with an non-executive chairman. Officially Schmidt will leave his post at a board meeting in January 2018.

Many of the Netflix Originals as well other content on the world's most popular streaming TV service are now available not only in 4K but also in HDR. Now the streaming giant has expanded the support to another major platform.

Supported by most high-end TVs, HDR gives you a clearer, more vibrant image with blacker blacks and more contrast. However, in addition to HDR supporting display, your playback platform also needs to support the feature.

Netflix can be watched on HDR for example via PlayStation 4 or Chromecast Ultra, but one of the more popular platforms, Windows 10, has lacked the support. Now Netflix has added HDR support – more specifically HDR10 – to Windows 10.

However, it has a few limitations. You will need to use the Windows 10 app or Edge browser, so no love for Chrome users. Also if the computer is powered by an integrated GPU by Intel, you'll also need at least 7th generation Core processor. For Nvidia GPUs you need GeForce 1050, 1060, 1070, or 1080, with no less than 3GB of RAM.

Unfortunately there is no support for Dolby Vision or AMD's GPUs or CPUs. Also, naturally, if you aren't connected to a HDR supported TV, or other HDR display, it doesn't matter what type of PC you have.

3rd Generation Partnership Project, known more commonly as 3GPP, has finished first fifth generation wireless network specifications earlier this week. The consortium gathered in Lisbon, where they announced the next-generation mobile network specifications.

The specifications detail how the first edition of 5G networks will be built and thus the manufacturers finally know how they should build their network devices. The first new generation of network technology is dubber 5G NR, NR standing for New Radio.

While the specifications have been completed and approved, they haven't quite yet been revealed to the public. That is, however, expected to happen before Christmas.

Obviously the completion of 5G specs is a huge step forward in getting next-generation mobile networks to the public. Technology companies and mobile operators can now focus on building the products and services necessary to implement 3GPP's plan.

5G NR supports a wide array of bands ranging from a low of 600-700MHz to high of 50GHz. That means that the technology supports many circumstances with different range and penetration requirements.

Apple has been super effective at selling a new iPhone for existing customers for years. A yearly, or perhaps more commonly biyearly, cycle of buying a new iPhone has been very beneficial for Apple, but some have suggested that there's some foul play how Apple treats older devices.

Now it has been revealed that Apple is slowing down older iPhones as it releases a new model, or models. That would obviously incentivize people to invest in the new, much speedier device.

Previously these types of allegations have been met with denial from Apple, or even no response at all. This time around, though, Apple has had to confirm what has been rumored for years, TechCrunch reported.

According to Apple, they added a performance limiter to iPhones a year ago. That doesn't sound good at all, but Apple says that there's a good reason for it.

Apple's reasoning is that it wants to ensure optimal user experience in certain situations and circumstances. This means that when the battery gets older it is not anymore able provide the system with high enough voltage. Thus especially cold climate and sudden performance hogging could prove difficult for older iPhones.

European Court of Justice has ruled today on the Uber case where the US-based ride-hailing app was looking to be classified as digital company. Instead the EU court decided that it is regulated under transportation laws.

Uber has been calling itself a digital technology company that provides a platform for drivers and customers to connect. While the company itself wants to be classified as an IT company delivering digital products, it is already considered a transportation company in many countries.

The highest court in the EU, however, makes Uber's case harder to make, and is definitely a setback for them. Regulations for transportation companies are harsher than the ones for digital enterprises, and that might not only hurt the company's bottom line but remove it from some spaces altogether.

Even though the ruling was clearly not what the transportation company was looking for, according to Uber's statement it doesn't affect most of its business within the EU. This, however, was because it was looking to be freed from much of the regulations and the situation is not optimal to begin with.

Google surprised many of us earlier this year by announcing that it will be adding an ad blocker element to its Chrome browser. The search giant that has made its billions thanks to advertisements realized that it can't stop people from using ad blockers.

Obviously Chrome's native ad blocker is not going to work quite like the rest of them. It will block all the advertisements from a single page if it has even one obtrusive ad. So it basically tries to block ads from sites with obtrusive ads, not ads in general. There are no exceptions for Google's own ads.

Now Google has revealed that the new feature will enter the Chrome pipeline in just a couple of months. Previously it has been unclear in what update the ad blocker will be enabled, but now Google says that it will start the rollout in February.

Chrome version 64 will be released in late January and version 65 in early March, so the ad blocker will be deployed somewhere in the middle. The launch will be gradual, and Google probably wants to make sure it doesn't lose too much ad revenue due to the new feature before adding it worldwide.

Google's Chrome browser will begin blocking annoying and nuisance advertisements on webpages from February, 2018

Google previously announced plans to block nuisance advertisements on webpages. It defined such elements as being auto-play videos with music, or ads that prevent a user from using a webpage for a set amount of time.

Chrome browsers will start to take actions against such ads from February 15, which doesn't appear to coincide with any major release of the Chrome browser.

Websites that go on to violate te Better Ads Standards (set by Coalition for Better Ads, which counts Google as a member) will see all of their ads blocked by Chrome if they persist for more than 30 days. The idea is to reduce the amount of annoying advertisements that encourage users to install ad blockers that remove all ads altogether.

Read More: developers.google.com

Bloomberg is reporting that YouTube has reached licensing deals with Universal and Sony, a vital ingredient for its music service plans.

It had been proviously reported that a YouTube subscription service for music could be launched as early as March, but was under threat from possible failures to sign agreements with major music corporations.

Bloomberg is now reporting that YouTube has secured long-term deals with Sony and Universal. The contracts set royalty rates for music video rights holders, but also commit YouTube to more aggressive anti-piracy action on its platform.

YouTube's planned music service will feature music that is not available to play for free on the video site.

Relations between YouTube and large media companies have been shaky for years, to say the least. Rights holders want YouTube to more aggressively police content on its platform, as many YouTube users upload music to the service without permission. Disputes with trade associations in several European countries have previously resulted in widespread blocking of music in those countries.