Wayne Rash

Microsoft’s announcement July 8 that it is restructuring its phone business is hardly a surprise. The end of Microsoft’s long, strange journey into phones was foreshadowed by earlier comments from CEO Satya Nadella. What may have been a surprise was the size of the accounting charge and the size of the resulting layoffs. The $7.6 […]

MasterCard is experimenting with facial recognition as a layer of security for its credit card payments. The idea is that customers could use their smartphones to prove that they’re who they say they are when they’re making what the industry calls a “card not present” transaction. A good example of that type of transaction is […]

The expressions of alarm are all over the place. Suddenly people have discovered something called “WiFi Sense” that Microsoft is including in Windows 10 when it’s released at the end of July. Once the new version of Windows is released, this feature of Windows will have an impact on your wireless network security. So you […]

The email that Michael Becce shared with me certainly looked real. In the message he appeared to ask the CFO of the corporation he runs to send a large, but not unusually large wire transfer to a bank. “I need you to do a wire of 28,500USD to the attached account. Kindly let me know […]

The Federal Aviation Administration has decided the time has come to take a close look at the security of its data systems. These systems, which include networks that help the agency run the air traffic control system, send radar images to flight controllers and control connections to the radios that keep flight controllers in touch […]

The news carried by Reuters on Thursday, June 25, that two self-driving cars from rival makers almost had an accident during a lane-change maneuver on a street in Palo Alto, Calif., may be the most encouraging recent news to come from the growing effort to develop autonomous vehicles. The key word here is “almost.” The […]

The latest news about the massive data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management indicates there may be even more personal records at risk than previously disclosed. Even more alarming is that it appears that the OPM’s attempts to fix the problem may be adding even more risk, which suggests that federal officials don’t […]

Microsoft has tried a few times recently to explain the company’s upgrade policy in regards to Windows 10 for a variety of users. In the process, the explanations caused great confusion and led to all sorts of speculation as to what Microsoft really has in mind. It was confusing partly because there’s no single process […]

Verizon Lures News Media With Beer and Father’s Day Toys by Wayne Rash Getting a Kick Out of Father’s Day This is the Adidas MiCoach Smart Ball, which is an instrumented soccer ball to help dedicated forwards improve their goal kicking skills. The ball communicates with your Android or iOS device. Notably, this isn’t the […]

The Federal Communications Commission is planning to whack wireless leader AT&T with the largest fine the Commission has ever levied, some $100 million, a senior FCC official stated in media briefing on June 17. The proposed fine, outlined in a Notice of Apparent Liability, is for alleged violations of the FCC’s Transparency Rule. The FCC […]

National Maker Faire in Washington Goes Far Beyond 3D Printing by Wayne Rash HP Shows Off Its New Sprout 3D Workstation While many applications in the Maker world are decidedly home-brew efforts, not all of them are. Hewlett-Packard is an early entry with the HP Sprout creative workstation. And, yes, next to the computer is […]

The news about the data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management keeps getting worse by the day. How much worse? On June 12, the Associated Press reported that the number of personnel records that may have been pilfered in a stealthy cyber-attack is as high as 14 million. Meanwhile, The Washington Post is […]