Techlife News #168

The network was crippled. Days before Thanksgiving, Sony Pictures employees had logged onto computers that flashed a grim message from a hacker group calling itself Guardians of Peace. Soon personal information for tens of thousands of current and former workers was dumped online, including Social Security numbers and the purported salaries of top executives. Five Sony-produced movies, including the unreleased “Annie,” appeared on file-sharing websites. Thousands of private, and sometimes embarrassing, emails hit the Internet. “They came in the house, stole everything, then burned down the house,” Michael Lynton, the movie studio’s CEO, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. “They destroyed servers, computers, wiped them clean of all the data and took all the data.” More than six weeks later, the studio’s network is still down - and…

Hackers supporting Islamic militants took over the Twitter and YouTube accounts of a major U.S. military command Monday, in what the Pentagon called an annoying prank that did not breach military networks or access classified data. The hacker group, calling itself CyberCaliphate, was already under FBI investigation for incursions into the Twitter feeds or websites of media outlets in New Mexico and Maryland, prompting officials to question whether the group has any real affiliation with the Islamic State militants. The U.S. and other partner nations have been launching airstrikes against Islamic State insurgents and locations across Iraq and Syria since last summer. U.S. Central Command Twitter accounts in English and Arabic and the YouTube site were quickly removed from the web by military officials. They said they were working to get the…

The Golden Globes seemingly honored every type of content service feeding television’s changing world, except for the four major broadcast networks still watched by most Americans each week. The Globes’ night of underdogs included wins for Amazon’s comedy about a transgender woman, a rookie Latina actress who just learned Sunday that her show had been picked up for a second season, a new Showtime series about a marriage undermined by a torrid affair and the television remake of the movie “Fargo.” In all, three Globes went to streaming services, three to basic cable networks, three to premium cable networks, one to public broadcasting and one to the tiny CW broadcast network. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox were shut out. Amazon’s “Transparent” won best comedy and Jeffrey Tambor, who plays a transgender woman who…

A New Delhi court charged an Uber cab driver on Tuesday with rape, kidnapping and criminal intimidation in a case that has renewed a national fury over chronic sexual violence in India. Authorities are still investigating whether Uber should also be charged. Judge Kaveri Baweja ordered the case to begin Thursday in a special fast-track court set up in 2013 to bypass India’s lumbering judicial system. The 32-year-old suspect, Shiv Kumar Yadav, entered a plea of innocence. He has been in custody since a 25-year-old woman filed a police complaint alleging he assaulted her after she hired him for a ride home on Dec. 5. Authorities, meanwhile, were still investigating the possibility of criminal charges against the company for allegedly misrepresenting the safety of its service, police official Brijendra Kumar Yadav said. “That is…

ALL OF THE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SHOW FLOOR Ah, but you couldn't possibly have expected the technology world to die down for a little while after Christmas, surely? Yes, you may have barely got rid of the last remaining wrapping paper from your brand-spanking-new smartphone, tablet, PC or other device, but technology never sleeps, and the same has to be said of the wider consumer electronics world, as shown by the impact of CES 2015. The Consumer Electronics Show or International CES has been held since June 1967, and once took place twice a year. Now, it's just the one date that you need to put in your diary, January, and there's just the one venue to remember every year - the Las Vegas Convention Center in Nevada. We wouldn't recommend turning…

The Nielsen company says an estimated 19.3 million people watched the Golden Globes ceremony on NBC on Sunday night. That’s down from the 20.9 million people who watched the ceremony last year, when it was the most-watched Golden Globes in a decade. Nielsen said Monday that it represents the most-watched prime-time entertainment program on NBC since the 2014 Golden Globes ceremony. It marked the third year in a row that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the show; they’ve said this would be their final year.…