Google Unveils Self-Driving Car Prototype

Google has been building self-driving cars for years, but what we've seen so far has always been retrofits of existing cars — until now. The search giant unveiled on Tuesday a fully autonomous self-driving car, built from the ground up by Google and its partners.

Company co-founder Sergey Brin revealed his plans at Recode's Code Conference in southern California. He told Recode editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher (who has ridden in the car), that there's a safety benefit in a custom-built self-driving car. Because the car doesn't have a steering wheel, accelerator or brakes, it has more sensors in strategic spots than is possible in a regular vehicle. It is also equipped with a big "stop" button. In addition to all this tech, Google's autonomous car includes internal power steering and power brakes.
"It was inspiring to start with a blank sheet of paper and ask, 'What should be different about this kind of vehicle?'" Chris Urmson, director of the Self-Driving Car Project, wrote in a blog post about the new car.
Swisher said riding in the all-electric car was like going on a Disney ride. Considering it currently has a maximum speed of roughly 25 mph, this makes sense. Brin described riding in the car, which in one test was programmed via smartphone, as "relaxing," and similar to catching a chairlift. He added that the car will eventually go up to 100 mph once it's proven to be able to travel safely at that speed.

As for when the cars — which are significantly smaller than traditional cars and include couch-like seating — might actually make it to real highways, Brin said Google will soon test them with drivers. "Within a couple of years, we'll — if we’ve passed the safety metrics we've put in place, which is to be significantly safer than a human driver ... have them on the road,"

Nokia Focuses on Telecom Security With New Dedicated Unit

Beefing up its security efforts, Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia will launch a dedicated security unit that will act as its central office for security processes, partnerships and guide for developing product.
The new unit will help ensure that new products have security baked in, enhance the portfolio of security products and services, and develop business models around telecom security, Nokia said in a statement.

To be set up on June 1, it will also expand Nokia's security partner ecosystem to create additional value for operators and make security a positive differentiator, the statement added.

The unit will bring together security experts and talent from across the company's customer operations, global services and technology and innovation teams - with the aim of tackling the full set of requirements for robust telecom security, Nokia Executive Vice President (Mobile Broadband) Marc Rouanne said.

"We will continue to encourage industry dialogue and knowledge sharing in terms of security research to improve awareness of this crucially important area of telco business, including with open source software. This will become critically important as mobile broadband networks are starting to evolve towards the cloud," he added.

According to Nokia's 2014 Customer Acquisition and Retention Study Report, about 75 percent of customers consider security to be the operator's responsibility.

It also said a significant portion of mobile subscribers are likely to switch operator in case of security issues, and they are willing to pay extra for reliable security protection.

Nokia had previously announced plans to launch a Mobile Broadband Security Center in Berlin for knowledge exchange with customers, business and research partners, and public authorities.

Iranian Judge Summons Mark Zuckerberg for Breach of Privacy

A conservative Iranian court opened a case against instant messaging services WhatsApp and Instagram while also summoning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over complaints of privacy violation, state news agency ISNA reported on Tuesday.
The case underscores the growing struggle between moderate Iranian president Hassan Rouhani's drive to increase Internet freedoms and demands by the conservative judiciary for tighter controls.

The Iranian court in the southern province of Fars opened the cases against the social networks after citizens complained of breaches of privacy.

"According to the court's ruling, the Zionist director of the company of Facebook, or his official attorney must appear in court to defend himself and pay for possible losses," said Ruhollah Momen-Nasab, an Iranian internet official, according to state news agency ISNA, referring to Zuckerberg's Jewish background.
Zuckerberg, whose company owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is unlikely to heed the summons.

Iran is still under international sanctions over its disputed nuclear activities and it is difficult for U.S. citizens to secure travel visas, even if they want to visit.

Internet use is high in Iran, partly because many young Iranians turn to it to bypass an official ban on Western cultural products, and Tehran occasionally filters popular websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Rouhani, in remarks that challenge hardliners who have stepped up measures to censor the Web, said earlier this month that Iran should embrace the Internet rather than see it as a threat.
A Rouhani administration official said Iran would loosen Internet censorship by introducing "smart filtering", which only keeps out sites the Islamic government considers immoral.

Google Releases Malware Security Tool VirusTotal Uploader for OS X

Google in an attempt to beef up malware security of Mac users has released VirusTotal Uploader for OS X.
The app can be downloaded from the VirusTotal page, which also details that the service is for machines running OS X 10.7 or higher.

Google acquired VirusTotal, a free security service on the Internet able to also quickly scan the image files of running processes, trigger scans of remote URL content before saving it to disk, and more, back in 2012.

VirusTotal in a blog post announced the release and said, "Today we are proud to announce a new VirusTotal Uploader for OS X. It is available for download on our Desktop Applications page. Internally it uses our public API to schedule uploads of files, with the exact same limitations that any public API user would experience. Hopefully this will lead to VirusTotal receiving more Mac applications, diving deeper into an increasingly targeted OS by attackers and allowing antivirus companies and researchers making use of VirusTotal's backend to build stronger defences against these threats."

The VirusTotal Uploader for OS X will allow Mac users to upload suspicious apps or files for scanning possible malware threats.

Users can submit files and apps to VirusTotal by dragging and dropping folders or apps to scan them, or by right clicking, or control-clicking on a file, click Open With, and then select the VirusTotal uploader app.

As The Next Web notes, a significant portion of the Google workforce uses OS X, and Google's release may have been for that very reason. It could also serve the purpose of highlighting what Google is calling the 'increasingly targeted' nature of Apple's OS X, while pointing to ChromeOS.

Apple wants retrial in Samsung patent case

Apple is requesting a retrial after a Californian jury ordered Samsung to pay the US company $119m (£71m) in damages for infringing two of its patents.

Apple had been seeking damages of $2.2bn after accusing Samsung of copying five patents including the "slide to unlock function".

The US company also filed a permanent injunction to prevent Samsung using the patents it was found to have infringed.

Samsung filed court documents too but the contents have not been made public.

During the original trial Apple had accused Samsung of "systematically" copying features distinctive to its iOS software. Samsung denied that it had copied Apple patents and said it was Apple who was doing the copying.

The jury found that Apple had infringed some Samsung patents and awarded $158,000 in damages to the South Korean firm.

"Litigation fatigue"

Although the jury found in Apple's favour in respect of two of the patents, the damages awarded were much lower than the company had been seeking.

The verdict would have been a blow for Apple said the BBC's North America technology correspondent Richard Taylor, speaking at the time.

"The figure would appear to reflect the jury's belief that Apple's settlement claim was unfairly inflated. Samsung argued all along that it should be far lower than the $2.2bn sought, not least because some of the patents were never even incorporated into the iPhone's software," he said.

This latest legal step is an attempt by Apple to have its damages award increased but it would require a new trial.

Intellectual property analyst Florian Mueller thinks any new trial is unlikely to happen before an appeal of the original ruling.

"The judge may make some minor amendments to the verdict but then she'll let the parties appeal the unfavourable parts of the ruling to the Federal Circuit. Thereafter, there may be a retrial." he said.

These requests by Apple mark the latest instalment in a series of legal battles over intellectual property that the world's top two smartphone makers have been fighting for years across many countries.

Two years ago, a separate jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $930m after finding it had used Apple technology. That verdict is still being challenged by Samsung.

But Mr Mueller thinks Apple may be suffering "litigation fatigue", he pointed out that Apple has not filed a US case against Samsung in more than two years.

Apple recently settled a patent row with Google. The two companies had filed several lawsuits against one another but they agreed to dismiss these cases and said they would work together in "some areas of patent reform".