Technology

  Washington / AFP They know how you browse the internet, your favorite TV shows and where you shop and travel. Data collected by internet and media companies is a powerful tool, and the big mergers planned by AT&T with Time Warner and Verizon with Yahoo offer those firms more data that can be used to target consumers with content …

  NEW YORK / AFP Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus is getting a new camera capability — the blurring of backgrounds to focus attention on people or other objects in the foreground. Apple first announced the “portrait mode” feature in September but it wasn’t available until the company released its iOS 10.1 software update on Monday. It replicates an effect typically …

  NEW YORK / AP A massive internet attack that paralyzed Twitter, Netflix and other services is being blamed on a specific kind of malware designed to harness the power of ordinary consumer devices. The bad news: Using it isn’t particularly hard and doesn’t require much money. The malware, known as Mirai, was recently posted online for others to adapt …

  Bloomberg Chinese billionaire Jack Ma proposed that the nation’s top security bureau use big data to prevent crime, endorsing the country’s nascent effort to build unparalleled online surveillance of its billion-plus people. China’s data capabilities are virtually unrivaled among its global peers, and policing cannot happen without the ability to analyze information on its citizens, the co-founder of Alibaba …

  MANASSAS / AP Think of it as the airborne cousin to the self-driving car: a robot in the cockpit to help human pilots fly passengers and cargo — and eventually even replace them. The government and industry are collaborating on a program that seeks to replace the second human pilot in two-person flight crews with a robot co-pilot that …

  BEIJING / AP The Canbot can say its name, respond to voice commands, and “dance” as it plays Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Other robots China is displaying at the World Robot Conference can play badminton, sand cell phone cases and sort computer chips. China is showcasing its burgeoning robot industry at the five-day exhibition in Beijing, part of a …

  Relaxnews Chromebook laptops are known for running Google’s Chrome OS and for being competitively priced. The Chromebook range now looks set to get a brand new and much more ambitious model made by Samsung, all for under $500, according to leaks published on the specialist website SamMobile. A Chromebook is a laptop computer that runs Google’s Chrome operating system. …

  SEATTLE / AP If your heart is going to stop, right outside a hospital is not a bad place for it. And if 41 people within a 330-yard radius have a cellphone app alerting them to your distress, so much the better. That’s what happened in Seattle last week when Stephen DeMont collapsed at a bus stop in front …

Bloomberg Vulnerable internet-connected devices such as cameras and digital video recorders may be to blame for the attack that took down some of the world’s most popular websites on Friday. Malware that targets the “internet of things,” a new breed of small gadgets that are connected to the internet, may have powered the global attack, according to Brian Krebs, a …

  Relaxnews When Apple launched its first PowerBook range of laptop computers on October 21, 1991, it also set in motion a computing revolution by firmly establishing the recipe for the laptop computer that all leading PC makers are still following. According to Eric Smith, Strategy Analytics’ senior tablet and touchscreen strategies analyst, the first PowerBook’s impact “is still shaking …