Swarms of robotic insects incapable of being swatted away may no longer be the product of science fiction and Black Mirror episodes. A team from EPFL’s School of Engineering has developed an insect propelled at 3 cm/s, dubbed the DEAnsect. What makes this robot unique is its exceptional robustness. Two versions of the robot were…

Rob Barry and Dustin Volz, reporting for Wall Street Journal: The hackers seemed to be everywhere. In one of the largest-ever corporate espionage efforts, cyberattackers alleged to be working for China’s intelligence services stole volumes of intellectual property, security clearance details and other records from scores of companies over the past several years. They got…

Another small victory in the long fight to end robocalls. …read more Source:: CNet

A cybercrime group called Thallium stole login info via phishing, says Microsoft. …read more Source:: CNet

You don’t need special glasses to see what it looks like when smart people run out of ideas. From a column: The breakout hit of the Consumer Electronics Show in 2010 was a television set. Hard to believe now, maybe, but it’s true; for one shining moment, the Toshiba Cell TV was the most exciting…

The updates meets the requirements from the World Trade Organization and follows complaints from the EU and Japan. …read more Source:: ZDNet

Patched or not patched? You won’t know until the box marked “2000” is opened Y2K Welcome to Y2K, The Register’s collection of ramblings from readers tasked with dealing with what almost happened – but didn’t – during those halcyon days of two decades past.… …read more Source:: TheRegister

Fireworks have long been a staple of New Year’s Eve celebrations in Germany, with revelers setting off their own pyrotechnics in the annual reverie of booze and exuberance known in the country as “Silvester.” But for the first time this year, Berlin will join dozens of other German cities and communities in instituting a partial…

The Chinese phone giant was blacklisted by the US government this year. …read more Source:: CNet

‘Thallium’ nation-state threat group used the domains to target mostly US victims. …read more Source:: DarkReading