The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Thursday, February 26
Some hackers took Lenovo's corporate web address for a joyride on Wednesday, redirecting traffic to a video stream showing an apparently bored teen sitting in his bedroom. The prank, like the hijacking of Google's Vietnam site recently, highlights continued weakness in the Internet's Domain Name System, which translates web site names into IP addresses.
Samsung gets more woe over eavesdropping TVs
The fuss over data collected by voice-operated TVs made by Samsung Electronics is not going away, despite its efforts to minimize the issue. Now the Electronic Privacy Information center is asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate, in a complaint that says Samsung has violated federal law.
Former Facebooker launches server management startup
Facebook is famous for the advanced data centers that keep its global social network humming. Now one of its former engineers, Amir Michael, who also helped start Facebook's Open Compute Project, has cofounded Coolan. The startup Wednesday launched a "community analytics" service that companies can use to predict failures and prevent outages.
Massive botnet taken down by European law enforcers and security vendors
European law enforcement agencies have seized command-and-control servers used by Ramnit, a malware program that steals online banking credentials, FTP passwords, session cookies and personal files. It infected over 3.2 million computers over five years. Symantec, Microsoft and AnubisNetworks assisted Europol and law enforcement investigators from several countries in disrupting the cyberinfrastructure that was controlling the Ramnit botnet.
First up for HP's IoT platform: energy management
Hewlett-Packard has rolled out the first product built on its platform for Internet of Things implementations, targeting energy companies that want to fine-tune efficiency in power production and use. The HP Energy Management Pack is a combination of software and services for building systems that energy companies could use for monitoring, device management, security and analytics. Coming later for the HP IoT platform are packages for industries such as transportation and health care.
China drops Cisco, other foreign vendors from approved list
China has slashed the number of foreign-made tech products approved for purchase by government entities in a move that particularly hurt Cisco Systems, which has seen all of its wares dropped from an official list, Reuters reports. Also gone are Apple, Intel's McAfee division, and Citrix Systems. Overall, the list contains one-third fewer foreign brands.
Google said to ready payments API
Google is planning to introduce a new API for payments called Android Pay at its I/O conference in May, Ars Technica reported, citing unnamed sources. It's meant to let developers add a mobile payment option to apps, and also to enable tap-to-pay transactions in stores.
Watch now
Three Austrian men had their paralyzed hands replaced with nerve-controlled robotic prostheses.
One last thing
Humanity can close up shop now: An artificial intelligence network developed by researchers at Google-owned DeepMind can teach itself to play classic Atari video games.