TechCrunch Posted Apr 2, 2014 by Darrell Etherington (@drizzled)

Before Apple’s Lightning cable, I never even dreamed of a life where input/output cables could be reversible. Now, however, it’s hard to go back to standard and micro USB, because I got so lazy. Soon enough, however, USB is getting a new reversible standard called “Type-C” which is around the size of microUSB, and which replaces USB 3 cables entirely, on both sides.

We now have our first look at this tech, from Foxconn via some pre-production artist renderings (courtesy of The Verge). Don’t be surprised to see something that looks a lot like Lightning – if you’re building a reversible I/O standard, it’s going to look pretty much like the most efficient design to come before, which is Apple’s. It looks like the main connects might be inside the cable end, however, instead of on the outside, as they are with Lightning.

Click Here to Read the Full Story 

…

This week the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that should determine the future of Aereo, an over the air delivery system for local TV signals.  Here is an article from earlier this year that describes the battleground and why this is an important battle in communications history.

Summary: Aereo is the new internet service company that has CBS and Fox threatening to shut down their broadcast stations and move their TV networks to cable. But what is Aereo exactly — and why does it have TV networks in such a state?

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Networking | April 10, 2013 — 20:24 GMT (13:24 PDT)

When Chet Kanojia came up with the idea of Aereo, I’m sure he never dreamed that broadcast TV networks, such as Fox, would threaten to shutter their local stations and move their content exclusively to cable to avoid it being shared over the internet.

Aereo wants to take broadcast TV to the cloud. (Credit: John P Falcone/CNET)
Aereo, itself, is based on a very simple idea. Many people want to cut the cable cord, but find it hard to watch the major broadcast networks even with an over-the-air (OTA) antenna. …

Join the Largest Apple Macintosh User’s Group in Michigan, covering the Detroit Metropolitan area this coming Sunday, April 27.

Topic: How to Watch TV on your Mac/iOS Devices

Join us for the next meeting where we will explore various ways of watching live TV and recorded shows on your Mac or iOS Devices.

…

Mashable Team, 4/10/14

An encryption flaw called the Heartbleed bug is already being called one of the biggest security threats the Internet has ever seen. The bug has affected many popular websites and services — ones you might use every day, like Gmail and Facebook — and could have quietly exposed your sensitive account information (such as passwords and credit card numbers) over the past two years.

But it hasn’t always been clear which sites have been affected. Mashable reached out some of the most popular social, email, banking and commerce sites on the web. We’ve rounded up their responses below.

See Full Article and List of Sites Affected …

Written by Mike Wendland APRIL 10, 2014 in Gadgets and Gear, News

Here we go. Another online security alert, reports of widespread personal information vulnerability, dire warnings, alleged security breaches at the biggest websites around and a general the-sky-is-warning panic by the Media.

It’s all about something called the Heartbleed bug, a wide-reaching security vulnerability in the SSL (Secure Socket Library) computer code used to secure something like 20%  – or one in five – of the websites on the Internet. The sites with SSL start with https://, not the normal http://.  Not all https:// sites are or were vulnerable. But all sites that were do start with the https:// prefix.

According to CNET, an attacker can exploit Heartbleed to essentially “get copies of a server’s digital keys then use that to impersonate servers or to decrypt communications from the past or potentially the future, too.”

The problem is, the flaw has  been exploitable for at least two years, and it was only discovered Monday. Nobody knows for sure whether hackers have been quietly stealing personal information for months. Some compromised Yahoo! accounts have had passwords lifted, according to reports.

What we do know is this security hole …