Online Storage Provider Box Soars in Wall Street Debut

Box's shares soared 66 percent in their stock market debut Friday despite the online storage provider's decade-long history of losses, a showing that may encourage more unprofitable technology startups to go public this year. The start on the New York Stock Exchange came after Box Inc. sold 12.5 million shares for $14 apiece in a delayed IPO that raised $175 million. That represented about a 10 percent stake in the company.

Box's stock gained $9.23 to close at $23.23, giving the company a market value of $2.7 billion. Although Box focuses on selling online storage services companies and government agencies, the company also offers free, bare-bones accounts to consumers. All told, 32 million people have Box accounts. The wide usage of Box's service probably helped drum up more interest in the company's initial public offering, according to Sam Hamadeh, who runs PrivCo, a firm that tracks startups.

"I think this is going to be a short-term pop" in Box's stock price, Hamadeh said. "What you are seeing is a lot of buying by doctors, lawyers and dentists who just know Box's name and didn't pay any attention to the financials. And the financials are horrendous."

Windows 10 January Technical Preview Now Available for Download

As promised at its Windows 10 Next Chapter event on Wednesday, Microsoft 'within a week' on Friday started rolling out its January Technical Preview build of its upcoming Windows 10 OS for desktops, adding features like Cortana, Continuum and more.

The January Technical Preview of Windows 10 (build number 9926) includes bug fixes as well as several new features that were demoed by Joe Belfiore at the Windows 10 Next Chapter event. However, several are not available just yet.

"Much is still in-progress and we're getting it out to you as fast as we can - so you can try it out and give us feedback," added Microsoft Engineering General Manager, Gabe Aul in the company blog post.

The Windows 10 January Technical Preview misses out on Spartan, Microsoft's 'modern' browser and OneDrive-based Music Locker support, as per ZDNet. The firm has also not mentioned anything about its next version of Microsoft Office in the latest build of Windows 10. The Windows 10 preview build for desktops does bring the Cortana virtual assistant which with which will help users to set reminders, search for information stored of the PC, tablets or the Web, via voice or text input. Also new, is the Continuum feature that switches the Start Menu and other UI when switching between tablet mode and laptop mode in a convertible Windows 10 laptop.

Other features included are the redesigned Settings app; the new Start Menu with Live Tile interface, easy connectivity options for audio and video devices via the new 'Action Centre', which comes as a replacement to Windows 8's Charms Bar; the new Photos and Maps apps, and an updated Windows Store Beta. The testers can also try the Xbox App as a part of this build.

Google Reveals Security Flaws in Apple's OS X O.S

Google these past few weeks published details about security flaws in Microsoft's Windows operating system despite a request by the Redmond giant to hold off until it issued a fix within a few days, and now, the company has published details about three security flaws in Apple's OS X operating system after the stipulated Project Zero 90-day deadline to deliver a fix lapsed.

Google's Project Zero security unit has revealed three flaws in Apple's OS X operating system that might allow hackers to take control of users' Mac systems. The flaws are mentioned as "OS X networkd "effective_audit_token" XPC type confusion sandbox escape", "OS X IOKit kernel code execution due to NULL pointer dereference in IntelAccelerator," and "OS X IOKit kernel memory corruption due to bad bzero in IOBluetoothDevice."

The first flaw may be mitigated by changes already present in OS X Yosemite, but that has not been confirmed. Details can be found in Google's Security Research page. The search giant notified Apple about the flaws back in October. However, it later published detailed information about the flaws including proof-of-concept exploit after the Project Zero team's 90-day cut-off period.

Apple has still not addressed the flaws and is yet to mention if these loopholes will be tackled in future. According to iMore (via Engadget), the upcoming OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 update, currently in beta, might be able to bring fixes to the issues.

Google Responds to Concerns Over Widespread Android WebView Vulnerability

Google has issued a statement regarding the recently reported WebView security flaw that affects devices running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and older versions, a flaw that potentially puts over 900 million users at risk.

The statement is essentially a follow-up to the Android security team's earlier response that it is up to OEMs to address the issue, and that the company has already addressed the issue with the release of Android 4.4 KitKat and Android 5.0 Lollipop. For those who are unaware, WebView is a part of the Android OS that lets app developers render webpages in apps without requiring a full browser.

The component was based on the Webkit engine, which was replaced by Google's Chromium engine when Android 4.4 KitKat launched, resolving the reported vulnerability in WebView and also enabling quick binary updates to the component via OEM updates. Android 5.0 Lollipop then unbundled WebView from the operating system, allowing it to be downloaded and updated separately by users from Google Play - without requiring an OEM fix. Adrian Ludwig, from Google's Android security team, in a Google+ post on Friday says Google issues bug fixes to the current version of Android on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) page, and directly provides patches "Android partners with patches for at least the last two major versions of the operating system."

Facebook Suffers Own Goal Outage Affecting Users Worldwide

Facebook said it suffered a self-inflicted outage lasting an hour on Tuesday that made its site inaccessible to users worldwide. The glitch reported in Asia, the United States, Australia and the U.K. affected access from PCs and Facebook's mobile app. The social media giant's Instagram service was also inaccessible.

A Facebook statement said the disruption was caused by a technical change it made to the site and not the result of a cyber-attack. Lizard Squad, a group notorious for attention seeking antics online, claimed responsibility on Twitter for the outages.

"The downtime was caused by a technical issue we introduced. It was not connected to Lizard Squad, Snowmageddon, or any other external party," Facebook said.

The temporary loss of service may be Facebook's biggest outage since Sept. 24, 2010 when it was down for about 2.5 hours. The statement said users would have been shut out of Facebook for roughly 50 minutes. On its website for developers, Facebook said the "major outage" lasted one hour.

Facebook has about 1.35 billion active users and Instagram has some 300 million. News of the Facebook outage set rival social network Twitter alight, propelling the hashtag "facebookdown" to top trend on the site. It comes ahead of Facebook reporting its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.

Nasa Set for Launch of First Soil-Observing Satellite Launch on Thursday

Nasa is set for Januar 29 launch of the first US Earth-observing satellite designed to collect global observations of surface soil moisture. The agency's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission (SMAP) will lift off from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket, the US space agency said in a statement.

SMAP will provide high resolution, space-based measurements of soil moisture and its state - frozen or thawed. This will allow scientists to better predict natural hazards of extreme weather, climate change, floods and droughts and help reduce uncertainties in our understanding of the Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles.

The mission will map the entire globe every two to three days for at least three years and provide the most accurate and highest-resolution maps of soil moisture ever obtained. The spacecraft will orbit the Earth once every 98.5 minutes and repeat the same ground track every eight days.

Scientists will for the first time get a bird's-eye view of drought patterns; for instance, they will watch where droughts begin and end, and how droughts spread across large areas. The mission is planned to last three years, at a cost of $916 million (including launch), but the instruments could last several years longer.

Nasa Probe Indicates Asteroid Vesta Once Had Flowing Water

One of the largest asteroids in our solar system - Vesta - may once have had flowing water which formed gullies and other erosion features on its surface, according to data from Nasa's Dawn spacecraft.

Vesta, visited by Dawn from 2011 to 2013, was once thought to be completely dry, incapable of retaining water because of the low temperatures and pressures at its surface. However, a new study shows evidence that Vesta may have had short-lived flows of water-mobilised material on surface.

"Nobody expected to find evidence of water on Vesta. The surface is very cold and there is no atmosphere, so any water on the surface evaporates," said Jennifer Scully, postgraduate researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"However, Vesta is proving to be a very interesting and complex planetary body," said Scully.

"These results, and many others from the Dawn mission, show that Vesta is home to many processes that were previously thought to be exclusive to planets," said UCLA's Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission. Scully and colleagues identified a small number of young craters on Vesta with curved gullies and fan-shaped deposits.

"We're not suggesting that there was a river-like flow of water. We're suggesting a process similar to debris flows, where a small amount of water mobilises the sandy and rocky particles into a flow," Scully said.

Nasa Releases First-Ever 3D View of Greenland Ice Sheet

Using ice-penetrating radar data, Nasa scientists have built the first-ever comprehensive map of layers deep inside the Greenland ice sheet. This new map, prepared on the basis of data collected by Nasa's Operation IceBridge and earlier airborne campaigns, allows scientists to determine the age of large swaths of Greenland's ice.

"This new, huge data volume records how the ice sheet evolved and how it's flowing today," said Joe MacGregor, glaciologist at the University of Texas at Austin and the study's lead author.

Greenland's ice sheet is the second largest mass of ice on Earth, containing enough water to raise ocean levels by about 20 feet. The ice sheet has been losing mass over the past two decades and warming temperatures will mean more losses for Greenland.

Scientists are studying ice from different climate periods in the past to better understand how the ice sheet might respond in the future. Ice-penetrating radar works by sending radar signals into the ice and recording the strength and return time of reflected signals.

From those signals, scientists can detect the ice surface, sub-ice bedrock and layers within the ice.

New Internet Browser Vivaldi Aimed at 'High-Volume Users'

Veteran software maker Jon von Tetzchner launched a new Internet browser on Tuesday, offering an interface for high-volume users who "have problems fitting all their open tabs on one screen", he said in a Reuters interview. Known as Vivaldi and available on desktop computers from Tuesday, the browser's initial launch covers the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

"A mobile phone and a tablet version are in the pipeline. We are working on it, but they won't be out until they're ready," said von Tetzchner, who owns 90 percent of the company's shares and has paid for the development.

"At some point it will need to fund it self and to reach that point we will need a few million users. I have no doubt that we will reach that number quite easily," he added.

With features like personalised notes, bookmarks with small screen shots and speed dials with options for multiple groups and folders, Vivaldi hopes to attract high-volume users. Despite tough competition from the likes of Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, Mozilla Corp's Firefox and Opera Software's browser, von Tetzchner believes there is still room for more.

Soon, Flexible and Paper-Thin Displays With LE-OFETs Technology

The next generation of transistors may pave the way for flexible, paper-thin computer screens that provide faster response times and better efficiency, scientists say. Researchers at Japan's National Institute for Materials Science reviewed the latest developments in research on photoactive organic field-effect transistors; devices that incorporate organic semi-conductors, amplify weak electronic signals, and either emit or receive light.

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) were developed to produce low-cost, large-area electronics, such as printable and/or flexible electronic devices. The researchers reported that much progress has been made in the development of light-emitting organic field-effect transistors (LE-OFETs) since they first appeared in 2003. Research in this area has resulted in advances in the manufacture of novel organic photonics applications using cost-effective approaches.

Light emission efficiency and brightness of these transistors will soon improve, researchers said.