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Samsung on the front of Apple's next-gen iPad Mini?

(Credit: Apple)

Apple will likely tap Samsung for high-resolution screens for its next-generation iPad Mini, unidentified sources tell The Wall Street Journal.

The much-rumored Retina tablet, which is expected to go into mass production by the end of this year, will also feature screens produced by Japan Display and LG Display, the sources said. The new model will likely retain the current form factor with a 7.9-inch screen size, while a selection of colors for the back cover is being considered, the sources said.

CNET has contacted Apple for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

The report suggests that Apple is further along in the production process than previously thought. Analysts and their supply chain sources have been saying for a while that they expected the Retina Mini to be delayed, possibly until 2014.

While Digitimes reported in June that Apple hadn't even decided whether to go Retina for the Mini because of display supply issues, market analysts Citi Research and NPD DisplaySearch have both said they anticipate a Mini Retina release in 2014. Both analysts also expect an updated non-Retina version of the Mini to appear this year.

However, such a deal would seem to suggest that Apple has not succeeded at a much-rumored effort to distance itself from the South Korean Electronics giant, which represents both a competitive rival and legal foe. Apple has also reportedly been pushing more chip orders to other Asian hardware manufacturers in an effort for its next-generation iPhone as it tries to diversify supply lines and reduce its dependence on its legal foe and competitor.

The new Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 is one of the lenses eligible for a mount-lift.

One frustrating lock-in for interchangeable-lens camera systems is having to give up the expensive stable of lenses you've amassed when you switch to a different camera manufacturer -- other than Micro Four Thirds, supported by Olympus and Panasonic, each company has its own proprietary mount. There are mount conversion adapters, but you frequently take a hit on capabilities or performance when you use them. Sigma, on a roll with new and excellent lenses that fall under its "Global Vision" marketing strategy (the ones labeled Contemporary, Art, or Sports), adds another compelling reason to buy with its Mount Conversion Service. Sigma's MCS lets you -- for a fee ranging from $80 to $250 -- convert any of these newer lenses to another mount, as long as that mount exists for the lens. So, for example, you could convert the full-frame 35mm F1.4 DG Art from/to a Canon EF, Nikon FX, Sony A, Pentax K or Sigma mount, but not to a Sony E, because that mount isn't offered for this lens.

As technology advances in camera bodies, I think people's eyes stray to greener camera pastures elsewhere a lot more often than they used to. This option certainly makes the thought of shelling out $3,600 for the 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS HSM a little less intimidating, but there's still your set of manufacturer-specific lenses holding you back.

Sigma also took the opportunity to announce a change in its warranty program, extending it to four years for all of the company's products bought on or after July 1, 2013.

Imagine getting a week's worth of battery life out of one charge. That's what Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical is intimating.

(Credit: Samsung)

Shin-Etsu Chemical thinks new material it has developed could boost battery life by tenfold. Needless to say, even if the company achieved a fraction of that, it would be groundbreaking.

The new development replaces traditional carbon-based material in lithium-ion batteries with silicon, according to a report in the Japanese-language version of Nikkei -- which didn't provide much detail about the technology.

Though the cost is higher than carbon-based materials, the expected tenfold increase in battery life would -- theoretically -- effectively obviate the need to frequently re-charge smartphones, Nikkei said.

The material would have applications to electric car batteries too.

Shin-Etsu has begun shipping samples to domestic and foreign battery makers and plans to have a facility for trial manufacturing of the material by 2014.

Commercial mass production is targeted in three to four years.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

A security flaw in Apple's iOS 6 that could theoretically allow malware to be uploaded to iOS devices via a malicious power adapter will be patched in the next version of Apple's mobile operating system, Apple said Wednesday.

The hack, dubbed Mactrans by the three researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology who discovered the flaw, was demonstrated Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The trio announced in June that they had developed a proof-of-concept that showed how a malicious iPhone charger lets them hack into the mobile device running the latest version of Apple's iOS in less than one minute -- no jailbreaking required.

An Apple representative told Reuters today that the vulnerability had been repaired in the latest iOS 7 beta, which is already in developers' hands.

"We would like to thank the researchers for their valuable input," Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said.

The researchers' custom-built charger, which was built in about a week for about $45, contains a tiny Linux-based computer programmed to attack iOS devices, according to Wednesday's presentation by Billy Lau, the researcher who constructed the device. Malware uploaded to iOS devices could give access to passwords and sensitive financial information as well as communications and the device's location, Lau said.

"It can become a spying tool," Lau said.

Lau said the vulnerability doesn't affect Android devices because that operating system warns users when their device is plugged into a computer.

If only she'd sung too.

(Credit: Porcha Coleman/Vine Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Tone is everything. I say that to all my exes as they're telling me that I'm a no-good worm that turns every apple rotten.

It's also something that must have been learned by the lady who walked into an L.A. Apple store recently. Yes, the one who screamed her head off because she couldn't just get the part she required to complete her computing life.

The poor lady didn't have an appointment -- other than with fame, of course.

It wasn't her fault that actress Porscha Coleman made a Vine out of her performance. (I still think she knew her.)

Jimmy Kimmel found this clip mesmerizing. Indeed, he felt that this performance needed to be immortalized in song.

As it happens, the Backstreet Boys, who are still alive and singing, happened to be lying around his studio looking for something to do.

So they took her dialogue and created something far more tuneful out of it, a cappella.

From the malodorous to the melodious.

You will, on hearing this ditty, surely hum it for days as you wander about your office on your legs or skateboard.

Sing along now: "I was told by AppleCare that I could walk in the store and get a part."

Barbershop meets Apple store. Who could ask for more?

Instagram has apparently issued a reprieve of sorts to third-party Windows Phone apps using its API.

Instagram, which doesn't work with Windows Phone 8, recently made alterations that resulted in customers of third-party apps being unable to upload pictures to the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service. While Instagram was immediately suspected of singling out the third-party apps, the company issued a statement Tuesday indicating that it recently made changes to its spam filters to increase security.

But another update this week has further revised those filters, allowing third-party Windows Phone apps to resume photo uploading, The Verge reported Wednesday. The blog confirmed that images uploaded on the third-party apps were once again appearing on the site but noted that Instagram frequently updates its spam filters and that future revisions could once again cut off third-party app uploads.

Instagram offers versions for iOS and Android, but it has so far declined to support Windows Phone 8, leading third-party app developers to use Instagram's private application programming interface to reverse engineer the uploading process. Instagram's lack of support led some to believe that Instagram was targeting third-party Windows Phone apps when images uploaded by one of those apps recently began disappearing from the photo-sharing site moments after upload.

CNET has contacted Facebook for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

(Credit: Lexity)

Yahoo is adding another startup to its shopping cart. The e-commerce company Lexity announced on Wednesday that it was being acquired by the tech giant.

Lexity was founded in 2009 by former Yahoo product management director Amit Kumar. The startup calls itself the "one-stop-shop of e-commerce services." It comes with its own App Store and has marketing apps that aim to help online merchants drive sales. Lexity has "tens of thousands" of customers in 114 countries worldwide.

According to Lexity's announcement, all of its products, services, and initiatives will keep running on its platform and be no different on Yahoo. The only thing to change will be the rebranding of the company.

Yahoo has been on a buying jag over the last few months. It made a splash when it acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion in May, but it has been gobbling up other companies as well, including news-reading app Summly, conference-call service Rondee, iOS camera app maker GhostBird Software, storytelling app Qwiki, and e-mail address book startup Xobni.

Yahoo also recently announced it will shut down a dozen products to instead "focus on creating beautiful products that are essential to you every day."

It's unclear how much Yahoo paid for Lexity. CNET contacted Yahoo for comment and we'll update the story when we get more information.

Tortilla creator Jason Geffner answers an question from his audience about how Tortilla allows plug-ins when using Tor.

(Credit: Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

LAS VEGAS -- The Onion Router's popularity as a Internet traffic anonymizing network that can be used just about anywhere belies some of its limitations. To combat those, one security researcher at Black Hat 2013 here figured out a way to make Tor more palatable.

And to the consternation of people who hate food names and metaphors, it's called Tortilla (download).

"People couldn't easily anonymize their Internet traffic," Jason Geffner, Tortilla's inventor, told CNET after his presentation. "This opens a whole realm of opportunities for them."

Geffner developed the free, open-source, and Windows-only Tortilla with help from his colleagues at Crowdstrike, where he's a senior security researcher. It answers the question of how to wrap Tor securely around Internet traffic, Geffner told his audience.

It also addresses two of the biggest problems with Tor, Geffner said during his short, 25-minute-long "Lightning" session at the conference. It fixes what he termed "the Firefox problem" and untangles SOCKS server issues. SOCKS, at its simplest, is a way to transfer data securely through a firewall.

The Firefox problem, Geffner said, is that the browser has had twice the number of discovered vulnerabilities in the past year than Internet Explorer. Tor is limited to Firefox use only, and Tor blocks plug-ins for security reasons.

"If Firefox gets exploited, the malware could circumvent the Tor tunnel entirely," he said.

The SOCKS server problem prevents TCP proxying via SOCKS in most cases, and in cases where the software supports it, DNS proxying isn't.

Tortilla solves both of these issues and allows Tor to be used with virtual machines. This, Geffner said, makes it an excellent tool for security experts who want to visit or test attack Web sites, or blogs written by people who run attack Web sites, without leaving traceable tracks.

"It acts on DHCP, ARP, DNS, and TCP packets, and drops everything else," Geffner said, in explaining what kinds of Internet traffic work with Tortilla. He added that Tortilla is failsafe, so that you can run it before or after you start your virtual machine or Tor itself.

The benefits of Tortilla for security researchers are apparent, but there's nothing stopping people who are concerned with their online privacy from using it, either, Geffner said. "The fact that we're using Tor isn't a secret," when using Tortilla, he said, "but our identity is."

Given that people are arguably more concerned with online privacy now than in the history of the Internet, it's hard to imagine people not clamoring for more tools like Tortilla.

Pinterest's Head of Engineering Jon Jenkins.

(Credit: Pinterest)

Pinterest wants you to have a richer experience on Pinterest, which means more recommendations and more information squeezed into each pin.

The site's Head of Engineering Jon Jenkins told a group of journalists on Wednesday that users can expect to see more of both as the company builds up its "interest graph," a way to harness the power of overlapping pins and interests.

"This has been Ben's goal from the beginning," Jenkins said of CEO Ben Silbermann's vision for the graph.

To enhance its pins, Pinterest added animated pinning recently and has added more information to recipe, movie and product pins. Recipe pins may show ingredients, products pins may include pricing, and movies pins would list movie information. Jenkins said these additions are not so much keeping people on Pinterest as it is about helping its content providers. For example, the recipe pins may show ingredients but not the actual recipe instructions. For that, users will need to go to the original source.

"What we think is really important is the discovery of the recipe," he said. "The ingredients are a key part of that discovery."

While those are the only types of pins that get this type of treatment right now, Jenkins said he could see this applied to music or a number of interests, including a personal favorite, snowboarding. Eventually, Pinterest will have this kind of data available for every type of pin.

"For me, a ski mountain is a really interesting place, there's all kinds of meta data I would want to know about a ski area, like what's the vertical dip," he said.

In addition to adding more data to pins and recommendations, Pinterest is working to ensure the site can continue to add more pins and users, focus on designing Pinterest for different mobile devices, and, eventually, launch an application programing interface (API). Jenkins wouldn't say when the API was launching, but the API will let more independent developers create application using the information from Pinterest and its interest graph, similar to how Facebook has apps.

(Credit: Bang with Friends)

It appears that Zynga is not "down to bang" with the casual sex app "Bang with Friends." The game maker filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the app maker for trademark infringement of its "with friends" franchise.

"This is a case about illegal free riding on recognized and valuable intellectual property rights," Zynga said in a complaint filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco. "The 'WITH FRIENDS' brand is strong and has been associated with one company -- Zynga."

Zynga is referring to its social games that include Words with Friends, Crumble with Friends, Hanging with Friends, Chess with Friends, and more.

"Defendant's 'Bang With Friends' app caught a free ride on the coattails of Zynga's famed WITH FRIENDS family of marks and gained notoriety while simultaneously causing consumer confusion and falsely associating the 'Bang With Friends' app with Zynga," the complaint reads.

Besides the suit filed by Zynga, Bang with Friends has experienced other bad luck lately. In May, Apple removed Bang with Friends from its App Store. As of this writing, the app is still unavailable on Apple's App Store but is available on Google Play.

Zynga is asking the court to stop the company from using the "Bang with Friends" title and also pay the game maker unspecified damages.

Apple's A6 and A6X chips are made by Samsung. It's rumored that the A7 chip could be too.

(Credit: iFixit)

After much back and forth, it is now rumored that Apple's forthcoming A7 processor will have at least some Samsung components, according to 9to5Mac.

A developer told the news source that he found references to a new A7 chip within the code of the iOS 7 file system. And, another person familiar with Apple's chip design process told 9to5Mac that an analysis of this iOS 7 code revealed that some Samsung components will be used on the supposed chip -- most likely those that power the display.

This wouldn't be the first time that Apple has used Samsung components for its processing chips. The A6 chip uses Samsung components, as does the A6X. However, in June, it was rumored that Apple reached a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to work on chips.

It's been said that the A7 chip is for the rumored iPhone 5S and possibly future iPads.

Earlier today, another iOS 7 code sniffer said that he believes three new models of the iPad Mini are on the way, including an "2,8," "2,9," and "2,10" which represent higher numbers than Apple's existing trio of iPad Minis, which are listed in code as "2,5," "2,6," and "2,7."

CNET contacted Apple for comment. We'll update the story when we get more information.

Path CEO Dave Morin and Wired senior editor Cliff Kuang during the Mixpanel Data Driven Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon.

(Credit: Nick Statt/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Dave Morin, co-founder and CEO of Path, on Wednesday outlined his social network's unique approach to data collection, called ambient, that lets Path's mobile app continuously collect data about location and activities and then automatically post it to a user's network.

Morin, in a sit-down with Wired senior editor Cliff Kuang during Mixpanel's Data Driven Conference here, outlined how Path is capable of utilizing a smartphone's sensors to continuously collect data about a user's location and activities, which is then transmitted to his or her Path. "It's silly that a user would have to always put in their location," Morin said, expressing that the name ambient is an unofficial term and that the feature has held different names over time.

As is now par for the course with Path, which was fined $800,000 by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in February over collecting and storing user data without consent, the ambient data collection raises an obvious privacy concern. But Morin said the feature is something a user must opt into upon signing up for Path, and that a large fraction of users are keeping it turned on.

Morin also claims that Path's algorithms can become attuned to your patterns of behavior using this ambient data collection, meaning the app will be able to figure out the moments of your life that are serendipitous and most interesting, thus making them the most sharable. It does this by learning from the data collected around a user's primary nexuses -- home and work. "We've tuned the algorithms such that you when break outside of those patterns and you go to a new area -- a new neighborhood or entirely new city based on large amount of travel distance -- we update your Path in a way that feels intuitive," Morin explained.

The goal of ambient data collection is threefold in Morin's words: generate content for its users to make their Paths more complete; to maximize serendipity with the ability to know which moments break out of users' ingrained patterns; and maximizing battery life. Morin said the company was very cognizant of the fact that utilizing smartphone sensors and constantly streaming data must be done in a way that doesn't drain a device.

Over time, this ambient data collection will play into Morin's overall strategy, which is to leverage data to inform design, especially with the inevitable age of wearable technology and how social networks like Path will have to remain smart about its continued integration with devices like Google Glass.

"There's a lot of volume and there's not a lot of quality," he said, "and as these werarables come online there's got to be quality."

Just a few of Lego's licensed product lines. No, thank you!

(Credit: Lego.com)

I am done with Lego. And no, it's not because I stepped on a brick in the middle of the night last night, suffering what can only be described as the worst pain in the world, although yes, that's a permanent source of rage for every parent, really. No, I'm done with Lego because that sacred cow of millions of geeks who grew up happily constructing elaborate vehicles, castles, cities, and imaginary lands, is no longer the Lego of our childhood. It's time to face the hard truth: Lego is evil now.

On the one hand, the story of Lego's resurgence in the past few years is a remarkable tale of innovation and canny survivalism. The patents on Lego's brick design began expiring in the early 2000s; the original patent expired in 2011, and despite many attempts by Lego to get its patents extended indefinitely and then to trademark the design, the company was eventually forced to admit that innovation was its only road to continued success.

Enter the new saga. Lego 2: The Licensing. It started with "Lego: Star Wars," of course, and the library of licensed Lego goodness now includes, to name just a few, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Batman, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Toy Story, Cars, The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, Super Heroes (including figures from Marvel and DC Universe), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and even, heaven help us, a forthcoming set based on the new "Lone Ranger" movie. Here's a list, if you're in the mood.

Things really got genius in 2011, when Lego went ahead and created its own original series, Lego Ninjago. The premise is brilliant, from a merchandising and sales perspective. There are six main characters, five of them ninjas who have to go through various stages of training and ninja accomplishments--meaning multiple permutations of minifigures from just the primary cast. Then there's a different set of villains for each season, each set of villains has its own vehicles, weaponry, and mechs, as do the ninjas, and virtually no single minifigure is available for sale all by its little lonesome--only as part of a set that ranges from $10 if you're lucky to $100 and up if you're the parent of a fanatical 3, 4, 5, or 6-year-old child. Now there's Chima, a show that aired once, near as I can tell, but which has still spawned a million minifigs.

Plus, many of the themes also now have companion character encyclopedias, which are little more than catalogs for greedy, brand-obsessed children. The hype around the must-have toys is so intense it's even led to full-on Lego fraud rings, and I myself bought a sketchy standalone minifigure on eBay that arrived wrapped in tissue in a Ziploc bag, just to avoid spending $30 or $40 on yet another ridiculous "set."

My biggest complaint about the licensed sets, other than their always increasing cost, is that they're basically the antithesis of the Lego model: where I remember building and learning to build with the Lego blocks of my youth, these new sets simply require children to follow somewhere between 100 and 300 steps to build a very specific, one-time use vehicle or environs. Then, two to seven hours later, they're done, moved on to the next shiny branded toy.

Yes, of course, you can deconstruct the sets and build something else out of the blocks, but many of these new pieces are specialty parts that hardly fit anywhere else: wings, bolts, circular attachments, pointy triangle blocks. They're less interchangeable than they've ever been. Plus, with all the emphasis on characters, the minifigures are the focus of most of the attention: kids will beg their parents to buy a $40 set, mine the minifigures, and toss the rest into a separately sold, branded storage bin.

And do not get me started on the Lego for girls sets that have started to spring up in the last year or so. After all, once Lego is no longer even remotely about creativity, problem solving, or imaginative thought, why not go all the way toward pandering to ludicrous gender stereotypes and producing a bunch of pink crap.

I'm hardly the first to complain about Lego moving to a licensing model that costs a lot, turns our kids into brand slaves, and dampens their creativity--but what really gets my goat is that the company is simultaneously trying to cling to its creative roots by releasing imagination-oriented sets and products for adults. Take the newest release from the Lego Architecture Studio line, which, wonder of wonders, consists of a box of bricks, no instructions, and Cost: $150.

Bite me, Lego. As a parent and a consumer, I am exercising my right not to fill my child's life with Yet Another Piece of Plastic, and I'm sorry to report that Lego is included in the "your grandparents can get that for you" list. I bought him a good old-fashioned box of bricks for $30, and someday soon I am going to get a 3D printer and some decent CAD software and you are going down!

Does that look right to you?

(Credit: Jobs the Film/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

You will either love the new "Jobs" movie with Ashton Kutcher. Or you will hate it.

Or you've still got a BlackBerry and you're not sure who this Steve Jobs is.

For myself, I have always struggled with the notion of Kutcher as Jobs. I always feared that he was just too nice, too sweet, too all-the-things-I'd-like-to-be-but-am-not.

This is a man who melted the heart of a Ukrainian, for goodness' sake. That takes some vast level of nice.

I worried, then, before looking at the latest piece of promotional footage emerging from the producers.

It's partly a trailer and partly an official reminder that the actors really, really admired Jobs.

I squinted a touch before pressing play.

Far too early in this clip are several shots of Kutcher wearing Jobs' gray beard.

Well, it must be somebody's gray beard. Perhaps it was made from snippings after Daniel Day Lewis was finished with "Lincoln." It's like something Brian Wilson of the Los Angeles Dodgers created for a geriatric bobblehead of himself.

Wherever it came from, it just didn't feel right. So perhaps my viewing of the rest of this clip was a touch tainted.

Kutcher clearly gave his all to this role. Especially when he wore those painful Birkenstocky monstrosities with socks. The Birkensocky look. Please, don't get me started.

Whether this movie will have them queuing in their socks around the block, as they do at Apple stores with a new launch, I somehow doubt.

Many, though, will appreciate the homage.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the story's so well known that there seems relatively little left to reveal.

Still, the trailer does offer a few glimpses of, well, one more thing. Yes, of course I'm referring to sex. What did you think I meant?

Elpida memory is used in the iPad 4, iPhone 5, and second-generation Nexus 7, among other popular mobile devices.

(Credit: Apple)

Micron Technology has completed the acquisition of Japan-based Elpida, instantly making it one of the largest suppliers of mobile memory chips for devices like the iPad, iPhone, and Nexus 7.

Micron and Elpida trustees have announced the closing of the U.S. company's acquisition of 100 percent of Elpida's equity, the two companies announced Wednesday. The deal, estimated at $2 billion, had been in the works since July 2012.

"Using its advanced technologies, Elpida has built a strong presence in Mobile DRAM, targeting mobile phones and tablets," Micron said in a statement.

That may be an understatement. Elpida memory has been a steady supplier to Apple and a mainstay in Apple's iPad and iPhone. Elpida memory also is used in the just-released second-generation Nexus 7.

Idaho-based Micron is already one of the largest memory manufacturers in the world. It also markets memory and solid-state drives under the Lexar and Crucial brands.

Elpida's assets include a DRAM fabrication facility in Hiroshima, Japan and a 65 percent ownership interest in Rexchip, whose assets include a DRAM fabrication facility in Taiwan, Micron said. Elpida also has a 100 percent ownership interest in Akita Elpida Memory, whose assets include an assembly and test facility located in Akita, Japan. From the statement:

Together with the Rexchip shares acquired from Powerchip, Micron will control approximately 89 percent of Rexchip's outstanding shares and 100 percent of Rexchip product supply. The manufacturing assets of Elpida and Rexchip together can produce more than 185,000 300mm wafers per month, which represents an approximate 45 percent increase in Micron's current manufacturing capacity.

Yukio Sakamoto, CEO of Elpida, announced his resignation, effective with today's closing of the deal.

(Credit: Matt Harnack/Facebook)

Facebook said Wednesday that https is now the default standard for everyone browsing its social network, meaning that almost all traffic to its Web site and a majority of traffic to its mobile site will be established through a secure connection.

"We now use https by default for all Facebook users," Facebook infrastructure engineer Scott Renfro wrote in a blog post on the update. "This feature ... means that your browser is told to communicate with Facebook using a secure connection, as indicated by the 'https' rather than 'http' in https://www.facebook.com. This uses Transport Layer Security (TLS), formerly known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and makes the communication between your browser and Facebook servers more secure."

The protocol is intended to provide an extra layer of security around members' Facebook browsing and communication activities. The hope is to insulate people from man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks, and prevent members' accounts from being comprised.

Facebook first introduced secure browsing through https as an option two years ago and said that more than one-third of users had enabled feature prior to the forced, full migration.

"Turning on https by default is a dream come true, and something Facebook's Traffic, Network, Security Infrastructure, and Security teams have worked on for years," Renfro said. "We're really happy with how much of Facebook's traffic is now encrypted and are even more excited about the future changes we're preparing to launch."

(Credit: Matt Harnack/Facebook)

Facebook said Wednesday that https is now the default standard for everyone browsing its social network, meaning that almost all traffic to its Web site and a majority of traffic to its mobile site will be established through a secure connection.

"We now use https by default for all Facebook users," Facebook infrastructure engineer Scott Renfro wrote in a blog post on the update. "This feature ... means that your browser is told to communicate with Facebook using a secure connection, as indicated by the 'https' rather than 'http' in https://www.facebook.com. This uses Transport Layer Security (TLS), formerly known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and makes the communication between your browser and Facebook servers more secure."

The protocol is intended to provide an extra layer of security around members' Facebook browsing and communication activities. The hope is to insulate people from man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks, and prevent members' accounts from being comprised.

Facebook first introduced secure browsing through https as an option two years ago and said that more than one-third of users had enabled feature prior to the full migration.

"Turning on https by default is a dream come true, and something Facebook's Traffic, Network, Security Infrastructure, and Security teams have worked on for years," Renfro said. "We're really happy with how much of Facebook's traffic is now encrypted and are even more excited about the future changes we're preparing to launch."

The Honeywell Online Energy Savings Calculator gets straight to the point.

(Credit: Honeywell Online Energy Savings Calculator/Screenshot by Brian Krepshaw)

Being able to control the environment inside of a house is one of the hallmarks of modern living, yet for many years it was simple; turn on the heat or turn on the air conditioning and that was that. Considering the dynamic nature of hot and cold -- along with humans' inherent desire for control -- it should make perfect sense that on and off simply wasn't enough.

Precise control over home heating and cooling systems has increased by leaps and bounds in the past few years. The popular Nest thermostat helped take things to the next level by making a Wi-Fi-enabled, programmable, and adaptive device an everyday reality. With energy usage considerations always being a factor, an affordable approach to home environment management was only a matter of time, and it appears as if the trend is continuing.

Today, Honeywell, maker of thermostats both smart and dumb, announced an online energy savings calculator. Designed to attract people to its line of thermostats (such as the Honeywell Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat), the service gives consumers a quick glance into possible savings that they could enjoy by using a thermostat that can be programmed to optimal levels depending on their personal schedules.

Users are invited to enter their ZIP code, fuel costs, and weekday and weekend schedules, and the calculator returns a value in terms of potential cash savings as well as a "tree" value representing annual carbon dioxide reduction. While the vague return values are not necessarily illuminating, the idea behind the service is clearly to convince the average consumer that programmable thermostats can translate into real-world differences. Of course, depending on how it's programmed a smart thermostat can just as easily rack up heating and cooling bills (as well as "tree" consumption, presumably), but the idea that energy savings can be better managed is a viable one.

It may be a vague and somewhat goofy service that Honeywell is providing, but growing pains in home environment systems seem to be a new tradition -- as well as a contentious one, as Nest and Honeywell have been embroiled in a slow-moving patent battle. The new Honeywell online energy savings calculator probably won't turn up the heat on that front, but it does go to show that consumers continue to warm up to the trend.