The computer virus appears to be making a subtle comeback. The term virus is frequently used as a catch-all for malicious software, but actually describes a very specific type of program that infects files and replicates, noticeable impairing a computer. Most malware these days tries to not be so obvious. But Microsoft has noticed that viruses — which have been present on around 5 percent of the computers the company regularly polls — have increased in prevalence in some regions, wrote... 

Electronic Arts may be through with the Wii U. According to a Kotaku report, EA has confirmed that it is no longer working on Nintendo’s new console. “We have no games in development for the Wii U currently,” EA’s Jeff Brown is quoted as saying. Brown did not indicate if EA would resume development on the system in the future Earlier this month, EA confirmed it would not be bringing this year’s Madden NFL 25 to the Wii U. At the time, a representative said, “We... 

Dell’s thumb-sized PC named Project Ophelia, which is the size of a USB stick, will begin shipping in July for around $100. The Android-based device will plug into a display’s HDMI port so that it can run applications or access files stored remotely. It will have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities and is aimed at users who do most of their computing on the Web. Ophelia can turn any screen or display into a PC, gaming machine or a TV set-top box, said Jeff McNaught, executive director of... 

The largest U.S. satellite video provider, DirecTV, is one of the companies contemplating making a bid for online video website Hulu, according to a source familiar with the situation. The person acknowledged that other parties were involved, adding that DirecTV was “one of many” suitors. Media reports have previously identified Time Warner Cable Inc as another company weighing a potential stake in the company. Representatives of DirecTV and Time Warner Cable declined to comment on... 

Yahoo reportedly has bought blogging service Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion, as it looks to attract a more youthful user base. Tumblr, a place for posting cat memes and duck faces, is apparently in Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s sights, with Allthingsd reporting that she is the main driver of a possible acquisition. Yahoo and Tumblr are in “had been in serious talks,” with Mayer having had her eye on the company ever since she worked for Yahoo rival Google. The report also claims that... 

There’s a chance that NASA’s Kepler space telescope can recover from the malfunction that has halted its wildly successful search for alien planets, mission team members say. The second of Kepler’s four reaction wheels — devices that allow the observatory to maintain its position in space — has failed, depriving Kepler of the ability to lock precisely onto its 150,000-plus target stars, NASA oficials announced Wednesday (May 15). But mission engineers are not conceding that... 

Social networking services Facebook Inc and Twitter are being added to Google Glass, the wearable computer made by the Internet search company. Google Inc announced on Thursday a half-dozen apps specially designed to work on its Glass devices. News network CNN, fashion magazine Elle, as well as online apps Tumblr and Evernote were among the half-dozen new apps for Glass unveiled during Google’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. Google Glass is a stamp-sized electronic screen... 

Oracle is building a third data-center in the UK, to service the British administration’s G-Cloud plans right next to the sweet smelling Mars Chocolate factory. According to the company, the new data-center, opening in July, is located in Slough. It will offer cloud services and infrastructure as a service, to government bodies as well as to independent software vendors working on state contracts. Oracle president Mark Hurd said in a press release that the new Equinix Slough data center,... 

The U.S. tech industry added nearly 64,000 software related jobs last year, but as the labor force grew, the average size of workers’ pay checks declined by nearly 2%. There are multiple theories for the decline in pay, but a common one cited by analysts is simply that the new people being hired are paid less than those already on the job. The average annual wage of all workers in the software services sector was $99,000 in 2012, about $2,000 less than the prior year, reported TechAmerica... 

Dell reported another quarter of anemic profits and falling revenue on Thursday as CEO Michael Dell continues his fight to take the company private. Dell’s profit for the quarter, ended May 3, was $130 million, down 79 percent from $635 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Revenue declined 2 percent to $14.07 billion. Dell’s PC division was particularly hard hit. Sales for the quarter were down 9 percent to $8.9 billion, Dell said, and the group’s operating profit skidded... 

IBM has opened an office in Beijing that will help developers port Linux applications to its Power architecture. IBM has been pushing its Power architecture for over 20 years, with its RISC chips intended for use in mission critical systems. Now the firm is working with Red Hat and Suse to help Linux developers port applications to the Power architecture by opening an office in Beijing. While the firm has pushed its AIX operating system, IBM’s proprietary variant of Unix, as its favored operating... 

The planet-hunting days of NASA’s prolific Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,700 potential alien worlds to date, may be over. The second of Kepler’s four reaction wheels — devices that allow the observatory to maintain its position in space — has failed, NASA officials announced Wednesday (May 15). If one or both of those failed wheels cannot be brought back, the telescope likely cannot lock onto target stars precisely enough to detect orbiting planets, scientists... 

Microsoft research is showing that there has been a spike in malware targeting Java vulnerabilities since the third quarter of 2011. Much of the activity has focused on vulnerabilities which are already patched. This suggests that attackers are hitting vulnerabilities that are in multiple versions of Java, rather than just one specific version. Jeong Wook Oh of Microsoft said that in Q3 and Q4 of 2012 two new vulnerabilities, CVE-2012-4681 and CVE-2012-5076, were found. “But we didn’t observe... 

Epson America is bringing hands-free interaction with YouTube to its smart glasses, which may accelerate improvements in usability of applications like augmented reality. Users wearing Epson’s Moverio BT-100 smart glasses will be able to play, pause, rewind, fast forward or select a video by tilting or turning their head in a specific direction. The capability is made possible through an application developed to enhance the end-user experience of YouTube. The smart glasses and hands-free YouTube... 

Google’s Android OS has more than 900 million users, the company said on Wednesday at its I/O event began in San Francisco. Google also announced several APIs that will let developers add more capabilities to their Android apps, including in the areas of location and improving battery life. “It’s been an amazing year for Android developers,” said Android and Chrome vice president Sundar Pichai. Google has sent more money to developers through their Play Store sales in the...