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Several upcoming NASA missions will use lasers to increase data transmission from space. Thought your Internet speeds were slow? Try being a space scientist for a day. The vast distances involved will throttle data rates to a trickle. You're lucky if a spacecraft can send more than a few megabits per second (Mbps) - a pittance even by dial-up standards. But we might be on the cusp of a change. Just as going from dial-up to broadband revolutionized the Internet and made high-resolution photos and streaming video a given, NASA may be ready to undergo a similar "broadband" moment in coming years. The key to that data revolution will be lasers. For almost 60 years, the standard way to "talk" to spacecraft has been with radio waves, which are ideal for long distances. But optical communications, in which data is beamed over laser light, can increase that rate by as much as 10 to 100 times. High data rates will allow researchers to gather science faster, study s

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last week. Russia’s reported deployment of a new type of missile presents another challenge to its relations with the United States. POOL PHOTO BY ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO By MICHAEL R. GORDON WASHINGTON —  Russia  has secretly deployed a new cruise missile despite complaints from American officials that it violates a landmark arms control treaty that helped seal the end of the Cold War, administration officials say. The move presents a major challenge for President Trump, who has vowed to improve relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and to pursue future arms accords. The new Russian missile deployment also comes as the Trump administration is struggling to fill key policy positions at the State Department and the Pentagon — and to settle on a permanent replacement for  Michael T. Flynn, the  national security adviser  who resigned  late Monday. Mr. Flynn stepped down after it was revealed that he had misled the vice president

If you’re handing over your internet connection for free, don’t expect top-notch security. For individuals seeking extra privacy online or trying to access geo-blocked content, a virtual private network (or VPN) can seem like an ideal fix. VPN applications protect users by encryp        For individuals seeking extra privacy online or trying to access geo-blocked content, a virtual private network (or VPN) can seem like an ideal fix. VPN applications protect users by encrypting internet traffic and routing it through different countries. That makes it harder for hackers to intercept your connection, and can also fool Netflix into thinking you're in a different country. However, these programs can also pose a risk to users. A  new analysis  of nearly 300 Android VPNs found that 84 percent of those studied leaked users’ web traffic, 38 percent contained malware or malvertising, and 18 percent didn’t encrypt data at all. Three of the apps even directly intercepted traffic, allowing, f

Vizio did everything wrong when it comes to data collection. Vizio has been fined $2.2 million by  the Federal Trade Commission  for "surreptitiously collecting details on viewers' watching habits." The company also agreed to delete all the data collected before March 1, 2016, and to get specific consent from users with a new privacy program. Vizio's Smart Interactivity technology isn't much different from what other smart TV manufacturers use to find out exactly what you watch and when you watch it. The difference, according to  ProPublica , stems from the way Vizio went about collecting it and what they did with it afterward. For starters, Smart Interactivity is active and running unless you specifically opt out, and you're not told it's there or that opting out is even possible. Oddly enough, the instructions to tell you  how  to opt out have disappeared from Vizio's support site and have been replaced by a 404 error page. Thankfully,  Vizio no