Christopher Mims

Google portrays itself as the sort of responsible internet giant that pushes back against intrusive federal requests for user data and is not a collaborator in the US government’s program to eavesdrop on the internet traffic of pretty much the entire world. But merely by providing ever more ways to record our actions, the company is assuming the risk that the US or other governments will simply compel it to give up that data, or else acquire it by other means.

How did a company like Motorola, which literally invented the cellular telephone, sink so low that it could be scooped up at a fraction of its peak capitalization by an advertising firm like Google? The answer should surprise no one who follows the fortunes of public companies and CEOs who are exposed daily to the blast furnace of public and investor scrutiny.

Google has finally unveiled the Moto X “superphone” that the company has been teasing for months. As predicted by the many leaks that preceded today’s announcement, the Moto X is not an ultra high-end Android smartphone intended to go head-to-head with the top phones from Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony. Rather, it’s a thoughtful “mid-range” smartphone that will appeal to the masses.

Matias Duarte, head of design at Android, is holding a Nexus 7 tablet, and he’s clearly proud of it. With its custom, high resolution screen—one that was selected not just for its pixel density but also its brightness and color gamut, says Duarte—it’s the perfect vehicle for showing off the graphics and animations that his team is building at Google.

Last week, after the Nexus 7 launch event in San Francisco, Sundar Pichai of Google, head of both the Android and Chrome teams, dropped a particularly interesting aside into one of his comments to the assembled press: “Our goal is to put computing everywhere.”

Google has hatched a plan to boost the visibility of its existing local news product, and in the process is testing a whole new way to get people to pay attention to the news that is geographically most relevant to them.

The first hint came when Facebook made Instagram’s new videos the same length as a 15-second television commercial. Then Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg mentioned how much time people spend browsing Facebook during television’s prime viewing hours, when advertisements command the highest rates. Now anonymous sources have told Bloomberg that Facebook is indeed working on video advertisements that will appear directly in people’s stream of updates from friends and relatives.

Microsoft, Apple, and every maker of mobile and desktop apps on the planet all have a problem: The moment they issue a security “patch,” or an update to their software designed to plug a hole that could be exploited by hackers, those same hackers work feverishly to reverse-engineer that patch in order to figure out what vulnerability it’s designed to stop. Armed with that knowledge, malicious hackers can then attack whatever PCs, servers or mobile phones have yet to update their software with the new patch.

MIT has released a report on its involvement in the controversial prosecution and subsequent suicide of Aaron Swartz, who at the time of his death was facing 13 federal felony charges for downloading academic papers via MIT’s network.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, Microsoft tried to turn your TV into a computer via a device called WebTV, and it was a disaster. The main problem with the effort, and others since, is that screens that sit many feet away, and don’t have the same resolution as one on a notebook or tablet, simply aren’t all that great for getting even basic tasks done, like browsing the web. Another issue is the awkward interface: Who wants to add a keyboard and pointing device to their collection of remotes?

With the new 7″ Nexus 7 tablet, Google, along with its hardware partner ASUS, has decided to up the ante in small tablets. Despite, and perhaps because of, the iPad’s nearly uncontested dominance in global tablet sales, Google is cramming the Nexus 7 with features that, at least on paper, give the tablet markedly better performance than the iPad Mini, and pretty much every other small tablet on the market.

Adobe just issued its semi-regular State of Mobile Benchmark, part of its Digital Index. It’s a collection of charts showing how dynamic the market for mobile computing continues to be. This past quarter saw explosive growth in some categories, for instance, rates at which people are using mobile devices to access social networks and adoption of smart phones in Asia. There were more than a few surprises: thanks to the iPad, Apple’s iOS mobile operating system is now the leading way to access the web from a mobile device in the US.

Apple sold 5.4 million fewer iPads in its most recent quarter than it did in the same three months a year ago. That’s despite having introduced a whole new iPad, the Mini, in the intervening year. The drop in iPad sales, from 17 million to 14.6 million, is all the more surprising because iPhone sales continued to grow, from 26 million to 31.2 million.

Facebook has noticed something that other companies would do well to heed: The biggest opportunity right now isn’t in smartphones, where users are bombarded by the fruits of an ever-more-competitive market for apps and mobile services. Rather, the big play for some companies, especially any that wish to expand into emerging markets, is on the “dumbphones”—aka non-smartphones, or in industry parlance, feature phones—that most people in rich countries have now left behind.

Mark Shuttleworth, the South African-born, Isle of Man-based millionaire who was only the second person on earth to pay to have himself shot into space, has latched onto a vision that’s compelling in its simplicity, not its particulars: Shuttleworth contends that it’s time people stopped owning more than one computer.

Here’s what’s holding back 3D printing, the technology that’s supposed to revolutionize manufacturing and countless other industries: patents. In February 2014, key patents that currently prevent competition in the market for the most advanced and functional 3D printers will expire, says Duann Scott, design evangelist at 3D printing company Shapeways.

There are fewer than 10,000 Google Glass headsets in the wild—2,000 in the hands of developers and another 8,000 trickling out to early adopters—but already, creative entrepreneurs are thinking ahead to what will be a brand new, multi-billion dollar industry: accessories for Glass and other face-based computers.

For years, Intel has been shrinking. Quarter after quarter (after quarter), the company’s performance has roughly tracked the dismal showing of its biggest customer, the PC industry. In the press release accompanying Tuesday’s disappointing quarterly results, Intel’s newish CEO Brian Krzanich, for whom this is the first full quarter at the helm, sounded properly humbled. “In my first two months as CEO, I have listened to a wide variety of views about Intel and our industry from customers, employees and my leadership team.”

On Monday, the original Nintendo game console turned 30, but it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the company that made it will last another 30 years.

Apple today tipped its hand on a number of likely features for its long-awaited television product. The new details suggest that Apple is actually working on an all-in-one television set, in addition to new features for its existing Apple TV set-top box. They also suggest that Apple will justify selling such a device by creating an integrated user experience not seen in other televisions.

Noise pollution costs Europe $30.8 billion a year. It increases blood pressure, shortens lives, reduces office productivity by 66%, interferes with learning and concentration and, along with open-plan offices, has contributed to a boom in the sale of headphones.

A funny thing happened on the way to our supposedly 3D-printed future: A simpler, older, but no less revolutionary technology made its way into every automated factory on earth, and now it’s coming to a garage near you. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s mostly because it has a completely unbankable name—CNC routing (or CNC milling.) Also, unlike the usurper technology 3D printing, which has only lately become popular, CNC milling has been around since MIT pioneered the technology starting in the 1950s.

Google’s forthcoming, Samsung-killing Moto-X Android “superphone” is also going to have a super-size advertising budget of up to half a billion dollars, reports the Wall Street Journal. That’s half as much as the $1 billion Apple spent advertising all of its products in 2012.

Russia’s government agencies are already big fans of typewriters, using them mostly for top-secret messages intended for the president or the minister of defense, reports The Moscow News. Now, in response to revelations of US electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency, Russia’s Federal Protection Service, which protects top state officials including president Vladimir Putin, has ordered 20 typewriters, as well as 600 ink cartridges for them.