Imagine a bracelet-like armband device that you wear on your arm, that lets you control your Mac or PC, iPhone iOS or Android phone, with a mere flick of your arm. Actually you don’t have to imagine it, because it’s here, and it’s called Myo.

Yesterday we told you about how Microsoft is one of several companies who are encrypting their services and hardening their systems against the prying of nosy agencies like the NSA. Now Microsoft is fighting a Federal court order that they turn over the data for a user’s email account whose email data resides on a server outside of the U.S. (in Ireland, to be specific).

Coincident with the Reset the Net effort, in which they are taking part, Google and Yahoo, along with Microsoft and Facebook, and others, are moving at speed to block the NSA’s snooping, and to tighten up their systems to make it more difficult for the NSA, and others, to eavesdrop on their data.

The Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has revealed a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Explorer 8 (IE 8) that Microsoft was first alerted to more than 7 months ago, and never bothered to issue a patch for or to fix. Here’s the scoop, and what to do to protect yourself from the CVE-2014-1770 vulnerability.

Both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the UK analog are warning users around the world not to use Internet Explorer. The pointed warning to not use IE (any version of Internet Explorer) follows the discovery of “active exploitation of a use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer,” and comes from both US CERT (Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team), and the UK’s CERT.

Now that Yahoo and AOL are both stating through the DMARC p=reject that any email coming from a yahoo or aol address that isn’t sent from a yahoo or aol server should be rejected (bounced), problems are cropping up for Hotmail, Outlook, Live.com and MSN users, who are finding their own email addresses being removed from mailing lists for no apparent reason. But there is a reason.

Employees of more than a dozen high tech giants were subject to a secret agreement (see the smoking gun documents) between the companies to not poach each other’s employees. The deal, labelled “Techtopus” by journalist Mark Ames, included Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Dell, IBM, eBay, Microsoft, Comcast, Clearchannel, Dreamworks and Pixar, and British public relations company WPP (which stands for Wire and Plastics Products – they started out as a manufacturer of shopping baskets).

With the news of Microsoft acquiring Nokia, there has been a resurgence in the news of the terms “feature phone” and “dumb phone” (both as contrasted to a “smartphone” – and why is “smartphone” one word, but not “featurephone” or “dumbphone”?) So, some of you may be wondering “just what is a feature phone? And how is it different from a dumb phone or a smartphone?” We explain.

Call us conspiracy theorists, but the first thing that we thought of when we heard that Microsoft and Nokia had inked a deal for Microsoft to buy Nokia – and with it Stephen Elop, who left Microsoft three years ago to become the CEO of Nokia – was that this was an inside job. Are we the only ones who are suspicious?

Microsoft has disclosed that it has sought permission from the U.S. government to disclose to the public how it handles requests from the Federal government for user data. Microsoft says “We believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public, yet the Government is stopping us.”

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the concerns that many had that the new Microsoft Xbox One had built-in spying capabilities, especially as it needed to be connected to the Internet at least 1 hour a day. In fact with the leaks about the NSA PRISM program some were even wondering whether the new Xbox One would have an ‘NSA Spycam’ (in fact we had someone searching for that on our site).

The Internet, the country, and indeed the whole world is abuzz with the news of PRISM, the no-longer-secret program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) first exposed by Glenn Greenwald of the British newspaper The Guardian, through which the United States federal government is accessing and mining all sorts of user data from the major ISPs and possibly cell phone companies. Data which is potentially about just about anybody and everybody, even you. The list of companies and ISPs alleged to be involved with PRISM, by which we mean allowing the government to data mine their users’ data, is impressive (read as “scary”) indeed, although most of them are quick to deny it. However, we have evidence (see screenshots below) that even though they are denying it, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, and AOL are all involved. There are rumours of DropBox and Amazon joining. And Verizon is also giving the Feds access to their user data. But as 1984 as this all is, we really only have one question: why is anybody surprised?

There has been a lot of speculation that the new Microsoft XBox One (XBox 1) will essentially be spying on its owners. Well, ‘spying’ may be too strong a word but, at least, that it will have the potential to spy on its owners when combined with the required Kinect motion-detecting web-cam, an ever-vigilant watching and listening device connected to the Internet. These concerns arose after rumours started spreading that the new XBox One required a near 24/7 Internet connection and requires the Kinect.

Microsoft has been fined to the tune of $732 million by the European Union, for failing to adhere to the requirements of a settlement agreement that resulted from Microsoft’s restrictive shipping of Windows computers pre-loaded with Internet Explorer as the default web browser, and with no obvious alternative. Joaquin Almunia, competition commissioner for the European Union, noted that it had been a mistake to let Microsoft monitor their own compliance with the agreement.

Update: We have just learned that Senator Leahy has withdrawn his support for the amendments to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). He received resounding criticism from many groups and private citizens who felt that the revisions are unconstitutional and a gross invasion of privacy. In a series of tweets, below, Senator Leahy said that he did not support the bill amendments, and seems to deny that he ever did.