In case you missed it, here are this week’s top five tech news stories.
1. ‘Somebody Stop Me!’
A malware that has been out in the wild for several years has finally been detected by Kaspersky Labs, and it is called The Mask.
The name is a loose translation of Careto, a Spanish word for “ugly face,” as reported by Engadget.
The Mask is like the Swiss army knife of malware—from root kit to boot kit, it purportedly infects everything from 32-bit to 64-bit computers running Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS and Android.
Besides being very hard to detect and sophisticated, Kaspersky Lab believes it was possibly created by a Spanish-speaking nation-state, which puts it in the same category as Stuxnet and Duqu.
2. ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ Exclusively on Netflix
In the not-too-distant future, on a TV near you, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” final season will be streaming through.
Netflix will be receiving exclusive rights to stream the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” entire saga, including the final season titled “Lost Missions,” for its U.S. and Canadian customers.
The debut will take place on March 7, and viewers will get to see exclusive scenes never seen before from the director’s cut of seasons 1 to 5, as well as the full-length movie, as reported on the Star Wars website.
‘“Star Wars: The Clone Wars” was discontinued in March of 2013, and “Star Wars: Detours,” which is a comedy spin-off from Seth Green, was postponed at that time as well.
3. Scientists Are One Step Closer to Harnessing Energy That Powers Sun
Scientists in California from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are one step closer to developing a controlled fusion-energy reaction, as reported by USA Today.
Scientists are now able to get more energy out of the fuel that sparked the initial reaction, but are unsure what it will take for “ignition” to occur.
Omar Hurricane, a physicist at the federally funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said it is similar to being half-way up a mountain that is covered in clouds, and not knowing what is between you and the peak.
For more, see “Giant Leap for Nuclear Fusion as Lasers Blast New Route to Ultimate Energy Source.”
4. ‘Show Me The Money’
Square, a mobile payment application, has come up with a new feature that will allow you to request payment from others.
You can request payment using Squares’ Square Cash app, or simply just create an email, carbon copy (CC) [email protected], and put the amount in the subject line, as reported by PC Magazine.
You can then check who has paid and who has not from the Square app available on iPhones and Android devices.
With over a million dollars in transactions weekly, Square believes this should make it easier for people to send money to each other, and it is free.
5. Lenovo Motion-Control Technology
Intel gets into the gesture controls for PCs.
