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The site Exposed.su published the birthday, address, phone number and Social Security number of dozens of celebrities and public officials, including the heads of the FBI and CIA. (credit: krebonsecurity.com)

A 22-year-old hacker has been handed a two-year prison sentence for his role in doxing and swatting politicians, celebrities, prosecutors, the first lady, and security journalist Brian Krebs.

While cooperating with the FBI after his 2012 arrest on unrelated charges, Mir Islam doxed and swatted as many as 50 people, authorities said. Those who were doxed had their information appear on a website Islam ran called "Exposed." Victims included First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Those who were swatted include Stephen P. Heymann, the Massachusetts federal prosecutor who handled the Aaron Swartz prosecution; security journalist Brian Krebs; Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association; and Mike Rogers, a former GOP representative from Michigan and a key supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Islam also orchestrated a phony threat of an active shooter at the University of Arizona.

Enlarge / The new additions enable all kinds of different occupations for emoji women of many colors. (credit: Google)

The Unicode Consortium announced plans (PDF) to support new emoji aimed at promoting gender equality—11 new "professional" emoji will depict both men and women performing different jobs, and there will be both male and female versions of 33 existing emoji that currently depict either a man or a woman but not both. The plan is based largely on a proposal from Google, a prominent member of the Unicode Consortium, back in May (PDF).

The new professions include, in the Unicode Consortium's words: a farmer, welder, mechanic, health worker, scientist, coder, business worker, chef, student, teacher, and rockstar.

To avoid the normally lengthy wait time associated with new emoji—Unicode 9.0 was just finalized in June, and version 10.0 won't be finalized until June of 2017—Unicode is using combinations of existing emoji to create the new ones. The process is similar to, though not exactly the same as, the system for changing skin tones. A special character called a "zero-width joiner" (ZWJ) can be placed between two or more emoji, and operating systems that support it know to put out a different composite emoji rather than a series of separate emoji.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood at a news conference last year. (credit: Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Google has ended its legal conflict with a Mississippi state official who opened a wide-ranging investigation into the search giant's business practices.

A dismissal agreement (PDF) filed yesterday in court states that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and Google will "endeavor to collaborate in addressing the harmful consequences of unlawful and/or dangerous online content." The document also states that Hood's office withdrew the original subpoena on April 22 and acknowledges that Google "remains subject to the laws of the State of Mississippi and to the jurisdiction and authority of the Attorney General."

The agreement comes after the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled against Google, finding that the search company's challenge to Hood's investigation was premature. However, the appeals court opinion also criticized Hood's demands for evidence as being overly broad, noting that Google tried hard to comply.

If you've installed the iOS 10 public beta since it came out last week, you’ll know that compatible iPads come loaded with the “Swift Playgrounds” app that Apple announced at WWDC.

The app is Apple’s first crack at anything that even resembles an iOS-native development environment—iPad hardware is now fast enough (and Swift is now stable and mature enough) to make such a tool palatable. But while Swift Playgrounds uses and executes actual Swift code, it’s not going to let you make actual apps. Its aim is educational, specifically for younger kids who are familiar with and comfortable around technology but who have never been exposed to coding before.

I played with the app for a few hours, working my way through the first few tutorials in the public beta—I’m a little older than the intended age group, but I still managed to learn a few things. I also spoke with the team at Apple to learn more about their goals and intentions when they designed the app and to learn how it will continue to develop throughout the public beta process up to the release of the iOS 10 Golden Master.

(credit: Robert Scoble)

In a case closely watched by much of the tech industry, an appellate court has ruled in favor of Microsoft, finding that the company does not have to turn over the contents of an Outlook.com user’s inbox to American investigators because that user’s data is held abroad, in Ireland.

In a 43-page decision handed down on Thursday, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court’s ruling, finding that the Stored Communications Act, which allows domestically held data to be handed over to the government, does not apply outside the United States.

In December 2013, authorities obtained an SCA warrant, which was signed by a judge, as part of a drug investigation and served it upon Microsoft. When the company refused to comply, a lower court held the company in contempt. Microsoft challenged that, too, and the 2nd Circuit has vacated the contempt of court order, writing: