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In the place of these unofficial or illegal links — which often rank above legal, commercial sites — Google will now show direct links to Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and other “official” sites. Furthermore, Google will more aggressively prune the results that pop up via autocomplete so that they’re in-line with DMCA takedown notices (i.e. Google will no longer prompt you with “free download” when you start typing the name of a movie).

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Yahoo, whose stock had been buoyed by the pre-IPO hype, has already committed to returning at least half of that money to shareholders. Yet the company's core advertising business has been unimpressive in recent years, putting pressure on CEO Marissa Mayer to prove that Yahoo can be more than just an Alibaba proxy for investors. A manager of the activist hedge fund Starboard Value recently called for the company to merge with AOL (AOL, Tech30).

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Brain stimulation is a very real but still unproven area of technology for tinkering with the human brain. For decades, scientists have experimented with sending electrical currents through subjects' skulls to their brains to do everything from treating serious mental disorders like depression to improving memory and learning. Now Silicon Valley is hoping it can turn brain stimulation tech into sleek wearable devices for consumers. Is it really possible to make the jump from the lab to Best Buy shelves?

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On October 14th, 2014, a vulnerability in version 3 of the SSL encryption protocol was disclosed. This vulnerability, dubbed POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption), allows an attacker to read information encrypted with this version of the protocol in plain text using a man-in-the-middle attack. Although SSLv3 is an older version of the protocol which is mainly obsolete, many pieces of software still fall back on SSLv3 if better encryption options are not available. More importantly, it is possible for an attacker to force SSLv3 connections if it is an available alternative for both participants attempting a connection. The POODLE vulnerability affects any services or clients that make it possible to communicate using SSLv3. Because this is a flaw with the protocol design, and not an implementation issue, every piece of software that uses SSLv3 is vulnerable.

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New York City is the city that never sleeps, and if a new study from the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering is any indication, it’s home to plenty of active Internet connections around the clock. But there are plenty of places around the globe where the Internet actually does sleep at night.

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