electronics

"It's like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship." So goes the oft-used simile that references the legendary 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic. The phrase has been used to describe everything from government disfunction to professional sports disappointment. (Andy Reid, I'm looking at you.) But today, I will apply it to the business of big box, brick-and-mortar consumer technology retail. And there's no bigger ship in this shrinking sea than Best Buy, the American electronics retailer.

First, the facts: Best Buy posted disappointing third-quarter results this morning. The company recorded a loss, fed … Read more

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law, CNET has learned.

Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns, according to three individuals who have been negotiating with Leahy's staff over the changes. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Leahy's rewritten bill would … Read more

Building a smartphone isn't easy. Building one that's a blockbuster success is an even more Herculean task.

The latest company with big smartphone dreams, Sony, is reportedly putting together a flagship device to rival Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S III and Apple's iPhone 5, one that could debut as early as the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

But the smartphone business is a brutally competitive one, with only Apple and Samsung generating any success of note. Customers now fawn over the iPhone and Galaxy S phones, but little else. Fortunately, CNET is here and willing to unload a … Read more

If former CIA Director David Petraeus had secretly stashed love letters he exchanged with his paramour at home under his mattress, he might have actually done a better job of protecting his privacy.

Blame federal law for this counterintuitive result. Because it's so easy to dash off an e-mail -- or edit a Gmail draft -- you might think electronic correspondence should receive far greater legal protections and be more difficult for the FBI to read.

Not quite. Because of the way a key federal privacy law was worded in 1986, back in the pre-Internet days of analog modems, … Read more

The human skin, with all its frailties, turns out to be difficult to recreate, let alone improve on. The main challenge: It manages to be both self-healing and sensitive to the touch, enabling it to send vital information to the brain about temperature and pressure.

But chemists and engineers at Stanford say they are one step closer to developing an electronic skin that has both these properties, and they report this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology that it could help lead to smarter prosthetics and more resilient, self-repairing electronics.

Their central task was to find a self-healing material (a … Read more

A handful of U.S. Navy SEALS have been reprimanded for leaking military secrets to video-game maker Electronic Arts while working as paid consultants on the game Medal of Honor: Warfighters, according to a report.

Seven of the SEALs have been disciplined, including one who was involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and four others are being investigated, according to CBS News.

Medal of Honor: Warfighters is a military combat shooting game that prides itself on being as realistic as possible. Players are involved in real-world scenarios, such as battles in Afghanistan and attacks on Somali pirates. … Read more

A federal judge has rejected the FBI's attempts to withhold information about its efforts to require Internet companies to build in backdoors for government surveillance.

CNET has learned that U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg ruled on Tuesday that the government did not adequately respond to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Seeborg, in San Francisco, ordered (PDF) a "further review of the materials previously withheld" in the lawsuit, which seeks details about what the FBI has dubbed "Going Dark" -- the bureau's ongoing effort to force companies including … Read more

Apple isn't expecting a very happy holiday season, financially anyway.

The company today issued its forecast for its fiscal first quarter ending in December, calling for per-share earnings of $11.75 and revenue of $52 billion.

That's short of Wall Street's average forecast of $15.43 a share in earnings and $55.02 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters. Apple is known to be overly conservative with its own estimates, and Wall Street investors often pump up their own projections a little higher.

Still, the expectations call for growth in the quarter and underscore Apple's … Read more

Shares of Best Buy declined in after-hours trading after the electronics retailer announced a management shake-up and issued a warning about its upcoming third-quarter results.

Best Buy announced today that two executives, including its U.S. president, would be leaving the company as part of a restructuring effort. U.S. business President Mike Vitelli will retire at the end of the current fiscal year in February 2013, while Tim Sheehan, executive vice president of U.S. operations, will leave the company at the end of the month.

Best Buy also warned that its net income for the third quarter will … Read more