2012

Working conditions at the plants that make many of our favorite consumer electronics have long been a subject of concern -- even for those manufacturers that contract with them.

Employees at Foxconn factories in China have committed suicide, jumping from buildings. Explosions have injured and even killed workers at plants run by Foxconn and another contact manufacturer, Pegatron. And pay has been often barely enough for Chinese workers to get make ends meet and send a bit home to their families.

Those issues came to a head after an exhaustive New York Times report on working conditions at Foxconn. Activists … Read more

For a job with more scrutiny than many in the public eye, look no further than Tim Cook, who replaced Steve Jobs as the chief executive at Apple last August.

On the plus side, Cook's first full year on the job was marked with prosperity. During Apple's fiscal year, the company sold more than 125 million iPhones, just over 58 million iPads, and raked in $41.66 billion in pure profit. Apple's stock also reached an all-time high, and the company pushed out a dividend to investors for the first time.

With that said, there are still … Read more

Voice control apps for cell phones have been around for years before Apple launched Siri, but they've only this year come to the fore on Android with the same kind of energy and attention. Samsung introduced S Voice, its own take on Siri's spoken and card-form response. Unfortunately, Samsung's S Voice couldn't compare, though the device-maker continues preinstalling the S Voice app on its newer smartphones.

Google's redesigned Search app with voice actions fared much better against Siri, and version Android 4.1 of the OS also includes Google Now, a system of predictive alerts … Read more

Talk about a roller coaster of a year.

Former PayPal president Scott Thompson took over the reins at Yahoo in January. He quickly became an unpopular figure in Silicon Valley after picking a patent fight with Facebook in March. Then came the resume scandal.

After it was discovered he had fudged his resume to claim he had a computer science degree (his degree is actually in accounting), Thompson was forced to resign in May.

Don't weep for him, though. Two months later, he'd already landed himself a new CEO gig, this time at e-commerce company ShopRunner.

Go back to the CNET 100… Read more

Self-driving cars have long been the dream of futurists, but they came one huge step closer to reality this year, as California became the third state to legalize autonomous vehicles, and Nevada issued the first license for testing on public streets and highways. Google released a demo video of one of its autonomous vehicles carting a blind man around town in May.

How realistic is it that you'll soon spot a driverless car in the next lane over? Probably not very. But testing will certainly continue in 2013, and Google's Sergey Brin is optimistic, predicting that consumers will … Read more

It's been a tough couple of years for NASA, which has seen huge budget cuts and the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle program. But it's not all bad news at the agency.

Curiosity, the newest robot in NASA's little fleet of Martian rovers, landed on the Red Planet in August and quickly got to work. Within a few months, the rover had already made a significant finding: NASA announced in early December that Curiosity had found signs of simple organic compounds in a Martian soil sample, though scientists were quick to check expectations since they … Read more

John McAfee just might be the worst over-sharer on the Internet.

Living as an expat in Belize, the founder of the ubiquitous antivirus software hasn't been an active figure in the tech industry for years. But when his neighbor was found murdered in November, he came back on the scene in a truly bizarre way.

Wanted for questioning by local police, McAfee went on the lam. In an odd turn, he began publishing regular updates and pictures to his blog declaring his innocence, making claims of government persecution, describing his disguises, and explaining the nature of his relationship with … Read more

Global smartphone adoption, particularly of Apple iOS and Google Android devices, has exploded over the past year. Research firm Flurry Analytics released a report this summer showing that iOS and Android adoption has grown 10 times faster than PC adoption at its peak in the 1980s. And these mobile platforms have amassed new users twice as fast as the Internet itself did during the go-go days of the Web in the 1990s.

This rapid growth in mobile has shaken up the Internet space as companies like Facebook and Mozilla race to keep up with users that are increasingly accessing the … Read more

A lot has been written about security online. But Wired writer Mat Honan's heartbreaking story about being hacked earlier this year resonated with people in a way no number of security analysts' warnings could.

Through a series of clever steps, a pair of hackers exploited holes in Apple's and Amazon's security policies, gaining control of Honan's Google, Twitter, Amazon, and Apple accounts. They eventually took control of his MacBook, wiping it clean of all of his documents, e-mails, and every photo he'd taken since the birth of his daughter.

Amazon immediately made changes to its security policy … Read more