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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday defended his company's downsized version of the Internet, called "Free Basics," which is offered in developing nations around the world.

"In every society, there are certain basic services that are so important for people's wellbeing that we expect everyone to be able to access them freely," he wrote in the Times of India, citing public libraries, hospitals and schools as examples.

"That's why everyone also deserves access to free basic Internet services," Zuckerberg added.

Net Neutrality Trade-Off

Facebook launched Free Basics, a set of basic Internet services that is offered in more than 30 countries and has garnered some 15 million users over the last year, because everyone should have access to basic Internet services, he maintained.

However, the service has come under some criticism, especially in India, where last week the country's telecommunications industry regulator asked the mobile network set to partner with Facebook on Free Basics to put its efforts on hold.

Among the criticisms of Free Basics is that it stifles innovation by limiting choice, undermines net neutrality by favoring some content providers over others and confines users within a walled garden.

There is a trade-off between net neutrality and allowing more people to access the Internet, acknowledged Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research.

"There's no doubt the plan is non-neutral, but it does get more people online," he told TechNewsWorld.

"Facebook would argue that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, but the objection here is that many people's first experience with the Internet will be Facebook-flavored, which gives the company an unfair advantage," Dawson continued.

Marketing Initiative

Although Free Basics has introduced millions of new users to the Internet, doubts linger about Facebook's intentions.

"There's a suspicion that Facebook has ulterior motives," said Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner.

"They're in the business of making money," he told TechNewsWorld. "They'll have to do that to pay for this, and they haven't come out and said how that's going to work in the long term."

"My assumption with Mark Zuckerberg is everything he does is a marketing initiative," said John Carroll, a mass communications professor at Boston University.

"If there's some kind of side benefit for other people, that's fine with him," he told TechNewsWorld.

Facebook as Internet

Zuckerberg is all about collecting information and then selling it to marketers, Carroll noted.

"This is a market he's looking at -- the undeveloped world -- that he can gather up and do the same thing with them that he'd done with the other billion Facebook users," he said.

By creating a walled garden, Free Basics advances one of Zuckerberg's goals for Facebook. "One of Zuckerberg's objectives has long been for Facebook to be the Internet for people," Carroll noted.

"What he wants to do is preempt movement away from Facebook to other apps and other platforms and contain users as much as possible within the Facebook walls," he said.

"With Free Basics, he's going to bring in certain content providers that he picks and chooses. In that way, he creates the entire environment of digital media for all these people who wouldn't otherwise have access," Carroll continued.

Springboard to Wider Net

Free Basics is a springboard to the Internet for users, Zuckerberg argued.

"Half the people who use Free Basics to go online for the first time pay to access the full Internet within 30 days," he wrote.

There is one thing, though, that even Zuckerberg's critics would agree with him about.

"Internet access has become a critical differentiator in terms of societal development and competitiveness," Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research, told TechNewsWorld.

It also can affect the lives of individuals.

"Lack of access to the Internet can have a negative impact on things people are trying to do to improve their lives in meaningful ways," Aaron Smith, associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, told TechNewsWorld.

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John Mello is a freelance technology writer and contributor to Chief Security Officer magazine. You can connect with him on Google+.

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that burrows through the mountains of discarded wrapping paper to search out the best and brightest of the latest gadget announcements.

In our festive holiday edition, we take a look at connected socks with a Netflix focus, a hoverboard with a short flight time, and a robot vacuum cleaner that's also a home security system.

As always, these are not reviews, and the ratings reflect only how much I'd like to use each item. And, before I forget, I hope you're enjoying the holidays!

Netflix Socks

Finally, a pair of socks I would not be ever-so-slightly disappointed to find among my gifts on Christmas morning.

Netflix has released some designs for socks that can stop streaming the show or movie you're streaming if you should nod off. The socks detect when you've stopped moving for a long period and hit the pause button. When they're about to turn off your show, there's an LED light that flashes -- so if you're still awake, you can wiggle your big toe to halt the action.

Truly, there's little worse for streaming addicts than to miss a few episodes of a show or the end of a movie, potentially spoiling plot twists during the subsequent search to find their place.

I do wish Netflix saw enough of an opportunity here to sell the socks itself rather than posting the instructions for them online as a DIY project. The plans are somewhat complex for a complete novice at engineering (and knitting, if we're completely honest).

Then too, if you're someone who rolls around often in your sleep, there's a chance the socks won't detect your lack of consciousness and will fail to halt what you're streaming.

There's a lot of value here, though, especially for someone like myself, a heavy Netflix viewer. I just hope the socks are comfortable with all those electronics tucked in.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Are You Still Watchings?

Hover for a Moment

One of the hottest gifts this holiday season, by many accounts, is the hoverboard -- not one that actually levitates, but one that's essentially a self-balancing powered skateboard that you ride like a Segway. If you want an actual hoverboard, you'll need to dig deep.

We've seen conceptual hoverboards that use magnets to "levitate," but ARCA Space Corporation offers one that stays in the air. The US$19,900 ArcaBoard has 36 fans that output 272 horsepower to keep you afloat.

However, your ride ends in just 6 minutes, when the ArcaBoard needs a recharge, which takes six hours (unless you buy a US$4,500 accessory to reduce that to 35 minutes). The ride time drops to 3 minutes for heavier users, who will need a version of the system with extra thrust. You use a smartphone to steer, or you can disable it and use your body weight instead. Top speed is 12.5 miles per hour.

At its steep price point, the ArcaBoard doesn't offer enough return on investment.

However, I do think that eventually we'll have hoverboards that work for an extended period of time, with safety and elegance factored in. The future is coming, and it's one worth waiting for if it means we don't have to do something as prehistoric as use our legs to get around.

That said, I absolutely want to hop on one of these. I'd be crazy not to at least want to try out an actual working hoverboard.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Marty McFlys

Roaming 'Round the House

If you're a manufacturer and want your new robot vacuum cleaner to succeed, you have to bring something new to the table. LG is trying just that with the Hom-Bot Turbo+.

Along with functionality you'd expect as standard in a robot vacuum, it has an augmented-reality feature called "Home-Joy," which, like almost everything else these days, functions through a smartphone app.

When you aim your smartphone's camera at a certain area of your floor, Turbo+ will go to that spot and clean up. That is a much faster way of getting a robot vacuum to take care of a trouble spot, and I can see myself making great use of it when flour falls on the floor as I'm baking.

Thanks to the three onboard cameras, you can watch a cleaning cycle take place when you're not at home. Meanwhile, Turbo+ can operate as a security camera. If it detects movement when you're elsewhere, it can send you pictures from inside your house.

LG hasn't disclosed a price for Turbo+ as yet, because it's showcasing the system at CES 2016. Nevertheless, it's a robot vacuum with enough bells and whistles to help it stand out, and one that I'd like keeping an eye on my apartment when I'm away.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Farewells to Spills

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Kris Holt is a writer and editor based in Montreal. He has written for the Daily Dot, The Daily Beast, and PolicyMic, among others. He's Scottish, so would prefer if no one used the word "soccer" in his company. You can connect with Kris on Google+.

Researchers last week revealed a zero-day flaw that lets attackers take over a Linux system by pressing the backspace key repeatedly.

Pressing backspace 17 to 20 times will overwrite the highest byte of the return address of the grub_memset() function, ultimately causing a reboot by redirecting control flow to the 0x00eb53e8 address, according to the Cybersecurity Group at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.

The flaw is in Grub v 1.98 and later. Grub is the bootloader used by most Linux systems, including some embedded systems.

Why the Attack Works

The processor's interrupt vector table, or IVT, resides at address 0x0.

At this stage of the boot sequence, the processor is in protected mode, which Grub2 enables from the start.

Virtual memory is not enabled; there is no memory protection and the memory is readable, writable and executable; the processor executes the 32-bit instruction set even in 64-bit architectures; the processor automatically handles self-modifying code; and there is no stack smashing protector or address space layout randomization.

In other words, the system is naked.

The integer underflow fault impacts both the grub_password_get() function and the grub_username_get() function.

Pressing the Backspace key 28 times when Grub asks for the username will show whether a system is at risk.

If the machine reboots or a rescue shell is displayed, it is.

The Danger of the Flaw

Attackers can access the Grub2 rescue function without authentication. Then they can deploy malware into a system through various means, including running a BASH shell, or they can patch the code of Grub2 in RAM to be always authenticated and then return to normal mode.

They can elevate privileges to whatever extent they desire or copy the entire disk; destroy any data, including the Grub; or overwrite ciphered disks, causing a denial-of-service attack.

The bug can be fixed by preventing cur_len overflows. Major Linux vendors -- Red Hat, Ubuntu and Debian -- have fixed the flaw, and the researchers have created an emergency patch.

Much has been made of the relative security of Linux systems compared to Microsoft PCs, but this flaw shows Linux users "have to be at least as observant and reactive as everyone else," observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

Easier Said Than Done

Exploiting the flaw is not as easy as it might sound.

"The ability to PWN a Grub2-based system is based on the version of Grub2, the version of the system BIOS, and physical access to a system console or network access to a virtual console," pointed out Bill Weinberg, principal analyst at Linux Pundit.

Further, its impact on embedded devices and the Internet of Things is "questionable" because it's "very much constrained to Intel architectures," he told LinuxInsider. Embedded systems are more likely to use "ARM and other non-x86 silicon, each with its own different IVT layout and, equally important, a non-Grub bootloader, such as U-Boot or RedBoot."

Still, the process the researchers described "is likely only one of several paths to exploit this zero-day vulnerability, so patching ASAP is highly advisable," Weinberg said.

Who's Gonna Get Hurt

The vulnerability will be a real problem in libraries and schools that provide access to Linux desktops with limited accounts, remarked Tripwire researcher Tyler Reguly.

"Since both Ubuntu and Red Hat -- the two most likely distributions in these environments -- have already issued updates, this is simply a matter of updating these systems," he told LinuxInsider.

Sysadmins concerned a breach has occurred should reimage the system and then apply the update.

Government installations also may be at risk, Enderle told LinuxInsider, as "governments have been attracted to the cost of Linux front ends for cost savings and they aren't well staffed to address problems like this. Cheap has its downsides."

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Richard Adhikari has written about high-tech for leading industry publications since the 1990s and wonders where it's all leading to. Will implanted RFID chips in humans be the Mark of the Beast? Will nanotech solve our coming food crisis? Does Sturgeon's Law still hold true? You can connect with Richard on Google+.

Next week is CES, and I am so looking forward to coming home from that show. It used to be a lot of fun, but it covers such a massive amount of space that just getting around takes up much of the time.

Given that most folks do prebriefings if they are smart, and that most of the really cool stuff is behind closed doors and not on the show floor, every year I question the intelligence of going. However, this year it does herald what should be a rather amazing year.

I'll close with my product of the year. I thought long and hard about this one, as there were a lot of good contenders: Tesla's SUV, Microsoft's Surface, Hootsuite, Dell XPS 13, Lenovo Carbon, and the Linksys Mu-MIMO router, to name a few. It came down to which product set the best example, and my choice may surprise you.

The Year of Artificial Intelligence

2016 is looking like the year when we really see the impact of AI. That isn't just because Elon Musk launched a startup with that in mind -- it is also because so much of what we'll be seeing around us has some advanced form of intelligence in it.

Examples include drones that automatically navigate around obstacles, the first viable self-driving car prototypes, IBM Watson solutions average people can use, and robotic vacuum cleaners that seem to think about the room and bounce around walls far less often.

By the end of 2016, I expect we'll see a number of companies that are raised up because of their unique use of AI, and a bunch that either fail or are on the ropes because they didn't see either the risk or opportunity until it was too late. I also expect that 2016 may be the first year when a major election is won or lost by the use of some intelligent system -- just like the last ones were the result of better management of social media.

MU-MIMO Arrives

Your WiFi becomes obsolete in 2016 as phones that support MU-MIMO start showing up -- and I expect laptops and tablets also will start arriving with this feature. This means a huge jump in bandwidth, particularly for those attending conferences.

The folks who have phones, tablets and PCs that don't support it will be waiting even longer for their mail to download and their Web pages to load. This is good news if this is the year you typically replace your phone. If it isn't, you are likely to wish it was.

It is going to be interesting to see which phone vendors do and don't get how important the radio is to a smartphone buyer. It may even be time for you to consider that the aging tablet you thought would last you forever might need to be replaced.

The Internet of Things

Yep, you likely won't be able to hide next year, as you suddenly realize everything you are seeing in the stores at the high end is fully connected. I'm not sure how much of this stuff really will make sense -- but, in the end, you'll see an Internet-connected option for everything from your smoke detectors and thermostats to your ovens and refrigerators.

Sadly, I doubt most of these will be MU-MIMO, which suggests you'll likely have to think about replacing them again within five years. Anticipate a recommendation to hold off until the technology in these devices matches the new technology that is rolling out to market.

Self-Driving Light

You'll see the first big step to self-driving with enhanced cruise control systems that generally will keep you on the road most of the time while you're on a freeway. Other than Tesla's system, most of these will be obsolete within 18 months. That suggests you might want to save your pennies and avoid this option or avoid buying a new car until this technology is fully cooked in a couple of years.

I'm expecting most of the cars sold in this pre self-driving window to depreciate like they fell off a cliff, with the exception of Tesla models, because they're designed to accept upgrades.

I expect we'll see some interesting accidents as people ask limited self-driving systems to do things they weren't designed to do, proving yet again that some of us are idiots.

Goodbye Yahoo

Unless something dramatic happens, I think we are going to say goodbye to Yahoo in 2016. Its plan to raise money by selling off its stake in Alibaba fell through this year, and its large investors are now in an open battle with very different plans for Yahoo's future.

None of these folks appear to have the critical mass needed to drive forward any of the plans focused on raising cash or massively cutting costs, however. The end result is likely to be the confused death of a company. I hope I'm wrong here, but it looks like the sharks are circling the body -- and that doesn't bode well for Yahoo's future.

The Dell/EMC Merger

Dell/EMC is arguably the biggest technology merger in history, and it is in sharp contrast to HP's breakup.

In 2016, we'll get to see if Dell can pull off another miracle and create the biggest privately owned technology company in history.

If it pulls this off, it will have the most advanced customer loyalty program and technology forecasting programs under one roof and no drag from public investors, either in cost or decision making.

It should be kind of like what would happen if an F1 Car raced a NASCAR car. (Hint: The F1 car is much faster.)

Electric Cars Live or Die

Until this year, only Tesla seemed to get that the real electric car market was in the luxury segment. The problem, though, is that with gas dropping toward US$2 a gallon, the justification for an electric car has become far more difficult to argue.

If the Republicans win the presidential campaign -- long odds at this point, I know -- they are likely to kill electric subsidies, and the continued high cost of batteries coupled with the low cost of gas could kill off much of the segment.

If electric cars can survive 2016 on more than life support, then they are likely to make it until 2020, when they should be able displace gas cars broadly. If not...

Microsoft's Hardware Wars

This year Microsoft threw down the gauntlet with its excellent Surface 4 tablet, and really rubbed folks' faces in its Surface Book -- a stunning halo product. That hardly went unnoticed. In 2016, Dell, HP and Lenovo (among others) will bring to market their response and a fight over whether Microsoft or its OEM partners can build a better 2-in-1 PC.

This is a no-holds-barred fight, and the OEMs are pissed, which means we are likely to see some rather amazing products, including the Surface Pro 5 and Surface Book 2. The only certain winner is us, because we'll get amazing choices we likely wouldn't have seen otherwise.

The Dyson Robot Vacuum Killer

Or maybe I mean the killer Dyson robotic vacuum. This product has been a long time in coming, and, on paper, it looks to be able to eat everything else in the market -- including the new and smarter Roomba.

I doubt Roomba or Neato will be sitting this one out, so expect a robotic vacuum battle royal for your home -- and let's just hope none of them show up armed.

Wrapping Up: 2016 Should Be Amazing

We have a lot to look forward to in 2016: smarter cars, smarter tech companies, smarter wireless, and smarter appliances -- which we may want to purchase wisely, because much of what will be in the market will be in massive transition, making decisions risky.

Those risks may get worse through the end of the decade -- likely making a lot of Luddites look really smart.

That said, we'll see some amazingly tempting things. From your PCs, tablets and smartphones to your smartwatches and smarter cars, you may find that by the end of the year, much of what you own is smarter than you are. Now isn't that aggravating?

Every year I look for a product that seems both to tickle my fancy the most and to move the technology ball in a positive fashion. This year it was the BlackBerry Priv, which combined BlackBerry's market leading productivity platform (hardware and software) with the massive Android app ecosystem, bringing back the heart of the old Microsoft "embrace and extend" strategy to create the most secure and productive smartphone on Android. Apparently it is so popular it sold out, and it popped BlackBerry's stock.

The Priv has been like a kiss of heaven, because it gives me all the things I missed in BlackBerry and the app support I had to have to operate my smarthome. Constantly having to locate an Android tablet or borrow my wife's iOS device in order to use the gate and lights -- or even operate the house sound system -- was getting to be a pain in the butt.

With the Priv, that pain is now past, and I live off my phone. So, the product that really knocked my socks off in 2015 was the BlackBerry Priv. Who would have thought that a BlackBerry would be my favorite product any year this decade, let alone half the way through? The BlackBerry Priv was my favorite product in 2015, and it rules, so it is my product of the year.

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Rob Enderle is a TechNewsWorld columnist and the principal analyst for the Enderle Group, a consultancy that focuses on personal technology products and trends. You can connect with him on Google+.