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via W.J. Hennigan, L.A. Times In a pivotal moment for private spaceflight, a towering white rocket lifted a cone-shaped capsule into space early Tuesday on a mission to the International Space Station. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carried the unmanned Dragon capsule into space after a 3:44 a.m. EDT launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking the … Continue reading
via Mark Hachman, PC Mag Facebook’s strength—that it has evolved beyond a social network, into a platform—appears to be its greatest weakness, at least in the mobile market. Much has been made in the last week about Facebook’s inability to derive revenue from or otherwise monetize its mobile business. That may be one of the … Continue reading
via Marcus Wohlsen, The Huffington Post A watchful eye has arrived on San Francisco’s bar scene, but not to keep you in check. It just wants to check you out. A new app launched this weekend that will scan the faces of patrons in 25 bars across the city to determine their ages and genders. … Continue reading
via Matt Krantz, USA TODAY Facebook shares jumped 13% to $43 as the stock opened in the frenzied first minutes of trading Friday, but just as quckly the price slid, tas investors stormed Wall Street to trade shares of the world’s leading social networking company. The stock rose $5 from its initial price of $38 … Continue reading
via William Pesek, Bloomberg The iPhone has become a symbol of something Steve Jobs never envisioned: Chinese sweatshops. Were the late Apple Inc. co-founder still with us, he would surely dispute that. But facts are facts, and any of us (full disclosure: this includes me) who use one of Apple’s smartphones, iPads or iPods is, … Continue reading
via Steve Olenski, Social Media Today Facebook is currently testing the idea to charge users to highlight a given post or picture on their Facebook wall. Let’s say you’re out one night at a club and you take a picture of your buddies making complete idiots out of themsleves and you want to post that … Continue reading
via Will Doig, Salon Cities as technologically precise as a Formula One race car are being built now. Do we really want to live in them? Formula One car racing is the most viewed sport in the world. On any given race day, half a billion people — one-fourteenth of the globe — are watching … Continue reading
via John Naughton, The Guardian: The Observer Earlier this year, American legal scholar Tim Wu published a sobering book: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. In it, he surveyed the history of the great communications technologies of the 20th century – the telephone, movies, broadcast radio and TV. And in the … Continue reading
via Deborah Netburn, L.A. Times Are you addicted to checking your work email? Do you check it first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed? Do you check it on work breaks and even on vacations? Well, here’s a piece of advice: Stop. According to a new study by researchers at … Continue reading
via Peter Ha, TechCrunch Earlier today Google released the full report of the FCC’s investigation into the collection of “payload data” from open Wi-Fi networks — aka passwords, email and search history from open networks — that its fleet of Street View cars obtained between 2008 and April 2010. An earlier and heavily redacted version … Continue reading
via Venkat Balasubramani and Eric Goldman, ARS Technica This post references a case decided by the US District Court of Eastern Virginia, Bland v. Roberts, 2012 Bland and his cohorts worked in the Hampton Sheriff’s Office, under B.J. Roberts. Roberts ran for re-election against Jim Adams, and the plaintiffs were lukewarm in their support of Roberts. … Continue reading
via Alex Fitzpatrick, Mashable The House of Representatives changed, then passed, the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA, late Thursday afternoon. As the dust settles, many are wondering where CISPA stands now and where it’s headed next. Hey Mashable, what’s CISPA? CISPA’s designed to let private business share information about … Continue reading
via Drake Bennett, Bloomberg Businessweek Today an all-star cast of adventure capitalists and space entrepreneurs—James Cameron, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Charles Simonyi, Peter Diamandis (creator of the X Prize), and others—announced the creation of Planetary Resources, an asteroid-mining company. In theory, asteroid mining is an enormously lucrative endeavor: a single small asteroid has been estimated … Continue reading
[Editress’ Note: It’s important to be well-informed. Read the full CISPA bill here.] via Donna Cassata, AP, MSNBC The Obama administration on Wednesday threatened to veto a House bill designed to defend critical U.S. industries and corporate networks from electronic attacks by foreign governments, cybercriminals and terrorist groups, arguing the measure falls short in protecting … Continue reading
via The Huffington Post For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer. Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the … Continue reading
Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. A report on what the epidemic of loneliness is doing to our souls and our society. … Continue reading
via Dave Jamieson, The Huffington Post In a victory for privacy hawks and worker advocates, Maryland legislators passed a bill Wednesday that would ban employers from asking job candidates or current employees for their passwords to social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter. If the bill is signed by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and becomes law, … Continue reading
via Morgan Little, Chicago Tribune In spite of their hopes, Internet activists are finding that their efforts to keep the digital world free of further regulation did not end with SOPA’s defeat. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 is working its way through Congress, and is the latest proposed legislation to raise … Continue reading
via Josh Constine, TechCrunch Facebook has just finished a deal to acquire mobile photo sharing app Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock. Instagram will remain an independently branded standalone app that’s separate from Facebook, but the services will increase their ties to each other. The transaction should go through this quarter pending some standard … Continue reading
via Alexia Tsotsis, TechCrunch It’s hard to tell if the Wikipedia article on April Fools’ Day is itself an April Fools’ prank. Tidbits of the ubiquitous holiday’s history seem like jokes in and of themselves; “In France and Italy, children and adults traditionally tack paper fish on each other’s back as a trick and shout … Continue reading
via Ross Anderson, The Atlantic Our mourning rituals are being adapted to — and evolving because of — our strangely persistent online personas. In this interview, a philosopher tries to make sense of death on the Internet. Think of how rich and deeply personal your online persona has become. Now think of what will happen … Continue reading
via Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic You might not think about the Fourth Amendment while you’re using Facebook and other online tools, but you probably should. You are no doubt familiar, now, with Facebook’s concept of “frictionless sharing.” You enable a social reader like the one from the Washington Post and the next time you read … Continue reading
via Bianca Bosker, The Huffington Post Google’s plan to collapse 60 privacy policies into a single one and combine informationit collects about its users has sparked outcry among privacy advocates and scrutiny from lawmakers around the world. Privacy experts have slammed the approach as “frustrating,” “a little frightening,” and even “illegal.” But users will not notice much of a … Continue reading
via Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet A Homeland Security training manual belies claims made by DHS representatives during a Congressional hearing last week that the federal agency is only monitoring social media outlets for “situational awareness,” and proves the fact that Bis Sis is also tracking online criticism of government, including discussion of airport body … Continue reading
via John Thomas Didumus, Digital Journal With just days to go before Google changes to its new privacy policy that allows it to gather, store and use personal information, users have a last chance to delete their Google Browsing History, along with any damning information therein. Tech News Daily reports that once Google’s new unified … Continue reading
The Brandt Standard 