Uber waited more than five months to notify 50,000 drivers whose names and drivers-license numbers were taken in a computer-security breach last year, much longer than allowed by many state laws.
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Saturday 28 February 2015
Uber Breach Affecting 50,000 Drivers Went Unreported for Months
Uber waited more than five months to notify 50,000 drivers whose names and drivers-license numbers were taken in a computer-security breach last year, much longer than allowed by many state laws.
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Rethinking office space
Not the sexiest title for a blog post, I know. But as we’ve inhabited a variety of workplaces—including a garage in Menlo Park, a farmhouse in Denmark and an entire New York city block—we’ve learned something about what makes an office space great. And we’re excited to put that into practice, starting here at our home in Mountain View.
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China draft counterterror law strikes fear in foreign tech firms
China is weighing a far-reaching counterterrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over encryption keys and install security "backdoors", a potential escalation of what some firms view as the increasingly onerous terms of doing business in the world's second largest economy. A parliamentary body read a second draft of the country's first anti-terrorism law this week and is expected to adopt the legislation in the coming weeks or months.
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Wall Street Journal Upset That Wall Street Isn't Upset About Net Neutrality
A few weeks ago, after it was more or less confirmed that the FCC was going forward with full Title II reclassification of broadband, we noted that the stocks of the big broadband companies actually went up suggesting that Wall Street actually knows that reclassification won't really impact broadband companies, despite what they've been saying publicly. Perhaps this is partly because those same companies have been telling Wall Street that the rule change won't have an impact.
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Weed Vending Machines Have Hit the U.S.
This month, Washington state’s legalization of recreational marijuana seemingly reached its logical conclusion with the installation of the state’s first weed vending machine in Seattle. In abstract, the device (which is also Bitcoin-compatible, just for added zeitgeist-y value) sounds like a terrible idea, prone to the sort of general abuse that could set back the tide of legalization that’s been sweeping the country.
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Friday 27 February 2015
It's official: NSA spying is hurting the US tech economy
China is no longer using high-profile US technology brands for state purchases, amid ongoing revelations about mass surveillance and hacking by the US government. A new report confirmed key brands, including Cisco, Apple, Intel, and McAfee -- among others -- have been dropped from the Chinese government's list of authorized brands, a Reuters report said Wednesday. The number of approved foreign technology brands fell by a third, based on an analysis of the...
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Marijuana Investors Lost $23.3 Billion in Penny Stocks Last Year
Investors in small cannabis companies lost $23.3 billion in 2014 because shady stock promoters are capitalizing on the slow tide of legalization in the US by manipulating the penny stock market with “pump and dump” schemes. Penny stocks are stocks in small companies that trade for less than five dollars apiece. They’re quoted and traded on dealer networks like OTC Markets because they don’t meet the requirements to be traded on more formal exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange.
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Yemen ex-president amassed up to $60 billion, colluded with rebels
Yemeni ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh is suspected of corruptly amassing as much as $60 billion, equivalent to Yemen's annual GDP, during his long rule, and colluding in a militia takeover last year, U.N.-appointed investigators have told the Security Council. The report by the world body's Panel of Experts on Yemen echoes criticism by his opponents that Saleh's rule from 1978 to 2012 was marred by graft, and that even out of office he is fomenting instability...
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Alaska Farmer Turns Icy Patch Of Tundra Into A Breadbasket
Warmer temperatures in Alaska are giving farmers flexibility to plant a wider range of crops over a longer growing season. One farmer says the secret to his bounty is soil enriched by flooding rivers.
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Thursday 26 February 2015
EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System
The U.S. patent system is in crisis, but there are clear steps Congress and the White House can take to mitigate the impact of vague patents, patent trolls, and a weak legal process to protect competition and creativity, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explains in a new report released today.
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Big Pharma Is America’s New Mafia
By now you have probably seen John Oliver’s comic take on the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on doctors’ prescribing habits. Media outlets from Mother Jones to the Wall Street Journal commented admiringly, and even the American Medical Association felt compelled to declare they were “committed to transparency” around drug company payments to doctors. But satire will do very little to focus on...
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Rent Walkouts Point to Strains in U.S. Farm Economy
Across the U.S. Midwest, the plunge in grain prices to near four-year lows is pitting landowners determined to sustain rental incomes against farmer tenants worried about making rent payments.
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300+ Awesome Free Internet Resources You Should Know
There are a lot of beautiful tools on the internet – here are 300+ of them that are awesome and – best of all – free to use. Enjoy!
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Apple ordered to pay $533-million for patent infringement
Apple Inc has been ordered to pay $532.9 million after a federal jury found its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by Texas-based patent licensing company Smartflash LLC. Though Smartflash had been asking for $852 million in damages, the verdict, which came late Tuesday night, was still a costly blow for the U.S. tech giant, the most valuable company in the world.
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Lenovo.com has been hacked, possibly by Lizard Squad
Lenovo.com has been hacked. Starting at 4PM ET, users visiting the site saw a slideshow of disaffected youths, set to the song "Breaking Free" from High School Musical. At 4:17, the site seemed to have reverted to its normal self, although HTML problems persist and in some instances, the song continued to play in the background.
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Whoa, This Weird Retro Ad Imagines Birdman as a Real Action Figure
Last fall, Fox Searchlight gave away limited-edition Birdman action figures as part of its marketing for the movie. Now, the Best Picture Oscar winner is reopening in cinemas—and getting a dose of new marketing, including a commercial for those toys.
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The Psychology of Fellowship on Social Media
There is a way to build brand ambassadors on social media. Here are some tips you can use to create a fellowship and cultivate your following.
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Teenager making $480,000 a year babysitting, forced to hire CEO to meet demands
A US teenager who has made more than $480,000 from her babysitting business has hired a chief executive to handle day-to-day business matters while she's at high school.
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Wednesday 25 February 2015
Florida Companies Push US to License Ferry Services to Cuba
Catamaran builder Brian Hall is too young to remember when ferries plied the route between Florida and Cuba in the 1950s, but he has plans to be among the first to revive the once-popular route. ...
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How to Build a Company and a Content Strategy Based on Values: Inside Rand Fishkin's Journey With Moz
Moz's Rand Fishkin shares his thoughts on how he manages to create consistently amazing content based on core values and beliefs
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Apple spending $2 billion on two European data centers running on 100 percent renewable energy
Apple has announced plans worth €1.7 billion ($1.93 billion) to construct two new data centers in Europe. Each facility will be run using 100 percent renewable energy and will provide online services such as iTunes, iMessages, and Siri for Apple customers in Europe. The data centers are being built in Athenry in western Ireland and in Viborg in central Denmark, with both sites expected to be operational by 2017.
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North America’s largest freezer nearing completion in north Richland
A 455,000 square-foot, 116-foot tall building is will open in July in north Richland. The largest freezer of its kind in the world will employ 134 people and handle 2 billion pounds of food a year.
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Yelp Sues Websites Promising "All Positive Reviews" For Businesses
While Yelp may be within its legal rights to re-order and filter its user-submitted reviews, the company is taking legal action against the operator of multiple websites promising “all positive reviews for your business.” The lawsuit, filed last in a federal court in California, accuses the people behind at least three sites — YelpDirector, Revpley, and Revleap.me — of trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquatting, contract interference, along with a state-level claim of...
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Making it Millennial: Public policy and the next generation
The well-being of any society depends on each successive generation’s ability to contribute to the common good. Yet today’s rising generation, the…
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Tuesday 24 February 2015
And The Best Native Ad Award Goes To...
Although the Super Bowl is still “king” when it comes to TV ad space, annual award shows like the Oscars and the Grammys are also very attractive to advertisers. For the recent Grammy Awards, 30-second commercials went for $1 million apiece, while half-minute ads for this year’s Oscar telecast are selling for $1.9 million. But it’s not just the content of the ads that’s unique, it’s the very nature of the ad experience as a whole.
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Nvidia hit with false advertising suit over GTX 970 performance
Gaming enthusiasts have been griping for months that Nvidia's GeForce GTX 970 graphics chip doesn't operate up to snuff, and now someone has taken the company to court over it. Nvidia was hit with a class action lawsuit Thursday that claims it misled customers about the capabilities of the GTX 970, which was released in September. Nvidia markets the chip as having 4GB of performance-boosting video RAM, but some users have complained the chip falters after using 3.5GB of that allocation.
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Monday 23 February 2015
A Wet And Wild Look Inside The 'Mushroom Houses' of a Fungi Farm
Foraging for wild, edible fungi may be a growing trend. But most of the mushrooms we eat come from farms — and a behind-the-scenes look at one of them turns out to be pretty exciting on its own.
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America's Most Economically Segregated Cities
Can you guess what Tallahassee, Trenton, and Tucson all have in common?
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Mars Missions Are A Scam
Last week, the nonprofit reality-television project Mars One announced its selection of 100 volunteers who may get one-way tickets to Mars. It’s only the latest in decades of celebrated Mars colonization projects. And just like all the rest, this one is unlikely to ever happen, experts say. “It looks like a scam,” John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., told BuzzFeed News.
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Women are leaving the tech industry in droves
Ana Redmond launched into a technology career for an exciting challenge and a chance to change the world. She was well-equipped to succeed too: An ambitious math and science wiz, she could code faster, with fewer errors, than anyone she knew.
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Banned From Carrying Passengers in Spain, Uber Now Delivers Food
After a court last year forced Uber Technologies off the road in Spain, the car-hailing company is back—but delivering prepared meals instead of shuttling people around. Uber on Thursday said it opened a type of food delivery service in Barcelona, similar to one it offers in California. Drivers’ cars are stocked up with prepared meals, which are sold for about €10 plus a €2.50 delivery fee ($14).
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A mountain of toys: Inside the strange world of Toy Fair 2015
Around the start of Toy Fair, I realized just what made the experience so different to the tech shows, video game events, and comic cons I usually visit. It was the volume. At a tech event, most companies have just a handful of products. Some have just one or two. Even a gigantic company like Samsung might be showing off no more than fifty different devices in all: a dozen TVs, a handful of phones, a line of computers, and a handful...
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Backers often face long delays for crowdfunded products
A woman waves a tiny device in front of several food items. Within seconds, detailed information, going well beyond what’s on the label, has appeared on her smartphone. She’s discovered a potentially dangerous food dye in a corn chip and gluten in a chocolate truffle. The short video, which seems more science fiction than reality, was a part of a crowdfunding campaign to finance production of a device called the TellSpec.
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Sunday 22 February 2015
Meet the King of Kombucha
Yes, kombucha. The fermented probiotic beverage that GT Dave turned into a $600 million category--one that he still dominates. If only things would stay so simple.
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Peter Lik’s Recipe for Success: Sell Prints. Print Money.
Mr. Lik, an Australian photographer, has what many artists crave: buyers willing to spend big. But in the art world, price does not always equal value.
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Sony sees 25-fold profit jump by 2018; could exit TVs, phones
Sony Corp aims to boost operating profit 25-fold within three years by growing its camera sensors and PlayStation units, its chief executive said, outlining a strategy that could see the company exit the cut-throat TV and smartphone sectors. CEO Kazuo Hirai said on Wednesday the Japanese consumer electronics firm would no longer pursue sales growth in areas such as smartphones where its has suffered competition from cheaper Asian...
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Saturday 21 February 2015
Get Ready for $10 Oil
Rising oil production and falling demand will combine to drive oil prices lower.
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12 Successful Kickstarters That Never Delivered
All is not right in the world of crowdfunding. For every massive critical success like Shovel Knight or Divinity: Original Sin, there are numerous games or game-related projects that disappoint, under-deliver, or, as has become scarily common, take people's money and never make what they promised in the first place.
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Coca-Cola Spreads Happiness Online With Emoji Web Addresses
Coca-Cola hasn't had much luck making the Internet a happier place lately, but maybe this will help—a fun campaign from Coca-Cola Puerto Rico that puts smiley-face emojis right in the brand's web addresses.
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Cable TV is speeding up its shows slightly to show you more ads
It's not news that reruns of Friends aren't what cable TV really wants you to be watching. Networks make money by showing ads, and for years those networks have been looking for ways to pack in more and more quick spots to get you to buy Charmin, Tide, and Viagra. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that many networks are desperately trying to increase the number of commercials you watch per hour, sometimes...
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How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul
Etsy has grown from a startup built by crafters and for crafters to a juggernaut on the verge of an IPO. The most recent success story of a mom making a million dollars a year isn’t what it seems. In practical terms, scaling the handmade economy is an impossibility. So while Etsy maintains a hipster façade, they lost their indie cred years ago.
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Amazon Two-Hour Deliveries Come to Prime Members in Brooklyn
Amazon isn’t playing around. A spokeswoman said Thursday that the e-commerce giant has expanded its Prime Now same-day delivery service out of Manhattan for the first time and into select neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The service allows Amazon Prime subscribers in neighborhoods such as Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights to get free delivery on a limited selection of goods within two hours of ordering. Prime Now also offers an $8, one-hour option...
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How Apple Reinvented Premium
It was 1991 when we got our first Mac. It was a Macintosh LC, nicknamed “the pizza box”, and “LC” I now know stood for Low Cost, but I don’t remember it being cheap. In fact, at over $2000 it was the most expensive thing I had ever bought, next to my car. A relentless series of desktops, PowerBooks and MacBooks, and now iPhones and iPads later, I still buy Apple products and expect to pay substantially more than for non-Apple choices. My new iPhone is at least two times the cost of an Android...
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Thailand To Give Chinese Tourists Etiquette Manuals
Thailand’s tourism office has announced plans to give incoming etiquette manuals to Chinese tourists who are expected to visit the country later this week. As much as 90,000 tourists from mainland China are expected to visit Thailand this week, according to the Tourist Authority of Thailand. In preparation for their arrival, leaflets containing information on how to behave properly in public have been printed and are ready to be distributed to Thailand’s Chinese visitors.
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Friday 20 February 2015
Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
A holy war is being fought over a proposal to build a $500 million commercial development, on the rim of America's natural treasure.
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10 days on, HSBC bank faces 10 separate inquiries
Ten days after revelations about HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary first broke, the bank is now facing 10 separate inquiries around the world. On Wednesday Swiss prosecutors announced a criminal investigation into the Geneva-based bank’s activities, joining a growing list of investigations in jurisdictions across Europe, Asia, and both North and South America. Of perhaps the most immediate concern to the bank are statements from US Department of Justice officials...
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The end of RadioShack, through the eyes of a store manager
After 94 years in business, RadioShack -- one of the most recognizable retail brands in American history -- is rapidly disappearing. Jon, a former employee, talks to a current store manager over the course of its dying days.
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