Cyber Monday, Game of Drones, Google, Facebook, Copyfight, e-Media, Censorship, Prenda, Bitcoin, Haxx0red, Passwords, Healthcare.gov

Cyber Monday

• The Unmitigated Inanity of Cyber Monday—"The dumbest fake holiday of the year."
• T-Mobile and AT&T went head-to-head on Twitter over a customer… T-Mobile won
• Yahoo sends rambling memo demanding employees start using its webmail—"A close read of the anachronistic historical universe where Yahoo takes place."
• The internet mystery that has the world baffled
• Stuxnet's Secret Twin—"The real program to sabotage Iran's nuclear facilities was far more sophisticated than anyone realized." ForeignPolicy

Game of Drones

• Amazon says drone deliveries are the future—Starting to fly in China.
• Hexacopter used to smuggle tobacco and cell phones into Georgia prison
• Army Scores a Super-Stealthy Drone That Looks Like a Bird

Google

• Google Is Ordered to Block Images in Privacy Case—"The Internet company said it would appeal a French court's ruling that it strip from its search results nine images of the former European racing chief Max Mosley." NYT
• Google's frightening patent: collect data and interact with others automatically on your behalf
• Will This Google+ Flaw Abruptly Shut Down Your YouTube Account?—User gets false-flagged as an impersonator and Google requires photo ID to have it reinstated.
• YouTube hilariously impotent against ASCII comment pornographers
• Google employee goes on Facebook rant after cafe bans him from wearing Google Glass—What a self-entitled Glasshole.
• Gmail is boiling the frog – and we are the frog
• This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan—Frickin' onions, I tell ya.

Facebook

• Louis C.K. parody reveals the one button Facebook needs—"No, it's not a 'hate' button or 'private' button. It's something far more pertinent to the truth of social networking."
• On Facebook, a growing teenage wasteland
• Fraud problem makes Facebook more attractive to online advertisers, say ad insiders
• Why I'm (Still) Not Going to Join Facebook: Four Arguments that Failed to Convince Me
• Snapchat turned down more than $3B from Facebook

Copyfight

• Study shows removing DRM increased music sales
• Russell Brand: Get My New DVD From The Pirate Bay
• Copyright Monopoly Disintegration Inevitable As It Only Takes A Single Country

e-Media

• Young adult readers 'prefer printed to ebooks'—"Survey finds that 62% of 16 to 24-year-olds prefer traditional books over their digital equivalents."
• A Brief Whine About E-Books, Digital Publishing, and International Nonsense
• Apple Doesn't Want to Pay the Feds' E-Book Lawyer $70,000 a Week

Censorship

• UK's Internet-Porn Crackdown Threatens Free Speech—"Critics of the law fear it will give the gov. the power to censor any information it feels is dangerous."
• Apple Blocks "Sex Criminals" #2 on comiXology iOS App—It recently rejected #3 and retroactively removed #1.
• Amazon removes abuse-themed e-books from store
• 'Ryse: Son of Rome' design director comments on cutting sex scenes in U.S.
• Let us say 'faggots' on Facebook, says maker of pork snack—"Mr Brain's, which makes the traditional pork product, is urging Facebook to allow people to use the word 'faggots' to refer to the dish."

Prenda

• Prenda's massive trolling take revealed: $1.9 million in 2012
• Prenda's John Steele: Accused of identity theft by his own mother-in-law
• Porn trolls slammed again: Minnesota judge calls in the feds on Prenda—"Prenda Law is referred to investigators—and it must repay its victims."
• Copyright troll starts filing ADA lawsuits—without knowledge of his "clients"—"Disabled 'tester' didn't know Hansmeier sued small businesses in her name."
• Unhappy Thanksgiving for Prenda Law, ordered to pay $261K to defendants

Bitcoin

• We need anonymity to make democracy safe – Stallman talks bitcoin
• Texas Hacker Debunks Link Between Bitcoin Founder and Online Drug Market
• E-sports site settles covert Bitcoin mining case for $1 million
• The secret Hong Kong facility that uses boiling goo to mine Bitcoins
• Bitcoin Thefts Surge, DDoS Hackers Take Millions
• Sheep Marketplace Scam Revealed, $40 Million Stolen
• Missing: hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

Haxx0red

• Malware Analysts Say Breaches Are Not Being Disclosed by Their Employers—40% of infections come from company executives visiting porn sites.
• How Somebody Forced the World's Internet Traffic Through Belarus and Iceland
• Alleged Windows support scammer forfeits money earned by "fixing" PCs
• Estonia to extradite 3 men for "Operation Ghost Click" malware scheme—"US government claims botnet group took in $14 million from traffic diversion."
• Ding Ding Ding! Video Poker 'Hackers' Cleared of Federal Charges—"Two gamblers who took advantage of a software bug to win a small fortune from casino video poker machines will enjoy Thanksgiving without the threat of federal prison hovering over them like a carving knife. A federal judge in Las Vegas this morning dismissed federal charges against the men, ending a nearly two-year-long legal battle over when beating the house becomes a crime."

Passwords

• The gentle art of cracking passwords
• Hack of MacRumors forums exposes password data for 860,000 users
• Password hack of vBulletin.com fuels fears of in-the-wild 0-day attacks
• Cupid Media Hack Exposed 42M Passwords—Stored as plaintext. Oy.
• Now Selfies Can Be Used as Passwords

Healthcare.gov

• Obama Administration Says Health Care Website Is Vastly Improved NYT
• Report: 100,000 Signed Up For Obamacare As Website Was Revamped
• Consumer tips for HealthCare.gov show administration's cautious optimism WaPo
• HealthCare.gov will work. That means Obamacare can work, too. WaPo
• Obamacare website progress garners muted reaction from Congress

Iran; Filibusted, Politics, Vote Machinations; Press Freedom and Transparency; NSA Spying, Your Rights Online, Cybersecurity, Tech Tracking, Surveillance and Privacy

Iran

• Iran agrees to curb nuclear activity at Geneva talks
• We Have a Deal With Iran. A Good One.—"It's everything Obama hoped to achieve in Geneva."
• Republicans Attack Iran Deal Before It's Announced—"Texas Senator John Cornyn suggests the late-night announcement from Geneva is a Wag The Dog moment, aimed at saving the President from the messy Obamacare rollout."

Filibusted

• Don't Believe the Republican Cries of Vengeance—"They would have gotten rid of the filibuster at the first chance they got, regardless of what Democrats did today."
• Stop whining, centrists: Bipartisanship is a myth that's never existed—"While Beltway elite pine for the "good old days" and condemn filibuster reform, they're wrong on the history." Salon
• GOP: Ending Filibusters Is Unconstitutional and Un-American—and We'll Do it, Too
• Why The Filibuster Change Is Fantastic News For Obama—Will make him less of a lame duck [WaPo].
• Harry Reid and filibuster reform: The nuclear option is a huge victory for progressives

Politics

• Utah Attorney General Blames 'False Allegations' For Forcing Resignation
• Blow by Blow: 10 Politicians Linked to Cocaine—"Congressman Trey Radel isn't the first politician to make headlines from white lines."
• Drug testing is a great idea. Thanks, Rep. Radel.—"Rep. Trey Radel voted in favor of drug-testing the folks who get food stamps. In that case, why don’t we drug-test all people who get federal money? Let's start with members of Congress!" WaPo

Vote Machinations

• Bill to end gerrymander huge reform
• Georgia GOP dusts off Jim Crow tactic: Changing election date
• It's The Fundamentals, Stupid: Elections Aren't Determined By Short-Term 'Game Changes'

Press Freedom and Transparency

• White House blocks access to Obama events, news groups say
• Focal shift: Press photogs riled by White House social media—"Even if the Obama administration mollifies angry photojournalists, the news media now has to earn its place alongside direct communications through Twitter and Facebook."
• Muzzling the Freedom of Information Act—"Government to authors: We're not showing you public records because you're not journalists."

NSA Spying

• Government Claims Americans Have No Right To Challenge NSA Phone Surveillance
• N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power—"The top-secret document described strategies to keep pace with rapidly changing technology and stay ahead of adversaries in intelligence collection." NYT
• NSA and metadata: How the government can spy on your health, political beliefs, and religious practices
• NSA Mass Surveillance Has Already Been Used For Ordinary Police Work—"[O]nce mass surveillance of ordinary people is used for everyday police work, we are past the event horizon to a surveillance dystopia."
• NSA infected 50,000 computer networks with malicious software
• Report: NSA also had the green light to spy on UK residents—"NSA has unfettered access to metadata about UK residents' communications."
• House intel bill adds $75 million to NSA budget to stop future Snowdens—"Senate version also adds money to NSA's budget to stop 'insider threat.'"
• NSA bulk data collection violates constitutional rights, ACLU argues—"Civil liberties group tells New York court that program breaches first and fourth amendments and NSA is overreaching its powers."
• NSA deputy director skeptical on sharing data with FBI and others—"John Inglis appears at University of Pennsylvania to argue legality of bulk surveillance and indicates stance on Feinstein bill."
• Former Blackwater CEO: The NSA Is Turning America Into North Korea

Your Rights Online

• Tim Berners-Lee says 'surveillance threatens web'And it's worse than outright censorship.
• Internet co-creator: 'Privacy may be an anomaly'
• Lavabit Strikes Back at Feds in Key Internet Privacy Case
• Twitter upping security to thwart government hacking—"The microblogging site adds a new security measure designed to make it harder for organizations like the National Security Agency to uncover its data."
• Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days. Here's how.

Cybersecurity

• Rockefeller attaches cybersecurity bill to NDAA 2014—CISPA returns.
• President's tech council plays sad trombone for federal cybersecurity—"Report finds that government 'rarely follows accepted best practices.'"
• Repeated attacks hijack huge chunks of Internet traffic, researchers warn—"Man-in-the-middle attacks divert data on scale never before seen in the wild."

Tech Tracking

• LG smart TVs send viewing habits, filenames back to manufacturer—"Businesses may want to think twice before plugging that USB device into the boardroom smart TV as a UK blogger has found that his TV has been sending back the names of files on his devices."
• Google pays $17m to settle Safari cookie privacy-bypass charge
• Microsoft video attacks Google's Chrome as surveillance technology

Surveillance and Privacy

• Meet the Spies Doing the NSA's Dirty Work—"This obscure FBI unit does the domestic surveillance that no other intelligence agency can touch."
• US Working Overtime Behind The Scenes To Kill UN Plan To Protect Online Privacy From Snooping
• The surveillance state: How Australia spies on its own
• Mexico Uses Deaf People to Monitor Surveillance Cameras
• A Vote for Privacy is a Vote for Security

Tech Luddites, Digital Life; iPhone Follies, Not-so-smartphones, Microsoft, Patents, Wikipedia, Foul Play, Your Rights Online, Facebook and Your Privacy, NSA Spying and Surveillance, Haxx0red

Tech Luddites

• Computers are too difficult and people are computer illiterate
• The digital revolution's lingering literacy problem—"If so many of the 2.7 billion people already online still have trouble with basic computer concepts, how will the next 2.5 billion fare?"
• Pew: 15% Of Americans Don't Have Internet. 5% Think It's Irrelevant

Digital Life

• YouTube gets the yuck out in comments cleanup
• Are search engines and the Internet hurting human memory?
• Anger explodes at Yahoo Mail redesign disaster: Key functions removed or broken—"The redesign is Yahoo Mail's second redesign within a year (under the leadership of former Google executive, current Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer). It was publicized at launch as Yahoo's bid to make Yahoo Mail more like Gmail." Unfortunately, in my own experience, the new Gmail sucks donkey balls.

iPhone Follies

• And Then Steve Said, 'Let There Be an iPhone' NYT
• Apple Never Really Meant to Sell a 'Cheap' iPhone—The 5c didn't seem worth getting at its price with the 5s around.
• California man sues Apple CEO Tim Cook over automatic iOS 7 update
• Chinese couple sold baby to pay for iPhone—"Unemployed parents mastermind 'sinister conspiracy', auctioning daughter for £5,000 and using proceeds to buy luxury shoes and iPhone."
• Blast from the Past: No, phone app can't cure acne -- Sellers claimed that by holding iPhone to your face it could clear up your skin

Not-so-smartphones

• This is how a Helsingin Sanomat journalist tried to save Nokia
• BlackBerry pleads for patience in open letter to customers, partners
• 'They were completely oblivious'—"Hundreds of passengers on packed commuter train were so engrossed in mobile phones that they failed to spot gun-wielding student killer."

Microsoft

• Bill Gates admits Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake, blames IBM—A single button would've made things worse.
• 3 Steve Ballmer Quotes That Explain Why Microsoft's Mobile Effort Failed
• Microsoft bug hunter won't see much of that $100,000 bounty—"James Forshaw scooped a $100,000 reward from Microsoft – but his company and the taxman will get most of it."

Patents

• Crowd-backed EFF files to kill off 'podcast patent'
• Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids
• Google Patents 'Heart-Shaped Hand Gesture,' But Taylor Swift Shouldn't Worry

Wikipedia

• Why Wikipedia Does Belong in the Classroom—A counterpoint to Why Wikipedia Doesn't Belong In The Classroom.
• The battle to destroy Wikipedia's biggest sockpuppet army
• How Much is Wikipedia Worth?

Foul Play

• This video is no longer available: The Day One Garry's Incident Incident—Wild Games Studio should be called out for abusing the DMCA to censor critiques, but their game is embarrassing by itself as it is.
• Gaijin Entertainment has Served Me with a UDRP Complaint—Trying to steal another's legitimately registered domain.
• EA finally "exploring the possibility" of offline mode for SimCity—After burning their fans, they claim the game is a "success".

Your Rights Online

• New York Comic Con Tweets From Attendees' Accounts Without Permission—Fuck @NY_Comic_Con's non-apology.
• The Darkest Place on the Internet Isn't Just for Criminals—"Darknet is populated by precisely who you'd expect to be skulking in the darkest corners of the online world. They have something to hide. But the Darknet, by itself, isn't evil, and we can use it too."
• How stores use your phone's WiFi to track your shopping habits WaPo
• Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
• Contrary to public claims, Apple can read your iMessages—"Control of keys gives Apple ability to read iMessages, despite end-to-end encryption."

Facebook and Your Privacy

• This Game Shows You How Terrible Facebook's Privacy Settings Really Are—First they make every profile searchable.
• Facebook changes privacy settings for teens—Then they sacrifice teen's privacy to keep them from leaving.
• This Won't Be Awkward: Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Writes Children's Book Telling Kids to Get Off Facebook

NSA Spying and Surveillance

• Obama has chance to reshape the NSA—"The upcoming retirement of National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander will give President Obama an opportunity to transform the agency."
• US asks top court not to take case on NSA cyber-snooping—Subverting check and balances.
• Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President's Email—Naturally, they're angry.
• US spy agency 'taped millions of French calls'—"France said on Monday it would 'immediately' summon the US ambassador in Paris to respond to the 'shocking' claims in Le Monde newspaper on Monday that the US NSA spy agency secretly recorded millions of phone calls made in France. Le Monde cited documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden."
• The NSA Spying and Lying Does Relate to 9/11

Haxx0red

• UK secretly arrested 16-year old boy for world's 'biggest' DDoS-attack
• 13 members of Anonymous indicted
• Japan promoting programs to produce more hackers for cybersecurity
• Silk Road: suspicions grow that server was hacked ahead of arrests
• Adobe source code breach; it's bad, real bad
• Cryptolocker Ransomware: What You Need To Know
• To pay off webcam spies, Detroit kid pawns $100k in family jewels for $1,500—"Video was so embarrassing, theft seemed the better option."

Domestic Spying; XBone, SimShitty, Zynga, Tilt, Game Dev Tycon, Chess

Domestic Spying

• Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations—"The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows."
• Paul wants to lead Supreme Court challenge to fed's tracking of Americans' calls, emails
• NSA memo pushed to 'rethink' 4th Amendment
• The NSA's Best Tool for Snooping: You Carry It in Your Pocket Every Day
• After PRISM, 'Boundless Informant' tool comes to light—"Meet the U.S. National Security Agency's global intelligence tracking tool, Boundless Informant, the latest intelligence secret exposed by leaked information."
• Analyzing Yahoo's PRISM non-denial
• '4 Intelligence Officials' Allegedly Joke Of 'Disappearing' NSA Leaker, Reporter
• I Am Worried. You Should Be Too.—"We shouldn't have to wait for an abuse of power to know that the NSA's snooping has gone too far."
• Icelandic Legislator: I'm Ready To Help NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Seek Asylum
• UK says eavesdropping is legal, defends U.S. spy links
• Why Canadians Should Be Demanding Answers About Secret Surveillance Programs
• Blast from the Past: The NYT's predictable revelation: new FISA law enabled massive abuses—"The 2008 Democratic Congress gutted eavesdropping safeguards and thus made spying abuses inevitable." Salon

XBone

• Microsoft confirms 'pre-owned fee' for Xbox One—"Microsoft has confirmed that all Xbox One games will require mandatory installation onto the system's hard drive and, to install the same disc onto another user's drive, a fee must be paid."
• Microsoft kills game ownership and expects us to smile
• Opinion: Xbox One policy is a lovely marriage proposal to big corporations
• Microsoft Paying Third-Party Publishers to Not Show PS4 Games at E3 2013 – Report
• Xbox One to perform online checks every 24 hours, every hour if playing on separate console
• Wii U Sales Rank On Amazon UK Jumps 875 Percent After Xbox One Reveal—The ongoing resentment against XBox gives also Sony an opening. Update 11 Jun 2013: Which they've taken full advantage of.
• My Internet connection is fine, Microsoft. I’m worried about yours

SimShitty

• The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away
• Original 'SimCity' creator Will Wright calls EA's botched game launch 'inexcusable'
• SimCity for Mac Delayed Until August

Zynga

• Zynga to lay off 18 percent of staff, shut offices, slash infrastructure—"With dwindling number of users, Farmville maker needs fewer employees."
• Betting the FarmVille: the rise and fall of Zynga
• Why Zynga is failing — in basic napkin math

Tilt

• Nintendo to profit from user videos posted to YouTube—Guess they have to make up for their crappy earnings lately.
• How a player with a "useless" item almost took down EVE Online's entire economy
• Taiwanese Gamer Witnesses Murder in Internet Cafe, Keeps Playing Games in Bloodstained Clothes

Game Dev Tycon

• Game Dev Tycoon forces those who pirate the game to unwittingly fail from piracy
• Piracy or baiting? The thorny legal question of Game Dev Tycoon's honeypot
• Game Dev Tycoon developer finds success after its cheeky anti-piracy stunt

Chess

• Chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov Is Latest Russian to Flee
• A Point of View: Chess and 18th Century artificial intelligence
• Chess mania captures Armenia's attention
• "The Annihilator" Chess Piece from Hell
• Chess CAPTCHA

Your Rights Online, Privacy and Surveillance, Google Glass, Bloomberg; Copyfight, Piracy, DMCA, e-Books; Prenda, Pr0n

Your Rights Online

• 'The future of freedom on the internet is at stake'
• U.N.'s ITU pursues Internet control -- again
• Interpol filter scope creep: ASIC ordering unilateral website blocks

Privacy and Surveillance

• Eric Schmidt: we have to fight for privacy, or we're going to lose it
• Your digital identity and why you cannot escape it
• Fears of U.S. Mass Surveillance Spur Data Protection Proposals in Europe
• The Government Wants A Backdoor Into Your Online Communications
• Kiwis Want To Spy On All Communications, VPNs, And Be Able To Use Secret Evidence Against You
• How the FBI's online wiretapping plan could get your computer hacked
• Dear hacker: Please help us eavesdrop on our customers—"Saudi telecom seeks help monitoring encrypted Twitter data according to e-mails."
• Skype with care – Microsoft is reading everything you write—Are they really doing that? The evidence seems to say yes.
• So This Is How It Begins: Guy Refuses to Stop Drone-Spying on Seattle Woman
• How to permanently delete Snapchat photos

Google Glass

• Glass questions
• Lambda Labs Is Launching A Facial Recognition API For Google Glass
• At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom NYT

Bloomberg

• Privacy Breach on Bloomberg's Data Terminals NYT
• Bloomberg reporters allegedly used financial terminals to spy on Wall Street
• Bloomberg chief apologizes for data snooping

Copyfight

• Goods from kiosks at two malls seized—"Jim Spero, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Buffalo office of Homeland Security, says the sale of counterfeit goods - in Buffalo and beyond - poses a major security threat." Emphasis mine.
• Obama Stops Championing Treaty That Gives the Blind Better Access to E-Books
• 'Mockingbird' Writer Harper Lee Sues To Regain Pulitzer-Winning Novel's Copyright
• Day of the Dead trademark request draws backlash for Disney—No Dia de los Muertos for Mickey.
• Jail Terms For Unlocking Cellphones Shows The True Black Heart Of The Copyright Monopoly
• Defeat for EA over faces of sports stars—"A former college football player has won the right to sue Electronic Arts for using his likeness without permission."
• A YouTube Piano Teacher Took Down His Competition With Phony Copyright Claims

Piracy

• Hollywood should not decide our copyright laws
• US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!
• RIAA stamps its feet again, demands Google improve anti-piracy efforts
• Banking Privacy More Important than Copyright Enforcement, Dutch Court Rules
• Megaupload Launches Frontal Attack on White House Corruption

DMCA

• Judge Tosses DMCA Defenses, Creating Unexpected Copyright Liability For Web Services In New York
• Hollywood Studios Censor Pirate Bay Documentary—"Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate have all asked Google to take down links pointing to the Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK."
• Blogger Issues DMCA Notice To Take Down Posts Infringing His 'How To Infringe' Post

e-Books

• Apple denies DoJ accusations, says eBook publishers were fixing prices before iBooks
• Penguin will pay $75M back to e-book buyers over alleged price fixing
• The Steve Jobs emails that show how to win a hard-nosed negotiation
• Judge says leaning toward U.S. in Apple e-books case
• Amazon: Victim or Aggressor? Issue Will Frame Apple E-book Trial

Prenda

• New Prenda letter threatens to tell neighbors about porn accusations—"Sprawling case may be porn troll's 'last stand,' but it looks massive."
• Prenda lawyer gets kicked off 9th Circuit case—"Paul Hansmeier's motion to delay an $81,000 sanctions order was also denied."
• Prenda blows sanctions deadline, ordered to pay an extra $1,000 per day

Pr0n

• Yahoo won't restrict porn on Tumblr
• EU votes to reject 'porn ban' proposals
• Does Bible Belt love porn as much as the godless do?
• "Revenge porn" suit targets generic porn sites, Web hosts
• Chinese "spy" caught with NASA laptop full of porn, not secrets

Google Search, Everywhere, Hangouts, Ogooglebar; Facebook; Adobe; Patent Trolls; Tech Death; Passwords, Hacking and Malware

Google Search

• Google announces 'the end of search as we know it'
• Google Search scratches its brain 500 million times a day—"On a daily basis, 15 percent of queries submitted have never been seen before by Google's search engine."
• Google's cool new conversational search quietly hits Chrome

Everywhere

• Google unifies Gmail, Drive, and photo storage: all users now get 15GB of shared space
• Google Buys a Quantum Computer—"Google and a corporation associated with NASA are forming a laboratory to study artificial intelligence by means of computers that use the unusual properties of quantum physics." NYT
• The App That Puts Google's Music Subscription Service on Your iPhone
• Google+'s Best New Unadvertised Feature: Photo Search With Visual Recognition
• Why Google Will Crush Nielsen

Hangouts

• Thank you Google for the new homework assignment: Hangouts vs. Chat
• Hangouts Won't Hangout With Other Messaging Vendors: Google's New Unified Messaging Drops Open XMPP/Jabber Interop
• Google defends its use of proprietary tech in Hangouts

Ogooglebar

• Google takes the 'last step' to shut down its failed social network Buzz
• Don't expect Google Fiber to come to your town anytime soon
• Google demands Microsoft remove YouTube Windows Phone app, cites lack of ads—Microsoft contends that "Google refused to work with us...." but ends up yanking the app anyway.
• Google Admits Defeat In Its 7-Year Battle With Amazon And PayPal
• Dumped! by Google—One moral from this story: don't put all your digital eggs in one basket.

Facebook

• Facebook loses millions of users as biggest markets peak—"Facebook's dominance in the social media world has come under threat from newer services such as Instagram and Path."
• Facebook's stock has lost 31% of its value since it went public one year ago
• Teens Are Turning Away from Facebook Because Tumblr Is Real, and Parent-Free—And though they're getting tired of the drama, some are sticking around.
• Rupert Murdoch warns Facebook faces same fate as MySpace
• Facebook Home and Dogfooding
• Another reason for Facebook Home’s rough start: The team behind it didn't fully understand Android
• Facebook teens' kimonos - basically never closed—Do teens really overshare or not (Salon)?

Adobe

• Adobe Goes All-In With Subscription-Based Creative Cloud, Will Still Sell CS6 For Now But Will Stop Developing I
• Unhappy Customers Want to Parachute From Adobe's Creative Cloud
• xkcd: All Adobe Updates

Patent Trolls

• Newegg, Overstock win patent fight with Alcatel-Lucent
• Nintendo Joins Firms Beating Patent 'Bullies' in Court
• Lodsys patent rampage continues as Activision and Capcom get sued
• Patent troll that wants $1,000 per worker gets sued by Vermont A-G
• Bad news for patent trolls, in one chart

Tech Death

• BlackBerry is the phone people want least, survey says
• The Netbook Is on Its Last Legs
• HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future
• Windows 8 Causes the Biggest Drop in Customer Satisfaction Since the Vista Disaster
• Feds crack down on bitcoin exchange

Passwords

• Why your password can't have symbols—or be longer than 16 characters
• It's official: Password strength meters aren't security theater
• Password Minder: The blank notebook that got laughed out of production

Hacking and Malware

• Cyber security expert answers readers' questions
• Mac malware signed with Apple ID infects activist's laptop
• Reporters use Google, find breach, get branded as "hackers"—"Scripps reporters uncover mishandling of customer data; companies threaten to sue."
• LulzSec Hackers Sentenced to Prison by London Court
• The true cost of the 'Microsoft support' scam call
• Feds Drop Hacking Charges in Video-Poker Glitching Case
• xkcd: Authorization

Gitmo, War on Terror, Soldiers, Money in the Military, Guns

Gitmo

• Gitmo is killing me—"No charge. No trial. And I'm being force-fed while bound to a chair." NYT
• Gitmo Defense Lawyers Say Somebody Has Been Accessing Their Emails
• Guantanamo legal files mysteriously disappear from PCs—"Legal documents by lawyers representing detainees charged with plotting 9/11 vanish, while hundreds of thousands of e-mails also land on the computers of prosecuting attorneys."
• Clashes at Guantanamo over hunger strike prisoners
• Obama, Guantánamo, and the enduring national shame

War on Terror

• 'No plan for after the invasion': How an effort at rebuilding destroyed Iraq
• "Indisputable" that U.S. practiced torture after 9/11—"A lengthy independent review (NYT) found that the country's highest officials and president condoned torture." Salon
• How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States—"What really happened after Raymond Davis killed two men in the street in Lahore." NYT
• Hagel Cancels Creation Of New Medal For Drone, Cyber Warfare
• 'I Am a Bomb': Mother Acquitted over Child's 9/11 Shirt—"A French court has dropped charges against a mother accused of glorifying terrorism by sending her 3-year-old son to kindergarten wearing a 9/11-themed T-shirt. The decision has infuriated officials."

Soldiers

• After Years Of Struggle, Veteran Chooses To End His Life
• Wars on Drugs—"The military has been increasing prescriptions of psychoactive drugs for soldiers in combat at an alarming rate." NYT
• Bank Of America To Pay $36.8 Million To Military Members For Improper Foreclosures

Money in the Military

• Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War
• World military spending declines, a first since 1998—What do you think?
• What Would a Fighter Jet Buy 60 Years After Eisenhower's Speech?—"In his famed 1953 Chance for Peace speech, President Dwight D. Eisenhower outlined what armaments cost in human terms. Applying his methodology toward today yields interesting results." NYT

Guns

• In blow to gun control backers, background check compromise falls 6 votes short
• Major Gun Rights Group Splits With NRA, Endorses Increased Background Checks
• Tactical Response CEO James Yeager: I Got My Gun Permit Back

Memes, Tech Culture, Internet; CISPA, Privacy; Open; Copyfight; Trouble with Telcos; Customer Service; Interfaces

Memes

• The Overly-Attached Girlfriend Explains What It's Like Being A Wildly Popular Internet Meme
• You didn't make the Harlem Shake go viral—corporations did
• Memes: Has The Time Come To Monetize Them—Here's a snapshot of what's been trending over the past few years.
• 7 Memes That Went Viral Before The Internet Existed
• The man who created internet memes — before the internet

Tech Culture

• How the Banner Ad Was Born
• The Dangers of Trusting Wikipedia With Your Life
• Police Search For Mugger For 3 Weeks, Internet Finds Him In An Hour
• You can now tell Google what to do with your account in the afterlife—"Google's Inactive Account Manager lets users set up plans for 'inactivity' periods."
• Frequent texters tend to be shallow, research suggests—"Those who text 100+ times a day more interested in wealth and image, psychologists say."

Internet

• How the internet is making us poor
• Shodan: The scariest search engine on the Internet—"When people don't see stuff on Google, they think no one can find it. That's not true."
• Just Because It's On The Internet Doesn’t Make It True
• The Internet map—"is a bi-dimensional presentation of links between websites on the Internet."
• Cracked.com: If Famous Websites Were People

CISPA

• White House knocks amended CISPA bill for not addressing civil liberties concerns
• CISPA's Sponsor Can't Even Keep His Story Straight About NSA Having Access To Your Data
• Privacy protections booted from CISPA data-sharing bill—"Committee overwhelmingly votes down privacy amendments that would have curbed National Security Agency's access to private sector data."
• CISPA 2013: Google, Apple Top Massive List Of Supporters Favoring The Controversial Cybersecurity Bill
• What is CISPA, and what does it mean for you? FAQ

Privacy

• IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant—"The ACLU has obtained internal IRS documents that say Americans enjoy 'generally no privacy' in their e-mail messages, Facebook chats, and other electronic communications."
• NSA data center front and center in debate over liberty, security and privacy
• Delete This When You're Done: Snapchat and the Power of Deletion—"Snapchat highlights the power of deletion in resisting the gentle totalitarianism of endless sharing."
• Google chief urges action to regulate mini-drones—"How would you feel if your neighbour went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their backyard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"
• Facebook and State Attorneys General Team Up to Educate Teens and Parents about Privacy

Open

• The Empire acquires the rebel alliance: Mendeley users revolt against Elsevier takeover—"Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientiffic research, has promised that it won't become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren't waiting around."
• Opinion: Antitrust complaint against Android is an attack on open source
• Napster.fm Is An Open Source Social Music Player That Can Be Hosted By Anyone In Case Of Shutdown
• CFAA: Internet Activists Win First-Round Victory In Fight Over Anti-Hacking Law
• Open access gains momentum in Washington—"White House takes action to increase access to the results of federally funded scientific research."

Copyfight

• Australia To Propose Copyright Reform That Includes Fair Use
• The Copyright Monopoly Was Always Intended To Prevent Freedom Of Expression—"When Queen Mary I created the copyright monopoly on May 4, 1557, it was a purebred censorship mechanism: in exchange for a lucrative monopoly on printing, the London Company of Stationers agreed to let anything printed first pass by the royal censors."
• Blast from the Past: Stevie Wonder lobbies UN over audiobooks for the visually impaired

Trouble with Telcos

• Time Warner Cable: You Don't Really Need Google Fiber
• Don't let Verizon, AT&T run roughshod over smaller carriers, DOJ warns—"Spectrum auctions should boost competition, antitrust officials tell FCC."
• Cable Companies Can Now Force You to Rent Set-Top Boxes. Here Are Your Alternatives.
• Time Warner Cable (TWC) charges customer a wireless services fee for his own home—Customer rep claims that the "wireless signals are sent from the modem to the router, which then sends out WiFi signals at your home."
• Wouldn't It Be Smarter For ISPs And Cable Companies To Take Good Care Of Their Customers In The First Place?

Customer Service

• Stuffed Giraffe Shows What Customer Service Is All About
• Boy Reunited With Long Lost Toy Thanks to eBay
• BMW makes 4-year old's dream come true by designing a 19-engined race car
• RadioShack's epic PR win
• Why Amazon Is One Of The Most Successful Companies In The World

Interfaces

• How 'Minority Report' Trapped Us In A World Of Bad Interfaces
• We've Reached Peak Infographic, and We're No Smarter for It
• Checkboxes that kill your product
• Skeu.it
• Blast from the Past: An Interface of One's Own

Piracy, Copyfight, DMCA, DRM; Your Rights Online, Swartz, Cyberwarfare, CISPA, Surveillance and Privacy; Google; SimShitty

Piracy

• Online Music Piracy Doesn't Hurt Sales, European Commission Finds—"It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them."
• Game of Thrones' author George R.R. Martin on piracy, video games, and new shows with HBO
• Supreme Court OKs $222K Verdict for Sharing 24 Songs
• File-Sharing Service isoHunt Illegally Fosters Piracy, Appeals Court Says
• Kim "Billy Big Steps" Dotcom Still Causing Headaches For Spy Agency
• Did Prenda try to intimidate ID theft victim into dropping charges?
• Japan: Websites Can Legally Pirate Porn Movies, Prosecutors Rule

Copyfight

• Court Backs Student In Textbook Copyright Case—This would have been a telling blow to the First-Sale doctrine.
• Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own
• AP wins big: Why a court said clipping content is not fair use
• India Says: 'There Is No Direct Correlation Between IP And Innovation'

DMCA

• GoPro sends fraudulent DMCA notice to site that ran a negative review of its products
• Fifteen Years of DMCA Abuse
• Recent YouTube, Veoh Copyright Infringement Rulings Help To Unpack Safe Harbor Guidelines

DRM

• Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards
• DRM Strikes Again: Digital Comics Distributor JManga Closing Down... And Deleting Everyone's Purchases
• WHSmith Breaking Trust Putting DRM in eBooks without permission from the authors
• Google engineer: DRM has nothing to do with piracy
• DRM-free label for all your DRM-free stuff

Your Rights Online

• The persecution of Barrett Brown - and how to fight it—"The journalist and Anonymous activist is targeted as part of a broad effort to deter and punish internet freedom activism."
• Judge lifts gag order on online critic of McDonald's settlement
• UK: Defamation bill set to be lost due to 'Leveson' clause
• Press regulation deal sparks fears of high libel fines for bloggers—"Websites could have to pay exemplary damages if they don't sign up to new regulator, claim opponents of Leveson deal."
• Twitter cooperating with Russian authorities to ban users for promoting illegal websites—"... which were found to be encouraging suicide and drug use." How long before "gay propaganda" gets banned online in Russia?
• Nokia defies Google over WebM video standard, guarding VP8 codec patents
• Groupon, Aaron Swartz, and the Failings of the Second Great Tech Boom—"In the name of convenience, we've surrendered our data. And in the name of progress, we're not sure if we even care."
• Senate embraces Internet taxes—"Senators vote 75 to 24 to glue an endorsement of Internet sales taxes onto a Democratic budget bill, despite opponents predicting the idea is antibusiness and a 'bureaucratic nightmare.'"
• Departing commissioner says net neutrality was FCC’s biggest recent failure
• Fla. House passes bill banning Internet cafes, adult arcades

Swartz

• Aaron Swartz's estate seeks release of documents—"The representatives said the protective order 'hinders the public's access to vital information about Mr. Swartz's case without any substantial justifications.'"
• MIT to release documents related to Aaron Swartz case
• Secret Service Reopens Aaron Swartz Freedom of Information Act Requests
• The American Library Association Has Given Aaron Swartz Its First Ever Posthumous Award
• How to fix the worst law in technology

Cyberwarfare

• Tone Down the Cyberwarfare Rhetoric, Expert Urges Congress
• NATO Cyber War Manual Says Hackers Are Targets: Online Geneva Conventions proposed for cyber war
• Is All The Talk About Cyberwarfare Just Hype?

CISPA

• Reddit, Craigslist and 30,000 Other Websites Oppose CISPA
• CISPA Petition Reaches 100,000 Signatures, White House Owes Response
• Pro-CISPA Lawmaker Deletes Retweet about Money Received from Pro-CISPA Groups
• How to defeat CISPA once and for all
• Don’t Just Hate CISPA — Fix It

Surveillance and Privacy

• Cops: U.S. law should require logs of your text messages
• Emails should be protected like regular mail, California senator says
• 'We're going to have more visibility and less privacy': Mayor Bloomberg admits soon NYPD surveillance cameras will be on nearly every corner and in the air—Nibbling away at your civil liberties.
• Twitter Sued for $50M in France for Withholding the Identities of Anti-Semitic Users
• Microsoft admits revealing subscriber data to India govt
• Victory for Transparency: Microsoft Releases Report on Law Enforcement Requests for User Data
• Skype in hot water over failure to let French police eavesdrop
• Feds: No Warrant Needed to Track Your Car With a GPS Device—Claims it's needed to fight terrorism, but hopefully Congress can do something about this invasion of privacy.
• Activist sues San Francisco PD after warrantless search of his phone
• Big Data Is Opening Doors, but Maybe Too Many—"The dawn of mainframe computers offered huge technological benefits, but also challenged notions of privacy. Now Big Data is bringing similar expectations and concerns." NYT

Google

• Google apologizes for Digg de-indexing, saying it "inadvertently" applied a webspam action to whole site
• Google Keep Gets Frosty Reception—"Keep" it to yourself, Google Reader killers.
• The Problem With Google -- and The Cloud
• Google's trust problem
• CollegeHumor: Google is Full of Crap

SimShitty

• EA Didn’t Give Me A SimCity Refund, But Agreed To Switch It For A Game I Can Actually Play
• Flaw Exposed in Electronic Arts's Origin Store
• SimCity 5's Always-On Requirements: What Happened, And Why It Needs To Stop
• Electronic Arts CEO resigns, effective on March 30
• Team Meat dev: Apathy and refunds are more dangerous than Piracy

Robocalls; Bills; Google Reader; Facebook; Apple; Amazon.com; Malware, Hacking; Web; Tech

Robocalls

• FCC cracks down on campaign robocalls to cell phones—"Two companies face fines of nearly $5 million for allegedly making millions of artificial voice messages without consumers' prior consent."
• Public Utility CallerId4U, Inc. Involved in Millions of Illegal "Robocalls"
• Calling Out the Robocaller—"Account Management Assistance offers to reduce credit card interest rates, but satisfied customers are scarce." NYT

Bills

• 5-year-old sorry for racking up $2,500 iPad bill in 10 minutes
• $22,000 roaming bill caused son to go "into a fetal position" and cry
• Slough MP donates £14,268 to Comic Relief after 'naive' Twitter pledge—Ultimately, it was for a good cause.

Google Reader

• Google Reader Shutdown a Sobering Reminder That 'Our' Technology Isn't Ours
• Former Google Reader product manager confirms our suspicions: Its demise is all about Google+
• Google backslides on federated instant messaging, on purpose?
• What Else Google Is Shutting Down —CalDAV and apparently Chorme's RSS extension.
• Hitler finds out Google Reader will be shut down

Facebook

• Twitter Is the New CNN, and Facebook Wants to Be the Morning Paper—Expect to see #hastags in your newsfeed.
• As User Interaction on Facebook Drops, Sharing Comes at a Cost NYT
• It's Official: Teens Are Bored With Facebook—It's losing its cool.
• Facebook Brings Down The Hammer Again: Cuts Off MessageMe's Access To Its Social Graph
• Facebook users unwittingly revealing intimate secrets, study finds—"Personal information including sexuality and drug use can be correctly inferred from public 'like' updates, according to study."
• On Facebook, smart people like The Colbert Report and curly fries—"On the low end of the intelligence scale, you wind up with Sepahora-using, Harley-riding, Lady Antebellum fans who 'like being a mom.'"
• Knowing the score: How Facebook's Graph Search knows what you want

Apple

• Apple 'hipsters' lament that the company was better before it became cool
• Prominent Weibo Users Paid to Bash Apple? Introducing China's '820 Party'
• Mexico denies Apple rights to the 'iPhone' name
• There Was That Whole Internet Thing, Too
• How I ended up with Mac
• Apple privacy lawsuit: Judge calls company untrustworthy
• HiddenApps lets would have let you disable iAds and hide stock Apple apps, no jailbreak required

Amazon.com

• Amazon's application for .book domain opposed by industry groups and rivals
• Amazon accused of knocking off AWS customers' products
• My Amazon bestseller made me nothing Salon

Malware

• Mac malware that infected Facebook bypassed OS X Gatekeeper protection—Grab the OS X update now to ensure Java security.
• After leaving users exposed, Apple fully HTTPS-protects iOS App Store
• Google Wants to Replace All Your Passwords with a Ring—"The world's largest search engine is now experimenting with jewelry that would eliminate the need to remember dozens of passwords."
• Two new attacks on SSL decrypt authentication cookies—"Aging standard isn't holding up very well in face of sophisticated attacks."
• Puzzle box: The quest to crack the world's most mysterious malware warhead

Hacking

• Murdoch's empire accused of 600 more phone hackings
• Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams
• Crooks Spy on Casino Card Games With Hacked Security Cameras, Win $33M
• Two charged in theft of $40K from hacked Subway keypads
• Exploit lets websites bombard visitors' PCs with gigabytes of data

Web

• The 'Nasty Effect': How Comments Color Comprehension
• Unmasked: Golden Frog admits to creating sleazy DumpDropbox scare campaign
• Internet's 'bad neighbourhoods' spread scams and spam

Tech

• Leeds Universtiy submerges a server in liquid, cuts cooling costs 97 percent
• Why Moore's Law, not mobility, is killing the PC
• Chain of Fools : Upgrading through every version of Windows—Nostalgia for those of us who's done this over the years.