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From MSNBC: They’re already predicting, mathematically, what you’ll want to watch, what you’ll want to wear, and who you’ll want to vote for. Obviously, the next step is for computers to read your mind — and that’s just what they’re working toward at Tufts University in Boston. Your computer won’t be picking up details about …
From CNet News: For anyone who’s ever been stuck in rush-hour traffic on U.S. Highway 101 through Silicon Valley, the region’s overgrowth of green-glass office buildings, ugly tech company headquarters and expensive cars is a frustrating flip side to the steady stream of world-changing innovation that has emerged there. But if you’d visited the region …
From InfoWorld: Discrimination against women and minorities is putting the U.S. at a disadvantage in technology innovation, according to the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. Robert Birgeneau said of the top 50 university computer science department jobs in the U.S.,The highest hand wins, and all online poker hands contain five cards. not …
From CNN Money: Should we start calling Facebook, the popular social networking site, Microbook or Facesoft? The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Monday afternoon that Microsoft is considering investing $300 million to $500 million for a 5 percent stake in Facebook. The high end of that range would value Facebook as a …
From CNN: Hackers compromised dozens of Department of Homeland Security computers, moving sensitive information to Chinese-language Web sites, congressional investigators said Monday. Investigators pointed a finger at a government contractor, saying the firm hired to protect DHS computers tried to hide the incidents from the department. The FBI is investigating the incidents, a congressional staffer …
From Reuters (via ZDNet News): Canada’s privacy commissioner told Google in August that the feature–which offers a series of panoramic, 360-degree images of nine U.S. cities–could violate Canadian laws if it were introduced without alterations. Some of the pictures feature people who can clearly be identified, which contravenes Canadian legislation on privacy. “We are thinking …
From CNN: It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. 🙂 Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.
From Reuters: A Chinese man dropped dead after playing Internet games for three consecutive days, state media said on Monday as China seeks to wean Internet addicts offline. The man from the southern boomtown of Guangzhou, aged about 30, died on Saturday after being rushed to the hospital from the Internet cafe, local authorities were …
From eWeek: The Great Firewall of China is no firewall after all. The People’s Republic of China has no firewall perched on its routers to enable censors to block Internet sites. Rather, the authoritarian regime relies on a far more sophisticated censorship system that uses a keyword blacklist and routers that reach deep into Internet …
From USA Today: Social network Facebook will soon make the listings — the name and photo — of its 40 million active members available to anyone who searches the Internet on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. But in its pursuit of building a bigger audience, Facebook has set off privacy alarms among customers who don’t necessarily …