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Credit card users may be dismayed by findings MIT Researchers reported last week in the journal Science: Just a few pieces of vague non-identifying information, namely the dates and locations of four purchases, were enough to identify 90 percent of people in a data set of 1.1 million credit card users over a three-month transaction period When the ...

People get sick, and back in the Middle Ages they would use leeches and razors to bleed them until they got better (read this to once again be really happy you didn't live in the Middle Ages). The practice didn't work that well -- yet if we look at what we do to sick divisions and companies, it is effectively the same thing. We cut investments, freeze salaries, make layoffs, and shave marketing expenses and then seem fascinated when the firms don't recover. ...

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that sorts the wheat from the chaff in new gadget announcements We're in the post-CES doldrums as far as shiny new toy reveals go, but there's plenty ahead in our crowdfunding-heavy lineup, including a thermometer smartphone accessory, flashing headphones, the world's cleverest mattress cover, and...

The Gamergate controversy, which centers on sexism and sexual violence in the video game industry, has made things hot for Wikipedia, whose arbitration committee has taken punitive action against some of the people involved in the debate The committee decided to impose a complete site-wide ban on one male editor, with the handle "Ryulong," Wikimedi...

Amazon on Wednesday announced WorkMail, a play for the enterprise email market. Offered by Amazon Web Services, WorkMail is aimed at companies that want to move their on-premises email services to the cloud WorkMail reduces complexity and cost, Amazon said. With all mail infrastructure relocated to Amazon's cloud, a company no longer need be concer...

Google has decided not to fix vulnerabilities in WebView for Android 4.3 and older, sparking heated discussions among developers Those versions of WebView run on the WebKit browser. Fixing them "required changes to significant portions of the code and was no longer practical to do so safely," Adrian Ludwig, lead engineer for Android security, expla...

Dish Network on Thursday announced that subscribers to its satelliteTV service can enable Reverse AutoHop for this Sunday's SuperBowl. This feature will enable viewers with the Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR to watch the commercials alone without having to fast-forward through the game To utilize Reverse AutoHop, customers need only have the PrimeTimeAny...

SpaceX on Thursday released a computer-generated animation demonstrating how the three Falcon 9 cores of its Falcon Heavy rocket, scheduled for launch later this year, would return to Earth The boosters would land vertically at a selected site....

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday issued a warning that intentional blockage of personal WiFi hotspots was illegal and would be subject to enforcement. The FCC has noticed a "disturbing trend" among hotels and other commercial establishments of blocking consumers' personal WiFi hotspots on their premises, its advisory notes.

Canada's spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment, has been eavesdropping on 102 free file upload sites, including Sendspace, Rapidshare and Megaupload, which has been shut down A CSE program called "Levitation" lets analysts access information on 10-15 million uploads and downloads of files from such sites daily, according to document...

T-Mobile US strikes again with its new Score offering. Score is like its Jump program for the company's credit-challenged customers. I like all the activity going on at T-Mobile. It is alive once again. That's the good part. However is it starting to burn too fast and too hot? If so, could it burn itself out?...

Part of my new year routine has been ordering new business cards. In this electronic age, they are the only things I actually print, and I'm a writer! Well, actually, in a few weeks I'll publish a book, Solve for the Customer (SftC), in paperback, and the two are related. Printing cards requires a special diligence. The process is akin to carving ...

Twitter on Tuesday announced two new offerings that could bolster its efforts to compete with Facebook. The new tools will let users create private groups of up to 20 members; they also will be able to shoot, edit and share video from within Twitter's mobile app Twitter members already can conduct one-on-one private conversations using its direct m...

Because Cuba's government makes it difficult for all but a handful of Cubans to access the Internet, people in Havana and other parts of the country have linked thousands of PCs to create an informal network known as "StreetNet," or "SNet" for short, the AP reported The network was built with commercially available equipment. The PCs are connected ...

Hackers are like gold miners. Once they find a rich vein for their malware, they mine it until it's dry.Point-of-sale terminals are such a vein, and it doesn't appear that it's one that's about to run dry any time soon Following the success of the Target breach in 2013, the hacker underground was quick to rush more POS malware to market....

"No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets, or invade the privacy of American families," President Barack Obama told the U.S. Congress during the State of the Union Address last week However, hunting down the perpetrators of cyberattacks that compromise national security or disrupt commerce is o...

Engage.cx just closed its first investment round -- US$2.9 million in Series A financing. The round of participating investors is noteworthy, but for the CRM industry the real intrigue lays in Engage.cx's premise -- or rather, promise: how to present a unified cohesive customer service operation, no matter which channel is used.

Oculus VR on Monday unveiled a new project at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Oculus Story Studio will produce movies in virtual reality. It presented its first example of the genre on Monday evening -- a 4-minute experience called Lost Oculus, which was founded in 2012 and quickly raised US$2.4 million via crowdfunding and venture c...

Cablevision on Monday announced plans for Freewheel, an all-WiFi mobile phone service offering unlimited data, talk and text to residents of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania The prepaid service will connect to Cablevision's Optimum Online WiFi network of 1.1 million hotspots. Optimum Online is Cablevision's high-speed Internet ser...

Apple is expected this week to report that last year's iPhone sales in China exceeded those in the United States, according to the Financial Times. Thirty-six percent of iPhone shipments in the most recent quarter went to China, while just 24 percent went to the U.S., according to UBS statistics, also reported by the FT. ...