Become a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!The big news this week is Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ resignation. Will Apple stop making great products? Does the new leader, Tim Cook, have what it takes to perpetuate the company’s recent success? When will his impact on the company even become noticeable? Wall Street seems pretty positive about the transition, at least. And here are […]
...moreIs there one hacker culture, or many? Here’s a a photo comparison of the Black Hat and Defcon conventions. Some tech folks are on edge today, with an eye on the stock markets following last week’s debt deal and downgrade controversy. Anonymous is back to activism today, with a message for the Syrian government. This […]
...moreNot a good day for Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg: he’s been declared worst dressed of Silicon Valley by GQ, and his sister quit his company. In the “creepy” department, unborn children can now be part of the family on Facebook. Google is not too happy to be the target of patent suits, gets told to stop whining. […]
...moreAdobe seems to be edging toward HTML5, potentially preparing to leave Flash behind. A new patent infringement suit is adding to Hulu’s recent acquisition woes. Meet one of the not-so-threatening faces behind LulzSec. Your future iPad will be made by robots, not humans. Calling the internet bad for society is “unhelpful and scaremongering.” Besides, why would I […]
...moreContrary to popular memory, Netflix has committed several gaffes along its way to movie rental domination. Fans of the dungeon hack genre ought to be looking forward to the Diablo 3 release later this year. Anonymous is planning to spread malicious gossip about the Norwegian man who killed dozens of people last Friday. I guess […]
...moreHackers really do seem to be at war with each other. Latest target: Anonplus. Meanwhile, Anonymous claims to have a huge cache of NATO data. The first track from Bjork’s new interactive album, Biophilia, is available on iPad today. Chinese counterfeiters are copying entire Apple stores now. The speculation continues that Google+ will eclipse Facebook and […]
...moreThere’s more information coming out on the role TV and movie studios may be playing in the Netflix price increase. It looks like Europe is experiencing the new tech bubble too, with a proliferation of tech start-up bootcamps causing some to scratch their heads. The internet may be changing fundamental things about us, like how […]
...moreOne news organization has got this online advertising thing down! BBC.com is making money sooner than anyone expected. Could the post-Facebook timing of Google+ be its biggest asset? Today’s tech bandwagon: formerly Europe-only music streaming service Spotify has landed on American shores. Gamers with disabilities are taking on the gaming industry, pushing for small modifications […]
...moreWhat is Google+ good for? Hiding from parents. But seriously. Google is letting more people onto its new social network this week, even after new glitches surfaced (and were fixed) over the weekend. The nerds are all excited today over upcoming HTC upgrades that will unlock newer Android phones. The perfect new app for moving season: […]
...moreA week after a rocky launch, Google+ is set to start welcoming new members. Judge to Apple: You can’t own the term “app store“. Speaking of Apple… The iPhone 5 hasn’t hit shelves yet, but iPhone 6 rumormongering (and attendant backlash) has already begun. It’s good to remember how old wireless technology, like the radio, set […]
...moreAre you ready for a Twitter-based Obama town hall-style meeting? I guess it sucks to work at RIM, maker of the ubiquitous BlackBerry, these days. Troubled News Corporation asset MySpace has long been spammy, but now it’s going to be owned by spammers, I mean, an ad company. With Justin Timberlake as its spokesperson. Despite a […]
...moreHacker group LulzSec, after almost two months of chaos, called a truce on Saturday. But their hacktivist buddies Anonymous say there’s no end in sight for them. Plus, if you do it right, hacking can land you a sweet job. There’s an argument to be made that corporate employee “idiocy” is a bigger problem than hackers. […]
...moreFollowing LulzSec’s declaration of war on the world, the world has declared war on LulzSec. Hulu is up for sale, but what exactly are they selling? It looks like ISPs are inching toward enforcing copyright within their networks, on behalf of media companies. Here’s a fun infographic comparing Microsoft and Apple through the ages. Britain, […]
...moreOnline currency Bitcoin, which was recently targeted by US senators for its use in the drug trade, is the latest high-profile hacking target. The fastest computer in the world is now in Japan, not China or the US. Are you ready for an internet in which anyone can make up their own domain suffix? Some unexpected […]
...moreSo who are all these hackers anyway? Here’s a quick video introduction. LulzSec has been grabbing headlines for the past week. They hit Citi customer accounts, the FBI, and the CIA. This week’s Titanic Takeover Tuesday took down a bunch of gaming sites. And who can forget the PBS hack last month, in retaliation for negative PBS […]
...moreBig hack of the day: the CIA, by LulzSec. And they released 62,000 password and login combinations with a challenge to hackers to find out where they work. Now, the security breaches are escalating to an all-out hacker war between competing groups LulzSec and Anonymous (complete with Final Fantasy references, oh my). Facebook addicts are […]
...moreHere’s some nice internet doomsdayism for your Monday: people only see things they like online. Oh, and traditional journalism is still dying because of the internet. Let’s just call today “internet hoax day”: the voice of the Syrian rebellion is fake, and McDonald’s isn’t actually racist. The latest security breach: the International Monetary Fund. Is Facebook reaching […]
...moreThere’s a lot going on in the security world right now. First, Lockheed Martin was compromised. There was the series of Sony hacks, and the newest round of Gmail hacks. Then, just as a judge says that banks aren’t really responsible for security breaches of customer accounts (short version and long version), one percent of […]
...moreApple held its big yearly news event, known as WWDC, today. Highlights include a new version of OSX, called Lion, that will only be available online, new mobile operating system iOS 5, greater Twitter integration for the iPhone, and a streamlined mobile messaging system. There’s something fishy about the fact that Facebook headquarters is one […]
...moreIn Google news, the company is blaming China (again) for the latest round of Gmail hacks, and today they launch a new “+1” button to compete with Facebook’s ubiquitous “Like” around the interwebs. Where did Nokia go wrong, and is there still time to fix things? And does this ad make you want to buy […]
...moreTupac lives! At least, according to a group that hacked PBS over the weekend. Another group of hackers successfully broke through Lockheed Martin’s self-defense systems, after months of preparation. Robots are still taking over the world on occupation at a time, this time from on stage in Boston. Twitter finally gave up user information in […]
...moreWall Street is not too happy with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, even after Microsoft’s recent, somewhat controversial purchase of Skype. Skype has, incidentally, been having some major problems this week. Google Wallet, a much gossiped-about, touchless, money-less, perhaps even magical phone payment system, is expected to be announced today. Amazon soldiers on with the 99-cent offer […]
...moreTo speak of “the other” is often to say very little nowadays. There are big-O others, little-o others, psychoanalytic others, (post)colonial others, others who punish and spy on us when we are least aware of it, others who choose their otherness and others who are forced into their condition. It was into this soup of […]
...moreSomehow I missed this back in March: gesture-based touchscreen phone keyboard Swype is available for download again! Laptop batteries that will last three years? Sign me up! Chinese factory Foxconn, which supplies Apple with parts and had a spate of worker suicides last year, just can’t catch a break. Now, an explosion seems to be disrupting production. […]
...moreTen years in, brick and mortar Apple stores have proven to be wildly successful. Eight New Yorkers are suing Chinese search engine Baidu for censoring the internet on behalf of the Chinese government. Google Places will start allowing users to import data about places you’ve visited from Foursquare, but the blogs are skeptical about the convoluted […]
...moreRIM’s woe cup runneth over: 1,000 BlackBerry Playbooks are being recalled due to the fact that they had the wrong version of the operating system. Did internet piracy help an un-kid-friendly bedtime story jump to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list? The new HTC Flyer tablet is certainly beautiful, despite having outdated software. It appears […]
...moreGoogle has big visions and disruptive ambitions for the newest version of its cloud-based Chromebook, but the hardware gets a solid “meh” from the gadget brigade. Speaking of the gadget brigade, they’re pretty psyched about this overclocked Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone. Facebook got caught hiring a PR firm to smear Google’s privacy practices. Facebook […]
...moreIn money matters, Gilt Groupe is the newest startup to secure a serious pot of investment funding – $138 million of funding, to be precise – and LinkedIn expects to make over $146 million on its upcoming IPO. The new New Yorker iPad app from Conde Nast is set to be awesomely affordable. Apple cofounder Steve […]
...moreIs international hacking group Anonymous to blame for the recent Sony PlayStation Network hack? File under “painfully postmodern”: British charity National Trust is set to translate Facebook game Farmville into a real life farming experiment. Students, academics, and others obsessed with organizing their PDF collections should be excited for Papers 2 (for Mac). Six tech companies […]
...moreNews junkies beware! Hackers are taking advantage of the internet traffic spike prompted by Osama bin Laden’s death and embedding news coverage with malware. And of course, people got all snarky about his demise on Twitter. Apple isn’t the only one collecting user location data; Google’s at it with its Android operating system as well. Changes […]
...more