Today’s Tech Sightings: The FBI Used the Web’s Favorite Hacking Tool to Unmask Tor Users According to WIRED, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used an abandoned Metasploit project called the “Decloaking Engine” in 2012 to launch “Operation Torpedo” to identify child port suspects using Tor’s anonymous network to hide. Patient-Specific Knee Parts Can […]
Unmasking Tor; 3-D Printing; Sony Blues; Facebook Drops Bing
Posted December 16th, 2014 at 2:38 pm (UTC-5)
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Online Harassment Is a Game of Control
Posted December 12th, 2014 at 2:45 pm (UTC-5)
The ugly episode that has come to be known as GamerGate may have receded, but it left in its wake some unanswered questions. Why did a seemingly legitimate discussion of gaming journalism devolve into harassment and threats of violence against women journalists and critics? What triggered this behavior and was it a reflection of offline […]
3-D Printing Goes Wild; Bitcoin Finds Microsoft; the Hacking Wars
Posted December 11th, 2014 at 2:44 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Silicon Valley Summit Explores Ways to Make Tech Workforce More Diverse Leading tech companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook and many others, are participating in a California summit to look at ways to increase diversity in the tech sector, currently dominated by white and Asian men. Microsoft Begins Accepting Bitcoin Microsoft has added […]
Choking Russia’s Internet; Uber Troubles; IoT; Google Hangouts
Posted December 10th, 2014 at 2:43 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Russia’s Creeping Descent Into Internet Censorship A new Russian law could soon prevent foreign Internet companies from reaching the country unless they set up local servers. The move would effectively put these companies at the mercy of the Russian government, which has been gradually expanding censorship. Obama Becomes First US President to Write […]
Firefighting With Technology; Sony, Uber Woes; Linux Malware
Posted December 9th, 2014 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: FBI Official Says ‘No Attribution’ to North Korea in Sony Hack Probe The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation says the FBI has not confirmed suspicions that North Korea is the culprit in the recent Sony Entertainment hack attack that wreaked havoc on the company’s systems. PlayStation Network Hacked ‘By Lizard Squad’ Sony […]
Wiping Out Sony; Girl Scouts; GTA 5; Best Android Apps
Posted December 4th, 2014 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
The Princess Trap A New-York based software engineer, whose four-year-old daughter is already going for cultural gender cliches and predesignated social roles, writes about the uphill battle he and others face getting kids – especially girls – interested in science. Inside the “Wiper” Malware That Brought Sony Pictures to its Knees The malware used to […]
PC Power Fights Ebola; IoT; Google’s Santa Tracker
Posted December 3rd, 2014 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
Tech Sightings today: IBM Helps You Donate Computer Power to Fight Ebola In a new twist on ways to fight the Ebola virus, IBM and scientists at Scripps Research Institute in southern California have come up with a way to enable users to donate processing time on their PCs and various digital devices to researchers. Harvard: […]
Twitter, Uber Mobile Snooping; EU vs. Google
Posted November 27th, 2014 at 2:25 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: European Parliament Calls On Commission to Consider Breaking Up Google In a non-binding resolution, European Union legislators urged antitrust regulators to consider separating search engines from other commercial products to boost search market competition. The move is widely seen as targeting Google, which controls about 90 percent of Europe’s search engine market. […]
EU Wants Google to ‘Forget’ US Citizens; Regin; 3-D Printing
Posted November 26th, 2014 at 2:24 pm (UTC-5)
Tech Sightings today: Google Pushed to Extend ‘Forgotten’ Requests to US After two days of meetings, EU data protection chiefs drafted rules that now require Google to extend the right to be forgotten beyond Europe to the United States to allow U.S. residents to submit privacy requests to Google if they are unhappy with their […]
Sony Hijacked? Killer Technology; EU vs. Google and More
Posted November 25th, 2014 at 2:02 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Tech’s Gender Gap Wasn’t Always So Bad. Here’s How It Got Worse A filmmaker whose daughter wanted to drop out of her computer science major because she was one of only two girls attending resulted in a documentary about gender inequality in the U.S. tech and science sectors. The film, called CODE: […]