Revealed: spy agencies' covert push to infiltrate virtual world of online games
NSA and GCHQ collect gamers' chats and deploy real-life agents into World of Warcraft and Second Life — Read the NSA document Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments
China Mobile to Accept iPhone Orders This Week
China Mobile Ltd. plans to take preorders for Apple Inc.'s iPhones from Thursday in Shanghai, according to an advertisement on its website, as the world's largest mobile carrier by subscribers moves c...
Global Government Surveillance Reform
The undersigned companies believe that it is time for the world's governments to address the practices and laws regulating government surveillance of individuals and access to their information. Whil...
How Apple's Lightning-Plug Guru Reinvented Square's Card Reader
Square also developed a new custom read head—the piece that swipes data from the card itself. The two rectangles here draw from two different data bands hidden in the card's magnetic stripe. Photo: ...
“Hour of Code” Calls on Students to Program Computers, With Support From Obama (and the Republicans, Too!)
By now you may have heard about the United States' woeful lack of public coding classes, despite the economy's ever-growing need for technical workers.
Google now lets you create your own Street View maps using Photo Sphere or your dSLR camera
Google has unveiled a new way to allow anyone to create their own personalized Street View map of their location. The company states in a blog post that a Street View experience can be created …
AllThingsD Editors Are Said to Complete NBCUniversal Deal
AllThingsD editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, who are leaving News Corp. at the end of the year, completed a deal with NBCUniversal for a news and conference business that will bring their curren...
Google Bus: Max Bell Alper Is the Boy Who Cried Gentrification
Max Bell Alper has befouled his own well. He's soiled his own bed. You can use Google to hunt down other apropos analogies. Busloads of employees roll out of San Francisco every day to make it so.
Qualcomm Introduces Its First 64-Bit Chip, Though This One Takes Aim at the Low End
Qualcomm is detailing on Monday a new entry-level mobile processor that packs a number of high-end features. — The Snapdragon 410 is designed for phones that sell for $150 or less but includes …
Microsoft CEO Search: Stalemate
The Microsoft CEO succession process appears to be stalled. This is a company with immense human, technical, and financial resources; the tech industry is filled with intelligent, energetic, dedicate...
Stealth payment startup Clinkle lays off 25% of staff
Layoffs at stealth payment startup Clinkle — Clinkle still wants to kill Square. But first it needs to get its own house in order. — FORTUNE — Clinkle, a stealthy mobile payment startup that rece...
Google barge on ‘hiatus’ amid scrutiny from two agencies
Whether it's a Google Glass store or a showroom for all things Google X, one thing is clear: No one will be visiting Google Barge anytime soon. — The once-mysterious barge, currently sitting idle al...
Microsoft's “Threshold” could include three SKUs (modern, traditional, and enterprise) built on common Windows core
More on Microsoft's SKU-morphic Windows vision — Summary: Microsoft's plans for Windows SKUs is undergoing a transformation.
How Foursquare used its massive check-in database to make passive notifications work
The Brilliant Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From the Dead — Dennis Crowley thought his 13-year dream might never come true. — Crowley is the founder of Foursquare, the seminal social networkin...
Verizon Confirms EdgeCast Acquisition, Adding Over 6K Customers To Its Content Delivery Business
Verizon is indeed going to acquire EdgeCast Networks, a content delivery network founded in 2008 that has grown to be one of the fastest-growing Internet companies in the world.
Snapchat Files For A Restraining Order, Accuses Ousted Founder Of Leaking Confidential Court Docs
Snapchat has filed for a temporary restraining order against Reggie Brown, the man who claims to have invented the idea for disappearing messages. According to court documents filed today …
Ousted Apple exec Scott Forstall reportedly advising startups, focusing on philanthropy
Not much has been heard of former iOS head Scott Forstall since he was fired from Apple in 2012, but a report published on Monday claims to shed some light on the ousted executive's activities over th...
Google catches French govt spoofing its domain certificates
Summary: Fraudulent certificates were used in a commercial device to inspect encrypted traffic on a private network. — Michael Lee — France's cyberdefence division, Agence nationale de la sécurité...
Facebook hires NYU deep learning expert to run its new AI lab
Facebook launched a new artificial intelligence lab in September, and now we know the person who will run it — New York University deep learning expert Yann LeCun. He has been an instrumental figure ...
Alibaba and Haier Create Logistics Joint Venture
Alibaba to Invest $360 Million in Haier Electronics as Part of Deal — BEIJING—Alibaba Group will invest $2.82 billion Hong Kong dollars ($360 million) in Haier Electronics Group Co. as part of a dea...
Google Launches Google+ Social Ads on Other Sites
Advertisers can plug anything they want on Facebook and Twitter for free. And if they pay up, they can take those posts and transform them into “native” ads, so more people can see them. — Now Goog...
Marissa Mayer's Next Big Acquisition Could Be Imgur, The Photo-Sharing Site Reddit Loves
This fall, Yahoo began serious talks to buy photo-sharing site Imgur, a source with first-hand knowledge of those discussions tells us. — Since she joined Yahoo in July 2012, CEO Marissa Mayer has a...
Samsung squeezes 1TB into an mSATA SSD for Ultrabooks
If you own an Ultrabook or laptop that contains an SSD, chances are it uses the mSATA rather than SATA interface. mSATA drives are typically a quarter the size of a standard 2.5-inch SSD, which allows...
Why Won't Obama Rein in the N.S.A.?
On March 12, 2013, James R. Clapper appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the threats facing America. Clapper, who is seventy-two, is a retired Air Force general and ...
Chinese hackers spied on Europeans before G20 meeting: researcher
(Reuters) - Chinese hackers eavesdropped on the computers of five European foreign ministries before last September's G20 Summit, which was dominated by the Syrian crisis, according to research by com...
Counsyl Co-Founder Balaji Srinivasan Steps Up As Andreessen Horowitz' Newest General Partner
Balaji Srinivasan, a Stanford academic who co-founded genetic-testing company Counsyl, is stepping up as Andreessen Horowitz' eighth general partner. — The firm, which is just four years old …
Scripps Buys Newsy For $35M To Expand From TV And Newspapers To Digital Video
Another exit for a new media startup into the arms of the old media industry: E.W. Scripps, the storied owner of 19 local television stations and daily newspapers in 13 markets across the U.S. …
Confirmed: Flipboard Raises Another $50 Million To Close Out Its Series C Round
Flipboard has confirmed that it raised an additional $50 million, which will close out the Series C round of financing that it brought on in September. In addition to the new funding, Flipboard is al...
New website ranks database popularity, shows continued growth for non-relational systems
New Site Tracks the Cracks in Oracle's Empire — Oracle is one of the most successful companies in the history of tech. But like any tech giant, it can be overturned.
Fast-growing IT automation startup Opscode raises $32M, changes name to Chef
Seattle entrepreneur Barry Crist likes to say that the best time to raise money is when you don't really need it. — And that was certainly the case for Opscode, the fast-growing IT automation startu...
Justice Department Investigating Dell Sales to Syria
The U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating possible sales of Dell computers to the Syrian government, the company said in documents released Monday. — In the July letter to the Securities...
Lazada raises $250 million, totalling $486 million so far
Rocket Internet's e-commerce ventures are on a roll. After just recently announcing $112 million in funding for fashion e-commerce sites Zalora and The Iconic last week, today its sister site Lazada ...
Netflix open sources its data traffic cop, Suro
Netflix is open sourcing a tool called Suro that the company uses to direct data from its source to its destination in real time. More than just serving a key role in the Netflix data pipeline, thoug...
The Biggest Social Network No One Is Talking About: Gamers
The NSA is spying on gamers for the same reason it wants to spy on your Facebook account. It's a clear map of your relationships. — The easy reaction to today's revelation in the Guardian that the ...
CyanogenMod rolls out encrypted text messaging by default
Secure messaging will now be built into the popular Android extension — As we continue to read new revelations about the extent of the government's spying on citizens, more people are looking into w...
Twitter Rises Most Since IPO Amid Advertising Product Optimism
Twitter Inc. rose the most since its initial public offering after enhancements to its advertising products sparked optimism that the social-networking company will grow into its valuation. — Twitte...
Microsoft Research Releases Socl App For Windows Phone 8 Devices
If you are not aware of Microsoft's own social network called Socl, here is the description from Microsoft. Socl offers a set of simple, fun “create experiences” that make it even easier to express a...