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Thu
22
Aug
Dennis Faas's picture

Websites Left Reeling After Brief Google Outage

Both Google and Amazon experienced significant outages a few days ago, and the ripple-effect these issues have caused has been no less than astounding. Amazon's site went down for somewhere between 20 and 45 minutes on Monday, August 19, 2013. Only ... the amazon.com and amazon.ca sites, aimed at US and Canadian visitors, were affected. Other Amazon national sites, along with some specialist sites the company owns, remained online. Sources estimate the outage cost Amazon almost $5 million. That's based on the length of the outage and the average amount of money the company makes in sales every ... (view more)

Mon
19
Aug
Dennis Faas's picture

New 'PirateBrowser' Prevents Web Censorship

The Pirate Bay, which is arguably the world's most controversial site, has introduced its very own Internet browser. Setting this browser apart from rivals like Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox: one-click features that allow users ... to avoid censorship. Sweden-based The Pirate Bay provides users with access to torrent files and facilitates peer-to-peer file sharing. Since it was founded a decade ago, The Pirate Bay has often been accused of helping users exchange copyright-protected material -- such as music, movies, and TV shows -- illegally. The Pirate Bay has also faced a ... (view more)

Tue
11
Jun
Dennis Faas's picture

Microsoft Accused of Unfairly Promoting Xbox One

Microsoft is being accused of manipulating comments about the soon-to-be released Xbox One on social media site Reddit. Reddit users (called 'Redditors') can post news articles, reviews, photos, etc., on the site and have the public vote a ... submission "up" or "down" in an effort to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages. Now, a Redditor using the alias "mistysilver" claims Microsoft representatives have been voting up positive comments about the Xbox One and voting down negative posts about the console, which is expected to be released later this year. Microsoft Employees ... (view more)

Fri
31
May
Dennis Faas's picture

'Liberty Reserve' Currency Exchange Closed Down

U.S. authorities say a website that allowed users to convert money into virtual currency was a front for money laundering operations. The Liberty Reserve site was shut down amid claims it helped criminals 'clean' more than $6 billion dollars. The ... site, which is based in Costa Rica, billed itself as an easy way to transfer money to people, regardless of their location. Unlike PayPal, Liberty Reserve didn't process direct payments between people. Instead, users could convert their cash into either 'Liberty Reserve Dollars' or 'Liberty Reserve Euros,' which were tied to the value of the real- ... (view more)

Thu
30
May
Dennis Faas's picture

Facebook Cracking Down On Hate Speech

Facebook says it will review the way it vets hateful and offensive content. The social networking site will also force people who post offensive material to reveal their identity. The move follows an open letter by dozens of groups aiming to ... challenge sexism and abuse against women. These groups argued that Facebook was wrong to allow organizations to post images that make light of violence against women. According to the letter, Facebook has repeatedly failed to remove such content. The letter insists that this is particularly shocking because the site regularly removes harmless images of ... (view more)

Thu
04
Apr
Dennis Faas's picture

Torrent Site Traffic Rankings Revealed by New Study

A new study shows that, despite facing a constant barrage of legal challenges, The Pirate Bay is now the world's most popular torrent site. The traffic report comes from torrent industry tracking blog TorrentFreak. After using "several traffic ... comparison and analytic tools," including Alexa and Compete, TorrentFreak put together a list of the most popular torrent sites on the web. The Pirate Bay Withstands Legal Onslaught Sitting in first place: Sweden-based The Pirate Bay. According to TorrentFreak, the site's Alexa rank is 75. (Alexa ranks site traffic by using information gleaned from ... (view more)

Wed
27
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

Facebook to Craft Ads Using 'Real World' Data

Chances are you've never told your Facebook friends which brand of toilet cleaner you use. But if you buy a bottle at the grocery store, you might see an ad for it the next time you log in to Facebook. The social networking company has announced ... deals with four companies to supply data to make Facebook advertisements more relevant. This means that, for the first time ever, the ads you see on the site won't be based on your activity on the social networking site. The four companies collect data in a variety of ways. Two maintain a database of purchasing activities in retail stores. Another ... (view more)

Wed
13
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

Amazon, Authors Battle Over '.Book' Domain Name

The Authors Guild has formally objected to Amazon's plans to take control of a new website domain dedicated to books. They say it is inappropriate for a private company to control such an important (and generic) domain name. The dispute centers on ... the new top level domain system. Until this year, all website addresses had to have an ending (or top level domain) that was either '.com' or '.org,' or a specific country code, such as '.ca' for Canada. Under the new system, organizations can apply to take control of virtually any term. For example, a technology site could move to a ".site" address ... (view more)

Tue
05
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

HTML5 Browser Bug Floods Hard Drives In Minutes

A recently-discovered browser flaw could allow hackers to manipulate a site visitor's physical hard drive. At the moment, Mozilla's Firefox is the only browser not affected by the problem. The technology involved is HTML5, the latest edition of the ... standard code used to produce websites. One of the key features of HTML5 allows web developers to include code for showing multimedia -- such as animations and videos -- without the website visitor having to install special plug-in software. Web browsers have always had the ability to write some data to a computer's hard drive, usually on a ... (view more)

Mon
25
Feb
Dennis Faas's picture

NBC.com Visitors Exposed to Malicious Software

According to reports, NBC.com was hacked late last week. The hackers bypassed security and then spread malicious software designed to steal bank account information from site visitors. It wasn't just the main NBC.com site that was affected, either. ... Reports indicate that sub-sites, including sites dedicated to the Jimmy Fallon and Jay Leno late night shows, were also affected by the hack. Security experts say that hackers modified the NBC.com site so that it would serve up an 'iframe,' which is a method of adding content to a site from a distant domain. In this case, the iframe effectively ... (view more)

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