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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings dropped a surprising statistic during an interview with Dutch website Tweakers last week, as he made the rounds promoting the launch of Netflix Netherlands. When asked if Dutch viewers would switch from piracy to Netflix, Hastings said sure, some will switch, and that pirac
Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington’s widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments. President Dilma Rousseff ordered
Most business owners sued by patent trolls don’t talk about it to anyone other than their lawyer; a typical response is to cross one’s fingers and hope the problem goes away. It won’t, of course. Often they do the next best thing—hope it will go away for as little money as possible
The internet is chuckling over a quirky news item which uncovered, perhaps, the most ominous flight plan ever: Flight 666 to HEL on Friday the 13th. It’s a series of sinister coincidences picked up by the Associated Press. In many countries, the number “666” carries diabolical biblical connotations
NASA’s unmanned LADEE rocket headed to the moon with an unexpected passenger, a small frog which was caught on camera launching into the air from its home in the marshy wetlands surrounding the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. One of three still-cameras setup around the launch site, trigge
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced today at TechCrunch Disrupt that Yahoo monthly active users are up 20% to 800 million globally, including 350 million monthly active users on mobile. Mayer said those figures are increases since she took over as CEO in July of 2012, and that they do not include Tumb
Mark Zuckerberg joins Mayer in hitting back at critics of tech companies, saying US government did ‘bad job’ of balancing people’s privacy and duty to protect. Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook struck back on Wednesday at critics who have charged tech
At Apple’s iPhone presentation today, Tim Cook presented the following chart. At best the chart is misleading; at worst it’s disingenuous. The chart has no scale. It could be showing billions of iPhone sales or it could be showing hundreds of iPhone sales. Furthermore, showing sales cumulatively tac
A few months ago I passed along the story of Barrett Brown, a young journalist/activist who relentlessly followed up on documents leaked by Anonymous, was targeted for this by the FBI, and who was eventually harassed enough that he cracked—which took the unfortunate form of recording a YouTube rant
Everybody’s been waiting for the smartwatch revolution to begin, and for major companies (other than Sony) to unveil their long-awaited offerings in this new era of mobility. Samsung announced this week their Galaxy Gear smartwatch. Qualcomm also announced a smartwatch called the Toq. Press an
December 2011, a month before the criminal proceeding against Megaupload became public, Kim Dotcom first revealed his plans to launch a new service to transform the music business. At the time the project was called Megabox and the similarly named .com domain was seized by the U.S. Government. Howev
The phone would be free, no wireless contract necessary, and sold on Amazon.com or through wireless carriers, according to unnamed sources. Amazon is going to give away its long-rumored smartphone for free, according to a report from former Wall Street Journal reporters Amir Efrati and Jessica E. Le
The reporting on these documents was done jointly by The Guardian, the NY Times and Pro Publica. However, the NY Times coverage has one interesting tidbit: Intelligence officials asked The Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new
What makes a video go “viral?” After an elevator prank video from LG UK garnered over 19 million views on YouTube, LG Chile has used the same format for a new video. “Ultra Reality: What would you do in this situation?” presents itself as a hidden camera, much like a Candid C
After 30 days of continuously changing its logo, the tech giant unveiled its final new design at midnight Thursday. “We wanted there to be a mathematical consistency to the logo, really pulling it together into one coherent mark,” CEO Marissa Mayer said. Mayer said she spent the majority of a Saturd
Samsung today announced its Galaxy Gear Smartwatch, a wearable device that features a 1.63-inch 320 x 320 resolution AMOLED touchscreen, built-in speakers, and a 1.9-megapixel camera in the strap. It has an 800MHz processor, 4GB of storage, and 512MB of RAM. Samsung’s watch will support voice contro
Forget eyes and fingerprints. The Nymi bracelet wants the future of biometric password protection to be your own unique cardiac rhythm. Future authentication methods need to be a lot harder to hack. That’s the idea behind the Nymi from startup Bionym. Instead of passwords, Nymi relies on your
Images of tech entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are continually thrown at us by politicians, economists, and the media. The message is that innovation is best left in the hands of these individuals and the wider private sector, and that the state—bureaucratic and sluggish—should