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$22.5M FTC fine against Google for Safari tracking

$22.5M FTC fine against Google for Safari trackingMichael Liedtke, writing for Associated Press: In the Safari case, Consumer Watchdog argued that the fine amounts to loose change for a company like Google, which generates about $22.5 million in revenue every four hours. It’s a very good deal for …

Xbox 720 leak: Blu-ray, Kinect 2.0, new controller

Xbox 720 leak: Blu-ray, Kinect 2.0, new controller I don’t typically post rumors or leaks, but this stuff is exciting to me, so here it is, for whatever it’s worth to you.

Streaming music to listeners, but not money to artists

Streaming music to listeners, but not money to artistsGalaxie 500 drummer Damon Krukowski1, writing at Pitchfork: Since we own our own recordings, by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one— one— LP sale. (On Spotify, one …

Philly is lost-phone central

Philly is lost-phone centralThis includes theft and just plain misplacement. I’m more of a dropper myself. Just ask my twice-cracked Galaxy Nexus. I’m not proud, but disclosure will help shame me into being more careful.

Sprint buys spectrum and 585,000 customers from U.S. Cellular for $480m in cash

Sprint buys spectrum and 585,000 customers from U.S. Cellular for $480m in cashEach subscriber Sprint buys from US Cellular in this deal will cost them $820.51.

EFF's pre-emptive prior art defense of 3D printing

EFF’s pre-emptive prior art defense of 3D printingIt’s a great idea, and I hope it yields some useful results.

Twitter and Two-Factor Authentication

Twitter and Two-Factor AuthenticationTwo-factor authentication is a pain in the ass. Just ask my Google account or my Dropbox account. But it’s a no-brainer. Savvy users will flock to it, seeing the value in the headache. Less-than-savvy users don’t need to be forced into it, but Twitter is as good …

Judge blocks California’s new ban on anonymity for sex offender

Judge blocks California’s new ban on anonymity for sex offenderThis one is worth watching. With regard to blogs and forums, particularly, there’s a strong analogy with letter-writing and other modes of communication with the “outside” that are typically allowed. The plaintiffs, two registered …

The Oxford Guide to Treaties: An Opinio Juris Symposium

The Oxford Guide to Treaties: An Opinio Juris SymposiumIf international law interests you at all, particularly the role treaties play, you should click the link above this sentence. Professor Duncan Hollis edited The Oxford Guide to Treaties and is an expert on the topic. I’m currently in his …

Conservatives lambast Romney, vow to take over Republican Party

Conservatives lambast Romney, vow to take over Republican PartyThe Hill’s Erik Wasson, quoting Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots: She described Romney as a “weak, moderate candidate hand-picked by the country club elite Republican establishment […] They didn’t see a clear distinction so …

"Parallel Thinking in Product Design Will Only Increase"

“Parallel Thinking in Product Design Will Only Increase”Rain Noe at core77: When you have an uncomplicated design that’s boiled down to its pure essentials, you approach a kind of universal perfection, and that universality is the tricky part in a world filled with designers. This is a …

Marriage rights tide turns decisively against US bigots

Marriage rights tide turns decisively against US bigotsI hope this is the beginning of an acceleration in the death of “traditional” marriage in the United States of America. Fear, ignorance, and religion are all equally insufficient and shameful excuses to deny universal marriage rights for one …

IMAlive provides online counseling—but at what cost?

IMAlive provides online counseling—but at what cost?Aja Romano of The Daily Dot: IMAlive sounds perfect for introverts and those who are more comfortable writing than speaking. And anyone can volunteer to be a counselor, as long as they pass the background check. But there’s a hitch. Potential …

Pandora suing ASCAP for lower licensing fees

Pandora suing ASCAP for lower licensing feesDon Jeffrey of Bloomberg: Pandora also claims that it’s entitled to lower rates because some large music publishers have announced they are withdrawing new media rights from Ascap and negotiating licensing fees directly with Web radio services. The …

When 32GB is really 16GB...

When 32GB is really 16GB…Microsoft is taking heat for claiming more user-available disk space on its new ARM-based Windows 8-powered Surface tablet than is really there. But I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Most companies are lying in their commercials, product pages, and press …

A Map Of America’s 284 Drone Strikes Against Pakistan

A Map Of America’s 284 Drone Strikes Against PakistanCliff Kuang of Co.Design: Whatever your stance on drone killings, the fact remains that there’s been very little national dialogue on the topic. Indeed, some would say that’s a direct result of the main problem with the policy: Its complete lack …

Nearly all of Omni Magazine at the Internet Archive

Nearly all of Omni Magazine at the Internet ArchiveAdi Robertson shared this at The Verge and it made me very happy. I loved this magazine.

Over 50% of Android phones still run Gingerbread

Over 50% of Android phones still run GingerbreadThe greatest argument against Android is that the “Android” I am talking about when I describe the experience on my Galaxy Nexus is still very foreign to a majority of Android users.

Google integrating AMBER alerts

Google integrating AMBER alertsRichard Dunlop-Walters’ The Brief is a must-read for those interested in news about how technology affects our lives every day. Mr. Dunlop-Walters said of Google’s AMBER Alert integration: whenever you perform a Google search related to an area where a child has been …

Professor David Post: Copyright is meant to benefit the public

Professor David Post: Copyright is meant to benefit the publicProfessor Post, writing at The Volokh Conspiracy about the brief he helped write in the Aereo case: copyright law does not exist for the benefit of authors; it uses the benefit granted to authors because that is a means to increase the …

Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion

Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion Kathleen Kennedy, current Co-Chairman of Lucasfilm, will become President of Lucasfilm, reporting to Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn. Additionally she will serve as the brand manager for Star Wars, working directly with Disney’s global lines of business …

Marco Arment goes to a Microsoft store

Marco Arment goes to a Microsoft storeThe link above and what it describes are far more damning than any of Microsoft’s shitty advertising and messaging.

Samsung shipped a stunning 57M smartphones in Q3 — twice as many as Apple

Samsung shipped a stunning 57M smartphones in Q3 — twice as many as AppleHow many Samsung devices are on the latest version of their respective operating systems? Many consumers don’t know or care that they’re buying an outdated version of Android, but that ignorance will not last forever. Samsung …

More interactive Tweets, in more than 2000 ways

More interactive Tweets, in more than 2000 waysWhat ever happened to seeing a link and clicking on it? I don’t want garish, heavy embedded crap all over Twitter. But alas, it’s not my company or design to screw up, so I’ll stop whining (but not sulking).

Supreme Court Will Address Antitrust State Action Exemption

Supreme Court Will Address Antitrust State Action ExemptionSteve Semeraro at the Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog: Government actors are charged with a duty to act in the public interest and thus can generally be trusted to restrain trade only when the public will benefit. Private actors, by …

Invention as Art

Invention as ArtThis is a great article on patent drawings and models, as selected for Co.Design by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan.

iPad mini - Every inch an iPad.

iPad mini - Every inch an iPad.Everyone is shitting their pants over this thing, but I’m more excited by the new MacBook Pro.

FTC Publishes Facial Recognition Guidelines

FTC Publishes Facial Recognition GuidelinesCarl Franzen, of TPM Idea Lab: There are two cases where the FTC believes that companies need to get a consumer’s “affirmative express consent,” that is, an “opt-in,” before using information captured via facial recognition: When identifying anonymous …

Amazon outage takes out Reddit, Foursquare, Heroku

Amazon outage takes out Reddit, Foursquare, HerokuLee Hutchinson, writing at Ars Technica: These kinds of outages are a jarring reminder of the true nature of “the cloud”—it’s still just servers in data centers. Amazon’s market power in ebooks leads to some questionable behavior, as well as some …

Introducing the New Entertainment Experience from Xbox

Introducing the New Entertainment Experience from XboxYusuf Mehdi, Chief Marketing Officer for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Division: […] we will rapidly accelerate the reach of Xbox entertainment from more than 67 million consoles to literally hundreds of millions of devices worldwide. …