internet

Update 15 May 2016 Unlucky woman's GPS led her straight into a lake
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Technology doesn't always love you back.
A woman in Tobermory, Ontario drove down a boat ramp and into Lake Huron last Thursday thanks to faulty directions from her GPS.
The GPS has not yet apologized for its actions.
Luckily, she was able to roll down the window, retrieve her purse and clamber out of the car before it started to sink.
She is reportedly doing just fine, with no injuries other than a few technological trust issues.

26 March 2016
BBC: The company said Google Maps directed them to the wrong address; they were supposed to tear down a home just one block away. Diaz says she has now received a personal apology but hopes the company will change its procedures to ensure addresses are more thoroughly checked before any demolition starts. And she warns against relying on GPS for directions. "I do not like to rely on GPS," she says. "I've had GPS take me to the wrong places also. So I look at the map."

Diaz says the demolition crew, who were still at the site of her home when she arrived, did offer a kind of explanation. One employee told her they had been due to tear down a house at 7601 Cousteau Drive, one street away, but their GPS mapping system had taken them to her home at 7601 Calypso Drive instead - The building, which included two homes, was pummelled in December's tornado but was due to be repaired  read more »

Longfellow once said,
"in character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity."
And Emerson stated,
"nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great."

So, hard to disagree that the 140-character limit is Twitter’s signature, and Twitter’s legacy.

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Twitter’s 140 characters - It’s staying. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and CEO of Twitter, speaks during an interview with CNBC following the IPO for Square Inc., on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange November 19, 2015.

Twitter Inc's 140-character tweets are here to stay, Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said on Friday, ending speculation that the microblogging site might abandon one of its trademark features for a 10,000-character limit.

"It's staying. It's a good constraint for us and it allows for of-the-moment brevity," Dorsey said on NBC's Today Show.

In January, technology news website Re/code reported that Twitter was building a new feature that would allow tweets as long as 10,000 characters.

Twitter has declined to comment on the feature directly. But Dorsey tweeted the day of the report that the company had seen more screenshots of text posted as a way to get around the 140-character limit.  read more »

Glitch's prank. this guy's luck. Google-operated domain service on 29 Sept 2015 sold google.com to MBA student Sanmay Ved, charged his credit card for $12, emailed him the transaction confirmation. For a glitch-created historical minute, a guy owned google.com beyond Google.

Washington Post - Max Schrems, left, and his lawyer Herwig Hofmann, right, at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on Oct. 6, 2015. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

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For just $12, he bought Google.com - Babson College student, Sanmay Ved, briefly owns Google.com
For just one brief but unforgettable moment, a Babson College student owned the internet domain for the world's most heavily trafficked website. For just $12, he bought Google.com. Sanmay Ved is getting his MBA, but he used to work for Google. He was playing around with the website registration service, Google Domains. For fun, he entered "Google.com."

"I put in Google.com and it showed it was available," he said.
Much to his surprise, the domain he presumed would be unavailable, actually was. "I thought it was a mistake or something that should not happen, Google.net, is unavailable, but...(shows paperwork) as you see, Google.com is showing as available," he said, referencing screenshots.  read more »

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28 Aug 2015 - money.cnn.com - Ashley Madison promotes itself as the go-to website for infidelity (Avid Life Media owns the Ashley Madison website. Noel Biderman @noelbiderman 'THE KING OF INFIDELITY' President at Avid Life Media Inc. Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Ashley Madison Agency)
- Information containing Biderman's emails is released on August 20, but the file becomes corrupted so it can't be fully accessed by the public.
- Two Canadian law firms say on August 20 that they have filed a $760 million suit against Avid Life Media. The lead plaintiff is described as a "disabled widower" who briefly joined the site after the death of his wife but never met anybody in person. 7. - Information containing Biderman's emails is released on August 20, but the file becomes corrupted so it can't be fully accessed by the public.
- Two Canadian law firms say on August 20 that they have filed a $760 million suit against Avid Life Media. The lead plaintiff is described as a "disabled widower" who briefly joined the site after the death of his wife but never met anybody in person.
- The stolen database of people who used Ashley Madison makes its way to the Web on August 19, making it easily searchable on several websites.  read more »

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Huffington Post - Lavabit Founder Ladar Levison On The Shutdown Of Email Service (LIVE VIDEO)

Washington Post - Lavabit, Silent Circle shut down e-mail: What alternatives are left?

PC Magazine - Google is making headlines this week for a court filing that some have interpreted as an admission that Gmail users should have no expectation of privacy while using the service.

Fox News - House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called the latest reports "extremely disturbing."

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Image courtesy ciphersend.com and techzane.com

SOPA Protests Sway Congress: 31 Opponents on Jan 18; 122 on Jan 19; Unfortunately, there are still more stated supporters than opponents in the Senate

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The best Twitter has to offer from music to politics, sport to science.. Twitter has become the people's voice on the eve of its fifth birthday.

Blame Stephen Fry. In Twitter the preening polymath found his true calling, sending out an ever changing and oddly riveting mix of self-promotion and stream of consciousness as he tweeted his every thought and photo. His thoughts on Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, a picture of a parrot, a call for charity in Sri Lanka, Stephen in a balloon hat, all mixed in with his Wildean wit: "Streets of London fantastically full of young people. Either it's half-term or truancy in this country is running wildly out of control." Millions came to watch, millions more joined in. You may scoff but we are all Stephen Fry now.  read more »