The world’s largest technology companies hold the keys to some of the largest databases on our planet. Much like goods and coins before it, data is becoming an important currency for the modern world. The data’s value is rooted in its applications to artificial intelligence. Whichever company owns the data, effectively owns AI. Right now that means companies like Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, IBM and Microsoft have a ton of power.

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Submitted on September 28th 2016 by mariogi with 1 comments

This is an (admittedly huge) list of words that supposedly cause the NSA to flag you as a potential terrorist if you over-use them in an email. We found this on Reddit, where James Bamford, a veteran reporter with 30 years experience covering the NSA, is answering questions from the community. He just wrote a big profile for Wired on NSA director Keith Alexander that's really good and well worth a read.

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Submitted on October 1st 2016 by larylin with 12 comments

A Tesla car whose driver said he was using the “Autopilot” driving assistance system crashed into a bus on a motorway in northern Germany on Wednesday.

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Submitted on September 29th 2016 by canuck with 2 comments

One common complaint in the twenty-first century is that nothing is built to last. Even complex, expensive computers seem to have a relatively short shelf-life nowadays. One computer in a small auto repair shop in Gdansk, Poland, however, has survived for the last twenty-five years against all odds.

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Submitted on September 28th 2016 by sjvn with 2 comments

Multiple law enforcement sources tell CBS News homeland security correspondent Jeff Pegues that more U.S. state election databases have been hacked than previously thought. According to sources, a total of about 10 states have had their systems probed or breached by hackers, similar to what happened in Arizona and Illinois. CBS News has learned that government officials are increasingly concerned about Russian efforts to disrupt or influence the 2016 presidential election.

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Submitted on September 30th 2016 by bradd with 1 comments

How you get your cable TV may be about to undergo a historic change.

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Submitted on September 29th 2016 by baron778 with 2 comments

Jamie Soar suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that has rendered him legally blind and which affects some 100,000 people in the U.S. alone. Because of the dual-screen projection method used in virtual reality, Soar was able to see normally for the first time in his life.

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Submitted on September 30th 2016 by socialiguana with 1 comments

Earlier today, Google had announced that they’ve renamed ‘Apps For Work’, the service is now called ‘G Suite’, as Google feels this name fits better, and will be able to ‘better reflect’ what this suite represents. Now, this is not the only change the company is making, as the Mountain View giant has also decided to launch a new, official company blog, ‘The Keyword’. Now, this new blog will essentially replace the old one (googleblog.blogspot.com)

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Submitted on September 30th 2016 by TNY

Microsoft says it has formed a new 5,000-person engineering and research team to focus on its artificial intelligence products — a major reshaping of the company’s internal structure reminiscent of its massive pivot to pursue the opportunity of the Internet in the mid-1990s. “We are on the cusp of a paradigm shift in computing that is unlike anything we have seen in decades,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an internal email to employees this morning, the text of which was obtained by GeekWire.

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Submitted on October 1st 2016 by funhonestdude

Facebook is replacing the Messenger shortcut in the center of its mobile app with a platform for buying and selling things called Marketplace.

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Submitted on October 3rd 2016 by ivangro with 1 Related Links:

1. People are already selling drugs, animals, and adult services on Facebook's new Craigslist competitor Added by gladsdotter on October 4th 2016.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has banned Microsoft products from Russia and placed Bill Gates on a Federal Security Service watchlist. Citing “concerns over security and reliability,” Putin has ordered the removal of Microsoft software to begin immediately. Government spokesman Sergei Zheleznyak explained that Microsoft had been caught carrying out “minute-by-minute surveillance” on millions of Russian citizens – as well as citizens of other countries.

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Submitted on October 1st 2016 by Chubros with 3 comments

Amazon is making a significant change to its Community Guidelines, announced today, which will eliminate any incentivized reviews, except for those that emerge from within its own Amazon Vine program. This program allows Amazon – not the seller or vendor – to identify trusted reviewers, and has a number of controls in place in order to keep bias out of the review process. Amazon has historically prohibited compensation for reviews – even going so far as to sue those businesses who pay for fake reviews, as well as the individuals who write them, in an effort to make its review and rating system fairer and more helpful to online shoppers.

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Submitted on October 4th 2016 by hxxp

When 21-year-old Alfie Deyes released his first book, it was No 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list for 11 weeks. Who are the YouTubers – and why are their books so successful?

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Submitted on September 28th 2016 by gladsdotter

4Chan, the imageboard whose name has since become synonymous with internet villainy, celebrated its 13th year online this past Saturday. A day later, the site’s owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura, posted a thread titled, “Winter is coming.” The message was simple: we’re broke.

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Submitted on October 4th 2016 by dynamite

A palm-sized robot dubbed Kirobo Mini has been unveiled in Japan, designed to be a companion for the growing number of women left childless by the country's aging population crisis. The robot, created by Toyota Motor Corp, aims to emulate a human baby and even "wobbles" like a infant "which hasn't fully developed the skills to balance itself," its chief design engineer Fuminori Kataoka said.

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Submitted on October 3rd 2016 by Apolatia with 2 comments

Moments, best known as the feature you have to swipe past to see your notifications, are collections of tweets that generally focus on a...

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Submitted on September 29th 2016 by sugartoad

'No Man's Sky' is supposedly being investigated for false advertising claims in the U.K. While the case itself is unconfirmed, here's everything we know about what's making the game's PC audience so upset!

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Submitted on September 28th 2016 by Gozzin

Police discovered that a Keene woman had lied about being assaulted, even going as far as applying makeup to appear as bruise marks on her face. Emily Elliot, also known as Emily Glover, went to the police on Aug. 2 to report an assault that allegedly happened after a date. Elliot claimed that after their date she did not let him in her home, so the man beat her face and body. She even published photos to her Facebook page of the alleged injuries.

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Submitted on October 1st 2016 by Apolatia

Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events.

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Submitted on October 4th 2016 by kong88 with 1 comments

A new Ethernet standard that allows for up to 2.5Gbps over normal Cat 5e cables (the ones you probably have in your house) has been approved by the IEEE. The standard—formally known as IEEE 802.3bz-2016, 2.5G/5GBASE-T, or just 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet—also allows for up to 5Gbps over Cat 6 cabling. The new standard was specifically designed to bridge the copper-twisted-pair gap between Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbps), which is currently the fastest standard for conventional Cat 5e and Cat 6 cabling, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which can do 10Gbps but requires special Cat 6a or 7 cabling.

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Submitted on September 29th 2016 by baron778 with 1 comments