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18 Oct 2010 22:27

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Tech: Facebook’s “privacy breach”: Meet Rapleaf, circa 2007

  • This is an e-mail we got way back in 2007. Good time of our life. We were living in Norfolk, Va., probably drinking an iced coffee and getting dumped on by an old ex or something. Well, one day, we got this e-mail in our inbox. Something seemed pretty bizarre about this e-mail. We don’t have the old page, and it no longer exists, but this company, Rapleaf, had a significant amount of information about us that it was publicly sharing with other people we didn’t know. And the service wasn’t opt-in for some reason. After getting really pissed about it and yelling and stuff, we opted out and didn’t think about it again for a while. We were reminded of this e-mail when we read the WSJ’s Facebook story today.
  • What’s going on?The WSJ investigation suggests that certain app developers have been giving away personal information about their users to services like Rapleaf, who then sell the information to marketers, who were then able to trace the users by linking their e-mails and user IDs. Rapleaf says it was unintentional.
  • LOLApps was doing it Over the weekend, Facebook game company LOLapps, known for their quizzes and other games, was kicked off of the site unexpectedly. (They’re back now after a cooling-off period.) Their platform is super-popular and has millions of users. Nobody knew why – that is, until the WSJ made it clear.
  • Don’t blame Facebook Facebook isn’t the bad guy here; they’re just the indirect conduit. We’re much more inclined to question Rapleaf. Based on our prior history with them, we can say that they have a history of directly violating end users’ privacy. And we find it hard to trust their explanation at face value. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 21:26

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Biz: Starbucks trying out booze, but it’s not strong enough for our tastes

  • It’s possible that soon enough, you may go to Starbucks and find this cup filled with something other than coffee. Like booze. See, the company is testing out beer and wine at some of its Seattle testbeds. If it proves popular, other Starbucks across the country could get it. If you ask us, though, we don’t think we could get behind this until they serve hard liquor, mainly because that’s the only way we think we could survive being in a Starbucks for an extended period of time. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 21:14

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Music: Kanye doesn’t understand why retailers don’t like his album cover

So Nirvana can have a naked human being on they cover but I can’t have a PAINTING of a monster with no arms and a polka dot tail and wingsMon Oct 18 03:02:27 via webKanye West
kanyewest

  • So yeah, wow. The “banned” Kanye album for “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” has a cover so weird that we don’t think that we can post it here. But Pitchfork has it, so go over there and look at the painting of a monster with no arms and a polka dot tail and wings. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 20:46

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Biz: Warren Buffett: Berkshire Hathaway the “dumbest” stock I ever bought

  • For 20 years, I fought the textile business before I gave up. As instead of putting that money into the textile business originally, we just started out with the insurance company, Berkshire would be worth twice as much as it is now.
  • Warren Buffett • Explaining what the “dumbest” stock he ever bought was. Wait, what? Is he really claiming Berkshire Hathaway as his dumbest stock purchase ever? Yes, and the reason for that is that Berkshire was initially a textile firm, when in reality he should have started a new insurance business as his corporate shell. He initially bought out Berkshire partly to get rid of the former owner, whom he clashed with, which put him in a very strange spot. “I had now committed a major amount of money to a terrible business,” he notes. Buffett made most of his money off of insurance – specifically GEICO, which we bet you didn’t know he owned. The company handles other random stuff, including Ginsu knives and The Buffalo News, but one thing Berkshire no longer creates is textiles. The last legacy plant closed way back in 1985. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 20:05

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Biz, Tech: Apple’s 3Q earnings report overloaded with (mostly) good news

  • 91% increase in iPhone sales from a year ago (wow)
  • $20
    billion     Apple’s quarterly revenues, which happens to be a new record for them, by the way
  • $4
    billion     Apple’s quarterly profits, which is also a record for them – and up 70 percent (!); freaking show-offs
  • +28% increase in Mac sales year-over-year; not bad considering their light recent publicity
  • +28% increase in iPad sales from last quarter; pretty good but not particularly spectacular
  • -11% decline in year-over-year iPod sales, which admittedly was kind of expected source
  • » Investors somehow not impressed: Wait, what? Well, here’s why: They expected the increase in Apple’s iPad sales to be much higher, so as a result, Apple’s stock went down five percent in after-hours trading. You bastards can’t ever be impressed, can you?
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 18:55

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Offbeat, Tech: Thief steals computer, sends victim backup of hard drive

  • bad A Swedish professor placed his laptop behind a door for several minutes whilst doing laundry, where it was promptly stolen.
  • good As a consolation, the thief backed up all of the professor’s documents and sent them to him a week later. How thoughtful! source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 15:43

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Politics, U.S.: Sharron Angle knows how to get the Hispanic vote

  • I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me.
  • Sharron Angle • To a room of Hispanic teenagers, at the Hispanic Student Union. Well-played! She also mysteriously claimed that she’s been called “the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly.” Anyone want to try and make sense of that? source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

18 Oct 2010 15:30

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Politics, U.S.: Joe Miller bleeding support in Alaska

  • 7% decrease in Joe Miller’s support over last month source
  • » For a while, Joe Miller had it in the bag. But things have changed. It started when incumbent Lisa Murkowski, having lost the Republican primary to Miller, announced that she’d run a write-in campaign. Polls then began showing erosion of Miller’s popularity, with his negatives increasing by 6% in the last month. Then, news broke last night that Miller’s private security detail handcuffed and detained a reporter at a town hall meeting. Now, Nate Silver says that “any ordering of the top three candidates is possible.” This is a race to watch on November 2nd.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 12:41

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Politics, U.S.: Carl Paladino likes to hug it out

  • The vast majority of people in Buffalo know what it’s like to be hugged by Carl, even those who don’t want it.
  • Carl Paladino’s campaign manager • In an frank admission to the New York Times. Paladino is quickly becoming known for his “grandfatherly species of full-body bear hug,” during which hugees often “find themselves lifted off the ground.” His campaign jokingly refers to his robust hugs as “the mind meld.”  source
. Resistance, where it exists, is futile: Mr. Paladino is so enthusiastic a hugger that huggees will occasionally find themselves lifted off the ground.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 11:13

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U.S.: Wrongful detainment suit against John Ashcroft goes to Supreme Court

  • Is John Ashcroft in trouble? It appears that the Obama Administration will have to go to bat in the Supreme Court for the controversial former attorney general, who’s facing a suit from a former college football player detained without cause for 16 days. He was held under what some critics call a radical reinterpretation of the “material witness” law. Abdullah al-Kidd, who once was a running back at the University of Idaho, claimed he was held naked at times and shackled at other times. Now al-Kidd wants to personally sue Ashcroft. If the Supreme Court favors al-Kidd, who’s already won a in a lower court, let the lawsuits begin. (Photo by Gage Skidmore) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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