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Tag: tech

REUTERS/EDGAR SU/FILES

China to Impose Orwellian ‘Social Credit System’ on Internet Users

The latest brainstorm from the Chinese Communist Party is a system for monitoring the Internet activity and financial transactions of its citizens, computing a “social credit” score on the acceptability of each person’s behavior, similar to the credit ratings compiled by financial institutions.

Reboot

Crowdfunding Site Patreon Hacked

Crowdfunding site Patreon yesterday announced that a hacker had gained unauthorised access to its user database, as well as email addresses, posts, registered names, and some billing and shipping addresses. In a post on the site, Patreon CEO Jack Conte

Barack Obama

Another Obama-Funded Energy Firm Makes Its Final Emission

Michigan’s Alpena Biorefinery announced that it is taking a “sabbatical,” after drinking $22 million of taxpayers’ stimulus cash and after consuming unknown amounts of additional and indirect taxpayer funding—all just to show it could convert wood chips into pure alcohol.

Vote Here Vote Aqui

How Many Latinos Need to Support Republicans for There to Be Future Conservative Presidents?

(Ferenstein Wire) — White Americans are slowly dwindling into the minority, which poses big problems for Republicans. Democrats’ popularity with minorities has helped them snag the presidency in recent elections. By 2024, Republicans may need to blow past George Bush’s 2004 historic record with Latinos (44 percent) in order to ever have a shot again at another conservative president.

SCOTT OLSON/Getty Images

Which Republican Americans Are Most Curious About

(From The Ferenstein Wire) — The Republican field for president is massive, and conservative contenders are scrambling to stand out from the crowd. Polls tend to swing wildly from month-to-month, as new candidates enter the race or happen to get into a headline-making story.

Homejoy Toilet Paper (Cindy Ord / Getty)

Dumb VC: Homejoy Charges $19 an Hour, Loses $12 an Hour

Uber is now valued at almost $51 billion, a valuation that puts the “on-demand mobile service” (ODMS) leader at the level of Facebook in 2011. The company’s fund-raising success has spurred a vast number of “Uber for X” start-ups that are building corporate empires with legions of outsourced contract workers. But the “gig economy” seems to be operating the same money-losing business model as the “Dot-com Bubble.”

Microsoft Windows 10

Windows 10: Tech Media May Need New Company to Hate

For a company that is regularly scowled at by the tech media, Microsoft’s introduction of Windows 10 over the last 48 hours has been amazingly smooth, and reviews are overwhelmingly positive. In what for Microsoft is a paradigm shift, the

Apple logo darkness (Justin Sullivan / Getty)

Wall Street’s Love Affair with Apple May Be Over

In its last quarter that will be impacted by innovation on Steve Jobs’ watch, Apple booked strong quarterly revenue and earnings yesterday. But the company had to admit that existing Apple customers were slow to upgrade to new iPhone releases and Apple as a status symbol in China may be coming to an end. The stock plunged by -10 percent, or about $80 billion, before recovering somewhat today. But as Breitbart News warned last month, ‘Apple Products: Without Steve Jobs, the Thrill is Gone.’

First Computer ENIAC (Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty)

Republican Consultants at ‘Reboot’: We Have the Tech Thing Now

Over the weekend, political hacks and techies converged for the second annual Reboot Conference in San Francisco. Chief technology directors of campaigns–including Barack Obama’s Organizing for America, along with several Republican campaigns–joined a panel that advised the campaign tech crowd.

Reuters/Kacper Pempel

Tech Meets Conservative Politics at #Reboot2015

On Friday, Lincoln Labs, a liberty-oriented technology thought leadership group, opens its second annual conference: #Reboot2015. Featuring an array of experts from across technology, politics and the ideological spectrum, attendees will discuss how technology can and should impact our politics and how we can harness innovation to improve government, society and life for all Americans.

Unicorn dog (Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty)

Number of VC Deals Falls as Investors Chase ‘Unicorns’

Global venture capitalists invested $56.31 billion in 4,894 deals during the first half of 2015–the lowest number of deals recorded by the Pitchbook blog over a six month period in the last 25 years. The major reason for a smaller number of companies being funded is that venture capitalists are throwing huge amounts of money at a small number of “unicorns.”

AP Photo

Google Play Music Ready to Crush Spotify and Apple Music

On the heels of Apple Music’s $9.99 streaming service getting the bodyslam from a 99-pounder named Taylor Swift, Google has just rolled out “Play Music,” which will offer a free, ad-supported streaming music service. Combined with their “All Access” subscription product released in May, Google appears positioned to crush both Spotify and Apple Music.