By Jessica Roy 6/18 11:34am

Facebook Faceoff

(Photo: Wikipedia)

No, Facebook Is Not Deliberately Blocking Logins from TOR

A post on the blog Arabcrunch.com went viral this morning, hitting the front pages of both Reddit and Hacker News. The post stated that Facebook had begun blocking logins from users attempting to access it from the anonymized browser TOR. For activists and political dissidents who use the Internet to communicate with the outside world in countries where doing so is a crime, being unable to login to Facebook using TOR posed a huge problem. Read More

By Jordan Valinsky 6/12 8:34am

Linkages

Jobs/Kutcher. (Photo: ScreenRant)

Booting Up: Former Palm’s CEO Calls HP’s Purchase a ‘Waste’

“Talk about a waste.” That’s how former Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein described the purchase of the company from HP. As an aside, remember Palm? [Fierce Wireless]

Google is still the most popular search engine in the U.S., but Bing’s market share is rising. Microsoft’s site registered a 17.4 percent slice, compared to Yahoo’s 11.9 percent. [CNET]

Interns at Google are living the good life as they earn as much as $6,000 per month. That can buy them a lot of tickets for The Internship. [CNN Money]

Reddit is adding even more benefits for its Gold subscribers! The site is teaming with Uni Qlo to randomly select a member to receive a fancy gift from the Japanese clothing retailer. Hint, hint? [TechCrunch]

Get excited! Ashton Kutcher’s biopic Jobs is slated to be released August 16. [Entertainment Weekly]

By Kelly Faircloth 6/11 7:00pm

Hello? Hello?

Yesterday's rally.

Good Luck Parsing Your Conflicted Feelings About Edward Snowden, Silicon Valley

At yesterday’s rally to support NSA leaker Edward Snowden, a software engineer who identified himself only as Michael huddled under Union Square subway entrance (just out of the pouring rain). ”The fact that we have this man coming out now puts a face on this,” he said. “The human element is what’s most important, because most people think of these big surveillance things as these impassive, cold structures, but they’re the creation of humans, they’re the creation of people like me and you and all of us and there is a moral equation to all of that.”

He gestured to the northern edge of the park.

“Even in New York City, Union Square Ventures is right over there, which funded Tumblr, which is now owned by Yahoo, which is one of the companies that reported back to PRISM.”

But not everyone’s so sure of their feelings about Mr. Snowden. The occasional 1984 quote from Fred Wilson notwithstanding, the industry’s position in this whole mess is awfully conflicted. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 6/10 1:50pm

Vile

And their web design is stomach-turningly bad, too. (Photo: screencap)

Tumblr Has Its Very Own Hub for Creepshots

Hey, ladies! Had you considered dashing out to the Starbucks on the corner, or perhaps making a quick trip to the gym? Well, here comes a bit of news that’ll make you want to lock yourself in your apartment until Judgement Day. Just don’t sign on to the Internet, because you aren’t safe there, either.

Months after the frenzy over Reddit’s r/creepshots, Jezebel has uncovered creepshots.tumblr.com, which has been around since April 2011. The site’s about page explains: “”What is a ‘CreepShot’ you ask? Easy. Creepshots are CANDID pictures. If a person is posing or aware that a picture is being taken, then it is no longer a creepshot.” (Also: “Major fan of Howard Stern and the Crew,” which pretty much figures.) Read More

By Jessica Roy 6/05 11:31am

BummerVille

(Photo: Imgur)

‘Their Business Strategy Is Terrible:’ Fired Zynga Employee Takes to Reddit for Tell-All AMA

It wasn’t long after Zynga announced it would be laying off 18 percent of its staff that fired employees began to speak to the press. But one enterprising ex-Zyngaite decided to circumvent the traditional media route by hosting his own AMA on Reddit.

“What do you want to know about Zynga?” wrote the poster under the handle former_zyngite. ”I’ll try to be as honest and open as possible.” As proof of his identity, the poster included a photo of his layoff paperwork. Read More

By Jordan Valinsky 5/27 12:55pm

Planet Reddit

Mr. Erwin.

Reddit-Commenter-Turned-Screenwriter Now Wants to Kickstart a Novel, Of Course

Everyone, we need to thank James Erwin or else Hollywood would just produce more sequels to Fast and the Furious for the rest of our lives. Last year, the technical manual writer hit the big time when his random Reddit comment was somehow green-lit to become a feature film.

During a lunch break last year, Mr. Erwin answered an important prompt that only those brains on Reddit could think of: Could the Roman Empire be obliterated by the U.S. Marines? Rather than, “uh, probably,” Mr. Erwin wrote something so earth-shattering that Hollywood came knocking. Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/02 8:59am

Linkages

(Photo: Imgur)

Booting Up: IamA Hollywood Actor Using Reddit for Self-Promotion AMA

Looks like the tech industry is still poaching from Wall Street, and the WSJ is ON IT! [Wall Street Journal]

Facebook’s first quarter results are in, and it looks like the company’s mobile ad revenue is finally increasing. [New York Times]

The father-son duo of NYC-based VC firm Lerer Ventures is launching a website in conjunction with Mayors Against Illegal Guns called StoptheNRA.com. [TechCrunch]

Now that the neckbeard lobby is growing in influence, can Hollywood A-listers master the Reddit AMA without having another Rampart situation on their hands? [LA Times]

Now New York Senator Chuck Schumer is going after patent trolls. Perhaps he’s jealous of all Mayor Bloomberg’s startup cred? [TechCrunch]

“Hey guys, we can make TV too!” – AOL [Adweek]