The Implications Of Facebook Indexing 1 Trillion Of Our Posts

A whole wing of the Internet just got added to our collective conscience, like websites by Google or knowledge by Wikipedia before it.

Microsoft Is planning To Building A New Browser That Is Not Internet Explorer.

Remember when Chrome  was fast? Microsoft might, if ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley’s recent report that the software company is building a lightweight browser, codenamed “Spartan,” bears out.
According to Foley, Spartan is “new” and “isn’t [Internet Explorer].” Her post notes that it could be set free inside of the Windows 10 release schedule. In short, Microsoft may be building a speedy, simpler browser that maintains use of Internet Explorer’s rendering engine.

Russian Startup Livemap Lands $300K Grant For Its Motorcycle Helmet With Built-In Navigation

As we’re coming up on the next Consumer Electronics Show, I got an update from one of the companies that participated in TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield at the last CES — Russian startup Livemap.

Build Your Own DIY Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server

As we approach the doldrums of winter what could be more cheerful than hours of incessant Minecrafting with you and your loved ones? While you can easily run a server on any computer (the program requires a server app to run in conjunction with a client “game” app), why not use your newly acquired Raspberry Pi? I don’t know!

A Massive List Of Passwords And Credit Card Numbers was Leaked by an Anonymous person.

Following through on threats of a Christmas hack, a Twitter account claiming affiliation with Anonymous released a list of what it says are usernames and passwords for 13,000 accounts on Amazon, PlayStation, XBox Live, Hulu Plus, Walmart and other retail and entertainment services.
The hack additionally included credit card numbers, security codes and expiration dates.

Engineers at Twitter are Currently Fixing Widespread Sign-In Issue

Update: Twitter says the issue has been fixed.
If you have had trouble using Twitter or third-party apps over the past couple of hours, fear not—the microblogging service is on it.

Good Riddance To Social Search

Remember how not too long ago the future of search — at least according to the big search engines — was social search? Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find any mention of social search on Google or Bing (let alone Yahoo Search). Let’s be thankful for that because social search was an ill-begotten idea to begin with.

currently Gmail is More Inaccessible In China

China has made it increasingly difficult to use Google services, including Gmail, this year. Now Gmail users are blocked from a workaround that allowed them to access their emails through third-party services.

Our Brains are been Changed by Thumb Typing

Smartphones are changing us, at least according to researchers at the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zurich. It seems that as we moved from phones with buttons – BlackBerrys and even feature phones – the parts of our brain associated with the thumbs are changing thanks to increased screen typing activity.

Confirmed. Xiaomi Raised $1.1B At $45B Valuation

Xiaomi, the fast-growing Chinese hardware company best known for its low-cost smartphones, confirmed today that has raised $1.1 billion in new funding at a valuation of $45 billion. In a Facebook post, Xiaomi co-founder and president Bin Lin said the round was raised from investors including All-Stars Investment, DST, GIC, Hopu Fund, and Yunfeng Capital.

AWS Simplifies EC2 Reserved Instance Pricing

Amazon Web Services is making some major changes to how it charges for reserved EC2 instances — a move that seems to be at least partially motivated by the changes Google announced earlier this year.
As Amazon announced today, developers can still pay upfront for the full term of the instance (either one or three years), but in addition to this, they can also pay only a portion of the reserved instance upfront cost and then pay the rest later for a slightly higher price.  They can also opt to pay nothing upfront, but commit to pay for the instance over the course of the contract. The last option, however, is only available for one-year commitments.

How To Hire When Everyone Wants To Found Their Own Startup

Back before founding a company was cool, it was a lot easier to get a lot of smart people in a room. Rockstars were hireable because they weren’t forging their own paths. That led to powerhouse teams like the “PayPal Mafia” seen below.
Alongside the future founders of LinkedIn, YouTube, and Yelp at PayPal was Keith Rabois, now of Khosla Ventures. Today at the Postseed Conference in SF, Rabois explained how PayPal was lucky to start at the right stage of the talent dilution cycle.