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The US tech sector does a great job of exchanging photos and recipes and family photos, but it doesn’t do much for overall productivity, which is stagnant as investment goes into apps rather than plant and equipment. This is how it always happens. Late Tuesday an obscure short-seller, Citron Research, announced that Twitter was the social media platform most vulnerable to privacy regulation – and its stock plunged 12% in the course of the day. All the other tech names followed, including the whole of the FANG+ Index (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, along with a half-dozen other big names,...

At a certain level, formerly functioning societies seem to be growing unnecessarily complicated. Yet, in a more basic sense, it's all coming together: Yesterday, as I was heading home after our live Clubland Q&A, it was all breaking news about the YouTube shooter. As usual in the first moments after such an attack, it's all tediously speculative - except for the apparent eyewitness report that the gunman was, in fact, a gunwoman. That, on the other hand, sent the breaking-news chappies boring down yet another dreary alley - that it was supposedly a YouTube employee upset with an ex-boyfriend. I...

When former national security adviser Susan Rice was named to the Netflix board of directors Wednesday, she became at least the third high-ranking official under former President Barack Obama to receive a top post at a tech giant after leaving the White House. In announcing Rice's appointment, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings said the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. had "tackled difficult, complex global issues with intelligence, integrity and insight." Rice's appointment was met with outrage from some conservatives. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Netflix had "[doubled] down in support of Obama corruption" by hiring Rice, a...

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was an epic fight of so-called muckrakers — journalists and novelists such as Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell, along with trust-busting politicians like Teddy Roosevelt — against rail, steel, and oil monopolies. Whatever one thought of their sensationalism and often hard-left socialist agendas, they at least brought public attention to price fixing, product liabilities, monopolies, and the buying of politicians. No such progressive zealotry exists today in Silicon Valley and its affiliated tech spin-offs. And the result is a Roman gladiatorial spectacle with no laws in the...

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you." I don't know, or care, who said that originally, but in this age of hacking and cyber corruption – and the deep state trying desperately to defeat the forces of light - it's becoming increasingly clear that there appears to be folks out in cyberspace who don't have your best interests in mind. Indeed, you may have heard about how Facebook and Google have been revealed as corrupt data miners more interested in raking in cash and helping their fellow political travellers than in providing the benign...

Facebook shares are still dropping after its worst one-day decline since 2012 yesterday, as data breaches affecting over 50 million uses makes things political and the social media giant loses some $50 billion. On Monday, Facebook shares fell almost 7 percent on news that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating it over personal data breaches. The market-wide sell-off continued on Tuesday, even as the Dow gained points, when more details emerged on the investigation, sparked by a whistleblower who told regulators that more than 50 million Facebook users had their data hijacked by a political consultancy hired by...

• Price performance difference between tech and utilities has spread lately to a level nearly as wide as when the dotcom bubble burst. • "The obsession with dot-com stocks in the late-1990s has been replaced today by a fascination with FANG stocks," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group. Price performance between the two sectors has spread lately to a gap not quite as wide as during the bubble, but close. Using a measure called the "Popular/Panned Ratio", Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group, sees danger signs growing for the bull market that began...

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire says it's "unacceptable" that Google and Apple unilaterally impose prices and other contractual terms on software developers, and that this is hurting France's startups. Le Maire predicted the tech giants could face sanctions amounting to millions of euros, according to AFP. It’s not the first time the French government clashes with Google. It has repeatedly criticised the company for paying little tax in France by transferring its revenues to a subsidiary in Ireland, where taxes are much lower. Wednesday's move comes amid growing fears of an international trade war pitting the United States against...

Starting in May 2010, The Washington Examiner reported, drawing on emails obtained by Citizens United, “Clinton Foundation staff pushed Hillary Clinton’s State Department to approve a meeting between Bill Clinton and a powerful Russian oligarch as her agency lined up investors for a project under his purview.” His name was Viktor Vekselberg of Renova (a Clinton Foundation donor) and the project under his purview was the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which is being built near Moscow. The following month, Bill Clinton would receive $500,000 for a speech in Moscow from a Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the...

When a cryptocurrency start-up that promised to revolutionize the fruit and vegetable industry shut down last month, it left behind one word on its website: penis. When a virtual currency company called DateCoin recently tried to entice investors for its initial coin offering, it posted a Facebook ad that featured a reclining woman in a swimsuit with text over her body that read, “Touch my I.C.O.” And after the North American Bitcoin Conference in January, which highlighted 84 male speakers and three women, the official conference party was held at a Miami strip club. Virtual currencies and blockchain, the digital...

Glassdoor assembles its annual Best Jobs in America list, which is in its fourth year, based on each job’s overall Glassdoor Job Score, a score that is determined by weighing three key factors equally: earning potential based on median annual base salary, job satisfaction rating and the number of current job openings. Here are the top 10 jobs pulled from Glassdoor’s list: Data scientist Job Score: 4.8 Job Satisfaction Rating: 4.2 Number of Job Openings: 4,524 Median Base Salary: $110,000 Devops engineer Job Score: 4.6 Job Satisfaction Rating: 4.0 Number of Job Openings: 3,369 Median Base Salary: $105,000 Marketing manager...

Tesla Inc. released a new compensation plan for Chief Executive Elon Musk on Tuesday, with payments dependent on massive increases in the electric carmaker's stock market value. The announcement comes as Tesla prepares to report 2017 financial results that are expected to include massive cash losses. Tesla Inc. released a new compensation plan for Chief Executive Elon Musk on Tuesday, with payments dependent on massive increases in the electric carmaker's stock market value. The announcement comes as Tesla prepares to report 2017 financial results that are expected to include massive cash losses.

Amazon wants to put a camera and microphone in your bedroom with the UK launch of its latest Echo home device. The camera on the £119.99 ($129) Echo Spot, which doubles up as a 'smart alarm', will probably be facing directly at the user's bed. The device, which is already available in the US has such sophisticated microphones it can hear people talking from across the room - even if music is playing.

Angry iPhone fans will have to wait until March to fix their handsets, despite promises from Apple to replace ageing batteries. The tech company previously admitted deliberately reducing the performance of older smartphones to extend their battery life. It offered to replace the power packs in the iPhone 6 or later even if the devices passed Apple's Genius Bar diagnostic test according to an internal memo. Customers have taken to social media to express their outrage at being told the firm has run out of stock and won't be getting more batteries in for at least two months. News of...

Electronics giants like Samsung, LG, Panasonic and more suddenly lost power to their booths a little after 11 a.m. PT. LG’s exhibit in the center portion of the hall is enclosed, and when the power dropped out it drew audible gasps from attendees, and for a minute it seemed like some sort of surprise announcement. But everyone quickly realized that there was a problem and brought out their phones to provide a modicum of light as attendees exited the hall. Other parts of the hall remain up and running, but CES attendees outside were locked out of the convention center...

he U.S. Navy has located a transport aircraft deep on the Pacific Ocean floor where it crashed in November, killing three sailors on board. The C-2A "Greyhound" aircraft, which was traveling to the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan when it crashed the day before Thanksgiving in the Philippine Sea, rests at a depth of about 18,500 feet (5,640 meters), the Japan-based 7th Fleet said in a statement Saturday. Salvaging it will be the deepest recovery attempt of an aircraft to date, the Navy said. The plane was located last week by a contracted salvage vessel that deployed a pinger locator...

What are Meltdown and Spectre? Do they only affect Intel chips? Will the fixes slow my computer … and what even is a processor? Meltdown and Spectre are the names of two serious security flaws that have been found within computer processors. They could allow hackers to steal sensitive data without users knowing, one of them affecting chips made as far back as 1995. What are Meltdown and Spectre? Meltdown is a security flaw that could allow hackers to bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer’s core memory, which is normally highly protected. Spectre is...

A fleet of drone ships would be a key part in staving off another major offshore oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new report issued by a task force created after the worst oil spill in the energy industry's history. The National Academies of Sciences' Gulf program issued a report Wednesday that calls for the creation of a fleet of robotic ships, miniature drone-like submarines and underwater gliders to track oil flows along the Gulf's sometimes unpredictable underwater currents. Tracking oil's movements under the water, not just at the surface, became a key problem after the...

If watching Mad Men were my full-time job (and what a job that would be), I would only need to dedicate 9.1 eight-hour working days to completing the task. Same with Game of Thrones, as it stands – 9.1 working days, less than two working weeks, before the job was done, signed off, go home and put your feet up. The company AT&T has released a “streaming consumption calculator”, which informs you with casual cruelty how much of your life you have dedicated to watching your favourite TV shows, in terms of data and time. (Obviously not at all motivated...

Border Patrol agents are increasingly worried about the threat from drug-cartel-flown drones, after agents spotted 13 drones suspected of carrying drugs across one section of the U.S.-Mexico border in just one four-day period in November. Cartels are aware that the U.S. lacks the ability to detect the drones, much less to interdict them, making them a choice method for smuggling high-dollar hard drugs into the country, agents said. They said the fact that they even spotted the 13 drones was serendipitous and only hints at the scope of the real problem. “We’re seeing an uptick. We flat-out just don’t have...