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21.5 million social security numbers affected in federal data breach, says US government

Jul09
by on July 9, 2015 at 8:34 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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One of the largest hacks in US government history may have been more extensive than we originally imagined. According to the Wall Street Journal, the hackers – which US officials believe were working for China- were able to access 19.7 million background investigation forms from the Office of Personnel Management, each of which includes a multitide of personal data. The number is  much larger than the previous estimates of ‘only’ 4.2 million files. It’s worse than you might think too, as these documents contain information about spouses and children, including their social security numbers. The Associated Press reports as many…

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Employees or Contractors? Uber fights to retain independent status for its drivers

Jul09
by on July 9, 2015 at 8:17 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Uber insists that its 160,000 US drivers are not employees but independent contractors, and is fighting a legal battle to make sure it stays that way. Uber today filed a motion to oppose class certification of a lawsuit filed in January by three of its drivers who seek employee status with the company and to represent their fellow drivers as a class. Whereas a class action suit typically involves a group that shares similar grievances, Uber says that its drivers are too diverse for that classification. In its motion, Uber stated in part: … Plaintiffs themselves are woefully inadequate and atypical class representatives under Rule 23(a),”…

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Amazon Fling SDK brings iOS and Android media casting to Fire TV

Jul09
by on July 9, 2015 at 8:07 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web

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If you’re one of the cord-cutters who replaced your cable subscription with an Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, then your device is about to get a whole lot better. In addition to the slew of announcements Amazon made today regarding its bevy of services, the company announced the Amazon Fling SDK — allowing iOS and Android developers to cast their apps onto the Fire TV. It’s essentially the Amazon equivalent to the Google Chromecast’s “casting” ability, finally breaking the Amazon Fire TV out of its native app for iOS and Android, and allowing mobile users to “fling” content and create a second-screen…

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Investors behind Linkedin, Dropbox dance around whether tech is in a bubble

Jul09
by on July 9, 2015 at 7:44 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Finance, Insider, San Francisco, vcs

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Tonight on Bloomberg Television Studio 1.0, correspondent Emily Chang will try her darnedest to get Greylock Partners‘ David Sze and John Lilly to either confirm or deny whether a tech bubble is mounting in the Silicon Valley. And, to their credit, both Sze and Lilly effectively dodge direct answers about whether or not that’s the case. Sze and Lilly have been at Greylock since 2000 and 2007, respectively, and have led Greylock investments in LinkedIn, Dropbox, Tumblr, and Digg — a slice of Greylock’s impressive investment portfolio. In a preview clip of the interview, which airs at 7:30pm ET/PT, both Sze…

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Hangouts on the Web finally lets you drag-and-drop photos right into your chat window

Jul09
by on July 9, 2015 at 7:28 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, Insider

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Hangouts on the Web, formerly known as Gchat, is a convenient way to keep up with your friends while reading through your emails, but it’s not without its share of issues. One of the most annoying ones is that you couldn’t simply drag and drop an image onto your chat window to share it with your contacts. Thankully, that’s changing today; Google Product Manager Mayur Kamat made a brief post about the neat new feature on his Google+ page today, and it’s as simple as you’d expect – just drag and drop. The images aren’t sent automatically though, so you don’t have…

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