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INSIGHTS

Blockchain (Re)Emerges

More often than you might think, disruptive innovations travel in pairs -- at least until they are separated by the markets, which decide one is useful and the other not so much. Sometimes they're symbiotic. Both may be useful or even necessary -- like hardware and software -- but that's not always ...

Defending against foreign interference in American elections is one of the priorities Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he has been focusing on this year. The issue is highly sensitive, and it is one that has garnered a great deal of discussion in media reports and on the Web. Special counsel Robert...

The European Parliament on Wednesday approved a directive aimed at protecting the intellectual property of copyright holders on the Internet. It would require online platforms to scrutinize content their users post online and enter licensing agreements with rights holders. The Parliament approved th...

INSIGHTS

Oracle’s Bad Boy Image

No one at Oracle will ever be nominated for sainthood, and that's probably OK with them. Over the years the company has developed a bad boy image that in some cases is richly deserved, while in others it has been embellished by events. Much derives from the brash doings of founder and longtime CEO (...

The City of Sunrise Firefighters' Pension Fund has sued Oracle, alleging that its executives lied about the company's successes in the cloud and engaged in coercion and threats to sell its cloud products, "creating an unsustainable model that fell apart." The plaintiff apparently is seeking class-ac...

If you're a technologist, you've probably noticed a few new things associated with Chrome 68's release last month. One of the more notable changes is that it now uses a "not secure" indicator for any site not using HTTPS. So instead of providing a notification when a site is HTTPS, it now provides ...

The line between journalism and public relations can be fuzzy, and news organizations have wrestled with that problem for some time. However, that line recently has become more blurred than ever, with some publications enlisting armies of nonprofessional scribes to satisfy an insatiable appetite for...

GOVERNMENT IT REPORT

Feds Seem to Favor ‘Light Touch’ IoT Regulation

The Internet of Things may be in its infancy, but the U.S. government has been gearing up to determine what the proper federal role should be, both for encouraging and for regulating the use of IoT technology. Two recent developments have underscored the government's interest in IoT. On the regulato...

A national debate over civility erupted after Stephanie Wilkinson, a co-owner of a Red Hen restaurant in Virginia, asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. However, that wasn't the only consequence of the incident. In its aftermath, restaurant owners in various parts of Ame...

T-Mobile and Sprint have embarked on the road to a merger, creating some consternation among competitors. One concern that the combined company would have too much power as a mobile virtual network operator -- possibly controlling as much as 40 percent of the MVNO marketplace. The question is, shoul...

The United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce has written Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Apple CEO Tim Cook demanding information on their companies' practices with regard to third-party access, audio and location data collection. "This is a huge issue," said John Simpson,...

Small and mid-sized e-commerce businesses are likely to be hit hard by the United States Federal Communications Commission's repeal of Net neutrality earlier this month. The move will let Internet service providers block and manipulate Internet usage and discriminate against users at will, according...

The EU's Legal Affairs Committee has voted in favor of a directive on copyright in the digital single market, a proposal it has been wrestling with since its introduction in 2015. News of the vote kicked off a storm, as Article 13 of the directive effectively requires online content-sharing service ...

Large corporations are not the only businesses governed by Europe's GDPR, which became effective last month. Small and mid-sized businesses also are subject to its provisions. The regulation applies to the processing of personal data of individuals in the EU by an individual, a company or an organiz...

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