Internet & Media

Pinterest rolls out user blocking, flagging, and reporting

Despite Pinterest's clean image, some smut does work its way onto the site -- and now the company is doing something about it.

The social network announced today that it's rolling out a new feature that lets users report and block questionable activity. People will be able to block other users, flag certain pins, or report an entire user profile for review.

Here's more from a blog post by Pinterest software engineer Dannie Chu:

Blocking prevents both of you from being able to follow each other's boards as well as like, repin, and comment on each … Read more

Uber hails arrival of its taxi service in San Francisco

A day after conceding defeat in the Big Apple, Uber is bringing its taxi service to the City by the Bay.

The private car-summoning company announced today that it is bringing its cab-hailing service to San Francisco, allowing customers to request a taxi via an app on their iOS or Android device. At the end of a customer's ride, the driver will input the fare appearing on the cab's meter into an Uber iPhone -- along with a 20 percent gratuity and a $1 booking fee -- to determine the final charge, which is then billed to … Read more

Square's Jack Dorsey reconsiders the term 'user'

One of George Orwell's famous rules of writing is "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

It seems Square's founder and CEO Jack Dorsey was channeling the famous "Animal Farm" writer in a Tumblr blog he penned today. Known for ruminating on concepts and ideas, Dorsey called into question the tech world's use of the word "user."

"It's time for our industry and discipline to reconsider the word 'user,'" he wrote. "We speak … Read more

Pirate Bay ditches servers and switches to the cloud

In the midst of threats of a possible police raid, the Pirate Bay decided to armor itself and become literally raid-proof. It's ditched its servers and moved to several cloud-hosting providers in different countries around the world.

"Slowly and steadily we are getting rid of our earthly form and ascending into the next stage, the cloud," the Pirate Bay wrote in a blog post. "Our data flows around in thousands of clouds, in deeply encrypted forms, ready to be used when necessary. Earth bound nodes that transform the data are as deeply encrypted and reboot into … Read more

Sparks fly over anti-Semitic tweets in France

A controversy over an explosion of anti-Semitic tweets in France has raised complaints that Twitter makes it too hard for users to report offensive posts.

Over the last week, Twitter has been awash in anti-Semitic French-language tweets tied to the hashtag "#unbonjuif" ("a good Jew"), prompting arguments that social media in general, and Twitter in particular, are cesspools of objectionable content (article in French).

#UnBonJuifx-( twitter.com/CosaNostraAmli...

— J U L I ABOND JR(@CosaNostraAmlia) October 14, 2012

#UnBonJuif twitter.com/racyyne/status...

— Serre Fion 8-9 (@racyyne) October 16, 2012

Among the many objectionable tweets … Read more

PayPal, Marketplaces boost eBay earnings

Despite last week's rumors of layoffs looming at PayPal, eBay reported much better-than-expected third-quarter earnings today after the bell.

The e-commerce giant reported a third-quarter net income of $597 million, or 45 cents a share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 55 cents a share on a revenue of $3.4 billion -- up 15 percent from the same time last year.

Wall Street was looking for eBay to report third-quarter earnings of 42 cents a share on revenue of $2.63 billion.

However, eBay shares were initially down -- though not by much -- in after-hours trading by approximately 3.9 percent following Q3 results. … Read more

Buzzworthy: Houseflies can now tweet

Anyone out there speak fly? Because I'd really like to know what these houseflies were saying when they tweeted the following last week:

``F`CZHGF`CZHGF`XZHGFDS`XZHFDS`XZHFDS`ZFD`ZFD`ZHGFD`HGFD`HGFD`HGF` HGF`HGF`HF`HF`HF``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

The flies have joined the social-networking masses thanks to artist David Bowen, who created fly tweet, a device that sends tweets based on the activities of a colony of houseflies with too much time on their wings. The flies live and tweet inside an acrylic sphere that also contains a computer keyboard.

As the insects fly over the keyboard keys, their subtle movements trigger not-so-subtle tweets (really, flies, tweeting in all caps? Not cool).… Read more

Facebook opens floodgates for mobile ads in your News Feed

Facebook is upping its efforts to make money on mobile.

In early August, the company rolled out its first mobile ad units that aren't tied to a user's social connections. These ads, which Facebook called a test at the time, let an undisclosed number of third-party developers buy ads in mobile New Feeds as a way to help them drive more people to their apps. Tapping on the ad would take you to the Android or iOS App Store purchase page.

Now Facebook is opening its mobile app install ads to all developers, which should help spread apps … Read more

How to restore the classic Start menu with Pokki for Windows 8

Pokki for Windows 8 joins a growing list of Windows 8 Start menu utilities. How does the program fare?

SweetLabs' Pokki for Windows 8 fills in the gap for Windows 8 users who still want the traditional Start menu on their desktops. And you'll have to place me in that group.

Through I've become more accustomed to the Start screen over time, I still find the Start menu a quicker and more efficient way to launch any application installed on my PC.

I know you can open a program or file just by typing its name at the … Read more