Is Wikipedia for sale? We all know that Wikipedia can be subverted – it's an inevitability of an open platform that some people will seek to abuse it, whether to gain some advantage or just for a laugh. Fortunately, the Wikipedia community has strong mechanisms in place to deal with this, from the famous cry of [citation needed] to the rigorous checks and standards put in place by its hierarchy of editors and admins. In recent months though, insiders have encountered something altogether more worrying: a concerted attack on the very fabric of Wikipedia by PR companies that have subverted the online encyclopedia's editing hierarchy to alter articles on a massive scale – perhaps tens of thousands of them. Vice
Ubuntu 13.10 review: The Linux OS of the future remains a year away After the customary six months of incubation, Ubuntu 13.10 – codenamed Saucy Salamander – has hatched. The new version of the popular Linux distribution brings updated applications and several new features, including augmented search capabilities in the Unity desktop shell. Although Saucy Salamander offers some useful improvements, it's a relatively thin update. XMir, the most noteworthy item on the 13.10 roadmap, was ultimately deferred for inclusion in a future release. Ars Technica | Download Ubuntu
Windows 8.1 models unlikely to ignite PC demand The PC market is unlikely to reverse its decline in 2013 and 2014 despite the arrival of new Windows 8.1 devices, sources in the supply chain have commented. The sources pointed out that Microsoft's slow pace in responding to consumer demand has seriously damaged the software giant. Since the company also failed to seize the best opportunity to promote Windows, and the PC industry is already walking downhill, the sources believe Windows 8.1 is unlikely to contribute much. DigiTimes
Fresh leak on US spying: NSA accessed Mexican President's email The National Security Agency (NSA) has a division for particularly difficult missions. Called "Tailored Access Operations" (TAO), this department devises special methods for special targets. That category includes surveillance of neighboring Mexico, and in May 2010, the division reported its mission accomplished. A report classified as "top secret" said: "TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain..." Spiegel
What does it mean for the U.S. to 'lose control of the Internet?' Is the U.S. losing control of the Internet? That's how some are interpreting a statement released in October by 10 organizations central to the Internet's operation. "With striking unanimity, the organizations that actually develop and administer Internet standards and resources initiated a break with three decades of U.S. dominance of Internet governance," writes Milton Mueller, a professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. The Atlantic
Snapchat went from frat boy dream to tech world darling. But will it last? L.A. does tech the way it does everything else: with red carpets and velvet ropes. Consider the Social 25 party, held this year at the exclusive 41 Ocean Club in Santa Monica. The VIP event, which kicks off L.A.'s Social Media Week, honors 25 celebrities and brands who – in the words of organizer Drew Baldwin – are crushing it on social. Sam Pepper is there, muttering something and posing with his hangers-on for the paparazzi. LA Weekly
Intel Core i7-4770K vs Core i7-2600K gaming-performance Especially gamer see themselves confronted with the question which is the best CPU for their system from a performance as well as a price perspective. This is meanwhile the sixth article in our CPU Gaming Performance series of articles, where we compare the gaming performance of two CPU's in recent games. Obvisously you will see the performance difference and we will also point to the price of these chips. Ocaholic
A radical dream for making techno utopias a reality Balaji Srinivasan opened his Y Combinator startup school talk with a joke: Is the US the Microsoft of nations? The question was received warmly by the crowd of more than 1,700 and did in fact have a logical conclusion: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, were exactly what Bill Gates feared when he said in 1998 that two people in a garage working on something new was Microsoft's biggest threat. CNET
My Steelcase Leap chair fixed my crappy posture Like, a lot. I sit in my home office for eight to nine hours every day doing TR-related work. Once I'm done, I go on sitting there doing other things – working on personal projects, playing Trackmania, wasting my time on Reddit, and so forth. I take breaks, of course. Every now and then, I'll walk to the kitchen, open the fridge door, decide that I'm not hungry, and walk back to my desk. The Tech Report
CryptoLocker ransomware - see how it works, learn about prevention, cleanup and recovery CryptoLocker, detected by Sophos as Troj/Ransom-ACP, is a malicious program known as ransomware. Some ransomware just freezes your computer and asks you to pay a fee. (These threats can usually be unlocked without paying up, using a decent anti-virus program as a recovery tool.) CryptoLocker is different... NakedSecurity
Vivo teases world's first 2K resolution smartphone 4K displays haven't made their way to the broad consumer market yet – we're all still playing our video games and watching our sports in 1080p. Normally, that would mean mobile device displays are much further off from upgrading to the next-gen resolution, but Vivo's new 2K smartphone – the world's first 2K smartphone – is quickly closing the gap. ExtremeTech
Would you pay $2,000 for a GIF? The artist Molly Soda, 24, is what you might call "Tumblr famous." The short, green-haired Chicago native has about 30,000 followers on the platform, where she posts GIFs, selfie performance pieces, and undulating word art. "I've never sold any work that I wasn't directly commissioned to do," she says. The Verge
The museum of Mario A single quarter was all it took to meet the man who would go on to define an entire medium. In 1981, the world gained access to a screen flicker, an iconic melody, and control of a carpenter named Jumpman. IGN