
This is the A2SM Link Post for April 11th through April 12th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.
- Twitter to Developers: We Needed to Acquire Tweetie to Grow – Twitter’s Ryan Sarver posted a note to the Twitter Developer Talk Google Group today responding to growing concerns by folks in the Twitter application development ecosystem.
- Palm is For Sale – Palm, the smartphone pioneer, is on the block. The company, which in recent years has been eclipsed by the iPhone (and to some extent by Google’s Android OS), failed to make much of a comeback with its most recent Pre and Pixi phones.
- WARNING: Farm Town Serves Malware Ads to Facebook Users – Sophos warns today that popular Facebook game Farm Town (quite similar to FarmVille) has been serving ads which display fake security warnings, tricking users into installing malware or handing over their credit card details.
- iPad Marriage Proposal: Congrats Zach, You Dork –
- Researcher Uncovers (Another) Major Facebook Security Exploit – For all the credit Facebook has received for its privacy controls and user safety, the site still falls prey to an unsettling number of security issues and potential data breaches. Last month a botched code push accidentally revealed private user email addresses, and before that Facebook accidentally sent private messages to the wrong recipients. Today, security engineer Joey Tyson, AKA theharmonyguy, has detailed a major security hole in Facebook Platform — one that would allow a malicious website to silently access a user’s profile information, photos, and in some cases, messages and wall posts, with no action required on the user’s part.
- Fair Use Is Not Enough: Using The ‘Copyright Misuse’ Defense To Protect Free Speech | Techdirt – We've written many times about the inherent conflict between free speech and copyright laws. Copyright law is an inherent restriction on free speech. The courts have tried to get around this with two tools: "fair use" as an exception to copyright and the "idea/expression" dichotomy, which is supposed to only allow copyright over the specific expression, rather than the idea (in practice, this is often violated — such as in the recent decision to ban an unauthorized sequel to Catcher in the Rye). So, that mostly leaves fair use. However, many people have noticed that fair use is woefully inadequate in preventing basic First Amendment abuses.
- Wikifounder reports Wikiparent to FBI over ‘child porn’ • The Register – Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has reported the site's parent organization to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he believes the Wikimedia Commons "may be knowingly distributing child pornography."
- Dear Journalists: There Is No Cyberwar | Techdirt – At the beginning of April, we noted that director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, who's now consulting for some firms that would profit greatly from a re-architecting of the internet, is going around pushing a ridiculous moral panic about "cyberwar" and how we basically need to break the internet and get rid of all privacy and anonymity. Forget your civil liberties, there's money to be made in scaring people. While even the US "cybersecurity" czar tried to throw some cold water on these claims, the press sure does love bogus "cyberwar" stories, despite the lack of proof that there is any such thing or that it could do any real damage.
- U.S. Steps Up Probe of Tech Hiring – WSJ.com – The Justice Department is looking into claims that company agreements not to recruit each others' employees is a violation of antitrust laws.
- http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=GOOG – The Justice Department is looking into claims that company agreements not to recruit each others' employees is a violation of antitrust laws.













