gawker

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Tuesday, August 2.

• Finally, President Obama signs debt limit bill after nasty fight to avert economic catastrophe Tuesday. According to CBS News, Obama said the deal to cut spending and increase the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit marked an "important first step to ensuring that as a nation we live within our means."

• Doctor booking site ZocDoc announces $50 million funding round from DST Global, and plans to use the investment to expand its presence to … Read more

Husband, father, grandfather, citizen, small businessman, author, former Speaker, candidate for president, and Twitter fraudster? Newt Gingrich is being accused of having more than a million fictitious followers on Twitter.

The provocative blog Gawker has been on an absolute tear over the last few days, accusing Gingrich of using campaign money to hire spam agencies designed to boost Twitter follower counts. The accusations supposedly originate from an anonymous former campaign staffer.

Things got even spicier today, when Gawker cited a new report by New York-based search company PeekYou, which claims to have analyzed every Gingrich follower and to come up … Read more

A probe into a prototype iPhone 4 purchased by a gadget blog is nearing its end, with investigators expected to report their findings soon.

Stephen Wagstaffe, district attorney for the county of San Mateo, Calif., told CNET today that "the investigation is ongoing" and he expects it could conclude as early as next month. Investigators are close to finishing their interviews and will present him with their findings, he said.

The investigation began early last year when Robert Gray Powell, a 28-year-old Apple computer engineer, left an unmarked prototype iPhone in a German beer garden in Redwood City, … Read more

Last night, IBM's "Watson" supercomputer competed against the top human competitors on "Jeopardy" to test Watson's ability to use artificial intelligence in the context of the English language.

Represented by a lighted blue avatar, Watson performed well against quiz game champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, finishing the first round with a tie against the latter at $5,000. It did this with the help of 10 racks of IBM Power 750 servers running Linux, although like everyone else we wonder if the speed at which Watson can "press" a buzzer is fair to the other contestants.

Either way, this sounds like the exposition for an unwritten Roland Emmerich movie starring Will Smith, so start loading up your ID4 viruses.

Howard Stern's "Private Parts" aired on HBO last weekend, and the King of All Media himself pulled a Tang and liveblogged behind-the-scenes commentary throughout the showing. In addition to answering questions from fans, Stern also talked about his co-stars, revealed details about specific shots, and even dished about adult film star Jenna Jameson's antics onset.

Stern's arrival on Twitter is an obvious move, although it took him a while to jump on the bandwagon--the star joined the Twitterverse on February 3, the same day he defended David Letterman's honor and galvanized his crew on "The Late Show."

Stern's incendiary approach to celebrity gossip and media makes Twitter an apt medium for speaking to his more than 270,000 followers. The Lord of Fart Manor can be found at @HowardStern.

Next on the show, we discuss Gawker and Facebook's recent site redesigns. The Internet is giving a cold shoulder to the Gawker network after it debuted an app-style blog layout last week.… Read more

When blog network Gawker Media announced last year that it would be completely redesigning its portfolio of media properties--which include Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, and the namesake Gawker.com--it created a wave of banter in the media industry. With only one story fully highlighted on the front page and a frame serving up alternate stories' headlines, Gawker honcho Nick Denton is steering the company into a theoretical post-blog age.

But, when the redesign went live on several Gawker properties Tuesday, there were still a few surprises to the notably tablet-friendly experience. For one, Gawker sites have now completely eliminated … Read more

It's not your regular Buzz Outloud today. From New York City, Wilson G. Tang, Jeff Bakalar, Dan Ackerman and Rex Brian (AKA Scott Stein) take over, and needless to say it's a very different BOL. In this topsy-turvy world, Google's Dr. Eric Schmidt is forced out as CEO. HP joins the fray by rearranging its board of directors with four new members, including former California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. Verizon files suit against the FCC for rules they proposed, and no, the iPad 2 won't be getting the Retina Display--much to our dismay.

A data breach at Gawker Media last weekend had a ripple affect for sites all over the Web.

Gawker's Web site and back-end database were compromised, and passwords, usernames, and e-mail addresses for about 1.3 million user accounts were posted on the BitTorrent site Pirate Bay. Passwords were encrypted with technology, but weak passwords can easily be cracked.

People who use the same password on multiple sites are at risk of having their accounts on those other sites compromised. This happened already on Twitter, with some accounts being used to send spam shortly after the Gawker breach was … Read more

The data breach at Gawker earlier this week had many people scrambling to figure out if their data had been exposed and resetting passwords on other sites just in case they had reused their password there.

The only Gawker subscribers who appeared to have been safe were those who logged in to the site using Login with Facebook (formerly called Facebook Connect), a single sign-on authentication service that lets you use one login for multiple sites as long as you have a Facebook account.

Basically, it works by allowing you to sign in to a Web site using your Facebook … Read more

A data breach at e-mail database management firm Silverpop prompted McDonald's and at least one other Web site to warn subscribers, but it's unclear just how many companies are affected.

McDonald's told customers this week that in addition to e-mail addresses, other information may have been exposed such as name, postal address, and phone number. The data was managed by an unnamed company hired by its marketing partner, Arc Worldwide.

However, the company was revealed to be Silverpop in this ChicagoBusiness.com report, which quotes an FBI spokesman as saying that Silverpop has more than 100 customers … Read more