If you're the giver or recipient of presents gift-wrapped by Amazon, you may want to take a gander at U.S. Patent No. 8,060,463, granted to Amazon last month for Mining of User Event Data to Identify Users with Common Interests. Among other things, Amazon explains the invention can be used to identify recipients of gifts as Christian or Jewish based on wrapping paper. From the patent: 'The gift wrap used by such other users when purchasing gifts for this user, such as when the gift wrap evidences the user's religion (in the case of Christmas or Hanukkah gift wrap, for example.)'

In an op-ed published in Politico shortly after SOPA was introduced in the House, GoDaddy applauded the bill and called opponents “myopic.”

Now furious Internet users at reddit (owned by Advance Publications, which also owns Condé Nast) have organized a boycott of the registrar.

GoDaddy appears to be the only domain registrar, or Internet company for that matter, on the list. Indeed, even traditionally strong copyright supporters like the Business Software Alliance have been having second thoughts about the legislation.

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said Zynga should have priced its shares at $7. Morningstar analyst David Summer argued last week that Zynga was really worth only $6 per share.

The social-gaming company's issues are numerous, the analysts say. Bhatia pointed to the company's slowed growth over the last year, as well as its declining profit margins, as fundamental issues that could wreak havoc on Zynga's financials next year. He was also concerned that Zynga derives 94 percent of its revenue from Facebook.

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," an unnamed Iranian engineer analysing the captured drone told a Monitor correspondent inside Iran. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."

A former Navy specialist told the Monitor that hostilely reprogramming a GPS to fly to a different home is "certainly possible".

If that's what happened to the CIA's Sentinel, it's going to prompt some serious rethinking of how to wage robotic warfare. You don't want the enemy to be able to capture and reprogram your robots so they fight you.

Viacom says it doesn't match enough of its works, and complains that it shouldn't have to tell Google which copyrights it owns – Google should just figure this out and block Viacom's works a priori.

Malamud's 146-page report from FedFlix to the Archivist of the United States documents claims that companies such as NBC Universal, al-Jazeera, and Discovery Communications have used ContentID to claim title to FedFlix videos on YouTube. Some music royalty collecting societies have claimed infringements in "silent movies".

The American public paid to produce these videos, and they own them, lock, stock and barrel. Multinational companies – the same ones who cry poverty and demand far-reaching laws like the Stop Online Piracy Act – have laid title to them, "homesteading the public domain", and they are abusing Google's copyright peace offering to steal from the public.

The payments company, according to a Regretsy blog post, first froze the account due to a supposed misuse of the “Donate” payment button. The blog was told that it had to be a nonprofit in order to use the button. It isn’t, so it then attempted to collect money for toys by using a regular payment button and allowed the buyers to send purchased gifts to the 200 children.

After what the blog post calls “a very long and jaw-dropping conversation with an incredibly condescending representative,” this approach was also shut down. PayPal required that unprocessed orders be refunded — and then kept all of the transaction fees.

PayPal’s site doesn’t clearly ban the actions that Regretsy says got its account shut down. That doesn’t help the payment service’s case. Nor does the fact that Regretsy included in its blog posts damning snippets from what it says were conversations with PayPal’s customer representatives. (For example: “You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people.”)

The quarterly staff survey solicited 1,600 responses, with plenty of criticism, including one person who said he planned to cash out and leave after the initial public offering.

As the discord increases, the situation may jeopardize the company’s ability to retain top talent at a time when Silicon Valley start-ups are fiercely jockeying for the best executives and engineers.

But the heavy focus on metrics, in this already competitive industry, has also fostered an uncompromising culture, one where employees are constantly measured and game designers are pushed to meet aggressive deadlines.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently began calling the new Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3DS insensitive to the hunting and killing of real-life tanuki racoon dogs for fur.

Splattering animated blood on their site and flashing "Mario Kills Tanooki" is a bit harsh, even for a organization that has links to known arsonists and the ALF, a group declared by the Department of Homeland Security to be a "terrorist threat."

China, which is often accused of taking part in state sponsored hacking, with or without evidence, rejected the report and said it wanted to help.

Interestingly, while the US report pointed the finger at China and Russia it did admit that it is difficult to pinpoint who exactly is behind an attack.

It is no surprise that China or any government would deny such allegations and the report should serve as yet another example of how governments are trying to lay blame rather than fix the underlying problem at hand.

The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups. The article does not define the standards are for “suspicion” and “association.”

When the agency expects to kill 20 or more people at once, then it’s got to give the Pakistanis notice.

And the basic question — Who should be targeted? — hasn’t changed. The default answer, to put it bluntly, is: Whomever the CIA can. Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights lawyer, points to a consequence: A young man named Tariq was killed in a drone strike with his 12-year old cousin, Waheed Khan, while driving their aunt home.