The Vast Majority of IRS Employees Aren't Corrupt
GSA Mishandled Executive Bonuses
EIG 2013 as Told by Your Tweets
Infographic: Nominee Limbo
Will You Be Furloughed?
Boldly Go Where No Fed's Gone Before
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
There Are 12.5 Unprotected Versions of the Average American’s Personal Information on the Web
May 15, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Safe Shepherd is a company that searches the web for all the public records available on Americans, and then presents them in a dashboard. Try it for yourself—it’s free—and the results are almost guaranteed to be unnerving. The information is mostly innocuous, and includes your address, phone number and email, ...
Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon Are Trying to Turn Into the Same Über-Company
May 10, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Who will be the sole provider of all that you desire? Which company’s services will you “hire” to address your every internet-enabled whim? It sounds absurd, but this is the essence of the battle between the big four tech giants—oh and Microsoft too, but these days Microsoft is mostly an ...
Video: Robotic Exoskeleton turns everyday Houseplants Into Cyborgs
May 9, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
As if we needed more evidence that we have more technology than we know what to do with, a collaboration between an artist and an engineer has yielded something both whimsical and potentially useful. It gives houseplants autonomy. Such ideas have been explored in science fiction before—in Vernor Vinge’s novel ...
Massive Hacker Strike Against US Government and Banks Turned Out to Be a Dud
May 8, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Yessterday was May 7, the day that Anonymous and various explicitly anti-USA and anti-Israel hacking groups promised to take down the websites of the Pentagon, White House, FBI, Bank of America, Chase bank, and all the other usual symbols of oppression. Except the attacks appeared to be a complete failure. ...
Most Data Isn’t 'Big,' and Businesses Are Wasting Money Pretending It Is
May 7, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Big data! If you don’t have it, you better get yourself some. Your competition has it, after all. Bottom line: If your data is little, your rivals are going to kick sand in your face and steal your girlfriend. There are many problems with the assumptions behind the “big data” ...
$1 Billion in Bitcoin Was Traded in April—16 Times the Previous Record
May 6, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
In April, $1 billion worth of bitcoins was traded across all exchanges, according to an aside in the complaint bitcoin startup Coinlab just filed against the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, Mt.Gox. Just a month prior, only $60 million in bitcoin was traded, estimates Jeremy Liew, a managing director at Lightspeed ...
BlackBerry’s CEO Is Correct: There’s No Future in Tablets
May 1, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
If you think PC manufacturers are hurting as consumers opt for tablets and other devices, what’s to stop the same downward spiral of razor-thin margins from destroying the fortunes of tablet makers, as well? That appears to be the logic of BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, who told Bloomberg today that ...
Commentary: Amazon Takes On Enterprise Cloud Companies
April 29, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
“I find it really hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books,” said Carl Eschenbach, the chief operating officer of VMWare, at the company’s recent annual confab with its partners and resellers. VMWare competes with Amazon to provide businesses with computing and IT services in ...
Just Four Companies Will Produce the Microchips on Which the Global Economy Depends
April 26, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Making advanced microchips has always been hard. But it’s now so difficult that the number of companies with the knowledge and cash to do it is about to shrink to precisely four. The factories in which microchips are made, called fabs, can cost billions of dollars. They’re like rocket launch ...
Video: The Present and Future of Wearable Technology
April 26, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
“Having technology on you, around you, inside you 24/7 is going to be totally commonplace,” says Rebecca (Becky) Stern, a director of wearable electronics at Adafruit Industries, in this excellent, highly watchable introduction to wearable technology. Adafruit is a thriving electronics boutique based in New York City and aimed at ...
