Skyway Recommended January 6th to 12th

This week: Target Hacker Victim #s Grow; Finder’s Fee for Software Bugs?; Rogers Counting Internal Traffic Against Data Cap?; How NSA Nearly Killed the Internet; Apple, Google, Microsoft Race to Bring OS to Cars

Each Monday we’ll pass on links to articles we thought were well worth reading from the previous week, for those who live where we do (British Columbia, Canada), work like we do (high speed business internet), and think about things we do (internet trends, internet privacy, internet censorship, cutting-edge technology, etc.). If you don’t want to wait ’til Monday, we usually tweet and link to these as we come across them…

NY Times | The Numbers Grow: Hackers steal 110 million names, phone numbers and email addresses from Target

Target on Friday revised the number of customers whose personal information was stolen in a widespread data breach during the holiday season, now reporting a range of 70 million to 110 million people. The stunning figure represents about a third of all American adults at the low end, and is nearly three times as great as the company’s original estimate at the upper end. The theft is one of the largest ever of retail data. Read More…

IT World Canada | Pay millions for people to find bugs, argue security researchers

There’s no shortage of people who complain about government spending. As the saying goes, the only thing that’s constant in the world is death and taxes. So I wonder what the world will think of a suggestion from security researchers that governments should chip in and buy all of the IT vulnerabilities people can find in software. The money wouldn’t go to malware makers, but those who fund bugs. Read More…

Geek.com | Rogers caught counting internal data transfers against monthly data cap

Canada’s internet competition laws are a matter of some debate, here in the north (we call it Beyond the Wall). One side says that the enforced oligopoly and ban on foreign invasion keep local Canadian companies from going under. The other side argues that, with no danger of ever losing customers to competition, Canadian telecoms provide some of the worst service-per-dollar anywhere in the developed world. Canada’s price-per-datum is so bad NetflixCCO Ted Sarandos said last year that it was “almost a human rights violation.” Still, how bad could things get? One Reddit user has taken to the internet to voice his displeasure with the service. This user was on a home internet plan fromRogers, one of Canada’s three legally allowable national wireless carriers, which capped his data at 60 gigabytes per month. Some would consider this restrictive in the best of situations, but when, like this customer, you hit the cap without having actually used the internet very much, something clearly isn’t right. Read More…

Wired | How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the other tech titans have had to fight for their lives against their own government. An exclusive look inside their year from hell—and why the Internet will never be the same. Read More…

The Guardian | Google, Apple and Microsoft race to bring software to cars

Will buying a car soon involve questioning whether it is compatible with your smartphone? Google has announced a new “Open Automotive Alliance” (OAA), teaming up with carmakers Audi, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai and the graphics chipset company Nvidia to “enable new forms of integration” – but will find Apple and Microsoft already wooing many carmakers with their own software. Read More…