Takeout Tycoons GrubHub and Seamless Merge

Yahoo and Tumblr weren't the only online properties getting into bed together today: GrubHub and Seamless, two of the largest food-delivery websites in the US, have announced a merger, combining forces to fend off an increasing number of startup rivals, Bloomberg reports. "This has nothing to do with cost savings;...

Yahoo Promises Not to 'Screw Up' Tumblr

As Marissa Mayer puts it , "Tumblr. + Yahoo! = !!" As Tumblr CEO David Karp puts it , "F--- yeah." The two companies this morning announced that a definitive agreement has been reached and that Yahoo will indeed acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, a transaction that Mayer expects will close in...

France Goes Shopping for US Drones

France is looking to assemble a fleet of intelligence gathering drones to use in its military operations in Mali, and is in talks with both the US and Israel to get its hands on some. The Pentagon has already approved the sale of two Reaper drones (Congress still needs to...

Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1B

The rumors were apparently pretty accurate : Yahoo will indeed acquire Tumblr, and its board has approved a $1.1 billion cash deal for the blogging site. The board met today and unanimously OKed the deal, in what AllThingsD 's Kara Swisher reports was "a foregone conclusion." It's the biggest acquisition...

Americans Are Cheating on Their Partners ... on Netflix

Are you guilty of "Netflix adultery"? That's secretly watching a video on Netflix you were supposed to be waiting to watch together with your significant other. According to a survey by the site itself, 51% of adults in committed relationships said they had or would cheat. Only 12% of those...

100M Facebook Users Are Not Human

Apparently not everyone on Facebook has an actual face. A new analysis of Facebook user data has found that of the site's much-boasted-about 1 billion users, only 889.3 million of them are actual people, reports Quartz . The other 100 million? Probably brands, pets, parodies and kitchen appliances . Yet Facebook...

eHarmony Looks to Match Bosses, Workers

EHarmony is moving from the business of love to the business of, well, business. The dating website is developing a job service that aims to cut through what one eHarmony exec calls the "artificial and weird interaction" of the job interview in much the same way it does the date....

Brazil's Ambitious Plan: Erect 10K-Mile Virtual Fence

Brazil's border is pretty mammoth (here's a visual reminder ), and a growing economy has made illegal activities (chief among them illegal immigration) an equally growing concern. But the country has a plan: a 10,000-mile fence ... except that this one is virtual. For reference, America's southern border is only...

Report: Yahoo In 'Serious' Talks to Buy Tumblr

The tech world is abuzz today over reports that Yahoo is in talks to invest in, partner with, or just plain buy Tumblr, in an attempt to, to quote Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman, make the company "cool again." Goldman uttered those words earlier this week, saying that the company's chief...

Google Glass Could Make Us Less Annoying

Given all the hate that's been piled on Google Glass lately, Farhad Manjoo strapped on a pair "expecting to experience the digital equivalent of a machine hacked together with duct tape and construction paper." Instead, he came away convinced that Glass, or something like it, will define the way we...

Google Maps Reunites Boy With Family, 23 Years Later

A Chinese man who was abducted as a 5-year-old boy finally found his way home, 23 years later, thanks in part to Google Maps. After he was snatched on his way to kindergarten in a small town in Sichuan province, Luo Gang was raised by adoptive parents (no word on...

Fired Groupon CEO Records 'Business Music' Album

Groupon's co-founder seemed to take it pretty well when he got fired , which somehow still doesn't detract from the nuttiness of what Andrew Mason has done since: recorded an album ... of "motivational business music." The tidbit comes in an otherwise fairly unremarkable Chicago Tribune piece about Mason's decision to start...

Georgia Tech Offering $7K Master's Degree

In what the dean of computing calls a "revolutionary step," Georgia Institute of Technology will offer a $7,000 online master's degree in computer science—that's one-sixth the cost of its traditional degree, and officials say the two degrees will be comparable. The university will partner with Silicon Valley startup...

Google's Spotify Rival Is Here

Google today announced its Spotify competitor, although we have to say that when it comes to names, Spotify has the edge: Google's service is called Google Play Music All Access, VentureBeat reports. The streaming music service is available today for $9.99 a month, after a free 30-day trial. A...

Winning Bid for Coffee With Tim Cook: $610K

Someone just paid $610,000 to have coffee with Tim Cook sometime in the next year. A charity auction for up to one hour with the Apple CEO closed yesterday, and the winning bid was quite a bit higher than Charitybuzz's suggested value of $50,000, NPR reports. The winner...

Tumblr Post Spurs 8-Hour Race to Stop Teen's Suicide

Tumblr: It isn't all animated GIFs and Ryan Gosling. USA Today recounts the incredible story of how one teen's cry for help in a May 6 Tumblr post set off a nationwide search to find the girl before she committed suicide. It started when 18-year-old Jackie Rosas from Cathedral City,...

Google CEO Has Rare Vocal Cord Condition

Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page has broken his silence about the condition that prevented him from speaking publicly last summer , sparking fears he may have had an undisclosed, life-threatening illness. Page says he is in good health, but his left vocal cord has been paralyzed since he caught a...

LinkedIn Tells Prostitutes to Go Away

LinkedIn's new user agreement includes a surprising clause: No promoting prostitution or escort services on your profile, even if it's legal where you live. ReadWriteWeb spotted the unusual inclusion, and wondered if it was even truly necessary. In its words, "would anyone really take the risk of advertising adult services?"...

Help Gingrich Find a New Name for 'Cell Phone'

Newt Gingrich is launching a new campaign: to find a better name for the cell phone. In a new YouTube video, the former presidential candidate urges followers to suggest a new name for the device we don't really use as a phone much anymore, ABC reports. He likens it to...

Samsung: 5G Downloads Movies in 1 Second

Samsung has wireless technology in the works that will let users download an entire movie in a second, it says. In tests, the South Korean company's 5G service worked over a distance of more than a mile, AFP reports via Business Insider . Data traveled at more than a gigabyte per...

Girl Coder, 17, Rules All-Guy Field at Hackathon

Jennie Lamere was the only girl competing at a Boston hackathon last month, and the only of 80 coders who competed solo. So when the 17-year-old New Hampshire native took 10 hours and 150 lines of code to come up with a gizmo that lets you block Twitter spoilers for...

Bloomberg News Caught Snooping on Bankers

Bloomberg LP operates both a multi-platform media organization, Bloomberg News, and a computer system, Bloomberg Terminal, that bankers and traders use to monitor market data. The problem: Bloomberg News reporters can see how and when any customer has been using a terminal, and now it turns out they have been...

2 Big Names Bail on Zuckerberg Advocacy Group

The advocacy group spearheaded by Mark Zuckerberg on immigration reform is down two high-profile players from Silicon Valley because of an ad strategy that has angered environmental and liberal groups, reports Reuters . The bigger name to leave is Tesla CEO Elon Musk. "I agreed to support FWD.us because there...

ESPN Could Help Pay Your Mobile Bill

Sick of worrying about staying within your data limits? ESPN is considering helping you out. The channel has discussed the possibility of subsidizing users' data plans with at least one top wireless carrier, the Wall Street Journal reports. For users, the result could be that ESPN usage wouldn't factor into...

WSJ : Amazon Building Smartphone With 3D Screen

Rumors of an Amazon smartphone have been kicking around for a while, and the Wall Street Journal weighs in today with some funky-sounding specifics. Its sources say one of the devices the company is working on has a 3D screen: "Using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone would seem to...

Feds Order 3D Gun Blueprints Taken Offline

When a company run by a Texas law student posted blueprints online this week for a 3D-printed gun, it logged more than 100,000 downloads in its first two days. Now, the State Department also has taken notice of the gambit by Cody Wilson at Defense Distributed , reports Forbes . It...

Facebook Phone Now Costs $1

Ouch. The "Facebook phone"—aka the HTC First phone running Facebook Home —is now selling for just 99 cents. AT&T was offering the phone for $99 on a two-year contract, but has now reduced the price to under a buck, Mashable reports. That's an absurd-sounding 99.72% discount on the...

FBI Pushes for Easier Online Snooping

In a shift expected to spark a major debate on Internet freedom, the White House is leaning toward granting the FBI's wish to make it easier to eavesdrop on online communications, insiders tell the New York Times . The FBI, which argues that advances in technology are causing its ability to...

Syria's Internet Goes Dark

A major Internet security firm issued this ominous-sounding assessment today: "On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the internet." That's from Dan Hubbard at Umbrella Security Labs , and other monitoring companies have similarly reported that web traffic in the country has disappeared, notes the Guardian . The most...

Los Alamos Has Ultra-Secure 'Quantum Internet'

The concept of a "quantum Internet" is like the holy grail of online security—any such system would guarantee that all communication is safe. Now it appears that researchers at Los Alamos have made real progress: They've been using an uber-secure system of their own design for about two and...