What Has Changed  —  As I read this post in the WSJ about the changing nature of VC funding of consumer web companies, I thought that we may be looking at the symptoms and not the disease.  As the WSJ notes, VC funding of consumer web and mobile companies is down 42% in this first nine months of 2012 (vs the first nine months of 2011).

Scientists See Promise in Deep-Learning Programs  —  Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification …

Droidfooding: After Years Of Giving Employees iPhones, Posters At Facebook HQ Beg Them To Test Android  —  “In the early days we gave employees iPhones primarily”, a Facebook spokesperson tells me.  That decision and the rise of Android has left Facebook scrambling to get employees dogfooding its apps for Google's OS.

Thanksgiving Day retail traffic increased 71% in 2012  —  Thanksgiving Day online traffic increased 71% in 2012 versus 2011 as the top 500 retail sites received more than 181 million total US visits.  So far this Holiday week of online traffic to the top retail sites is up 8% on average.

Fighting Sandy debris-removal crooks: There's an app for that  —  A devastating storm like Sandy can bring out the crooks - and not just opportunistic looters and burglars.

Gaza violence leads lawmakers to call for shuttering terror groups on Twitter  —  The past week's violence in Gaza has rekindled calls for Twitter to shutter the accounts of U.S.-labeled terror groups such as Hamas.  —  Seven House Republicans asked the FBI in September to demand that Twitter …

Windows Phone Team: This is No Way to Treat Early Adopters  —  Once seen as a nice gesture, Windows Phone 7.8 is now seen for what it is  —  When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7.8 in June, I knew it was too good to be true.  At the time, it seemed like Microsoft was throwing a bone …

Cyber Corps program trains spies for the digital age  —  At the University of Tulsa school, students learn to write computer viruses, hack digital networks and mine data from broken cellphones.  Many graduates head to the CIA or NSA.  —  Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta highlighted the need …

What happens when your pivot goes horribly wrong?  —  Travel is among the most pivot-friendly categories in the startupland.  What happens when a well-liked-but-limited app, focused on a nice but commodity niche, attempts to pivot into a larger company, attempting to “reinvent travel”?

LG admits reason behind dropping 4G in Nexus 4  —  Because it's secretly another phone … The redundant 4G chip in the Nexus 4 caused confusion, but now LG has told TechRadar why it's there.  —  The presence of the LTE connectivity hardware in the Nexus 4 caused some to believe that it could be next-gen speed-enabled in the future.

Can Police Locate Wireless Internet Moochers Without a Warrant?  —  Beware, wireless Internet moochers.  A federal court in Pittsburgh has ruled that the government can track you to your location, sans search warrant, using free anti-moocher software.  —  The courts have ruled …