Horizon highlights – Palin and email security, Facebook and job security, computers and investing security
Our regular roundup of sci-tech stories from across the Web includes how a hacker cracked Sarah Palin's email account, 20 percent of companies check the Facebook profiles of applicants, and why Wall Street's warning bells need calibrating. Let’s kick it off:
Politics/security – Alleged 1st-person tale of Palin e-mail hack comes and goes
"With news of Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin's personal Yahoo e-mail account being hacked coming to light yesterday, details on how the hack may have taken place may be emerging." [via Ars Technica]
Format wars – Blu-ray and digital downloads: Best frenemies
"It's been widely assumed that digital downloads will wipe out physical disc media as soon as broadband Internet access becomes ubiquitous. But there are plenty of details to work out until that happens, such as consumers' continuing endorsement of DVD as an entertainment format." [via CNET]
Work place – Employers admit checking Facebook before hiring
Careerbuilder.com "surveyed employers and found that 20 percent of companies admitted to checking out candidate's profiles on social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace before deciding to employ them. A further 9 percent said they planned to start reviewing potential employees social-networking pages in the future." [via PC World]
Investing – How Wall Street lied to its computers
"Most Wall Street computer models radically underestimated the risk of the complex mortgage securities, they said. That is partly because the level of financial distress is “the equivalent of the 100-year flood,” in the words of Leslie Rawl, the president of Capital Market RiskAdvisors, a consulting firm. But she and others say there is more to it: The people who ran the financial firms chose to program their risk-management systems with overly optimistic assumptions and to feed them oversimplified data. This kept them from sounding the alarm early enough." [via NYTimes]
Phones – Official: First Android phone to debut on September 23
"T-Mobile has sent out invitations for the official announcement of the first Googlephone, the HTC Dream. The press conference will be held in New York on September 23rd, although the Android-based phone won't hit stores until October (probably October 20th)." [via Wired]
