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eBay Just Bought Svpply

They're not saying how much, so I'll assume it was for an obscenely large amount. (Eleventy trillion?) On paper, Svpply is a fairly modest portal site, letting users build public collections of things (usually expensive clothes) and raking in affiliate money everytime someone actually buys one. But that system is exactly how people expect outlets like Pinterest to make money, so it gives the 17-year-old eBay a rare edge on its more social-friendly competitors. Also, everything on Svpply looks really good, which suggests their designers can teach eBay a thing or two.

Russell Brandom Russell Brandom

How To Fix Gmail in Five Minutes

Noticed your Gmail getting sluggish lately? Jack Goetzinger of SeatGeek has come up with a smart fix: just empty it out. It turns out, Gmail works a lot faster when it's not dragging around 10 gigs of archived mail. Goetzinger's solution is a little unwieldy — setting up a fast-loading, archive-free account on top of the old sluggish one — but it works. Of course, one of the things that made Gmail so attractive was that you didn't have to worry about the hassle of Outlook-style archiving, but if it'll save us ten seconds of agonizing load time, we're willing to give it a shot.

Russell Brandom Russell Brandom

Anonymous Has Hacked 12 Million Apple Device IDs

All last week, the security community was making noise about a critical flaw in Java 7. Five days later, Oracle released an emergency patch — and just two days after that, the flaw produced its first headline-grabbing hack. An Anonymous group called Antisec used the flaw to break into an FBI laptop containing 12 million of the unique device IDs Apple uses to track users across hardware. That's mostly ID numbers and profile pics, but still a big black eye for Cupertino and the FBI. (Why the FBI had that data is still unexplained, but you can bet someone will be asking.) Time to either update your version of Java or disable it entirely. Especially if you work for the government.

Russell Brandom Russell Brandom