Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Despite our (usually modest) efforts to protect our personal information, thieves and hackers are constantly accessing our records. These data breaches have soared since 2005 . Although crooks still account for most invasions, many of the largest breaches are now made by "hacktivists"--individuals or groups who are angry about a company or organization's actions and expose its records as a way to protest or to strike back.

Since performing research for my book, Climate Capitalism (written with Hunter Lovins) a few years ago, I have become increasingly convinced that the smart grid has the potential to be one of the "holy grails" in the clean tech revolution. I believe that the smart grid can be the enabling technology that enable all kinds of other low-carbon innovations to flourish

Web reviews from online everymen are either low-hanging fruit for DIY marketers, the best thing to ever happen to e-shopping, or bait for angry cheapskates.

The droughts in Somalia are creating the latest refugee crisis. At the same time, Western countries are clamping down on asylum claims.

Rioters in North London have been using BBMs to rally, presuming RIM's phone-to-phone, encrypted messages won't land in the hands of authorities. But in an increasingly familiar move, RIM has now pledged to work with those authorities

A new virus targeting Android-powered smartphones has been uncovered by CA security researcher Dinesh Venkatesan.

A crusader from Attrition.org has found that an alarmingly high number of books written by computer security experts are nearly 100% copied from other sources. What does that say about the industry? Borrowing code is standard operating procedure for those who work with software.

The web is more dangerous than ever. LulzSec, Anonymous, Julian Assange, News Corp. employees--they all make our grandparents wonder if their computers are indeed infected , and require iron-clad protection from McAfee or Symanetc, lest their Windows 98-running Gateway desktops explode.

This and other breaking news, updated throughout the day by Fast Company's editors. Google+ Games Will Cost Developers Less .

The burden of having people's livelihood in your hands never fully goes away, but knowing where your revenue to cover your expenses will be coming from does reduce the heavy feeling of being the boss.

A top Department of Homeland Security official has admitted to Congress that imported software and hardware components are being purposely spiked with security-compromising attack tools by unknown foreign parties.

The Secret Service recently spilled the beans on their anti-cybercrime investigations. Fake accounts on underground websites? Elaborate multinational credit card fraud investigations with Turkish law enforcement

On June 15 a team of researchers at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory brought the Planet criticality assembly machine located at the Nevada National Security Site to a supercritical point for approximately eight minutes, successfully repeating an experiment last conducted at Los Alamos in 2004.

Hacker conference DEF CON is, in information-security circles, a big deal--which is why it's pretty astonishing that in August it will launch its first event targeted at the younger hacker . You know, the kind who's still in school and may not yet be old enough to drive, but is quite adept at managing SQL injections, DDoS, and password cracking. The kind of hacker who may be as young as 8

Until now, the antics of LulzSec have seemed more or less harmless (depending on where you draw the line on the criminality of White Hat hacking), but with the release of 62,000 usernames and passwords to unlisted sites, LulzSec has got personal. LulzSec claims to have hit the CIA this week , and may also have again penetrated web security at the Senate's website, and an earlier LulzSec leak of over 20,000 usernames and passwords was confined to pornographic websites--headline-earning efforts indeed. But today's 62,000-plus list actually doesn't mention which site the passwords and login credentials are connected to