Techlife News #159

Hackers stole 53 million email addresses in addition to customers’ card data, Home Depot said Thursday. The nation’s largest home improvement chain had disclosed the massive, months-long breach of 56 million debit and credit cards in September. Home Depot’s breach surpassed Target’s pre-Christmas 2013 data theft, which compromised 40 million credit and debit cards and hurt sales and profits. Since late last year, Michaels, SuperValu and Neiman Marcus have been among a string of retailers that have also reported breaches, though they were smaller. While shoppers appear to have grown numb to the hacks, the breaches have forcing changes in retailing. Target’s breach pushed banks, retailers and card companies to increase security by speeding the adoption of microchips in U.S. credit and debit cards, which supporters say are more secure. Home Depot reiterated…

The Sunday-morning public affairs show “Face the Nation” celebrates 60 years of broadcasts this week, making it the second longest-running television program on the air. The reason this doesn’t attract a lot of notice outside of CBS offices is because “Face the Nation” was created to compete with the longest-running show, NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which marks 67 years on the air this week. But host Bob Schieffer and his colleagues have special reason to enjoy this milestone now, since “Face” is hot and “Meet” is not. Friday is the exact anniversary, 60 years to the day after the anti-communist crusading Sen. Joseph McCarthy came on to talk about Senate efforts to censure him. “We still do exactly what we did on the first broadcast - find the key newsmaker and the biggest…

It seems like only yesterday, or could it be a decade, since “Growing Up Gotti” was lending an ear to the fortissimo life of mobster daughter Victoria Gotti and her three boisterous lads. Now A&E is bringing back the family for a one-hour retrospective, “Growing Up Gotti: 10 Years Later,” inviting viewers to revisit the Gottis’ Long Island manse for reminiscing and vintage clips from the series (which aired in 2004-05). The new special airs Monday at 9 p.m. EST. Mom, now 51, is still the dolled-up matriarch while sons John and Carmine are all grown up and no longer so reliant on hair gel and swagger. (But domestic drama remains: Youngest son Frank, 24, blew off the retrospective taping, claiming illness, according to the network.) “We laughed! Boy, did we laugh,” Gotti…

Siri, meet Alexa. Amazon is introducing a voice-recognition service called Amazon Echo that comes with a speaker-like wireless device just in time for the holiday shopping season. Responding to voice commands after the “wake word” Alexa, the device offers updates on news and weather and provides hands-free voice control for Amazon services such as Prime Music. It has an accompanying app for tablets and smartphones. Amazon has been expanding its offerings for members of its $99 annual Prime loyalty club and other Amazon shoppers. It launched a smartphone, the Fire, earlier this year, and has offered a set-top video streaming device, a streaming video service, grocery delivery, music streaming and original TV shows such as the critically acclaimed “Transparent” starring Jeffrey Tambor. The Echo, its latest offering, is available by email request only and…

Insurance underwriters involved in a legal battle with the Rolling Stones over a $12.7 million claim have won permission to seek evidence in Utah about the mental health of Mick Jagger’s girlfriend before she took her life in March. A federal judge in Utah last month allowed the 12 underwriters to gather testimony and documents from Randall Bambrough of Ogden, the brother of L’Wren Scott. She was a fashion designer and Utah native whose suicide prompted the rock group to postpone a concert tour of Australia and New Zealand and then file a $12.7 claim for losses due to its postponement. Jagger was “diagnosed as suffering from acute traumatic stress disorder” after Scott’s death and was advised by doctors not to perform for at least 30 days, according to documents filed in the…

SURPRISE NEWS ALSO SEES JOHN LASSETER'S DIRECTORIAL RETURN Do you remember Toy Story, that staggering 1995 box office success that firmly installed the name of the Pixar animation studio in the minds of movie-goers everywhere? Or what about either of its sequels, particularly 2010's Toy Story 3, which saw the boy at the centreof the saga - Andy - mark his transition fromchildhood to adulthood by handing his oldtoys to a young girl, Bonnie? Well, we're now set to get a fourth addition to the franchise. So seemingly perfect was the ending of Toy Story 3, that few people ever contemplated that the series would make a big screen return. Fair enough, so Woody and Buzz haven't exactly faded into obscurity, having continued to appear in various short films and television specials,…