BBC News - NSA and GCHQ agents 'leak Tor bugs', alleges developer: "...British and American intelligence agents attempting to hack the "dark web" are being deliberately undermined by colleagues, it has been alleged. Spies from both countries have been working on finding flaws in Tor, a popular way of anonymously accessing "hidden" sites. But the team behind Tor says other spies are tipping them off, allowing them to quickly fix any vulnerabilities...By fixing these flaws, the project can protect users' anonymity..."
Delivery Start-Ups Are Back Like It’s 1999 - NYTimes.com: "Of course, the couriers still need to be paid. “The complicated part is not getting customers, it’s getting the product to the customers"...." The Ivy League, Mental Illness, and the Meaning of Life - The Atlantic: "William Deresiewicz explains how an elite education can lead to a cycle of grandiosity and depression. " Google Buys Product-Design Company Gecko for X Projects - Bloomberg: "Gecko, which is based in Los Gatos, California, will join Google’s X lab, the startup said on its website. The company helps design products for clients including Hewlett-Packard Co., furniture maker Herman Miller Inc. and wearable-device provider Fitbit Inc., according to its website." Execution of U.S. journalist reveals the changing business of war coverage | Reuters: "... On the evening newscasts at the major U.S. networks ABC, NBC and CBS, the number of minutes dedicated to overseas coverage is less than half of what it was in the late 1980s, Pew reported. But a new crop of smaller and less resourced news outlets, such as GlobalPost, Vice Media and BuzzFeed, are stepping into the breach and reporting from conflict regions. There has also been an influx of freelance journalists who can now report with a smart phone or hand-held camera and post their stories online, all without the backing of an established media organization...." I will not be returning to Ferguson | Ryan L. Schuessler: "...We should all be ashamed, and I cannot do it anymore. I am thankful for my gracious editors who understand that."
Google Lures Developers to U.K. With Free Beer While San Francisco makes the headlines, Google is global. It boasts about 70% market share for mobile phones and to keep it that way it needs the latest and greatest apps from around the world on its operating system. So the company threw events to celebrate their latest set of announcements - from Pakistan to Peru, Uganda to Ukraine. European Business Correspondent Caroline Hyde went to check out what the U.K. had to offer. (Source: Bloomberg June 26) Google Shows Developers a Sub-$100 Smartphone | MIT Technology Review: "A low-cost smartphone designed by Google will go on sale in India this fall before debuting in other emerging economies, the company announced today. The phones will be branded “Android One,” after the company’s mobile operating system Android, and will cost less than $100. They are part of a new effort by Google to get devices based on its software into the hands of people who currently lack access to the Internet." Tchau Orkut - Orkut Blog: ".... Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell (or, tchau). We'll be focusing our energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them. We will shut down Orkut on September 30, 2014. Until then, there will be no impact on current Orkut users, to give the community time to manage the transition. People can export their profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016). Starting today, it will not be possible to create a new Orkut account...."
YouTube's Fans-Funding Feature Will Rock The Crowdfunding Boat - Google Inc.- Seeking Alpha: "YouTube announced new fans-funding feature to be implemented into its website. Google’s presence in the crowdfunding market will shift market share from Indiegogo and Kickstarter to Google. In order to fight back against Google, the crowdfunding market is about to enter an acquisition battle where every player tries to gain as much market share as possible." A review of the Blackphone, the Android for the paranoid | Ars Technica: The Blackphone is the first consumer-grade smartphone to be built explicitly for privacy. It pulls together a collection of services and software that are intended to make covering your digital assets simple—or at least more straightforward. The product of SGP Technologies, a joint venture between the cryptographic service Silent Circle and the specialty mobile hardware manufacturer Geeksphone, the Blackphone starts shipping to customers who preordered it sometime this week. It will become available for immediate purchase online shortly afterward. Google's Street View Snooping Problems Aren't Going Away Businessweek Google (GOOG) is going to have to keep talking about how the cars it used to build its mapping service drove around sucking in personal information ...
Yahoo's Marissa Mayer loves Alibaba CNNMoney They compare Alibaba to U.S. peers like Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) and ... many believe could be a bigger IPO than Facebook's $15 billion in 2012.
Apple Kills Aperture Photo App InformationWeek Apple will replace Aperture with OS X Yosemite's built-in Photos app, but the company says it remains committed to its professional customers.
Microsoft Explains Exchange Outage InformationWeek Microsoft pledges to do better after frustrating customers with last week's ... Microsoft, Google, and others want companies to use cloud services to ...
NASA to give global warming satellite second try USA TODAY Five years after a NASA satellite to track carbon dioxide plunged into the ocean after liftoff, the space agency is launching another almost exactly like it — this time on a different rocket. The $468 million mission is designed to study the ...
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Facebook Fraud "Evidence Facebook's revenue is based on fake likes. My first vid on the problem with Facebook: http://bit.ly/1dXudqY I know first-hand that Facebook's advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about Veritasium (but I wasn't aware of this at the time). They drove my reach and engagement numbers down, basically rendering the page useless. I am not the only one who has experienced this...." (go to link above for more) Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Facebook Fraud - How Much of Facebook's Ad Revenue is Legitimate?: " . . . . From my experience, Google is very meticulous about weeding out fraud. If you pay money to generate clicks or impressions on your site, Google will drop you from its ad program. If the above video is even in the ballpark, there are serious issues at Facebook. In general there are serious problems if you pay someone to "like" you or drive traffic to you. Addendum: Just moments after I made the above post, I received an email from Lenny Teytelman regarding his company's experiences with fake "likes": What do Facebook “likes” of companies mean? The moral of this story is don't pay for "likes", don't pay to have someone drive traffic to your site either."
Silk Road 2.0 'Hack' Blamed On Bitcoin Bug, All Funds Stolen - Forbes: " . . . On Thursday, one of the recently-reincarnated drug-selling black market site’s administrators posted a long announcement to the Silk Road 2.0 forums admitting that the site had been hacked by one of its sellers, and its reserve of Bitcoins belonging to both the users and the site itself stolen. The admin, who goes by the name “Defcon,” blamed the same “transaction malleability” bug in the Bitcoin protocol that led to several of the cryptocurrency’s exchanges halting withdrawals in the previous week . . .." Developer survey: HTML5 gaining, Windows slipping | HTML5 - InfoWorld: "HTML5 developers queried recently by tools vendor Sencha remain dedicated to building apps via Web technologies, even as doubts have been cast on how effective HTML5 is vis à vis native development. Many of those same developers, however, have dropped support for the classic Microsoft Windows platform...." HTML5 trumping iOS among app developers in emerging mobile markets | ZDNet: "Mobile app developers in many regions outside the US and Europe are choosing to develop apps in HTML5 rather than iOS but it's iOS that's earning devs the biggest bucks." Now running on a Chromebook near you: Windows | Business Tech - CNET News: " . . . Up until now, Chrome OS has been unable to run anything besides Web sites and the HTML5-based Chrome Web Apps. That's left many businesses in the lurch, perhaps attracted to Chromebook's affordability, centralized management console, and lower security risks but unwilling to lose access to core business applications. Combine those positives with Microsoft's Windows 8 stumbles and the impending end-of-life of the decade-old Windows XP, and Google hopes that it has an opening to attract businesses looking for a new approach to workplace computers. Businesses can purchase access to VMWare's Horizon Desktop-as-a-Service to run on Chrome OS. At first, it'll be available only as an on-site service, although a Chrome Web Store app is in the works...." Microsoft Plunges Into Handset Battle as Google Withdraws New York Times And the second-biggest is Apple. Then, way behind, is Microsoft. What's in this game for Microsoft?” From Microsoft's perspective, the answer may be that it is in a different war — one that isn't over handsets or even the operating systems embedded in ...
Google publishes commitments it made to settle EU antitrust case PCWorld Google has done what the European Commission declined to do: publish the details of the latest commitments Google made in a bid to settle a long-running antitrust case involving its treatment of rival specialist search services, among other matters ...
Google gets more guarded about acquisition numbers Washington Post The circumspection makes Google more like one of its fiercest rivals, Apple Inc., which has never disclosed how many deals it closed in its regulatory filings. Apple just lists the total amount of money and stock that it paid for acquisitions, just as ...
What Google really means when it calls Android 'open' CNET Every once in a while, Android terminology discussions flare up like a stomach ulcer forGoogle. They center on Android's nature as a development platform, which in turn affects the variety and breadth of Android apps -- from Minecraft to Pandora to ...
Microsoft Tweaking Xbox One Controller For 'Titanfall' Forbes Microsoft Microsoft, it would seem, is all in on Titanfall. Respawn entertainment's upcoming mech-shooter is, arguably, the centerpiece of the Xbox One's first few months, and the company is making sure that the console is good and ready for it when it ...
Apple Says War Zones Don't Ship Its Supplies New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — Apple released on Thursday its supplier responsibility report, and the company said its hardware factories did not use any tantalum, a metal commonly used in electronics, from areas engaged in warfare. Some warlords, particularly in ...
Apple to Sell IPhone at Costliest $1174 in Brazilian Debut Bloomberg Apple's 16-gigabyte, contract-free iPhone 5s will sell for 2,799 reais ($1,174) in Brazil. That compares with $649 in the U.S. and 5,288 renminbi ($872) in China. The price of the iPhone 5s in Brazil, offered by authorized resellers, has jumped 17 ...
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