Twitch DDoS Attack, Alibaba Profit Triples (video)

Alibaba Profit Triples Ahead of IPO: Video - Bloomberg:
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Oberweiss Asset Management Senior Analyst Jeffrey Papp, Bloomberg’s Leslie Picker and Cory Johnson discuss Alibaba’s profit numbers. They speak on “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg Aug27)

Twitch hit by DDoS attack right after Amazon announced purchase - Pocket-lint: "This commercialisation of a platform that was built for gamers could be why it's now under attack. The thought of having to sit through lots of adverts or having items to buy thrown at you constantly might be too much for some."

PC market in 2014 a bit less dire than previously thought | PCWorld: "PCs with the older Windows XP OS are being upgraded in larger numbers, IDC said. Chromebook shipments are also growing, particularly in the education sector, which has contributed to the improved outlook."

Can Windows 9 Help Microsoft Win Back Lost Customers? - Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) | Seeking Alpha: "....those who work for a living don't want to be annoyed by apps that crave attention. They don't want to be WOWed by on-screen animations, or stare at screensavers on end. There may be some people who like these distractions. So, the company should give users a simple way to get rid of such annoyances. Another thing is the Windows app store. It's a mess in there. Microsoft's app store is infested with scam. Fake apps turn up frequently in popular searches. Microsoft will have to resolve these issues before people currently using Mac, Chrome or Ubuntu will even consider coming back."

Amazon Muscles In On Google Ad Dollars
Forbes
Amazon's offering is expected to resemble AdWords, Google's engine that ... But Amazon is also reportedly developing a tool to enable advertising ... David Dorf, senior director of technology strategy at Oracle Oracle Retail, saw ... “Google and Facebook have different views of those shoppers based on ...


Yahoo Tech
9 Things You May Not Have Known About Google Now
Yahoo Tech
Google Now is known mostly as the search giant's Siri competitor. Available on many Android phones and as part of the Google app for iPhone, ...


Forbes
Apple wearable rumored to debut with iPhone 6 in September
CNET
Apple will debut a wearable device alongside the September 9 iPhone ... similar to devices running Google's wearable-specific Android Wear OS.


Forbes
New Google Nexus Leak Confirms 192-Core, 64-bit Apple Rival
Forbes
Last September Apple Apple caused a stir when it announced iOS 7 and the accompanying iPhone 5S would support 64-bit operation. The move to ...


Wall Street Journal
Judge Denies Apple Request for Injunction Against Samsung Phones, Tablets
Wall Street Journal
Samsung smartphone Galaxy J SC-02F, left, and Apple's iPhone 5s are seen in ... Apple had sought a permanent injunction against certain Samsung ...


New York Times
California's Embrace of Anti-Theft Technology in Smartphones Puts a Squeeze on Thieves
New York Times
If the history of security technology is any indication, the kill switch could ... Since Appleintroduced so-called kill switch technology for its iPhone in ...


Business Insider Australia
​Google goes public with security audits to ease corporate concerns
CNET
Google is taking unprecedented steps to show its cloud, business, and ... Google, along with Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, and others, has become ...

Cloud Storage Showdown: Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud and More
Mario Aguilar
Dropbox, MediaFire, Microsoft OneDrive, and Google Drive all offer 1TB for ... And if you're a hardcore Apple fan who revels in simplicity and doesn't ...

Time Warner internet outage affects millions of US broadband customers | Technology | theguardian.com: "The FCC is currently reviewing a deal for company to be purchased by Comcast – a cable and internet giant. The deal comes after Time Warner received a $60bn offer from smaller rival Charter Communications, but accepted Comcast’s offer of $45.2bn after Charter threatened to unseat the company’s board of directors."

Why Apple's next iPhone will be bigger than people think: "It's a big year for the iPhone, literally. At a choreographed coming-out party on Sept. 9, the entire tech world expects Apple to show off a device with a 4.7-inch screen, and possibly one with a 5.5-inch screen...."

Twitter Opens Its Analytics Dashboard To Everyone: ".... this page lurking in Twitter’s support base confirms it: the dashboard should now be open to every account that has been open for at least 14 days, isn’t restricted/protected/suspended, and (curiously) that primarily tweets in English, French, Japanese, or Spanish. You can find the newly unlocked analytics dashboard right here...."

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X-47B Drone and F-18 Fighter Jet Take First Flight Together (video)

X-47B Drone and F-18 Fighter Jet Take First Flight Together: Video - Bloomberg:
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Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) –- Earlier this week, the U.S. Navy conducted an historic first: operating manned and unmanned aircraft together from an aircraft carrier. The test was conducted on the USS Theodore Roosevelt and successfully saw an F/A-18 fighter jet and a a bat-winged X-47B drone take off and land in rapid succession. (Corrects cost.) (Source: Bloomberg)

iPhone 6: Doctors Raise Concerns Over Apple HealthKit
Forbes
The iPhone 6 launch is just weeks away, but there will be much more than just one or two new phones. Of greater importance to most iPhone and iPad ...


Wall Street Journal
Amazon.com Coming to Shanghai's Free-Trade Zone
Wall Street Journal
Amazon, operating in China for a decade and delivering to about 3,000 cities and counties, has been quietly building its presence in the region.


Economic Times
Facebook Messenger gives users more control of privacy options on iOS
TechRepublic
The Android and iOS versions of Facebook Messenger offer different ... Several years ago,Apple got into some hot water because of several apps that ...


TechCrunch
European Facebook Class Action Suit Attracts 60K Users As It Passes First Court Hurdle
TechCrunch
Some developments around the class action suit filed against Facebook in Europe earlier this month over alleged privacy violations: the Austria-based ...
Facebook forced to respond to privacy complaints of 25000 Europeans - ZDNet
Facebook ordered to respond to “class action” European privacy suit - Gigaom


USA TODAY
Report: Microsoft to reveal Windows 9 next month
USA TODAY
Might Microsoft be ready to reveal the latest version of its Windows operating system? The Verge reports Microsoft is planning an event Sept.


Re/code
A Video Startup Teaches Apple TV Some New Tricks
Re/code
AirPlay is Apple's system for beaming stuff from users' phones, tablets and laptops toApple TVs, and then onto actual TV sets. A couple of years ago, ...


The Guardian
Google lobbies to test self-driving cars in Matrix-style virtual world
The Guardian
Google has built a "Matrix-style" digital simulation of the entire Californian road system in which it is testing its self-driving cars – and is lobbying the ...


TechSpot
Google Chrome is now surfable in Cuba
CNET
Google Chrome is now downloadable in Cuba -- a country known for limited Internet access. The Web giant announced Wednesday that it made the ...

Twitter details its anti-spam system, BotMaker — Tech News and Analysis: "Twitter has developed a system called BotMaker to deal with its spam problem. Essentially, BotMaker scans messages before they’re posted, after they’re posted, and as part of bulk data analyses in order to determine what’s spam and then deal with them accordingly."

UPS: We’ve Been Hacked | TIME: "The United Parcel Service announced Wednesday that customers’ credit and debit card information at 51 franchises in 24 states may have been compromised. There are 4,470 franchised center locations throughout the U.S., according to UPS."

Can anyone stop Comcast? | The Verge: "..."other options are hardly worth the money," says Bonnie Smalley, who worked in customer service at Comcast and won an award for her work tweeting as @ComcastBonnie. She quit in 2011. "Right now, [Comcast] has little incentive to provide you with decent service. Who are you going to run to when you disconnect your service? Nobody, and they know it."..."

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Microsoft Windows 8 Metro, Mozilla Firefox votes NO

The bad news just keeps coming for Microsoft and its debacle OS known as Windows 8:

Mozilla shelves Metro Firefox, cites user apathy toward Windows 8
Computerworld
Computerworld - Mozilla on Friday abruptly canceled the release of its touch-enabled Firefox browser for Windows 8, just four days before it was to ship and after two years of work. Firefox for Windows 8 Touch, the browser destined for Windows 8's "Metro" ...

Mozilla scraps Metro version of Firefox, citing low interest | Internet & Media - CNET News: 

• "The move is a vote of no confidence for Microsoft's new interface from a prominent software developer. Microsoft, eager to move to the touch-screen era after being caught flat-footed by Apple's iPhone and iPad, gave Windows dual interfaces -- some would say dueling, since they're so different and customers have found the transition so difficult."

• ""On any given day ... we've never seen more than 1,000 active daily users in the Metro environment.""

• "Very, very few are interested in using the browser on Windows 8's touch-first interface, so Mozilla is mothballing the code and sticking with the older, more popular "desktop" version."

And yet, Microsoft just keeps compounding its mistakes --

Six clicks: What we think we know about Windows 9 | ZDNet:
Windows 9 will not do away with the Metro design language or the tiled Metro interface/start screen.
Metro haters: Windows 9 is not your savior. Windows 9 is still expected to feature the Metro-Style/tiled Start Screen that Microsoft first introduced with Windows 8.
According to Windows SuperSite Editor Paul Thurrott's sources, Windows 9 will feature an updated 2.0 version of the Metro design language.

The Rebranding Of SOPA: Now Called 'Notice And Staydown' | Techdirt: "The idea is, more or less, that if a site receives a takedown notice concerning a particular copy of a work, it should then automatically delete all copies of that work and, more importantly, block that work from ever being uploaded again. This may sound good if you're not very knowledgeable about (a) technology and (b) copyright law. But if you understand either, or both, you quickly realize this is a really, really stupid solution that won't work and will have all sorts of dangerous unintended consequences that harm both creativity and the wider internet itself. "

Sprint Vies for Worst Deal Ever - Digits - WSJ: "Sprint is launching a new prepaid wireless plan. It just may be the worst deal ever. The plan will be available under a new brand simply named Sprint Prepaid. For $45 a month, subscribers buying the Smart plan get unlimited voice and text but no cellular data. All Internet surfing on the plan has to be done over Wi-Fi.. . .Republic Wireless — which buys access to Sprint’s network wholesale and resells it to customers — offers unlimited voice and texts with data over Wi-Fi for $10 a month. That’s the exact same deal on the exact same network for $35 less a month."

Google, Microsoft Pressure Asus To Cancel Dual-Boot Tablet
InformationWeek
Brian Krzanich, Intel's CEO, joined Asus on stage and helped show off the convertible, a dual-boot machine that could run both Microsoft's Windows and Google's Android operating systems. Asus envisioned it would be a work machine by day and a personal ...

How Google Confused Basketball Fans With Flu Patients
Businessweek
Big data evangelists love the story of Google Flu Trends. In 2008 the search engine company created a feature that geographically tracks searches for flu-related words over time—presumably words like cough or fever (Google doesn't release the exact ...

Google bricks-and-mortar strategy shouldn't mimic Apple's
San Francisco Chronicle
Rushing alone into retail can mean the difference between building an Apple Store (good) and a Microsoft store (bad) or Sony store (very bad). Apple enjoyed several strategic advantages, first and foremost its larger-than-life founder. Steve Jobs was ...

$20 Amazon Prime hike won't scare off customers
CNNMoney
Sam Henry is a tech entrepreneur in Baltimore, who's been using Prime for three years, While he admits Amazon has a disappointingly limited selection of free shows and movies, it's been a good option ever since he quit paying for cable television ...

Microsoft exec cops to 'confused' Xbox One launch
Christian Science Monitor
Last year, Microsoft took the wraps off the Xbox One, the successor to the best-selling Xbox 360. The hardware was impressive; the usage policies were not. In fact, in the words of one onlooker, it was "a scrambled mess," with Microsoft employees ...

Google Must Face Patent Suit Over Street View, Court Says
Bloomberg
Google Inc., (GOOG) owner of the most-used search engine, must face revived claims its Street View mapping system infringed a California company's patents for creating images for visually navigating a geographic area. The judge in the case erred in his ...

Google updates search app on Android
USA TODAY
Both Google and Apple (with its Siri app) are focusing hard on voice-recognition technology in a quest to make it a core part of how people use their smartphones to search for things when they are out and about. The idea is that speaking a query into a ...

Apple supply chain rumors: 'iPad Pro' on hold, sapphire production limited
Apple Insider
... some models from Apple competitor Samsung already on shelves. Large tablets present an inferior value proposition to low-cost notebooks, Digitimes argues, and suffer from the poor quality of enterprise applications available on Google's Android ...

Google cameras take rafting trip at Grand Canyon
San Jose Mercury News
The 360-degree views that went live Thursday in Google's Street View map option once were reserved largely for rafters who were lucky enough to board a private trip through the remote canyon, or those willing to pay big bucks to navigate its whitewater ...

Top Three in Tech: Snowden, Zuckerberg and Alibaba
Wall Street Journal
Edward Snowden's appearance at SXSW and Mark Zuckerberg's phone call to President Barack Obama are some of the top tech stories from the week....

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Windows 9? Who cares anymore? Microsoft is irrelevant

Microsoft, three strikes and you're out!--
Windows 98 was a success.
Windows Millenium Edition (Me) was a failure.
Windows XP was a success.
Windows Vista was a failure.
Windows 7 was a success.
Windows 8 was a failure.
Windows 9 ... does it even matter anymore? Microsoft lost most of us at Windows 8 -- just get a Chromebook or MacBook and be done with Microsoft --

Windows 9: Can Microsoft pull off another miracle? | ZDNet: "While Windows 8 has a small legion of fans, the adoption numbers show that mainstream Windows users as well as businesses have rejected it. We regularly hear stories from ZDNet and TechRepublic readers that add context to that story. We hear from consultants who tell us they have been extremely busy for the past 18 months because so many small businesses have bought Windows 8 machines and asked them to come in and install Windows 7 over the top...."

Microsoft Still Can't Find Its Future. Is It Too Late for the Company? - Forbes: "... Microsoft’s monopoly over personal computing has evaporated - From 95% market domination in 2005 share has fallen to just 20% in 2012 (IDC, Goldman Sachs.) Comparing devices, in 2005 there were 55 Windows devices sold for every Apple device; today explosive Apple sales has lowered that multiple to a mere 2 (Asymco). Universally the desire to upgrade Microsoft products has simply disappeared, as XP still has 40% of the Windows market – and even Vista at 5.7% has more users than Win8, which has only achieved a 1.75% Windows market share despite the long wait and launch hoopla...."

From the latest Akamai state of the Internet report, covering the third quarter of 2013:

• Average connection speeds globally increased 29 percent in the past year, to 3.6 megabits per second.
• Mobile traffic increased by about 10 percent during the third quarter of 2013–and grew by 80 percent year over year.
• Denial-of-service attacks keep rising; the first three quarters of 2013 had already surpassed the levels of all of 2012.
• The top three countries from which Internet attacks were launched were China at 35 percent; Indonesia at 20 percent; and the United States at 11 percent.

Yahoo Q4 2013 Earnings Slide 6% To $1.27B On EPS Of $0.46, Display Ads Down 6% | TechCrunch: "One thing that can provide a boost to that cash position could be patent sales down the line. CFO Ken Goldman, during the conference call, said that the company was looking at patent sales later this year, and emphasized that they would be to operating companies — not enforcement entities."

Net neutrality regulations: ISPs must be made common carriers | BGR: " . . .  Copps thinks that it’s the only way to stop American ISPs from playing favorites and essentially acting as gatekeepers for what Internet services become successful and which Internet services flop. “The time is now for the FCC to classify broadband as Title II,” Copps said. “Without this step, we are playing fast-and-loose with the most opportunity-creating technology in all of communications history. Without this step, we are guaranteeing an Internet future of toll-booths, gatekeepers, and preferential carriage. Without this step, we stifle innovation, put consumers under the thumb of special interests, and pull the props from under the kind of rich civic dialogue that only open and non-discriminatory communications can provide.”..."

Microsoft is about to take Windows XP off life support
CNN
After April 8, Windows XP computers will be more susceptible to malware and viruses beginning, since Microsoft will no longer address major holes in the software. Although antivirus software will continue to fend off some malicious attacks, Microsoft's ...

Microsoft Makes Azure Server Design Open-Source
InformationWeek
The open-source hardware movement got a new and unlikely convert Tuesday in the form of Microsoft, the company that so vehemently resisted the admission of Linux into the datacenter. Microsoft's membership was announced at the fifth Open Compute ...

Apple patents solar-powered MacBook
Computerworld
Computerworld - Apple today was awarded a patent for a MacBook that would be powered with solar cells (photovoltaics), meaning your laptop could be powered or at least recharged through light. The patent, titled "Electronic device display module" ...

Google Hopes Designer Frames Will Sharpen Glass
ABC News
Rather, Google plans to make various attachments available for people who wear glasses or sunglasses. Starting Tuesday, the Mountain View, Calif., company is offering four styles of prescription frames and two new types of shades available to its ...

Exclusive: Google close to settling EU antitrust probe - sources
Reuters
EU regulators will not seek feedback from the 125 rivals, including Microsoft and third parties who commented on Google's previous proposals as they have a clear idea of their thinking after the last two market tests, the official said. That is likely ...

Apple shares fall after muted iPhone sales
Chicago Tribune
Apple's low-cost alternative to its iPhone 5S was unable to grab market share from cheaper rivals using Google Inc's Android software, they said. "We don't think Applehas created a meaningful new product category with the iPhone 5C," BMO Capital ...

Google, Lego bring bricks to the Web with Build With Chrome
Los Angeles Times
Google and the Danish toy company have teamed up to create Build With Chrome, a website users can visit using the Chrome Web browser to build Lego models. The site can be ... As Apple stock drops, Carl Icahn buys $500 million more in shares ·Google ...

Apple's iPhone 'shortfall'? Blame Verizon, AT&T
CNET
Pinning the blame on Verizon and AT&T jives with Apple CEO Tim Cook's comments that the business in North America contracted. He had attributed it largely to supply issues with the iPhone 5S, but many have noted that weaker sales in the iPhone 5C may ...

Google Street View Lands in Manila
Wall Street Journal (blog)
... to some of the country's ancient fortresses and historic churches. On Tuesday the tech-giant began capturing images of the Philippines for Street View – a feature onGoogle Maps and Google Earth that allows users to virtually explore cities at ...

Apple eyes magnets to attach camera lenses to iPhone
CNET
... interested in a new patent filing. Published Tuesday by the US Patent and Trademark Office, an Apple patent called "Magnetic add-on lenses with alignment ridge" describes how a camera lens would be attached to the iPhone and aligned with its camera.

Chromium Blog: Run Chrome Apps on mobile using Apache Cordova
By Google Chrome Blog
The toolchain wraps your Chrome App with a native application shell and enables you to distribute your app via Google Play and the Apple App Store. We provide a simple developer workflow for packaging a Chrome App natively for mobile ...
Chromium Blog

Google Brings Chrome Apps To Android And iOS | TechCrunch
By Frederic Lardinois
Google's offline Chrome Apps are about to find their way to both Android and iOS. Using Apache's well-known open-source Cordova platform for turning web apps.. ... Using these tools, developers can take their existing Chrome Apps, wrap them into a native shell and submit them to Google Play and Apple's App Store. todos. Google is making a wide variety of Chrome APIs available for these ... Hands-On With The Nexus 5 · Box's Aaron Levie Has Thoughts on Microsoft. Play Video ...

Cuttlefish Holds Clues to Camouflage
Laboratory Equipment
The cuttlefish, known as the "chameleon of the sea," can rapidly alter Scientists at Harvard Univ. and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) hope that gaining a new understanding of a natural photonic device that enables a small sea animal to change its ...

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