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Judge overrules Samsung objection to jury video depicting Apple devices

Written By Unknown on Senin, 31 Maret 2014 | 16.01

U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh on Sunday overruled Samsung Electronics' objections to showing jurors a recent instructional video on how patents work, ahead of a trial in a patent dispute between Apple and Samsung.

The South Korean company claimed that the video suggested at a minimum that Apple's products are patentable and innovative. The new video, called "The Patent Process: An Overview for Jurors," was developed by the Federal Judicial Center to provide jurors with an introduction to the patent system, and was posted to YouTube in November last year.

Samsung on Friday objected to the FJC video which it said includes several scenes in which Apple products are depicted and used. It recommended that the jurors be shown an earlier video that was also shown to the jury in another patent dispute between Apple and Samsung in the court, and does not feature products and brands at issue in the trial.

A note from the FJC to the November 2013 video states that individual judges will want to review it and consult with counsel before deciding whether to use it in a particular case, Samsung said in its filing.

At the 2:55 mark on the new video, for example, a series of Apple products are shown, including an iPad, a newer model of a laptop computer, and an iPhone, Samsung said. "The narration during this portion of the video addresses how the disclosure of a patent may 'inspire new inventions,'" Samsung's counsel wrote in a filing to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division.

"At the 4:35 mark, the requirements that a patent be new, useful and non-obvious are shown on the screen in front of a still image of an Apple computer," the counsels wrote in the filing.

"At a minimum, the video strongly suggests that Apple's products are innovative and patentable," Samsung's attorneys wrote. Showing the jury such a video would be prejudicial to Samsung and threaten the impartiality of the jury, according to the filing.

In her order on Sunday, Judge Koh wrote that the parties shall bring the November 2013 version of the video, and shall include a handout referenced in the video in the jury binders.

In the lawsuit, Apple claims that Samsung infringed five of its patents in 10 models of phones and tablets, while Samsung has counterclaimed that Apple has infringed on two of its patents in nine phones and tablets.(

The case covers some of both companies' better known and recent smartphone and tablet models such as the Galaxy S III and the fourth-generation iPad. On Monday, the two parties are expected to start with jury selection.


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Activists to appeal US judge's ruling on Baidu's censorship

A group of activists are hoping to appeal a U.S. judge's ruling that treated the censorship on Chinese search engine Baidu as free speech. 

In making the ruling, District Judge Jesse Furman equated the censorship to a newspaper exercising its editorial right to publish what it wants. But Stephen Preziosi, lawyer for the eight pro-democracy activists, said in an email Saturday that the comparison was wrong, and that the court had a "fundamental misunderstanding" of how search engines work. 

The appeal is planned to be filed later this week, Preziosi wrote. 

In 2011, the eight activists filed a lawsuit, claiming that Baidu violates U.S. free speech laws by censoring pro-democracy works on its search engine for users in New York. 

But last Thursday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the lawsuit, and ruled that Baidu had the right to create a search engine that favors certain political speech over another. 

Newspapers have to manage costs and spacing on the paper in selecting what they publish, but search engines operate by indexing all content on the Web, Preziosi said.  In Baidu's case, the company worked to "proactively" exclude the pro-democracy works from its search engine, he added.

"This constitutes the denial of the right to freedom of speech," Preziosi said. 

Baidu has declined to comment. But as a company operating in China, Baidu must follow the nation's strict rules on censorship, including the blocking of content deemed inflammatory or anti-government. 

As Baidu can also be accessed outside its home country, Preziosi said the search engine is helping to bring Chinese censorship to the U.S. "Those anti-democratic policies are being foisted upon people within the United States," he added. 

But lawyers representing Baidu have called Thursday's ruling a victory for free speech rights. 

"It shows that our courts protect the right of all media to choose what they publish," said attorney Carey Ramos in a statement on Friday. "That right extends to Internet media as well as print media. And it protects Chinese media as much as American media."  


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Alibaba invests $692 million for a presence in physical retail

Alibaba Group is investing about US$692 million in retail company Intime Retail with the aim of setting up a joint venture that aims to provide linkages between their online and physical retail businesses in China.

The Chinese e-commerce giant will invest $214 million in shares of Intime, besides acquiring $478 million in convertible bonds, according to a filing by Intime on Monday to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The equity investment will give Alibaba a 9.9 percent share of the enhanced share capital of the company besides giving it the option to acquire a larger stake by converting its bonds into up to 18 percent of the share capital after conversion.

The investment is the latest by Alibaba, which earlier this month invested $215 million to acquire a minority stake and a seat in the board of U.S. mobile messaging app developer Tango. Alibaba has previously invested in expanding its presence in the U.S. including through a $200 million investment in Amazon.com competitor ShopRunner and Quixey, a search engine for apps.

In China, Alibaba also bought a stake last year in a large social networking site Sina Weibo and is working to acquire online mapping provider AutoNavi for $1.1 billion.

The aim of the investment in Intime is to harness the latest Internet technologies and develop an online-to-offline, omni-channel business so as to create a highly convenient and impactful shopping experience, the companies said.

Alibaba will hold a 80 percent stake in the joint venture with the balance held by Intime.

The investment comes ahead of Alibaba's plan for an initial public offering in the U.S.


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Yahoo may try to draw YouTube's most popular acts with a video site of its own

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 30 Maret 2014 | 16.01

If you can't beat em, bait em. That seems to be the strategy Yahoo is considering in its attempt to take on YouTube, according to a new report from Recode.

Citing "several sources close to the situation," Recode reports that Yahoo may be looking to luring some of YouTube's biggest names to a service of its own with promises of higher ad revenue.

For now, Yahoo isn't looking to build a direct competitor to YouTube that will accept video uploads from all comers, according to Recode; instead, it's looking to build upon what it has started with its Yahoo Screen video site.

How much more money could YouTubers stand to make? According to an AllThingsD article from last April, if you place ads in videos you upload to YouTube, you can expect to make anywhere from $2.50 to $10 per thousand video views, depending on who you ask, after YouTube takes its 45 percent cut.

Even though that may not sound like a lot, that isn't stopping some from making some serious cash through YouTube. One site estimates that the top-paid YouTube users make anywhere between $1 million and $7 million each year.

Granted, these are the absolute top earners—most of us would probably make enough for a dinner or two at Applebee's over the course of a year—but it shows that there is money to be made if you can catch a break on YouTube.

For a channel with 10 million views per year, an extra dollar per thousand views would translate to an extra $10,000 annually.

When you get to big numbers like that, an extra few dollars per thousand video views really adds up in no time. For a channel with 10 million views per year, an extra dollar per thousand views would translate to an extra $10,000 annually—not a bad raise.

The risk for video producers, of course, is that a competitor to YouTube—even one from a household name like Yahoo—may not draw as large an audience as YouTube does, thus negating any increased ad payout rate.

Yahoo could counter with a higher guaranteed payout, and Recode also notes that, according to its sources, Yahoo has "has offered extensive marketing, even on its homepage, as well as allowing video producers the ability to sell advertising along with Yahoo's sales force." For some, that alone may make it worth considering what Yahoo has to offer.


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Nadella wins praise for public debut as CEO

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's first public appearance on Thursday was a hit with analysts, who gave him a thumbs up for his time on stage as the company unveiled Office for iPad.

"He was very confident, obviously a whole different character than Ballmer. Much calmer," said Carolina Milanesi, strategic insight director of Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, in an interview Thursday. "Both he and Julie White [a general manager for the Office technical marketing team] spoke very quickly, as if they had a sense of urgency, which they should have."

Milanesi praised Nadella, saying he "did a great job" in his opening remarks as he expounded on his "mobile first, cloud first" strategy. "For the first time I actually see a strategy," Milanesi added.

officeipad 2

Nadella introduced Microsoft Office for iPad in his first public presentation as CEO.

Nadella spent most of his time trying to describe that "mobile first, cloud first" concept in more specificity, even as he noted that the day's news would be only the first step in what he called a "beginning of exploration" that would continue for months.

"Our customers want to know where we are going, what is our innovation agenda," said Nadella. "[Today] we want to talk about one aspect of our strategy going forward. Over the course of the next couple of weeks and couple of months we will come back, and many other leaders on our team will come back, and talk about other aspects."

"He articulated this emerging strategy," said Ross Rubin, an independent analyst with Reticle Research, in a Friday interview. "He made it clear that this [Office on iPad] was only a piece of the overall strategy."

Nadella was named CEO on Feb. 4, and while he answered questions from another Microsoft executive that day on the company's Redmond, Wash. campus in a staged interview, his first public appearance was dissected by outsiders hoping for insight on his progress in the job.

"I was very impressed," said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst with Forrester Research, in an email today. "First off, I was really glad to see that his first appearance was about Office running on a competing platform. That's a big break from the old Microsoft pattern of always pushing the overall Microsoft stack at every opportunity."

Others made the same point, adding that while Office for iPad's genesis preceded Nadella's tenure, he would receive the bulk of the credit for the detour from Microsoft's long-held "Windows-first" strategy of releasing software first for its own platform.

Some reports before Thursday's announcement claimed that former CEO Steve Ballmer had, along with others in his senior leadership group, made the decision before he retired to launch Office for iPad as soon as it was ready, even if that was prior to touch-first apps for Windows 8.1. If accurate, it meant that Ballmer finally saw the logic of taking Windows off the table, but far too late to save his job.

Ballmer had stepped away from Microsoft in large part because he had been unwilling or unable to speed up change at the company, according to accounts published late in 2013.

"I was very impressed with Nadella on stage," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "He was very professional, poised, and seemed like a man on a mission."

Others, like Milanesi, commented on Nadella's technical knowledge, contending that he warmed up the more technical he got in his remarks.

"I think he sent a strong signal that he is the right person to take Microsoft in a new direction, despite his long tenure [at the company]."

That comment would make co-founder and former chairman Bill Gates happy. When rumors swirled that the front runner for Ballmer's job was Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally, Gates hinted that he thought Microsoft needed a technically-astute leader.

A large number of sell-side Wall Street analysts had pushed in the months before Nadella's appointment for someone less technical, more business savvy, someone like Mulally, who had rescued Ford from the brink and was believed capable of remaking Microsoft.

As it turns out, Nadella has won some converts.

"I think he sent a strong signal that he is the right person to take Microsoft in a new direction, despite his long tenure [at the company]," said Koplowitz. "I was hoping to see a sea change after Ballmer, and Nadella's stake in the ground on being device agnostic and delivering Microsoft's flagship product to the most endpoints possible with the best possible experience, was a great start."


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Expo Notes: Livescribe hopes to make the pen mightier in the digital age

Think we're living in a post-pen world? Think again, Livescribe says. The smartpen maker says its research shows that most people—even those toting around phones and tablets—still like having pen and paper on hand to jot down notes. But that doesn't mean people want those notes to be available digitally, which is where the Livescribe 3 comes in.

The Livescribe 3 lets you write notes onto a piece of paper, just like you would with any ordinary pen. But, if you're using one of Livescribe's Dot Paper notebooks, your notes can also be stored digitally with the help of a companion app for organization, tagging, and searching.

The Livescribe 3 has been around since last fall, but this week's Macworld/iWorld gave the smartpen maker a chance to demo it for iOS users in San Francisco. And you'll see a demo of the pen from Livescribe's Bryan Rodrigues in the above video report.

Since its release late last year, the Livescribe 3 has been busy adding support for other third-party apps. Earlier this month, Livescribe said it was integrating its smartpen with OneNote, Microsoft's note-taking app.

Livescribe 3—available in either a $150 standard version or a $200 pro offering—works with any iOS device that supports Bluetooth Smart (the iPhone 4s or later, the iPad 3 or later, and the fifth-generation iPod touch.)


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Trial to proceed in Silicon Valley employee 'no poaching' case

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 29 Maret 2014 | 16.01

A lawsuit that accuses Google, Apple and other top Silicon Valley companies of driving down wages by agreeing not to hire each other's workers can go to trial, a judge ruled on Friday.

The case alleges that executives including former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt agreed not to poach the other's workers during a period between 2005 and 2009. The alleged agreements would violate state and federal antitrust laws. Adobe Systems and Intel are also named as defendants.

Similarities among the alleged agreements, and the defendants' knowledge of them and other matters, provide enough evidence that a jury must decide if there was an overarching conspiracy, Judge Lucy Koh wrote in a ruling Friday at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.

A trial date has been set for May 27.

"These agreements were negotiated by a small group of intertwining high-level executives at the defendant firms," Koh wrote.

In one instance, Jobs contacted Google co-founder Sergey Brin, telling him, "If you hire a single one of these people that means war," Koh wrote in her ruling.

In another case, Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit's board of directors, emailed Brin, stating, "Steve Jobs called me again and is pissed that we are still recruiting his browser guy," according to Friday's ruling.

Intuit has since settled with the plaintiffs, as have Lucasfilm and Pixar. Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

There's also evidence that the defendants shared confidential compensation information despite considering each other competitors for talent, Judge Koh wrote.

And evidence indicates there may have been other agreements between companies that are not defendants in the case, Koh said. For example, Jobs called Edward Colligan, former CEO at Palm, to ask him to be part of an anti-solicitation agreement and threatened patent litigation against Palm if it refused, the ruling says.

Some 64,000 technology workers could be affected by the suit, which was first filed in 2011 by five software engineers.

A case management hearing was held Thursday in San Jose, where attorneys for both sides said progress was being made toward a possible settlement.


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World Tech Update: Microsoft puts Office on the iPad and Facebook's $2 billion VR bet

This week on World Tech Update, our weekly news video review, we take a closer look at Microsoft's long-awaited Office for iPad.

At his first major press conference as Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella said he's committed to driving Office 365 across all platforms, including the Web, smartphones, tablets and PCs. The widely used Office suite is now available for the iPad as a collection of three apps: Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Is it a good move for Microsoft or does it come too late? Watch our show and decide for yourself!

And less than a week after we caught up with Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey at the Game Developers Conference, Facebook announced it's scooping up the virtual-reality startup for US$2 billion. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg clearly sees virtual reality as potentially the next major computing platform.

Other stories we're covering this week include:

— Nvidia unveiled its most powerful graphics card yet, the GeForce GTX Titan Z, which starts at a whopping $2,999.

— HTC debuted its latest smartphone, the One M8, which has a 5-inch full HD display and is available now in the U.S. and Canada.

— The X-37B, a classified reusable space plane being developed by the U.S. Air Force, has broken its own record for endurance in orbit.


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Judge blocks sales of Typo keyboard on BlackBerry request

A California judge has granted BlackBerry's wish to temporarily halt sales of an iPhone keyboard produced by start-up Typo Products while the two companies argue over alleged copyright infringement.

BlackBerry had petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in late January to block sales of the Typo keyboard because it was an "obvious knock-off" of the keyboards on its phones.

In a ruling issued late Friday, Judge William Orrick said "BlackBerry has established a likelihood of proving that Typo infringes the patents at issue and Typo has not presented a substantial question of the validity of those patents."

The court's decision will be a blow to Typo, which had asserted that its keyboards were sufficiently different.

The Typo keyboard was first unveiled in January and is designed to slip onto an iPhone 5 or 5S like a protective case. It costs $99 and has received attention in part because Typo is backed by U.S. TV and radio personality Ryan Seacrest.

BlackBerry quickly moved to sue Typo claiming its keyboard was a copy of those found on BlackBerry handsets.

The company currently sells several phones with a physical keyboard and plans to launch at least one more later this year.

Earlier Friday, CEO John Chen said BlackBerry would launch a new model called the Q20 "Classic" later this year that includes the trackpad and 'Menu,' 'Back,' 'Send' and 'End' buttons along the top of the keyboard that helped make the company famous.

As a next step in the California case, BlackBerry will have to post a bond with the court that would cover Typo's losses should it eventually be decided that Typo's keyboard does not infringe on BlackBerry's patents.

Typo has a week to come up with a detailed accounting of how much money it could lose as a result of the injunction.

Typo could not immediately be reached for comment.

The case is 14-00023, BlackBerry vs Typo Products, at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.


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Wearables, projectables, Office for iPad, and Oculus

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 28 Maret 2014 | 16.01

Clockwise is a podcast about technology that's designed not to waste your time. Every week we'll talk about a few tech topics in 30 minutes or less.

This week we're live at Macworld/iWorld! Live on stage we discuss Microsoft Office's late arrival on iPad, the future of wearables and projectables, and Facebook's purchase of a nice pair of VR goggles.

Our guests this week are Macworld's Roman Loyola and special guest Rene Ritchie of iMore!

For comprehensive coverage of the Android ecosystem, visit Greenbot.com.

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Lawyers talk of settlement in Silicon Valley employee-poaching case

Attorneys say they're making progress toward a possible settlement in Silicon Valley's employee poaching case, in which Google, Apple and other companies are accused of conspiring not to hire employees from other tech giants.

During a hearing on Thursday in a San Jose court, attorneys on both sides said they were working daily with a mediator to resolve the dispute, which involves alleged secret agreements among the firms not to poach each other's workers. Those agreements would violate federal antitrust laws.

"From our perspective, we don't need any rulings," said Robert Van Nest, an attorney for Google, during a case management discussion with Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for Northern California. Discussions were ongoing with a mediator to possibly settle the claims, he said.

An attorney for the workers agreed. "I think if there's any possibility of settling this case, we have the right mediator for it," said Kelly Dermody.

The case dates back to 2011, when Silicon Valley software engineers alleged that Adobe Systems, Apple, Google, Intuit, Intel, Lucasfilm and Pixar engaged in an "overarching conspiracy" to fix and suppress employee compensation and to restrict employees' mobility. The class covered by the suit is estimated at 60,000 workers.

Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar have already settled with the plaintiffs.

A trial date has been set in May. During Thursday's hearing, the parties worked out a variety of logistical issues for a trial, partly in an attempt to streamline the evidence that could be used.

Some of the evidence consists of emails sent between Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in which they allegedly agreed not to hire employees working at each others' companies. Those agreements, plaintiffs allege, drove down their compensation and prevented them from moving to higher-paying positions in a competitive job market.

Much of the case focuses on "do-not-call lists," which plaintiffs say the companies used to instruct their recruiters not to call other firms about possible job openings.

The alleged agreement between the companies not to solicit each other's employees violates the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, the plaintiffs argue.

The defendants had tried to appeal a ruling by Judge Koh that allowed the case to be treated as a class action, but the appeals court rejected that petition.


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US judge rules Baidu's censorship is protected as free speech

A U.S. judge has ruled that the Chinese search engine Baidu has the right to block pro-democracy works from its query results, dismissing a lawsuit that sought to punish the company for Internet censorship. 

The lawsuit against Baidu, originally filed in 2011 by eight activists in New York, claimed that the Chinese search engine had violated U.S. laws on free speech. This was because Baidu had been censoring pro-democracy works on its search engine for not only its users in China, but also for those accessing the site from New York. 

The lawsuit demanded Baidu pay US$16 million in damages. But on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled against the activists, and said requiring Baidu to include pro-democracy works in its search results would "run afoul" of the U.S.'s free speech laws. 

In his ruling, Furman compared Baidu's blocking of pro-democracy works to a newspaper's right to exercise "editorial control" to publish what it wants. In Baidu's case, the company has created a search engine that favors certain political speech. 

"The First Amendment protects Baidu's right to advocate for systems of government other than democracy [in China or elsewhere] just as surely as it protects Plaintiffs' rights to advocate for democracy," wrote Furman. 

Baidu is also not stopping U.S. users from accessing the pro-democracy works through other search engines such as Google or Bing, the judge added. 

On Friday, the Chinese search company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the law firm representing Baidu in the case said the ruling was a victory for the free speech rights of Internet search engines. 

"It shows that our courts protect the right of all media to choose what they publish," said attorney Carey Ramos in a statement. "That right extends to Internet media as well as print media. And it protects Chinese media as much as American media." 

The activists who filed the lawsuit against Baidu could not be reached for comment. 

Last year in March, Furman had initially dismissed the lawsuit because Baidu was not properly served court papers, but later the case was allowed to proceed. 

Baidu is China's largest search engine, with a 61 percent share over the market, according to Internet analytics site CNZZ.com. But the company, like others in the country, is required to comply with the nation's strict regulations over Internet content. Google for a time also obeyed these rules, but in 2010 the company decided to shutdown its China-based search engine following ongoing disputes with the nation's censorship rules. 


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'Coinkrypt' malware mines cryptocurrencies on Android

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 27 Maret 2014 | 16.01

A malicious software program for Android that mines lesser-known cryptocurrencies could cause phones to overheat, a mobile security company warned Wednesday.

The "Coinkrypt" malware appears to not be very widespread and has been seen in Spanish-language forums discussing pirate software, wrote Marc Rogers, a principal security researcher with Lookout Mobile Security.

The malware doesn't steal data. Instead, it "mines" digital currency by participating in the peer-to-peer networks that verify transactions through a cryptographic proof-of-work system, which Bitcoin and other alternative virtual currencies use.

To earn any meaningful returns, Bitcoin's network requires high-powered computers for mining. Coinkrypt skips Bitcoin and instead processes transactions for emerging digital currencies such as Litecoin, Dogecoin and Casinocoin, Rogers wrote.

Targeting those cryptocurrencies "might yield more coins with less work," he wrote. Still, the processing is taxing for a mobile device.

Coinkrypt is a quite basic program, which means it may not have the restrictions that other mining programs have that throttle the rate at which the coins are mined to avoid damaging a computer's hardware.

"Mining can be incredibly resource-intensive and, if allowed to run without any limits, could potentially damage hardware by causing it to overheat and even burn out," Rogers wrote. "Users affected by this malware will find their phones getting warm and their battery-life massively shortened." 

There's another ill effect. The public record of transactions for many virtual currencies, known as a "blockchain," are usually very large files. Coinkrypt might eat up a person's mobile data plan trying to download it, Rogers wrote.

It's unlikely Coinkrypt is earning much money. Rogers wrote that Lookout analysts ran another mobile mining program for Litecoin called "AndLTC" on an LG Nexus 4 phone. After seven days of mining, the application generated about US$0.20 worth of Litecoin.

"Despite the fact that this malware author was likely targeting the lower hanging digital currency fruit, mining likely isn't worth the return on investment for this malware," Rogers wrote.


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Hosting company describes security scare aimed at Bitcoin accounts

On Sunday morning, Nate Daiger, one of the owners of a small Los Angeles-based hosting company Chunk Host, received an odd email on his phone.

The email came from SendGrid, a company used by Chunk Host to send its email. SendGrid specializes in ensuring an organization's legitimate emails get through and aren't mistakenly picked off by spam filters.

The email was a password reset notification. That was odd, since Daiger wasn't trying to reset his password. In fact, he barely ever logged into his SendGrid account.

But it was the first clue that something was awry at his company, which sells inexpensive virtual private hosting on fast hardware.

The precise details of the attack aren't entirely clear just yet. Daiger said in a phone interview Wednesday that he is continuing to work with SendGrid's technical team on exactly how it happened.

Daiger said the attackers might have successfully social engineered someone at SendGrid, which in turn, could have exposed Chunk Host customers to possible account takeovers.

SendGrid officials couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

Daiger said SendGrid doesn't think they were socially engineered to add the email address. But Chunk Host doesn't appear to have been attacked directly, Daiger said, and if it was compromised, the attackers wouldn't have needed to manipulate SendGrid in the first place.

"If it turns out to be some problem on our side, I'll apologize," Daiger said, who wrote about the attack on his company's blog. "But I'm pretty sure it's not."

Daiger believes the attackers managed to convince someone at SendGrid's technical support over the phone to add another email address, "support@chunkhost.info," to Chunk Host's account. The legitimate address is "support@chunkhost.com."

SendGrid had assured him earlier this month after another attempt to get access to Chunk Host's account that it uses strict procedures for account changes, Daiger said.

Once the new address was added, the attackers then initiated a password reset for Chunk Host's SendGrid account. The link for the password reset was copied to the attackers, enabling them to change the password and gain access.

After Daiger received the password reset notification email, the attackers had already changed his password, and the second phase of the attack was underway.

Now in control of Chunk Host's SendGrid account, they initiated password resets on two of the hosting company's customers, both of which are Bitcoin-related, Daiger said.

The password reset triggered emails to those customers—and were also copied to the new email address they controlled.

The two customers of Chunk Host were likely none the wiser due the attackers' knowledge of a specific feature employed by SendGrid's system.

It allows an email to be sent to a blind courtesy copy address, which means the targeted victims couldn't see the password reset link had also been sent to someone else. The attackers then changed the passwords for the bitcoin-related Chunk Host accounts, Daiger said.

"It was pretty clear that somebody was intercepting our password reset emails," Daiger said. "I also didn't know it was possible with SendGrid to silently BCC all your outgoing emails elsewhere. I would have been a little more wary about using it if I had known that was a feature."

The attackers were foiled, however. Both of Chunk Host's customers used two-factor authentication, which requires the input of a one-time password to get access to their accounts.


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Mt. Gox creditors want to force Karpeles to testify in the US

Creditors of failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox are trying to force its CEO Mark Karpeles to go to the U.S. for questioning related to a fraud lawsuit.

Gregory Greene and Joseph Lack asked a U.S. judge to order Karpeles to go to the U.S. for a deposition, according to a motion filed Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas division, which granted the exchange temporary protection from creditors.

Karpeles has to testify in the U.S. to protect domestic creditors because of his involvement in the management of the exchange and his peculiar knowledge of its coding and operations, according to the filing.

The pair rejected a proposal from the Karpeles side to have the embattled CEO go to Taiwan to be questioned by lawyers in person or via video link, calling it "an unjustifiable misuse of judicial resources."

The motion states that the plaintiffs have offered to pay for Karpeles' travel to the U.S.

"He is someone who has availed himself of the protection of the United States courts and he wants all the advantages of a foreign representative who's been forthright, transparent and open without being forthright, transparent or open," Steven Woodrow, a Colorado-based lawyer for the plaintiffs, said.

"Most foreign representatives, from our research, who have availed themselves of the United States courts, are more than willing to come to the United States to justify the relief that they're seeking," Woodrow added. "For some reason, Mr. Karpeles seems averse to coming to the United States. His attorneys won't tell us why."

Karpeles did not respond to an email seeking comment. A lawyer for Mt. Gox in Dallas was not immediately available for comment.

Greene and Lack are plaintiffs in an Illinois class-action lawsuit that claims that the bitcoin exchange in Japan was involved in massive fraud and the theft of bitcoins and currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

After filing for bankruptcy protection with the Tokyo District Court on Feb. 28, saying some 850,000 bitcoins, worth about $474 million, had gone missing, Mt. Gox also sought bankruptcy protection in Texas, which shields it from creditor lawsuits. Mt. Gox later said it found about 200,000 bitcoins in an old-format digital wallet.

The latest motion by Greene and Lack also alludes to Bankruptcy Rule 2004, which states that the court may order the examination of any party of interest.

The Tokyo court, meanwhile, is expected to decide whether Mt. Gox can be rehabilitated or whether it should be liquidated. The exchange has said it has consulted with Tokyo police regarding the disappearance of its bitcoins.


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Intel acquires health band maker Basis Science

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 26 Maret 2014 | 16.01

In another sign of the mainstream growth of wearable devices, Intel has bought high-end health tracker maker Basis Science.

The San Francisco-based startup produces the Basis band, billed as an advanced health-tracking wristband.

Earlier: Why Intel finds Basis so appealing

Intel did not disclose the terms of the deal, but said the trackers will still be sold and supported through existing channels.

The chipmaker said its strategy is to create wearable reference devices, SoCs (systems on a chip) and other technology platforms "ready to be used by customers in development of wearable products."

basis carbon steel turned webres

The Carbon Steel wearable from Basis

Basis will be incorporated into Intel's New Devices Group, where former Basis CEO Jef Holove is now a general manager.

"Intel has a broad wearables strategy and we are now a key part of it," Basis wrote in a blog post.

The acquisition of Basis gives Intel immediate entry into the health tracking wearables market, Mike Bell, Intel vice president and general manager of the New Devices Group, said in a statement.

At CES 2014, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich focused on the company's push into wearables during his keynote address, showing off smart earbuds for runners that can measure heart rate and display the data on a smartphone screen.

He also featured the Jarvis earpiece, a smooth-talking personal assistant that can make dinner reservations and scan email.

In 2013, Intel invested in Thalmic Labs, which makes the MYO gestural armband, and Recon Instruments, which is behind the Jet, a heads-up display for sports that has some similarities with Google Glass.

The $199 Basis band has sensors that sit against the skin and can analyze sleep patterns, motion, heart rate, calorie expenditure, perspiration and skin temperature around the clock. Of course, it also tells the time.


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'Innocence of Muslims' actress files contempt motion against Google

An actress in an anti-Islam movie trailer has filed for a contempt of court order on Google for its alleged 'near-total disregard' of an appeals court's order asking it to take down copies of the video from YouTube.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had earlier ruled in a split decision that Google should take down and prevent new uploads of the trailer. In an amended decision, it did not preclude the posting or display of any version that does not include Garcia's performance.

Garcia has claimed she holds the copyright for her performance in the trailer "Innocence of Muslims," which sparked of protests and violence in many countries in 2012.

In a filing Tuesday, Garcia's lawyer stated that a version of the trailer that includes her performance was still available in the morning on Google's worldwide platform and also viewable in Egypt by tweaking the settings of the global platform to settings for a country.

An Islamic religious ruling called fatwa is said to have been issued in Egypt for Garcia's execution. The filing claimed that the availability of the video from any computer in the world on YouTube's global platform was covered by the court's order.

In her previous takedown notices in 2012, Garcia is said to have included a list of 852 YouTube channels and URLs (uniform resource locators) that contained the infringing material. "For Google, it is a pedestrian, technical exercise to take down those URLs, to hire an intern to just search for 'Innocence of Muslims'...," counsel M. Cris Armenta wrote in the filing.

Google has violated the court's order and continued to profit illegally from traffic to the infringing material on YouTube on several different channels, according to the filing. Armenta described the maximum penalty of US$150,000 per channel as the "only fair measure of the contempt," and asked that Google be asked to post a bond for the amount for each of the 852 cited YouTube channels.

The Internet giant has temporarily disabled only a few copies of the video that allegedly contain infringing content and put in their place what the filing described as "a snide message," that states: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by an actress over her 5-second appearance in the video. A U.S. court has ordered Google to remove the video. We strongly disagree with this copyright ruling and will fight it."

Garcia claims that the YouTube video included a performance by her for another movie that wasn't released, and was dubbed over to include offensive remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.

Google has claimed that an acting performance like Garcia's cannot be copyrighted and that the Copyright Act makes a distinction between a copyrightable work and its performance. It had asked for a stay of the appeals court order, as Google, YouTube, and the public would suffer irreparable harm to their First Amendment and other constitutional freedoms if the company was not immediately granted a stay on the order. The order was not stayed, but only amended.

The company could not be immediately reached for comment on the contempt filing.

Rights groups have also criticized the appeals court decision, particularly its remark that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect copyright infringement. As the Supreme Court has observed repeatedly, injunctions that shut down speech are particularly disfavored, the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a post after the court ordered Google to take down the video.

Google is also concerned that a precedent may be set by the order so that people appearing in amateur videos without written agreements "will now have independent authority to contact YouTube and demand their removal."


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Ceglia's ownership claim to Facebook dismissed by federal court

A District Judge in New York on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by Paul D. Ceglia, claiming half ownership of Facebook.

In a 2010 lawsuit, Ceglia claimed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg signed a Work for Hire document in 2003 in which he agreed, in return for monetary payments, to give Ceglia a half interest in Facebook, which Zuckerberg was working on as a student at Harvard, besides providing programming and coding services for a search project called StreetFax.

Zuckerberg had stated under oath that he had not signed the Work for Hire document that Ceglia attached to his complaint, but only signed an agreement to do website development work for StreetFax, a now-defunct company.

Both Facebook and Zuckerberg alleged that the Work for Hire document had been fabricated by doctoring the text of the first page of the StreetFax contract and then adding it to the authentic second page of the contract, or its facsimile, that had Zuckerberg's signature.

In March 2013, Magistrate Judge Leslie G. Foschio of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, recommended that a motion by Facebook and Zuckerberg to dismiss Ceglia's petition should be granted as the purported contract was a "recently created fabrication," while the StreetFax document was the authentic contract.

Based on his review of the recommendations, District Judge Richard J. Arcara granted the motion to dismiss.

Ceglia could not be immediately reached for comment.

The office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in October 2012 that Ceglia was arrested by federal agents for allegedly attempting to defraud Facebook and Zuckerberg of a stake in the company, by allegedly doctoring, fabricating and destroying evidence to support his false claim.


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Report: Obama to unveil legislation to end NSA bulk phone data collection

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 25 Maret 2014 | 16.01

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is set to propose legislation that will end the bulk collection of phone data by the U.S. National Security Agency, according to a newspaper report.

Under the proposed legislation, the NSA will stop collecting telephone metadata in bulk from telecommunications carriers, and the records will stay in the hands of the phone companies, the New York Times reported Monday.

The NSA will also be able to obtain specific records from the carriers only with permission from a judge using a new type of court order.

The proposed legislation will also let the government pursue phone calls that are two-steps removed from a number associated with a terrorist group, instead of the three hops previously authorized, according to the report.

The collection of bulk phone metadata by the NSA has been at the center of controversy after its former contractor Edward Snowden disclosed in June last year that the agency was collecting bulk phone records of Verizon customers in the U.S. The government admitted that a program existed for the collection of such data in bulk from carriers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

In January, Obama promised to reform the bulk phone records collection program, with the goal being a new program that doesn't include the NSA holding on to the records. He wanted members of his administration to propose a new program by late March, when the phone records program would come up for reauthorization.

The government asked industry in February for information on whether commercially available services can provide a viable alternative to the government holding bulk phone records for the NSA program. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it was investigating alternative approaches "without the government holding the metadata, while maintaining the current capabilities of that system and the existing protections for U.S. persons."

Under the proposed legislation, phone companies will not be required to hold data for the five-year period that NSA now holds it. The companies will instead hold the records for 18 months as required by current federal regulations, thus avoiding a burden on carriers, the newspaper reported.

The administration proposal will join other legislation under consideration by the U.S. Congress including a proposal from the House Intelligence Committee. The committee bill would have the court authorize the program, but allow the NSA to issue subpoenas for specific phone records without previous judicial approval, the newspaper said, quoting people familiar with the draft proposal. The House Intelligence Committee bill is expected to be unveiled Tuesday, according to reports.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will be asked to renew the program in its current form for at least another 90 days, according to the New York Times report. The extension is likely to be necessary as it would not be possible to have a new regime in place by the end of this month.


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ATM malware, controlled by a text message, spews cash

A group of enterprising cybercriminals have figured out how to get cash from a certain type of ATM—by text message.

The latest development was spotted by security vendor Symantec, which has periodically written about a type of malicious software it calls "Ploutus" that first appeared in Mexico.

The malware is engineered to plunder a certain type of standalone ATM, which Symantec has not identified. The company obtained one of the ATMs to carry out a test of how Ploutus works, but it doesn't show a brand name.

Ploutus isn't the easiest piece of malware to install, as cybercriminals need to have access to the machine. That's probably why cybercriminals are targeting standalone ATMs, as it is easy to get access to all parts of the machine.

Early versions of Ploutus allowed it to be controlled via the numerical interface on an ATM or by an attached keyboard. But the latest version shows a remarkable new development: it is now controllable remotely via text message.

In this variation, the attackers manage to open up an ATM and attach a mobile phone, which acts as a controller, to a USB port inside the machine. The ATM also has to be infected with Ploutus.

"When the phone detects a new message under the required format, the mobile device will convert the message into a network packet and will forward it to the ATM through the USB cable," wrote Daniel Regalado, a Symantec malware analyst, in a blog post on Monday.

Ploutus has a network packet monitor that watches all traffic coming into the ATM, he wrote. When it detects a valid TCP or UDP packet from the phone, the module searches "for the number "5449610000583686 at a specific offset within the packet in order to process the whole package of data," he wrote.

It then reads the next 16 digits and uses that to generate a command line to control Ploutus.

So, why do this? Regalado wrote that it is more discrete and works nearly instantly. The past version of Ploutus required someone to either use a keyboard or enter a sequences of digits into the ATM keypad to fire up Ploutus. Both of those methods increase the amount of time someone spends in front of the machine, increasing the risk of detection.

Now, the ATM can be remotely triggered to dispense cash, allowing a "money mule," or someone hired to do the risky job of stopping by to pick up the cash, to swiftly grab their gains. It also deprives the money mule of information that could allow them to skim some cash off the top, Regalado wrote.

"The master criminal knows exactly how much the money mule will be getting," he wrote.

Symantec warned that about 95 percent of ATMs are still running Windows XP, Microsoft's 13-year-old OS. Microsoft is ending regular support for Windows XP on April 8, but is offering extended support for Windows XP embedded systems, used for point-of-sale devices and ATMs, through January 2016.

Still, Symantec warned that "the banking industry is facing a serious risk of cyberattacks aimed at their ATM fleet."


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Panasonic brings 4K to wearable action camcorders

If you want to record your next climb up a cliff in extreme detail, Panasonic is offering a high-resolution wearable camera that shoots in 4K at 30 frames per second progressive.

The HX-A500 is being touted as the first wearable camera in the world of that resolution. It's aimed at users who want to record from a first-person perspective on land or water while having their hands free.

The waterproof, dustproof device can go underwater to a depth of 3 meters for 30 minutes. It comes in two parts, a 31-gram lens unit and a 119-gram body unit, that are linked by a cable.

It can attach to your clothes, helmet, or sleeve. The lens, for instance, can loop around your ear with an attachment and nestle against your cheek so it captures everything you see.

Other accessories allow it to be attached to a shoulder, backpack or handlebars. A wind jammer attachment cuts out noisy gusts during fast-moving activities like skiing.

The body unit has a 1.5-inch LCD monitor for playback as well as NFC (near field communication) for linking to a Wi-Fi connection on a smartphone or other mobile device.

If you're concerned about potentially making viewers a little seasick with footage taken at odd angles, the HX-A500 can detect when it's shooting at a tilt, which it corrects by adjusting the final images. It can also automatically reduce blur from motion.

The camera can also capture slow motion video at 200, 100 or 50 frames-per-second. An associated app can send footage to streaming site UStream for live broadcasts.

The HX-A500 is a successor to the lower-resolution HX-A100, an action camcorder with a similar form factor that was launched at CES 2013.

It will go on sale in May in Europe with a suggested price of £379.99 (US$626), according to a Panasonic release.

A separate release said the unit will be available in the U.S. in July. A spokeswoman at the company's office in Tokyo was unable to give a price for the U.S. market.

The price tag of $626 is significantly more than the $399.99 GoPro Hero 3+ ruggedized action cam that shoots in 4K at 15 frames per second. The GoPro camera weighs 74 grams for the camera alone, or 136 grams including its waterproof housing.


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Small bitcoin exchange, Vircurex, teeters after large withdrawals

Written By Unknown on Senin, 24 Maret 2014 | 16.01

A small bitcoin exchange in Beijing is in trouble again after trying to earn back funds lost in two hacking incidents last year.

The exchange, called Vircurex, said in a statement it would freeze on Monday cryptocurrency accounts held by its customers after large withdrawals apparently nearly drained it of funds.

A tiny player, Vircurex traded just 54 bitcoins in the last 30 days, according to statistics compiled by Bitcoin Charts. By comparison, the largest China-based exchange, BTC-China, transacted more than 202,000 bitcoins in the same period.

But it is the latest exchange to suffer financial problems following the collapse last month of Mt. Gox, the one-time king of the bitcoin trade, which lost an estimated 650,000 bitcoins and US$23 million in cash through poor accounting and security problems.

Vircurex lost "a significant" amount of its holdings in two incidents last year, it said on its website. It claimed to be covering the losses from those incidents through normal trading operations, from which it collects a fee.

The exchange apparently had enough in reserve to allow regular trading of bitcoins and several other cryptocurrencies, including litecoin, feathercoin and terracoin, but not enough if many depositors suddenly wanted to withdraw.

The scenario, termed a "fractional reserve," has long been a worry of bitcoin investors since the finances of virtual currency exchanges, which are mostly unregulated worldwide, are often opaque.

But Vircurex said "large fund withdrawals" in the last few weeks depleted its so-called "cold wallet," which refers to offline, secure storage for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

"We are now facing the option of either closing the site with significant unrecoverable losses for all or to work out a solution that allows the exchange to continue to operate and gradually pay back the losses," the company said.

It outlined a plan that involved distributing its remaining cryptocurrency balances to depositors. Depositors' accounts will be labeled with the term "frozen balance."

"Funds in this balance type cannot be used to trade or withdraw," Vircurex said. "Those are the balances that the exchange will gradually pay back and hence transfer back to the available balance over time."


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A thin lifeline for XP users: New Malwarebytes suite will support the older OS

As Malwarebytes announces its new Anti-Malware Premium suite Monday morning, it comes with a nice present for Windows XP users: lifetime support.  Perhaps it isn't entirely surprising given that, according to the company, 20 percent of its user base remains on Windows XP. Microsoft is actually extending malware support well beyond the XPocalypse date of April 8th, but knowing other companies have your back is a rare bright spot.

(Not that we're encouraging anyone to stick with Windows XP. Cyber criminals are ready and waiting to pounce on the holdouts. There are some things you can do to protect your XP machine, but most people should upgrade to Windows 7/8, or consider Linux as an alternative safe haven. Microsoft's campaign to move everyone off Windows XP involves increasingly lucrative enticements.)

malwarebytes anti malware premium logo march 2014Image: Malwarebytes

Regardless of your OS, the new Anti-Malware Premium suite unites five handy Malwarebytes products and offers a new interface for managing them. The heart of the suite is a new malware detection engine that uses behavior to identify suspicious software, rather than signatures that constantly have to be updated. That's where the industry in general is going, because it's better to nip malware in the bud than wait for it to be confirmed and fixed.

Should malware make it onto your system, a new Anti-Rootkit feature can dig deep into your computer to eradicate all traces of the foul creature. Another tool, called Chameleon, can force a system restart and malware scan even if your system's been crippled by an attack. The suite also provides protection against browser-based risks, such as malicious URLs and aggressive adware and toolbars.

The company recommends its Anti-Malware Premium suite as a complement to a full-fledged antivirus suite. The $24.95 annual subscription covers up to three PCs, or Anti-Malware PRO lifetime-license holders may upgrade for free. Even better: The suite is a lightweight 16MB download. Separate from this suite, the company's well-known cleanup tool will remain a free product.


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Nokia delays closure of sale to Microsoft of smartphone business

Nokia has delayed to April the sale of its smartphone business to Microsoft as it still hasn't received approvals from certain antitrust authorities in Asia.

Microsoft said in September it plans to acquire Nokia's Devices & Services business, which includes the smartphone and mobile phones businesses, for over US$7 billion. The deal, which also includes licensing of patents by Nokia to Microsoft, was expected to close in the first quarter of this year.

Nokia said Monday the deal had already received most of the required regulatory approvals, including approvals from the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. The two companies continue to make good progress related to the closing conditions and integration planning, Nokia said.

"We are nearing the final stages of our global regulatory approval process—to date we have received approvals from regulatory authorities in 15 markets on five continents," wrote Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith in a blog post announcing the delay in closure of the transaction.

A Nokia spokeswoman in India declined to name the countries where Nokia and Microsoft still need antitrust clearance. China has not yet approved the deal, according to sources.

The Competition Commission of India approved the deal in October, as it found that the combination of the two companies will not likely have an "appreciable adverse effect" on competition in the country.(

Nokia's handset factory in Chennai in south India has, however, been frozen by Indian federal authorities in a dispute over taxes for mobile phone software licenses.

The company faces another dispute over unpaid sales tax on phones made at the factory from authorities in the state of Tamil Nadu where the factory is located. Nokia has contested the claim in the local High Court, stating that no sales tax can be levied on exported products. The state government claimed that devices made at the factory were not exported but were instead sold domestically.

Nokia said the delay in closure of the transaction is not linked to the tax issues in India and will not affect the deal terms materially. The Chennai factory won't be included in the transfer to Microsoft for a temporary period if the issue is not resolved before the deal is closed, and will operate as a contract manufacturer to Microsoft, according to sources.

Microsoft said last year it would submit the proposed acquisition for approval in the E.U., U.S., China, India, Brazil, Russia, Canada and other countries.


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Report: Turkey cuts off a key Twitter workaround by blocking Google DNS

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 23 Maret 2014 | 16.01

Earlier this week, the Turkish government blocked access to Twitter inside the country in response to a YouTube video that alleges Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's involvement in a corruption scandal. Citizens found a number of ways to circumvent the ban, but according to a new report, one of the easiest ways around the block is apparently no more.

The Turkish news site Hurriyet Daily News reported Saturday that Erdogan's government has apparently blocked access to Google Public DNS, which Turkish citizens had been using to access Twitter, ban be damned. 

Behind the scenes, the websites you visit are actually represented by IP addresses. DNS servers "translate" these IP addresses to the more familiar URLs we know and love. They're basically what ensure that entering twitter.com into your browser takes you to Twitter's website.

Normally, you would access websites through your ISP's DNS servers, but if you want to, you can switch to a alternative DNS service like Google Public DNS or OpenDNS, and it's actually fairly easy to do so. Sometimes people switch DNS servers for security purposes, other times for performance.

Google's DNS service was not impacted by the Twitter blockage, so it allowed for an easy workaround for the ban inside Turkey—until Google DNS itself was blocked, anyway. And apparently, word about it got out. A widely-shared photo shows the Google DNS server addresses spray-painted on a building in Istambul, for example. 

As of right now, it appears that other options for circumventing the ban—such as using another alternative DNS service or connecting through a VPN or a proxy server—still work, according to Hurriyet Daily News, so it isn't quite lights-out for Twitter in Turkey. At least not yet. 


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AT&T exec takes to the Internet, takes Netflix to task in the process

In a blog post published Thursday night, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings took aim at Comcast—you know, the company Netflix paid in order to get better network access— for its stance on net neutrality. So naturally, AT&T had to chime in.

Someone get the popcorn.

In a post published to the AT&T Public Policy blog, AT&T executive Jim Cicconi took issue with Hastings' insistence that "ISPs must provide sufficient access to their network without charge." Cicconi counters that somebody needs to pay for high bandwidth usage, and that it shouldn't all fall on the ISPs and their customers.

"In the current structure, the increased cost of building [network] capacity is ultimately borne by Netflix subscribers. It is a cost of doing business that gets incorporated into Netflix's subscription rate," Cicconi wrote. "In Netflix's view, that's unfair. In its view, those additional costs, caused by Netflix's increasing subscriber counts and service usage, should be borne by all broadband subscribers – not just those who sign up for and use Netflix service."

Cicconi went on to argue that the arrangement Netflix wants would be like Netflix passing the cost of mailing DVDs to its customers on to non-customers.

Netflix has yet to reply to AT&T's criticism, but one thing's for certain: This debate is far from over.


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RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition review: The same Myst you know and love, but prettier

The sun is setting on Myst Island. It dips towards the ocean, which stretches boundless in every direction. From where I stand, the last pale orange rays stretch across the sky, scrabbling for purchase between a few thinning trees. The clock tower, the electrical station, the library, the rocket—all are silhouetted against the day's final minutes.

And then the stars come out.

We have the technology. We can rebuild it.

Like so many other people, Myst was the first "real" game I played, despite being a kid and understanding nothing about the game. In fact, I don't even know if I ever got off Myst Island and made it to the other ages at the time.

Regardless, I wandered Myst Island for hours, delved into the library's secrets, flipped the marker switches up and down, heard the desperate pleas of Sirrus and Achenar. Twenty years on— that's right—as of next year, you can take that first edition copy of Myst out to your favorite bar and buy it a drink—Myst still holds a dear place in my heart.

realmyst 6

To celebrate this auspicious anniversary, Cyan has released realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. This is the fourth major version of Myst—the original, realMyst, Myst: Masterpiece Edition, and now realMyst: Masterpiece Edition.

The original Myst was made in Hypercard and was essentially an interactive slideshow: A collection of hand-drawn environments you navigated by clicking. RealMyst, on the other hand, turned those 2D environments into fully-realized, 3D polygonal spaces. The "Masterpiece Edition" designation is basically Cyan's way of saying "Director's Cut" or "Remastered."

So, in other words, realMyst: Masterpiece Edition is a visually-enhanced version of realMyst, which was already a fork of the original Myst line but rendered in polygons. Got that? Phew.

New look, old feel

You'd never know realMyst: Masterpiece Edition is essentially a twenty-year-old game. This isn't Battlefield 4, by any means, but the new Unity Engine-ified version of Myst Island looks comparatively gorgeous here. The addition of a day-night cycle is utterly pointless, but exploring at night or even at sunset adds a certain solemnity to the isolated loneliness of the island. Aside from a few muddy textures (especially the ones used inside the library's destroyed books), this is Myst Island and the Ages as you've never seen them before. It's a fantastic looking overhaul.

realmyst 7

The most confusing part, actually, is that you have these amazing graphics on a game that conceptually feels so '90s. Whereas Myst's sequel, Riven, went with a more naturalistic environment, Myst is a unicorn taped to the hood of a car. It's red smacked right up against green.

What I mean is Myst's fantastical hub world, Myst Island, smashes together elements from four or five very different design schools, and this clashing juxtaposition of the various ages both makes Myst Island visually fascinating and makes it a relic of a type of '90s hodge-podge design that's largely disappeared—and that no amount of high-res textures can cover up. Nowadays games, especially puzzle games, value a coherency or cohesiveness to the environmental designs that just isn't present in Myst.

But really that's neither here nor there. Myst Island is Myst Island, and I still love it even if the design is insane.

realmyst 2

What I don't love is the amount of frame-dropping in realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. There's no way of getting around it— realMyst: Masterpiece Edition is poorly optimized. Despite multiple patches since release, the game still slows down for inexplicable reasons. Even with graphics settings dialed down I experienced stuttering. The game looks good, but not that good, and certainly not good enough I should've had trouble getting it to run, even at the highest graphics settings.

The proof is in the playing

RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition also has two control schemes: A "Classic" mode that controls like the point-and-click games of yesteryear, and a free-roam mode that allows you to walk and look around at will.

With Classic controls, Cyan went back in and mapped the original camera angles from 2D Myst onto the 3D environments, so you're basically playingMyst as it was originally intended, except instead of warping to the next camera angle, your character walks over. It's a bit disorienting if you did play original Myst, because walking over takes up more time (though there's a bar to adjust walk speed).

realmyst 5

Free-roam mode is a mess, however. When you're walking, the game controls like a standard first-person game—that is to say, when you move the mouse your view also changes. This is how first-person games have played since time immemorial. But when you stop moving in realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, your controls change. Now you have to hold down right click to pan around, or scroll with the edges of the screen.

It's an awkward and convoluted means of control, and I found myself more often than not moving rapidly back and forth so I could trick the game into giving me standard mouse-look controls instead of dealing with the Right-Click-to-pan scheme.

As far as how difficult Myst actually is these days—well, I honestly can't tell you. I didn't feel like I remembered much of the game's solutions going in. Nevertheless, I beat it in four hours. Whether that's a commentary on the game being simpler in a post-Riven, post-adulthood, or post-"I've played a ton of games and recognize some of the tropes" world...I just can't say.

Bottom line

RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition is beautiful, and I still love Myst, but I don't know if this is "the definitive version" of the game. Certainly it's the easiest to run on modern hardware, but I still would probably opt for Myst: Masterpiece Edition if only because it's better optimized and, well, costs a lot less.

If you want something that "just runs," though, or you're determined to freely wander Myst Island, this updated realMyst is your best bet. And hey, it's quite a sight to see the sun set.


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Xbox One's price disadvantage disappears with new bundle

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 22 Maret 2014 | 16.01

Best Buy and Walmart have begun selling the Xbox One console bundled with a copy of Titanfall for $450, a $50 discount that arguably makes the Microsoft Xbox One cheaper than the PlayStation 4 from Sony.

Nick Wingfield of The New York Times noted the bundle deal, which is revealed after one selects the bundle and clicks all the way through to checkout. Essentially, Microsoft is giving away Titanfall for free. 

Titanfall

Titanfall has had its own availability issues, but not on the Xbox One.

Making the argument that the Xbox One is actually cheaper than the PlayStation 4 requires a bit of finesse, however. Titanfall is an Xbox exclusive. Best Buy prices the 500GB PlayStation 4 at $400, a PS4/PS Plus bundle at $450, and a game bundled with a PlayStation-exclusive game, Infamous: Second Son, at $460. So, when one compares a PS4 bundle with an Xbox One bundle, the Xbox One bundle is indeed $10 cheaper.

The Xbox One originally launched at $499, compared to the $399 price Sony charged for the PlayStation 4. That led many to think Xbox One sales would suffer as a result. But Microsoft has previously dabbled in discounting games to bring down the total price of the Xbox One.

That's probably because, even though both consoles have been well regarded, Sony continues to outsell the Xbox One within the United States. For the month of February, Microsoft sold 258,000 Xbox Ones. That figure represented 90 percent of the sales of the PlayStation 4, according to NPD, although NPD's numbers do not include online sales. In any event, lowering the price of a product, including a game console, usually results in a corresponding increase in sales.

The Xbox One/Titanfall bundle being sold at Best Buy and Walmart includes the Xbox One console, Kinect sensor, wireless controller, chat headset, HDMI cable, 1-month Xbox Live Gold membership and a Titanfall game download—note that it's a download, so you'll have to wait before you can jump in and play.

Nevertheless, companies like IDC predicted, largely correctly, that the PlayStation 4 would outsell the Xbox One early on, if only because of the price difference between both consoles. Putting each console on a par with the other, price-wise, will make for a much more interesting race.


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Worried about the government? Internet giants also dip their hands in the cookie jar

Security protections have been tightened at many of the major online services, as firms like Google and Microsoft pledge to protect their users against unwanted prying eyes. But while many people fret about unwarranted government access to their data, the Internet firms themselves play by their own set of rules.

Some of the heat directed lately at the U.S. National Security Agency was focused this week on Microsoft instead. On Wednesday, Microsoft revealed that it had taken a peek at a French blogger's personal Hotmail emails as part of a company investigation into trade-secret leaks.

Microsoft said it had a right to do so, because its policies allow it to search personal emails to protect its intellectual property. In this case, a former Microsoft employee allegedly leaked Windows RT updates to the blogger via email. Microsoft's terms of service state that it's forbidden to use the company's services to upload or otherwise make available files that contain software or other material protected by intellectual property laws.

"Microsoft reserves the right to review materials posted to the Communication Services and to remove any materials in its sole discretion," the company says in its terms of use.

Microsoft responded to the criticism by pledging to update its procedures to make them more "transparent." In the future, it said, a separate legal team at Microsoft will review any evidence and proceed "only if that team concludes there is evidence of a crime that would be sufficient to justify a court order, if one were applicable." It will then submit the evidence to an outside attorney—a former federal judge—and conduct a search only if that person agrees with its conclusions.

But Microsoft's explanation of why it needs to pursue this route is itself telling. "Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed," it explained. "So even when we believe we have probable cause, it's not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves."

In other words, there are no laws preventing Microsoft from looking at the data in its own services, so only Microsoft can decide when it's appropriate.

It's not alone in this. Other companies including Google and Yahoo have similar language in their terms of service.

There are at least two class-action lawsuits looking at the way Google's automated systems scan emails for advertising and other purposes. One of the suits accuses Google of crossing a "creepy line" by scanning the data of Apps for Education users to build profiles that could be used for marketing, according to a report this week in Education Week.

The way Google's scanning systems work amounts to illegal "interception" or "eavesdropping" under federal and state wiretapping statutes, both suits allege.

When it scans email for advertising purposes, Google isn't exactly "reading its users' emails." It's all automated, with a machine searching for keywords in the mails and relating them to ads. It's what allows Google and other companies to offer their services for free. But it still makes some people highly uncomfortable.

Facebook faces a similar lawsuit, which claims the company scans people's private messages for URLs for "purposes including but not limited to data mining and user profiling." It's accused of violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as well as privacy and unfair competition laws in California.

These issues raise questions about the extent to which users should be concerned about the access companies have to their private communications.

With the exception of certain types of information like medical records, your data is basically all there for the taking, said Lorrie Faith Cranor, an associate professor of computer science and of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Lab.

"There's few restrictions legally on what big companies are allowed to do with your personal data," she said. "What you purchase, which websites you browse ... there's no law legally saying you can't look at that," she said.

There are differences between automatically scanning people's messages and actually reading them, but in either scenario some actionable use is made of the data. One of the questions, Cranor said, is how that data is put to use.

Scanning emails to prevent spam or viruses is probably fine with most people. But scanning emails to provide targeted ads? That's where Internet users have mixed feelings.

At the same time, almost all the major Internet firms have bolstered their efforts to protect people's data from intrusion by outside entities such as governments and hackers. Last month, Microsoft announced availability of its Office 365 Encryption program, which encrypts the emails people send to make snooping harder.

And Google this week said it was removing the option to turn off its HTTPS encryption, to make it harder for others to snoop on people's email.

For those seeking more online privacy, smaller outfits have cropped up like Syme, an encrypted Facebook-like service, and the messaging app Wickr, which claims to have no way of seeing people's data even if the company wanted to.

But the major free online services like Facebook and Google are unlikely to be changing their business models any time soon.

"If you're getting a free service, you're paying for that service with your data," said Susan Freiwald, a professor of law at the University of San Francisco, who studies cyberlaw and information privacy. And the fact that your data is stored on a company's servers, she said, poses risks around its availability to governments, hackers and the companies themselves.

And encryption may only go so far. The topic generated discussion last week at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. During a video interview, NSA contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden noted that HTTPS encryption does not prevent service providers from tapping into data stored on their own servers.

End-to-end encryption, which encrypts data before it leaves the user's own device, is not practical for the Internet giants because it conflicts with their business models, Chris Soghoian, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU, said during the event. That's because it prevents them from scanning content for advertising or other purposes.

"The tools designed with security as a first goal are often developed by independent developers, activists and hobbyists," he said.

In other words, if you're using one of the major online free services, be careful what you say. As the University of San Francisco's Freiwald put it: "There's a lot less security online than people think."


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Twitter kills its music app, which never got much play

Twitter's mobile music app, launched last year amid a crowded market for online music services, is being shut down, Twitter said on Friday.

Twitter #music will be removed from Apple's app store on Friday. For those who already downloaded it, the app will continue to work until April 18, Twitter said.

twitter music

Twitter Music

The app was launched last year as a music discovery service, with songs sourced from Spotify, iTunes and Rdio. Other music providers were supposed to be added later, Twitter said at the time. The app was available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and elsewhere. An Android version never got off the ground.

Twitter #music let users listen to songs within the app, and follow artists in a similar way to how the main Twitter service works.

Twitter didn't say why it was killing the app, but it was having to compete with its own partners—Spotify, iTunes and Rdio—as well as popular services like Pandora and Rhapsody.

"We continue to experiment with new ways to bring you great content based on the music activity we see every day on Twitter," the company said in a separate tweet.


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Developers give Sony's Morpheus headset an excited welcome

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 20 Maret 2014 | 16.01

Software developers were among the first in the world to get their hands on Sony's futuristic Project Morpheus headset on Wednesday, and they liked what they saw.

The device, unveiled on Tuesday evening in San Francisco, is a prototype virtual-reality headset that might one day replace the living room TV as the main display for gaming. It's getting its first public outing at the Game Developers Conference, which is currently taking place in the city.

A queue began forming at Sony's booth on Wednesday morning for the few hundred tickets that would guarantee a chance to try out the headset.

One of the first in line was David Klingler, a software developer with Solanimus.

"It was much more impressive than what I've done with the Oculus Rift," he said, referring to a rival headset from startup Oculus. "The resolution is not an issue at all with this, like I've had with the Oculus."

morpheus developer

A visitor to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco tries out a Sony Project Morpheus headset.

Sony has packed a 1080p high-definition screen into the Morpheus. The Oculus Rift's resolution is lower, but on Wednesday Oculus launched a new version of its headset that offers the same 1080p resolution.

Sony had several virtual worlds and games for people to try out, including an underwater world and a crossbow game that utilized two PlayStation Move controllers.

"The depth was very good, it was fantastic," said Klingler. "That was the most important thing. I think what makes the difference is that you can focus very close, like there were the bubbles in the deep demo, but you can also see very far away, like the wreck."

project morpheus event

And here's what all the fuss was about.

Another developer, Andrew Willans, of the U.K. studio Reflections, appeared even more impressed.

"Absolutely phenomenal," he said when asked about the demo. "I just lost myself in there."

"I felt genuine fear when I was in the deep, because I was looking around for the shark," he said. "Just amazing. Really, really good. The second one, the crossbow and the sword, the sensation of having something tactile in your hands ... is just phenomenal."

Both Klingler and Willans said they are interested in developing virtual reality games.

"I've been waiting for this for years. It's one of the reasons I got into the industry," Willans said.

Sony hasn't said when developers will be able to get their hands on the prototype headsets. They will have to get access before a consumer version is released.


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