NEC aims at Big Data 'sweet spot' with new SAP Hana tool

Cloud computing and SAP's Hana in-memory database can be a powerful combination for data analysis, and new tools could help to make sure it doesn't fall down on the job.

On Friday, NEC released a tool designed to make life easier for data analysts by boosting Hana availability in the cloud.

Focusing in particular on users of the Amazon Web Services cloud, the new tool takes advantage of NEC's ExpressCluster software. The tool can automatically detect system faults as SAP Hana runs on AWS and switch over to a standby server when problems arise. The result, NEC said, is to shorten downtime and improve both availability and operational efficiency.

The tool is aimed both at companies using SAP Hana for high-speed Big Data analyses and those using it for core business-critical systems, the company said.

Eventually, NEC plans to make the software available for other cloud-based services as well.

The new offering fills a distinct need at the intersection of the four key technologies involved, said Kirk Borne, a data scientist and professor at George Mason University.

"SAP Hana delivers in-memory analytics; clusters deliver fast parallel computing speed-ups for analytics tasks; cloud computing delivers scalable on-demand cluster computing; and AWS delivers managed cloud services in an accessible way," Borne said via email. "The NEC tool marries these solutions by providing an AWS-based workflow and cluster-management layer on top of the powerful in-memory analytics from SAP Hana."

The tool could help to democratize analytics, he said, by bringing it to an even broader community of data analysts without requiring a steep learning curve.

Numerous Big Data predictions for 2015 included both cloud-based analytics and in-memory analytics, so "it appears that NEC hit a sweet spot for data scientists," Borne said.

NEC is one of several vendors certified by SAP to work with Hana, so the new solution is probably an effort by NEC to differentiate itself, said analyst Henry Morris, a senior vice president with IDC.

However, it doesn't appear to offer any kind of uptime guarantee, he added.

"That's what the buyer would want to hear—if they stand behind this offering," Morris said.

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MIT randomizes tasks to speed massive multicore processors

As each new generation of computer processors arrives with a larger number of computing cores, computer scientists grapple with how best to make use of this proliferation of parallel power.

Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a data structure that they claim can help large multicore processors churn through their workloads more effectively. Their trick? Do away with the traditional first-come, first-served work queue and assign tasks more randomly.

MIT's new SprayList algorithm allows processors with many cores to spread out their work so they don't stumble over one another, creating bottlenecks that hamper performance.

If it pans out in day-to-day operation, something like SprayList might pave the way for more effective use of new, many-core processors coming our way, such as Intel's new 18-core server chip,the E5 2600v3.

Multicore processors, in which a single processor contains two or more computational cores that operate simultaneously, can present a challenge in programming. The problem is that the work a computer needs to do must be distributed evenly across each of the cores for maximum performance.

When the first commodity two-core and four-core processors came out more than a decade ago, software researchers harnessed a simple and well-known computer science technique to dole out work, called priority queue, in which the task on top of the work queue is assigned to the next available core. The queue can be ordered through a combination of job priority and good old-fashioned first-come, first-served serialization.

Traditional implementations of priority queue work fine for up to eight cores. But performance suffers when additional cores are added, the researchers said.

Like having too many cooks in the kitchen, too many cores working on the top of a single priority queue can slow performance. Multiple cores hitting the queue at the exact same time can cause bottlenecks as each core contends for the top task. And because each core keeps its own copy of the priority queue in a cache, synchronizing the ever-changing queue across these multiple caches can be a headache—if processors could get headaches, that is.

So the researchers devised a new way of implementing priority queues in such a way that they will continue to be effective for up to 80 cores. Instead of each core being assigned the next task in the queue, the core is assigned a random task, reducing the chances of creating a bottleneck from two cores contending for the same task.

Random assignment has traditionally been frowned upon by those who think a lot about computer processors, the researchers noted in a paper explaining the work. A random scheduling algorithm takes longer to jump around the queue than a conventional one does. Caches can't be used to store upcoming work items. And if a set of tasks needed to perform one job are executed out of order, then the computer needs additional time to reassemble the final results.

But as the number of cores increase, these disadvantages are outweighed by performance gains of using a more "relaxed" style of random assignment, the researchers said.

To test the effectiveness of SprayList, the researchers ran an implementation on a Fujitsu RX600 S6 server with four 10-core Intel Xeon E7-4870 (Westmere EX) processors, which supported 80 hardware threads. In effect, it mimicked an 80-core processor.

When used to juggle fewer than eight processing threads, SprayList was indeed slower than a set of more traditional algorithms. As more threads were introduced, the performance of these established algorithms leveled out, and SprayList's performance continued to increase linearly, as measured by operations per second.

SprayList does not pick tasks entirely at random, but rather works off a kind of priority queue called a skip list, which bundles tasks into different priority levels, ensuring high-priority items still get processed before low-priority ones.

"Users who specifically choose to use a priority queue require that items with the highest priority are selected before items with low priority. Our work argues that it is OK to relax this somewhat—we can process the tenth-highest priority before the first highest priority without too much problem," said MIT Graduate student Justin Kopinsky, who led the work with fellow graduate student Jerry Li. Pure randomization might lead the computer to first process tasks with very low priority. "Then you run into trouble," Kopinsky wrote by email.

For the work, Kopinsky and Li received help from their advisor Nir Shavit, an MIT professor of computer science and engineering, as well as Dan Alistarh, who works at Microsoft Research and is a former student of Shavit's.

The researchers will present their work next month in San Francisco at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming.

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Google Now adds data from Lyft, Airbnb and many more apps

Google Now just got a lot smarter, adding data from dozens of outside apps to help people get more things done as they go about their day.

Google Now is a search tool and digital assistant built into Android devices and the Chrome browser, and included as part of the Google search app for iOS. Until now it's served up information about the weather, restaurant reservations, shipping notifications and nearby events based on people's past Google searches and reading their Gmail messages. The content is presented as "cards" that users can swipe through and dismiss as they please. The idea is to present helpful information, sometimes before people know they need it.

Now, a much wider variety of cards will be incorporated into the Android version of the app, including for the first time information from third-party apps like Pandora, Airbnb, Lyft, and real estate database Zillow—provided a user has those apps installed. Adding more of those cards will make it faster to get information from the other apps, and perhaps make them more useful.

Take this example for Airbnb: A person uses Google search to plan a trip but can't decide right away where to book. Later, after opening the Google Now app, a card from Airbnb appears for the location and dates researched, helping the person choose a place to stay. Or if a person who uses Lyft lands at an airport, Google Now can offer to order them a ride.

The integrations could lead to more use of Google Now, provided the suggestions are useful and not annoying. And they could address a mounting challenge for Google—that people are getting more and more information from apps rather than searching the web.

Google's share of U.S. mobile search ad spending could fall to 64 percent this year, research company eMarketer said in a report last June, down from 83 percent in 2012, while Yelp's share was expected to grow.

The more than two dozen new cards will roll out over the next few weeks, Google said, with more on the way. Plans for bringing the new cards to iOS were not announced.

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Nvidia employee retracts comments about planned GTX 970 driver to improve memory allocation performance

Important update 1/29/15: The Nvidia employee who said the company was looking into a GTX 970 driver that would "tune what's allocated where to further improve performance" has updated his post to remove the claim after it was covered by several publications, including PCWorld, PC Gamer, and PC Perspective. As that changes the entire thrust of this article, its headline has been updated to reflect that. We still stand by our recommendation of the GTX 970 and you can read a summary of the memory allocation firestorm here.

This post originally ran at 2:30 PM Eastern on 1/28/13 with the headline "Nvidia plans GeForce GTX 970 driver update for memory performance concerns." The original post follows in its entirety.

There's trouble a-swirling in graphics land. To make a long story short, Nvidia was recently forced to admit that the way the GeForce GTX 970 handles its 4GB memory allocation is… unorthodox, to say the least. The GPU actually taps into two separate memory pools: A primary, full-speed segment of 3.5GB, and a secondary, far slower 512MB segment. In cases where games need more than 3.5GB of RAM, some users saw stuttering and frame rate wonkiness as the GPU accessed the 512MB segment.

The vast majority of users are unlikely ever to bump into the issue, as it should be a problem limited largely to situations where you're gaming at extremely high resolutions and/or with anti-aliasing settings cranked. But an Nvidia representative says the company is working to minimize the issue regardless.

Writing in the GeForce forums, an Nvidia employee and moderator going by "PeterS" said the following (emphasis mine):

"It sucks because we're really proud of this thing. The GTX970 is an amazing card and I genuinely believe it's the best card for the money that you can buy. We're working on a driver update that will tune what's allocated where in memory to further improve performance."

PeterS provided more detail in a follow-up comment:

"Actually I'm not sure as that's not a simple issue with just one cause. Card memory is not just used for the frame buffer, plenty of driver stuff gets loaded into it as well. We're looking at sticking as much of that stuff as possible into the 0.5GB space to leave the rest available."

Essentially, Nvidia's trying to shove all the background crap into the secondary 512MB segment in order to leave as much free space for actual games in the main 3.5GB space. In the meantime, PeterS has offered to help try to get refunds or exchange credits for deeply disgruntled GTX 970 owners, though he cautions that the offer basically means he'll talk to your graphics card manufacturer on your behalf if they're giving you a rough time about a return related to memory allocation concerns.

EVGA

EVGA's GTX 970 FTW with ACX 2.0+ cooling is a barnburner of a graphics card and still comes highly recommended.

I wouldn't recommend most gamers jump the gun on that, however. Nvidia messed up here, but the GTX 970 is still a beastly card that offers tremendous bang for your buck, and gaming at 4K resolution—where memory frame buffer issues would be a much larger concern—wouldn't be very feasible with a single GTX 970 anyway.

Simply put, average gamers aren't likely to push games to 3.5GB-plus of memory usage unless they're doing really unusual things. People who purchased two or more GTX 970s for a high-resolution SLI setup might want to weigh their options, however. (Guru 3D's initial testing of the issue suggests the actual performance drop when the GTX 970 utilizes more than 3.5GB of RAM is minimal.)

Speaking of options, AMD representatives were quick to try and tempt unhappy Nvidia owners over to Team Radeon.

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Facebook tests delivering tips about your location

Facebook is getting closer to territory occupied by Yelp and Foursquare by testing a new service that will provide users with recommendations about places they are at.

Starting Thursday, some users of Facebook on iPhone in New York will find a new feature, called "Place Tips," at the top of their news feed, which will surface information on the location they are at, as well as posts and photos of the place that friends have shared.

"You can also see information about the place, including posts from its Page, popular menu items and upcoming events," wrote Mike LeBeau, Facebook product manager in a blog post.

Facebook has been increasingly introducing services that are designed around the user's location, including a Nearby Friends feature it launched last year that allows users to spot friends in their vicinity.

The company is using a combination of cellular networks, Wi-Fi and GPS to determine a person's location for the trial of Place Tips, but in some locations it will also test Bluetooth beacons, provided to businesses, that will send signals to the phone to help locate the user.

Facebook's Place Tips will only show if the social network has been given permission to access the user's location through the phone. Users have the option to turn the feature off. Viewing the Place Tips doesn't post on Facebook or show people the location of the user, the company said.

Facebook said it will be testing the new feature in locations like Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty and JFK Airport. The beacons will be tested by a few businesses like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Strand Book Store.

The social network will likely make money through charges or commissions from local business owners that surface on Place Tips. The company did not immediately comment on plans to monetize the service.

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VPN providers play 'cat-and-mouse' with China's growing censorship

Amit Bareket calls it a "cat-and-mouse" game. In this instance, his company is the mouse, and the Chinese government is a giant cat.

The two sides are continually at odds, because Bareket's company, SaferVPN, is one of many that provide software tools designed to circumvent the country's notorious Internet censorship.

These tools are growing more popular in China, in spite of recent government attempts to block them, according to Bareket.

"I can tell you that more than 300 new VPN users come to our service every day in China," said Bareket, who is the spokesman at SaferVPN.

VPNs, which stand for Virtual Private Networks, are essentially tools that can let users bypass Internet censorship. For about US$6 to $10 a month, subscribers to these services in China can access blocked sites such as Facebook, YouTube and more.

But lately, China has been more aggressive in trying to disrupt these services. Last week, several VPN providers reported access problems for users. Days later, one of the country's top regulators defended the actions and signaled that the authorities were prepared to crack down further.

"As the Internet develops, and new circumstances arise, we will take new regulatory measures to keep up," said Wen Ku, a director with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

That said, the recent disruptions haven't stopped the VPN services, only added a minor roadblock. Companies like SaferVPN still manage to bring their services to the country, and are working on new technologies to stay a step ahead of the censors.

Although VPN providers serve countries across the world, China is one of the big markets, Bareket said. SaferVPN is a smaller player, and has only several thousands of users from the country. Bareket estimated that the bigger VPN providers may have over 100,000 users in China, if not more.

In SaferVPN's case, it's not just foreigners living in China and businesses that use its service, but also local residents. VPNs became more widespread among Chinese users last year, driven mainly by regular users wanting access to site likes Facebook, Bareket said.

That may be the reason why the government, which was previously somewhat tolerant of the technology, is growing more alarmed about VPN usage.

VPNs risk upending the vast censorship China has so heavily invested in. Bareket noted that Chinese authorities were taking more measures to block VPN service, after pro-democracy protests broke out in Hong Kong last September.

China was already censoring coverage of the event, and was quick to cut access to Instagram, after photos of the demonstrations began to appear online. Still, a VPN service would be able to bypass the block.

As for the most recent VPN disruption, Golden Frog was one of the providers affected last week. While the company wouldn't reveal user numbers, a spokesman said that demand for its VPN was up in the country.

Part of the reason is that China in recent years has blocked other lower-quality VPNs that were free, pushing more customers to its service, said Golden Frog spokesman Andrew Staples in an email.

The company's service, called VyprVPN, is in use by business customers that need to access cloud services blocked in China, such as Google Docs and Dropbox, he added. But along with foreign students and other expatriates, Chinese citizens wanting access to an unfiltered Internet are also among its subscribers.

Although last week's disruption may have caused some hiccups for Golden Frog, the company was able to quickly restore its VPN service. "One reason we do well in the country is we've developed technologies for China," Staples said. The technology is called "Chameleon", and was built to "defeat" China's censorship systems, although its not 100 percent perfect yet, he added.

To fight back, China has blocked the websites to many of the top VPN providers. In some cases, e-commerce sites and social networking services in the country have censored search terms such as "VPN" and "Fanqiang", the Chinese word for climbing over the wall and circumventing the country's censorship.

Still, companies such as SaferVPN are finding ways to reach Chinese Internet users. They can do this by selling its services through affiliates and advertising networks that the censors haven't blocked yet. "Also when they block a domain name, we can just a start a new domain name," Bareket added. 

But the big is question is how far China will go to stop the VPN providers. The government could do more to stifle the services, but any Internet clampdown would draw complaints from businesses about disruption of their activities, industry experts said.

For now, VPNs still have one other barrier to entry and that's the monthly subscription. Outside of China's larger cities, where many residents earn less, an unfiltered Internet could still be financially out of reach.

"What the authorities may be looking to do right now is make it more difficult for the masses to gain VPN access," said Mark Natkin, managing director for Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting. "But corporations and those that have enough money will still be able to use Facebook and Twitter."

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Congo restores Internet to banks, gov't agencies but public block remains

Internet service has been restored to government agencies and banks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but otherwise a government shutdown of email, social media and mobile phone services, ordered on Jan. 19, remains in effect.

The DRC government moved to block communications in an attempt to quell public protests and clashes that left more than 45 people dead and over 1,000 injured.

As in other countries in Africa including Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the government claims the Internet and mobile phone communications are putting the security of the public at risk. The Web is increasingly becoming a conduit for expression of social unrest on the continent. In the DRC, people have been using text messages and social media networks to coordinate rallies to protest President Joseph Kabila's political maneuvers to change the country's constitution in order to continue his stay in office.

The DRC government now fears that public protests might result in the overthrow of Kabila, just as public unrest led to the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in 2011.

Opposition political parties have called for mass demonstrations against the new electoral bill being debated in the Senate. The opposition is demanding that Kabila, who has been in power for 14 years, step down when his tenure ends next year.

The DRC government has admitted that the new bill is likely to cause delay in holding the presidential elections by at least one year.

France has voiced concern over the trouble and urged all parties to negotiate the proposed reforms in a "consensual fashion, respecting DRC's constitutional and civil liberties."

Operators and ISPs in the troubled Central Africa country have complained that they are losing millions of dollars following the directive by the DRC government to shut down Internet and mobile phone services.

Initially, the DRC government denied it directed ISPs and mobile operators to block Internet and mobile phone services. The DRC government has since acknowledged that it ordered mobile operators and ISPs to shut down services in order to stop people from coordinating protests through social media and mobile phones.

DRC government spokesperson Lambert Mende said this week, "we did it for security reasons because we have a constitutional duty to protect the country."

So far, there is no indication as to when Internet and mobile phone services will be restored in the country. The DRC government said it has only allowed the restoration of Internet services for banks and other corporate bodies. This is the second time that the DRC government has shut down Internet and mobile phone services in four years.

In 2011, the DRC government banned the use of SMS and access to social media networks in a bid to curb violence following disputed results of presidential elections that returned Kabila to the presidency for a second five-year term.

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Samsung smartphone business sees profit slide, some hopes in DRAM

Samsung Electronics' operating profit in its mobile business slid 64 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, the result largely of competition in the Chinese market where it struggles against rising brands like Xiaomi.

The South Korean company sold 95 million handsets and shipped 11 million tablets in the quarter, it said during its earnings conference. The company did not disclose the number of smartphones sold globally, but it is expected to be around 75 million, according to Lee Seung-woo, an analyst at IBK Securities in Seoul.

The drop in profit is expected to have been the result of poor showing in high-end phones and a not so successful move to introduce smartphones targeted at mid-range and low-end markets, to fend off Chinese rivals including Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo. Samsung launched the Galaxy A3 and A5 in China in November and the Galaxy E7 and E5 in India this month, in the US$300-$400 price range.

These new products may not have stopped the bleeding for the company. "Samsung is under pressure in Chinese market, because at a same price point, Chinese brands like Xiaomi is offering competitive specs, compared to [Samsung] models like A3 or A5," said Jessica Kwee, a Singapore-based analyst at research firm Canalys.

Rival Apple sold a record 74.5 million of the bigger-sized iPhone 6 series, the company said during its earnings call this week. Research firm Strategy Analytics said Samsung and Apple had tied for the top position in smartphones in the fourth quarter.

"This quarter, it's quite clear a lot of people went for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, because of untapped demand for a larger screen iPhone, that boosted Apple's market share in the Chinese market," Kwee said, indicating growing competition for Samsung in high-end smartphones as well.

As the world's largest phone maker scrambled to retain its market share globally, the operating profit from its mobile division dropped to 1.96 trillion won ($1.78 billion) in the quarter from 5.47 trillion won in the same quarter a year earlier.

The only upturn was in its semiconductor business, which saw operating profit rise 36 percent to 2.7 trillion won compared to 1.99 trillion won in the same period a year earlier.

Samsung is likely to focus more on its component business as is seen from its recently improved relationship with Apple, said Will Cho, analyst from KDB Daewoo Securities, in a research note. The company announced last October that it will invest 15.6 trillion won in a chip manufacturing factory in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul.

"In 2015, DRAM growth is expected to continue into the first quarter, led by server DRAM for data centers and mobile DRAM for new smartphones," Samsung said in a statement.

Samsung is the largest supplier of DRAMs, which are used in smartphones and personal computers. It is likely to transition from using the low-power DDR3 to the newest low-power DDR4 3GB for its next flagship Galaxy S6, scheduled for release at the end of the first quarter, said Tae-young Kim, a Seoul-based analyst at Nomura, in a research note. Apple will also likely adopt DDR4 2GB for the iPhone 6S by the end of the third quarter this year, Kim said.

"Samsung is still a component supplier for Apple and is expected to increase its partnership, supposedly in supplying the 'A9' chips, because it has the leading technologies than the competitors," said Lee of IBK Securities.

Samsung reported a total operating profit of 5.29 trillion won in the October-to-December quarter, a drop of 36 percent, from 8.31 trillion won in the same quarter a year earlier, the company said. Revenue was 52.73 trillion won in the quarter.

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US targets mobile operator for deceptive data promises

TracFone Wireless, the largest prepaid mobile provider in the U.S., has agreed to refund US$40 million to customers to settle charges that it throttled bandwidth or cut off consumer data connections, despite promising "unlimited" data service as a marketing tool.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday that from 2009 TracFone, which sold unlimited prepaid monthly plans for about $45 per month, under the Straight Talk, Net10, Simple Mobile, and Telcel America brands, slowed or cut off mobile data after customers used more than certain fixed limits in a 30-day period.

The data service was generally slowed down after a customer used 1GB to 3GB, and was suspended at 4 to 5GB, according to the FTC.

Until September 2013, most of the operator's ads did not explain the data throttling policy. It started disclosing information subsequently but these were in fine print or not conspicuous.

FTC has warned previously that it would go after operators that allegedly use deceptive ads. The agency had last year filed a federal court complaint that charged AT&T Mobility mislead smartphone customers about its unlimited data plans. The commission's case against AT&T is still in litigation, FTC said.

TracFone even terminated all the talk, text, and data services of some consumers. Throttled users experienced slow-downs of between 60 to 90 percent, which affected their online activities like video streaming, according to the FTC.

Under the settlement with the FTC, besides paying the refunds to customers, TracFone has been blocked from making further deceptive advertising claims about its mobile data plans, and must disclose clearly any limits on the speed or quantity of its data service.

Consumers who had an unlimited plan but are not sure if their data service was slowed or cut off should still file a claim to find out if they are eligible for a refund, FTC said.

TracFone could not be immediately reached for comment.

The operator runs a virtual network by reselling mobile services purchased from network-based providers, according to a FTC filing on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco division.

The TracFone refund will be done in coordination with a pending class-action law suit against the operator.

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Facebook, Instagram temporarily down in many countries

Facebook and Instagram were down temporarily late Monday, suggesting that common infrastructure used by these services was hit.

"We're aware of an outage affecting Instagram and are working on a fix. Thank you for your patience," Instagram said in a Twitter message, which was deleted after the service was restored.

Users in various parts of the world were reporting that Facebook was down. People accessing Facebook's website received a message: "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."

Facebook could not be immediately reached for comment. Some users were reporting that some other websites were also down but it could not be immediately confirmed.

The outages come as a "life-threatening blizzard" hit the North East of the U.S., but it wasn't clear whether it had affected the online services.

Users later reported that both Facebook and Instagram were back, though neither website explained what had caused the outage.

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Internet problems take out Facebook, Instagram, others; Lizard Squad takes credit

Unexplained outages took down a number of popular Internet services Monday night, including Facebook, Instagram, HipChat, and possibly others. Notorious hacker group The Lizard Squad took credit.

Users promptly took to Twitter—whose Web site also seemed to be experiencing problems—to complain. Web sites which track Web outages, such as Outage Analyzer, also noted Facebook's downtime.

Outage Analyzer first noted Facebook's outage at 10:24 PM on Monday night, and reported numerous other outages affecting the company's servers. Both the Android app as well as the main Web site were unresponsive. 

But that wasn't the only site that went under, however. Facebook's Instagram was also unreachable, and users complained online that the dating app, Tinder, was also not working. (Tinder's Web site was functional, although Tinder does not have a Web app.) Atlassian's HipChat service also failed to connect. Other social apps, such as Pinterest, appeared to function normally. 

Notorious hacker group The Lizard Squad took credit for the outage, however, claiming it had taken down several services. The group had also taken credit for a hack of the Malaysia Airlines site earlier in the day.

A second tweet about 40 minutes earlier read "If only we didn't use twitter to communicate..."

At press time, Facebook had not taken to Twitter or elsewhere to explain the outages. But the dismay with Facebook being down actually propelled #facebookdown to the top of Twitter's trending topics list, above the #Snowmageddon2015 hashtag that people in the snowy Northeast were using to discuss a blizzard that had rolled in over New England and New York City.

The outage also appeared to have affected Microsoft's Bing, at least on this reporter's computer, although Microsoft's search engine and page appeared to have recovered by the time this story was published. What sites or services do you use that are or were out or unavailable? Tell us in the comments below.

At about 11:16 PM PT, Facebook service appears to have been restored.

Updated at 11:29 PM with additional details.

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China signals censors will continue to crack down on VPN services

China has defended its growing attempts to control the Internet, after disrupting several services that allowed users to view the Web free of censorship.

"As the Internet develops, and new circumstances arise, we will take new regulatory measures to keep up," said Wen Ku, a director with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, at a news conference on Tuesday.

The statement doesn't bode well for providers of virtual private networks (VPNs). These services can allow users to circumvent China's censorship and access the Internet unfiltered.

Last week, VPN providers including Astrill, StrongVPN, and Golden Frog reported access problems with their services.

In the case of Astrill, China has been disrupting the VPN protocols it once used to provide unfiltered Internet access to iOS devices, the company said in a posting for customers. "We know how access to unrestricted Internet is important for you, so our fight with Chinese censors is not over," the VPN provider added in a later posting.

"In China, the Internet's development must follow China's rules and regulations," Wen said, when reporters asked about the growing censorship and the logic behind the new measures. "Certain harmful content will be regulated according to Chinese law."

But the ministry wasn't concerned that the censorship might disrupt the local Internet industry. Wen pointed to the success of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, and the company's massive initial public offering on the U.S. stock market, as an example.

"Everyone can see that this is all because of the Chinese government's policy safeguarding the environment for the developing Internet industry," he said.

In recent months, China's Internet has become more censored than ever. The government has already blocked Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Last year it began cutting access to all Google services, in addition to several foreign mobile apps.

VPN services are gaining popularity among some sections of the Chinese public, and have become a convenient way to access popular foreign sites not allowed in the country.

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Coinbase set to launch licensed Bitcoin exchange in the US

Bitcoin wallet provider Coinbase will launch the first U.S. licensed exchange for the digital currency on Monday, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

While pointing to a "Lunar" teaser website with a clock counting down to 9 a.m. Eastern Time Monday, Coinbase's Twitter account also posted a link to documentation for Coinbase Exchange, calling them "API docs for our new project."

The move by Coinbase follows plans announced last week for Gemini, a regulated Bitcoin exchange in New York that is backed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and reflects a movement to get financial authorities behind Bitcoin amid continued price declines, hacking and criminal cases as well as the collapse of mammoth Japan-based exchange MtGox 11 months ago.

That would go against Bitcoin's founding philosophy as an unregulated, anonymous currency, but if Bitcoin's latest price movements are any indication, traders don't seem to mind. Bitcoin jumped over US$30 on Monday, touching a high of $290 on tracking site CoinDesk. It hit $177 earlier this month, its lowest in over a year.

The Coinbase founders have regulatory approval in half of U.S. states including jurisdictions with big cities in New York and California, according to the Journal. The API (application programmer interface) documents show that the exchange will have no trading fees during a promotional period, after which it will charge 0.25 percent.

Coinbase already claims 2.2 million consumer wallets, 38,000 merchants and 7,000 developer apps. Last week, it announced it had raised $75 million from investors including The New York Stock Exchange, calling it the first time financial institutions made a major investment in a Bitcoin firm.

"2015 will be the year when institutional investors began moving into Bitcoin in large numbers," Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin developer, said via email.

"Buying and trading bitcoins in the United States has always been a hassle, with many using overseas exchanges. Buying local is always more efficient, involves fewer fees, and is more likely to be compliant with the laws of your jurisdiction. These two exchanges will make Bitcoin more accessible to a huge target market." 

Coinbase did not immediately respond to a request for more information.

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Walmart's $25 Vudu Spark streaming stick is now available to the masses

Media streaming sticks like the Google Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV have some more company. GigaOm reports that Walmart is now selling its Vudu Spark media streaming dongle through its online store and "select Walmart locations."

The Vudu Spark, like other, similar dongles from Google and Amazon, is a $25 Wi-Fi-equipped USB device you plug into your HDTV. Using it, you can rent, purchase, and watch any of the movies or TV shows available through the Vudu service. 

The Vudu Spark surfaced in the FCC's online database back in November, so its release isn't a complete surprise. Citing a Walmart spokesperson, GigaOm also reports that the Vudu Spark is available in about 2400 Walmart stores.

The story behind the story: Walmart acquired Vudu in 2010 in order to compete with video streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon. In the years since, the line between retailers and hardware makers have blurred, what with Amazon's continued push into consumer electronics and Google getting more into the gadget act.

If anything, the Vudu Spark's release is another sign that it isn't enough to just provide an online storefront—you need to give TV lovers an easy–and affordable—way to watch the media you sell on their big-screen TVs. And with their easy setup and rock-bottom prices, the current generation of USB streamer dongles seems to be the way to go.

Walmart seems uniquely qualified to get the booming streamer dongle market an added boost, too, thanks in big part to its devotion to low prices. Sure enough, at $25, the Vudu Spark is $10 less than the Chromecast ($35) and $15 less than the Fire TV Stick ($40). Meanwhile, Roku's Streaming Stick retails around $50 and Microsoft's Miracast will cost you around $60. All of those are fairly inexpensive, but $25 moves streaming dongles solidly into the impulse-buy range.

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Malaysia Airlines attacked, big data dump threatened

The Malaysia Airlines website has been attacked and the Lizard Squad, one of the groups that claimed responsibility on Monday, threatened to soon "dump some loot" found on the airline's servers.

The airline said in a statement on its Facebook page that its Domain Name System (DNS) was compromised and as a result users trying to access the URL www.malaysiaairlines.com were being redirected to a hacker website.

At this stage, Malaysia Airlines' Web servers are intact, it added. The airlines assured customers that it had not been hacked and "this temporary glitch does not affect their bookings and that user data remains secured."

The Lizard Squad countered the claim of the airlines and released what appeared to be a travel itinerary receipt as proof that it had hacked into user data.

Users were initially redirected to a page with a picture of a Malaysia Airlines plane with the message "404-Plane Not Found. Hacked by Cyber Caliphate," a reference to the disappearance of the airline's Flight MH370 when on a flight in March between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. The page was subsequently modified to have the logo of the Lizard Squad. At the bottom of the image was another message "Hacked by LIZARD SQUAD -OFFICIAL CYBER CALIPHATE."

Malaysia Airlines said it had resolved the issue with its service provider and the system is expected to be fully recovered within 22 hours. "The matter has also been immediately reported to CyberSecurity Malaysia and the Ministry of Transport." It was directing passengers who wanted to book fares to a page on its site.

Lizard Squad claimed in December it was behind distributed denial-of-service attacks on Christmas Day of Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live.

But it appeared to share credit with other groups for the attack on Malaysia Airlines, including the Cyber Caliphate, according to screenshots of the website.

After another attack on Sony in August, the Lizard Squad had said in a Twitter message that "today we planted the ISIS flag on @Sony's servers," referring to the militant group that occupies parts of Iraq and Syria. On Monday, visitors to the Malaysia Airlines website said that at one point they noticed a browser tab "ISIS will prevail." A group, calling itself CyberCaliphate, compromised the Twitter account of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) earlier this month.

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Here's the Windows 10 preview user forum on Microsoft's site

Microsoft's engineers want to know what consumers think about Windows 10. Really they do. The company just announced a slew of new features at an event on Wednesday. On Friday morning, a new version of the preview build dropped. And now, the forum for user feedback is open.

Even if you're cautious about downloading the beta, just seeing what other people think and experience should be as fun as any Reddit thread.

A quick read of the threads so far: 

"Unexpected shutdown of Technology Preview"

"The UI is so UGLY an there are no options to change this." 

"Hey Cortana Play Music"

"OUCH! NOT GOOD! Things Freezing All Over"

But that's okay. This is a beta. Microsoft wants you to tell them what's good and bad, perfect or broken.

"We're well way on our way to making Windows 10 the largest-ever open collaborative development effort Microsoft has ever shipped," said Windows honcho Terry Myerson in his Windows 10 blog post on Wednesday. "Since we launched the Windows Insider Program in September, we've been joined by 1.7 million Windows Insiders, who have delivered over 800,000 pieces of feedback. We are truly co-creating the future of Windows with you and we're humbled by your valuable role in this new open development process."

So go ahead. Tell Microsoft what you think. And let us know what you think in the comments. 

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NIST pledges transparency in NSA dealings over crypto standards

A U.S. agency that develops widely used standards for encryption has pledged to be more transparent about its dealings with the National Security Agency, amid concerns the NSA undermined those standards to boost its surveillance efforts.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology outlined new proposed operating procedures in an updated draft published Friday. It's seeking public comments on the proposal through March 27.

The document follows a report last July from independent security experts who concluded NIST had put too much faith in the NSA in developing cryptographic standards.

"The new draft expands on NIST's interactions with the National Security Agency (NSA), explaining how the agencies work together and what steps are now in place to ensure NSA's contributions to the standards development process are transparent," NIST said.

"The new processes will ensure that NIST attributes to the NSA all algorithms, standards or guidelines contributed by the agency's staff, and acknowledges all comments received from the NSA."

NIST has been in the spotlight since 2013, when reports based on leaked documents from Edward Snowden claimed the NSA used its influence over NIST to insert a backdoor in at least one cryptographic standard and possibly to weaken others.

Last February, NIST appointed an independent panel of technologists review its practices, including Ed Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton University, Ron Rivest, an MIT professor, and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, who works at Google.

They concluded that NIST needed to hire more cryptographic experts and reduce its reliance on the NSA for decisions about standards.

Friday's proposal reflects the feedback in that report and from public comments on the first draft, which was published last February and said much less about NIST's work with the NSA.

NIST is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Formed in 1901, it's charged with making U.S. businesses more competitive by creating standard measures for weights and time, as well as standards for encryption, x-ray radiation and other areas.

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North Carolina could be next in Google Fiber roll-out

Two cities in North Carolina could be the first to benefit from a planned expansion of Google's fiber-optic Internet service.

The company is holding events in Raleigh and Durham on Wednesday and Thursday next week, apparently to announce selection of the cities as roll-out locations for the service, according to local TV station WRAL. Construction of the service could begin as early as April, the report said.

The two cities, which along with Chapel Hill make up an area known as Research Triangle, were among a preliminary list of 34 locations that Google said last February were in the running for its high-speed Internet connections. The company said it would begin working with the cities to explore deployment of the service and provide more details on its planned roll-out towards the end of 2014. However, to-date, no further announcements have been made.

Google Fiber is already available in Provo, Utah, Austin, Texas, and Kansas City. It delivers a "basic speed" service of around 5Mbps for no charge but customers must pay a construction cost of $300. A gigabit-per-second Internet service costs $70 per month and a third option bundles Internet and more than 100 TV channels for $120 or $130 per month depending on market. Installation costs for the two latter packages are waived.

In addition to fiber Internet, the company has told the 34 prospective cities that it is considering deploying Wi-Fi service in the areas covered by Google Fiber.

One of the other cities in the running, Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, said this week that it remains in conversation with Google on launch of fiber Internet there.

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Twitter 'recap' helps you catch up with missed tweets

The next time you are too busy to access your Twitter feed or have a bad Internet connection, the social network will help you get updated with a quick recap of the key tweets you have missed.

On Wednesday, Twitter introduced to the home timeline a feature, it calls "recaps," that will surface important tweets that the user might have missed from the accounts they follow.

"....we will surface a few of the best Tweets you probably wouldn't have seen otherwise, determined by engagement and other factors," Paul Rosania, a Twitter product manager, wrote in a blog post.

The recaps, which will be marked with the heading "While you were away," will appear for all users on the iOS operating system from Wednesday, with similar alerts for users of the Android app and the Web version of Twitter coming soon.

Users who spend a lot of time on Twitter will see fewer recaps, Twitter said. "Our goal is to help you keep up—or catch up—with your world, no matter how much time you spend on Twitter," Rosania wrote. "With a few improvements to the home timeline we think we can do a better job of delivering on that promise without compromising the real time nature of Twitter."

Rosania did not mention whether users would have any control over the tweets that would be included in the recaps and their frequency.

The recap feature was discussed by Twitter at an analyst meeting in November. CEO Dick Costolo said at the meeting that the company was building a Twitter that was the best way to keep in touch and connect with the world, and promised a speedup in the pace and breadth of product change.

Twitter has previously modified users' timelines. For example, besides showing "promoted tweets," purchased by advertisers, it also started surfacing tweets from accounts that the user didn't follow. "We select each Tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting," Twitter said in a support page.

Twitter reported in late October, when announcing its third-quarter 2014 results, that it is available in more than 35 languages and has 284 million monthly active users, up by 23 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.

There are also over 500 million unique users who visit Twitter owned and operated properties every month but don't log in, and there are many more unique monthly users who consume Twitter content in syndication and through mobile apps, Costolo said at the November meet. His aim is to convert visitors to active users by reducing barriers to consumption, including easier sign ons and an "instant timeline" feature that will allow new users to see what's happening on the site without having to first go through the time-consuming process of following accounts.

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Fujitsu psychology tool profiles users at risk of cyberattacks

Fujitsu wants to make computer security more personalized with profiling software based on psychology.

The manufacturer's Fujitsu Laboratories is developing an enterprise tool that can identify and advise people who are more vulnerable to cyberattacks, based on how they use email and Web browsers as well as their keyboard and mouse actions.

The software is designed on a belief that most cyberattacks exploit mistakes made by users such as clicking malicious links or inadvertently emailing the wrong person. Fujitsu describes the technology as the first that is based on behavioral and psychological characteristics.

Rather than being like an antivirus program, the software is more like "an action log analysis than looks into the potential risks of a user," a spokesman for the lab said via email. "It judges risk based on human behavior and then assigns a security countermeasure for a given user."

As part of its research, Fujitsu consulted social psychology experts and surveyed about 2,000 Japanese, half of whom had experienced attacks, to determine what traits make some users more vulnerable to viruses, scams and data leaks.

It found that those who are more comfortable taking risks are also more susceptible to virus infections, while those who are confident of their computer knowledge were at greater risk for data leaks.

The tool can display warnings such as "You are vulnerable to being scammed. Be careful," after a risk analysis. It can also produce bar graphs showing a user's vulnerability to viruses, scams and data breaches compared to the risk profiles of other departments in his or her company. Furthermore, it can analyze a user's attention level when reading privacy policies by tracking the distance his or her mouse moves.

Fujitsu says the information gathered is stripped of identifying information before analysis, and that data would only be collected with the consent of users.

"Most organizations have a single set of security countermeasures in place, but depending on the people and department, these can either be too strict or too lenient," the spokesman said. "Cyberattacks are becoming more and more intricate in how they adjust to their targets, so there are limits to what one kind of security countermeasure can do."

Fujitsu is still developing the tool and is now focusing on how the software will assign security countermeasures based on individual user behavior. It hopes to commercialize the system in 2016.

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BlackBerry wants to mandate app developers to make apps for its platform

BlackBerry CEO John Chen wants net neutrality to extend to content and applications, so that developers of apps for Android and iOS will be mandated to develop on the BlackBerry platform as well.

Not all content and app providers have embraced openness and neutrality, Chen wrote in a blog post that the company said was adapted from a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday. Policymakers must demand openness not just at the traffic and transport layer, but also at the content and applications layer, he added.

"Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM [BlackBerry Messenger] service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple's iMessage messaging service," Chen said. He also took a shot at streaming service Netflix for refusing to make its streaming movie service available to BlackBerry customers.

"Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users," said Chen, who added that as a result a "two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem" had been created where Android and iPhone users have more access to content and applications than users of mobile devices running other operating systems.

"Therefore, neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet," said Chen, who added that all applications and content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer's mobile operating system.

The BlackBerry OS accounted for less than 1 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2014, according to research firm IDC. Android had 84.4 percent while iOS had 11.7 percent and Windows Phone had 2.9 percent.

On the issue of carrier neutrality, Chen favored using current rules to keep the Internet neutral rather than reclassifying broadband under Title II as common carrier under the Communications Act. Title II of the Act already defines telephone companies as common carriers, and requires them to deliver service at "just and reasonable" rates and interconnect with each other.

"Given the unique nature of wireless networks, including the highly competitive wireless business in the United States and the bandwidth limitations inherent in spectrum-dependent transport, reclassifying broadband as a Title II service seems excessive to us," Chen said.

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Dish found not to infringe Fox's copyright by letting users stream programs

A federal court in California has ruled that Dish Network did not infringe the copyright of Fox Broadcasting by offering users services for skipping ads and streaming live or recorded programming over the Internet to their computers and mobile devices.

Referring to a Supreme Court ruling on Aereo, a now defunct service which streamed broadcast television programming to subscribers, Judge Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled that Aereo neither owned the copyright to the broadcast works nor held a license from the copyright owners to perform those works publicly.

"DISH does not, however, receive programs that have been released to the public and then carry them by private channels to additional viewers in the same sense that Aereo did," Gee wrote in a decision on Jan 12 that was made public in a redacted form on Tuesday.

"DISH has a license for the analogous initial retransmission of the programming to users via satellite," the judge added.

Once Dish subscribers receive the authorized programming, its Dish Anywhere service aids the transfer of those recordings in the set-top box or digital video recorder to the subscriber's other devices, according to the judge, who added that the ultimate function of Dish Anywhere is to transmit programming that is already legitimately on a user's in-home hardware to his Internet-connected mobile device.

"Relying on external servers and equipment to ensure that content travels between those devices properly does not transform that service into a traditional cable company," she added.

On the charge that the programming was being illegally used for a public performance, the judge observed that when an individual Dish subscriber transmits programming rightfully in her possession to another device, that transmission does not travel to "a large number of people who are unknown to each other." The transmission travels either to the subscriber or to someone in the household using an authenticated device.

The judge also observed that a "no copying provision" in the agreement between Dish and Fox did not cover private home use by consumers. "Thus, DISH subscribers may time- and place-shift Fox programming within the confines of their home," she wrote.

The case was scheduled to go to trial in February but was put on hold until October after both companies requested it. They said in a Jan. 15 filing that the issues at stake in the lawsuit were "highly likely" to be resolved as they negotiate a renewal of their 2010 agreement later this year.

The judge agreed with Fox that Dish subscribers were contractually bound not to use Dish Anywhere outside the home on mobile devices. "Given our knowledge of current technologies, it may seem absurd that a contract would allow subscribers to use DISH Anywhere on their mobile devices inside the home, but not the moment they step outside the home. Those are the terms, however, to which the parties agreed," she wrote.

Judge Gee also found that by copying Fox programming for quality assurance testing of its ad-skipping AutoHop feature, Dish violated the no copying provision.

Fox could not be immediately reached for comment.

"The decision is the sixth in a string of victories in federal courts on both coasts for the American consumer related to our Hopper Whole-Home DVR platform," said R. Stanton Dodge, Dish's general counsel in a statement. "We are proud to have stood by their side in this important fight over fundamental rights of consumer choice and control."

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Obama promises to promote net neutrality, broadband

U.S. President Barack Obama promised to push for net neutrality rules and for more transparency in the government's surveillance programs during his State of the Union address late Tuesday.

In a speech largely focused on the U.S. economy and aiding the middle class, Obama also promised to push for the deployment of next generation broadband networks, as he outlined in a preview to the State of the Union a week ago. The president has called on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to pass strong net neutrality rules and to roll back state limits on municipal broadband projects.

"I intend to protect a free and open internet, extend its reach to every classroom, and every community, and help folks build the fastest networks, so that the next generation of digital innovators and entrepreneurs have the platform to keep reshaping our world," Obama said in his annual speech before the U.S. Congress.

He also called for a new package of cybersecurity legislation, including legal protections for businesses that share cyberthreat information with the government, with details announced earlier this month. His proposal to criminalize violations of terms of service in computer and software products has led to concerns from white-hat hackers.

"No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets, or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids," he said Tuesday night. "We are making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyberthreats, just as we have done to combat terrorism."

Congress must "finally pass" legislation to combat cyberattacks and identity theft, he said. "If we don't act, we'll leave our nation and our economy vulnerable," Obama added. "If we do, we can continue to protect the technologies that have unleashed untold opportunities for people around the globe."

Earlier this month, Obama called for Congress to pass a consumer privacy bill of rights and a law requiring businesses with data breaches to report them to affected customers within 30 days.

On the U.S. government's controversial surveillance programs, Obama said the U.S. must uphold its commitment to civil liberties "if we want maximum cooperation from other countries and industry in our fight against terrorist networks."

He promised a new report on surveillance programs and privacy next month. "While some have moved on from the debates over our surveillance programs, I haven't," he said. "As promised, our intelligence agencies have worked hard, with the recommendations of privacy advocates, to increase transparency and build more safeguards against potential abuse."

Obama also noted that his administration has worked to protect "human dignity" and privacy, including during the use of surveillance drones. His administration has "worked to make sure our use of new technology like drones is properly constrained," he said.

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, giving the Republican response to the State of the Union, largely criticized Obama's foreign policy without addressing most of his tech-related proposals. However, Republicans will "advance solutions to prevent the kind of cyberattacks we've seen recently," she said.

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Don't blame sharks for Asian Internet problems, experts say

It may not be Shark Week, but don't tell that to people in Vietnam.

Internet connections in the South East Asian nation have been affected by problems with the Asia America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable system for the fourth time in a year, according to local news outlets. The cause of the outages? Sharks, if you believe some online reports.

As AAG has the highest capacity of cable systems linking to Vietnam, faults can have big consequences for its international Internet bandwidth.

Vietnam's latest woes aren't the first time sharks have been made out to be a threat to the Internet. Last year, a 2010 YouTube video, showing a shark biting a submarine cable, made the rounds again, approaching a million views, when a Google official said the search giant wraps its ocean cables in Kevlar to defend against sharks.

With 99 percent of all transoceanic Internet traffic now flowing through submarine cables, how large of a threat are these big fish? Michael Costin, Chairman of the AAG Cable Consortium, says the damage was likely caused by ship anchors or fishing.

"AAG is not yet aware of the cause of the advised fault, but strongly believes it is not caused by sharks," Costin said via email. "Consistent with past experience, AAG believes it is most likely to be as a consequence of damage due to ship anchors or fishing, which reportedly are the predominant causes of faults experienced by submarine cables."

The fault occurred 117 kilometers off Vung Tau in the southern part of the country. Costin said the consortium's local partner is working with Vietnam's coast guard to protect the AAG cable.

He points to research by the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), a global industry group which claims that 65 to 75 percent of cable faults are due to anchoring and fishing. It found no cable problems that were caused by sharks from 2008 to 2013, compared to 11 cases between 1959 and 2006 as documented by the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

The ICPC says advances in cable design have "effectively eliminated the problem." Modern cables wrap a core of optical fibers in multiple protective layers including a copper or aluminum tube as well as a fiberglass or plastic shell. Cables laid near shore or fishing grounds are often equipped with an additional shield of steel wires and buried.

"As for shark bites, its like a joke within this industry," Shota Masuda, a senior manager in NEC's Submarine Network Division, said via email. "Google made a remark last year about this, and this brought back a few papers written about this topic into the light, but in reality, sharks do not bite fiber optic submarine cables."

The continuing importance of marine cables has been highlighted by Google's recent investments in the infrastructure. NEC, one of the top three submarine cable makers along with Alcatel-Lucent and TE SubCom, is part of a consortium including Google working on the US$300 million FASTER cable system between Japan and the U.S. With six fiber pairs and 100 wavelengths, it will have a capacity of 60Tbps when it comes online in 2016. As Google described it, that's about ten million times faster than your cable modem.

NEC manufactured cables used in the 20,000km-long AAG system. Masuda says that the AAG Consortium is responsible for maintaining the link but said that cables can get cut by dropped anchors, trawler nets and undersea earthquakes. NEC's underwater cables, he said, are rated to last for 25 years at depths of up to 8 kilometers.

Biologists, meanwhile, say sharks are known to bite submarine cables. How much damage they can cause depends on the species and the cable itself.

"Underwater cables are sometimes bitten and damaged by sharks," Kazuhiro Nakaya, a marine scientist and professor emeritus at Hokkaido University, said via email. "Although 8,000m below the sea level is a little too deep for sharks (the deepest shark record is less than 5,000m), it is possible that the cables settled shallower areas are damaged by sharks."

Sharks are attracted by electromagnetic fields they can pick up through sensing organs called electroreceptors, which are located in their snouts and heads.

"They cruise along the bottom trying to detect bioelectric fields from prey living on the bottom and also looking for the light flashes of bioluminescent prey," Dean Grubbs, an associate scholar scientist at Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory, said via email. He was referring to the bluntnose sixgill, which he said is the shark in the 2010 video on YouTube.

"Though their jaws are relatively weak, they have saw blade-shaped teeth and tend to bite large food items (including carrion like dead whales) and then twist their large body until they saw out a hunk of flesh. It is possible that a large shark feeding in this way could damage submarine cables."

Grubbs said he has seen experiments showing sharks orienting to a weak electromagnetic field emanating from an electrode. A transatlantic cable laid in the 1980s by AT&T was found to have been damaged several times by undersea attackers, primarily crocodile sharks, Grubbs said. He added, however, that "most deep-sea sharks have relatively weakly calcified jaws so their bite force is quite low."

That, combined with better protection for cables than in the past, suggests human activity is what has been affecting the Internet in Vietnam. According to the management consortium's Costin, anchoring and fishing were responsible for all the faults last year. It's expected to be fully restored by Jan. 27.

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Microsoft's Outlook.com faces brief man-in-the-middle attack in China

Microsoft's Outlook.com briefly faced a "man-in-the-middle" attack in China, according to a watchdog group, following similar eavesdropping attempts against Apple and Yahoo last year.

The group, GreatFire.org, noticed the attack against Outlook on Saturday for users attempting to visit the service through mobile and desktop email clients.

Accessing the service, prompted users to see warning messages, stemming from the service failing to return a trusted digital certificate, according to GreatFire.org.

Man-in-the-middle attacks work by trying to eavesdrop on the user's communications. This is typically done when a hacker impersonates a service the user is hoping to visit in an attempt to intercept the victim's login and password information.

In the case of the Outlook attack, tests showed that access to the Microsoft email service had likely been tampered with, GreatFire.org reported.

On Tuesday, Microsoft confirmed that the disruption took place. "We are aware of a small number of customers impacted by malicious routing to a server impersonating Outlook.com," it said in an email. "If a customer sees a certificate warning, they should contact their service provider for assistance."

Last October, Apple faced a man-in-the-middle attack in China against its iCloud service, and weeks before Yahoo had faced a similar issue in the country.

GreatFire.org claims these attacks could be a sign that the Chinese government is trying to monitor the communications of its citizenry. The country is already notorious for its online censorship, which has resulted in the blocking of foreign Internet services in the country, including those from Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Last year, China also cut access to mobile apps including messaging service Line and photo-sharing product Instagram.

China, however, has repeatedly denies it carries out any hacking attacks. The disruption to Microsoft's Outlook.com only lasted a day, according to GreatFire.org.

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Google may invest in SpaceX for Internet through satellites

Google may invest about US$1 billion in SpaceX, a company that aims to use satellites to deliver low-cost Internet to underserved regions of the earth, according to reports.

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft. It bagged a $1.6 billion contract from NASA to fly cargo resupply missions, and eventually manned missions, to the International Space Station.

Its founder and CEO Elon Musk indicated in November in a Twitter message that his company is working on large formations of micro-satellites that will be used to provide Internet access. He had promised an announcement in two to three months.

The investment in SpaceX would value the company at over $10 billion, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter. Tech news blog The Information first reported on a proposed investment by Google in SpaceX, citing people familiar with the talks.

For Google the investment in SpaceX would be in line with its plans to extend Internet access to various parts of the world using technologies like balloons to provide Internet services. By moving with the wind, Google's Project Loon balloons, traveling at about 20 kilometers above the earth's surface in the stratosphere, can be arranged to form one large communications network, according to the company.

Google also acquired in April last year Titan Aerospace in New Mexico, a developer of solar-powered drones and other technologies. It now appears to be focusing on atmospheric satellites and other technology for providing Internet connections in remote areas or helping monitor environmental damage like oil spills and deforestation, according to its website.

The purpose of Google's deal with SpaceX is to support the development of satellites that could beam low-cost Internet around the globe, according to The Information.

Google could not be immediately reached for comment.

Musk has discussed using optical-laser technology in his satellites, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter. But lasers may not be a reliable way to deliver Internet service to Earth, as they don't easily pass through clouds, unlike radio waves. "The company isn't believed to control rights to radio spectrum," the Journal reported.

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Twitter to acquire Indian startup ZipDial in emerging markets play

Twitter is to acquire ZipDial Mobile Solutions, a Bangalore company that has developed a platform that allows content like promotions to be delivered to users through voice, SMS or an app notification when an user gives a missed call.

The technology takes its cue from the tendency for cost-conscious Indians to signal that they want to talk to someone by placing a call and hanging up before the phone is answered, with the expectation that the other person will then call them back.

The acquisition of the ZipDial platform and its various technologies to address consumers is likely to be useful for Twitter in emerging markets where data access is found to be expensive by consumers or is not easily available.

Users have to just give an advertiser a toll-free "missed call" to a designated phone number to receive content through any of the channels.

"These interactions are especially appealing in areas where people aren't always connected to data or only access data through intermittent wifi networks," Christian Oestlien, Twitter's vice president for product, wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

ZipDial CEO Valerie Wagoner said in a Twitter message that the ambition of the deal was to "Make @twitter even more accessible in emerging markets."

"Our ambitious goal is to make Twitter's unique, great content accessible to 100% of the world's mobile users, including those in emerging markets who will be experiencing the mobile Internet for the first time," she wrote in a blog post.

The proposed acquisition, which was rumored earlier, signals the coming of age for Indian technology startups. Facebook acquired last year Little Eye Labs, a developer in Bangalore of mobile app analysis tools for app developers and testers, and the entire team moved to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Facebook, in its bid to popularize the Internet and its platform in emerging markets, has previously partnered with ZipDial to launch a "missed call" feature for advertisements on the social network.

Twitter said it had collaborated with ZipDial over the past two years on a variety of campaigns in India, including elections and film promotions.

The founders and employees of ZipDial will join Twitter's Indian operations, and ZipDial's office in Bangalore will operate as an engineering center for Twitter.

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Uber woos European cities with the promise of 50,000 new jobs in 2015

Uber Technologies has promised 50,000 new jobs in Europe from its service in 2015 alone, in an overture to get more cities on the continent to approve its ride-hailing service.

"We want to make 2015 the year where we establish a new partnership with EU cities," Uber CEO and cofounder Travis Kalanick said at the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) conference in Munich on Sunday.

Kalanick said his company could take 400,000 cars off the road this year, and reduce congestion and emissions in Europe, by expanding its ride-sharing service, UberPool, and by efficient routing of cars.

Uber, which allows users to hail taxis from a smartphone app, has, however, fallen foul of local authorities in a number of locations. In Delhi, Uber's service was banned in December amid concerns about the company's safety measures after a driver allegedly raped a woman passenger.

In Spain, the company's operations in the country were banned at least temporarily in December by a Madrid commercial court for "unfair competition" and conducting unauthorized services. Last week, South Carolina ordered the company to halt operations until certain conditions are met.

Kalanick said he backed regulation that supports the "the policy principles" that drove previous rules, such as protecting rider and driver safety, promoting choice and competition, and growing tax revenue and economic growth.

Highlighting the role of Uber in creating jobs, Kalanick said that the company had 1.6 million unique riders in San Francisco, which has created the equivalent of 7,500 full-time jobs, while in New York city 1.9 million users provide 13,750 jobs.

Uber can go to any mayor in any city, and work out a regulatory framework that will help deliver jobs, and reduce congestion, Kalanick said.

However, certain cities are still governed by old transportation rules that are essentially governing an analog economy, Kalanick added. These were necessary in the old system where the only identifiers that could ensure a passenger's safety and that he wasn't overcharged were color schemes and meters on taxis.

However, there are also a set of rules that aim to protect the traditional taxi industry, sometimes by creating an artificial scarcity, Kalanick said.

With the new technology, it's no longer an anonymous person getting into an anonymous person's car, as there is a branded service like Uber in between, said Kalanick, who called for the freedom for consumers to connect with any form of transportation at different price points.

In 2014, 22 different jurisdictions in the U.S. passed new laws regulating ride-sharing, and this year the company plans to focus on pushing for progressive regulations in Europe, according to Uber. The company has growing operations in many countries in Europe like Sweden, Netherlands and Belgium, but is facing legal action from incumbents in Spain, France and Germany, Kalanick said. Competition authorities have, however, urged governments to repeal the outdated rules, he said. Progressive legislation is "being considered in the Netherlands, Brussels and Helsinki," he added.

Uber also said it was open to sharing data with city officials in Europe, in a deal similar with the one it struck with Boston, where the company is sharing dates and times of trips, areas of pick-up and drop-off points, distance traveled and length of rides. The company said when making the announcement about the deal in Boston that trip-level data will be "anonymized," compiled in a way that protects the privacy of riders and drivers, without providing further details.

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Report: Inside North Korea's network, NSA saw signs of Sony attack

The U.S. National Security Agency has had a secret foothold for years in North Korea's networks and saw signs of the Sony Pictures Entertainment attack but only in retrospect grasped its reach and depth, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The spy agency has worked for at least four years to infiltrate networks inside North Korea and those in China and Malaysia favored by the country's hackers, the newspaper reported, citing former U.S. and foreign officials and a newly disclosed NSA document published by Der Spiegel.

The revelation explains why the U.S. quickly blamed North Korea for the attacks despite widespread skepticism from the computer security community, which said only circumstantial evidence pointed to the country's involvement.

The hackers were "incredibly careful, and patient," the Times reported, citing a person who had been briefed on the investigation.

The Sony attack stole terabytes of sensitive documents, including a salary spreadsheet for 6,000 employees, internal emails, pre-release copies of films and vast amounts of personnel data. It also broke thousands of the organization's computers by using a destructive type of malicious software that wipes files.

A group calling itself the Guardians of Peace claimed responsibility for the attacks, releasing the data piecemeal on file-sharing sites and reaching out directly to journalists with links to the material.

It initially appeared the group wanted to blackmail Sony. Only later did the North Korean connection emerge in part due to Sony Pictures' plan to release "The Interview," a comedy centered on an absurd campaign by two Americans to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

After the U.S. blamed North Korea in mid-December, it was silent on what evidence led to the conclusion. On Jan. 2, President Barack Obama authorized sanctions against North Korea, adding to those in place for years against the secretive nation.

It's the second time the U.S. has directly blamed another country for cyberattacks. In the first legal action of its kind in May 2014, federal prosecutors charged five members of the Chinese Army with stealing trade secrets from U.S. organizations over eight years. China denied the accusations.

FBI Director James Comey offered more clues for the Sony attacks on Jan. 7, saying the hackers failed to to mask their IP addresses. That revealed some emails from the hackers to Sony employees came from Internet connections used by the North.

The NSA saw spear phishing emails sent to Sony in early September, but the attacks did not look unusual, the Times reported. Phishing emails typically try to get people to open malicious attachments that can install malware or reveal login credentials for attacks.

Only later did the NSA figure out that North Korea had stolen account credentials for a Sony administrator. Investigators now believe the Sony hackers spent more than two months inside Sony's network, mapping its systems, identifying critical files and planning to destroy computers, the Times reported.

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Opponent of Apple, Google settlement with workers wants larger cut in new deal

Michael Devine, who helped sink an earlier settlement between tech companies and workers in a lawsuit over an alleged conspiracy to prevent poaching of staff, has supported a new settlement proposed last week.

But Devine, a former Adobe Systems engineer, wants his payout from the new settlement to be doubled for his efforts in getting the proposed settlement amount increased.

In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division, Devine is asking for US$160,000 out of the $415 million proposed settlement in the class action suit, which if approved would give him twice the payout for the other four named plaintiffs.

District Judge Lucy H. Koh in August rejected the earlier proposed settlement of $324.5 million as too low, after Devine also objected to it. The tech workers had alleged that Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar put each other's employees off-limits to the other companies, in a bid to fix and suppress employee compensation and restrict employee mobility.

The companies had earlier settled similar charges in 2010 with the U.S. Department of Justice but admitted no wrongdoing. They agreed not to ban cold calling and enter into any agreements that prevent competition for employees. But the employees said that the government was unable to compensate the victims of the conspiracy, which was the reason they were filing a suit.

Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar previously settled with the workers for about $20 million.

"Devine believes the request is justified based on his service as a class representative and his work to oppose the original settlement and secure an additional $90.5 million for the Class," according to a filing Friday by his lawyer Daniel C. Girard.

Devine holds that in opposing the original settlement he has taken a higher risk that his participation in this litigation will adversely affect his job prospects, according to the filing.

The proposed settlement has to be approved by the court, and seeks to award "reasonable service award payments of $80,000" for each of the named plaintiffs for their services. Some 64,000 workers are represented in the class action suit. The lawyers could get about $85 million from the settlement.

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Scary Steam for Linux bug erases all the personal files on your PC

If you're a Steam fan running Linux, the last thing you'll want to do in the next few days is mess with your Steam files. Users on Valve's GitHub Steam for Linux page are complaining about a nasty bug that has the potential to wipe out every single personal file on your PC. Even worse, users say the bug will even wipe out documents on USB connected drives. So much for local backups.

The impact on you at home: The obvious implication if you're running Steam on Linux is to be wary of the program right now. As a precaution, don't connect any local external hard drives while you're running Steam. Users complaining of this bug appear to have moved their .steam or ~/.local/share/steam directories, or invoked Steam's Bash script with the —reset option enabled.

UPDATE: Valve gave us the following statement: "So far we have had a handful of users report this issue, after they manually moved their Steam install. We have not been able to reproduce the reported issue, but we are adding some additional checks to ensure this is not possible while we continue to investigate. If anyone else has experienced this or has more information, they should email linux@valvesoftware.com."

Steam's bug appears to be caused by a line in the Steam.sh Bash script: rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*. That command is a basic Bash instruction that tells the computer to remove the STEAMROOT directory and all its sub-directories (folders).

That's all well and good, but the issue is that if the STEAMROOT folder is not there then the computer interprets the command as rm -rf "/"*, as first reported by Bit-Tech. If you're not familiar with Bash, that command tells the system to delete everything on your hard drive starting from the root directory.

The saving grace for Linux users is that you can only erase files you have write permissions over. That means the system itself can't be erased, but pretty much all of a user's files—including photos and personal documents—would be at risk. 

Ironically, the instruction at issue is preceded by a comment from the developer: # Scary!.

Indeed.

Editor's note: This article originally published on 1/16/15, but was updated on 1/17/15 to include Valve's statement.

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