Epic Fail of BlackBerry (video); NSA Fallout

Epic Fail: The Business Edition - Video - NYTimes.com: "Epic Fail: The Business Edition BY CHANNON HODGE November 4th, 2013 BlackBerry is just the latest example where a promising company falls in love with its own product while missing the signs that consumers are destined to move on."

Windows Phone, BlackBerry market share Q3 2013: Windows Phone surges | BGR: "For every winner there’s usually a loser and the biggest smartphone shipment loser over the last year has undoubtably been BlackBerry, which saw its shipments crash from 7.7 million in Q3 2012 to 4.5 million in Q3 2013 for a year-over-year decline of 41.6%. What makes these results particularly bad for BlackBerry, IDC says, is that the company is having a tough time selling BlackBerry 10 devices everywhere and that most of its shipments to emerging markets are still older BlackBerry 7 devices."

Internet architects propose encrypting all the world’s Web traffic | Ars Technica: "...A vastly larger percentage of the world's Web traffic will be encrypted under a near-final recommendation to revise the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that serves as the foundation for all communications between websites and end users. The proposal, announced in a letter published Wednesday by an official with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), comes after documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden heightened concerns about government surveillance of Internet communications.... "

NSA Fallout: Tech Firms Feel a Chill - WSJ.com: "...Cisco executives were the most explicit so far in suggesting that Chinese customers, particularly those with government ties, may be cutting purchases of U.S. tech gear in response to U.S. restrictions on Chinese companies and revelations about surveillance by the National Security Agency...."

Google Employees Speak Out About Government Spying - NYTimes ...
By By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
The Google lawyer who oversees national security requests testified before Congress Wednesday, while in an unofficial capacity, Google security engineers lambasted the government for surveillance.
NYT Bits

David Miranda Is Nobody's Errand Boy: "...“It’s just that it’s a post-9/11 era,” Greenwald says gently. “I’ve just seen all these judges who are so subservient, who will get down on their knees in deference every time the state utters the words ‘terrorism’ or ‘national security.’” He adds, to get back in Miranda’s good favor, “They’re trying to make an act of journalism into terrorism.”..."

Microsoft's new Cybercrime Center combines tactics against hacking ...

NBCNews.com
Microsoft Corp's expanded Digital Crimes Unit inside the 16,800-square foot, high-security facility combines a wide array of tactics that have worked the best: ...

ZDNet

Amazon Introduces Personalized Kindle Accessories

Wall Street Journal
(NASDAQ:AMZN)--Amazon.com today announced an all-new service that allows customers to personalize Kindle covers and skins--all for the same price as a ...

Headlines & Global News

Google defeats authors in US book-scanning lawsuit

Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Google Inc on Thursday won dismissal of a long-running lawsuit by authors who accused the Internet search company of digitally ...

Slate Magazine (blog)

Google report says company rebuffing higher ratio of legal demands ...

Washington Post
Several other companies, including Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Yahoo Inc., have since followed Google's practice of disclosing government ...

Washington Post

Apple's Schiller: iPhone was a 'bet-the-company' product

CNET
Apple's Phil Schiller talking about the iPhone 5S' M7 coprocessor during an ... Apple's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, on Thursday told a court here that the ...

Times of India

Google Chrome pwned in final Mobile Pwn2Own hack

ZDNet
Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Opera, etc. have spent years making their products as secure as possible and yet they're routinely penetrated by independent 3rd ...

IT PRO

Amazon builds shoddy 'House'

Boston Herald
'ALPHA' MALES: Amazon elected Mark Consuelos, John Goodman, Clark Johnson and Matt Malloy, from left, to star in 'Alpha House.' ...

Boston Herald

Apple rolls out iOS 7.0.4, includes new features, bug fixes

ZDNet
Secondly, in Spotlight, the device's internal search engine, Apple has brought back the ability to search Google and Wikipedia from the results. The two services ...

ZDNet

Destruction of Brazil's Amazon jumps 28%

USA TODAY
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil's government reported Thursday that annual destruction of its Amazon rainforest jumped by 28 percent after four straight years of ...

Slate Magazine (blog)

Google Now Update Improves Voice Commands

InformationWeek (blog)
Google made a new version of its Google Search application available to Android devices recently. The updated software adds a handful of new cards to the ...

ExtremeTech

Google's Street View maps the watery roadways of Venice - Engadget

Matt Brian
Google's Street View has taken us all the way up (to the Burj Khalifa) and all the way down (to the Great Barrier Reef), so where else is there to go but.
Engadget RSS Feed

Intelligence Lawyer Robert Litt Claims Searching For Possible Privacy Violations ...
Techdirt
The ODNI's head counsel, Robert Litt, had made statements over the past few months that seem to hint that he's actually some sort of android, rather than a living, breathing human being. Maybe this is what happens to anyone who spends too long on the ...

The world has lost almost six Californias worth of forest since 2000
Quartz
Take a look: This is deforestation's footprint from 2000 to 2012, according to a new study of 650,000 high-resolution satellite images. ​. The world lost the trees on some 2.3 million square kilometers (0.9 million square miles) of land, while trees grew back or ...

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