Mark Zuckerberg and Marissa Mayer field questions about Prism

The CEOs of Yahoo and Facebook were each on the hot seat Wednesday answering questions about the U.S. government’s data surveillance programs.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, in an on-stage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, said she couldn’t say more about the programs than Yahoo already has because doing so could be “treason.”

“We can’t talk about these things because they’re classified,” she said.

Martyn WilliamsMelissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO

Pressed by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington about what would happen if she revealed details about the government’s data requests, Mayer said she could go to prison.

“It makes sense for us to work within the system,” she said. For Yahoo, Mayer said, that means examining each request it receives and pushing back if it seems unreasonable.

In a separate interview, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was more outspoken. The U.S. government “blew it” by not communicating better about its surveillance efforts and made it harder for U.S. Internet firms to do business overseas, he said.

“It’s our government’s job to protect all of us, and also to protect our freedom and the economy, and I think they did a bad job of balancing those things,” Zuckerberg said.

“I think the government blew it,” he said.

The U.S. government, when asked about the surveillance programs, has said it was not spying on American citizens, Zuckerberg noted. That wasn’t helpful to Internet companies that do business overseas, he said.

“I think that was really bad.”

Both executives highlighted their efforts to push for greater transparency, and both said their goal is to protect their users. Both companies, along with Google and Microsoft, have filed lawsuits to force the government to let them disclose how many national security-related data requests they receive.

Those efforts have so far been unsuccessful. Earlier this week, the companies asked again for permission to provide more information about the data requests.

The latest round of leaks revealing U.S. government surveillance programs, including a data collection program known as Prism, were published in June by the Guardian and The Washington Post.

Since then, tech firms have come under scrutiny for the extent of their involvement with the government programs, and to what extent they have cooperated. They have all said they have cooperated only to the extent they are required to legally.

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Mama Mia, Mama Mia! A Canadian Bohemian Rhapsodizes About String Theory

Let me confess right off that I didn't understand anything Tim Blais sings in this video, except that it's hard — very hard — erase-the-blackboard-constantly-in-frustration hard — to find a mathematical theory that explains everything in the universe. That's OK. I'm not a physicist, so this isn't my problem. But when Tim produces an Albert Einstein sock puppet having a high-tenor tantrum, I found myself doing a little happy dance.

With no apologies to Queen, this is Tim's "A Capella Science" take on String Theory set to Bohemian Rhapsody. He calls it "Bohemian Gravity." He's 23. He wrote this. He sang this. He designed this. He's amazing.

A year ago Tim's college paper, The McGill Daily, sat him down and asked "who are you?" He says he grew up not too far from Montreal, that he's been a science nerd all his life, or for as much of it as he can remember. When he was about 3 or 4, he says ...

a kid in my preschool introduced me to "Bill Nye The Science Guy," which became the only TV I watched for about six years. After kindergarten I didn't go to school until Grade 10, but was homeschooled by my parents. We had a very multifaceted way of learning [...] that I think allowed me to see the big picture of things without getting bogged down in the horrible little details that are often the stumbling block when you start learning something. That gave me a fascination with science that's essentially carried me through a science DEC and one-and-a-half university degrees. But my parents have always been super cool about not pressuring us kids to be anything in particular, and now to show for it they've got an emerging rock star — my brother, Tom; a dedicated speech pathologist — my sister, Mary-Jane; and me, researcher in incomprehensible physics and recently popular internet fool. I think they did alright.

Me too. And if you liked this video, you should know he's got a few others. Last year, his A Capella Science version of the Higgs boson, sung to Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" was a monster success. The McGill paper asked him if he considered himself a singer or a scientist and he answered, "I don't really know what I am. I'm a person with varied interests." I think that's kind of obvious.

Thanks to Jacquie Lowell for sending this video my way.

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Fragging wonderful: The truth about defragging your SSD

With smarter file systems and faster disks and PCs, file fragmentation isn’t the performance suck it once was. Older computers had a habit of splitting files and spreading the parts all over your hard drives, but modern ones don’t do this as much. Not even close. That said, a bimonthly pass with a capable defragger can help you maintain peak performance on a heavily used hard drive.

However, solid-state drives, which use flash memory instead of a hard-drive platter to store data, are another story: My tests showed little or no benefit from running a number of disk defragmenters on a heavily used SSD.

"I found no hard evidence about SSD defragging anywhere I looked, so I decided to gather my own."

Conventional logic dictates that you should never defrag an SSD, because the SSD controller writes data in a scattershot-fashion to multiple NAND chips and locations, using algorithms that only the controller understands. The operating system sees it as a hard drive with sectors, but the data is spread all over the drive by the controller. Defragging these “sectors” is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded: You can feel parts of the pattern, but you can’t see the whole picture. In addition, NAND is good for only a few thousand write cycles, so defragging can reduce the SSD’s lifespan by unnecessarily writing data to it.

Despite those arguments, at least four defragging utilities purport to increase SSD performance through optimization: Auslogic’s Disk Defrag Pro, Condusiv’s Diskeeper, Raxco’s PerfectDisk, and SlimCleaner Intelligent Defrag. To understand how these might be of benefit, let’s review a few facts.

Used NAND cells (the parts of flash memory that holds the data) must be erased before they can be written to.

Early SSDs put off erasures, simply marking cells as no longer used when you deleted a file. When fresh cells ran out, having to erase the marked/used cells before rewriting to them slowed performance.

The advent of the TRIM command, which invokes a drive’s built-in garbage collection routines (including erasing unused, previously written cells), solved the problem.

Windows 7 and Windows 8 support the TRIM command.

If you read the documentation used to support most SSD optimization claims, you’ll notice that much of it predates Windows 7 and the TRIM command. Before that, free-space optimization could force an SSD into garbage collection and thereby regain lost performance. But on a modern SSD running with a modern operating system, many of these optimizations are no longer needed.

Yes, you can defrag an SSD...with the right utility. It just may not be worth your while.

The issue: When I investigated, no SSD vendor would state unequivocally that the defragging programs would or wouldn’t benefit a modern SSD running on a modern TRIM-supporting operating system. I could find no hard evidence anywhere I looked, so I decided to gather my own.

To that end, I grabbed a fast 128GB, SATA 6-gigabits-per-second OCZ Vertex 4 SSD, ran CrystalDiskMark on it in its virgin state, and then used PassMark’s Fragger and Joseph Cox’s program (also called Fragger) to seriously fragment the drive. I again ran CrystalDiskMark, and saw a 10 percent drop in sequential read speed. That’s a significant performance hit (although in real life you’re not likely to notice the difference).

I then gave each program its chance to optimize the drive, using its own default settings. Between each test, I performed a secure erase on the SSD (which should erase all used cells) and then restored an image of the fragmentation.

The problem here is that there’s no way to say whether the data in the image was actually distributed to the same cells. However, the level of reduced performance remained the same and, after a secure erase, increased back to nearly mint-condition level. I also tested the programs with the hardware they were meant to be used on: a standard hard drive.

To find out how the defraggers performed, see the results on the next page.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Verizon Wireless buyout drive is all about the money

IDG News Service - The price Verizon might pay to buy out its mobile subsidiary, reportedly $100 billion or more, is the most important thing that mobile users need to know about the potential deal.

Vodafone Group, which owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless, confirmed on Thursday that it is in talks with Verizon Communications to sell its minority stake to the U.S. parent company. Vodafone cautioned that there's no guarantee they'll be able to make a deal, but the companies have talked about it before and may be more motivated than ever. Verizon declined to comment.

If Verizon does take the leap, it's likely to be the biggest telecommunications deal in U.S. history. But consumers shouldn't look for big changes in mobile phones or services from Verizon after its wireless partner is sent packing, industry analysts said. If anything, they might just take it as one more sign that they're well-loved.

"It just shows you how attractive this market is," said analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. The Verizon Wireless deal would come on top of several other transactions in the billions just over the past year: Japan's SoftBank bought control of Sprint for $21.6 billion, T-Mobile paid $1.5 billion plus stock for MetroPCS, and AT&T agreed to buy Leap Wireless at a total cost of nearly $1.2 billion.

"Everybody, from the big to the small, is betting on this market," Entner said.

That's because U.S. consumers are buying into mobile technology and services in a big way and looking to combine the wireless experience with wireline TV and broadband, he said.

"Americans are seeing the value of it," Entner said. "We are leading the wireless broadband, and smartphone, and integrated communications world."

Verizon just wants to put more money behind a good investment, Entner said. The deal might be coming together now partly because interest rates are expected to rise, increasing Verizon's potential cost of borrowing to finance the buyout.

Taking full control of Verizon Wireless would also simplify the company's management, eliminating the separate board of directors overseeing the mobile subsidiary and some redundant administrative functions. Bringing its wired and wireless businesses fully into one company might make it a bit easier for Verizon to offer combined services, he added.

"For the subscribers, I don't think much will change," Entner said. A wholly owned Verizon mobile business wouldn't be significantly more competitive, either. Nor would Verizon's debt load, reportedly $50 million or more, weaken the company. In time, the buyout would pay for itself, Entner said.

"At roughly $2,000 per subscriber, it's not even outlandishly expensive," he said. Cingular paid more per subscriber to acquire AT&T Wireless in 2004, according to Entner.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Verizon Wireless buyout drive is all about the dollar signs

The price Verizon might pay to buy out its mobile subsidiary, reportedly $100 billion or more, is the most important thing that mobile users need to know about the potential deal.

Vodafone Group, which owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless, confirmed on Thursday that it is in talks with Verizon Communications to sell its minority stake to the U.S. parent company. Vodafone cautioned that there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to make a deal, but the companies have talked about it before and may be more motivated than ever. Verizon declined to comment.

If Verizon does take the leap, it’s likely to be the biggest telecommunications deal in U.S. history. But consumers shouldn’t look for big changes in mobile phones or services from Verizon after its wireless partner is sent packing, industry analysts said. If anything, they might just take it as one more sign that they’re well-loved.

“It just shows you how attractive this market is,” said analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. The Verizon Wireless deal would come on top of several other transactions in the billions just over the past year: Japan’s SoftBank bought control of Sprint for $21.6 billion, T-Mobile paid $1.5 billion plus stock for MetroPCS, and AT&T agreed to buy Leap Wireless at a total cost of nearly $1.2 billion.

“Everybody, from the big to the small, is betting on this market,” Entner said.

That’s because U.S. consumers are buying into mobile technology and services in a big way and looking to combine the wireless experience with wireline TV and broadband, he said.

“Americans are seeing the value of it,” Entner said. “We are leading the wireless broadband, and smartphone, and integrated communications world.”

Verizon just wants to put more money behind a good investment, Entner said. The deal might be coming together now partly because interest rates are expected to rise, increasing Verizon’s potential cost of borrowing to finance the buyout.

Taking full control of Verizon Wireless would also simplify the company’s management, eliminating the separate board of directors overseeing the mobile subsidiary and some redundant administrative functions. Bringing its wired and wireless businesses fully into one company might make it a bit easier for Verizon to offer combined services, he added.

“For the subscribers, I don’t think much will change,” Entner said. A wholly owned Verizon mobile business wouldn’t be significantly more competitive, either. Nor would Verizon’s debt load, reportedly $50 million or more, weaken the company. In time, the buyout would pay for itself, Entner said.

“At roughly $2,000 per subscriber, it’s not even outlandishly expensive,” he said. Cingular paid more per subscriber to acquire AT&T Wireless in 2004, according to Entner.

“For U.S. consumers, there won’t be any noticeable difference,” said Chetan Sharma, founder and president of Chetan Sharma Consulting.

Where a Verizon-Vodafone deal could have repercussions is in Europe, because Vodafone might use the proceeds to acquire weaker mobile operators there, Sharma said.

For Vodafone, a U.K.-based company that’s involved in mobile businesses on six continents, Verizon’s interest in buying now may be a lifeline.

“Vodafone’s core markets are in trouble as net revenue is declining,” Sharma wrote in an email interview. “It needs cash to shore up the assets in Western Europe.”

The company is also starting to focus on combined wired and wireless plays, such as its planned $10 billion acquisition of Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s biggest cable operator. The company aims to combine fixed broadband, mobile and TV on one bill, Enter said.

“What is finally motivating Vodafone is the implementation of their European integrated carrier strategy,” he said.

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FAQs about hacks: Everything you need to know about the Syrian Electronic Army

In the past 24 hours, the New York Times went down and Twitter images went wonky, while the Huffington Post dodged a digital bullet. All the chaos comes courtesy of the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker group in love with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad—and this isn't the first time the cyber boogeymen have lashed out at Western targets.

But what's all the hubbub about? Should you be worried about the Syrian Electronic Army? Is there a chance you and I could get caught in the crossfire, the way Lulzsec leaked so many passwords a few summers back? Read on to learn everything you need to know about the Syrian Electronic Army.

Nobody knows for sure, but all indications suggest that is a group of pro-al-Assad hackers, rather than an official government group.

Syrian Electronic ArmyThe SEA seized control of the DNS records for Twitter's image servers Tuesday. (Click to enlarge.)

The Syrian Electronic Army has been responsible for numerous high-profile hack attacks, including the hijacking of the Twitter accounts across the media spectrum—from venerable outlets like NPR, CBS, and the Associated Press all the way to BBC Weather, The Onion, and E! Online. Yesterday, the group claimed responsibility for the DNS-based troubles fouling the New York Times, Twitter, and the Huffington Post UK.

Unlike Lulzsec, which sowed havoc across the Web for nothing more than giggles (and eventual betrayal and jail time), the Syrian Electronic Army operates with more ideological goals. The hacker collective targets media entities with large followings, then uses the hijacked Twitter accounts and Websites to spread a pro-al-Assad message.

"There are many targets that were vulnerable that we felt were fair to Syria and had balanced coverage, we did not strike them," a Syrian Electronic Army representative told the Verge in May.

Yesterday's DNS attacks occurred as rumors of a U.S. strike in Syria abound, after the American government said there was "no doubt" that al-Assad deployed chemical weapons to kill hundreds of Syrians.

Not quite.

Tweets from the SEA-hijacked E! Online account weren't exactly highbrow. (Click to enlarge.)

Sure, the group's hijackings didn't take much skill beyond adept social engineering, and yes, a lot of the Syrian Electronic Army's shouting has been of the juvenile and meme-filled variety.

"The Syrian Electronic Army actually makes a lot more sense if you think of them as pranksters who also happen to love Assad than as state-aligned hackers in pursuit of concrete goals," the Washington Post recently wrote.

But don't mistake the group's silliness for stupidity!

Melbourne IT, the registrar that was attacked in order to fell the Times and other yesterday, has a reputation for strong security chops, according to CloudFlare. Indeed, after a group of HP researchers studied the Syrian Electronic Army for a number of months, they noted that the SEA is considered "one of the top 10 most skilled hacking teams in the world."

Yes and no.

Thus far, the Syrian Electronic Army has largely been targeting the digital equivalent of microphones, rather than the masses: It's trying to spread the pro-al-Assad word via hijacked media accounts. Yesterday's attack didn't affect user accounts or data in any way, as far as experts can tell.

But that doesn't mean the group intends to stay mostly harmless. In the midst of Tuesday's attacks, experts from Google, OpenDNS, and Cloudflare found that the Syrian Electronic Army site that replaced the New York Times homepage appeared to be infested with malware.

You shouldn't have anything to worry about if you take some basic online security precautions—the kind of stuff you should already be doing, anyway. Install an antivirus program and keep it up to date to protect against potential malware infections.

Likewise, you can keep your online accounts buttoned up by activating two-factor authentication wherever possible—Twitter offers both SMS- and app-based two-factor authentication, for example—and, more importantly, by never reusing passwords across multiple sites. It's not as hard as it sounds! Password managers can take a lot of the hassle out of, well, password management, and PCWorld has a guide to building better passwords without losing your mind.

Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify, digging through desktop PCs and covering everything from BYOD tablets to DIY tesla coils.
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Twitter acquires Trendrr to get a better handle on tweets about TV

Twitter has acquired Trendrr, a data analysis company, to better leverage users’ tweets about television to draw in more advertisers.

Trendrr analyzes data from social media sites such as Twitter to help businesses grow their brands. The company’s products help networks, television studios, brands and media agencies use the insights it gathers to grow, Trendrr explains on its website. Some of the company’s clients include ABC, MTV, Telemundo and Univision.

Twitter confirmed the acquisition in a tweet, saying that Trendrr would help the social network “build great tools for the rest of the TV ecosystem.” However, the company could not be immediately reached to comment further on the deal. Terms were not disclosed.

Television is becoming increasingly important to Twitter, and information that the service gathers around users’ TV activity could help to drive future advertising deals.

The company recently announced the national availability of its television ad-targeting program to let TV marketers push out branded content to people on Twitter if those users are tweeting about certain shows.

A study previously released by the market-research company Nielsen suggested that such a program could give the social network a revenue boost. The study’s findings showed that broadcast TV tune-in rates led to increased activity on Twitter, and vice versa.

Twitter’s real-time data about users’ activity on the site was what made the social network uniquely compelling to Trendrr, CEO Mark Ghuneim said on the company’s blog.

“We think we can help amplify even stronger the power of that connection to the moment inside of Twitter,” he said.

Curatorr, the company’s chief Twitter product, “will work with media companies, marketers, and display ecosystem partners to create compelling user experiences,” Ghuneim explained.

Twitter, therefore, could use Trendrr’s technology both to develop new products to encourage users to tweet around TV and other brands, and also drive more advertising arrangements based on data gathered by Trendrr.

Trendrr said it will honor its existing contracts for its Trendrr.TV service, but that it would not establish new ones going forward.

Twitter faces mounting pressure to further monetize its site as it competes with rivals such as Facebook, with a possible IPO also looming. The company’s current suite of advertising products includes promoted tweets, which lets marketers place promotional tweets into certain users’ feeds.

Twitter claims to have roughly 200 million active users.

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Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time (for iPad)

Pros Same general, addictive game play. Strong art, music.

Cons A plethora of features results in some interface bloat. Paid extras mostly uninteresting, but almost a requirement for advancement. Currently available only for iOS devices. Bottom Line Propelling the eternal battle between flora and the undead into the past, Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time builds on its predecessor—but not in ways all casual gamers will appreciate.

By Matthew Murray

That pleasant aroma wafting through the summer air is not, as you may expect, vegetables. That would unquestionably be appropriate for a game like Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, which returns us after four years to the universe of that wacky garden patch that's the only thing standing between humanity and undead annihilation. But no, the smell that surrounds PopCap's sequel to its 2009 smash hit is something more like candy—Candy Crush Saga, that is. Plants vs. Zombies 2 has adopted that ultra-popular game's "free-to-play" aesthetic wholeheartedly, and turned in commensurate results. If you loved the first Plants vs. Zombies, more than enough is right with this one to all but guarantee you'll respond to it, too. But the pleas for money and a few other small adjustments dilute an almost perfect casual gaming experience into one that's just a little overripe.

Back to Basics
The basics of Plants vs. Zombies 2 are identical to those of the previous game. Zombies are shambling from the right side of the playing field to the left, and it's up to you to stop them by any vegetal means necessary. Sunflowers (which emit the sun you use to acquire plants) are essentially required, but everything else is optional: You can choose from Peashooters to cover long distances in a straight line; Cabbage-pults, which can launch big heads of ammo over many squares; Wall-nuts, which provide armored protection; and many more. The zombies may appear plain, arrive armored (with buckets on their heads, or maybe carrying shields and other objects), set fires, or cause other kinds of mischief, but once you've stopped them, you've won—and can move on to the next level.

It's worth noting that, unlike the original Plants vs. Zombies, which was available on a wide array of devices, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is an iOS-only exclusive. I played it on a Retina display–equipped Apple iPad, but if you prefer gaming on a PC or Android device, you're out of luck for now.

Derivative Dangers
Though the art and music remain delightful accompaniments, and have received only gentle tweaks, in some ways Plants vs. Zombies 2 diverges greatly from its predecessor. First, as the title suggests,  time travel is involved: Your oddly minded ally from the first game, Crazy Dave, accidentally teleports you back centuries (on the search for a masterful taco—don't ask) so you can battle in Ancient Egypt, the Pirate Seas, and the Wild West, with a futuristic setting also apparently in the works. This means you get the expected differences in visuals (for example, the lawnmowers, which provide a last-ditch line of defense once the zombies are about to overtake you, appear as little motorized pyramids in the Egypt levels), but not so much in game play: Fighting in King Tut's backyard isn't that much different than fighting in your own. Inherited from Angry Birds and other similar games are "stars," which you receive for completion of a level within certain requirements (spend only a certain amount of sun, don't lose more than two plants, and so forth), and more significantly a map that lets you easily move between levels and see how many stars you still need to acquire, and so on.

If these changes don't affect the game much by themselves, together they give Plants vs. Zombies 2 a strong derivative feel. Whereas the original really was original, so altering the tower defense formula that it was all but unrecognizable, this one feels like most other games on the market, absent the freshness and individuality that so distinguished the first incarnation. Adding new plants is one thing—there are a number of fun ones, but I particularly loved the bonk choy, which can reach across two squares to continuously pound a brain-muncher—but watching my flora fight the zombies across the desert sands seemed unduly silly; and though there's something strangely endearing about zombies sporting traffic cones for head protection or inflatable ducks for flotation, I never warmed quite the same way to the sight of one lumbering around while stuffed in a sarcophagus.

All the other new game-play elements also make things feel busier than they should.  I didn't want to accidentally tap the counter of coins (distributed at the end of level, and used for buying power ups) when trying to plant a Potato Mine, or activate swiping gestures (available for only 800-1,200 coins each!) while trying to collect another couple of doses of sun. I just wanted to play the game, and the added filigree made that difficult at times.

Candy Crush Commerce
As for the paid upgrades, getting all the new plants will currently only run you about $20—the price of the original game. For another $14 you can get all the upgrade bonuses (more sun when shoveling, more starting son, more Plant Food or seed slots).  Or you can save some money through buying bundles, which combine certain plants and certain bonuses; all three of these will run you $22.  Want to accelerate access to Pirate Seas before you've unlocked enough stars?  Just $4.99 will get you there.  You can also buy bags of coins (from $2.99 for 5,000 coins to $99.99 for 450,000) that you can then trade in for more Plant Foods or gesture usages.  But PopCap doesn't stop there:  It also forces you to view frequent ads for your various possible purchases, in case you've forgotten or you really want to get 30 percent off your Jalapeno (one of the most useful plants, and a paid holdover from the first Plants vs. Zombies). This points up one of the biggest and most annoying problems with Plants vs. Zombies 2: It eventually gets too difficult to reasonably play (or play at all) without the use of the paid upgrades.

That's the Candy Crush Saga business model, after all, and if Plants vs. Zombies 2 doesn't get quite as shameless quite as quickly in begging for your cash, it won't stay completely free for most people for long. That's not necessarily a bad thing: Quality is definitely worth paying for, as the original Plants vs. Zombies proved. And if you're in the mood for more of the same, you'll unquestionably get that here, if in a more piecemeal package.  But rather than just build and expand lightly on what worked before, PopCap has played with the formula so much that sometimes you have to strain to see the charms that are still buried within.

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Facebook got 25,000 government requests about users in the first half of 2013

Facebook received more than 25,000 requests from governments about its users during the first half of 2013, with nearly half of those requests coming from U.S. law enforcement and related agencies, the company said.

U.S. agencies made 11,000 to 12,000 requests for Facebook user information during the first six months of the year, with the rest of the world’s governments making about 14,600 requests, Facebook said in its first global government requests report, released Tuesday.

Other countries with high numbers of requests: India with 3,245, the U.K. with 1,975, Germany with 1,886, and Italy with 1,705.

The “vast majority” of the requests related to criminal cases, Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, wrote in the report. In many cases, the requests seek basic subscriber information, such as name and length of membership, while in other cases, law enforcement officials seek IP addresses or account content, he wrote.

Facebook doesn’t honor every request. In the U.S., Facebook provided some information in response to 79 percent of the requests, while in the U.K., it provided some information in 68 percent. The percentage was much lower for several countries. For example, Facebook provided information in response to just 27 percent of Argentina’s 152 requests and 39 percent of France’s 1,547 requests.

“We have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests,” Stretch wrote. “We believe this process protects the data of the people who use our service, and requires governments to meet a very high legal bar with each individual request in order to receive any information about any of our users. We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests.”

Google and some other tech companies have released similar reports about government requests. Google began releasing a government data transparency report in 2009; in the second half of 2012, Google received more than 21,000 requests about its users.

Privacy International, a U.K.-based privacy group, applauded Facebook for releasing the numbers, but said recent leaks about data collection at the U.S. National Security Agency show that these kinds of transparency reports have limited use.

“We are left with a disturbingly hollow feeling regarding Facebook’s gesture, and it has little to do with Facebook itself,” the group said in a blog post. “Since [the NSA documents] have been published and analysed, the veil has been lifted on what information governments actually collect about us.”

The Facebook report only details lawful data requests, the group said. “We are now aware of a terrifying reality—that governments don’t necessarily need intermediaries like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft to get our data,” it added. “They can intercept it over undersea cables, through secret court orders, and through intelligence sharing.”

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service.
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AdBlock launches crowdfunding campaign to create ads about blocking ads

Prepare to have your mind blown: This weekend, the creator of the popular AdBlock software—which kills the ads you'd normally see while trawling the Web—launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for ads encouraging people to use AdBlock and block Internet ads.

Whoa.

As brain-bending as the concept sounds, AdBlock isn't dreaming small. The $25,000 minimum fundraising goal will oh-so-ironically go towards the creation of banner ads to spam the AdBlock ethos, and AdBlock founder Michael Gundlach promises to spread the word via a Times Square billboard if the donations hit $50,000, or a full-page ad in the New York Times if the campaign raises $150,000.

AdBlockAdBlock's contribution rewards. (Click to enlarge.)

If the crowdfunding really takes off, AdBlock has the white whale of advertising in its sights: At $4.2 million in donations (ha!), Gundlach says he'll buy an AdBlock TV commercial during the 2014 Super Bowl.

AdBlock recently started bugging users of its extension with ads about its campaign to create ads about blocking ads, in yet another bout of delicious hyprocrisy that you can see in the screenshot to the right. Here's what the campaign page says about fighting fire with fire:

We're going to use ads to get rid of ads. We will use the money raised to make AdBlock banner ads and video commercials, and we will show these across the internet to people who don't have AdBlock. If we raise enough, we will implement our craziest advertising ideas and capture the whole world's imagination.

With ads about blocking ads. Welcome to the Matrix!

While ad-blocking technology is indeed highly handy-dandy and borders on necessity on some of the most annoying pages on the Web, it's not without its share of critics. A large swathe of the Web—PCWorld.com and TechHive.com included—relies on advertising to monetize content provided free of charge to readers, and ad-killing software such as AdBlock deprive websites of that revenue. Penny Arcade's Ben Kuchera recently wrote a superb article detailing just how harmful ad-blocking software is to websites.

Simply put, without ads, many Websites couldn't exist. Creating quality content costs money, and a truly ad-free web would be a mostly empty web.

Is there a middle ground? AdBlock rival AdBlock Plus whitelists ads that don't scream at you or autoplay or steal your browser's focus, which seems like a reasonable compromise. Some people manually whitelist the majority of the Web, blocking only sites that betray their trust with obnoxious selling attempts.

Attempts to offer ad-free content behind a paywall, meanwhile, have seen hit-and-miss success. While Netizens hate ads, few seem willing to pay to remove them.

But in a bout of irony so hard that it hurts, people are tripping over themselves to fund ads about blocking ads. AdBlock has managed to raise more than $22,000 of its $25,000 minimum goal in just a couple of days, with 28 days of fundraising left. One thing's for certain: It's going to be interesting to see where AdBlock's ad campaign goes, and what—if anything—it accomplishes.

Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify, digging through desktop PCs and covering everything from BYOD tablets to DIY tesla coils.
More by Brad Chacos

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What we know about Sony's Playstation 4 rollout

If you’ve been anxiously awaiting news of Sony’s PlayStation 4, this is shaping up to be a good week for you.

We’ve known about the $400 price tag for the PS4 since June’s E3 gaming expo. (And that’s after Sony first announced the next-generation gaming console back in February.) On Tuesday at the Gamescom event in Germany, Sony had even more to say: namely, it announced that the PS4 will hit North America on November 15 in the U.S. and Canada and November 29 in all other territories.

In this video report, we’ll look back at Sony’s Tuesday press conference. We also know the 32 territories that will be getting the PS 4 on November 29. They include Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Peru, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Japan is missing from that list, an odd omission considering it’s Sony’s home territory. It’s no surprise when Microsoft delays the Xbox One’s launch in Japan, but no mention of PS4 plans for Japan is certainly unexpected. Perhaps, Sony is saving that news until the Tokyo Game Show in September.

Our video looks at other announcements from Sony’s press event at Gamescom including a whole slew of new games, Twitch.tv support for the PS4 that supplements the previously announced partnership with Ustream, a first look at the console’s user interface, and trailers for big-budget fare such as Watch_Dogs, Assassin’s Creed IV, Gran Turismo 6, Infamous: Second Son, and Killzone: Shadow Fall. We also talk about how Sony’s November 19 date may affect plans to launch the Xbox One, which arrives November 13 with a $500 price tag.

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Shut up about Android fragmentation already

A big one, with lots of fancy interactive charts and figures.

47.5 percent of the 682,000 Android phones surveyed were made by Samsung.

By OpenSignal’s count, eight versions of Android are still in use.

The headlines started pouring out about how Android is doomed because it’s too fragmented.

It’s what usually happens when you mention “Android” and “iOS” in the same sentence on the Internet.

There are hundreds of kinds of Android phones, each with its own set of pros and cons.

With Android you can choose a phone with a removable battery or a MicroSD card slot, if you want that feature, and you aren’t limited to a single screen size. With iOS your choices consist of two screen size options and two noncolor options. Talk about boring.

Fragmentation is sometimes the first word you hear when a tech enthusiast describes Android, and the term has come to have a negative connotation—even though it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The experience doesn’t change much from one modern version of Android to another, and the best-selling phones all have some sort of skin running on top of the OS that makes it even harder to tell what version you’re running, short of digging through the settings.

Although Ramon Llamas says consumers shouldn’t be worried about it, app developers take fragmentation very seriously.

Smaller developers tend to avoid Android and create for iOS first because they don’t have the resources to deal with the many varieties of Android devices.

Remember, it took Vine 6 months to make it to Android. And Twitter owns Vine! Imagine how long the process takes developers that aren’t bankrolled by a multi-million-dollar corporation.

"[Supporting] multiple versions of Android does introduce additional engineering time/effort. [But] for the most part, we have not faced any problems that we were not able to overcome within a reasonable amount of time/effort."

—Adam Stroud

RunKeeper is one of the most popular fitness apps on both Android and iOS. Its dev team isn’t ginormous, and it isn’t the only developer that sees Android fragmentation as not that big a deal.

Wikipedia

Your smartphone is essentially a small computer. It’s going to feel slow as time goes on because newer apps require more resources.

Just as with PCs, if you want to keep playing the latest games, you’re going to need to upgrade your phone every now and then.

Besides bringing fancy new features, Android updates include security patches that help keep your phone safe from malware.

"Some versions of Android used on specialist or niche phones rarely get updates—if even at all—regardless of how new they are."

—Mark Rogers, Lookout principle security researcher

Smartphone makers must heavily modify Android to get it to work on unusual devices—most of which never catch on. Supporting these unpopular phones with updates would cost money and resources that developers prefer to spend on updates for phones that people actually bought.

The same vulnerabilities that members of the Android community use to root their phones are used by criminals who have more-nefarious schemes in mind. Not only are bad people using unpatched versions of Android to create botnets, but the Android ROM and rooting community gets pissed at Google when it finally gets around to filling in the holes.

You’re more likely to install a legit app that violates your privacy than a virus that hijacks your SMS messages. Just use some common sense and stop looking at so much porn on your phone.

Android runs on thousands of different hardware configurations, all made by different companies. Google just provides the operating system. Does that sound like any other extremely popular computing platform you know?

Google lacks a sweaty, bald CEO. They’ve only got cofounders that give sad speeches on stage.

Armando Rodriguez

Ever since Andy Rubin left earlier this year, Sundar Pichai has been running the Android show. He’s also the guy in charge of the Chrome team, which makes superexpensive laptops that don’t do anything but browse the Internet.

Google has been slowly breaking apart Android so that everyone runs the same GMail, Maps, Play Store, and Chrome apps even if they don’t run the same version of Android.

It should be no secret that Google collects your data every time you use one of its services.

This is, after all, the same company that is developing self-driving cars and wants to use balloons to bring Wi-Fi to everyone.

Armando is an Android nerd, covering both apps and phones, and a former programmer. He is also a world-class heckler on Twitter.
More by Armando Rodriguez

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New Apps You Must Know About

Combining Apps with IFTTT

iPhone’s new automation app ‘If This Then That’(IFTTT) allows you to bring two separate apps together by mentioning which of them is the “This” one and the “That” one. For example, you could get all the pictures you click with your iPhone to upload instantly to your Flickr account, or send a greeting message to a new contact when you include his or her information in your phone’s address book.

You can use this app for free and customize it to integrate various services and apps such as Craigslist, Dropbox and many others.

3D Printing with eBay Exact

With its new eBay Exact app, eBay attempts to introduce the masses to 3D printing. This new iPhone app allows customers to give a third dimension to their designs. So you can customize accessories, jewellery, iPhone covers and more to get exactly what you want.

You can make selections from design templates and opt for colors of your choice. Variants in materials include plastic, metal and wood among others.Your designs will be printed out for you in 3D and sent to you within a couple of weeks of placing the order.

Perfect Looks with Glasses.com

A new iPad app launched by Glasses.com uses virtual reality to enable you to try on their glasses remotely. A unique “3D fit technology” on your iPad gives you an experience of almost being at the store.
A 180 degrees view lets you see how the glasses will look when worn. Another 3D view displays a different perspective and you can compare both looks and decide whether you want to go in for a pair.
The best part is that you can share your looks wearing different glasses with your social circles from right within the app. Different opinions can help you zero in to what suits you best.

Enhanced Facebook Home

One of the features that have been frequently requested by users of Facebook has finally come into being. Facebook Home has been updated to include folders. Now phone apps can be grouped in different folders while using Facebook’s Android launcher.

This feature was prominent in the list of user requests for the app launcher. Dock support was another one which was included last month. Facebook plans to update the app with widget support in the near future.

Rebtel’s VoIP App

A new version of Rebtel’s VoIP calling app was released recently. The 3.0 version of the app has been downloaded by about 23 million users. This includes an additional favorites section in which pictures of important contacts can be displayed. You can set reminders for calls you don’t want to miss and also use the service to check balance in your account more conveniently.

Enhanced Twitter Apps

The mobile apps of Twitter have been recently enhanced and sync functionality has been provided for messages. So when you use your phone to access a direct message, it will also be marked as read elsewhere on the web and on other Twitter clients.

Other enhancements include superior search results with preview of accounts and new language support for Thai, Danish, Swedish, Filipino, Norwegian, and Finnish.

Get free updates and win TTL prizes

View the original article here

New Apps You Must Know About

Combining Apps with IFTTT

iPhone’s new automation app ‘If This Then That’(IFTTT) allows you to bring two separate apps together by mentioning which of them is the “This” one and the “That” one. For example, you could get all the pictures you click with your iPhone to upload instantly to your Flickr account, or send a greeting message to a new contact when you include his or her information in your phone’s address book.

You can use this app for free and customize it to integrate various services and apps such as Craigslist, Dropbox and many others.

3D Printing with eBay Exact

With its new eBay Exact app, eBay attempts to introduce the masses to 3D printing. This new iPhone app allows customers to give a third dimension to their designs. So you can customize accessories, jewellery, iPhone covers and more to get exactly what you want.

You can make selections from design templates and opt for colors of your choice. Variants in materials include plastic, metal and wood among others.Your designs will be printed out for you in 3D and sent to you within a couple of weeks of placing the order.

Perfect Looks with Glasses.com

A new iPad app launched by Glasses.com uses virtual reality to enable you to try on their glasses remotely. A unique “3D fit technology” on your iPad gives you an experience of almost being at the store.
A 180 degrees view lets you see how the glasses will look when worn. Another 3D view displays a different perspective and you can compare both looks and decide whether you want to go in for a pair.
The best part is that you can share your looks wearing different glasses with your social circles from right within the app. Different opinions can help you zero in to what suits you best.

Enhanced Facebook Home

One of the features that have been frequently requested by users of Facebook has finally come into being. Facebook Home has been updated to include folders. Now phone apps can be grouped in different folders while using Facebook’s Android launcher.

This feature was prominent in the list of user requests for the app launcher. Dock support was another one which was included last month. Facebook plans to update the app with widget support in the near future.

Rebtel’s VoIP App

A new version of Rebtel’s VoIP calling app was released recently. The 3.0 version of the app has been downloaded by about 23 million users. This includes an additional favorites section in which pictures of important contacts can be displayed. You can set reminders for calls you don’t want to miss and also use the service to check balance in your account more conveniently.

Enhanced Twitter Apps

The mobile apps of Twitter have been recently enhanced and sync functionality has been provided for messages. So when you use your phone to access a direct message, it will also be marked as read elsewhere on the web and on other Twitter clients.

Other enhancements include superior search results with preview of accounts and new language support for Thai, Danish, Swedish, Filipino, Norwegian, and Finnish.

Get free updates and win TTL prizes

View the original article here