Maxim Bange

2013 was the year when "big data" became a really huge thing.

Big data refers to collecting vast amounts of data in all shapes and sizes from tweets to images and analyzing it to come up with fresh insights.

Time again we heard about big data projects and startups using the tech to help salespeople close deals or help companies target their ads better. Those are worthy use,s but big data is powerful enough to do more than help companies sell stuff. 

This is tech that can literally change the world.

That's why we like HP's new Earth Insights project announced earlier this month during the company's customer conference, HP Discover in Barcelona.

Scientists have placed hidden cameras all over the world's tropical forests that have collected 1.4 million photos so far. Earth Insights collects and analyzes those photos and alerts scientists when a species comes under threat.

HP CEO Meg Whitman blogged about the project when it was announced:

"Most recent findings show that, of the 275 species being monitored ... 60 of them – or 22 percent – are either significantly decreasing or likely decreasing compared to baseline levels. ... Until now, scientists had to manually collect and analyze this data from tropical forests – often taking weeks, months or more to analyze information – making it difficult to identify new patterns and intervene to protect biodiversity.  HP’s solutions are analyzing the data 89 percent faster."

For the project HP, used its Vertica software (HP bought Veritca for $350 million in 2011), and outfitted scientists with ElitePad Windows 8 tablets. The system is running on HP's cloud.

We asked HP to give us a few more details on Earth Insights. A spokesperson told us: 

• HP and Conservation International began Earth Insights in September 2012.
• It was the brainchild of the HP Sustainability and Social Innovation team.
• HP has committed more than $4 million to the project including financial grants, equipment grants and the cost of building the system.
• Earth Insights found that the population of a number of species that were not considered to be in trouble were declining in 16 specific sites.
• Earth Insights also found that a large number of species are stable. That's good to know, too.

Here's a video that shows the project in action.

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India has canceled a EUR556 million ($764.2 million) helicopter contract with a unit of Italian defense contractor Finmeccanica SpA following accusations its officials used bribes to obtain the deal, an Indian government official said Wednesday.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) is the outsider's outsider — what other Texan would spend a freezing New Year's hundreds of miles away in New York City?

But there he was last night at the launch event for the NYC Bitcoin Center, located just up the street from the New York Stock Exchange.

Stockman's attendance was a favor to Center founder Nick Spanos, a real estate developer and Bitcoin enthusiast. Spanos helped phone bank on Stockman's most recent Congressional campaign.

The Center itself is still in something of a planning stage, existing more as a statement about Bitcoin itself, though it plans on hosting a hackathon later this month. 

Stockman, a vocal opponent of Fed policy, told Business Insider last night that he wants to promote Bitcoin, whose most fervent evangelists tout as an alternative to fiat currency. 

To do so, he is now accepting Bitcoin for his Senate campaign against incumbent John Cornyn.

Here's the photo:

SEE ALSO: Fortress Investment Is Launching A Bitcoin Fund

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This year's big Marvel movie will be "Guardians of the Galaxy."

While we've already seen some concept art for the film, Disney and Marvel released the first official photo still for the film ahead of New Years. 

The film will follow a team of aliens played by Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Bradley Cooper (Rocket Racoon), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), and Dave Bautista (Drax the Destroyer).

Vin Diesel was recently confirmed to voice tree monster Groot after hinting at a role in the film.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" will come to theaters August 1.

Check out the photo below.

Here's the official plot synopsis from Disney and Marvel:

An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits — Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand — with the galaxy’s fate in the blanace.

SEE ALSO: Concept art for the film

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Perhaps you’ve heard the news: the incandescent light bulb is dead. "When the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, the year ends — and so does the ordinary lightbulb," read Fox News' website. CNN even penned an obituary. That’s because, according to countless media reports, January 1st marks the "light bulb ban." Today’s the day when the US government finally phases out the dated technology by banning the manufacture or import of 60-watt and 40-watt incandescent bulbs, which are repeatedly cited as the most popular bulbs in the US. The reports typically suggest that consumers get used to buying pricier, more efficient compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, or else stock up on incandescents while supplies last.

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The images in Japanese photographer Shinichi Maruyama’s "Nude" series take time-lapse technology to an entirely new, mind-bending level.

Though he's secretive about the technical details of his process, Maruyama told Wired that he combined 10,000 separate images of choreographed dancers to create the whirlwind effect. The photos took only a day to shoot, though the intricate movements were planned over a five-month period.  

"I tried to express the beauty of both the human body’s figure and its motion as well as the concept of time," he said to Wired. 

Each mesmerizing photo is meant to be seen as an accumulation of events, inspired by Zen Buddhism's idea of impermanence. 

"In everyday life, we feel that time is flowing but it is actually an endless repetition," he said. "One moment appears and disappears then another moment appears after and disappears… In Zen, we think that every moment is independent from one another."

The photos are on display at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City through January 11th. 

SEE ALSO: A Swiss Photographer Shot These Insane Photos Of Exploding Sports Cars

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Carbon for twitter has been in the play store for a while, but hasn’t seen any revolutionary changes in a long time. Till yesterday, that is.

When Carbon first made its way into the Play Store, it was trying to do something different. Be a feature packed app, and have one of the most beautiful dark UIs in the store. I, for one, am a huge fan of the dark UI schemes in apps and ROMs. For me, it was like love at first sight. For a while, that is. After a little bit of using Carbon, the “new app smell” wore off, and I went back to other apps, like the Official Twitter app.

Yesterday, Carbon was updated. And I love it. I don’t think I’m going to be switching away from it for a while. They updated it with what they call “#C2PointOh”, or Carbon 2.0. It truly is worthy of the 2.0 tag, as it is a complete overhaul, in a good way. The new Carbon is elegant in every way, but lacking a few things that I think it really needs. Don’t get me wrong, like I said, I love it. But, there are a few simple things that I think the app should do, that it doesn’t. Well, ok, one. If you have a device with a built in menu button, like me, you get used to hitting that button in any app to bring up the menu, no matter where it’s located. Or, you get used to having some sort of indicator of where the menu would be located. Carbon is not that way. It took me a good 3-4 minutes of searching around the app to figure out where in the world the menu was, and where it was, kinda surprised me. You get to the menu by clicking on your profile picture in the bottom, which is also the button used to compose a new tweet. I would have liked to see these two separated a bit more, or at least have it mapped to the hardware menu button on devices that support it.

Besides that, I love the app. It has good notifications, a good UI, very fast, clean, everything I look for in a Twitter app. Some things that this app does that I really do like is the way it handles multi-touch. If you double tap on a tweet, it brings up a dialog for ReTweeting said tweet, which is an ingenious way to make things faster!

The developers, dots & lines, have this to say about the app:

All-new Carbon v2 with a new design and experience.

Carbon experience for Android Smartphones. No Tablet support yet.

Simple, Dark, and a dash of elegance for your Twitter day-to-day pleasure.

Carbon is a Twitter client, but unlike other Twitter clients. All of your Twitter content on one screen. A screen that doesn’t get you drilling down to many other screens to reach to what you want. Timelines, Lists, Favourites, Searches, Trends, Profiles, all there.

- Fresh new Design & Interface
- Brand new Timeline design & aesthetics
- Swipe-able Timeline, @Mentions, and Messages on Home.
- Quick Timeline, one Timeline for Searches, List, Favourites on your Home screen.
- Don’t Disturb Mode
- Oxide Mode for Grayscale Timeline experience
- Power Scroll: Scroll/Swipe up or down using Two fingers to jump to top or bottom of Timelines
- Tweet Quick Actions
- Configuratie Tweet Font Sizes
- Retweets Timeline
- In-App Browser
- In-App YouTube Player
- Vine Previews & Playback
- Rich Timelines with full inline images and videos
- Rich and elegant style for User Profiles
- Rich Conversation View
- Threaded Direct Messages
- Background updates with quick actions for Jelly Bean, per account
- Username Autocomplete
- Mutes/Filters for Hashtags, Users, and Keywords
- People Search
- Obviously Multi-account with simultaneous accounts tweets
- Profile Editor

What do you think of this massive update? Is it enough to sway you from your current go-to Twitter app, as it was for me? Let us know in the comments, and download below!

The post A first look at Carbon 2.0, a refresh on an awesome Twitter client appeared first on AIVAnet.

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Al-Qaeda-linked militants were on Thursday in control of more than half of the Iraqi city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, a security official and witnesses said.

"Half of Fallujah is in the hands of ISIL (the Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) group, and the other half is in the control of" armed tribesmen, an interior ministry official told AFP.

A witness in the city west of Baghdad said that militants had set up checkpoints each manned by six to seven people in central and south Fallujah.

"In Ramadi, it is similar -- some areas are controlled by ISIL and other areas are controlled by" tribesmen, the interior ministry official said, referring to the Anbar provincial capital, which lies farther to the west.

An AFP journalist in Ramadi saw dozens of trucks carrying heavily-armed men driving in the city's east, playing songs praising ISIL.

Lyrics included "The Islamic State remains," and "Our State is victorious."

The militants also carried black flags bearing the words "Allah Rassul Mohammed," which are frequently flown by jihadist groups.

Clashes broke out in the Ramadi area on Monday as security forces tore down the country's main Sunni Arab anti-government protest site, and continued for two more days.

On Wednesday, militants in the city sporadically clashed with security forces and torched four police stations, but the clashes had subsided by Thursday, the AFP journalist said.

The violence also spread to Fallujah, where police abandoned most of their positions on Wednesday and militants burned some police stations, officers said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday said that Iraqi soldiers would depart restive cities in Anbar province, but reversed that decision the following day.

Army forces on Thursday remained outside Ramadi.

The removal of the protest camp was a victory of sorts for Maliki, who had long wanted it gone and had termed it a "headquarters for the leadership of Al-Qaeda".

But it has come at a high cost in terms of deteriorating security in Anbar.

And while its closure removed a physical sign of deep-seated grievances among Sunni Arabs, their complaints of being marginalised by the Shiite-led authorities and unfairly targeted by security forces remain unaddressed.

 

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LG’s rumored webOS Smart TV is tipped to arrive at CES in the coming days, but that hasn’t stopped intrepid leaker @evleaks from giving us what could be an early preview of its next connected set. In what appears to be a significant departure from the smartphone-like UI utilized in its current Smart TVs, the leaked render shows off LG’s modern interpretation of the Cards interface we first saw in Palm’s webOS-powered smartphones and tablets. LG chiefs have already indicated that the company has thrown its weight behind the Enyo open-source JavaScript development framework, which it acquired from HP as part of the webOS project, in the hope it will encourage third parties to create apps and services for its next-gen TVs. If the leaked image is real, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Skype apps will likely be available at launch, but we’re set to find out for sure when CES 2014 commences next week.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Software, HD, LG

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Source: Evleaks (Twitter)

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Onderzoeker kraakt 'veilig' De-Mail voor communicatie met Duitse overheid.

Apple has been downgraded to "market perform" from "outperform" by Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um. 

Um's downgrade is based on gross margin concerns. 

"Our bullish thesis on Apple had been predicated on the expectation for gross margin (GM) expansion driven by the 5s cycle," said Um in his note, according to Street Insider. "While we still have conviction in the gross margin thesis (and the potential for iPad/iPhone unit upside), we believe this may be largely embedded into the valuation."

Um is also concerned that the balance of power is going to shift away from phone makers to carriers this year. 

"Wireless operators have been offering generous subsidies of ~$400 per smartphone, getting the price to consumers to ~$250 in an effort to drive increased smartphone penetration," says Um, and it sounds like he's skeptical this can continue. 

A few thoughts on that:

1. We believe Apple sets up long-term contracts with carriers, so we don't think this is an actual risk for Apple. 

2. This meme was talked about last year, and Tim Cook generally shot it down by pointing out that carriers get loyal, high-priced customers from the iPhone.

3. This isn't a subsidy from the carriers, it's a charge that goes over 2 years. Jean Louis Gassee had a great post on this recently: "There is no subsidy. Carriers extend a loan that users pay back as part of the monthly service payment. Like any loan shark, the carrier likes its subscriber to stay indefinitely in debt, to always come back for more, for a new phone and its ever-revolving payments stream." 

Anyway, Um has some positive thoughts about Apple.

He could see the stock benefiting from an iWatch, iBeacons, an iPhone 6, and a new bigger dividend/buyback plan.

The stock was down .75% in pre-market trading this morning.

SEE ALSO: Get Ready For A Seriously Huge Year From Apple

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ASUS has just verified that a VivoTab Note 8 slate is imminent after it published the manual on its own site. According to leaks we saw earlier at the FCC and elsewhere, the Windows 8.1 device will be powered by an Intel Atom Z3740 quad-core CPU and have 2GB of RAM, up to 64GB of storage, a 1,280 x 800 touchscreen (which may include Wacom digitizer support), a dedicated stylus, front and rear cameras and a microSD slot. Though the reported specs and $300 price position it closely to the Dell Venue 8 Pro, the VivoTab seems to include the pen, unlike its competitor. All that’s left now is a formal launch with availability and final pricing, which is probably set for a certain little Vegas show.

Filed under: Tablets, ASUS

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Via: Laptoping

Source: ASUS

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DRIEBERGEN - Het nieuwe jaar is begonnen. Een goed moment om nog eens terug te blikken op 2013. Bijvoorbeeld: welke artikelen zijn het meest gelezen op Luchtvaartnieuws.nl? Wij hebben de tien populairste artikelen op een rij gezet. Daar zitten - wat ons betreft - enkele verrassende tussen.

Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz has a big post on why people should be optimistic about technology companies. 

In it, he talks about how some of the most fundamental products in our lives today were laughed at by outsiders when they were first introduced. 

He also talks about how big companies try to kill innovation. 

His theory is that one person can believe in a crazy idea and make it a reality through a startup. But, at big companies all it takes is one person to kill an innovative idea. He says lots of big companies have really smart people thinking up innovative ideas, but as the ideas go up the management chain, they are likely to get killed by a skeptic.

To illustrate his point, he included this excerpt from an internal committee report at Western Union. Alexander Graham Bell wanted to sell his patents and technology for the telephone to Western Union, which was the leading telegraph company at the time.

Bell's price: $100,000.

Western Union thought it was laughable:

The Telephone purports to transmit the speaking voice over telegraph wires. We found that the voice is very weak and indistinct, and grows even weaker when long wires are used between the transmitter and receiver. Technically, we do not see that this device will be ever capable of sending recognizable speech over a distance of several miles.

Messer Hubbard and Bell want to install one of their “telephone devices” in every city. The idea is idiotic on the face of it. Furthermore, why would any person want to use this ungainly and impractical device when he can send a messenger to the telegraph office and have a clear written message sent to any large city in the United States?

The electricians of our company have developed all the significant improvements in the telegraph art to date, and we see no reason why a group of outsiders, with extravagant and impractical ideas, should be entertained, when they have not the slightest idea of the true problems involved. Mr. G.G. Hubbard’s fanciful predictions, while they sound rosy, are based on wild-eyed imagination and lack of understanding of the technical and economic facts of the situation, and a posture of ignoring the obvious limitations of his device, which is hardly more than a toy …

In view of these facts, we feel that Mr. G.G. Hubbard’s request for $100,000 of the sale of this patent is utterly unreasonable, since this device is inherently of no use to us. We do not recommend its purchase.

The moral of the story? It's easy to be dismissive of new ideas, but in the long run, there's a good chance the outlandish becomes standard.

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It's Snapchat's first big test, and Snapchat is failing: A hacker has stolen and published 4.6 million customer usernames and phone numbers.

Given that Snapchat's entire reason for being revolves around security — it's a safe way to send a photo or a message that no one else will see because the message permanently deletes itself after it is viewed — security breaches are Snapchat's worst nightmare.

So this is the one area where Snapchat needs to communicate directly and in plain English with its users.

And yet the company has so far acted late, and published one slightly misleading statement that has turned out to be wrong.

The vulnerability in Snapchat was revealed to Snapchat back in August by Gibson Sec, a group of white hat (i.e. "good guy") students interested in hacking and security. Gibson Sec had discovered that it was able to access Snapchat's API, which is like the front door to the Snapchat platform. Gibson Sec warned Snapchat that it was vulnerable to anyone else who could be bothered to do the same thing, but Gibson Sec says Snapchat ignored their warnings.

In an attempt to force Snapchat into action, Gibson Sec published details of the vulnerability on Christmas Day.

Two days later, on Dec. 27,  Snapchat made its first statement on the matter, and basically denied that user names and phone numbers were up for grabs by hackers. It came in a blog post titled, "Finding Friends with Phone Numbers." That title, of course, is incredibly misleading. Something like "Warning to users about security breach" would have been more useful.

In the rest of the post, Snapchat describes how it believes that your phone numbers are not vulnerable to hackers:

We don’t display the phone numbers to other users and we don’t support the ability to look up phone numbers based on someone’s username.

Theoretically, if someone were able to upload a huge set of phone numbers, like every number in an area code, or every possible number in the U.S., they could create a database of the results and match usernames to phone numbers that way. Over the past year we’ve implemented various safeguards to make it more difficult to do. We recently added additional counter-measures and continue to make improvements to combat spam and abuse.

Problem solved?

Not quite.

As if to prove Snapchat wrong, four days later, on Jan. 31, hackers published 4.6 million user names and phone numbers publicly. You can use this site to see if your name is on the hacked list.

And still Snapchat hasn't given its users any advice on what to do if they believe their info is vulnerable. Nor has it reassured users about whether they are in any danger. So far, it looks as if there is little danger from hackers knowing your phone number but ... who knows?

If you dig around in Snapchat's support site, you do get this advice:

For security reasons, it is currently not possible to change the username for an existing account. If you wish, you may delete your account and create a new one.

And that is pretty much it: If you want to make your Snapchat secure, delete Snapchat.

Snapchat is a very young company, a startup. So we must expect it to make mistakes. And it is not Snapchat's fault that it has been hacked — that is the fault of the hackers.

But CEO Evan Spiegel needs to learn that there is more to running a startup than just coming up with cool new features for your app and putting the phone down on Mark Zuckerberg: Security is the heart of the Snapchat offering.

Lose that, and the whole business is toast.

SEE ALSO: Hackers Stole Millions Of Phone Numbers And Usernames From Snapchat — Here's How To See If You're OK

SEE ALSO: Security Researchers Gave Snapchat A Nasty Christmas Present By Telling The World How To Hack Snapchat

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Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a blog post this weekend with a tantalizing title, "Bitcoin Is Evil," that has provoked the expected backlash from proponents of the virtual currency.

The headline over-promises, unfortunately — while you could make an argument that Bitcoin nefariously wastes computer power, enables crime, and encourages anarchy, that’s not what Krugman’s saying. (Science fiction writer Charlie Stross’ "Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire" is more satisfying.) Instead, Krugman attacks Bitcoin’s economic fundamentals for the zillionth time.

Almost any time you see someone from a university praising Bitcoin, that person is from the computer science department. And if...

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No one knows why the Germans are obsessed with watching a 1963 short comedic film called "Dinner For One" on New Year's Eve, and yet the tradition remains wildly popular.

I observed it first hand last year in Cologne, with a group of Germans who planned our evening (including traditions like raclette and telling fortunes with melted lead) around which of the many broadcasts of the film we would watch.

Starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden, the film shows an old woman and her butler at a dinner table where they pretend her deceased friends are sitting. The butler asks, "The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?" The woman replies, "The same procedure as every year, James!" Then the butler proceeds to pour many rounds of drinks for the table, impersonating her friends giving toasts, and drinking all of the alcohol himself. The film ends as the very drunk butler walks the woman to her room and asks, "By the way, the same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?" She responds, "The same procedure as every year, James!" He says, winking, "Well, I'll do my very best!"

Why do half of Germans watch this movie every year, gleefully reciting lines as they happen? The group I was with could not have a good answer.

WSJ's Todd Buell recently offered some speculation:

A short chat with German colleagues revealed a variety of reasons: it debuted in Germany in a time when items from the English-speaking world were very popular. Also the English dialogue is so simple that it allows even those with limited English skills to understand what’s going on.

Another colleague pointed out that Germans’ affinity for the show is linked to a nostalgic longing for a more secure past. The “same procedure” means, obviously, that nothing will change as James stumbles and spills, Germany can remember an allegedly happier and simpler time. The action is also so at odds with “normal” German activity that it gives people an escape valve from everyday life, said another co-worker.

"Dinner For One" has become popular in other northern European countries and various parts of the world, becoming the most frequently repeated TV show ever despite not being broadcast in the U.K. or the U.S.

The film has also generated some controversy regarding the butler's heavy drinking, leading to censored cuts in some areas. I would not be surprised if someone has turned the original into a drinking game.

Here is a version of this strange and wonderful movie:

SEE ALSO: 17 unusual New Year's rituals around the world

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Slow and steady is the prescribed pace for the Curiosity rover, especially after recent photos showed a growing number of dents, scratches, and punctures on the car-size robot's wheels.

The rate of deterioration, which was not seen during earlier phases of the mission, is probably linked to the rough terrain that Curiosity has been traveling since October. It's different than what scientists have seen on Mars before.

Curiosity has tackled rocks in the past, but they were mostly small, isolated patches that didn't leave much of a mark on the wheels. Over the last month or so, the rover has wrestled large areas of rocks that are very sharp and embedded in the ground rather than loose, says Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It's very similar to a type of volcanic lava, called "aa," found on Earth.

"The idea of driving on this terrain, which is kind of like a bed of nails in some respects, that's something that we didn't assume we would drive on," said Erickson.

Curiosity's six wheels are made from aluminum, a material that's favored in the aerospace industry because it's strong, yet lightweight. The wheels are the thickness of about nine sheets of paper, or about two to three times as thick as an soda can, according to Erickson.

Each wheel has cleats to help the rover grip soft sand or climb over steep hills. All the tires are also imprinted with a zigzag pattern as well as a straight line of "dot" and "dash" cutouts that spell out "JPL" in Morse code. The unique track marks are used to determine how far the rover has traveled on Mars.

NASA engineers drove the wheels on a full-scale rover through rugged environments on Earth to try to simulate what the machine would experience on Mars, but they "were never able to beat them to the point where they didn't drive," said Erickson. As a result, he said, "we do know really know how much damage you have to do to these wheels to make them not work."

Over the holidays, scientists took close-up images of the wheels to better assess their condition. They noticed that the front wheels have sustained more damage than both the middle and rear wheels, but haven't yet determined a cause for this since the ground pressure for each of the wheels is roughly the same.

Although rock-strewn terrain seems to be the main culprit, scientists are analyzing many possible factors for the increasing pace of wear and tear, including whether it's related to the Morse code holes  (one of the larger gashes on the left-front wheel was found next to this imprint), vast swings in temperature, or if extensive denting of the aluminum is making the tires more susceptible to punctures, says Erickson.

As of Dec. 8, Curiosity had driven a distance of just under four miles after more than one year on the surface of Mars. Her main destination since July has been the base of Mount Sharp, which rises three miles up from the center of the Gale Crater landing site.

Curiosity is hardly a speed demon — she moves a sluggish 8 feet per minute at her fastest — but now the rover's engineers will be even more cautious about her next steps. They are looking at overhead and local imagery to chart a smoother driving path going forward, and believe that the rover will remain healthy as long as it stays on more benign ground.  

"We want this vehicle to not just work for the prime mission, which ends in June 2014, but to be around for a large set of extended missions," Erickson said. "We have plans to make sure this vehicle is going to be around for a long time." 

SEE ALSO: 2013's Biggest Science Breakthroughs

SEE ALSO: The Most Amazing Satellite Images Of The Year

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Apple says it was unaware of an NSA software implant that could control iOS devices and denies that it worked with the NSA to make surveillance easier. In a statement to All Things D, the company said "Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products." The program in question is called DROPOUTJEEP, described in a leaked 2008 slide as a tool capable of turning on and capturing data from iOS microphones and cameras and remotely pulling files, contact lists, text messages, location data, and more.

While security researcher Jacob Appelbaum suggested that the program could only work as perfectly as the NSA...

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At Business Insider Intelligence, we produced over 340 charts and accompanying datasets this year that dug into all sorts of mobile industry topics, including the smartphone and tablet markets, wearables, mobile advertising, mobile commerce, and the world of apps and app stores. 

Here's a slideshow of the charts that our thousands of individual and corporate subscribers across tech, digital media, finance, and telecoms considered the most important in 2013, as judged by our analytics that tell us which of our daily charts the greatest number of subscribers opened and read. You can click the link at the bottom of this post to view the slideshow, or click to view as one page to the right.

Subscribe for a free two-week trial to BI Intelligence and never miss any of the up-and-coming trends in mobile computing and the Internet. Our subscribers receive our morning newsletter, in-depth daily content, and access to our chart library with downloadable individual charts and datasets in Excel. They can also watch a video of Henry Blodget's presentation, The Future of Digital. Please sign up for a free trial here. 

10. Personalization was a big buzz word in mobile in 2013, but few companies are actually using it.

Personalization refers to content and advertising that dynamically alters itself so that it's particularly relevant to the individual or audience it's intended for. It's a powerful technique, especially on mobile, because mobile is such an intimate medium, and personalized messages can be tailored according to location and context. An example might be an outdoor retailer's ad on a weather app, which features a ski sale whenever it's snowing at a user's location. In 2014, personalization will be implemented rather than just talked about. 

9. The mobile industry has become hyper-concentrated in one sense: manufacturer profits.

At first glance, mobile seems like a world teeming with companies that are churning out smartphones. But of these major manufacturers, only two of them make any money: Samsung and Apple. 

8. App stores have become the world's dominant software market.

If the 60 billion app downloads from Apple's app store in the last five years were shared among the world's population, every person in the world would have eight iOS apps. The app boom has reached staggering proportions. Even if growth slows, it's clear that phone apps constitute the largest software market in global history. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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NKorean leader boasts of removal of "filth" in new year after execution of his uncle

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is boasting of internal strength in the new year because of the elimination of "factionalist filth" — a reference to his once powerful uncle and mentor, who was purged and executed last month.

Kim made the comments Wednesday in a public speech that will be closely scrutinized for clues about the opaque country's intentions and policy goals.

Analysts are divided about what Jang Song Thaek's execution means, but many believe it shows Kim Jong Un has yet to establish the same absolute power that his father and grandfather enjoyed.

This year's annual New Year's message by the North has added significance because of the elimination of Jang for alleged treason. The purge was one of the biggest political developments in the country in years.

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Letland is sinds middernacht lid van de eurozone. Het is daarmee het achttiende land waar de euro het officiële betaalmiddel is.

Het Baltische land voldoet ruimschoots aan de EU-normen. Het heeft een overheidstekort van 1,4 procent van het bruto binnenlands product en een staatsschuld van minder dan 40 procent.

Klederdracht

De invoering van de euro betekent het einde voor de lats, tot gisteren de munteenheid van Letland. De wisselkoers is vastgesteld op 0,703 lats voor 1 euro.

De Letse 1 en 2 euromunten worden gesierd door een vrouw in traditionele klederdracht. Alle overige munten worden voorzien van het wapen van Letland. De bankbiljetten zijn gelijk aan die van de andere eurolanden.

Pokémon X and Y modding enthusiast who goes by the moniker dekuNukem has further developed his hands-free shiny Pokémon finder so the machine now hunts, breeds, clones and releases shiny Pokémon without the need for human input.

Back in November, the modder posted a video of a set-up he'd created that automates the process of finding shiny Pokémon. After the shiny Pokémon were found, player intervention was required to catch them.

In the latest build of dekuNukem's "Poké-O-Matic," the machine not only finds the shiny Pokémon, it will also catch them for the player, breed then, name them where a nickname is necessary and clone them.

The video in which dekuNukem details the process can be viewed above.

De Noord-Koreaanse leider Kim Jong-un heeft voor het eerst gesproken over de executie van zijn oom. Hij deed dat in zijn nieuwjaarstoespraak voor de staatstelevisie.

Hij sprak over het doodvonnis als "de uitschakeling van een vuile verrader". Volgens hem is de eenheid van het land daarna honderd keer sterker geworden.

Zorgen over stabiliteit

De oom van Kim, Jang Song-thaek, werd op 13 december ter dood gebracht nadat hij was veroordeeld wegens samenzwering tegen de staat.

Deskundigen zagen in de veroordeling en de daarop volgende executie een teken dat er een machtsstrijd gaande was in de top van het regime.

Zuid-Korea

Kim Jong-un zei in zijn nieuwjaarstoespraak ook dat hij zich het komende jaar wil inzetten om betere betrekkingen met buurland Zuid-Korea te verbeteren.

Tegelijkertijd kondigde hij aan dat Noord-Korea doorgaat met het uitbouwen van zijn militaire capaciteiten.

Internationaal zijn er grote zorgen over het kernwapenprogramma van het land, na een kernproef in februari.

If Walmart or McDonald's began describing the Obama Administration as an unconstitutional threat to the privacy of its customers, it would be front page/holy-cow news.

But that's what is happening in Silicon Valley right now, with America's biggest tech companies.

The most interesting two words in Apple's official statement today on the news that the NSA can put spyware on 100% of Apple's products, including the iPhone, are these: "malicious hackers."

The company said it was unaware of the NSA's hacking program, called "DROPOUTJEEP," and that it was working to end the breach. But note that Apple's statement went out of its way to portray the U.S. government as a security threat:

We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them.

Apple isn't alone in its ire against the NSA. Most people think that the major tech companies — Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. — have been pussycats in terms of the NSA's domestic surveillance program. In fact there is a bunch of evidence that they hate it, and were unaware of its full extent. Here's what was said by Microsoft, which has been the most aggressive in publicly expressing its anger about domestic spying, from our coverage earlier this month:

... government snooping potentially now constitutes an 'advanced persistent threat,' alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks.

We all want to live in a world that is safe and secure, but we also want to live in a country that is protected by the Constitution.

Yes, Microsoft officially regards the NSA — its own government — as an unconstitutional advanced persistent threat. The company has vowed to sue the government over every non-transparent data request it gets.

And most people have forgotten Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's initial reaction to Edward Snowden's leaks about NSA surveillance:

He said after the news broke in the Guardian and the Washington Post about Prism, the government surveillance programme that targets major internet companies: "The government response was, 'Oh don't worry, we're not spying on any Americans.' Oh, wonderful: that's really helpful to companies trying to serve people around the world, and that's really going to inspire confidence in American internet companies."

"I thought that was really bad," he said. Zuckerberg said Facebook and others were pushing successfully for more transparency. "We are not at the end of this. I wish that the government would be more proactive about communicating. We are not psyched that we had to sue in order to get this and we take it very seriously," he said.

The anger in the tech business about the NSA's spying is wide and deep. Remember those Google engineers who went rogue, calling out the way the NSA hacked into the cables between its servers?

Twitter and Yahoo have demanded changes, too.

Here's Apple's full statement. But as you read it, bear in mind how crazy 2014 is shaping up to be. The most powerful opponents of the NSA are not the American people. (Where are the protests and demonstrations against the greatest domestic spying threat, ever?) They are tech companies with high-priced lawyers:

Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products. We care deeply about our customers’ privacy and security. Our team is continuously working to make our products even more secure, and we make it easy for customers to keep their software up to date with the latest advancements. Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple’s industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers. We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them.

SEE ALSO: DOCUMENTS: NSA Has 'A 100% Success Rate' Putting Spyware On iPhones

SEE ALSO: Microsoft Says Government Surveillance Is An 'Advanced Persistent Threat' That May Be Unconstitutional

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Startup Innovis Labs is looking to bring technology used in many first-person shooters to the paintball and airsoft fields with Project Overwatch, a mobile app that will integrate GPS tracking features and voice chat into real world games.

Project Overwatch is currently seeking funding through Indiegogo with a $50,000 goal. Using Overwatch, players will attach their iPhones to paintball and airsoft guns and use the app to track real-time movement of teammates and enemies similar to the way minimaps are used in many military first-person shooters. Overwatch will utilize the live GPS radar as well as a voice chat feature that includes the ability to jam opponents' communication radar. Players can also fake out their location to lead...