Maxim Bange

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Security concerns and bureaucracy have caused President Bashar al-Assad's government to miss Tuesday's deadline for the removal of deadly toxins from Syria under an international effort to remove its chemical arsenal, the global chemical weapons agency said.

Bad weather and a complex multinational procurement effort for equipment have also delayed the operation, an official from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said.

Syria agreed to abandon its chemical weapons by next June under a deal proposed by Russia and hashed out with the United States after an August 21 sarin gas attack that Western nations blamed on Assad's forces.

Damascus agreed to transport the "most critical" chemicals, including around 20 tonnes of mustard nerve agent, out of the Mediterranean port of Latakia by December 31 to be safely destroyed abroad away from the war zone.

The Special Coordinator of the OPCW-UN Joint Mission, Sigrid Kaag, told Reuters in Damascus on Monday that the OPCW is "comfortable in the knowledge that all the work is about to be completed" but she did not say how long the delay will last.

Kaag said on Sunday the deadline will not be met, citing technical delays, and she said on Monday there had been delays at customs without elaborating further.

The Syrian government is responsible for the safe packaging, transport along roads to Latakia - including the main highway from the capital - and removal of chemical weapons.

Government forces took back control this month of the highway linking Damascus to the coast which is needed to transport the toxins. Rebel were ousted from three towns along the road but activists say convoys moving along it will remain vulnerable to rebel ambushes.

Kaag said the Syrian government has repeatedly voiced a number of security concerns. Damascus "needs to plan for any eventuality in the journey from different sites to Latakia and in Latakia itself," she said.

"This is a very complex management exercise over and above the fact that it is a chemical weapons program that has to be destroyed at a time that a country is at war," she said.

Despite the delay, Kaag said "progress is very strong" and there is "a clear determination by all parties to achieve success."

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Kinda Makiyeh in Damascus, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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The magazine industry entered 2013 on a sour note, reeling from the final print editions of newsstand mainstays Spin and Newsweek, and bracing for layoffs in newsrooms across the country.

After a slight uptick in 2010 and 2011, magazine ad revenues fell once again in 2012, continuing a general decline that began in 2007.

But as 2013 comes to a close, the glossies have something to cheer about — and the good news comes in the form of the industry's highly coveted tablet ad sales.

According to a new report from MPA-The Association of Magazine Media, U.S. magazines sold 16% more iPad ad units this year than they did a year ago. Print ad pages were essentially flat from the year before.

Using data from Kantar Media, the industry trade group found that the 69 magazines it analyzed sold a total of 6% more ad space across both their tablet and print editions in 2013 than they did in 2012. So tablet ad sales are driving magazine growth, not print, basically.

MPA-The Association of Magazine Media president and CEO Mary G. Berner cheered the news with a defiant statement castigating the media's "lemming-like" coverage of the magazine industry's demise.

“I put lumps of coal in the stockings of all the nay-sayers who lost their faith in magazine media," Berner said. "These numbers prove, once again, that this business is about powerful, relevant and enduring brands. Despite erroneous, lemming-like coverage of declines, magazine media, has not, in fact, ever had an audience problem, and it is gratifying to see that advertisers are increasingly realizing that.”

In truth, the industry still has a ways to go. The Pew Research Center reported earlier this year that digital platforms made up just 6.6% of total magazine revenues in 2012. Pew expects this portion to rise to 14.5% in 2016, but it's unclear whether that will be enough to make up the print revenues the industry has lost over the years.

On the bright side for magazine publishers, the market for tablets is predicted to continuing growing in 2014, with IT research firm Gartner estimating that worldwide tablet shipments will jump 42.7% in the coming year.

SEE ALSO: The Future of Digital: 2013

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Microsoft has made a big change to its mobile phone business plan, Amri Efrati at The Information reports. 

Efrati says Microsoft is in talks with Sony to start selling a Windows-based mobile phone in 2014. He says it's also in talks with Chinese handset maker ZTE. 

Microsoft wants as many partners as possible to ramp up distribution and grab market share points. 

To lure new partners to Microsoft's platform, Efrati says it is tweaking its business model for Windows Phone. 

In the past, Microsoft would charge $10-$20 per handset, notes Efrati. Now, it's willing to charge a company nothing for "first several hundred thousand handsets sold and fee of just several dollars per handset after that," says Efrati citing a source familiar with Microsoft's negotiations. 

Microsoft can afford to do this, in part, because it makes a lot of money from patent royalties on Android phone sales. Nomura estimates Microsoft rakes in $2 billion annually, almost all profit. 

Money aside, Microsoft has no choice but to adapt. It's getting smoked by Google, and there's no reason for a handset maker to pay a premium for an operating system that consumers have totally ignored. Especially when the price of smartphones, even off-contract are drifting towards $100.

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Only days before Denver's recreational weed shops open for the first time, The Denver Post this week launched its new marijuana-centric vertical, The Cannabist. Led by the Post's marijuana editor Ricardo Baca, the site will include product and strain reviews, recipes and food, politics, and news of interest for smokers in the Denver area. It even has a map of dispensaries in the city.

Baca's appointment last month signaled the Post taking a vested interest in weed culture as marijuana inches toward broad legalization. The site now joins publications like the long-running High Times in its devotion to cannabis, but has the backing of mainstream press to support it.

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For billions of years, the Earth has silently traveled through space, spinning around the sun without making a sound. Even here on the planet, there's been little to hear. But now with the right recording equipment and processing, we can get a sense of what it sounds like for the planet to spin and spin while looping around the sun. Artist Lotte Geeven has ventured into what she says is the deepest open hole in the world — a location on the border of the Czech Republic that drops down over 5.5 miles, according to Designboom — and recorded what she calls "The Sound of the Earth."

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The Council on Foreign Relations has released its estimates on the year's covert targeted killings in Yemen and Pakistan, carried out primarily by drones. The numbers are based on reports from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Long War Journal, and The New America Foundation. Each source provides slightly different numbers, but the Long War Journal figures estimate a total of 54 strikes and 253 casualties, of whom 31 were civilians. The Council estimates a total of 3,520 casualties since the drone strike program began in 2004, of whom 457 have been civilians.

The numbers are only estimates, as data on civilian casualties is notoriously unreliable, but CFR is straightforward about its goals in releasing the report. "The...

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Yesterday, it was reported that the National Security Agency was able to capture live data from compromised iPhones including live camera, GPS, cell tower location and more.

Apple has now issued a statement denying that it ever cooperated with the NSA, according to AllThingsD.

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.

According to yesterday’s report, the NSA could install special software onto iPhones as part of a program called DROPOUTJEEP, that provides significant access to user data and other relevant information. The leaked documents describing the program were from 2008, so it is unknown how effective the NSA’s current iPhone efforts are.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

The post Apple Denies Knowledge of NSA’s iPhone Spying Program appeared first on AIVAnet.

Though technically fruit, tomatoes fall under the category of "vegetable," according to the Supreme Court. 

The high court issued this 1893 tomato ruling in a case brought by members of the Nix family against Edward Hedden, collector at the Port of New York, to recover the fees they spent transporting tomatoes.

The Nixes sued under the Tariff of 1883, which required taxes on imported vegetables — but not fruit.

Botanically, any seed-bearing structure formed from an angiosperm's (a flowering plant's) ovary is a fruit. Since a tomato protects and contains the seeds of its host plant, the juicy sphere is technically a fruit. Some might be shocked to learn a zucchini is a fruit, too.

General or culinary classifications, however, tend to differ from the botanical one. Most people would consider a tomato a vegetable. And the court essentially gave that reasoning in Nix v. Hedden: A tomato is a vegetable because people think it is.

The arguments were short and simple. The defendant's counsel read definitions from Webster's Dictionary of "pea," "eggplant," "cucumber," "squash," and "pepper" as evidence. 

The plaintiff then did the same (adding Worcester's Dictionary) with the definitions of "potato," "turnip," "parsnip," "cauliflower," "cabbage," "carrot," and "bean." Technically, a bean is a legume, but it too falls under the category of vegetable in everyday speech.

The court unanimously decided that the scientific classification of a tomato doesn't change common language. Therefore, the Tariff Act intended to tax tomatoes. And the Nix family wouldn't get their money back. The opinion of the court read:

Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits generally, as dessert.

The U.S. government abandoned the Tariff of 1833 for the Black Tariff of 1842, which the Walker Tariff later replaced. But the court's ruling on tomatoes' classification still stands and continues to affect legal proceedings. Other Supreme Court cases, like Saltonstall v. Wiebusch & Hilger and Cadwalader v. Zeh, have cited Nix v. Hedden, usually pertaining to payment of back taxes.

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A Russian hacker gained access to a BBC server over the Christmas period and attempted to sell access to it to other cybercriminals, reports suggest.

Paul Krugman set off a new firestorm this weekend with a post about Bitcoin that asked a fairly simple question: What gives a bitcoin its worth?

The post drew a ton of angry reaction from the internet and tech people for a couple of reasons.

One is that this question — why is a Bitcoin worth anything — is a difficult question to answer. The other is that the post is bizarrely titled "Bitcoin Is Evil" even though the post doesn't say that. But on the internet, people don't read past the headline and so, outrage!

But back to the question of trying to establish an "intrinsic value" for Bitcoin. It's not simple. The dollar has intrinsic value because you need dollars to pay taxes in the United States. The government accepts no other currency. So if you're going to engage in any kind of commerce whatsoever, you need to use dollars. This creates real value for the currency. Gold has real value because it's shiny and can be used for jewelry. Other commodities get their value from industrial purposes.

But what about Bitcoin? If you ask Bitcoin believers why a Bitcoin is worth anything at all, they will tell you about how amazing the technology is, and how it's "programmable" and how cryptography and pseudoanonymity are so great. But none of these are very satisfying answers.

For one thing, these features mainly explain why Bitcoin as a payment platform are so intriguing. They don't explain price. And as Krugman even notes in his original post, most of the techie Bitcoin bulls usually talk about Bitcoin as a platform (something that's easy to defend), rather than Bitcoin as an asset that will go up or down.

Furthermore, if Bitcoin's value were simply a function of all of the technological aspects, then there's no reason that Bitcoin wouldn't easily be supplanted by another crypto-currency that has better features (even the Bitcoin bulls will acknowledge that the technology could be better, particularly on the mining side and the confirmation time).

For example Litecoin, the second biggest player in the game advertises that if you transact in Litecoin you can faster confirmation times and that the whole system can handle more volume than Bitcoin. 

So the usual arguments aren't that compelling.

Now in the Bitcoin-sphere, there's a lot of debate about what Bitcoin is. People go round and round in circles about whether Bitcoin is a currency or a commodity or a platform or a protocol or an equity or whatever. These squabbles frequently get semantic (what is a currency? Must it be a stable store of value?) and usually they suffer from an inclination to plug Bitcoin into a category where it never quite fits.

I think Bitcoin is a hybrid of three things with which we're all pretty familiar: A currency, an equity, and a social network.

The currency part is pretty easy to understand. Someone is offering something for sale like a bike or a month's rent, and they might give you a quote in dollars, yen and Bitcoin. Bitcoin basically acts like a currency then.

Bitcoin also has equity-like characteristics in that the value seems to grow as the whole Bitcoin ecosystem grows. The value of a Bitcoin is up about 50x this year, which is an insane swing for a currency, but if you think about it as equity in a hot startup, it's not that preposterous when coming off of a low base. Bitcoins also have market cap (see: CoinMarketCap).

And most crucially, there's a social networking element to it (this is something Antonis Polemitis has written on). Bitcoin is something that's valued because lots of people use it. It's not that different from Napster. Napster was gamechanging technology in terms of how people get music, but it only had value once it was used by a lot of people. Same with Facebook. The technology may not have been better than its predecessors, but it got a lot of people using it, and suddenly the platform became tremendously valuable.

Strong, robust network effects are crucial for making the whole thing work.

Let's go through why...

Let's say you're a Chinese millionaire, and you're looking to take a big hunk of your fortune out of the country. This is not a trivial problem. The Chinese government has strict controls about wiring money out of the banking system. One way to get money out is to give your money to something called a "junket operator." That junket operator will give you a bunch of chips to go gamble with in Macau. Then after you're done gambling you take your remaining chips, cash them out for the local Macau currency (the Pataca) and then deposit those Pataca in a bank in Macau where that money is not burdened by capital controls. But that's difficult in part because you're dealing with a shady junket operator which might have ties to the criminal underworld. Then you have to gamble and play a huge vig to the casino. And then there's all the travel.

Another way you can get money out of the country is by buying a bunch of Rolex watches and putting them on all your wrists and ankles, and then flying out of the country and selling them to someone outside of China and then depositing that cash in a foreign bank. But like all luxury goods, the Rolexes are likely to lose a lot of value the second you take them out of the store. And do you really feel safe traveling with all those watches on you? It's a dicey enterprise.

The hot new way to evade capital controls is to buy Bitcoin, and then slip them to another wallet connected to a bank account in some other country. Then sell the Bitcoin to a buyer and deposit that money in a bank somewhere. The government would have an extremely hard time tracking this down (which is why lately the government of China [and India!]) have grown more negative on Bitcoin. This is a low cost solution, but it's not risk free. As we've seen Bitcoin is volatile, so you could experience a big price swing. But even if you can stomach the price swing, you have to be certain that there will be buyers for millions in Bitcoin on the other end of the transaction. This is only assured with big network effects.

Despite the technological similarity, our Chinese millionaire could not conduct the same transaction with Dogecoin. The value of all the Dogecoins in the world is just $7 million, so if you wanted to move $1 million, you'd need to suck up 1/7th of all the money in Dogecoin. It would be way too dicey.

Other crypto currencies have total "market caps" much less than $1 million. So then you literally could not execute the transaction despite equivalent or in some cases superior technology associated with other coins. 

Without the network effects, the technology is nothing. It's just a theoretical amusement.

The question then becomes: Can the social network last? If it can, then the value can be maintained, or might grow by even a lot. But history is not on Bitcoin's side on this question. For one thing, no social network seems to have much lasting power... especially not the first in a given category (Napster, MySpace, ICQ, etc).

This also doesn't satisfy what gives Bitcoin a "floor" in value, but then an equity never has a floor. Equity can go to zero, but that doesn't mean that in the meantime it's not worth something.

Bringing it all back home: A lot of Bitcoin skeptics are willing to accept that there's something technologically interesting going on here (Paul Krugman even posted a followup to his "evil" post talking about what kinds of problems the Bitcoin technology solves). But the economics of it are more tenuous. But if the network of people remains, Bitcoin may keep solving problems, like the problem of getting money out of a restrictive country.

SEE ALSO: Everyone who believes in Bitcoin should try to answer this question >

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As the debate over military drone use rages on, The Guardian has published an unexpected voice on the topic, that of a former US drone operator who openly questions the program. An imagery analyst for the Air Force from 2009 to 2012, Heather Linebaugh says the people making decisions about the drone program are mostly ignorant of the brutality of the casualties inflicted. "I wish I could ask them a few questions," Linebaugh writes. "I'd start with: 'How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?'"

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Dota 2 looks lovely, dark and deep. But there are many games this year yet to peep. And you just have to slay so many creeps.

On Christmas Day, someone hacked into two of the largest Dogecoin wallet sites and stole 30 million units of the digital currency.

It was a huge blow to a community that prides itself on its lack of rapaciousness. Dogecoin is mostly used to "tip" people on the Internet for performing favors or good deeds. At least two animal shelter groups, one in Florid and one in Spain, also accept the currency. 

That same generosity has now produced an incredible attempt to restore faith in Dogecoin's integrity by raising money to compensate people who'd lost funds. 

Launched Friday by techie Ben Doernberg, "the 12 days of Dogemas," which is being run out of reddit, has already raised more than 5 million Dogecoins, worth about $2,200. Contributions have come from around the world, and there's a mining pool that's sending 1% of their haul to the effort. In an email, Doernberg says he hopes to raise at least 15 million.

"The effort has been successful because respect, support and love is baked into the DNA of dogecoin," Doernberg said. "The doge meme is all about over-the-top positivity and optimism, and dogecoin was started in pursuit of fun and laughter, not greed. A few minutes spent on r/dogecoin will show that there isn't a more welcoming, friendly community anywhere on the Internet."

Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus told us in an email he was amazed by the project.

"I've NEVER seen something like this before in cryptocurrency. Usually when something gets hacked the common response is for everyone to call the people who got hacked 'idiots'. To me, this is incredible."

Dogecoin's market cap has been cut in half since reaching a high of more than $14 million on December 19. 

SEE ALSO: There Are Now At Least 14 Digital Currencies Worth More Than $1

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The US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued guidance earlier this year outlining how virtual currencies like Bitcoin should be regulated. According to the guidelines as originally interpreted, both companies and individuals trading in the cryptocurrency would need to register with the US government as money-services businesses, putting a great burden on those only mining Bitcoin for themselves. Now, according to correspondence sent to one Bitcoin company, FinCEN has clarified its language to let miners off the hook.

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Microsoft is creating a brand new computer programming language and it could be using that language to create an operating system that has nothing to do with Windows.

The new language was revealed on Friday by a Microsoft researcher named Jim Duffy in a blog post. Its relationship to the new operating system was discussed on Reddit by someone claiming to be an ex-Microsoft employee.

This operating system is code-named Midori, reports ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley.

Midori has been in the works since at least 2008 as a pure research project, Foley reports. Midori was initially an experiment to write an operating system from scratch that was small and fast and didn't need to be compatible with the huge numbers of Windows apps already out on the market. 

It looked like it was destined to remain a research project forever. But now it looks like Midori has been moved out of the research group and into the group that works on Microsoft's commercial operating systems (Windows, Windows RT, and Windows Phone), Foley reports:

I heard from two of my contacts that Midori -- Microsoft's non-Windows-based operating-system project -- moved into the Unified Operating System group under Executive Vice President Terry Myerson. (Before that, it was an incubation project, without a potential commercialization home inside the company.)

All of this could give us a glimpse into how Microsoft is preparing for a post-Ballmer, post-PC, post-Windows era.

We have to note: it seems unlikely that Microsoft would be willing to launch a brand new operating system separate from Windows anytime soon, especially since Windows 8 is essentially a break from the old Windows and Microsoft is still trying to get more developers to write apps for Windows 8.

It seems more likely that parts of Midori could wind up in Windows 9 or beyond.

However, the new langauge is also interesting. It's designed to write apps for today's cloud computing world, according to Duffy's blog post.

It isn't the only new language to take on cloud computing.

Google created a programming language called Golang (or Go) that's been catching on like wildfire, reports Infoworld's Serdar Yegulalp.

Go offers an alternative to a Oracle's tried-and-true Java programming language. Java is very popular with enterprises because it's powerful, but it was created long before the days of smartphones, tablets, and cloud computing. So Go creates apps that perform better in a cloud environment (memory usage, deployment ease etc.), says Go developer Travis Reeder. Reed is CTO of a site built on one of the first websites to use Go, he told Business Insider.

Microsoft has its own alternative to Java already, called .Net, which was also created before the cloud computing era.

Remember, Microsoft cut its teeth by making tools for programmers and still has a loyal following. Microsoft isn't going to concede a new cloud programming language to Google. And it certainly wouldn't use Google's language for its own next-generation operating system.

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The Benghazi report out of The New York Times has met with much fervor on both sides of the political/military aisle — with Republicans saying the Times ignored evidence of Al Qaeda's involvement.

Others, like Matthew VanDyke, say the report highlights the nuance of the attack, which was lost in the wake as political and military pundits sought to score points.

VanDyke — an American who fought with Libyan rebels to oust Gaddafi — says the report vindicates his initial assessment of Benghazi, and says people mentioning Al Qaeda have a fundamentally flawed view of Al Qaeda as a top-down organization with regimented ranks.

He writes us via email:

Complicating the "affiliation" issue is that individuals or groups may self-identify as being sympathetic to Al Qaeda or being part of Al Qaeda, without any actual operational connection or communication link to the core leadership of Al Qaeda. And even if they do have that rare link to the leadership, the majority of their actions are carried out independently, without direction from that leadership.

"Affiliation" with Al Qaeda is a broad term that is often misused, and often deliberately misused.

Islamist extremists are a small club and many know each other. They travel in the same circles and many of them are only a couple degrees of separation from someone who actually is part of Al Qaeda. But how many degrees of separation equals an "affiliation"? If it's only one or two degrees, then they're going to start labeling me, and many journalists as well, as Al Qaeda affiliated because of some of our contacts in the region might identify themselves as being Al Qaeda (anyone working in the region long enough as a filmmaker or journalist covering conflict zones has such contacts).

A perfect example would be the Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye who was imprisoned following his interviews with drone strike victims and members of AQAP.

VanDyke, like initial reports, says the rebels saw an opportunity to attack when the Muslim world exploded after an anti-Islam video went viral:

The anti-Islam video was the catalyst that set the events into motion that day, just as it had in Cairo and elsewhere around the world.

The difference was that in Benghazi the disgruntled were armed to the teeth and itching to fire their weapons having just fought in a war less than a year earlier.  There's no grand conspiracy involved, and no adequate sociological explanations for what happened that day. It was a post-war population of young men who were armed, a mob mentality, misplaced anger, minimal planning or organization, and a rapid escalation of violence that proved a deadly, tragic combination that day in Benghazi.

Others, particularly Republicans and some military members, dispute VanDyke's assessment as naive.

Jack Murphy, former Army Green Beret, author, and writer for the site SOFREP, calls the Times report "revisionist."

From SOFREP:

The Times article also tries to tell us that those who attacked the consulate were locals, with few foreign fighters even though we know that Eastern Libya was awash which foreign jihadists.  We know that many of those jihadists were tied to Al Qaeda, another fact which Kirkpatrick conveniently ignores.

Murphy doesn't comment on whether Al Qaeda leadership actually pulled the trigger on the operation against the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, a detail that still remains unclear, despite indications of "affiliation."

VanDyke still doesn't seem to think it was planned, or Al Qaeda-executed, and he didn't a year ago, when he told us, "This was not a commando style raid, that's ridiculous, this type of thing can be put together in a matter of minutes with a few cell-phone calls."

"The people up in [Libya's] green mountains, the extremists, they saw their opportunity to pounce. I've experienced how quickly the mobilization can happen firsthand. All it takes is a couple cell phones. All of sudden there's a handful of trucks packed with fighters."

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Stephanie Stiavetti is a freelance food writer.

She is the author of a cookbook called "Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese," published by Little, Brown, and Company.

She is at the vanguard of a swelling movement against Facebook.

Stiavetti knows that as an author and writer, she is a one-woman brand — and that she needs to market her brand as best she can on the Internet. 

So she's got active profiles everywhere: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google Plus.

One place online where Stiavetti has decided to be less active about promoting herself is Facebook.

That's pretty surprising, for two reasons: 

• Facebook is by far the world's biggest social network, with almost a billion people using it every single day.
• Stiavetti is popular on Facebook. She has 8,000 fans.

She writes:

I have 8,000 followers. Over the past few months my engagement has slowed to less than a trickle – a tiny fraction of what it was at the beginning of the year. Now, when I post to my Facebook page for The Culinary Life, only 100 people see those posts (on average). That is about .01% of my followers. Facebook then tries to charge me $20 so that you can see my content. Given that I don’t make any money from the stories and photos I post – please note there are not any ads on my site – paying hundreds of dollars a month to access you, the fans who willingly liked my page, is just not possible.

To make matter worse, Facebook has been charging page owners to run ads, which is in essence buying followers. That’s not a problem in and of itself, but when they charge to grow a page’s following and then remove access to those very same followers after they’ve accepted money for them, well, I find that incredibly unethical…

…I’m very sad that Facebook has decided to exclude the blogging community from accessing our loyal friends and fans, you who we love so dearly and are the reason we put so much work into creating recipes, photographing dishes, and publishing post after post. Really, you are the reason we work so hard. It’s terrible that Facebook has decided to hide our work from your eyes after you’ve already expressed interest in seeing it. We are not large brands selling products; the vast majority of food bloggers are moms, dads, husbands, wives, hobbyists, students, writers — everyday folks who just want to invite you into our kitchens.

Stiavetti isn't alone in her outrage at Facebook.

At the beginning of December, Facebook changed the algorithm it uses to select which "stories" appear in users News Feeds — that center column of photos, updates, videos and ads you see when you go to Facebook.com or open a Facebook app.

Facebook said it was changing the algorithm so that it would highlight higher quality news stories and show fewer silly photos.

But the immediate effect of the change was to drastically reduce the reach of the kinds of Facebook brand pages maintained by people like Stiavetti, e-commerce companies, and national brands.

Spokespeople for several companies told us that the "reach" of their Facebook posts declined by as much 80% after the changes.

Like Stiavetti, the people running those pages assumed Facebook actually changed its algorithm not to have the News Feed show higher quality  news stories, but to force Facebook page operators to buy ads from Facebook if they wanted reach.

In an email to Business Insider, a Facebook spokesperson said that was not the motivation behind the News Feed change. He said the most likely reason "organic" posts from Facebook pages weren't getting seen was that, during the holiday season, retailers are buying lots of ads for the News Feed, and those are crowding out the non-paid content.

The problem for Facebook is that appearances are reality — and to Facebook page managers, small like Stiavetti or big like several national retailers we spoke to, it appears that Facebook is shaking them down for bigger ad spends. They feel like suckers in a bait-and-switch scheme.

That "reality" has them angry.

Jim Tobin, who runs a social media marketing agency called Ignite, says clients like his are the reason Facebook has annual revenues of $6 billion. 

He says that Facebook used to be a great place for a brand because "you could you could have a presence for free and then pay to boost it."

Now that content posted to Facebook will only seen by .01% to 2.5% of its fans, that free "presence" is basically gone.

Tobin says his clients may soon leave Facebook and take their $6 billion with them.

"We as brands have the ability to take our money elsewhere. It's not like there's a lack of social networks for us to take our business."

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Kijk. Dit lezen we graag. 's-Gravendeelers steunen hun supermarkt door massaal op zondag te gaan shoppen. Oh, vraagt u zich af, is dat zo bijzonder dan? Ja, want de supermarkt in 's-Gravendeel gaat gebukt onder terreur en dreiging van de...

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google and Audi will use the Consumer Electronics Show next week to announce that they are working together to develop Android-based in-car information and entertainment systems. According to sources, these systems are designed to allow drivers and passengers access to apps and services similar to those available on Android-based smartphones and tablets.

The announcement that Google is working directly with a car manufacturer comes seven months after Apple announced iOS in the Car. Where Apple's platform integrates the iPhone into the car's infotainment system to provide access to maps, messages, and other apps, Google and Audi's joint efforts will see Android and Android-based apps run on the...

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Treinreizigers kunnen tijdens hun reis geen diensten als YouTube en Spotify gebruiken via het gratis wifi-netwerk van NS. De Autoriteit Consument & Markt staat toe dat die diensten worden geblokkeerd.

Het wifi-netwerk wordt verzorgd door T-Mobile. Iedereen kan tijdens de treinrit gratis internetten. Diensten als YouTube en Spotify verbruiken veel data waardoor op het netwerk een 'file' ontstaat. Daardoor is de kans groot dat een deel van de reizigers geen goede verbinding kan hebben met het wifi-netwerk, zegt de ACM.

Internet

T-Mobile was zelf naar de Autoriteit Consument & Markt gestapt omdat NS-reizigers problemen meldden met het netwerk. De ACM zocht vervolgens uit of een gedeeltelijke blokkade toegestaan is. "De internetverbinding in de trein heeft een beperkte capaciteit die ook nog eens sterk wisselt. Als mensen dan bijvoorbeeld filmpjes willen bekijken dan hebben andere reizigers daar last van."

Dat is niet de bedoeling, vindt de ACM, vandaar het besluit om dergelijke datavretende diensten van het netwerk te weren.

A special hacking unit of the U.S. National Security Agency intercepts deliveries of new computer equipment en route to plant spyware, according to a report on Sunday from Der Spiegel, a German publication.

Treinreizigers kunnen via het gratis wifi-netwerk van de NS geen diensten als YouTube en Spotify gebruiken. Die diensten leiden tot veel dataverkeer, waardoor andere internetgebruikers in de trein last hebben van 'filevorming', ofwel een trage verbinding.

Telecomprovider T-Mobile heeft van de Autoriteit Consument en Markt een uitzondering toegewezen gekregen op de wetgeving rondom netneutraliteit. T-Mobile mag bepaalde diensten blokkeren in de trein.

Here’s a Wikipedia stat you probably didn’t know: around 80 percent of new contributions to the crowdsourced encyclopedia are abandoned before they’re submitted. The organization thinks a lot of writers get cold feet because, since its creation, Wikipedia has deliberately prevented them from being able to save their articles without publishing them: you either went public or you went home. That’s changing now, as the site has decided to implement a Draft mode that allows work to be saved while still remaining invisible to most search queries. The site’s designers acknowledge that the feature is pretty basic right now, but they promise it’ll be refined over time to allow for collaboration on articles that are still in the draft state. The addition of tools like these make sense given that Wikipedia’s legion of volunteer contributors is reportedly shrinking, leaving its pages more vulnerable to the influence of iffy PR firms, but the organization says it has simply “matured” to the point where it can afford to be more flexible about how new content is created.

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Via: TNW

Source: Wikipedia

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Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula offers a rare apology to the families of those killed in an attack on a military hospital earlier this month.

NES Remix is the most unapologetic nostalgia trip Nintendo has ever embarked upon.

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People who have been playing the Blacklight: Retribution beta will be able to retain their progress and purchases when developer Zombie Studios brings the free-to-play first-person shooter out of beta, the studio announced today.

Zombie won't reset the character progress that players have made in the beta, which includes anything they've unlocked. Players won't lose anything they've bought, whether with GP (in-game currency) or ZCoins (currency purchased with real money). In addition, Zombie will refund players any ZCoins they've spent in the beta, so users will be able to spend them again.

"We here at Zombie Studios [...] feel this is a great way to give thanks to those Agents that have been helping us by playing and commenting on the...

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Users of the half-serious virtual currency Dogecoin are raising 30 million coins, worth about $13,545, in order to reimburse victims of a massive Christmas heist. Two days ago, hackers broke into two major wallets, Dogewallet and Instadoge, and made off with dogecoins belonging to "shibes," the community's term for Dogecoin users.

"In order to reach the moon we have to take care of each other and keep the spirit of community and faith in each other and the services that help spread the love of dogecoin," writes Ben Doernberg, one of the eight members of the Dogecoin subreddit who started the fundraising effort. "Thus, we are launching an effort to reimburse as many shibes as possible who lost their savings in the hacks."

The effort has...

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ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan still enjoys the fierce loyalty of pious voters and wealthy elites, which should be enough to keep him in power in the face of a corruption scandal that has rocked his government and reached his family.

But the suggestion by members of his AK party that a general election could be brought forward to next year shows that he is more worried than ever about his grip on a country he has transformed during a decade in office.

A less feisty leader might already have been sunk by the corruption scandal involving accusations of wrongdoing at a state-run bank.

Two members of the cabinet have resigned after their sons were arrested. Another minister who quit said the prime minister knew what was going on and should resign as well.

The affair turned more personal this week when Turkish media published what appeared to be a preliminary summons for Bilal Erdogan, one of the premier's two sons, to testify. The authenticity of the document could not be verified.

Investors are nervous and the lira currency has swooned.

But the scandal has only brought out the fight in Erdogan, who has consistently said that the entire affair is a foreign-backed plot against him. He has sacked police officers including the Istanbul police chief, exchanged diatribes with a powerful cleric and steadfastly insisted he has done nothing wrong.

The document naming his son was just another example of the conspiracy, he said: "If they try to hit TayyipErdogan through this, they will go away empty-handed. Because they know this, they're attacking the people around me."

So far, opinion pollsters predict that support for Erdogan's AK party, which enjoys wide support in Istanbul and the conservative countryside, has probably fallen by a few percentage points but still remains over 40 percent.

That is hardly enough of a slide to force it out of power. The last election saw it win more than two thirds of the seats in parliament with 50 percent of the vote, an unprecedented success.

Still, one senior official in Erdogan's AK party predicted the next general election, due in 2015, could be brought forward to early next year "if events take a dramatic turn", a sign that the party is revising its calculations to contain the fallout.

PUGNACIOUS

Much depends on the resolve of the famously pugnacious three-term premier, 59, who has already transformedTurkey by curbing the powers of the secularist military establishment and presiding over a spectacular economic boom.

Defiance worked for Erdogan six months ago, when he was beset by unprecedented anti-government street protests. Accused of being authoritarian, he ordered a police crackdown in which eight people died. Polls found his popularity almost unchanged.

To his conservative followers, corruption allegations could prove more damaging than accusations of authoritarianism.

"The (summer) protests were viewed as having been taken over by several disparate interest groups, which could explain why it has not had a major impact on his supporters," said Nazli Ilicak, a well-known Turkish columnist who worked for the pro-government daily Sabah until last week.

"But within the conservative electorate, the sense of justice - that what rightfully belongs to the people has been usurped - these are not seen as issues to be taken lightly."

She said Erdogan, who has hunkered down with a reshuffled cabinet of loyalists, would need to "come clean" and address the corruption allegations head on if he wanted to keep votes.

MUNICIPAL VOTE A TEST

Erdogan became prime minister in 2002, winning the loyalty of pious Turks who were sick of corrupt politicians. His image sits poorly with TV news pictures of police seizing shoeboxes filled with cash from the houses of corruption suspects.

Bekir Agirdir, director of polling firm Konda, which said there could have been a 3-5 percent slide in support for Erdogan's AK Party, said how the party manages the crisis will determine if its rating slides further or bounces back.

A March municipal vote in Istanbul, which is both Turkey's commercial hub and a longtime pro-Erdogan bastion, will be a bellwether. Trying to unseat the AK mayor is Mustafa Sarigul of the main opposition party CHP.

Erdogan faithful sound confident they will hold the city, yet they also fear Sarigul could reap grassroots support from a rival Muslim social network, Hizmet, whose charismatic leader Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based preacher, fell out with Erdogan last year and now openly excoriates the premier.

Hizmet claims to have at least one million followers worldwide, including in the upper tiers of the Turkish police and judiciary. In private conversations, AK officials say they will work to prevent Hizmet "defaming" Erdogan's government - a possible harbinger of dragnets for suspected Gulenists.

"Right now the situation in Istanbul seems to be under control," said one senior party official. But it remains to be seen whether similar operations by Hizmet to rally opposition to Erdogan take place in other cities.

Stewardship of the economy has long been Erdogan's most impressive boast, and the impact of the scandal on the business climate could determine whether support holds up.

Turkey's currency has hit consecutive new lows against the dollar, though the plunge was slightly softened last week by the central bank's sale of foreign currency.

But many investors are likely to keep faith in Erdogan and his economic team for now, having seen them successfully navigate stormy waters in the past.

"Erdogan is a political survivor, and a shrewd political operator. I think he can ride through this," said Timothy Ashof Standard Bank.

"He has strong underlying support, and as long as he retains the support of the economy team I think markets will give him the benefit of the doubt."

(Additional reporting by Seda Sezer and Gulsen Solaker; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Peter Graff)

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