Maxim Bange

Members of NASA's newest astronaut class pose with an Orion capsule at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013. Pictured back row, left to right: Tyler (Nick) Hague, Jessica Meir, Christina Hammock, Nicole Mann, Victor Glover. Picture front row, left to right: Andrew Morgan, Anne McClain, Josh Cassada. Image Credit: NASA

Although cyberattacks caused just 6 percent of significant outages of public electronic communications networks and services in the E.U. last year, they affected more people than hardware failure, a much more common factor in service disruptions, according to a report from the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA).

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Iron Man 3 is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Week ending August 18, 2013

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	Iron Man 3	7.5 / trailer
2	(1)	The Conjuring	7.9 / trailer
3	(5)	The Great Gatsby	7.4 / trailer
4	(…)	Pain and Gain	6.7 / trailer
5	(2)	Oblivion	7.1 / trailer
6	(4)	Epic	6.6 / trailer
7	(3)	The Iceman	7.0 / trailer
8	(6)	The Wolverine (CAM)	7.2 / trailer
9	(9)	R.I.P.D (TS)	5.5 / trailer
10	(…)	Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara! (DVDscr)	6.3 / trailer

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swan and Antifragile, is a pretty intense person. He's vocal about his displeasure with most economists, academics and journalists. He's usually wearing black. And he's usually seen not smiling.

So, we couldn't help but take notice of his Facebook status update on how "to have a great day." The first four ways are wonderful. The fifth seems much more Taleb-esque.

SEE ALSO: 35 Brilliant Insights From Nassim Taleb

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New York Times (blog)

Sea Level Could Rise 3 Feet by 2100, Climate Panel Finds New York Times (blog) An international team of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue ... The Battle Over Global Warming Is All in Your HeadTIME 95 Percent of Global Warming is Caused by Human Activities, Says New IPCC ...Headlines & Global News Climate experts “surer than ever”: It's our faultSalon all 46 news articles »

Earlier this month it was revealed that Microsoft would be shutting down the Games for Windows Live marketplace, and it looks like the entire service may be following suit as early as next year. Polygon reports that earlier today an Age of Empires Online support page on Xbox.com noted that the service will be discontinued on July 1st, 2014. Up until then, it said, the service will remain "100 percent operational." The note has since been pulled.

The support page also stated that Age of Empires Online requires certain Game for Windows Live services in order to run properly — making it a distinct possibility that those that own the title may be unable to play it after Microsoft takes its service offline. The company recently hired Jason...

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You shelled out a good bit of cash for your Mac. So it's frustrating when you notice it start to slow down or otherwise fall short of its original zippy pace.

Here are 13 strategies you can employ to help lighten the load on your struggling computer.

These aren't failproof silver bullets, though. They'll certainly go far, but they won't necessarily get your computer back to its original level of performance.

It's perfectly natural for computers to slow down over time, so occasionally having to replace a computer is just a fact of modern life.

But here's what to do to stretch every last bit of life out of your machine.

Delete the programs you don't use anymore.

Browse your Applications folder and see if there are any apps in there you don't need. If so, use an uninstaller to get rid of them and free up hard disk space.

We recommend AppZapper to help with the uninstalls.

Free up hard drive space in general.

If you fill up your hard drive to the point that you have fewer than 10 GB of space left, this can cause some problems with virtual memory. Help reduce the burden on a drive that's filled with stuff by deleting the junk you don't need or by moving it to an external hard drive.

Run Monolingual!

Your Mac and many of the programs you install come with alternative languages that you'll probably never use. Delete them using a free app called Monolingual and you can free up hundreds of megabytes of space.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

An Air Force B-1 bomber has crashed in southeastern Montana in the midst of a routine training mission, according to multiple news outlets. 

The two pilots and two weapons systems officers safely ejected and survived the crash, but some did suffer unspecified injuries, according to the Billings Gazette.

Their specific conditions, as well as their names and identities, are unknown at this time.

The plane belonged to the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. 

 "We are actively working to ensure the safety of the crew members and have sent first responders to secure the scene and work closely with local authorities at the crash site," Col. Kevin Kennedy, 28th Bomb Wing commander, said in a statement cited by CBS News. "Right now all of our thoughts and prayers are with the crews and their families."

The cause of the incident is under investigation. 

The B-1 is a long-range supersonic bomber developed by Boeing that has been in service since the 80s. The Air Force has roughly 60 B-1s in its arsenal. 

The last major crash came over the Indian Ocean en route to a combat mission in Afghanistan in December 2001. All four crew members in that incident ejected and were rescued, and the cause was never determined. 

SEE ALSO: Its First Time In Combat, Two F-14 Tomcats Shot Down Two Libyan Fighters In A Clean 45 Seconds

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The German Federal Ministry of Finance said on Monday that Bitcoin is not a full-fledged currency but that it is permissible to use it in private transactions.

Depending on whom you ask, messaging is either the most important mobile phone feature or the second-most — after regular-old phone calls. Messaging, led by SMS texts, has grown to become a huge global industry and a revenue windfall for the world's mobile carriers: $140 billion annually over the next three years. 

However, a new batch of companies are providing over-the-top (OTT) messaging services — services that send instant messages over the Internet and don't depend on wireless cell networks. 

The OTT services are already causing big changes in the mobile industry. From Facebook's Messenger service to Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup WhatsApp — which boasts 300 million monthly active users, more than than Twitter, and Korea's LINE, these players are some of the biggest crowd-draws in mobile. It's not just carriers that are threatened, but legacy social media too. 

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we profile some of the most important OTT players in mobile messaging, and detail the monetization opportunity for OTT messaging. We also identify what competitors must do — and some have already started doing — to guard against the OTT threat. 

Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

Here's an overview of the monetization opportunity:

• The size of the opportunity is massive: OTT instant messaging apps are enjoying phenomenal audience growth and message volume. Some back-of-the-envelope estimates have pegged WhatsApp revenues at $63 million. There's a rush of developers and publishers scrambling to find their place in this market. MessageMe, a new aspirant to the field of OTT messaging heavyweights, launched earlier this year and attracted a million users in less than two weeks. 
• Advertising: Asian OTT messaging players KakaoTalk and WeChat charge brands to send messages, including photos and videos, to users who opt in. KakaoTalk calls this program "Plus Friends," and encourages its users to add brands and show business acts as plus friends, with real and virtual prizes. But, other OTT apps like Viber and WhatsApp have so far said no to advertising. 
• Carrier partnerships: These are nascent but could work in certain markets. WhatsApp boasts 15 carrier deals, including Asian, Middle Eastern, and African operators. Viber and Bubbly have explored or struck deals with carriers in Asia. The carriers promote the messaging apps and pre-load them on phones. In exchange, the apps might feature carrier-managed services like enhanced voice calls or data plan top-ups. In China, wireless carrier Unicom has reportedly advocated working with the super-popular WeChat, rather than attacking it. 
• Acquisition: Messaging apps might be looking to be acquired by the very mobile players they threaten: social media and carriers. The rumor late last year that Facebook was close to acquiring WhatsApp spotlighted just how dominant WhatsApp has become. In fact, in many months its download volume exceeded that of Facebook's Messenger app, although WhatsApp is a paid download and Facebook Messenger is free. 

In full, the report:

• Profiles some of the most important OTT players in mobile messaging
• Detail the monetization opportunities and business models for those in the OTT messaging space 
• Identifies what competitors must do — and some have already started doing — to guard against the OTT threat

To access BI Intelligence's full report, sign up for a free trial subscription here.

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Hot on the heels of admitting that Area 51 really does exist, the CIA has finally admitted to another widely known secret: that the agency played a key role in the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq after he sought to nationalize the Iranian oil industry.

Like the Area 51 non-revelation, we have George Washington University's National Security Archive to thank for this. The Archive was able to get a new, less-redacted version of a 1970s official CIA history of the coup, which gives a clear indication of CIA involvement.

While the history had previously been released in 1981 after a lawsuit from the ACLU, many of the key points — especially a section labeled "Covert Action" — were redacted. The new version, declassified in 2011, includes this key line:

That key section (highlighted by Business Insider) read:

[The] military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.

Here's another section that explains some of the rationale behind the move:

Again, the key line reads:

When it became apparent that many elements in Iran did not approve of Mosadeq's continuing gamble or the direction in which he was pushing their country, the execution of a U.S.-assisted coup d'etat seemed a more desirable risk than letting matters run their predictable course.

Of course, this is pretty much common knowledge. The New York Times published what it claimed was a leaked 1954 CIA-written account of the coup in 2000 (you can read that over at the National Security Archive), and that same year then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the coup a "setback for setback for Iran's political development," adding that "it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."

It is still, however,  an important admission. The ousting of Mosaddeq 60 years ago today and the now-confirmed Western involvement in it (London remains tight lipped but it's probably safe to assume MI6 was involved too) is seen by many Iranians to be just one of the disastrous examples of unwanted Western intervention in Iran and the Middle East in general. As Malcolm Bryne writes at Foreign Policy, the coup's "reverberations have haunted its orchestrators over the years, contributing to the anti-Americanism that accompanied the Shah's ouster in early 1979, and even influencing the Iranians who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran later that year."

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The German Ministry of Finance has issued an official statement recognizing the virtual currency Bitcoin as "Rechnungseinheiten," a legal designation that translates to "units of account" — more than Monopoly money, but not quite currency. This type of accounting unit, which also covers regional currencies, is also referred to as "artificial currency" or "side payments." (Think barter clubs or Disney dollars.)

The announcement came in response to a direct question from a member of the German parliament Bundestag. But contrary to press reports, this is not a new position. It is an affirmation of a previous ruling by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, also known as BaFin, a body within the Ministry of Finance.

The designation...

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Any "Breaking Bad" fan's dream would be to watch an episode with an actor from the show. This is the next best thing.

"Breaking Bad" actor Aaron Paul surprised fans Sunday night when he offered to call the first ten people who responded to his tweet asking for phone numbers.

Happy Breaking Bad day bitches! What's your number? Calling the first 10 people to answer questions. Ask me anything. #yeahbitch

— Aaron Paul (@aaronpaul_8) August 19, 2013

Fan responses swarmed in for the Emmy award-winning actor.

Most tweeted about the experience while some shared it live on Instagram and YouTube. Here are some of the responses from lucky fans who received calls.

@kknorri yes. Talked about how BB changed his personal life.

— Josh Fisher (@joshfishr) August 19, 2013

“@alesitarobledo: AARON FUCKING PAUL JUST CALLED ME” It was a pleasure meeting you over the phone my friend. #yeahbitch

— Aaron Paul (@aaronpaul_8) August 19, 2013

.@aaronpaul_8 thanks for the call man! Thought of a real question for you now but it's to late. #INeedARedo

— AJ Costilla (@Alonzo_J30) August 19, 2013

While it's cool the actor called fans, the scary part is that people actually messaged him their phone numbers publicly.

SEE ALSO: The best of last night's "Breaking Bad" episode

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak sat down with Bloomberg this week to discuss his thoughts on innovation, Larry Ellison, and, most extensively, Jobs — the recently released biopic about Steve Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher. Wozniak attended a midnight premiere of the film, and apparently didn't leave with a very good impression.

"There were a lot of things wrong," he said in a televised interview Friday. According to Wozniak, the movie inaccurately glorified Jobs without acknowledging his flaws as a young entrepreneur, and without giving due credit to other people involved in the company's early days. "I didn't like seeing a lot of people I know not get the respect they deserve," he added.

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Despite Instagram releasing a video feature that offers similar functionality, Twitter's video sharing app Vine is still going strong.

Part of that has to do with Vine's appeal to creative types who like to make art within the app's limitations.

Just as the limited space of a haiku results in great poetry, having less than seven seconds of video forces artists to squeeze the most out of that time.

With voice overs, stealthy cuts, and twist endings, the best user make great work that you can watch in less time than it took to read this sentence.

Here, we've rounded up the funniest examples by the Vine users most people still haven't discovered.

John J. Fox easily made the best dancing bird video, ever.

See more of John J Fox's vines here.

Here, Tim Siedell manages to summarize Mad Men in 7 seconds.

See more of Tim Siedell's vines here.

Eric Dunn's vines are all hilarious satirical takes on stereotypes and the habits of twenty-somethings. Here's his vine on selfies.

See more of Eric Dunn's vines here.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Nothing is supposed to show up on your Facebook Wall unless it's posted by you or your friends.

So when a security researcher named Khalil Shreateh from Palestine found a bug that let him post stuff to other people's Walls, he reported it to Facebook.

That bug is a spammer's dream. To prove his bug was real, Shreateh posted something to Sarah Goodin's wall, a friend of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

He then contacted Facebook's security team with the proof that his bug was real, he explained in a lengthy blog post.

Facebook has a bounty program where it pays people to report bugs instead of using them or selling them on the black market. In this case, instead of fixing the bug and paying the researcher the $500+ fee, Facebook told him "this was not a bug," according to an email that Shreateh shared.

Shreateh says he tried a second time to warn Facebook and when that didn't work, he used the bug to post a message to Mark Zuckerberg's Wall.

The message said, "Sorry for breaking your privacy ... but a couple of days ago, I found a serious Facebook exploit" and explained that Facebook's security team wasn't taking him seriously.

Here's a photo of the message from Shreateh"

That worked and fast. Within minutes a Facebook security engineer contacted Shreateh and asked for details on how he did it, Shreateh says.

In a post on Hacker News, Matt Jones from Facebook's security team said that once the team understood the bug they acted quickly, "We fixed this bug on Thursday."

They also temporarily suspended Shreateh's account and said they wouldn't pay him the bounty fee because, by posting to Zuck's account, he violated Facebook's terms of service. Then the Facebook team asked him to continue to help them find bugs, he says.

Commenters are split on whether Facebook ripped off Shreateh or not. Facebook says that Shreateh didn't include enough technical info when he tried to report it the bug. You can't just demonstrate the bug, you have to explain how it works.

On the other hand, he wouldn't have hacked Zuck's account if the security team had asked him for more details the first two times he tried to report it.

Facebook's full comment on what happened is posted on Hacker News. Here's the bit that explains why Shreateh was disqualified from payment:

"The more important issue here is with how the bug was demonstrated using the accounts of real people without their permission. Exploiting bugs to impact real users is not acceptable behavior for a white hat. We allow researchers to create test accounts here: https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/accounts/ to help facilitate responsible research and testing. In this case, the researcher used the bug he discovered to post on the timelines of multiple users without their consent."

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Babies cry. The cry can mean a whole bunch of things: the baby is hungry or tired or uncomfortable or doesn't feel well.

Sometimes the baby cries a lot and even a doctor can't tell if the crying indicates something serious or not.

So researchers at Brown University have created a cry analyzer app that they hope will one day decode a baby's cry, as first spotted by Network World's Michael Cooney.

The tool can detect slight variations in cries imperceptible to the human ear. These sounds indicate if a baby is suffering with some kind of condition or neurological problem.

The new analyzer is the result of two-year's work between Brown’s Laboratory for Engineering Man/Machine Systems and the Women & Infants Hospital Of Rhode Island, Brown says.

The tool is not yet an app that you can download to your iPhone yet. The next step is to make it available to researchers around the world to help with the cry research. Eventually a doctor will be able to use it to detect serious health issues.

SEE ALSO: The Business App 50: The Best Apps To Help You Do Your Job

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We watch a lot of YouTube videos here at Business Insider. Especially new videos, as they break news and go viral.

We noticed something strange with newly published videos: Many of them seem to get exactly 301 views, right after they go up.

Here's a new video from the Dollar Shave Club, displaying the 301 phenom:

And here's one from GE, showing the same thing:

It turns out there's a reason for this. Google's YouTube unit does this on purpose ...

When a new video goes up and starts to attract attention, Google wants to make sure that the views it is getting are real, and not dubious clicks coming from botnets or unscrupulous publishers who want to make their videos look more popular than they really are ...

So YouTube pauses the counter at 301 views while its systems subject the video — and its cached duplicates on servers all over the world — to a statistical process that verifies the traffic.

It's not clear why Google chose exactly 301 as the place to pause the view count. Ted Hamilton, product manager at YouTube analytics, says he doesn't know why they chose that number, although any video that quickly attracts views in the hundreds needs to have its traffic verified. (Unviewed videos, by definition, aren't being played by bots.)

YouTube freezes the public counter at 301 for up to half a day or more while verification takes place. Internally, YouTube's counters are continuing to count views. Once the traffic is verified, the total number of views is added back onto the public counter. None are missed.

Hamilton says that one flaw in the system means that really popular videos can end up with thousands of likes yet only 301 views, at least for a period of time. The 301 phenom is one of the things that video publishers ask YouTube most about, he says.

Here's a video — which has more than 301 views — explaining the whole process:

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The Premier League used their new goal-line technology for the first time in their opening match of the 2013-14 season.

The system, officially called the "Goal Decision System," is similar to the replay system used during Wimbledon and other major tennis tournaments. But unlike tennis, the visual aspect of the replay system is not seen by the fans at the stadium. Rather, a signal is sent to a watch worn by the referee in order to keep the pace of play.

Here is the first decision rendered by the system, on a shot by Jordan Henderson of Liverpool...

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Earlier this week, a blog post by a thirteen-year-old social media user set off a debate about Facebook and teenagers. Ruby Karp's post on Mashable, "I'm 13 And None Of My Friends Use Facebook," seemed to touch a nerve.

In her post, Karp mentioned the popularity of apps like Snapchat and Instagram among her friends, and the fact that Facebook seemed to be populated mainly by snooping adults and marketers.

The debate will not go away. The tech world is mystified and frightened by teens, even while desperately catering to them, knowing that teens will shape the industry's future. 

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we analyze how teens and their mobile-first habits threaten to upend the tech industry.

We specifically dig into how established Internet companies like Facebook are in fact threatened by teen audiences and their tendency to fragment across platforms. Broadly, we agree with Karp that more focused social services like Instagram and Snapchat are peeling off Facebook features and cannibalizing the social network's base. 

Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

Take a look at this infographic: 

Teenagers are flocking to mobile services that peel away many of the features at the heart of Facebook. Like most trends in the tech industry, the fragmentation of social media has started with the youngest users and is working its way up the age chain.

Right now, cross-posting softens some of the edges of competition. For example, your Tumblr and Pinterest updates can automatically be cross-posted to Facebook. However, given the spate of conflicts between networks recently, one shouldn't assume cross-posting will always be allowed.

As we argue in our report, we may be witnessing is the unraveling of a unitary, centralized social media landscape, dominated by Facebook, into a set of multipolar nodes. Facebook warded off the Instagram threat by buying the company, but it won't always be possible for the company to neutralize threats with acquisitions.    

To access BI Intelligence's full report on How Teens And Their Mobile-First Habits Threaten To Upend The Tech Industry, sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today. 

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De recente DNS-serverhack waarbij duizenden sites en bezoekers zijn geraakt door malware is begonnen met één malafide PDF-attachment.

Google blocked videos from Microsoft's YouTube app for Windows Phones today.

Microsoft isn't happy. In a post on the company's blog, one of Microsoft's lawyers David Howard made that pretty clear. 

Below is a brutal takedown of Google's policies regarding the YouTube app for Windows Phone.

Here's a little backstory before you dive in though: Microsoft has to make a YouTube app itself because Google won't make one. But Google has given Microsoft a bunch of wonky rules to work around when making the app. Microsoft says it has done its best to follow those rules, but Google hasn't cooperated. 

It's especially strange since Microsoft is doing all the work for free and helping Google generate more ad revenue from ads on YouTube.

Got all that?

Now read it:

You may be wondering what happened to the YouTube app for Windows Phone. Last May, after we launched a much improved app on our platform, Google objected on a number of grounds. We took our app down and agreed to work with Google to solve their issues. This week, after we addressed each of Google’s points, we re-launched the app, only to have Google technically block it.

We know that this has been frustrating, to say the least, for our customers. We have always had one goal: to provide our users a YouTube experience on Windows Phone that’s on par with the YouTube experience available to Android and iPhone users. Google’s objections to our app are not only inconsistent with Google’s own commitment of openness, but also involve requirements for a Windows Phone app that it doesn’t impose on its own platform or Apple’s (both of which use Google as the default search engine, of course).

When we first built a YouTube app for Windows Phone, we did so with the understanding that Google claimed to grow its business based on open access to its platforms and content, a point it reiterated last year. As antitrust enforcers have launched investigations against Google – some of which are still ongoing – the company has reiterated its commitment to openness and its ability to stick to its openness commitments voluntarily.

With this backdrop, we temporarily took down our full-featured app when Google objected to it last May, and have worked hard to accommodate Google’s requests. We enabled Google’s advertisements, disabled video downloads and eliminated the ability for users to view reserved videos. We did this all at no cost to Google, which one would think would want a YouTube app on Windows Phone that would only serve to bring Google new users and additional revenue.

There was one sticking point in the collaboration. Google asked us to transition our app to a new coding language – HTML5. This was an odd request since neither YouTube’s iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5. Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility. At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps.

For this reason, we made a decision this week to publish our non-HTML5 app while committing to work with Google long-term on an app based on HTML5. We believe this approach delivers our customers a short term experience on par with the other platforms while putting us in the same position as Android and iOS in enabling an eventual transition to new technology. Google, however, has decided to block our mutual customers from accessing our new app.

It seems to us that Google’s reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can’t give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting. The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it.

Google claims that one problem with our new app is that it doesn’t always serve ads based on conditions imposed by content creators. Our app serves Google’s advertisements using all the metadata available to us. We’ve asked Google to provide whatever information iPhone and Android get so that we can mirror the way ads are served on these platforms more precisely. So far at least, Google has refused to give this information to us. We are quite confident that we can solve this issue if Google cooperates, but fixing Google’s concern here is entirely within Google’s control. If Google stops blocking our app, we are happy to work with them on this, entirely at Microsoft’s expense.

Google also says that we are not complying with its “terms and conditions.” What Google really means is that our app is not based on HTML5. The problem with this argument, of course, is that Google is not complying with this condition for Android and iPhone. Again, we’re happy to collaborate with Google on an HTML5 app, but we shouldn’t be required to do something that apparently neither iPhone nor Android has successfully figured out how to do.

Google raises concerns about our branding too. The funny thing about this point is that we’ve been using the same branding continuously since 2010 for an inferior YouTube app. Now that we have an app that gives users a fuller YouTube experience, Google objects to the branding (even though we’ve taken additional steps to clarify that we are the author of the app). Go figure.

Finally, Google cites a degraded experience. Since 2010, Google permitted a Windows Phone app that was far below the iPhone and Android app experiences. Reviews of our new app are unanimous that the experience is much improved, and we’re committed to making adjustments to improve it further. If Google were truly concerned about a degraded experience, it would allow our users access to the new YouTube app they love.

We think it’s clear that Google just doesn’t want Windows Phone users to have the same experience as Android and Apple users, and that their objections are nothing other than excuses. Nonetheless, we are committed to giving our users the experience they deserve, and are happy to work with Google to solve any legitimate concerns they may have. In the meantime, we once again request that Google stop blocking our YouTube app.

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Google Cloud Storage — a non-consumer service used by companies like Ubisoft, Rovio, Best Buy, and others for storing content— will for the first time automatically encrypt its users' data. The move is intended to protect, companies developers, and ultimately your data from prying eyes, utilizing the128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Under the new system, data will be encrypted on Google's end "before it's written to disk." Google tells us that the keys to unlock this encryption are managed using the same systems Google uses for its data. User data and metadata is encrypted using a unique key, which is then encrypted using a second key associated with the data owner, which is in turn encrypted using a "regularly rotated"...

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A week after Lavabit founder Ladar Levison shuttered the encrypted email service rather than comply with undisclosed government demands, he’s getting set for a legal fight. Speaking to RT, Levison says that the defense fund he created has reached $100,000 as he gears up for a showdown in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Lenovo has managed to do what Dell and HP haven't: make a successful move into mobile devices. And to top it off, it’s doing this as it reclaims the number one spot worldwide for PC shipments. Today, Lenovo is reporting that its mobile device sales have eclipsed its PC sales, spurred on by strong growth in its native China, where it holds a 42 percent share of the mobile market.

The company’s also reporting that its shipments of smart devices including phones and tablets are up 41 percent year-over-year — a number that jumps to 132 percent when you just consider smartphones. And next year could be even bigger; the company has said it wants to sell phones in the US within the year. “Smartphones are our new opportunity,” said...

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Jason Holtman spent the last eight years turning Valve's Steam digital distribution platform into a veritable cornucopia of PC games. Starting this month, however, he'll be working at Microsoft on the company's Windows gaming strategy. "Yes, I have joined Microsoft where I will be focusing on making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment," he told GamesIndustry International. "I think there is a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to deliver the games and entertainment customers want and to work with developers to make that happen, so I'm excited to be here." Holtman left Valve in February under mysterious circumstances, along with up to 25 other employees.

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Elon Musk's hypothetical Hyperloop is getting all the attention this week, but another one of his futuristic transportation pet projects is progressing by leaps and bounds in the real world. SpaceX's reusable, vertical landing, Grasshopper rocket took to the skies once again in McGregor, Texas, yesterday, for another milestone flight. The 100-foot-tall rocket has previously flown to heights in excess of 1,000 feet, hovered for a few seconds, and landed perfectly upright on the launchpad. But yesterday's test launch saw Grasshopper do something it's never done before: launch straight up about 800 feet, then travel over 300 feet sideways, or laterally, before returning to its original position in mid-air and landing.

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Last week, research firm IDC dropped a big bomb on Apple.

Google's smartphone operating system now powers a whopping 80% of devices worldwide. Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones only powers 13% of smartphones. iOS controlled about 16% of the worldwide smartphone market a year ago, according to IDC.

Apple should be freaking out, Jay Yarow says. (So does venture capitalist Fred Wilson and analyst Benedict Evans).

So how did Android, which debuted after the iPhone, get to where it is today. Here's a quick history lesson.

Android started as a separate company in 2003. It was run by Andy Rubin and a few other big names in the early world of mobile tech. They were trying to build software for phones and digital cameras.

Google bought Android in 2005. Andy Rubin and his team quietly worked on what would become the Android mobile operating system.

In 2008, Google partnered with HTC and T-Mobile to launch the first-ever Android smartphone, the G2.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider