Saturday, September 07, 2013

REPORT: Amazon Is Making A Smartphone That It Wants To Give Away For Free (AMZN)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/free-amazon-smartphone-2013-9

jeffery bezos amazon ceo

Amazon wants to give its upcoming smartphone away for free, according to former WSJ reporters Amir Efrati and Jessica Lessin.

It's unclear when the phone will launch, but Efrati and Lessin say it will likely be sold directly through Amazon's website. Amazon will also reportedly give away the phone for free even if you don't sign a contract with your wireless carrier.

So how will Amazon make money on a free smartphone? That's still not clear, but Efrati and Lessin hint that customers may be required to sign up for an Amazon Prime account when they get the phone. Amazon Prime costs $79 per year, and it gives you free two-day shipping on several items and access to thousands of streaming TV shows and movies through Amazon Instant.

But Lessin and Efrati still hedge a bit in their report. At least one source tells them Amazon may not be able to pull off a free smartphone because it would require special deals with hardware suppliers.

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Friday, September 06, 2013

drag2share: Forward Spam Text Messages to 7726 to Report Them

source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/vip/~3/BSkH3XjEoJo/forward-spam-text-messages-to-7726-to-report-them-1257920045

Forward Spam Text Messages to 7726 to Report Them

Ever get a text message that appears to be spam, but you don't really know what to do with it? It turns out, most carriers will let you report it by forwarding it to 7726 (SPAM).

We've talked about how to block unwanted text messages before, but this is one small tip we didn't know about until recently. It turns out, many carriers (including the big four US carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) let you report spam messages by forwarding them to 7726. It won't necessarily stop the messages from coming to you right away, but like reporting spam in Gmail, it'll help them filter those messages for everyone in the future. Thanks for the tip, Josh!

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You're Invited to Experiment With the Internet's First Quantum Computer

Source: http://gizmodo.com/youre-invited-to-experiment-with-the-internets-first-1263621119

You're Invited to Experiment With the Internet's First Quantum Computer

Eventually, quantum computers are going to be super powerful, but first we have to figure out how to use them. It's hard. Soon, aspiring quantum programmers will be able to try their experiments out for real on the world's first quantum computer in the cloud.

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Eyes-on with Samsung's 31.5-inch 4K PC monitor

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/06/samsungs-4k-31-5-inch-monitor-eyes-on/

Eyes-on with Samsung's 4K 31.5-inch PC monitor

Samsung's continuing the UHD TV march here at IFA with plenty of sets, but it's also showing a 4K (3,840 x 2,160) 31.5-inch monitor that's built to sit on your desktop. Crisp images deliver on the Ultra High Definition promise, but the colors are particularly vibrant, due in part to the LED panel's ability to reproduce 1.07 billion colors and pictures that can cram in 99 percent of Adobe's RGB color spectrum. Because of that, the set easily distances itself from others that have flat, dull image reproduction. However, viewing angles leave something to be desired, as standing far off to the side clouds the monitor. Not only does this piece of kit churn out good imagery, but it easily tilts and pivots into a vertical position, to boot. When it comes to connectivity, the screen packs four USB ports and slots for HDMI, DVI-DL and DPX2. If you're ready to hook up this display to your PC, there will be some waiting involved -- no pricing or release details have been divulged. If you'd like to gawk at the firm's hardware, look out below for our gallery.%Gallery-slideshow83282%

Follow all of our IFA 2013 coverage by heading to our event hub!

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Extra-large Nokia Lumia 1520 surfaces in press image

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/06/nokia-lumia-1520-press-image-surfaces/

Nokia Lumia 1520 press image surfaces

Want a clear look at Nokia's Lumia 1520 (aka Bandit)? You may just have it. After posting a screen capture earlier in the week, @evleaks has released what's reportedly a press image of the super-sized, 1080p Windows Phone. The render largely matches what we've seen before, including the additional Live Tiles on the home screen, but the back is new. It suggests that there will be a Lumia 925-style camera hump -- sorry, no 41-megapixel sensor here -- along with aesthetics borrowed from other members of the Lumia family. There's no guarantee that this image is real, but we won't be surprised if it accurately represents Nokia's last flagship before Microsoft takes the reins.

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Source: @evleaks (Twitter)

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Leaked Fujifilm X-A1 hints at a more mainstream mirrorless camera

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/06/fujifilm-x-a1-mirrorless-camera-leak/

Fujifilm XA1 interchangeable camera leaks, suggests 16megapixel

Fujifilm looks set to extend its range of retro-styled mirrorless cameras, if we're to believe a leaked press release and publicity shots for an unannounced model, the X-A1. The camera, which first appeared on Czech camera retailer Fotoskoda (before it was quickly taken down), looks to become the fourth model in Fujifilm's interchangeable lens X-series, with a 16-megapixel APS-C EXR CMOS sensor. Like the $700 X-M1, Fujifilm's latest shooter is said to include a 3-inch tilting LCD, on-board Wi-Fi, and a "very fast" startup response time to get you snapping in less than 0.5 seconds. The absence of Fujifilm's magical X-TRANS sensor, which has been a big feature on the higher-end models, makes us think this may be a significantly cheaper model, possibly aimed at those looking for their first foray into the world of interchangeable lens compacts. There's no word on when the X-A1 might become available, but expect bold red and blue variants when it does, alongside the more traditional Fuji-ish black.

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Via: Photorumors

Source: Fotoskoda

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Maxthon browser to be preloaded in at least 100 million smartphones thanks to MediaTek partnership

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/06/maxthon-mediatek/

DNP Maxthon browser to be preloaded in at least 100 million smartphones thanks to MediaTek partnership

Though Maxthon launched its Android browser three years ago, it might not be the go-to app most users have when they get their brand new smartphone. That might change soon however, thanks to a recently announced partnership between the software company and RollTech, the value-added services arm of MediaTek, one of the world's largest mobile chipset suppliers. As a result of the collaboration, the Maxthon mobile browser will be pre-installed in more than 100 million MediaTek-based smartphones in 2014. Though we don't know yet just which devices will have the software on board, a partially released list does include manufacturers like LG, ZTE and Lenovo. It appears that the phones will likely be targeted at emerging markets, with a focus on those in Brazil, Russia, China, India and Indonesia. Combine that with features like cloud syncing and LAN file transfer, and Maxthon might just gain marketshare over that other popular Android browser.

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Can You Identify a Mystery Cocoon Which Has the Whole Internet Stumped?

Source: http://gizmodo.com/can-you-identify-a-mystery-cocoon-which-has-the-whole-i-1262186274

Can You Identify a Mystery Cocoon Which Has the Whole Internet Stumped?

Usually, throw the internet an image of something you can't identify and it's only a couple of minutes until you're bombarded with people pointing out how dumb you are. Not so with this mystery cocoon, though—because nobody can work out where it comes from.

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Visualizing Published Science as Forming Galaxies

Source: http://gizmodo.com/visualizing-published-science-as-forming-galaxies-1262360288

Visualizing Published Science as Forming Galaxies

Scientific research is published by the bucketload every single week—to the extent that it's virtually impossible to keep up with. So this neat way of visualizing published papers as growing galaxies is particularly fun—and useful.

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LG's 77-Inch Curved OLED Ultra HD TV Is a Monstrous Beauty

Source: http://gizmodo.com/lgs-77-inch-curved-oled-ultra-hd-tv-is-a-monstrous-bea-1262576842

LG's 77-Inch Curved OLED Ultra HD TV Is a Monstrous Beauty

Currently, the biggest curved curved ultra-high resolution OLED TV tops out at a mere 55 inches—but LG is shaking things up with this monstrous 77-inch creature.

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Alcatel OneTouch Hero hands-on

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/05/alcatel-onetouch-hero-hands-on/

Alcatel OneTouch Hero handson

Okay, you have to admit: there might actually be something to this whole large smartphone business, started by Samsung two years ago at this very trade show. Not only has the trend not gone away, nearly every major OEM is hopping on the bandwagon. Alcatel OneTouch is interested in joining the party, and it's entering the field with a doozy aptly called the Hero, a 6-inch behemoth with a full HD (1,920 x 1,080) display and a few tricks up its sleeves. It's relatively easy on the hands, with a curved back and a decent thickness of 8.5mm. In fact, compared to the Acer Liquid S2 (another 6-inch smartphone announced at IFA), it's 6mm narrower, 7.5mm shorter and 0.5mm thinner -- great news, especially since we felt pretty comfortable with the S2 during our hands-on.

In many parts of the world, Alcatel OneTouch is still an unknown, despite the fact that the manufacturer has a reputation for pushing out up to a dozen handsets at one time. While this is still very much the case this week, we've noticed that the company has put a much higher amount of focus on quality. The Hero doesn't remind us of a cheap KIRF or knockoff phone. Instead, we came away much more impressed with the phone's look and feel than we originally expected. Continue past the break for more of our thoughts and the Hero's features.

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Velodyne vQuiet active noise-canceling headphones (ears-on)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/05/velodyne-vquiet/

Velodyne vQuiet active noisecanceling headphones earson

Velodyne is a name closely associated with subwoofers, but the company also knocks-out portable audio gear, too. The vQuiet, as you may have guessed, is Velo's first pair of active noise canceling headphones -- hopefully ensuring that your jams are more listenable on the rowdy floor of a busy trade show. In our very short time with the gear, we found that Bob Dylan's quiet-voiced bootlegs were a little more audible with the head wear activated than not. Of course, we'd rather spend a little more time with them before making a final judgment, but until then, the vQuiet will arrive more generally in October for $299 -- offering you a choice between them and the ever-present Bose sets that you see during those long-haul flights.

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Alcatel OneTouch intros prototype pico projector docking port (hands-on)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/05/alcatel-onetouch-pico-projector/

Alcatel OneTouch intros prototype pico projector docking port handson

Pico projectors are swell, but they're not wildly popular. Very few smartphone manufacturers can find a way to embed them into devices without making them incredibly thick and expensive, and without sucking the battery dry in no time at all -- the Samsung Galaxy Beam comes to mind regarding all of the above concerns -- and carrying around a separate accessory is just plain impractical and expensive. (Plus, most devices can wirelessly mirror content onto TVs and monitors anyway, making the actual market even more limited.) But what if you could find a clever way of incorporating it into another useful accessory while keeping it small, simple and inexpensive? Well, we're not sure about the latter qualification, but Alcatel OneTouch is at least keeping an eye on this niche with a new docking station that doubles as an aforementioned pico projector. It's a prototype accessory that's compatible with the OneTouch Hero, thanks to its set of magnetic docking contacts on the back -- all you have to do is clip it on and the phone recognizes that it's been attached. The projector is 12Lm, which is a little dimmer than we'd prefer (we were told that the final product may actually be brighter than this, but they can't confirm for now), and the company claims it can show a screen larger than 70 inches.

Company reps tell us that this nameless accessory isn't officially coming onto the market just yet, and they're trying to determine how best to proceed (the Hero's press release suggests that this for sure will be available later, however, so we'll take it with a grain of salt at the moment). It's a clever idea that could come in handy for a number of business travelers who need to carry on impromptu presentations, but price (of both the projector and the phone itself) will be a key factor in its success. Check out a few images below that show off the prototype in all its miniature glory.

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Follow all of our IFA 2013 coverage by heading to our event hub!

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Alcatel intros four One Touch Pop C-series smartphones, keeps them cheap

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/06/alcatel-one-touch-pop-c-series/

Alcatel intros four cheapandcheerful One Touch Pop smartphones

Not everyone needs a giant, higher-end smartphone like the One Touch Hero -- many can get by with just the basics. For those users, Alcatel has unveiled four One Touch Pop models with smaller screens and entry-level performance. The Android 4.2-based range begins with the Pop C1, a starter phone with a 3.5-inch screen, a dual-core 1GHz processor and sprightly color options like neon green and pink. Need more? The Pop C3 jumps to a 4-inch screen and a dual-core 1.3GHz chip; the Pop C5 steps up to a 4.5-inch screen, and the Pop C7 carries both a 5-inch display as well as a quad-core 1.3GHz processor. If you're interested, you can pick up the C1 or C3 as soon as October. The C5 ships in November, while the C7 arrives sometime during the last quarter of the year. %Gallery-slideshow79376%

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Source: Alcatel

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Leaked Verizon doc prices Galaxy Note 3 at $699 retail, $299 with contract, $599 if you bundle the watch

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/06/verizon-galaxy-note-3-prices/

AT&T and T-Mobile customers already know what they will have to cough up if they want to squeeze Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 into their pockets. Verizon customers, however, are currently in the dark -- despite big red encouraging you commit in advance all the same. A reportedly leaked document received by AndroidSPIN pegs the phone at $699 sans-contract, or $299 if you sign on the dotted line for a two-year fling. Verizon seems keen to bundle in the Galaxy Gear, too, offering a joint package for $599 should you want to go all in. The pricing-curtain officially lifts at 9am ET, but here's a head start if you need to count those beans. Take a squint at the image yourself past the break.

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Via: Sammobile

Source: AndroidSPIN

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LG's 77-inch Ultra HD curved OLED TV is the biggest, with the most buzzwords (update: eyes-on)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/06/lg-77-inch-curved-uhd-oled/

LG's 77inch Ultra HD curved OLED TV is the biggest, with the most buzzwords update eyeson photos

The never ending battle between Korean manufacturers Samsung and LG has moved to its inevitable next level, as LG has introduced an even larger super high-res OLED than its competitor's 55-inch models. The new high water mark is this 77-inch Ultra HD curved OLED it's showing off at IFA 2013, which is a step up in pretty much every way possible and even makes us recall the LCD size wars of the mid '00s. Whether or not we asked for it, it's bringing new display technology, a rare shape and of course, that truly outstanding size. It's only a concept now, but so was the $15,000 55-inch version at one point so we'd suggest keeping your black card handy.%Gallery-slideshow83284%

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Source: LG Newsroom

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Thursday, September 05, 2013

American and British spy agencies can thwart internet security and encryption

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/05/american-and-british-spy-agencies-can-thwart-encryption/

American and British spy agencies can thwart internet security and encryption

As reporters at the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica dig deeper into the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, new and disturbing revelations continue to be made. Two programs, dubbed Bullrun (NSA) and Edgehill (GCHQ), have just come to light, that focus on circumventing or breaking the security and encryption tools used across the internet. The effort dwarfs the $20 million Prism program that simply gobbled up data. Under the auspices of "Sigint (signals intelligence) enabling" in a recent budget request, the NSA was allocated roughly $255 million dollars this year alone to fund its anti-encryption program.

The agencies' efforts are multi-tiered, and start with a strong cracking tool. Not much detail about the methods or software are known, but a leaked memo indicates that the NSA successfully unlocked "vast amounts" of data in 2010. By then it was already collecting massive quantities of data from taps on internet pipelines, but much of it was safely protected by industry standard encryption protocols. Once that wall fell, what was once simply a torrent of scrambled ones and zeros, became a font of "exploitable" information. HTTPS, VoIP and SSL are all confirmed to have been compromised through Bullrun, though, it appears that some solutions to the NSA's "problem" are less elegant than others. In some cases a super computer and simple brute force are necessary to peel back the layers of encryption.

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Source: New York TImes, Guardian, ProPublica

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The NSA Has Figured Out How To Access Some Of The Most Private Data On The Internet

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-scariest-part-about-the-nsa-access-2013-9

world Internet map

The New York Times has published a report, drawing on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, that reveals the National Security Agency is able to circumvent the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards the privacy of much of the traffic on the Internet.

The most alarming part is that they want it all.

The Times' report explains how, exactly, the agency has been able to obtain so much access to the world's web traffic.

From The Times:

Because strong encryption can be so effective, classified N.S.A. documents make clear, the agency’s success depends on working with Internet companies — by getting their voluntary collaboration, forcing their cooperation with court orders or surreptitiously stealing their encryption keys or altering their software or hardware.

So the world's largest spy agency is paying companies, coercing companies, stealing from companies, and/or altering the software of companies to get the access to Internet data.

In the words of Bruce Schneier, an encryption expert and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the NSA is "doing it primarily by cheating, not by mathematics."

And the agency can only to this with the voluntary or involuntary cooperation of Internet companies.

That $250-million-a-year effort, called the Sigint Enabling Project“actively engages the U.S. and f! oreign I T industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial products’ designs” to make them “exploitable."

From The Guardian, which has published a parallel report:

"For the past decade, NSA has lead [sic] an aggressive, multi-pronged effort to break widely used internet encryption technologies," stated a 2010 GCHQ document. "Vast amounts of encrypted internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable."

Ultimately, beyond the capabilities provided through the a highly classified program, code-named Bullrun, is that the NSA and its British counterpart (i.e. GCHQ) want even more access.

From the New York Times (emphasis ours):

But the agencies’ goal was to move away from decrypting targets’ tools one by one and instead decode, in real time, all of the information flying over the world’s fiber optic cables and through its Internet hubs, only afterward searching the decrypted material for valuable intelligence.

One way to do this would be to obtain the master keys that companies use for Web encryption. It is unclear how far the U.S. and U.K. spy agencies have come to realizing that goal.

According to Schneier, there are still ways to remain secure against NSA surveillance.

SEE ALSO: CYBER EXPERT: The NSA Has The Means And Motive To Spy On Everyone

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PATRIOT Act Author: The NSA Has Abused Its Power Under The Law

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/patriot-act-author-nsa-abused-its-power-2013-9

ACLUThe U.S. government contends that the bulk collection of U.S. phone records is authorized by section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the author of the original USA PATRIOT Act, disagrees.

In a amicus brief filed in support of the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the National Security Agency's bulk collection of U.S. phone records, Sensenbrenner argues that the government has gone far beyond what the legislation authorizes.

Section 215, known as the business records provision, authorizes intelligence agencies to apply for information if "the records are relevant to an ongoing foreign intelligence investigation."

In practice, the NSA uses section 215 to collect data pertaining to every phone call to, from, and within the U.S. in the name of combating terrorism.

Sensenbrenner and the other members of Congress who enacted Section 215 "did not intend to authorize the program at issue in this lawsuit or any program of a comparable scope," according to the brief.

The brief goes on to propose this question (emphasis ours):

The NSA is gathering on a daily basis the details of every call that every American makes, as well as every call made by foreigners to or from the United States. How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?"

Filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the brief notes that Sensenbrenner "was not aware of the full scope of the program when he voted to reauthorize Section 215" and would have voted against it if he had known.

In Sensenbrenner's words: "The suggestion that the administration can violate the law because Congress failed to object is outrageous. But let them be on notice: I am objecting right now." 

SEE ALSO: The Best Hope Left For Americans' Privacy Is This 2012 Supreme Court Opinion

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