Tag: privacy-rights

Zynga almost breaks even in Q3, but user base still contracts

On Thursday, Zynga released its third quarter results and showed a loss of only $68,000—far better than the embattled gaming company’s losses of $52 million this time last year. And, because that loss was small, beating Zynga’s own expectations for Q3, its shares got a 12 percent boost in after-hours trading on Wall Street, Thursday evening. Still, that modicum of good news is just a sugar coat on an otherwise dismal earnings statement. Zynga’s Q3 revenue was only $203 million, which constitutes a decrease of 36 percent year-over-year, and a decrease of 12 percent from the quarter before. Also, Daily and Monthly Active Users were both down for Zynga. The company lost almost a quarter of its Daily Active Users compared to Q2 2013 (and that statistic is becoming a bit of a trend: we saw that exact headline on last quarter’s earnings report, too). And Zynga lost nearly 30 percent of its Monthly Active Users from Q2 2013. From Q3 2012, the statistics were down 49 percent and 57 percent, respectively. But it looks like Zynga will be progressing conservatively from here. For the fourth quarter of 2013, the company projected revenue in the range of $175 million to $185 million (a substantial decrease from this quarter’s earnings) and a net loss in the range of $31 million to $21 million. After a summer in which the company laid off 18 percent of its workforce and shuttered Omgpop , a games company it acquired for $200 million, Zynga’s next few months will be watched carefully to see how (and whether) the company will weather 2014. Read on Ars Technica | Comments        

Visit link:
Zynga almost breaks even in Q3, but user base still contracts

Hackers compromise official PHP website, infect visitors with malware (updated)

Wikipedia Maintainers of the open-source PHP programming language have locked down the php.net website after discovering two of its servers were hacked to host malicious code designed to surreptitiously install malware on visitors’ computers. The compromise was discovered Thursday morning by Google’s safe browsing service , which helps the Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers automatically block sites that serve drive-by exploits. Traces of the malicious JavaScript code served to some php.net visitors were captured and posted to Hacker News here and, in the form of a pcap file , to a Barracuda Networks blog post here . The attacks started Tuesday and lasted through Thursday morning, PHP officials wrote in a statement posted late that evening . Eventually, the site was moved to a new set of servers, PHP officials wrote in an earlier statement . There’s no evidence that any of the code they maintain has been altered, they added. Encrypted HTTPS access to php.net websites is temporarily unavailable until a new secure sockets layer certificate is issued and installed. The old certificate was revoked out of concern the intruders may have accessed the private encryption key. User passwords will be reset in the coming days. At time of writing, there was no indication of any further compromise. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

Taken from:
Hackers compromise official PHP website, infect visitors with malware (updated)

US carbon emissions hit lowest level since 1994 despite economic growth

US EIA Last year, the US saw its lowest carbon emissions since 1994, continuing a downward trend that began in 2008 during the economic crisis. It marks the second year in a row that carbon emissions have dropped despite a growth in gross domestic product. Prior to the last few years, economic growth had been closely tied to increased carbon emissions. The US Energy Information Administration released the data yesterday after having taken a bit of an unwanted break during the government shutdown. In analyzing the data, it identified a variety of causes for the drop in carbon emissions. As shown above, population size and economic activity both grew last year, which would normally push emissions up. But the energy required for that economic activity dropped, and the carbon intensity of the energy supply dropped as well. Combined, those two factors more than offset the economic growth. One of the simplest factors behind the lower energy use was a relatively warm winter at the start of 2012, which lowered residential energy demand significantly. Transportation also managed to contribute. Although miles travelled held steady, the turnover in the vehicle fleet brought more energy-efficient cars onto the road, meaning that it took less fuel to do all that travel. Another contributor is the turnover in electrical generation. Coal use dropped dramatically, replaced by a combination of natural gas and wind power. A drop in manufacturing contributed to a slight drop in overall energy use. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

View article:
US carbon emissions hit lowest level since 1994 despite economic growth

Apple unveils redesigned 9.7” iPad Air, available November 1

The big iPad just got a little smaller. Apple has just announced the fifth-generation version of its 9.7-inch flagship tablet, and as expected the tablet has gotten its first major design overhaul since the iPad 2 came out in early 2011. It’s now the “iPad Air.” The device will be available on November 1, and the entry level 16GB price will start at $499 for Wi-Fi only, and $629 with cellular data capabilities. The large iPad will be getting a tidy performance boost from Apple’s new 64-bit A7 SoC, which made its debut in the iPhone 5S. Apple is promising an 8x improvement in CPU performance and a 72x improvement in GPU performance over the original iPad. The device also gets its Wi-Fi upgraded to MIMO technology, gaining multiple multiple antennas provide to transfer data at up to 300Mbps over 802.11n. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

See more here:
Apple unveils redesigned 9.7” iPad Air, available November 1

Wikipedia editors, locked in battle with PR firm, delete 250 accounts

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Flickr user: Niccolò Caranti Wikipedia editors have disabled hundreds of paid Wikipedia editing accounts in recent weeks as part of a campaign against so-called “sockpuppetry.” The efforts were described in a statement published this morning by the Wikimedia Foundation, in which director Sue Gardner acknowledged that “as many as several hundred” accounts belong to editors who are being paid to promote products or services on the site. That’s a violation of Wikipedia policies and terms of use, Gardner noted. “As a result, Wikipedians aiming to protect the projects against non-neutral editing have blocked or banned more than 250 user accounts,” continued Gardner. “The Wikimedia Foundation takes this issue seriously and has been following it closely.” The statement follows reports earlier this month in the The Daily Dot and last week in Vice .  The stories describe the increasing amounts of money flowing toward paid editing of English-language Wikipedia pages. According to both articles, Wikipedia editors attribute the growth in paid edits to a company called Wiki-PR . Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

View article:
Wikipedia editors, locked in battle with PR firm, delete 250 accounts

Obama administration launches “tech surge” to improve Healthcare.gov

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on October 20 that the agency has launched a “tech surge” to make improvements to the troubled Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchange website , HealthCare.gov. The move comes as President Barack Obama reportedly prepares to speak about the site’s issues at an event today highlighting the ACA, frequently referred to as “Obamacare.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius had previously blamed most of the problems experienced by citizens visiting the site on unexpected demand. But as problems have continued, the White House has grown increasingly frustrated with the site’s performance. An administration official told the Washington Post that the president and others in the administration “find [the problems with HealthCare.gov] unacceptable.” While HealthCare.gov is being operated almost entirely by a team of contractors, HHS is now stepping in to take an active role in resolving the site’s problems. In a blog post , an unidentified agency spokesperson wrote “Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

Original post:
Obama administration launches “tech surge” to improve Healthcare.gov

Windows 8.1: What a difference a year makes

Windows 8 was an ambitious operating system. Microsoft’s goal was, and still is, to have a single operating system that can span the traditional PC, the tablet, and everything in between . To do this, the company introduced a new kind of application —the “Modern” or “Metro” style application. It created a new style of interaction—an edge-based UI for touch users, a hot-corner based one for mouse users. And it developed a new application launcher—the Start screen. Microsoft retained the familiar Windows desktop for running traditional mouse and keyboard driven Windows software. Windows 8 worked. It was a viable operating system, and in broad strokes, it fulfilled Microsoft’s dream of one operating system for tablets and PCs. But Windows 8 was far from perfect. Its problems were in three main areas. Read 91 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

Read more here:
Windows 8.1: What a difference a year makes

Ubuntu 13.10 review: The Linux OS of the future remains a year away

After the customary six months of incubation, Ubuntu 13.10—codenamed Saucy Salamander—has hatched. The new version of the popular Linux distribution brings updated applications and several new features, including augmented search capabilities in the Unity desktop shell. Although Saucy Salamander offers some useful improvements, it’s a relatively thin update. XMir, the most noteworthy item on the 13.10 roadmap, was ultimately deferred for inclusion in a future release. Canonical’s efforts during the Saucy development cycle were largely focused on the company’s new display server and upcoming Unity overhaul, but neither is yet ready for the desktop. Due to the unusual nature of this Ubuntu update, this review is going to diverge a bit from the usual formula. The first half will include a hands-on look at the new Unity features. The second half will take a close look at the Ubuntu roadmap and some of the major changes that we can expect to see over the course of the next several releases. Read 46 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

Read this article:
Ubuntu 13.10 review: The Linux OS of the future remains a year away

Square drastically simplifies Internet cash transfers

The screen where users enter their debit card information. Financial startup Square launched a new arm of its business Tuesday that allows two parties to transfer cash between themselves using only their debit card numbers and e-mail. Square Cash may trump similar services like PayPal in ease of use in that it doesn’t require extra bank info, and transactions can happen directly via e-mail. Competitors like PayPal have been able to handle direct debit transactions for some time, though setup is a bit more of a hassle. Users have to enter their checking account numbers and routing numbers and then verify their accounts with two small deposits, so the process can take a few days. With Square Cash, the process begins in e-mail : users send an e-mail to the person they want to pay, cc cash@square.com, and enter the amount in the subject line. If it’s their first transaction, Square sends a second e-mail that leads the user to a screen where they enter their debit card number, expiration date, and ZIP code. Once the person on the other end gets the e-mail and fills out the same form, the transaction is completed in 1-2 days. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

View original post here:
Square drastically simplifies Internet cash transfers

Facebook to rip search opt-out from under those who were using it

Here’s the dialog you’ll see if you were opted out of search, when Facebook gets around to opting you back in. Facebook If you checked that box saying you don’t want to appear in Facebook search results, get ready: soon, that choice is going away. Facebook announced in a blog post Thursday that it’s removing the ability to opt out of appearing in search results, both for friends and globally, for those who’ve had it enabled. Facebook actually removed the search opt-out for everyone who didn’t have it enabled early this year, around the time it introduced Graph Search . Now, ten months later, Facebook is giving the boot to anyone who actually cared enough to opt out, referring to the checkbox as an “old search setting.” Facebook claims that less than one percent of users were taking advantage of the feature. In simpler times, Facebook was smaller and easier to navigate, and everyone had a privacy setting asking “Who can look up your timeline by name?” Now that there are so many profiles that users become confused when they know they have a friend or know someone in a group, but try to find them by search and they don’t appear, says Facebook. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

See the article here:
Facebook to rip search opt-out from under those who were using it