Apple, Samsung face threat from Indian & Chinese manufacturers.

 

Competition plays a key role in the advancement of any technology. Increase in the number of competitors increases the new trends in any field. Consider the field of mobiles in which Apple, Nokia, Samsung are the standard ones from a long time. But now there are many mobile brands like Xiaomi, Micromax, Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, Karbonn, Lava and many others.

A report from BI Intelligence states that Global consumer internet and mobile companies needs to work with other recent mobile companies so as not to miss any opportunity of mobile growth phase in recent market conditions. The report also states that Indian and Chinese smartphone manufacturing companies are producing new models of mobile at a reasonable cost compared to same mobile model of premium brands.

The smartphone market in India is dominated by the major company Samsung and also local brands of Micromax and Karbonn. These two local companies together accounted for about 60% of smartphone market. The local brands are becoming more and more popular because they are able to grab the growing demand for big, bright screens and dual-sim facilities. They are now trying to produce 4G LTE smartphones having the same power and quality as standard devices like Apple and Samsung.

Apple is the well-known smartphone all over the world in sales as well as technology. Next comes the Samsung. Recent reports has given the statistics comparing the market of standard brands and local brands of smartphones. Some of the key points of that report are given here.

Local brands account to about two-fifths of China’s market and one-fourth of India’s smartphone market. Xiaomi has already sold four of top ten best Android devices and also one of the top five app stores in China. Xiaomi used a four point strategy in manufacturing and selling those four top models of smartphone.

The top five manufacturers in China and top two in India together account to 65 million smartphones market for every four months. This figure of  local brands is more compared to even sales of Apple. Now it is concentrating on exceeding the sales of Samsung.

The main feature of local brand mobile manufacturers is they are running their own app store, mobile operating systems and mobile services which plays a major role in their success. They also provide some pre-loaded apps on the mobile.

The main reason for users showing interest towards local brands is nothing but the cost of mobile. So the local manufacturers in India and China are producing phones at a cost less than standard mobiles but with same features. An example of cost comparision is the iPhone 5 of Apple costs nearly four times of Micromax mobile.

Local brands of mobile are now concentrating to grow their branches world-wide in search of new opportunities. Micromax is in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Xiaomi is in Malaysia and Brazil. Huawei is already in US.

All these factors indicate that local brands are slowly gaining a prominent position in the market of mobile phones. If it is continued all the major mobile companies has to go on agreement with the local brands to influence their sales in respective countries. This is already happened in the case of BlackBerry which signed a deal with Micromax to take its BBM  messaging service for Android into India.

From QWERTY Keypad to Touch Screen… Now Comes the No-touch Screen phones from Microsoft.

Microsoft is currently working on the next generation technology that will enable the users to operate their mobile phones, tablets and television with a no-touch technology i.e. without the need to swipe them.

Microsoft said it has started working on such machines that work on the no-touch basis.

Rico Malvar, Microsoft’s chief scientist, said “work has begun on new screens that can be manipulated without needing to approach a gadget.”

The machine will work by detecting fingers movement and allowing them to flicker and poke the device by just imitating the moves. Bracelets will be created that will enable the users to operate any device by not being near to the device.

Also working on the technology like Robert Downey Jr. AKA Tony Stark of Iron man, people will see cubes floating in front of them and they would select the objects they would want to use.

Tim Large, a researcher from Microsoft Applied Sciences Group, said that final versions of these displays will be ready in two to five years.

Candy Crush games developer King valued at over $7bn

 

Candy Crush Saga is King's most popular game and the biggest contributor to its revenue

The games developer behind Candy Crush Saga, King, has been valued at over $7bn (£4.2bn) after it raised $500m listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

It sold 22.2 million shares priced at $22.50 per share - the mid-point of the range the firm had initially set.
King said it plans to use the money raised for "working capital" and "other general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions".
Candy Crush was the most downloaded free mobile app of 2013.
It is the most popular offering from King - which has a portfolio of of more than 180 games.
The game's popularity saw King's revenues rise to $1.8bn in 2013, from just $64m two years ago.
But there have been concerns that the firm relies too heavily on Candy Crush and that if its popularity faded, the company's revenue and profits would be hit.

According to the company, its top three games - Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga and Farm Heroes Saga - accounted for 95% of its total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2013.
The firm's shares will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

Flight MH370: 122 new objects spotted - Malaysia minister

A further 122 objects potentially from the missing Malaysian plane have been identified by satellite, the country's acting transport minister has said.

 

Jon Donnison reports from Fremantle Port in Perth, where much of the search operation is based 

The images, taken on 23 March, showed objects up to 23m (75ft) in length, Hishammuddin Hussein said.
Some of the objects captured by France-based Airbus appeared bright and were possibly of solid material.
Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared on 8 March with 239 people on board.

 

 

 The images were supplied by France-based firm Airbus Defence and Space

The objects were spotted in a 400 sq km area around 2,557km (1588 miles) from Perth in Western Australia, Mr Hishammuddin said

"This is another new lead that will help direct the search operation," he said, adding that the information had been handed to the Australian Rescue and Co-ordination Centre in Perth on Tuesday.

The latest images are the fourth known collection of satellite pictures showing possible debris in the southern Indian Ocean. No pieces have yet been recovered in the search area, which has now been split into an east and west section.
The transport minister said Malaysia Airlines was "now taking a lead in communicating with the families" and would be conducting its own press conferences.
Weather improves
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa), co-ordinating the search, said on Wednesday that flights had resumed and conditions had improved after rough seas and heavy rain forced air and sea operations to be suspended the previous day.
It said seven military and five civilian planes were taking part and a total of six countries were now involved - Australia, New Zealand, the US, Japan, China and the South Korea.

Hishammuddin Hussein: "This is another new lead that will help direct the search operation"

Australian authorities said on Wednesday that three more objects had been spotted by a civilian aircraft involved in the search.

However, it could not be confirmed whether they were related to the missing aircraft.
The search for debris from the missing plane is taking place in one of the world's remotest regions.
If debris confirmed to be from the plane is found, the search area will narrow further.
However, experts say the aircraft's locator beacons, which will help guide ships to the wreckage, now have less than two weeks of battery life remaining.
Specialised equipment which can help locate the beacon is being flown to the search area.

Daniel Tan says he will "not give up hope" that his brother is alive until a wreckage is found

Most China Mobile 4G users bought iPhone, chairman says

The company has just 1.3 million 4G customers right now, but expects that figure to jump to 50 million by the end of the year.

This might be a good year for Apple in China.
China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua on Thursday said that "most" of his company's 1.3 million 4G customers have bought the iPhone -- an important success rate for Apple, considering the carrier only started selling the company's handset in January. And despite that figure appearing to be small, China Mobile reported that it expects its total number of 4G subscribers to jump to 50 million by year's end. If Apple can keep its lead, that could mean a boatload of iPhone sales in China.
China Mobile has long been the crown jewel in any device maker's plans. The company has 776 million mobile subscribers, making it the largest carrier in the world. China Mobile is aggressively expanding its 4G LTE presence in China, which was reportedly a prerequisite for Apple before it signed a deal with the company. That 4G deal appears to be paying off.
Still, it wasn't all good news for China Mobile on Thursday. The company reported its first profit drop in 14 years, blaming it on increased capital investment in 4G networks. Subsidies paid to companies like Apple were also to blame for the drop

Weekend news round-up: Apple’s cable deal, the coder generation

In our weekend news round-up: Apple deal with Comcast in negotiations; the CoderDojo revolution is in full flight; Target hack inspires a Hollywood movie; and it’s a Turkey shoot as PM takes aim at Twitter.

Weekend news round-up: Apple’s cable deal, the coder generation

CoderDojo founder James Whelton at Slane Castle last year

In our weekend news round-up: Apple deal with Comcast in negotiations; the CoderDojo revolution is in full flight; Target hack inspires a Hollywood movie; and it’s a Turkey shoot as PM takes aim at Twitter.

Apple gets its TV house in order

Apple may finally be nearing a breakthrough content deal for its Apple TV product as well as striking a deal to ease web congestion, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The tech giant is in discussions with US cable giant Comcast.
“The discussions between the world's most valuable company and the nation's largest cable provider are still in early stages and many hurdles remain. But the deal, if sealed, would mark a new level of

Apple gets its TV house in order

Apple may finally be nearing a breakthrough content deal for its Apple TV product as well as striking a deal to ease web congestion, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The tech giant is in discussions with US cable giant Comcast.
“The discussions between the world's most valuable company and the nation's largest cable provider are still in early stages and many hurdles remain. But the deal, if sealed, would mark a new level of cooperation and integration between a technology company and a cable provider to modernize TV viewing.

“Apple's intention is to allow users to stream live and on-demand TV programming and digital-video recordings stored in the "cloud," effectively taking the place of a traditional cable set-top box.
“Apple would benefit from a cable-company partner because it wants the new TV service's traffic to be separated from public Internet traffic over the ‘last mile’—the portion of a cable operator's pipes that connect to customers' homes, the people familiar with the matter say. That stretch of the Internet tends to get clogged when too many users in a region try to access too much bandwidth at the same time.”

No ghost to give up at Apple

Continuing with Apple, the New York Times said that despite a book entitled “Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs” by Yukari I. Kane suggesting the tech giant is on its knees in the vacuum following the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, it’s pretty much business as usual at the California company.
“The technology industry is brutal, and Apple, like any other company, could fail. But the fact that Apple has gone four years without some category-defining new product isn’t evidence that Apple has lost its way. Instead, it mainly proves that Apple under Mr. Cook is operating just like Apple under Mr. Jobs.
“That should be reassuring to anyone who cares about the future of the company.”

The coder generation

The Guardian featured a charming interview with CoderDojo co-founder James Whelton and recounted how the coding classes have become a global phenomenon.
“Their success comes from working with a generation of children who have had access to computing since they were a young age, while at the same time not having to adhere to traditional classroom teaching structures, said Whelton. Some of the measurements of the clubs' successes are how previously insular or isolated children come out of their shells in the classes, he said.
“’Screw creating the next Mark Zuckerberg. I want to see kids who become passionate about programming and go into medicine and politics, go into whatever field and use their skills to solve problems there and completely revolutionise it. I think that is infinitely more powerful to our society,’ Whelton said.”

Target hack inspires Hollywood movie

The Hollywood Reporter reported that the journalist who exposed the Target security breach is to be the subject of a major Hollywood movie.
“Sony has picked up the rights to the New York Times article ‘Reporting From the Web’s Underbelly,’ which focused on cyber security blogger Brian Krebs. Krebs, with his site KrebsonSecurity.com, was the first person to expose the credit card breach at Target that shook the retail world in December.
“Richard Wenk, the screenwriter who wrote Sony's high-testing big-screen version of The Equalizer, is on board to write what is being envisioned as a cyber-thriller inspired by the article and set in the high-stakes international criminal world of cyber-crime.
Escape Artists' Steve Tisch, Todd Black and Jason Blumenthal are producing as are Todd Hoffman andRichard Arlook. David Bloomfield will executive produce.”

Wage fixing cartel in Silicon Valley bigger than first thought

Pandodaily reported that Apple and Google’s notorious wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies and affected around 1m employees.
“Confidential internal Google and Apple memos, buried within piles of court dockets and reviewed by PandoDaily, clearly show that what began as a secret cartel agreement between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt to illegally fix the labor market for hi-tech workers, expanded within a few years to include companies ranging from Dell, IBM, eBay and Microsoft, to Comcast, Clear Channel, Dreamworks, and London-based public relations behemoth WPP.
“All told, the combined workforces of the companies involved totals well over a million employees.”

It’s a Turkey shoot as PM bans Twitter

The Washington Post has reported that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strengthened his Twitter ban by instituting an IP level block against the social network.
“When the block was first implemented, most Internet Service Providers appeared to be using DNS redirects to show users inside Turkey a page citing various court orders Twitter had not responded to as justification for the ban. DNS, or the Domain Name System, is sort of like a phone book for the Internet — it translates a URL into the numbers of IP addresses so browsers can access the Internet. Local ISPs were essentially changing the record in their digital phone books and redirecting many people in Turkey who were attempting to access Twitter to a different destination.

“But this redirection could be circumvented by changing the record manually and relying on a different DNS server. In Turkey, many users turned to public DNS servers, including some operated by Google — in fact, the records for those DNS servers ended up in protest graffiti widely shared online. But earlier Saturday, the local Hurriyet Daily News reported that most, if not all, DNS options were blocked — including Google's.

Australian ship homes in on possible debris from Malaysia plane

Journalists look at the monitor of a television camera crew who shot footage onboard a P-3 Orion aircraft of objects in the southern Indian Ocean, during a search of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, after returning to RAAF Base Pearce in Bullsbrook, near Perth March 24, 2014.

(Reuters) - An Australian navy ship was close to finding possible debris from a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner on Monday as a mounting number of sightings of floating objects raised hopes wreckage of the plane may soon be found.
The HMAS Success should reach two objects spotted by Australian military aircraft by Tuesday morning at the latest, Malaysia's government said, offering the first chance of picking up suspected debris from the plane.
So far, ships in the international search effort have been unable to locate several "suspicious" objects spotted by satellites in grainy images or by fast-flying aircraft over a vast search area in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

"HMAS Success is on scene and is attempting to locate and recover these objects," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who called his Malaysia counterpart Najib Razak to inform him of the sighting, said in a statement to parliament.
The objects, described as a "grey or green circular object" and an "orange rectangular object", were spotted about 2,500 km west of Perth on Monday afternoon, said Abbott, adding that three planes were also en route to the area.

Neither Malaysia nor Australia gave details on the objects' size.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people on board on March 8. No confirmed sighting of the plane has been made since and there is no clue what went wrong.
Attention and resources in the search for the Boeing 777 have shifted from an initial focus north of the Equator to an increasingly narrowed stretch of rough sea in the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from the original flight path.

Earlier on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency said a Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft spotted two "relatively big" floating objects and several smaller white ones dispersed over several kilometres.
Beijing responded cautiously to the find. "At present, we cannot yet confirm that the floating objects are connected with the missing plane," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a news briefing in Beijing.

Australia said that a U.S. Navy plane searching the area on Monday had been unable to locate the objects.
China has diverted its icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, toward the location where the debris was spotted. A flotilla of other Chinese ships are also steadily making their way south. The ships will start to arrive in the area on Tuesday.

Over 150 of the passengers on board the missing plane were Chinese.
The latest sighting followed reports by an Australian crew over the weekend of a floating wooden pallet and strapping belts in an area of the icy southern Indian Ocean that was identified after satellites recorded images of potential debris.
In a further sign the search may be bearing fruit, the U.S. Navy is flying in its high-tech black box detector to the area.

The so-called black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - record what happens on board planes in flight. At crash sites, finding the black boxes soon is crucial because the locator beacons they carry fade out after 30 days.
"If debris is found we will be able to respond as quickly as possible since the battery life of the black box's pinger is limited," Commander Chris Budde, U.S. Seventh Fleet Operations Officer, said in an emailed statement.
Budde stressed that bringing in the black box detector, which is towed behind a vessel at slow speeds and can pick up "pings" from a black box to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet, was a precautionary measure.

The Chinese aircraft that spotted the objects was one of two IL-76s searching on Monday. Another eight aircraft, from Australia, the United States and Japan, were scheduled to make flights throughout the day to the search site, some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth.
"EVERYONE IS QUITE HYPED"

"The flight has been successful in terms of what we were looking for today. We were looking for debris in the water and we sighted a number of objects on the surface and beneath the surface visually as we flew over the top if it," said Flight Lieutenant Josh Williams, on board a Royal Australian Air Force P-3 Orion.

"The first object was rectangular in shape and slightly below the ocean. The second object was circular, also slightly below the ocean. We came across a long cylindrical object that was possibly two meters long, 20 cm across.
"Everyone is quite hyped."

Australia was also analysing French radar images showing potential floating debris that were taken some 850 km (530 miles) north of the current search area.
Australia has used a U.S. satellite image of two floating objects to frame its search area. A Chinese satellite has also spotted an object floating in the ocean there, estimated at 22 metres long (74ft) and 13 metres (43ft) wide.

It could not be determined easily from the blurred images whether the objects were the same as those detected by the Australian and Chinese search planes, but the Chinese photograph could depict a cluster of smaller objects, said a military officer from one of the 26 nations involved in the search.
The wing of a Boeing 777-200ER is approximately 27 metres long and 14 metres wide at its base, according to estimates derived from publicly available scale drawings. Its fuselage is 63.7 metres long by 6.2 metres wide.

NASA said it would use high-resolution cameras aboard satellites and the International Space Station to look for possible crash sites in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. space agency is also examining archived images collected by instruments on its Terra and Aqua environmental satellites.
Investigators believe someone on the flight shut off the plane's communications systems. Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and re-crossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.

That has led them to focus on hijacking or sabotage, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems. Faint electronic "pings" detected by a commercial satellite suggested it flew for another six hours or so, but could do no better than place its final signal on one of two vast arcs north and south.
While the southern arc is now the main focus of the search, Malaysia says efforts will continue in both corridors until confirmed debris is found.

Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane: Possible Debris Located in Search for Jet

An Australian plane spotted "two objects" -- described as "circular" and "rectangular" -- today in the south Indian Ocean while searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 -- evidence described as "new leads" but "nothing conclusive," Malaysian officials said.

The potential plane debris -- spotted in the search area southwest of the Australian city of Perth -- were described by officials as grey or green and circular, while the second was orange and rectangular, officials said.

Malaysian officials said the Australian navy supply ship, the HMAS Success, was attempting to locate the objects as soon as "the next few hours" to see if they are related to missing plane. 

"It's possible that HMAS Success could pick up the objects within the next few hours or by tomorrow morning at the latest," Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said during a news conference. "It is currently the only vessel in the search area."  

Hussein also said they are working to "narrow the search area" and that 18,500-square nautical miles had already been searched yesterday, while another 20,000 were scoured today.

"There are new leads, but nothing conclusive," Hussein said in describing the possible debris spotted by the Australians.

The announcement came only hours after other "suspicious objects" had been spotted by a Chinese aircraft within the search area while searching for missing jetliner, but could not subsequently be located by the U.S. Navy, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

The crew aboard an IL-76 plane spotted the two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered over several square miles within the search area, according to China's Xinhua News Agency. The U.S. Navy's P-8 Poseidon was unable to subsequently locate the objects.

The coordinates of the potential plane's debris were reported to the to the Australian command center, which is coordinating the multinational search.

The P-8 Poseidon was tasked to investigate the reported object sightings by the Chinese aircraft at 33,000 feet, but that the American military plane was unable to relocate the objects, AMSA tweeted.

The Chinese plane was one of two Ilyushins that joined the search today from Perth, Australia, increasing the number of aircraft to 10. The U.S. Navy has also moved a black box locator into the region to aid in the search. The Towed Pinger Locator is dragged behind a vessel and can hear the beeps from black boxes all way down to a depth of 20,000 feet.

Satellite images from Australia, China and France had earlier identified possible debris in the area, but searchers in the air have yet to find these objects and confirm they are connected to missing Flight MH370. What was believed to be a wooden pallet that could have come from the jet was seen by one plane Saturday, but another search plane sent to photograph it could not locate the pallet.

Hussein said the missing Boeing 777-200 was carrying wooden pallets, but said there's no confirmation whether they are linked to pallets found in the water.

Malaysian authorities also said they had also interviewed over 100 people as part of the investigation, including the families of the pilot and co-pilot, but offered no other details.

Malaysia's police chief, Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar, repeated that all the passengers had been cleared of suspicion.

Malaysian authorities are considering the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board.

Minecraft movie in the works at Warner Bros.

Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of the beloved indie sandbox sensation, reveals on Twitter that Warner Bros. and his studio Mojang are bringing Minecraft to the big screen.

(Credit: Mojang)

Following the massive success of "The Lego Movie," it sounds like block-based blockbusters -- a pun no one could possibly refrain from using -- are a sure-fire recipe for Hollywood success. Up next: the Minecraft movie.

Dropping a bombshell on Twitter in the form of a sneaky 128-character admission, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson revealed that he and Mojang, the studio the 34-year-old Swedish developer formed to manage the title and its expansion, are working with Warner Bros. Pictures to develop a film around the game.

Persson has already confirmed that the tweet is no joke. "It's for real. I think every part of that tweet was real, including me wanting to be the one to spill the news about a potential movie," he told Polygon via e-mail. "It would be nice to tell people when it's 100 percent solid rather than to leak it before it's completely final, but our hands were a bit tied and rushed here."

Persson has already confirmed that the tweet is no joke. "It's for real. I think every part of that tweet was real, including me wanting to be the one to spill the news about a potential movie," he told Polygon via e-mail. "It would be nice to tell people when it's 100 percent solid rather than to leak it before it's completely final, but our hands were a bit tied and rushed here." 

The studio acquired the rights from Mojang, Deadline reported Thursday, and the project is already garnering huge interest from writers and directors. Warner Bros. intends on making a live-action film, and has already signed up Roy Lee, the mastermind producer behind "The Lego Movie," to tackle the project through his production company Vertigo Entertainment.

Since its release in 2011, Minecraft has become one of the most astonishing success stories in gaming history. Just yesterday, Persson announced on Twitter that the original PC version of Minecraft has reached 100 million users, with 14.3 million of them being paid accounts. Not too shabby, especially when you consider that Minecraft for the Xbox 360 and Minecraft: Pocket Edition for iOS and Android have each sold more than 10 million copies, while more than 1 million copies have been downloaded on the PlayStation 3 since that version's December 2013 release.
And the Minecraft train is not slowing down. Beyond the prospective live-action film, Mojang hopes to put out Minecraft for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita, with titles currently in development.

Bitcoin losses spur Mt. Gox to bankruptcy filing

Bad day for the big Bitcoin exchange: CEO Mark Karpeles says Mt. Gox lost some 750,000 customer bitcoins, plus 100,000 of its own.

 Mt. Gox chief Mark Karpeles (second from right) speaks at a press conference in Tokyo on February 28, 2014.

(Credit: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)
Mt. Gox, the embattled Bitcoin exchange, has filed for bankruptcy protection after falling into a state of disarray earlier this month in the wake of a security lapse that led to fraudulent withdrawals.
The exchange's CEO, Mark Karpeles, announced the news in Tokyo on Friday, saying that Mt. Gox lost nearly 750,000 customer bitcoins, as well as 100,000 of the exchange's own bitcoins. The total number of lost bitcoins translates to nearly $500 million at the current exchange rate, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

At the Tokyo press conference, Karpeles expressed contrition about Mt. Gox's crash, and sought to separate that development from the larger Bitcoin movement. "First of all, I'm very sorry," he said, according to Reuters. "The bitcoin industry is healthy and it is growing. It will continue, and reducing the impact is the most important point."

The massive loss of bitcoins had been rumored all week. Due to the currency's encryption technology, it might be difficult, if not impossible, for the stolen bitcoins to be restored to their owners' accounts, leaving people across the globe with significant losses.
At its height, Mt. Gox was one of the most popular Bitcoin exchanges. It was often cited in news stories discussing the startling rise of the Bitcoin phenomenon, which at one time, flirted with a bitcoin value of $1,000.

Mt. Gox's Karpeles acknowledged that the bitcoins were stolen through a weakness in his company's system that allowed hackers to slowly withdraw the currency.
According to Karpeles' lawyer, Mt. Gox has $63.6 million in debt, and about half that in assets. Even with the filing for bankruptcy protection, Karpeles would like to see Mt. Gox live on and come back, though it's not clear whether that will happen or whether customers would come back and use the exchange. In the meantime, Mt. Gox has been shuttered.

Really Francis? Here's where 'House of Cards' could use IT help

Crave's Eric Mack has been binging on season 2 of the Netflix series for two weeks now, long enough to notice some of the hackiness of the hacker subplot. He's talking to you, USB dongle of destiny.

Vice President Underwood might know how to manipulate everyone from the president on down, but he doesn't seem to know that deleting a text message doesn't guarantee that it's gone forever.

(Credit: Netflix)
The second season of "House of Cards" starring Kevin Spacey as ruthless politician Francis Underwood arrived in one big batch of 13 episodes exactly two weeks ago, and we've all been binge-watching since. By the way, if you haven't yet made it all the way through season 2, this is about as far as you should read without risking spoilers. I'll say that again in all caps for you skim-readers out there -- SPOILER ALERT!!! That's better.
The web of intertwined intrigue and drama this season also introduced a new plotline in which fictional Washington Herald deputy editor Lucas Goodwin becomes ensnared in a plot to gain access to an AT&T server farm with the assistance of shadowy hacker Gavin Orsay. Goodwin believes Orsay is assisting him in tracking down evidence of Underwood's murderous habits. Unbeknownst to Goodwin, however, Orsay is a grudging informant for the FBI, which is entrapping Goodwin to send him off to prison and out of Underwood's hair.

With so much tech and hacker content in the storyline, and "House of Cards" more or less a production of the Hollywood establishment (albeit Spacey and the awesome wing of said establishment), there were inevitably going to be some howlingly hilarious loopholes in how both are portrayed in the show. I've now completed my second viewing of season 2, and tracked down almost a dozen such faults that you can relive and cringe at again in the gallery below, including an IT pro's fatefully password-unprotected iPhone, the amazing iPad fingerprint cam, and the USB dongle of destiny.

On my first viewing, a lot of these problems jumped right out at me, but upon going through the episodes again, I gained more respect for the effort "House of Cards" puts forth in balancing realism with the visual appeal that seems to be a prerequisite for Hollywood hacker subplots.
Much of this was apparently thanks to Gregg Housh, a hacker of note in the 1990s who spent a little time in prison for those activities, and last year advised the show's producers on this season's hacker narrative.
"There are some concessions that had to be made for keeping things visually interesting, and some things where the story had to take precedence over what was most realistic from a tech standpoint, but nowhere near as many as I was fearing," Housh wrote in a Guardian piece about his feelings on the final product.

After reading about Housh's involvement in the show, other real-life parallels started to jump out at me. The fate of journalist Lucas Goodwin nearly mirrors that of real-life former Reuters social-media editor Matthew Keys. He was indicted last year on charges that he conspired with Anonymous hackers to break into the Web site of the Los Angeles Times.

Others, like Vice, have suggested that Orsay's character is similar to that of LulzSec hacker-turned-informant Hector Xavier Monsegur, aka "Sabu," whom I had a prolonged tweet war with back in 2011 when he was still believed to be an active hacktivist. However, while Sabu has come to be roundly detested among hackers for his role in assisting law enforcement, the Orsay character is clearly unhappy about being forced to inform, even going so far as to demand freedom for real-world friend-of-hackers Barrett Brown, who currently faces up to a century in prison.
All in all, I have to concur with Housh, and might go a bit further to declare that "House of Cards" has pulled off one of the better portrayals of tech in modern media. However, that's a really low bar, and I'm left with bated breath to see what will come out first: a third season of the show that does an even better job getting it right, or that awesome iPad camera that's also a fingerprint scanner.

You'll find the code on the iPhone of your head of IT, who fortunately doesn't password-protect the device.

(Credit: Video Screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)

Who needs 100-foot scuba limits with this 1,000-foot exosuit?

Recreational divers must not go deeper than 100 feet, but this special suit, on display at the American Museum of Natural History, allows safe diving for hours.

Diver Michael Lombardi tests out the "exosuit," which allows going to depths of 1,000 feet.

(Credit: American Museum of Natural History)
As anyone who's ever been a recreational scuba diver knows, diving beyond a depth of 100 feet requires special training. So imagine being able to go down to 1,000 feet and stay there for hours.
That's the goal of the deep-diving "exosuit," a "next-generation atmospheric diving system" that will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History through March 5.

The 6.5-foot-tall, 530-pound, hard-metal suit is designed to let a diver reach depths of 1,000 feet, where water pressure is 30 times that of the surface, and to conduct special scientific work there. Among those tasks, for which the suit will be used during the Stephen J. Barlow Bluewater Expedition this July, are things like imaging deep-water marine life with high-resolution underwater cameras, and sampling.

The exosuit is owned by the J.F. White Contracting Company, and the July expedition is meant to explore an area known as "The Canyons" off the coast of New England. There, depths drop to 10,000 feet. With the exosuit, scientists can study the so-called mesopelagic, or midwater, zone. According to a release about the museum exhibit, this zone is ideal because many different marine animals, including some that bioluminesce (using chemical reactions to generate visible light) pass vertically through it.

The suit will be used in conjunction with a special remotely operated vehicle known as the DeepReef-ROV, which can study bioluminescent and biofluorescent animal life in the deep.
To be sure, atmospheric suits like the exosuit have been in use for decades. But the hope is that the exosuit, which features four 1.6-horsepower thrusters and 18 rotary joints in the legs and arms, will allow scientists to broaden their ability to study the deep.

Tim Cook: Apple TV did over $1B in 2013 revenue

At Apple's annual gathering of shareholders, CEO Tim Cook said the product is more than a "hobby."

(Credit: Apple) CUPERTINO, Calif. -- While the iPhone and iPad have come to dominate Apple's business, the television has often been relegated to an afterthought for the company. So much for Apple TV being just a hobby, said Chief Executive Tim Cook.
"That hobby was over a billion dollars of revenue last year," Cook said during the company's annual meeting with shareholders here. "It's a little hard to call it a hobby anymore."
The billion-dollar figure includes content sales conducted by Apple on the platform -- like movies and TV shows -- and not just hardware sales of its set-top box. At Friday's meeting, Cook did not specify the breakdown between the two revenue streams.

Still, the milestone means the product is getting attention from consumers. A little over a year ago, Cook announced that in the first quarter of the 2013 fiscal year, the company sold more than 2 million Apple TVs, up from 1.4 million a year before. (Although it's worth noting that Apple's first quarter includes results from the holiday shopping season.)
The company also is said to be refreshing the product during the first half of this year, but the update is reportedly to enhance its content experience -- possibly adding a game center and a version of the App Store.

Still, a billion dollars is less than one percent of the company's total net sales last year. And the set-top box is far from what many fans have wanted for a long time -- a full-fledged Apple TV set. Cook has said that the company will be entering new product categories this year. And on Friday, he had a little fun with all the anticipation. "I'd like to unveil some new products today," he said, as an overflow room full of reporters gasped. "I was just kidding about that last part," he added, grinning.
But on the topic of innovation and research and development, Cook did say that the company has acquired 23 companies in the last 16 months. Thus far, the company's recent playbook has been to buy out smaller companies for technological gains, and Cook reiterated the point on Friday. "We're not in a race to pay the most. Not in a race to get the headline," he said, likely a veiled reference to Facebook's blockbuster acquisition of messaging service WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion. But he didn't rule out a splashy buy. "That doesn't mean we won't buy a big company tomorrow afternoon."

At the meeting, all of the motions proposed by Apple to shareholders were approved, while the motions proposed by individual investors were denied.
The gathering was originally billed in the press as a showdown between activist investor Carl Icahn and Apple over the company's buyback program. Icahn has been vocal about Apple repurchasing more of its stock. In December, he announced a nonbinding proposal for Apple shareholders to vote on a buyback at Friday's meeting.

But Icahn then announced earlier this month that he would pull the proposal, mainly because the Institutional Shareholder Services, a trade organization, urged shareholders to vote against it, and because Apple had increased the volume of its stock repurchasing. After investor disappointment over first-quarter results, Cook announced that the company had bought back $14 billion worth of shares in two weeks. The company is said to be on course to repurchase $32 billion by year's end, just $18 billion off Icahn's $50 billion sum.
Still, Cook said on Friday that the company is deliberating its buyback decisions, and will issue an update of its plans in the next 60 days.

But even without the Icahn drama, the meeting was not without its excitement. A group of Silicon Valley security guards -- including Apple's own -- held a protest outside the building demanding more secure contracts for the guards. The demonstration was just another example of the culture clash engulfing the tech industry in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

$7,000-per-month tech interns are making bank, says report

Glassdoor releases a list of the highest-paying companies for interns and (surprise, surprise) most of them are tech companies.

An Intel intern from 2012 from the group's "Call Me Maybe" video.

(Credit: Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)
If you had to hazard a guess as to which company pays its interns the most, which would you pick? Google perhaps? Close. Maybe Twitter? Very close.
Twitter is in the Top 3, but the No. 1 company is probably not one you'll guess. It's Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based software and services company that largely works on government contracts.

According to a report released Friday by Glassdoor, an online jobs and career company, Palantir's average monthly base pay for an intern is $7,012. It's enough to make you think you've gone into the wrong field of work. Glassdoor's report was gathered from anonymous information provided by the site's users and is based on companies with at least 20 intern salary reports shared over the last two years.

Hot on the heels of Palantir comes VMware with an average salary of $6,966, followed by Twitter at $6,791, LinkedIn with $6,230, and Facebook at $6,213. Microsoft, Ebay, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Nvidia aren't too far behind. Intel might sound relatively stingy at $4,648 down in the 23rd spot -- until you compare it to Glassdoor's average pay calculation for all interns on its site, which lands between $2,400 and $3,100 per month.

Glassdoor also collected comments from interns about their jobs and working environments. A support engineer intern at Palantir had this to say: "Work is motivated by a real mission. Very few people are there just for money." A Microsoft Research intern lauded the housing, car rental, and relocation subsidies.
Perhaps the most interesting comment comes from a Yahoo Tech intern, who mentions "free lunch and snakes." That came from a former employee at Yahoo's Champaign, Ill., office. It's probably just an unfortunate typo -- snacks, perhaps? -- but some reptile fans may consider it a significant perk. Check out the full top-25 list below.

(Credit: Glassdoor)