Tech news and more ....: July 2015

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Zuckerberg to Wall Street: Be Patient, Big Things Take Time. #Zuckerberg , #facebook , #wallstreet

Patience is a rare investor virtue. Mark Zuckerberg thinks he has the track record to ask for it.

Facebook Inc. had just reported second-quarter revenue Wednesday that beat analysts’ estimates, and on a conference call some of the same analysts asked the chief executive about applications that could be making billions on their own -- WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Zuckerberg didn’t seem eager to placate his questioners with promises, projections or even updated user numbers.

“We would ask for some patience on this to do this correctly,” he said of Facebook’s Messenger.

The focus for the three applications was still on expanding their communities, he said. Messenger has 700 million users, more than double the size of Twitter Inc., WhatsApp has 800 million and Instagram has more than 300 million. Instagram started to sell advertising, but it’s not going to have an impact on Facebook’s bottom line for a long time, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said.

“They didn’t offer up a whole lot of new details, but that’s the kind of luxury and time you get when your core business is doing very well,” said Nate Elliott, an analyst at Forrester Research. “They seem to be taking advantage.”

Zuckerberg’s investors may want results -- the stock fell more than 3 percent to the equivalent of $93.83 at 9:20 a.m. in Frankfurt -- but the social network’s billionaire founder has never been in much of a hurry. On Wednesday’s call he recalled 2006-2007, when Facebook was under pressure to add banner advertising, the main way websites profited back then. But Facebook took its time to develop ads that felt more natural, he said.

‘Organic Interaction’

“What we decided was that over the long term, the ads and monetization would perform better if there was an organic interaction between people using the product and businesses,” Zuckerberg said.

Now Facebook is following a similar playbook. With Messenger, for example, the company is introducing ways for people to conduct customer-service conversations with businesses.

Zuckerberg has long been tempering investor expectations about the products. In October, he said that applications “don’t really get that interesting to turn into businesses until they have about a billion people using them.”

It was a humble brag that dug at a competitor. A few miles north of Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, California, San Francisco-based Twitter was struggling past the 300 million user mark. Now, Twitter expects growth to stagnate for a while, its executivessaid Tuesday. Facebook, on the other hand, has a history of building or buying products with devoted user bases - - and making them lucrative.

Biggest Bet

Then there’s Oculus, the virtual-reality headset maker that Facebook owns. It’s central to Zuckerberg’s grand vision of the Internet’s future, and again, investors will have to wait for a potential payoff. Oculus expects to ship its first consumer product in early 2016. It’ll be an important event for Zuckerberg, who said immersive three-dimensional experiences will eventually replace video in online popularity. But on the call, Facebook executives declined to say how many Oculus units they thought would ship, how it might change Facebook’s cost structure, or whether it might have an app store.

Meanwhile, Facebook had its biggest quarter of hiring ever, with most of those employees brought in for research and development -- a longterm strategy for Zuckerberg that includes mastering artificial intelligence.

Facebook’s sales rose 39 percent to $4.04 billion in the quarter. That ought to buy Zuckerberg more time.

Bloomberg.com

Europe Stocks Rise on Earnings as Dollar Strengthens; Gold Falls

Stocks in Europe and Asia rose amid better-than-estimated corporate earnings. The dollar gained for a second day after the Federal Reserve said the job market is improving, while gold slumped.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index increased 0.5 percent by 8:21 a.m. in London. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.3 percent, paced by Nintendo Co. after the Japanese gaming company returned to a profit. The dollar gained 0.2 percent versus both the euro and the yen. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index index futures slipped 0.1 percent after U.S. stocks climbed Wednesday. Gold retreated 1 percent.

With Europe’s earnings season in full swing, companies from Nokia Oyj to Deutsche Bank AG exceeded investor expectations. Traders will get another chance to speculate on the timing of U.S. interest-rate increases with an update on second-quarter gross domestic product due Thursday. More than 500 companies in Japan’s Topix index report first-quarter earnings on Thursday and Friday.

Nokia surged 7.4 percent, while Deutsche Bank gained 2.4 percent. Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering company, rose 3.2 percent after quarterly earnings beat estimates.

The Topix rose a second day as the yen traded at a one-week low versus the dollar. Of the companies on the index that have already posted results, and for which Bloomberg has estimates, 59 percent beat analysts’ profit expectations. Japan’s industrial production increased more than forecast in June, aiding an economy that struggled last quarter with weakness in retail sales and exports.

‘Further Improvement’

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index climbed 0.8 percent. South Korea’s Kospi index fell 0.9 percent amid a 3.8 percent retreat by Samsung Electronics Co. after second-quarter profit missed analysts’ estimates.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday dropped the modifier “somewhat” in describing a decline in labor-market slack, and said it will tighten policy once it sees “some further improvement in the labor market.”

The addition of the word “some” to this sentence is a strong indicator the U.S. is inching closer toward its first rate increase since 2006, Alan Ruskin, global head of Group of 10 foreign exchange at Deutsche Bank AG, said in an e-mail.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen is guiding the central bank toward its first rate increase in almost a decade as the U.S. approaches full employment. She’s said the Fed is likely to tighten policy this year should the economy continue to improve in line with her expectations. Economists have put the chance of a September increase at 50 percent.

Goldman Positive

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the greenback against 10 major peers, rose 0.2 percent, extending Wednesday’s 0.3 percent advance. Treasuries slipped a third day, with 10-year yields up two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 2.31 percent.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein said Wednesday U.S. markets are poised for prolonged growth, and will quickly move on after the jolt that should result from the Fed’s rate increase.

The Bloomberg Commodity Index of 22 raw materials fell 0.1 percent, poised for its largest monthly loss since 2011. West Texas Intermediate headed for its biggest monthly drop this year. WTI was little changed at $48.78 a barrel, while Brent crude increased 0.3 percent. Copper declined 0.6 percent to $5,295 a metric ton.

Bloomberg.com

Russian hackers used Twitter, photos to access US computers: Report

Russian government-backed hackers who penetrated high-profile US government and defense industry computers this year used a method combining Twitter with data hidden in seemingly benign photographs, according to experts studying the campaign.

In a public report Wednesday, researchers at security company FireEye Inc said the group used the unusual tandem as a means of communicating with previously infected computers. FireEye has briefed law enforcement on what it found.

The technique, uncovered during a FireEye investigation at an unnamed victim organization, shows how government-backed hackers can shift tactics on the fly after they are discovered.

“It’s striking how many layers of obfuscation that the group adopts,” said FireEye Strategic Analysis Manager Jennifer Weedon. “These groups are innovating and becoming more creative.”

The machines were given an algorithm for checking a different Twitter account every day. If a human agent registered that account and tweeted a certain message, instructions for a series of actions by the computer would be activated.

The tweeted information included a website address, a number and a handful of letters. The computer would go to the website and look for a photo of at least the size indicated by the number, while the letters were part of a key for decoding the instructions in a message hidden within the data used to display the picture on the website.

Weedon said the communication method might have been a failsafe in case other channels were discovered and cut. Vikram Thakur, a senior manager at Symantec Corp, said his team had also found Twitter controls combined with hidden data in photos, a technique known as steganography.

FireEye identified the campaign as the work of a group it has been internally calling APT29, for advanced persistent threat. In April, it said another Russian-government supported group, APT28, had used a previously unknown flaws in Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash software to infect high-value targets.

Other security firms use different names for the same or allied groups. Symantec recently reported another data-stealing tool used in tandem with the steganography, which it calls Seaduke. Thakur said both tools were employed by the group it knows as the Duke family.

Thakur said another tool in that kit is CozyDuke, which Russian firm Kaspersky Lab says is associated with recent breaches at the State Department and the White House.

Ibnlive.com

Google Translate got way smarter; the app now supports 20 more languages

Most 2016 Volkswagen cars can avoid crashes and talk to your phone

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

New Genesis Mining Tool Seeks Industrial Bitcoin Mining Efficiency

Genesis Mining has launched a new web interface that will enable digital currency miners to gain greater control of their bitcoin and altcoin mining operations.

Initially built for internal use, Genesis Hive is currently being offered to large-scale miners at a rate that varies based on the number of mining units connected to the service each month. The new software is also expected to be made available to medium and small-sized firms at a later, to-be-determined date.

CEO and co-founder Marco Streng indicated that the project aims to reduce the rising complexities associated with industrial-scale bitcoin mining.

Streng told CoinDesk:

"While this has improved efficiency it has also lead to new problems in the mining space. A couple of years ago, no one could have dreamed of thousands of devices mining bitcoin in a single location, and there was no software to handle a setup of this size."

Genesis Mining envisions Hive as a solution to these issues, one that joins the ranks of other enterprise-level bitcoin mining offerings such as HashRabbit that have come to market in recent months.

Streng, however, suggested that Genesis Hive will be competitive as it allows for more flexibility than offerings geared for smaller mining entities.

"Hive does not require you to install any software on your individual rigs and will adapt to whatever network and hardware setup you deem most appropriate," he continued.

New controls

The new tool aims to ease the process to install a mining farm, by automatically detecting, configuring and updating mining units.

Additional control is provided over units in disparate geographies. Users will also be able to "constantly control" their mining rigs through Genesis Hive's dashboard, obtaining hashrate, temperature, rig statuses and power consumption calculations.

"Switching or adding pools, upgrading firmware, rebooting etc is done in a matter of a few clicks on any number of devices simultaneously," the company explained.

Genesis Hive also enables users to perform bulk updates, pool changes or establish automatic tasks depending on individual environmental needs.

Arms race

The launch comes at a time when efficiency is of increasing concern to industrial-scale bitcoin miners, many of whom are competing as the bitcoin price continues to be depressed relative to market highs last year.

Some bitcoin mining firms – such as CEX.io – have pivoted to other economically viable operations, citing the lack of profit as a result of bitcoin's declining price as the decisive factor behind their shift in focus.

However, as some mining outlets struggle, those that control the full lifecycle of hardware development – from the design of new machines to their eventual use – have emerged as market leaders, with BitFury and 21 Inc parlaying their successes into new and more experimental consumer products.

Image via Genesis Mining

coindesk.com

p.s. Don't forget to use the promo code CZL5k6 to receive your special discount at https://www.genesis-mining.com

Happy mining.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Britain's most promising tech companies - in pictures

Windows 10 to ship on USB drives

Distracted Driver Rear-Ends Google Self-Driving Car

Google's self-driving cars aren't perfect, but neither are motorists.

Human error is to blame for the latest crash of a self-driving car, according to the tech giant. The vehicle in question rear-ended Google's prototype because of "distracted driving."

"Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road," Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving cars unit, wrote in a blog post. "That's a big motivator for us."

The most recent collision occurred during evening rush hour on July 1, as an autonomous Google vehicle drove toward an intersection in Mountain View, California. Despite having the green light, backed-up traffic forced Google's car to stop ahead of the junction.

"After we'd stopped, a car slammed into the back of us at 17 mph—and it hadn't braked at all," Urmson said.

No passengers in either vehicle were hurt, save for minor whiplash, and Google's vehicle sustained only a few scrapes. The second car, however, was not so lucky: its entire front bumper fell off.

"Although we don't like getting hit, there's a silver lining here," Urmson said. "We all want to know how self-driving cars are measuring up against their human counterparts, but the statistics we need to do this simply aren't ordinarily gathered."

Currently based only on police reports, national crashes-per-miles-driven rates do not include what Urmson said are "millions" of fender benders each year, which account for as many as 55 percent of all crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Of course, more of Google's autonomous vehicles roaming the streets (racking up about 10,000 miles per week) means more potential accidents. Human drivers have hit the self-driving cars 14 times—including 11 rear collisions—since the start of Google's project in 2009.

"And not once has the self-driving car been the cause of the collision," Urmson insisted. "Instead, the clear theme is human error and inattention. We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers."

It is becoming harder to vouch for living, breathing motorists, when technology allows for transportation methods that can see 360 degrees in all directions, and never get tired, irritable, or distracted.

It's not always a case of human error, though. Last month, a report said that two self-driving cars—one from Google and another from Delphi—almost got into an accident in California. Both companies, however, argued that it was not a near miss, but simply an example of their technologies performing appropriately.

pcmag.com