The Ubuntu phone is about to go on sale, but curb your enthusiasm, and more for Friday, February 6, 2015

The Ubuntu phone is about to go on sale, but curb your enthusiasm David Meyer Feb 6 2015, 6:33am PDT Finally, after many delays, the first Ubuntu phone is about to hit the market. In Europe. And only through a series of online flash sales. And you’ve almost certainly never heard of the manufacturer. On the plus side, it will come with quite a few recognizable […] Read More » Anthem breach: vendors never let a good crisis go to waste Barb Darrow Feb 6 2015, 6:14am PDT Given this week’s news of a potentially huge security breach at insurance provider Anthem, security vendors of all types are eager to give advice, and oh, get their company names in front of affected consumers — or better yet — the companies spooked by what happened to Anthem. The […] Read More » HTC stays profitable, plans to slowly diversify product lines Kevin C. Tofel Feb 6 2015, 6:11am PDT Call it three for three: HTC followed its second consecutive quarter of profit with another one in the period ending December 31. The company announced net profit after taxes of NT $500 million (US $15.86M) on NT $47.9B in revenues for its fiscal fourth quarter. The […] Read More » UK access to NSA mass surveillance data was illegal, court rules David Meyer Feb 6 2015, 3:21am PDT The system through which U.K. spy agency GCHQ can access data from NSA mass surveillance programs was in violation of fundamental rights, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has ruled. However, the limits of that finding have left human rights groups dissatisfied. The decision came as a result […] Read More » Funds flow in for GnuPG author after article reveals his plight David Meyer Feb 6 2015, 2:22am PDT On Thursday ProPublica published the frustrating tale of Werner Koch, the one guy – yes really – who’s maintaining the extremely widely-used Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) software that people use to encrypt their email messages and digitally authenticate downloadable programs such as the Tor […] Read More » Google advisory council: Right to delist should only apply in EU David Meyer Feb 6 2015, 1:56am PDT To help it handle the EU ruling that forces it to delist certain results about people, Google assembled a team of expert advisors that travelled the continent, seeking out various opinions on how best to implement Europeans’ data protection rights. On Friday that advisory council published […] Read More » White House chooses VMware’s Tony Scott to be next U.S. CIO Jonathan Vanian Feb 5 2015, 5:07pm PDT VMware’s Tony Scott has been chosen to become the next U.S. chief information officer, according to a White House announcement on Thursday. Scott will follow in the footsteps of previous U.S. CIOs Vivek Kundra and Steve VanRoekel and be tasked with spearheading the White House’s Smarter […] Read More » Are media companies building another house of cards on SnapChat? Mathew Ingram Feb 5 2015, 3:48pm PDT SnapChat has convinced media companies like CNN and Yahoo and Vice to be part of its new Discover feature, and they were easy to convince because of SnapChat's 200M-plus millennial audience. But who ultimately benefits from these deals? Read More » Verizon to sell part of its wireline biz to Frontier for $10.54B Stacey Higginbotham Feb 5 2015, 2:48pm PDT Verizon Communications is fleeing the crufty wireline communications world as fast as it can and has turned once again to Frontier to buy its fiber and telephony assets in Texas, Florida and California in a deal valued at $10.54 billion. It also has signed a deal […] Read More » Katy Perry’s lawyers demand takedown of 3D printable Left Shark Signe Brewster Feb 5 2015, 1:47pm PDT While the nation identifies with the Super Bowl’s insta-star Left Shark, Katy Perry’s lawyers are apparently more the Right Shark type. They issued a cease and desist letter (see below) to on-demand 3D printing service Shapeways on Tuesday, demanding a 3D model depicting Left Shark be […] Read More » Why opening up its Cosmos big data system would be the right move for Microsoft Derrick Harris Feb 5 2015, 11:43am PDT There has been a rumor floating around since August (first, and subsequently, reported by Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet) that Microsoft is preparing to release its Cosmos big data system as a service on its Azure cloud platform, likely as an alternative to Hadoop. That would […] Read More » After handing over license plate info, Uber re-opens its NYC bases Carmel DeAmicis Feb 5 2015, 10:10am PDT Uber has relented against New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) and handed over its data. As a result, it can now open the five Uber dispatch bases that the TLC shut down when Uber refused to comply. New York City passengers won’t see much of a […] Read More » Sprint is growing, but it’s still losing core phone customers Kevin Fitchard Feb 5 2015, 7:23am PDT Marcelo Claure may have brought the struggling Sprint back to growth, but the new CEO probably wishes the company were growing in different ways. Sprint added 1 million new connections in the fourth quarter, but they were all prepaid, wholesale and tablet connections instead of core […] Read More » Brown Moses launches crowdsourced tracking of troops in Ukraine Mathew Ingram Feb 4 2015, 3:13pm PDT Eliot Higgins, the investigative blogger also known as Brown Moses, has launched a new project that uses crowdsourced data to track Ukrainian and Russian troop and vehicle movements in real time Read More » How can a baby have three parents? Lasers, software, and a joystick Elizabeth Armstrong Moore Feb 4 2015, 1:56pm PDT After spending several years interviewing scientists and holding public forums to debate ethics and air concerns, the U.K.’s lower house of Parliament this week voted to allow babies to be born with three genetic parents. While some call it a perversion, the procedure has nothing at […] Read More » Report: 80% of all mobile data is consumed by just 10% of users Kevin Fitchard Feb 4 2015, 1:40pm PDT Cisco Systems this week offered some insight into just how much mobile data the world is consuming — 2.5 exabytes a month, to be exact – and now a new report from Amdocs sheds a little light on who among those billions of users is consuming […] Read More » The FCC’s net neutrality proposal is awesome, but has a loophole Stacey Higginbotham Feb 4 2015, 1:05pm PDT FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has taken the unprecedented and awesome step of using Title II to ensure that the internet remains open and that ISPs cannot discriminate against the type of traffic flowing across their networks. This is a big deal, as I explained earlier, and […] Read More » Google had its biggest quarter ever for data center spending. Again Derrick Harris Feb 4 2015, 11:30am PDT Google just finished off another record-setting quarter and year for infrastructure spending, according to the company’s earnings report released last week. The web giant spent more than $3.5 billion on “real estate purchases, production equipment, and data center construction” during the fourth quarter of 2014 and […] Read More » Apple reportedly integrating Beats streaming into iOS and iTunes Kif Leswing Feb 4 2015, 10:02am PDT After Beats was purchased in 2014, and even before then, one main question facing Apple is when the company plans to come out with a streaming music service. According to a new report from ace Apple reporter Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac, the company has been working to integrate Beats Music streaming […] Read More » Android and iOS are nearly tied for U.S. smartphone market share Kif Leswing Feb 4 2015, 9:09am PDT A new report from Kantar Worldpanel tracking smartphone sales in the United States indicated that phones running Apple’s iOS operating system may have passed those running Android in terms of market share. According to Carolina Milanese, who wrote the report, iOS sales “overtook” Android sales by a […] Read More »