Troy Ave and Rick Ross Ball Out in 'All About the Money' Video

Two months after a dropping a video for his anthemic track ‘All About the Money,’ Troy Ave is back with a visual for the remix featuring Miami rhymer Rick Ross.

In the clip, the Brooklyn rapper and Maybach Music Group honcho flaunt their jewelry and brag about their riches. Troy Ave sits on an all-white Porsche counting stacks, while Rozay sips on Belaire Rosé out of a BSB Styrofoam cup.

Fellow Miami boss DJ Khaled and BK stunter Red Cafe make cameos in the video, which is directed by Rob Dade and the “Powder King” himself. Overall, it’s your basic rap cliche video. Nevertheless, the message should be relatable to those who are on their grind in 2015.

Troy Ave is looking to make more skrilla this spring as he’s scheduled to drop his second full-length album, ‘Major Without a Deal,’ in March. His latest single, ‘Doo Doo,’ is available on iTunes.

See 10 Rappers & Their Ridiculous Chains

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T.I. & Young Thug Are After the Paper on 'About the Money'

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Young Thug may have irked many an old rap head with his unique style (in and outside of music), but T.I. isn’t deterred, especially when it comes to that paper. Looking to bridge the gap between Atlanta’s old guard and its current generation, the King of the South calls on the city’s future crown bearer for his latest track, ‘About the Money.’

Premiered by DJ Whoo Kid and DJ MLK on Shade 54 last night (May 19), the song features whip-ready production from another of the A’s hotshots, producer London On Da Track. Despite this being billed as Tip’s record, Thugga Thugga leads off with a distinctive verse while Tip mostly handles the hook duties. He even injects a little more drawl and cadence into his delivery, which you could say is the influence of Young Thug.

Whatever the style and whoever he’s working with, though, the message remains the same for Clifford Harris: “If it ain’t about the money / Don’t be blowing me up, n—a, I ain’t getting up / If it ain’t about the money / Ain’t no use in you ringing my line, stop wasting my time.”

‘About the Money’ is the second new release from T.I. this month following the DJ Toomp-produced ‘Turn It,’ as he puts the finishing touches on his upcoming album, ‘Paperwork.’ Hit that paper chase with Tip and Thug below.

Listen to T.I.’s ‘About the Money’ Feat. Young Thug

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25 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Thor

With Thor: The Dark World in cinemas worldwide, you probably think you know Thor better than members of your own family at this point. It's his third movie in two years, and with Age Of Ultron to come plus an inevitable threequel in the offing, Asgard's mightiest warrior isn't going anywhere for a while. By far one of the most interesting characters in the Marvel roster, Thor certainly has the richest back-story of his Avenger chums, so join us as we explore the past, present and future of the God of Thunder and his pesky brother Loki.

1. The name's Thor... er, just Thor

Chris Hemsworth is perfect in the part of Thor, right? It could have been so different: actors originally pursued for the role included Brad Pitt, Kevin McKidd, Channing Tatum and even wrestler Triple H. Daniel Craig was allegedly offered the role in 2008 but turned it down due to Bond commitments, saying: "What am I, on some stupid fucking power trip? I can't imagine…blonde hair and a big hammer."

Tom Hiddleston auditioned for the role of Thor before he was awarded the role of his mischievous brother. One of his influences for the role of Loki was Cassius from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, so he went on an intense diet to give himself a "lean and hungry" appearance. Hiddleston also trained in the Brazlian art of capoeira to get in shape (although there is a serious lack of breakdance fighting in the movie).

The first appearance of Thor in print.

Thor made his first ever appearance in issue #83 of comic-book Journey Into Mystery, published in August, 1962. Created by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby, Thor was so popular that eventually the whole comic was named after him. Lee came up with the character of a God after worrying that he'd never be able to top the power of the Hulk. Look carefully in 2011's Thor movie and you'll see a billboard baring the comic's name.

If you're willing to overlook some pretty cosmic logic leaps, then the line about Thor's hammer Mjolnir being forged inside a "dying star" is not entirely fanciful. When a large star dies in a supernova, its remains can collapse to form a neutron star, which can potentially condense mass the size of the Sun into matter the size of a city – this is known as 'neutronium'. Scientists reckon even a fistful of this material would weigh "billions of tonnes", which would explain why it really, really hurts when Thor wallops you.

Thor's human alter-ego Donald Blake.

The original plan for Thor's movie adaptation was to use both the mythological character of Thor and his human alter-ego Donald Blake, a crippled American doctor. In the comics, Blake finds a walking stick in a cave in Norway and is transformed into the God of Thunder. The plot device was abandoned for the movie, but Thor is given the false identity 'Donald Blake' by Jane Foster in an early scene.

The first draft for Marvel's Thor was written in 2006 by Mark Protesevich, a fairly epic origin story described by the writer as the tale of "an Old Testament God who becomes a new Testament God." Such was its scale and reliance on special effects sequences, it was estimated to cost around $300m, so was subsequently scaled down. Scenes eventually cut included an origin story for Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, and battles with serpents, sirens that turn into evil trees and hell stags (whatever they are).

Tyler Mane as Sabertooth - the Thor that could have been.

Plans were in place for a Thor movie as early as 2000, albeit a made-for-TV special to be produced by US broadcast network UPN. Wrestler-turned-actor Tyler Mane was allegedly approached for the role of Thor but the project never came to fruition. Mane lobbied for the role when the movie came out of development hell some years later, but to no avail – although he did get to play Sabretooth in the first X-Men movie.

Thor-some cameo.

We all spotted Stan Lee's cameo in Thor as the hapless driver who ruins a perfectly good truck trying to remove the hammer from its New Mexico crater – but did you spot Thor comic-book writer J Michael Straczynski's cameo in the same scene? He's the guy in the cap and beard who pulls fruitlessly on Mjolnir, much like how Straczynski's Thor run got started. "I've vanished into my own narrative!" he later said.

9. How do you like them apples?

Thor and his ilk aren't actually Gods, they're just incredibly powerful beings who consider themselves Godlike. To that end, they're not actually immortal. In the comics, Thor and his fellow Asgardians maintain their power and vigour by regularly eating the Golden Apples of Idunn, which also have the added benefit of keeping the doctor away. We're assuming modern day Thor has them baked into handy chewable power bars for convenience.

Chris Hemsworth had to endure a punishing workout routine when he won the role of Thor: six months of daily trips to the gym and a diet that consisted of eggs, chicken, brown rice, steak and yummy protein drinks. Hemsworth claims he literally had to consume his own body weight in protein. Still... phwoar, right ladies?

The awesome Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder.

Another comic-book detail that was left out of the movie was Thor's ride: a mighty cosmic chariot, pulled by two... er, goats. Named Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder, the mystical goats were a step beyond your common variety cud-chewer: they could be reborn if ever they were eaten. Presumably though, no one at Marvel much fancied writing Thor's epic entrance scene in which he's dragged into shot by two mangy old farmyard animals.

THOR's ALIVE?

One of the earliest – and most curious – personnel decisions on Thor was the casting of Brian Blessed as Thor's father, Odin. Sadly we were denied seeing the erstwhile Prince Voltan bellowing his lines at Chris Hemsworth, damaging his eardrums beyond repair, because he was eventually replaced by Anthony Hopkins. No disrespect to Blessed, but the decision to choose between an Oscar-winning actor and the host of Challenge TV game show Unbeatable Banzuke must have been a no-brainer.

The Idea: An Inventor Wants One Less Wire to Worry About

“It was my last year to do it,” she told me, “so I literally would just carry around a notebook and write down any annoyances, because that would be an opportunity to solve a problem and have an invention.” An admitted “professional Googler,” she’d been researching all day on her computer when she decided to pack it in for the night.

“I was just standing in my room,” she said, “wrapping up my laptop charger and trying to fit it into my bag and suddenly it occurred to me: Wow, this is so archaic. Why are we using these 20-foot wires to plug in our quote-unquote wireless devices?”

“See past old paradigms” is one of those cheesy riffs one might hear from an innovation expert working the business speakers’ circuit. Yet here it was, a question that inched just past what was simply accepted: Why, in a wireless age, do we still have electrical wires?

As Ms. Perry soon learned, there are very good reasons that we don’t beam electricity through the air. Though you can transmit the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays, there are problems. “I realized that anything on the right half of the spectrum was too dangerous to beam,” she said, “and anything on the left half of the spectrum that was closer to radio was either too inefficient or tightly regulated by the government.”

So she started looking elsewhere and came upon piezoelectricity — a form of charge that is created in certain crystals and ceramics when vibrated. If you have seen Internet assertions about T-shirts “that charge your mobile phone while you wear them,” or about boots on the ground literally creating the charge for a soldier’s radio, you are familiar with the idea of piezoelectricity. Those applications rely on something that’s already in motion.

And here’s where the second eureka happened — enabling her to see how she might build a device to wirelessly charge a battery in a cellphone or a computer from across a room.

“How do I create vibration in the air without actually moving something?” The answer came instantly — it was almost like a stoner’s aha: “Sound is vibration in the air.”

Sound frequency “is basically how many cycles per second air is being pushed through a space,” Ms. Perry says. “We have little hairs in our ears that vibrate in response to sound. We interpret that change in air pressure as sound. But sound is something that exists outside of our head. Literally, it’s just air particles moving in an arranged fashion.” So was it possible to deploy sound waves that humans couldn’t hear or feel, in order to charge a phone?

Nothing in her training prepared her for this kind of research. She was an astrobiologist, after all. She was just 21 and had spent the previous two summers interning at NASA.

So she did what most everybody else does. She clicked on Wikipedia. She started with the “ultrasound” page, then “acoustic.” Soon enough, she was reading academic papers at the forefront of various disciplines.

Her idea, she discovered, meant marrying the fields of sound, electricity, battery technology and other subspecialties. “It was such a multidisciplinary idea,” she said, “and everyone in each different department basically told me that there was basically no way that you could get past all the hurdles.”

She kept running into the same genre of problem. “I was working with a couple of different people at the beginning who would say there was no way to get this high-power sound over this distance without creating shock waves,” she said. “Of course, I would have my 10-minute panic attack and think the whole thing was over. Then I would do some research on my own, and figure out how to achieve high-power sound without creating shock waves.”

Afterward, she said, “I would go back to that person and he would say, ‘Oh, yeah, that should work.’ ” Each expert seemed to dwell in his own private silo, so that whenever she crossed from one discipline to another, she would run into the same wall of constricted thinking.

Even after winning attention at a D: All Things Digital conference, where she transmitted power an impressive three feet using piezoelectrical technology, she still couldn’t attract start-up money.

“After being rejected by literally hundreds of investors — maybe not hundreds, maybe not literally — but lots of investors,” she said, she decided to research who had financed “crazy things,” and wound up gaining the attention of Peter Thiel, the former PayPal entrepreneur whose Founders Fund provides venture capital for unusual ideas.

The Idea will offer an occasional look at the origin of business notions.

DealBook: Icahn Heads to Court With a Point About Dell

South Korea Says Concerned About U.S. Decision on Apple Products

The Obama administration vetoed a U.S. trade panel's ban on the import and sale of some older iPhones and iPads, reversing a ruling that had favored South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd over Apple in their long-running patent battle. The move was vehemently criticized by the South Korean media as "protectionism."

"We express concerns about the negative impact that such a decision would have on the protection of patent rights," the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy, said in a statement.

The ministry called on the U.S. trade body and the Obama administration to make "fair and reasonable decisions" as Samsung faces a decision on Friday as to whether some of its phones and tablets infringed on Apple's patents and should be banned from imports into the United States.

Apple and Samsung, the world's top two smartphones makers, have been waging a global patent war since 2011, filing multiple lawsuits against each other over the design, interface and technology of their devices.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in June banned the import and sale of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G distributed by AT&T Inc, saying the devices infringed on one patent owned by the South Korean electronics giant.

Samsung had also accused Apple of infringing on three other patents, but the ITC found that Apple did not infringe those. A Samsung spokesman said on Monday the electronics giant in July appealed the ITC decision on the three patents.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Matt Driskill)

Bits Blog: Governments, Led by U.S., Seek More Data About Twitter Users

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Pogue's Posts: In the Universe of Printers, One Worth Talking About

DealBook: Worried About Defeat for Dell Offer, Board and Bidders Prepare Maneuvers

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesMichael Dell and Silver Lake are working to convince Dell shareholders that they will not raise their $24.4 billion bid.

July 17, 5:05 p.m. | Updated

A high-stakes game of poker is now being played over the fate of Dell Inc., less than 36 hours before shareholders are scheduled to vote on the computer company’s proposed $24.4 billion sale to its founder.

A special committee of Dell’s board is poised to adjourn the vote on Thursday morning because it is concerned that the offer may be defeated by shareholders, people briefed on the matter said on Tuesday. The directors have signaled for days that they would rather postpone the shareholder meeting, giving them time to either elicit a higher bid from Michael S. Dell and his partner, the investment firm Silver Lake — or get the buyers to declare their current offer of $13.65 best and final.

Meanwhile, Mr. Dell and Silver Lake are working behind the scenes to convince shareholders that they will not raise their current offer and are prepared to walk away.

The jockeying comes amid more signs that the deal faces stiff investor opposition. BlackRock, which owns a nearly 4.5 percent stake, has voted no, according to one of the people briefed on the matter. And the mutual fund manager T. Rowe Price, which owns a 4 percent stake, said publicly on Monday that it remained opposed to the deal.

The primary opponents to the leveraged buyout, the billionaire activist Carl C. Icahn and the asset management firm Southeastern Asset Management, have pressed their argument that the proposed sale would shortchange investors. They contend that their plan, in which the company would buy back 1.1 billion shares for $14 apiece, would deliver more to fellow shareholders while letting them participate in any revival of the computer company.

In a letter to investors sent on Tuesday, the Dell special committee again sought to rebut Mr. Icahn’s claims, arguing that a so-called leveraged recapitalization would leave shareholders owning stakes in a more indebted company. Moreover, Mr. Icahn’s offer requires investors to completely replace Dell’s board with the activist’s own slate of candidates.

Still, the directors remain pessimistic because of the tough threshold for approval of Mr. Dell’s deal. More than 42 percent of the company’s shares must be voted in favor of the transaction. More than 21 percent of Dell’s shares — including the roughly 13 percent stake held by Mr. Icahn and Southeastern — is currently arrayed against the proposal, this person said.

By briefly opening the shareholder meeting and then adjourning, the special committee buys more time to twist arms. The maneuver will let the company maintain the current record date of June 3, the day by which investors must have owned shares to participate in the vote. (That said, Dell directors may be ultimately fine with moving the date.)

Both the special committee and the buyer group believe that many of Dell’s shareholders are wagering that Mr. Dell and Silver Lake will blink and raise their offer. By some estimates, nearly one-quarter of Dell shares held as of June 3 are now in the hands of arbitrageurs, who bet on the outcome of mergers.

But people close to the would-be buyers argue that there is less incentive than ever for the consortium to increase their bid, pointing to the company’s declining earnings; increasingly negative analyst outlooks on sales of personal computers; and the rising cost of debt borrowing.

As recently as last week, the research firm Gartner estimated that worldwide PC shipments had fallen from the year-ago period by roughly 11 percent, to 76 million units. That is the fifth consecutive quarter of falling sales.

Meanwhile, raising the offer above $13.65 a share could prove expensive. A 25-cent increase of the bid would require an additional $400 million or so in new equity, hurting the potential return of Mr. Dell and Silver Lake.

Any bump in price would need the approval of both partners, even as many shareholders are hoping that the company founder would succumb to pressure and make additional concessions to allow an increase in the price.

Shares in Dell closed on Tuesday at $13.02, down almost 1 percent.

Gadgetwise Blog: About Gadgetwise

Thank you for visiting Gadgetwise. This blog’s regular features, including Q&A’s from J.D. Biersdorfer and briefs about new products, can now be found on the Personal Tech section front, along with the State of the Art column by David Pogue and the App Smart column by Kit Eaton.

This change in presentation will provide readers with a single destination for all important and timely personal tech news. While the formats may evolve, no changes have been made in the reporting, editing and other resources devoted to our personal tech coverage. Thank you for reading.

Bits Blog: Privacy Officials Worldwide Press Google About Glass

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images An attendee tries Google Glass during the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.

Ten government privacy and data protection officials from seven countries have asked Google to address privacy concerns related to its wearable computing device, Glass.

The letter was sent to Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, by 10 commissioners from Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Israel and Switzerland. It comes after a letter sent by eight members of Congress in May raising similar questions about Glass and privacy.

“We would be very interested in hearing about the privacy implications of this new product and the steps you are taking to ensure that, as you move forward with Google Glass, individuals’ privacy rights are respected around the world,” the officials wrote.

Glass, which is not yet available to the public, tethers to a user’s cellphone and has much of the same functionality, like text messaging and phone calls. It can also take photos and record video hands-free, and apps from news organizations, social networks, Google Maps and others send alerts and updates to a screen above the user’s right eye.

The officials raised fears of “ubiquitous surveillance” and asked about Google’s privacy safeguards, what it plans to do with the data the devices collect and how it is addressing “the broader social and ethical issues” raised by Glass. They lamented that Google has not yet reached out to data protection authorities to discuss the privacy implications of Glass.

Mr. Page addressed similar questions at Google’s shareholders meeting this month, where he made his first public comments about the issue. He said that many people already carried cellphone cameras everywhere they go, and that Glass was no different.

“People worry about a lot of things that, when we use the products, don’t turn out to be an actual concern,” Mr. Page said.

Many people at Google wear Glass, he said. “When you go into the bathroom, you don’t collapse in terror that people might be wearing these in the bathroom, just like you don’t collapse in terror that someone will hold up a cellphone in the bathroom.”

“I would encourage you not to create fear and concern about technological change until it’s out there and we understand the issues,” Mr. Page said.

Susan Molinari, Google’s vice president for public policy, responded this month to the members of Congress. She wrote that Glass would not include facial recognition, users would be able to wipe data from the device if it was misplaced or stolen and that Google was relying on early users currently testing the device to help the company shape the discussion about it.

In the letter, the privacy commissioners said they wanted a demo of the as-yet-unavailable product.

“Would Google be willing to demonstrate the device to our offices and allow any interested data protection authorities to test it?” they asked.

Bits Blog: Google Offers Some Detail About How It Transfers Data to the Government

Google has offered a few more details about how it shares user data with the government, including in response to national security requests.

As The New York Times reported on Tuesday, when Google is legally required to hand over data about its users, it usually delivers it using a file-transferring technology called secure FTP, David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said in an interview on British television.

FTP is a simple way to upload and download files sent between parties — like an online file folder. Either party can operate the secure FTP server that the files flow through. In an interview on PBS NewsHour, Mr. Drummond indicated that the secure FTP server is on the government’s machines and not on Google’s.

“We deliver it to them, we push it out to them,” said Mr. Drummond, who was speaking from Amsterdam. “They don’t come access it through any machines at Google.”

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, in April. Mr. Drummond published a letter Tuesday asking the government for permission to reveal more information about the number and scope of national security requests.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the National Security Agency‘s secret Internet surveillance program, Prism, involved electronically transmitting data — though not automatically or in bulk — in compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. While the government asked the companies to make a secure lockbox, the article said, the companies responded in different ways.

Mr. Drummond’s statement on Tuesday provides some clarity on how Google electronically transfers data in response to government requests, including national security requests.

Some lawyers who respond to national security requests for tech companies described the systems as nothing more than a 21st-century way to transfer files. Every government request is reviewed by a person, they said, but once it is time to hand over the data, it is more efficient to use the Internet than to print pages and mail them or burn a CD, for instance. (FTP, however, is hardly new, having existed in some form for about four decades.)

Mr. Drummond spoke publicly about the issue for the first time as part of a day of damage control to quell the criticisms after the Prism revelations.

Though Google and the other tech companies have repeatedly said they do not provide the government with direct access to their servers and only comply with lawful government requests, many questions remain about how the government surveillance program works.The companies have said they are restricted from saying more by government gag orders.

“There are a lot of misimpressions that are out there,” Mr. Drummond said on British television. “We feel very strongly that we’ve got to set the record straight.”

He also published a letter on Tuesday asking the government for permission to reveal more information about the number and scope of national security requests, and Microsoft and Facebook followed suit.

The delivery mechanism, people at tech companies have said, is not as important as the data that governments ask the companies to turn over, which is why they asked to reveal more information about the data requests.

David Karp Quit School to Get Serious About Tumblr

But instead of trying to pry him away from his machine or coaxing him outside to get some fresh air, his mother, Barbara Ackerman, had another solution: she suggested that he drop out of high school to be home-schooled.

“I saw him at school all day and absorbed all night into his computer,” said Ms. Ackerman, reached by phone Monday afternoon. “It became very clear that David needed the space to live his passion. Which was computers. All things computers.”

Clearly.

Now 26 years old, Mr. Karp never finished high school or enrolled in college. Instead, he played a significant role in several technology start-ups before founding Tumblr, the popular blogging service that agreed to be sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion this week. With an expected $250 million from the deal, Mr. Karp joins a tiny circle of 20-something entrepreneurs, hoodie-wearing characters like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, who have struck it rich before turning 30.

“When I first met David he was 20 years old and wearing sneakers and jeans,” said Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital, who was one of the first people to invest in Tumblr. “But I knew he was one of these rare entrepreneurs that grew up on the Web and who could come up with an idea, build it himself, and then ship it that night.”

Since founding Tumblr six years ago, Mr. Karp has been admired for his programming skills and Web site design acumen but at times has been a polarizing figure in New York tech circles because he so often blogged about his personal life and party-hopping. He has popped up in the New York Post’s Page Six Magazine, and has been a recurring target for the gossip Web site Gawker, where he was labeled a “fameball,” a derogatory term for someone who has an unquenchable desire for fame.

Tall and willowy, with a mop of brown hair and piercing blue eyes, Mr. Karp typically dresses in jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers. He speaks at a rapid clip and, often, for minutes without stopping. Technically, he never graduated from high school, which he cracked in an interview is “hopefully not a condition of Yahoo employment.”

After dropping out and working for a time in small New York tech outfits, Mr. Karp made his way to Tokyo, where he worked for several months for a start-up. He returned to the United States and became the chief technology officer for UrbanBaby, an Internet message board for parents. CNET Networks bought UrbanBaby in 2006, and Mr. Karp took the several hundred thousand dollars he made from the sale to start his own company, called Davidville. One of Davidville’s projects was a simple blogging service called Tumblr.

Mr. Karp’s run at Tumblr has not been without problems. He had trouble hiring in Tumblr’s early days, unsure how to even interview recruits. He often thought large companies were too big for their own good, proclaiming he could manage Tumblr with a team of four.

But Mr. Karp stepped out of the party scene and started dating his current girlfriend, a graduate nursing school student at New York University, four years ago. He also appeared to get more serious about his company as it grew from less than a dozen employees to more than 175 today. “David has grown up in Tumblr,” said Mark Coatney, who oversees Tumblr’s relationship with media companies.

Still, Mr. Karp’s unsure footing led to discussions about his taking a different role at Tumblr, according to two people who worked with the company and who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. Because revenue was not growing as fast as they would have liked, investors considered putting Mr. Karp in charge of Tumblr’s product development and finding a more seasoned chief executive.

Mr. Karp denied in an interview that there was a plan for him to give up the chief executive’s job. He said that when Tumblr’s chief operating officer left in the middle of last year, filling that job and other critical roles like head of marketing was “top of mind,” but he said there was no plan for him to step aside.

Like many who run so-called social Internet companies, Mr. Karp can teeter on reclusive. In an interview last year at the F.ounders conference in New York, he said he preferred to come to the office early to work alone, avoiding other people.

“Where I feel the most productive and engaged is when I’m buried in code, buried in some project, tweaking some designs,” he said. “I’m certainly introverted.”

Nicole Perlroth and Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

Bits Blog: Details Emerge About Syrian Electronic Army’s Recent Exploits

The Onion The Onion released a screenshot of the phishing e-mail used to hack into the company’s Twitter account.

At The Onion it’s all fun and games, except when the company’s Twitter account gets hacked.

This week, after the parody site became the latest publication to have its Twitter account hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, The Onion took a more serious note, explaining in a detailed blog post how the company’s account was hacked, and warning others how to avoid the exploit.

In the blog post, Onion engineers explained that the company’s Twitter account was hacked using a basic phishing exploit, where a false e-mail redirected people to a fake Web site which then asked for Google Apps credentials.

“At least one Onion employee fell for this phase of the phishing attack,” the company said.

Exposing details about an attack is not the normal approach companies take after they are hacked. The New York Times revealed earlier this year how Chinese hackers breached its systems, but that was an anomaly. Most companies fear what such disclosures will do to their reputations, or their stock price.

The Associated Press, for example, has remained silent after its Twitter account was hijacked and a fake message was posted about explosions at the White House.

In recent attacks on The A.P., Human Rights Watch, and the Onion, the group used sophisticated ”spearphishing”attacks to break into each organization. Employees received similarly worded e-mails, asking them to click on a fake news article that then redirected them to a fake Google Mail or Microsoft Webmail site where they were asked to re-enter their username and password.

The hackers used their login credentials to send e-mails to other employees from their inboxes until they found people with access to the organization’s social media accounts. Once inside those people’s inboxes, the hackers reset their Twitter passwords, giving them exclusive access to the account, until Twitter could suspend it. In the case of The A.P., a single Tweet was sufficient to nearly crash the stock market.

One hacker, who identifies himself only by his hacker handle Th3 Pr0, said the group attacked The A.P. because the Syrian Electronic Army believed the United States was “supporting the terrorist groups in Syria” and because the United States had seized its Web domains. Th3 Pr0 said the group was able to trick more than 50 A.P. employees to click on its malicious link, including a handful of the organization’s social media editors. Th3 Pr0 sent The New York Times several screenshots taken during the AP attack to prove the Syrian Electronic Army, or S.E.A., was behind it.

Security researchers tracking the hackers also confirmed the group was responsible. According to forensics reports, several recent Twitter hacks by the group, including an attack on Human Rights Watch last March and The Onion this week, were orchestrated from the same Internet addresses in Russia. But they believe those addresses are a proxy that masks the true origin of the attacks, which they say, is in Syria.

“From examining the details of this incident, as well as those effecting The A.P., Guardian and others, it’s clear that the S.E.A. is not using complex methods of attack,” The Onion’s tech team wrote. “All of the hacks so far have been a result of simple phishing, or possibly dictionary attacks — all of which are preventable with a few simple security measures.”

Among the tactics that can be used to ward off attacks, the engineers note that people should be aware of suspicious links and setting up a Twitter account on a different e-mail address than the one belonging to your organizations.

But The Onion has also managed to have a little fun at its own expense this week posting a satirical article on its hacking, titled: “Onion Twitter Password Changed To OnionMan77: ‘That Ought To Do It,’ Company Sources Confirm.” Then it posted another piece making fun of the hackers.

EXCLUSIVE: Hip Hop News Daily Talks To YMCMB’s Latest Family Member, T.Rone- “Hello Love (FU),” About Rock Influences, Signing To YMCMB, & ‘Lust’ Music

I constantly heard this song over and over again, and I was wondering who was the guy singing, 

Hello Love!
I know ya deal,
And I know y can get me killed (get me killed).
How dare ya judge, the ways of lust
When you’re the reason that I don’t trust?
F*ck you Love! F*ck you Love!

Welp, after doing some research I was able to determine that it was YMCMB’s latest signee, T.Rone from Jacksonville, FL. The guy’s track is in heavy rotation and Hip Hop News Daily had to hear from him.

In a pretty interesting  interview, the Duval representer tells us his musical influences, his perception of lust, and more. Let me just say this guy has one hell of a vibrant personality…Anyway, take a look at what he said below:

HHND: I understand that you were recently signed to YMCMB. How did that happen?

T. Rone: The song was playing heavy in Miami and Birdman reached out-I flew down to Miami and he liked what he heard and I signed.

HHND: Cool. Now, tell us about the concept of Hello Love (FU). Where did that originate from?

T. Rone: Everybody has said FU love and turn right back around just to say hello again. I left the club one night and went into the studio and the beat dropped. That’s how I was feeling that night.

HHND: With this sound, there are not many people that sound like you, so to speak? What are your influences?

T. Rone: A lot of my influence comes from Rock music-street Rock influences like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.

HHND: What would you call the type of music do you create?

T. Rone: I don’t put myself in a box- I create lust music.

HHND: What’s lust music?

T. Rone: Too much love music. The industry has lost its’ rawness and there is nothing wrong with lust. There’s a thin line between love and lust and I think its ok to lust. Lust doesn’t have to always be sexual. It can be about life and other things. Lust isn’t always a bad thing.

HHND: Some people have compared you to T-Pain. How do you respond to that?

T. Rone: There’s no comparison. On that song (Hello Love) that’s all me and no auto tune.

HHND: Did T-Pain influence you in any way?

T. Rone: No

HHND: So what are you working on now?

T.Rone: I’m working on a mixtape. It’s called “The Lord of Lust Part 1.” It will be out in the next couple of months.

HHND: Who is on the mixtape?

T. Rone: Right now, 2 Chainz, Juicy J, Fat Joe, Jim Jones, Raheem Devaughn

HHND: Ok cool…we are definitely waiting on that. Thanks for chatting with Hip Hop News Daily.

T. Rone: Cool.

Bits: There’s Something About Smartwatches

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press The Pebble smartwatch.

Rumor has it that Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft are all working on some sort of thingamajig that is worn around the wrist, which people are calling a smartwatch. None have arrived on the market yet, but they have everyone wondering whether or not this will be the biggest mobile device since the smartphone.

But will people really want to own and wear one?

Some people, of course, can’t wait. New gadgets can still titillate and excite even the most jaded consumer. But will it become a multibillion dollar market, as major hardware makers and software developers alike hope? That has yet to be seen.

Technology reporters Jenna Wortham and Brian X. Chen weigh in on three questions about the latest phenomenon in hardware.

What Will They Look Like?

Jenna: There’s no doubt that mass-market wearables are the next big thing in computing. They haven’t always had to look cool to catch on — take the pager and the Bluetooth headset as examples. So it is less a question of form and more a question of function. What will these things be able to that our other body machinery, including phones, fitness devices and tablets, don’t already do?

Brian: As a successor to the smartphone, a smartwatch will probably be a touchscreen that is worn around the wrist, capable of running apps. It will no doubt look like something that Tony Stark (or Elon Musk) would want to wear: futuristic, minimalist, slick. I’d imagine that it will come in a variety of colors, and people will be able to choose between different-style digital watch faces to display the time.

How Will They Be Used?

Brian: I would think that a smartwatch will barely even be noticeable unless you were actively looking for it on someone’s wrist, similar to the subtlety of the Nike FuelBand or Jawbone Up, which are just solid-color bracelets.

But the thing I think people may find jarring about smartwatches is how users will interact with them. Take the Pebble, for instance: When a text message is received, it shows up on the watch screen. When I was with a colleague who wore a Pebble, he would stare at the watch every few minutes whenever he received a message from his girlfriend. People usually interpret this body language to mean someone is short on time and needs to be somewhere else, which could raise some tension. I think it will be key for companies to figure out how to make a smartwatch that doesn’t create awkward social situations.

Jenna: In my trial run of the Pebble smartwatch, I was impressed by how cool it felt to wear it, but disappointed that it didn’t streamline my life more. Then there are etiquette issues. Glancing at your wrist constantly, trying to decipher what’s happening on that minuscule screen, is distracting and rude. But maybe that’s only temporary until we all have them. Only time will tell.

With all new technologies, there’s always an adjustment period where we figure out what role a new social service or piece of hardware plays in our lives, from autocorrect to Siri to GPS. It’s always a little bit bumpy and prone to awkward moments or comical glitches, and smartwatches will be no different. I think it’ll be telling to see who the initial market will be — likely early adopters, runners, business professionals, kids. Will it expand beyond that, or will smartwatches just end up being another piece of smart-garbage collecting dust on our closet floor, alongside our old discarded Razrs, Nintendos and GPS units?

Will They Succeed?

Jenna: Cost will be a factor, as will interoperability. Will Samsung’s smartwatch only work with its Galaxy line of phones? And Google’s, Androids? If the walling off of gardens continues to happen as we’ve seen it in the past, the future looks bleak for the broader success of any of these devices, except maybe Apple’s. Limiting the reach of any new, experimental piece of hardware had a significant impact on the success of the Nexus Q, Google’s music hardware, and others. Then again, each maker has the chance to really rethink how their device interacts with their suite of other products. If Microsoft’s watch had a singular and cool tie-in to the Kinect, for example, that could dazzle consumers and move the category forward.

Brian: As was the case with smartphones, apps will define the value of a smartwatch. One can only imagine the potential for software when it is connected to the body. For example, perhaps a smartwatch could contain a heart rate monitor, which would enable software for tracking your workout, or monitoring your health very closely. Or imagine if the smartwatch’s music player automatically picked songs with a BPM that matched your heart rate. There are plenty of interesting possibilities.

But I think the biggest question is how much these are going to cost. It seems inevitable that a smartwatch will be complementary to a smartphone, so I can’t imagine people wanting to pay much more than $150 for such a device.

Readers, share your thoughts on smartwatches in the comment section below. Are you interested in buying one? Why or why not?

Europe Receives Complaint About Google’s Android

The complaint was filed by Fairsearch Europe, a group of Google’s competitors, including the mobile phone maker Nokia and the software titan Microsoft, and by other companies, like Oracle. It accuses Google of using the Android software “as a deceptive way to build advantages for key Google apps in 70 percent of the smartphones shipped today,” said Thomas Vinje, the lead lawyer for Fairsearch Europe, referring to Android’s share of the smartphone market.

For example, phone makers that agree to use Android — and that also want Google applications like YouTube — face contractual requirements to place those applications and other Google-branded applications in prominent positions on the mobile device’s desktop, Mr. Vinje said.

In an interview on Monday, the European Union’s antitrust chief, Joaquín Almunia, declined to comment on the new complaint but said officials had been examining the Android operating system independently of the two-year inquiry into whether Google had abused its dominance of Internet search.

When a formal complaint like this is made, the commission must at some point decide whether to take up the case or drop it.

Mr. Almunia also said that he was receiving proposals this week from Google to clear up concerns about its search practices, and that he hoped they would make it easier for Internet users to identify when Google was promoting its own services rather than those of competitors who might offer better results.

“This is a new step in the investigation,” he said.

A Google spokesman, Al Verney, would not specifically discuss either the new complaint or the comments by Mr. Almunia about the search case, saying only that the company continued “to work cooperatively” with the commission.

The European Commission opened its antitrust inquiry into Google’s search practices in November 2010. The investigation has since focused on whether Google might have unfairly taken advantage of its market dominance by giving preference to links to its own services, like Google Maps, when answering queries; whether Google disadvantaged competitors by including material in search results that came from other Web sites; and whether Google conducts its advertising business in accord with European antitrust law.

Last May the commission suggested that Google propose changes in how search results are presented as a way to settle the case. Since then, regulators and Google have been negotiating over those changes and other terms.

In Monday’s interview, Mr. Almunia said Google needed to offer the commission a solution where choices between Google-branded search results and those of its competitors were clearly visible within the search engine both on desktop computers and on mobile devices.

“I don’t know if you should call it labeling, or whatever, but they need to distinguish,” Mr. Almunia said.

“In some cases this can be achieved through the information you will receive through the natural search results,” he said. “In other cases, maybe we will ask Google to signal what are the relevant options, alternative options, in the way they present the results.”

The choice “should be a real one,” he said.

Mr. Almunia said regulators were not requiring Google to make changes to its algorithm, the secret formula that the company uses to determine the best responses to search queries.

In terms of the way Google uses and displays snippets of information from other Web sites in its search results, he said he expected Google to accept that other companies could choose “to allow or not to allow Google to use the content, but this decision cannot have as a consequence the punishment of those who will not allow the use of the content in terms of search results.”

Web sites and some publications have complained in recent years of virtually disappearing from Google’s search engine if they posed a competitive threat or did not comply with Google’s terms.

Mr. Almunia said he would test any changes that Google proposed to make by sending questionnaires to competitors, including the complainants, and to other companies.

Mr. Almunia said in Europe, where Google is especially strong, with more than 90 percent of the search market, compared with about 70 percent in the United States, it is particularly difficult for search engines to establish themselves if they focus on narrow but deep services like online shopping, travel or mapping.

But Mr. Almunia also said his approach in the case was not aimed at “protecting competitors,” as critics of European regulation have long complained.

Mr. Almunia said that he had concerns that Google had abused its dominance to promote its own products but that he would not need to “find a final answer to this question” if Google reached a settlement. “We are concerned by the possibility of an abuse,” he said.

“What is clear in our view is the market dominance of Google,” Mr. Almunia said. “This is obvious.”

He also noted that “it would not be surprising” if Google faced formal charges in a case concerning Motorola Mobility, a mobile phone maker owned by Google. That case follows complaints by Microsoft and Apple that they were victims of unfair licensing conditions and abusive litigation by Motorola Mobility.

The commission has taken a tougher line with Google than has the Federal Trade Commission on the issue of how Google runs its search rankings. The F.T.C. decided in January, after a 19-month inquiry into how the company operated its search engine, that Google had not broken antitrust laws.

Bits Blog: Samsung Speaks Up First About a Smart Watch

Tribune Media Services

Samsung Electronics has made it clear that it is making a wristwatch, even as Apple is rumored to be working on a smart watch itself. It is rare for a big tech company to voluntarily reveal a future product.

Young Hee, an executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, told Bloomberg News that the company had been working on a watch for a long time. He did not share any details about the watch, but what matters is that Samsung has beaten Apple in saying it is doing a watch.

While Samsung’s products have been successful worldwide, the company has been accused in courts of copying Apple. Now that Samsung has said it is working on a smart watch, it will be more difficult for critics to call it a copycat even if Apple releases one first. Apple has not officially said it is doing a watch, though rumors are that one is coming soon.

Samsung’s early mention of a smart watch is just another example of a battle of words with its main competitor, Apple. A day before Samsung introduced its new smartphone, the Galaxy S IV, Apple did interviews with mainstream news outlets where it criticized the Android software running on Samsung’s phones. In the last year, Samsung has aggressively mocked the iPhone in advertisements for its Galaxy phones.

One thing is clear: Samsung’s attacks are direct, while Apple’s are still somewhat vague, perhaps to remain more secretive. Which strategy will win?

Bits Blog: Study: Facebook Users More Protective Even as They Reveal More About Themselves

Jim Wilson/The New York Times Mark Zuckerberg discussing Facebook’s privacy settings in 2010.

Facebook users became much more protective about who sees sensitive information about them, even as they were urged to share more about themselves on the social network, according to an unusual seven-year study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

The study followed the privacy settings of roughly 5,000 Facebook users who were part of the university network on Facebook between 2005 and 2011. It is among the first longitudinal efforts aimed at gauging how Facebook users try to protect their information.

The study showed how over those years, Facebook made changes that  elicited increasing amounts of data. For example, the social network tripled the data fields its users could fill out. It introduced Timeline in 2011, encouraging users to fill in much more personal history, including whether they were expecting a baby or had acquired a new car. Its diverse applications offered users the opportunity to share what news articles and books they read. And it let them “tag” one another, effectively allowing one user to post information about a Facebook “friend.”

But even as Facebook encouraged more sharing, users became less likely to reveal to strangers certain pieces of sensitive, fine-grained personal information like dates of birth and what high school they attended, the survey found. There was a similar decline in users revealing their phone numbers and instant-messaging addresses to others in the university network who were not their Facebook “friends.”

Then, between late 2009 and late 2010, the data found a swift, marked turnaround, as if users had suddenly decided to become more public about what they shared. The more likely explanation, the researchers said, was that the company tweaked its privacy interface in December 2009. The changes proved confusing to many users, who made public some information they may have intended to keep private.

Eventually, Facebook’s changes to its privacy settings attracted the attention of government regulators. In 2011, the company agreed to let the Federal Trade Commission carry out annual audits of its privacy policies for 20 years.

The research paper, written by Alessandro Acquisti, Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman, is unusual in that it followed the privacy practices of a set of users over an extended period. It did not receive any financing from Facebook or its business rivals.

It is consistent with other studies, including by the Pew Internet Center, which has found that Facebook users increasingly calibrated whom they were sharing with on the social network. Between 2009 and 2011, a growing number of those surveyed by Pew said they had deleted comments and removed someone from among their Facebook “friends.” Pew documented anxiety among parents of teenagers in particular: About a third of parents surveyed said they had helped their children adjust their privacy settings.

And earlier this year, Pew reported that 61 percent of Facebook users surveyed said they had taken a break from the social network. Among the main reasons, they said, was a lack of time to prune their privacy settings.

Data is at the core of Facebook’s business. The company uses aggregated data to show targeted advertisements. It has in recent years offered users a way to control who sees a particular post or picture, as they are about to share it.

The company does not share information about its users’ privacy practices. Responding to a request for comment about the research paper, a Facebook spokesman, Andrew Noyes, said in an e-mailed statement: “Independent research has verified that the vast majority of the people on Facebook are engaging with and using our straightforward and powerful privacy tools — allowing them to control what they’re sharing, and with whom they’re sharing.”

The Carnegie Mellon academics noted that their study focused on a subset of Facebook users, mostly undergraduates who had signed up for Facebook as early as 2005 when it was restricted to college students.

They concluded that “over time, the amount and scope of personal information that Facebook users have revealed to friends’ profiles seems to have markedly increased — and thus, so have disclosures to Facebook itself, third-party apps, and (indirectly) advertisers.”

Hence, the paper is entitled “Silent Listeners: The Evolution of Privacy and Disclosures on Facebook.”

Media Decoder Blog: Hulu's Chief Is Leaving, Raising Questions About Its Future

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesJason Kilar, the founding chief executive of Hulu, gave no indication why he was moving on.

8:39 p.m. | Updated
Jason Kilar, the Web wizard who turned Hulu from a punch line into a popular source of online video, said on Friday that he would step down as the site’s founding chief executive in the next three months.

The announcement is certain to turn up the volume on something that’s a constant hum in the media industry: speculation about the future of Hulu — and if it has one at all. Its owners, the Walt Disney Company, Comcast and the News Corporation, also run the ABC, Fox and NBC networks, and they do not agree about what to do with the Web site. Perversely, the more popular Hulu becomes, the more of a problem it is for the owners, since it may be taking viewers and advertising dollars away from their core television businesses.

Mr. Kilar never saw it that way, however. He was Hulu’s best advocate, sometimes clashing with the network executives on Hulu’s board and arguing that they had to keep investing in the site, since television’s future will surely involve Internet distribution.

For many Americans, that future is already here: Hulu’s streams of TV shows attract 30 million unique visitors a month via computers and untold millions more via tablets and Internet-connected television sets. Three million pay for Hulu Plus, its subscription arm — not bad for a start-up once ridiculed as “ClownCo.”

Mr. Kilar declined an interview request on Friday. In an e-mail message to employees, he gave no indication why he was moving on or what he might do next. “My decision to depart has been one of the toughest I’ve ever made,” he said.

He said his departure would take effect within the first quarter of the year. No successor was named. Rich Tom, the site’s chief technology officer, will also depart in the first quarter.

Mr. Kilar, a former executive at Amazon, has in the past been mentioned for a number of prominent jobs in Silicon Valley. He was a top candidate last year for the chief executive position at Yahoo, but Hulu said he declined to be considered. The job later went to Marissa Mayer, a longtime Google employee.

His departure comes just several months after the only independent owner of Hulu, Providence Equity Partners, sold its 10 percent stake, originally bought for $100 million, for $200 million. Mr. Kilar and other employees also sold their stakes in the company at that time, netting Mr. Kilar about $40 million, according to an executive with knowledge of the transaction.

On Friday, there was widespread praise for Mr. Kilar for steering Hulu through sometimes turbulent seas. “He defied enormous odds, built from scratch one of the top five digital video brands, created two viable and growing businesses (free and pay) and got his well-deserved payday — not bad for five years’ work,” J. B. Perrette, who used to help oversee NBC’s investment in Hulu and now runs Discovery Communication’s digital operations, said in an e-mail.

That said, Mr. Kilar’s announcement did not entirely surprise many in the industry. During his tenure, he sometimes clashed with the owners on Hulu, exemplifying the divide between new, disruptive modes of distribution like the Internet and the more traditional operations at major media companies. As the parent companies pulled back on the amount of ABC, Fox and NBC programming provided to Hulu, the Web site invested in original content to fill the gaps and attract attention. That investment effort continues, led by one of Mr. Kilar’s deputies, Andy Forssell, but many in the industry say they believe that Hulu’s future remains fuzzy.

An internal memo obtained by Variety in August showed that the owners may want to change their agreements with Hulu so that it is no longer the exclusive distributor of repeats of television shows like “The Office” and “Family Guy.” That way, the owners could also sell repeat rights to online video services like YouTube, Netflix or Amazon.

Some of the owners also wanted more advertisements on the site, which had revenue of about $700 million last year but is not yet believed to be profitable. Much of the revenue came from Hulu Plus, and therein lies another fault line: the owners may concentrate on the paid part to the detriment of the free streaming part.

The owners had no comment about any of that on Friday, though. Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive, called Mr. Kilar an integral part of the Hulu story and said in a statement, “We are proud of his achievements, we appreciate what he’s built, and we share his confidence in his team’s ability to drive Hulu forward from here.”

This month, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, predicted that News Corporation would seek to acquire its competitors’ stakes in Hulu in 2013. Comcast, he said, has no managerial control of Hulu and Disney “appears increasingly less interested” in the site.

In August, News Corporation said that Jonathan Miller, the company’s chief digital officer since 2009 and a vocal champion of Hulu, would leave the company. Mr. Miller represented News Corporation on the Hulu board and had helped the media company broker a stake in Roku. And Chase Carey, the No. 2 to the chief executive of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, is said to be less enamored with the service.

News Corporation has had some high-stakes stumbles in technology with both Myspace and its tablet-only publication, The Daily, which has led some analysts to expect the company to tread cautiously with future digital investments like Hulu.

Mr. Murdoch, however, praised Mr. Kilar for “building Hulu into one of the leading online video services available today.” He added, “It’s incredibly well positioned for the road ahead.”