CHART OF THE DAY: Netflix Is Finally Becoming HBO, Like It Said It Would (NFLX)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-netflix-is-finally-becoming-hbo-like-it-said-it-would-2014-8

Last January, Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos said the company’s “goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” Well, mission accomplished. According to the latest data provided by the company, which was charted for us by Statista, Netflix has finally passed HBO in subscriber revenue ($1.146 billion vs. $1.141 billion).

Netflix says it has 48 million total paid subscribers, with the vast majority of those customers — 35.1 million, to be exact — in the U.S. HBO actually has more paid subscribers than Netflix with 127 million worldwide, but that figure also includes various channels owned by the company, including HBO 2, HBO Family, and Cinemax.

SEE ALSO: CHART OF THE DAY: The Worst Company Data Breaches Ever

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The FBI uses malware to combat online anonymity

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/05/the-fbi-uses-malware-to-combat-online-anonymity/

Online anonymity is a beautiful, terrible thing, so naturally governments and law enforcement types are eager to see what happens behind the web's closed doors. Naturally, that includes the folks at the FBI: According to Wired, the FBI has been using "network investigative techniques" -- like highly specific, purpose-built malware -- to help peel back popular anonymizing service Tor's layers of obscurity to catch criminals.

The bureau's efforts began in earnest with an involved child pornography investigation dubbed Operation Torpedo back in 2012. They eventually lucked out by gaining access to a CP site called Pedoboard, arresting the operator, taking over the servers, and delivering malware to visitors who thought they were protected by Tor.

There's no denying that some good has come from the bureau's use of malware, as Wired's Kevin Poulsen points out that more than 12 child porn aficionados are headed to trial as a result. The flip side of that coin is that the FBI's success with Operation Torpedo led to another effort to bypass the anonymity that Tor provides... and possibly exposed some innocent people's information to the FBI's eager eyes. With a little Javascript, understanding of Firefox and Tor security issues and a "tiny" Windows program, users of some Tor-hidden services like Tormail (hosted by an outfit called Freedom Hosting, which itself was being investigated for "tolerating" child porn) essentially had their IP addresses unmasked.

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Source: Wired

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This is why Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion: because its throughput of shared photographs i

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-is-why-facebook-bought-whatsapp-for-16-billion-b-1616224487

This is why Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion : because its throughput of shared photographs is astronomical, and rising at an insane rate. (See also, the purchase of Instagram and the crazy offer for Snapchat .) [KPCB]

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13 European Dream Homes You Can Actually Rent

Source: http://gizmodo.com/13-european-dream-homes-you-can-actually-rent-1615953050

It's no secret that Europe is full of magical places. However, you're probably never going to stay in Windsor Castle or sleep in Rapunzel's tower. You might, however, enjoy a similar brush with a fairy tale thanks to this architecture-loving travel agency in Germany.

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Visual microphone can pick up speech from a bag of potato chips

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/04/visual-microphone/

You may want to be careful about the conversations you hold in the future; if you're near a window, someone might be listening in. A team of researchers from Adobe, Microsoft and MIT have developed a visual microphone algorithm that picks up audio by looking for microscopic vibrations in video footage. The technique exploits the rolling shutter effect in digital cameras (where the sensor reads pixels one row at a time) to detect sound-related movements that might otherwise be invisible; the only gear you need is a camera that can record at high frame rates. It's good enough to capture singing from a bag of potato chips, and musical tones from a potted plant.

Don't worry about optical eavesdropping just yet. The experiment only got accurate reproduction with specialized cameras that shoot at up to 6,000 frames per second; an off-the-shelf device with 60fps recording can identify people's voices, but it's hard to make out words. Provided the technology reaches fruition, it would most likely be used by investigators that want to hear what suspects say when they're not on the phone. It would be useful for more than surveillance, too, as team member Abe Davis believes the visual mic could identify a material's properties without making contact. It's definitely clever tech -- let's just hope that it's used more for science than snooping.

Filed under: Cameras, Science, Microsoft

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Source: MIT (1), (2)

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