Verizon

Cellular communications provider Verizon Wireless is adding cookie-like tokens to Web requests traveling over its network. These tokens are being used to build a detailed picture of users’ interests and to help clients tailor advertisements, according to researchers and Verizon’s own documentation.

The profiling, part of Verizon’s Precision Market Insights division, kicked off more than two years ago and expanded to cover all Verizon Wireless subscribers as part of the company’s Relevant Mobile Advertising service. It appends a per-device token known as the Unique Identifier Header (UIDH) to each Web request sent through its cellular network from a particular mobile device, allowing Verizon to link a website visitor to its own internal profiles. The service aims to allow client websites to target advertising at specific segments of the consumer market.

While the company started piloting the service two years ago, privacy experts only began warning of the issue this week, arguing that the service is essentially tracking users and that companies paid for a fundamental service that should not be using the data for secondary purposes.

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This looks like perfectly moral behavior. Washington Fish and Wildlife

The question of why good people do bad things has fascinated psychologists for decades. Stanley Milgram famously identified deference to authority as a factor pushing people toward unethical behavior, but it seems that something even simpler could be in the mix: fatigue.

A recent study published in Psychological Science found that people are more inclined to cheat on a task at different times of the day, depending on their individual body clocks, or “chronotypes.” Chronotypes affect people’s natural peaks and troughs of physical and cognitive functions throughout the day, making “larks” more alert first thing in the morning and “owls” more wakeful late at night. The new evidence suggests that morning people are more likely to cheat at night, while evening people are more likely to cheat in the morning.

Morality in the morning

Building on research suggesting that people are more dishonest when they are tired, Brian Gunia, Christopher Barnes, and Sunita Sah assessed the chronotypes of participants, classifying them as either morning, intermediate, or evening people. Participants attended morning test sessions that required completing a puzzle task and were paid $0.50 for each puzzle they claimed to have solved correctly. If a participant failed to solve a puzzle but reported having done so, this was counted as a cheat.

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Getty Images

Getty Images, a massive image licensing company, has earned quite a reputation for aggressive copyright enforcement over the past several years. But the company says it wants to turn that around.

Until now, Getty’s strategy has been to comb the Web for illegal reproductions of its images using special software and to send threatening letters to anyone who appears to be infringing. Getty has told the targets of its letters that it will pursue an expensive lawsuit unless those who re-post the images agree to pay settlements that include penalties and licensing fees, sometimes amounting to hundreds or several thousand dollars. Generally, Getty Images tends not to pursue its claims in court, instead favoring the so-called “settlement demand letters” which bill the alleged user of an unlicensed Getty image for the use of the image, as well as a portion of the "enforcement fees."

But that won’t be the case any longer. Earlier this week, general counsel for Getty Images John Lapham told GigaOm that Getty’s "enforcement polices are being ramped down.”

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A physician at Columbia University Medical Center who recently travelled to Guinea to work with Doctors Without Borders has become the first case of Ebola in New York City. The New York Times says that there have been positive results in preliminary tests performed by city health authorities, although these await confirmation by the CDC. This would be the first US case outside of an initial cluster in Dallas, Texas.

The physician, who has been identified as Craig Spencer, posted photos of himself in full protective garb on Facebook in September. He returned from West Africa less than two weeks ago and had been self-monitoring since. He apparently began feeling unwell several days ago and developed a high fever on Thursday. As soon as health authorities were alerted, they brought him to Bellevue Hospital, which has been prepared for the isolation of Ebola patients and has trained staff for this contingency.

Unfortunately, the night prior to reporting his fever, Dr. Spencer took public transportation and a cab in order to go bowling in Brooklyn, according to the Times report. Authorities are now trying to identify people who might have had extensive contact with the patient and have sealed off his home and quarantined his girlfriend, according to CNN.

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This afternoon, Microsoft announced record first quarter revenue for its fiscal year 2015 which ended September 30. Revenue was up 25% year-over-year, and came in at $23.2 billion. Gross margin was up 12% year-over-year at $14.9 billion. As a percentage, Gross Margin was down however, which resulted in a lower operating income of $5.8 billion, which is down 8% from last year. Net income came in at $4.5 billion, which is down 13% from 2013. Because of this, earnings per share also slipped to $0.55 per share, down from $0.63 a year ago.

Microsoft Q1 2015 Financial Results (GAAP)   Q1'2015 Q4'2014 Q1'2014 Revenue (in Billions USD) $23.201 $23.382 $18.529 Operating Income (in Billions USD) $5.844 $6.482 $6.334 Gross Margin (in Billions USD) $14.928 $15.787 $13.384 Net Income (in Billions USD) $4.540 $4.612 $5.244 Margins 64.3% 67.5% 72.2% Basic Earnings per Share (in USD) $0.55 $0.55 $0.63

Microsoft breaks their product and services into two divisions. Devices and Consumer focuses on end user products such as Xbox, Surface, Lumia phones, and the related consumer focused software options. Commercial focuses on enterprise which means Server, System Center, SQL, volume licensing, and other enterprise software and services.

Devices and Consumer (D&C) revenue grew 47% to $10.96 billion, as compared to Q1 2014. On the D&C Licensing segment, Windows OEM revenue was down 2%, however there was growth in the number of licenses sold. Microsoft changed the licensing fairly substantially during their 2014 fiscal year, which results in Windows being no cost for a lot of the lower cost devices. Windows OEM Pro licensing was down 4%, which the company feels is in-line with normal business PC replacement cycles. This would also not cover any businesses which utilize volume licensing, with that revenue falling under the Commercial branch. Continuing with licensing, Office Consumer revenue was down 5% for the quarter, with that loss being expected with the move to Office 365 for consumers. Windows Phone licensing revenue was down 46%, which is not unexpected when the operating system license fee was removed. The Gross Margin for D&C Licensing declined 3%, which Microsoft accounts for due to the end of the Nokia commercial license agreement with Nokia’s phone business being purchased last fiscal year. Overall, D&C Licensing revenue was down 9% to $4.09 billion.

The next D&C segment is Computing and Gaming Hardware, which is a look at the Surface and Xbox platforms. Surface enjoyed a strong quarter with revenue coming in at $908 million. Surface Pro 3 interest is strong, with Microsoft seeing good sales to students, professionals, and enterprise adoption of their latest tablet.  Xbox sales were also up, with 2.4 million consoles sold in Q1. There was no break down of Xbox One vs 360 numbers provided. I’m sure Microsoft is hoping for better Xbox One sales, with the new console launching in 28 additional markets last quarter. This segment had a good quarter, with revenue up 74% to $2.45 billion, and Gross Margin was up 134% to $480 million.

Phone Hardware, which technically did not exist as part of Microsoft a year ago, had a solid quarter as well. Microsoft sold 9.3 million Lumias in Q1, which was a modest gain year-over-year. They are seeing better sales in Europe, and especially with the lower priced phones. It seems to be that this is where the Lumia brand is focused, with the majority of the product launches this year being lower cost devices. The former Nokia feature phone line “performed in line with the market for feature phones” and there was no additional information here. The Phone Hardware segment came in at $2.61 billion in revenue and had $480 million in Gross Margin, although the margin gain was partially from non-recurring items which means those gains will not carry forward for Q2.

The final consumer segment is D&C Other, which is the consumer cloud offerings from Microsoft. Office 365 Consumer (Personal and Home versions) is now up to 7 million active subscribers. This is a 25% gain from the previous quarter. This helps explain the traditional D&C Licensing drop for Office, with Microsoft seeing good success in the subscription model for Office. Search revenue was up 23% due to higher revenue per search in addition to search volume. Bing search share in the US was up 140 basis points to 19.4%. Worldwide figures were not given. Gross margin for the cloud offerings was down due to investments in online infrastructure, and clocked in at $310 million. Overall revenue was up 16% to $1.81 billion.

Commercial revenue is the bigger piece of the pie for Microsoft, and this side of the house had a revenue gain of 10%, with $12.28 billion in Q1. Gross margin for Commercial gained was up 9% to $9.91 billion. Breaking down the segment, Licensing was up 3% to $9.87 billion, with Server product revenue up 11% which was due to double-digit growth for SQL Server, System Center, and Windows Server. Windows Volume Licensing was up 10%, and Office Commercial products declined 7% due to the transition of customers to Office 365.

Commercial Other had a 50% revenue gain, with a Q1 revenue of $2.41 billion. This gain was heavily assisted by a 128% increase in Commercial Cloud revenue and the adoption of Office 365, and especially the higher priced SKUs. Customers are also purchasing additional cloud features such as Enterprise Mobility Suite and Azure Active Directory.

Microsoft Q1 2014 Segment Overview (in Billions USD)   Q1'2015 Q4'2014 Q1'2014 Percentage for quarter D&C Licensing Revenue $4.09 $4.90 $4.48 17.6% D&C Licensing Gross Margin $3.82 $4.52 $3.92 25.6% D&C Computing and Gaming Hardware Revenue $2.45 $1.34 $1.41 10.6% D&C Computing and Gaming Hardware Gross Margin $0.48 $0.02 $0.21 3.2% D&C Other Revenue $1.81 $1.76 $1.55 7.8% D&C Other Gross Margin $0.31 $0.29 $0.32 2.1% Phone Hardware Revenue $2.61 $1.99 N/A 11.2% Phone Hardware Gross Margin $0.48 $0.054 N/A 3.2% Commercial Licensing Revenue $9.87 $11.22 $9.58 42.5% Commercial Other Revenue $2.41 $2.26 $1.60 10.3% Commercial Overall Gross Margin $9.91 $10.99 $9.08 66.3%

Fiscal Year 2015 has had a solid start for Microsoft, with record revenue for Q1. A little bit less impressive is the decline in net income. With a PC industry that has pretty much leveled off, the traditional businesses of Windows and Office are losing some of their luster. With Microsoft moving Windows to a no cost licensing model for lower cost PCs and smaller devices, we can expect Windows revenue to continue to drop over the next while. Low cost is generally higher volume, so this could mean a substantial decrease in revenue from the Windows team. However there are some good signs as well in the Consumer segment. Surface sales are almost at $1 billion for the quarter, but more importantly Surface is also making money. Anyone who follows Microsoft earnings will likely never forget the massive write down for the initial Surface lines, so it is promising to see the Surface team having some success. Also, as the traditional licensing method of Windows and Office has seen decreases, Microsoft’s cloud offerings are gaining a lot of traction and continue to see large gains in users and revenue.

On the Commercial side, it is interesting to see the strong gains because not only is the on-premise infrastructure seeing strong gains, with > 10% grown for Server, SQL, and System Center, the cloud based infrastructure, which at one point was thought to be a replacement for on-premise servers, also saw a 128% increase in revenue for the quarter. As companies move to the cloud for their computing needs, Microsoft has a strong offering here due to being able to provide both on-premise and cloud products that work together. It is fascinating to see double digit growth in a product like System Center, when someone looking in would assume a legacy product such as System Center, which is used to primarily manage desktops, would be replaced by a cloud solution like Microsoft Intune. Clearly businesses are seeing a need to expand into the cloud, but keep some or all of their existing infrastructure as well.

Unfortunately the Microsoft press release did not have any forward looking statements, as they were saved for the webcast which should be available by the end of Thursday. I will try and update this article with that information when it is released.

Source: Microsoft Investor Relations

bfishadow/ Flickr

In the first quarter of its 2015 financial year, Microsoft sold more phones than expected and continues to do well in the cloud space, leading it to a record for Q1 revenue.

Revenue for the quarter was $23.20 billion, up 25.2 percent on the same quarter in the 2014 financial year. Operating income was down 7.9 percent, to $5.84 billion, and earnings per share were down 12.7 percent to $0.55.

The large drop in operating income was driven primarily by a $1.14 billion charge for "integration and restructuring." The majority of this, $1.05 billion, was made up of severance expenses and restructuring-related write-downs.

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A single blue orb floating among billions, part of a galaxy that’s among hundreds of billions, houses the sum total of human achievement. The Sid Meier's Civilization series is one of those achievements, taking the total history of that great, big ball we all live on and condensing it into perhaps the best, and certainly the most popular, 4X strategy game ever made.

Civilization has always held the sanitized, slightly goofy ideal common to all projects bearing Meier's moniker. Maybe Civilization: Beyond Earth's developers felt infinitesimal when considering the vastness of space, or maybe they were simply struck with a distrust of the future common to science fiction. Either way, the latest game in the franchise that all but defines turn-based strategy is a bit less sanitized and a bit more sinister than its predecessors.

For one thing, despite the veneer of technological and social advancement inherent in exploring life on a new planet, the future represented by Beyond Earth is frighteningly similar to that of past Civilization titles. The humans still squabble over resources, land, and ideology, and they do so in ways that are similar to Civilization V from turn one on.

The similarities make Beyond Earth feel more like a sci-fi themed Civ V expansion than a bold new direction for the series. Units are moved the same way; cities are grown the same way; resource tiles are worked in the same way. While the new victory conditions each have some pseudoscience flavor dialogue, winning is still a matter of out-researching or out-fighting opposed factions in more or less the same ways as before.

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Aereo on an iPad. Casey Johnston

A New York federal judge has sided with a group of major broadcasters—including Twentieth Century Fox and the Public Broadcasting System—and shut down TV-over-the-Internet startup Aereo’s "Watch Now" system.

"The Supreme Court has concluded that Aereo performs publicly when it retransmits Plaintiffs' content live over the Internet and thus infringes Plaintiffs' copyrighted works," Judge Alison Nathan wrote in her 17-page opinion and order on Thursday.

"In light of this conclusion, Aereo cannot claim harm from its inability to continue infringing Plaintiffs' copyrights. In addition, in light of the fact that Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits rather than just sufficiently serious questions going to the merits, they need no longer show that the balance of hardships tips decidedly in their favor."

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Greetings, Arsians! The dealmaster is back with a bunch of deals courtesy of our partners at TechBargains. This week the top deal is a Dell XPS 8700 desktop computer. For just $799.99 you get a 2.6GHz Core i7, 16GB of RAM, a 2TB hard drive and a GeForce GTX 745. That's $500 off the regular price. If you current rig is feeling a little sluggish, maybe it's time to upgrade? This and tons more deals are below. For more desktop deals, visit the TechBargains site.

Featured deal

Dell XPS 8700 Core i7 Desktop w/ 16GB RAM, 2TB Hard Drive & 4GB GeForce GTX 745 for $799.99 plus free shipping (list price $1299.99 | use coupon code TQR2JHV6XV?$MP)

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Sam Machkovech

It's tablet season! We're swimming in tablets! The tablet fairy has arrived! Etc., etc., etc. As a result, we want to offer first impressions on devices that might otherwise fall through the cracks—and no high-end tablet fits that bill better than this year's Amazon Fire HDX 8.9, which just arrived at our doorstep.

That's because it's quite easy to mistake this for last year's Amazon Fire HDX 8.9. In fact, typing "Fire HDX 8.9" into Amazon's search bar will bring up last year's model by default, making us wonder why Amazon didn't take the opportunity to, we don't know, add a "point one" to the name. Either way, if you hold both models in your hands at the same time, you're not likely to notice a major difference at first glance.

They share the same weight (13.2 oz), the same dimensions and thickness, the same 2560x1600 display (measuring at, you guessed it, 8.9 inches), the same cameras, and even the same aesthetics, from the massive bezels on the front to the angled, soft plastic shape on the back.

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Lygodium japonicum, the fern in question. Doug Goldman. USDA

Sex exists because it's evolutionarily useful—it makes it easier for a population to share genetic novelties and dilute out harmful mutations. But it's also subject to all sorts of additional evolutionary constraints, from the amount of resources devoted to offspring to the challenge of ensuring that a population ends up with a useful ratio of male and female individuals.

A paper in today's issue of Science suggests that some species of fern have evolved a rather novel solution to creating a good balance between the sexes: they discuss it as a community, with the discussion taking place via chemical signals. A team of Japanese researchers show that the earliest maturing sex organs in a group of ferns will invariably develop as females. Once they do, they start producing and exporting a chemical signal.

That signal is a chemically inactivated hormone. When it's received by an immature sex organ, it gets converted to the mature form, which then influences the development of the tissue, causing it to mature as a male. The trick to all this working is that an enzyme that's essential for activating the hormone is present in immature tissue, but the gene that encodes it gets shut down as the tissue matures.

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T-Mobile's network won't reach into "your cave," so you'll need some Wi-Fi. T-Mobile

T-Mobile US is really looking forward to next year’s spectrum auction. Today, it doesn’t have enough low-band spectrum to match the networks of AT&T and Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile VP of Federal Regulatory Affairs Kathleen Ham wrote in a blog post.

“As our competitors well know, arming T-Mobile with low-band spectrum is a competitive game-changer, enabling our service to penetrate building walls better and travel longer distances than we can with the spectrum we have today,” Ham wrote. “Imagine a T-Mobile with even greater coverage, offering innovative Un-carrier deals to even more customers in even more places—in direct competition with the Twin Bells!”

The Federal Communications Commission plans to set aside spectrum for carriers that lack low-band frequencies (those under 1GHz) in the auction of 600MHz spectrum currently controlled by TV broadcasters. But T-Mobile says the FCC’s plan doesn’t go far enough.

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Farmland birds are at their lowest levels since records began, according to government figures.

Simulated tsunamis for earthquakes in several locations. Rhett Butler

Surfers love Hawaii’s waves, and many dream of catching “the big one.” For most people living in coastal areas vulnerable to tsunamis, though, “the big one” is a bad dream. We’ve seen many devastating events over the years, but our memory is not so long that Mother Nature can’t surprise us. The 2011 tsunami in Japan testified to that.

In 2001, sediment from a past tsunami was found in a sinkhole on the southeast side of the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i. The mouth of that sinkhole is about a hundred meters from the shoreline—and over seven meters above sea level. The largest tsunami measured in the area had been three meters, courtesy of Chile’s monstrous magnitude 9.55 earthquake in 1960. Could it be that an event was big enough to send tsunami waves over seven meters high to Hawaii in the past?

Researchers Rhett Butler, David Burney, and David Walsh simulated a variety of earthquakes around the Pacific to find out. They used a model that simulates the spread of tsunami waves, creating some virtual magnitude 9.0 to 9.6 earthquakes from Alaska to Kamchatka.

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brykmantra

It was an eerie tale. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney announced last year that he disabled the wireless function of the implanted heart defibrillator amid fears it could be exploited by terrorists wanting to kill him.

Cheney's announcement put a face to the fear of possible medical-device hacking exploits, and researchers and the federal government were slowly realizing there were genuine vulnerabilities associated with these implanted devices. They are equipped with computerized functions and wireless capabilities that allow the devices to be administered without requiring additional surgery, and therefore they could be vulnerable to hacker exploit.

Cheney's move may have seemed far-fetched, but his paranoia is being confirmed, as the Department of Homeland Security is now probing potential cybersecurity flaws in certain medical devices.

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Comcast reported its third quarter earnings today with positive results—and even the bad news was good.

"Video customer net losses declined to 81,000, the best third quarter result in seven years," the company's announcement said.

"I am pleased to report strong revenue, operating cash flow, and free cash flow growth for the third quarter of 2014," CEO Brian Roberts said. In addition to slowing video losses over the past three months, "cable results highlight the consistent strength of high-speed Internet and business services," he said.

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Cyrus Farivar

Ello, the notably stripped-down, ad-free social network, announced Thursday that it has taken $5.5 million in venture capital and re-incorporated as a “Public Benefit Corporation.”

The company’s founders and investors also published a one-page document in which they declared:

1. Ello must never make money from selling ads
2. Ello must never make money from selling user data
3. In the event that Ello is ever sold, the new owners would also have to comply by these terms

So how is Ello going to make money? Even its investors don't know.

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The Sony SmartWatch 3—the only Android Wear device with a GPS chip. Sony

Google is announcing the rollout of the first major Android Wear update, which allows the smartwatch OS to do a few core functions without being tethered to a smartphone. The update—which was detailed last month—allows a Wear device to play music directly to Bluetooth headphones and use an internal GPS chip to track location, all without the need to tether to a smartphone.

The most obvious use for the new feature is running. Now, with only a watch, a jogging user could listen to music and track their progress with one less device. This previously required dragging a phone along, but when you're running, it's nice to carry as little technology as possible.

The bad news is that the first batch of Android Wear devices didn't plan ahead for this. While standalone music will work on existing devices, nothing on the market right now has a GPS chip. Early adopters of devices like the Moto 360 will have to buy a new smartwatch to take advantage of the GPS feature.

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Michael Skrepnick

it seems like everywhere scientists look, they're finding dinosaurs. A new species is emerging at the astounding pace of one per week. And this trend continues with the announcement of perhaps the strangest dinosaur find over the past few years: the toothless, hump-backed, super-clawed omnivore Deinocheirus mirificus, which lived about 70 million years ago in what is now Mongolia.

Deinocheirus may even become a household name, thanks to spectacular new fossils from the Gobi Desert reported by South Korean paleontologist Young-Nam Lee and colleagues, who published their results in Nature. It is a one-of-a kind dinosaur—a creature so astoundingly weird that the world probably won't be able to avoid taking notice.

Half a century of wild speculation

It has been a banner year for dinosaur discoveries. First it was the “chicken from hell” and a dwarf tyrannosaur announced in the spring, then the long-snouted carnivore “Pinocchio rex” and the feathery glider Changyuraptor came in the summer. Over the past couple of months, we have been awed by the 65-ton, long-necked behemoth Dreadnoughtus and wowed by remarkable new fossils of the sail-backed, shark-eating Spinosaurus from Africa.

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The joy of shooting three guns at once.

It's Bayonetta's world, and we're all just living in it. That much was clear after watching her dispatch wave after wave of enemies in divine style in her first game. Nobody could possibly strap a pair of flamethrowers to their feet and breakdance the propellant over a crowd of hostile angels if they weren't 100 percent confident that they were completely in control of everything that happens next.

That sense of control is the most easily accepted facet of Bayonetta 2. Hooking dragons out from hell and launching them at your enemies is as basic in this game as firing bullets from a gun is in a Call of Duty title. When Bayonetta 2 steps past that baseline and actually tries to put on a show, it somehow gets infinitely more absurd, and entertaining.

If you played the first game in the Bayonetta series, you know the titular character gets her witchy powers through a pact with the aforementioned hell-spawn, giving her the canvas to express herself through a unique combination of magic, violence, and dance. The result isn't just ridiculous, but incredibly fluid and responsive. Bayonetta is a force of nature in combat, sliding effortlessly into battle to land blows with guns, fists, and any whatever weapons she can collect. Complete a combo uninterrupted, and Bayonetta calls forth a "Wicked Weave" demonic summon finisher before stringing the tempest over to another heavenly target.

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