Representing a potential privacy snare for some users, Mac OS X Yosemite uploads documents opened in TextEdit, Preview, and Keynote to iCloud servers by default, even if the files are later closed without ever having been saved.

The behavior, as noted in an article from Slate, is documented in a Knowledge Base article from December. But it nonetheless came as a surprise to researcher Jeffrey Paul, who said he was alarmed to recently discover a cache of in-progress files he intended to serve as "temporary Post-It notes" that had been silently uploaded to his iCloud account even though he never intended or wished them to be.

"Apple has taken local files on my computer not stored in iCloud and silently and without my permission uploaded them to their servers," Paul wrote in a recent blog post.

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The Retina iMac on my desk, driving my pair of 27-inch Thunderbolt monitors. Lee Hutchinson

I’m at the end of my time with the Retina iMac now that our Senior Applemeister Andrew Cunningham is back from his nuptials. He’ll be finishing up our coverage of the device, but I wanted to touch on a couple of final points with the big Mac before I send it on its way to the East Coast. We’ve received several variations of the same question submitted to our feedback form: does the Retina iMac operate at 60Hz in its native 5120x2880 resolution? And if so, how is that even possible, given that DisplayPort 1.2 doesn’t have the bandwidth to support that resolution and refresh rate?

To answer the first question: yes, the iMac’s display runs at 60Hz, even when driving all 14.7 million pixels of its native 5k resolution. Apple directly verified this when I asked; the company also told Daring Fireball’s John Gruber the same. Further, it can be confirmed with apps that measure your refresh rate, like SwitchResX:

The output from SwitchResX on the Retina iMac, showing the 60Hz refresh rate.

For additional verification, a quick visit to a Web-based app that demonstrates 60Hz movement shows that the screen is operating at that refresh rate:

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Twitter's mobile ad service is giving advertisers access to a unique tracking number that carriers hide in cell phone network traffic—and users can't turn off. Shawn Campbell/CC BY 2.0

This article originally appeared on ProPublica on October 31, 2014.

Wired and Forbes reported earlier this week that the two largest cell phone carriers in the United States, Verizon and AT&T, are adding the tracking number to their subscribers' Internet activity, even when users opt out. The data can be used by any site—even those with no relationship to the telecoms—to build a dossier about a person's behavior on mobile devices, including which apps they use, what sites they visit, and how long. MoPub, acquired by Twitter in 2013, bills itself as the "world's largest mobile ad exchange." It uses Verizon's tag to track and target cellphone users for ads, according to instructions for software developers posted on its website.

Twitter declined to comment. AT&T said that its actions are part of a test. Verizon says it doesn't sell information about the demographics of people who have opted out.

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Folger's Crystals

Every time I write a Bash script or schedule a cron job, I worry about the day I'll star in my very own IT version of a Folger's commercial. Instead of "secretly replacing coffee with Folger's Instant Crystals", however, I worry I'll be replaced by an automation framework and a few crafty FOR loops. more>>

US tightrope walker Nik Wallenda has successfully completed back-to-back high-wire walks above the city of Chicago, watched by thousands of people.

There has been speculation that the current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa may have been sparked by the handling of bushmeat.

Reed Hastings JD Lasica

Reed Hastings, the 54-year-old Netflix chief executive, and Sean Parker, the 34-year-old former co-founder of Napster, have donated a combined $1.6 million in support of California ballot measures before voters head to Tuesday's election.

Parker gave a combined $1 million for Propositions 1 and 2. The former measure authorizes $7.2 billion in bonds for the parched state to pay for water-supply projects. Proposition 2 concerns how the Golden State pays its debts.

For his part, Hastings gave $250,000 to Proposition 1 and another $246,664 to a voter ballot measure that would cut penalties for one in five criminals in the Golden State, campaign finance records show. Parker also gave $100,000 to support Proposition 47, according to data supplied by Maplight, a nonprofit in Berkeley, California that chronicles campaign financing.

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If you think the two-factor authentication offered by Google and other cloud services will keep your account out of the hands of an attacker, think again. One developer found out this weekend the hard way; Google’s account protection scheme can be bypassed by going after something most people would consider an even harder target—the user’s cell phone account.

As Wired’s Mat Honan found out two years ago, customer service representatives are the weakest link in cloud security. And mobile phone carrier customer service representatives are just as susceptible to social engineering attacks, apparently. That’s what Grant Blakeman, an independent software developer and designer, learned when he woke up to find his Google account’s password had been changed and his Instagram account—desirable because of its two-letter name (@gb)—had been hijacked despite the use of two-factor authentication on his Google account.

Blakeman contacted his cell provider after an online conversation with Honan about what happened. He found that someone enabled call-forwarding on his cell account without his knowledge. That call-forwarding setup allowed the attacker to get an authentication code from Google to take over his Gmail address, which was in turn tied to his Instagram account.

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The Nexus Player remote, box, and controller. Ron Amadeo

Just about every major tech company offers some device that will put Netflix and YouTube on a TV screen—a Chromecast, Apple TV, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, Fire TV, or a Roku 3 will all do the job. For Google, the Chromecast was rather successful in this area because it was dead simple to use and the cheapest out of the bunch at just $35, but the company has decided that something more is needed. Today, Google is back with yet another device that will try to take over your living room: the Nexus Player.

The Asus-built device is a standard set-top box in the same vein as the Apple TV or Fire TV. The "Nexus" in "Nexus Player" indicates that this is the launch device for Android TV, Google's new living room software that replaces the lackluster Google TV OS. All these TV OSes look similar—grids of content thumbnails—but Android TV is based on Android 5.0 and throws an app store and Google's excellent voice search into the mix. Unlike some earlier Google TV devices, the Nexus Player doesn't do anything with live TV or with your DVR—for that you'll have to switch TV inputs.

The Nexus Player has 3 components. For $99, you get the set-top box and remote control, while another $40 gets you the optional Nexus Player Gamepad. The total package is a $105 premium over the $35 Google Chromecast, but the Chromecast is just a streaming stick. While the Nexus Player supports Google Cast (the retconned name for the Chromecast protocol), it also brings a dedicated TV interface along with local apps and games. In other words, it's a smartphone for your television. The addition of a gamepad is interesting. We've been tracking rumors of a "Nexus TV" product that was considered to be Google game console, and this appears to be it.

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A status screen from the now defunct Hearthcrawler software.

Blizzard seems to have scored a decisive win in the never-ending battle against automated "bot" programs that play games like Hearthstone without human intervention. Crawlerbots, maker of the popular Hearthcrawler bot, announced this morning that it is closing up shop in the wake of a recent crackdown on users of the automated play tools.

In what's dubbed as its "last official announcement," Crawlerbots writes that "the recent ban wave in Hearthstone hit a lot of users. After discussing this with Blizzard, it’s clear we have to take off our services/products now. Please note that we’re not going to be commenting further on this."

"Thank you all for being part of our community," the message continues. "We are very sad about this but you also know botting is against the rules and we all knew that the day when our products doesn't [sic] work anymore would come. With tears in our eyes we have to say bye."

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More than 13 years after the original towers were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, New York's World Trade Center has re-opened for business.

For a few years now, Google has had a generally consistent tablet strategy. Instead of chasing after the ~10 inch tablet segment and focusing upon the high end, we’ve seen tablets closer to the ~7 inch display size at extremely low cost. While this has been an immensely successful strategy in driving hardware adoption, the formfactor made it possible for the tablet to be closer to a large phone than a small tablet. The flexibility of Android’s scaling system meant that an app designed for a phone worked acceptably well for a small tablet, even if the space efficiency was a bit poor. There’s no question that the Nexus 7 (2013) was and still is a great tablet, but even now it’s obvious that there’s a dearth of applications designed specifically for the larger display. The other issue is that of cost. With the Nexus 7 line, Google managed to integrate an incredible amount of hardware into a tablet priced well below the ~500 USD price point that the original iPad established. This is great for the consumer and no doubt great for Google, but the Nexus 7 line was good enough that there wasn’t much in the way of competition.

This brings us to the Nexus 9, Google’s attempt at changing the Android tablet space. From the start, this device seems to be intent on pushing the Android tablet to a more premium segment. To find out how Google does at this task, read on for our preliminary findings.

iDevices and Macs on the same network can make and receive phone calls through your iPhone. SMS messages can be relayed, as well. Apple

If you have the latest Mac and the latest iPhone or iPad running Apple's latest OSes, and if you have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on, the new Continuity features work like magic. What powers that magic? A wide range of network options, including Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE), peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, regular local networking, and iCloud/iMessage. Each aspect of Continuity actually picks and chooses from these connectivity options, sometimes using more than one.

We looked at Continuity while both iOS and OS X were in beta. Now that they are out, we've gone back and tested what the released version can accomplish. I think this is a complete list of what the current version of Continuity can do, as well as a couple of similar features that Apple doesn't cover under the "Continuity" umbrella:

• Let Macs and iPads send and receive SMSes if you have an iPhone
• Let Macs (and iPads?) make and answer phone calls through an iPhone
• AirDrop files between devices
• AirPlay to an Apple TV
• Remotely control a Keynote presentation
• Start work on one device and Handoff to another in Safari, Maps, Contacts, Notes, Reminders, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, as well as third-party applications in the future
• Set up an Instant Hotspot

Let's take a look at the various network requirements behind each feature.

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Funerals have been talking place across Punjab province for some of those killed in Sunday's suicide attack at the Wagah crossing, the only road crossing between India and Pakistan.

In a Q&A with Japanese investors (helpfully translated by a NeoGAF user), Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has given the first public indication that his company has considered removing the region lock that limits playable software on the Wii U and 3DS to hardware sold in the same region.

In responding to a question about the practice, Iwata defended the historical reasons for limiting international interoperability, such as translation, marketing, and licensing issues. But he acknowledged that these are justifications that mainly apply to game makers and sellers while being a drawback for customers.

"As for what should be done going forward, if unlocked for the benefit of the customers, there may also be a benefit for us," Iwata said. "Conversely, unlocking would require various problems to be solved, so while I can't say today whether or not we intend to unlock, we realize that it is one thing that we must consider, looking to the future."

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Ground imagery showing the destruction of SpaceShipTwo. Kenneth Brown/Reuters

The Guardian has a good summary of how things are proceeding with the two-day-old National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the destruction of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which occurred at approximately 10:12am PDT on October 31. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing an explosion when the craft broke up, prompting speculation that the accident had something to do with SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket engine—an engine that was making its first flight with its new fuel.

However, at a press conference Sunday afternoon, acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said that crash investigators had already located the cause of the accident that injured 43-year old pilot Peter Siebold and took the life of 39-year old co-pilot Michael Alsbury: the spacecraft’s "feathering" mode had been engaged early. This put SpaceShipTwo in a high-drag configuration unsuitable for powered flight, and the craft then broke apart.

The feathering functionality is designed to be used in the later stage of SpaceShipTwo’s flight. It changes the shape of the craft, swinging its wings upward and allowing them to move to the optimum angle to slow the craft down on descent, like a shuttlecock falling to the ground in a game of badminton.

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Since Computex, there has been a lot of talk around Intel’s Broadwell-Y / Core-M CPU line. In August Intel treated us to a breakdown of the 14nm process and the Broadwell architecture including all the improvements therein, followed by a more succinct breakdown of the CPUs we should expect. These initial CPUs should be properly available to the public in Q4 in devices such as the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro using the Core M-5Y70.

The news this week revolves around more Core M CPUs being pushed through the system. This is most likely as a result of Intel binning the CPUs in sufficient quantities to satisfy customers. The specifications are available at ark.intel.com, but the Core M line now stands at seven different SKUs:

Intel Core M Specifications   5Y71
(New) 5Y70 5Y51
(New) ​5Y31
(New) 5Y10c
(New) 5Y10a 5Y10 Cores / Threads 2 / 4 2 / 4 2 / 4 2 / 4 2 / 4 2 / 4 2 / 4 Base Frequency / MHz 1200 1100 1100 900 800 800 800 Turbo Frequency / MHz 2900 2600 2600 2400 2000 2000 2000 Processor Graphics HD 5300 HD 5300 HD 5300 HD 5300 HD
5300 HD
5300 HD 5300 IGP Base Frequency / MHz 300 100 300 300 300 100 100 IGP Turbo Frequency / MHz 900 850 900 850 800 800 800 L3 Cache 4 MB 4 MB 4 MB 4 MB 4 MB 4 MB 4 MB TDP 4.5 W 4.5 W 4.5 W 4.5 W 4.5 W 4.5 W 4.5 W LPDDR3/DDR3L 
Support 1600 MHz 1600 MHz 1600 MHz 1600 MHz 1600 MHz 1600 MHz 1600 MHz Intel vPro Yes Yes No No No No No Intel TXT Yes Yes No No No No No Intel VT-d/VT-x Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Intel AES-NI Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

The new high end model is the 5Y71, offering a 2.9 GHz frequency mode and vPro features. The 5Y51 has slightly better specifications than the higher numbered 5Y70, but loses vPro compatibility. Both the 5Y31 and 5Y51  fill in the large gap between the 5Y10a and 5Y70 in the initial launch. All four new processors all have an improved base GPU frequency, up to 300 MHz, and are slated to work at a cTDP Up of 6W or cTDP Down of 3.5W, depending on the customer’s needs.

All new CPUs are slated for a Q4 launch, which would mean that they might become available for end users in products on the shelf sometime in Q1 2015.

Source: CPU-World

Burkina Faso's military has said it will install a transitional government, days after it seized power as President Blaise Compaore resigned.

A 29-year-old British man accused of murdering two women in Hong Kong has been remanded in custody.

The Antarctic ice core, still in the core barrel. Mark Twickler

Selecting what kind of record to use when studying Earth’s climate history is a bit like selecting a camera lens from your bag. The choice depends on what you want to see, and your options are limited to what's in the bag. Some climate records are long but low-resolution—a wide-angle lens that shows you the big picture. Other records are short but high-resolution—a telephoto lens that lets you get a good look at that duck over there.

Ice cores have told us a lot about the glacial cycles the Earth has recently been through. Cores of Antarctic ice go back far enough to cover a number of roughly 100,000 year cycles. Greenland ice cores can only stretch back about as far as the previous interglacial warm period, but they show greater detail over short time periods because more snow falls there each year. However, wind-blown dust in Greenland’s ice compromises the tiny samples of atmospheric carbon dioxide locked in bubbles within the ice, making Antarctica the preferred source of information on CO2.

That’s fine for the big picture, but what if we want to learn more about precisely how CO2 changed during the transitions between glacial and interglacial cycles? To study these subtle shifts in Earth’s carbon cycle, you need to zoom in to shorter chunks of time than most Antarctic ice cores can provide.

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