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RT @pkedrosky: In search of Alpha: Beating the Market Has Become Impossible-er

RT @Techmeme: Netflix Hits Its Numbers, Investors Go Nuts, Reed Hastings Tells Them to Chill Out (@pkafka)

RT @Techmeme: Netflix Hits Its Numbers, Investors Go Nuts, Reed Hastings Tells Them to Chill Out (@pkafka)

RT @Techmeme: Facebook lets beheading clips return to social network (@leokelion / BBC)

RT @Techmeme: Facebook lets beheading clips return to social network (@leokelion / BBC)

Nintendo ceases production of the Wii

RT @pllevin: The best #cybersecurity essay I ever read is, again, from Dan Geer. Keeps exceeding himself #privacy #surveillance

Ransomware takes a nasty turn

RT @Techmeme: Apple has sold 170M iPads to date, implying sales near 15M in Sept. quarter (@thisisneil)

RT @Techmeme: Apple has sold 170M iPads to date, implying sales near 15M in Sept. quarter (@thisisneil)

RT @Techmeme: Apple's ossification, lack of vision sans Jobs, Forstall palpable in yesterday's presentation

RT @Techmeme: Apple's ossification, lack of vision sans Jobs, Forstall palpable in yesterday's presentation

With a Gmail address to hand, Agent-1 linked this address to accounts on the Google+ social network and YouTube video site.

An FBI official tells me that the bureau has located and seized a collection of 144,000 bitcoins, the largest seizure of that cryptocurrency ever, worth close to $28.5 million at current exchange rates. It believes that the stash belonged to Ross Ulbricht, the 29-year-old who allegedly created and managed the Silk Road, the popular anonymous drug-selling that site was taken offline by the Department of Justice after Ulbricht was arrested earlier this month and charged with engaging in a drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracy as well as computer hacking and attempted murder-for-hire.

Finally, charting the data in cumulative—as opposed to net—terms is an exercise in puffery (which, to be fair, is the point of events like these), because it counts incrementally every iPad sold in every previous quarter. The line, in turn, obscures the quarter-to-quarter fluctuations in sales. For Apple, that means that the last two quarters, which were actually declines, look like increases on the company’s chart.

A chain of evidence unearthed by Daniel Terdiman of CNET suggests that a massive, four-story structure floating on a barge off Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay is owned by Google and may be a floating data center. + No one knows for sure what the structure contains or who owns it, but the balance of the evidence suggests that it’s a real-world implementation of a floating data center first patented by Google in 2009.

Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But after going through lease agreements, tracking a contact tied to the project on LinkedIn, talking to locals on Treasure Island, and consulting with experts, it's all but certain that Google is the entity that is building the massive structure that's in plain sight, but behind tight security.

iPhone 5s owners have been dealing with a random reboot issue. And while some users are reporting that the issue has dissipated, we can confirm that it still exists on at least one iPhone 5s in the United States. Our T-Mobile iPhone 5s is still seeing reboots with our own Travis Pope claiming to see the issue after the device has been connected to Bluetooth. We have been unable to replicate the issue on other iPhone 5s’ running iOS 7.

The latest update to this story seems to indicate that this Disney “blackout” may be temporary, at least in one way. While no one is talking about the licensing agreements being restored or re-negotiated, Disney has said it plans to work with Apple to resolve the issues so that those users who purchased The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) movies on iTunes will get their access restored.

RT @Techmeme: Samsung is pulling another Amazon on Android, but this is even bigger (@kevinctofel / Gigaom)

RT @Techmeme: Samsung is pulling another Amazon on Android, but this is even bigger (@kevinctofel / Gigaom)

Amazon will begin charging sales tax on goods purchased by customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin today, after fighting such regulation for years. That brings the total number of states which require sales tax on Amazon purchases up to 16, affecting roughly 163 million people. The Wall Street Journal notes that this is “a milestone of sorts” as now over half of Americans see the taxes on their purchases. Amazon is still fighting similar regulation in the 34 other (less populous) states that don’t yet require it.

iGoogle has slipped into the darkness quietly: there’s no final blog post marking its demise and the URL for the service — google.com/ig — now navigates directly to Google’s regular search page.

"JetBlue now allows all customers gate-to-gate use of personal electronic devices, which means customers can now use their devices at any time during their time onboard," Hayes said. JetBlue posted a video tonight of Flight 2302 from JFK to BUF, which the company said was the first U.S. commercial flight to allow gate-to-gate personal electronics use. Delta said on Thursday that all of its aircrafts had completed the "carrier-defined PED tolerance testing" needed to ensure that the electronic device frequencies didn't interfere with the aircraft. JetBlue said the same today, noting that all of its 191 planes had passed inspection.

First spotted by Britoid on The Verge Forums, the image shows a tablet that looks to have a screen that's about 8 inches. It's running KitKat (you can tell from the status bar icons), and it has on-screen navigation buttons. Unlike the current Nexus tablet, the Nexus 7, the bezels look to be very compact. The Nexus 10 is a year old now, and many expected Google to have announced a replacement for it by now, but a smaller 8 inch tablet would be a surprise.

We now know how many people were able to get through the bugs in HealthCare.gov the first day and register for insurance: six. That's according to meeting notes from a "war room" meeting on the afternoon of October 2 at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance (CCII), the organization inside the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) responsible for oversight of the Affordable Care Act insurance program.

Over the past two weeks, Ruiu has taken to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus to document his investigative odyssey and share a theory that has captured the attention of some of the world's foremost security experts. The malware, Ruiu believes, is transmitted though USB drives to infect the lowest levels of computer hardware. With the ability to target a computer's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), and possibly other firmware standards, the malware can attack a wide variety of platforms, escape common forms of detection, and survive most attempts to eradicate it. But the story gets stranger still. In posts here, here, and here, Ruiu posited another theory that sounds like something from the screenplay of a post-apocalyptic movie: "badBIOS," as Ruiu dubbed the malware, has the ability to use high-frequency transmissions passed between computer speakers and microphones to bridge airgaps.

Google bid for the patents, but it didn't get them. Instead, the patents went to a group of competitors—Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony—operating under the name "Rockstar Bidco." The companies together bid the shocking sum of $4.5 billion. Patent insiders knew that the Nortel portfolio was the patent equivalent of a nuclear stockpile: dangerous in the wrong hands, and a bit scary even if held by a "responsible" party.