TechCrunch
UK Spy Agency Allegedly Taps Into Transatlantic Cables To Collect Data, Pays Companies For Cost Of Cooperation
According to the latest set of documents from Edward Snowden that were released by the Guardian today, the Britsh spy agency GCHQ has been tapping into 46 transatlantic fiber-optic cables that carry data between Europe and north America to collect and store email messages, Facebook posts and other information for at least the last 18 months, though the program, code-named “Tempora,” has supposedly been built up over the last five years.
Given what we’ve heard about the NSA and its close relationship to Britain’s GCHQ, this may not come as a total surprise and as the Guardian reports, GCHQ is sharing its information with the NSA.
“It’s not just a U.S. problem. The U.K. has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden told the Guardian. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the U.S.”
According to this report, about 300 GCHQ and 250 NSA analysts were working on analyzing this data by last May and an unnamed U.K. official argues that they get to work with even more information than the NSA because the program actually “produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA.” By last year, the program was handling 600 million “telephone events” each day and was processing data from 46 of the 200 fibre-optic cables it tapped into.
Paying Companies For Cooperation
The report also alleges that a number of companies have been “paid for the cost of their co-operation,” but unlike the NSA PRISM leaks, the names of these companies remain under wraps and the companies themselves are forbidden to reveal the existence of this program.
Sadly, the Guardian did not post the actual documents, so for the time being, we have to take the reporter’s word as to the extend of the program.
Kickstarter Says It Was Wrong About Sleazy ‘Above The Game' Campaign, Bans Future ‘Seduction Guides'
Kickstarter just published a blog post offering its take on a controversial campaign to fund a book called Above the Game: A Guide To Getting Awesome With Women.
The title of the post, “We were wrong,” makes the company’s position pretty clear. What was so bad about the campaign? Well, comedian Casey Malone had a pretty damning blog post about it — Malone basically quoted the parts of the guide that have already been published on Reddit, with tips like:
Decide that you’re going to sit in a position where you can rub her leg and back. Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances. …
Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, GRAB HER HAND, and put it right on your dick.
(The author Ken Hoinsky has said the quotes were taken out of context, and that he was just saying, “Don’t wait for signs before you make your move,” not advocating for sexual assault.)
Kickstarter says it first saw Malone’s blog post, and the material that he was linking to, on Wednesday morning, and it found the content pretty offensive. But the company didn’t cancel the campaign, it says, because it only had two hours before it ended (“We’ve never acted to remove a project that quickly.”) and because Kickstarter has an obligation “to approach these investigations methodically as there is no margin for error in canceling a project.”
“These factors don’t excuse our decision but we hope they add clarity to how we arrived at it,” the post says. It goes on to say that material glorifying violence against women has always been prohibited, and that if Kickstarter had seen this material when the project was submitted (again, the offensive content was first posted on Reddit, not the actual Kickstarter page), it would never have been approved.
Despite the apology, Kickstarter says there’s no taking back the money after the campaign has been funded. However, it says it is banning any future “seduction guides” from the site, and it’s also donating $25,000 to the anti-sexual violence group RAINN.
Printic Lets You Caption & Ship Cute, Polaroid-Like Prints From iPhone Or Android
Smartphones have long since established themselves as the preferred camera for the majority of users, and even though there are now a number of ways to share their digital output, there’s still something fun about receiving photo prints by mail. A new app called Printic, which has just this week arrived on Android following its earlier iPhone debut, aims to simplify the process of ordering these mobile prints, which it lets you ship anywhere in the world.
Based in Paris, Printic’s founders Benjamin Grelié, Florent Malbranche and Nicolas Reboud, had previously come together to work on Mayoz, a company that sold art photography online. “We realized that people really like to print their own pictures, and not only other people’s pictures,” explains Rebound. Eighty percent of smartphone owners take pictures with their phones, he adds. (What, only 80%?)
In April of last year, the team began to work on Printic, a fairly adorable app for iOS which has gotten better over time. The app at first felt very French, with little quirks and misspellings that made it feel more foreign to non-French users (e.g. the default country in the app was “France,” payment info was in euros, the address field was laid out differently, etc.). The new Android app is also a bit imperfect, as it sometimes pulls in other photo caches on your phone outside of a user’s main Gallery. (This may vary depending on the version of Android you use).
These are minor pet peeves, however, and not entirely unexpected from an early-stage startup. The overall experience of using the app is still simple enough, and it even has some cute pieces – like the little record you spin to increase the number of prints you’re ordering, for example.
However, the other very European thing about Printic’s mobile photo-printing service is that its prints arrive on thinner, Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper – something that the founders tell us has not been an issue with those in its home market and elsewhere in Europe, but that some Americans have complained about. Here in the U.S., it seems, many prefer thicker paper or matte prints.
But the thin prints, with their Polaroid-inspired look, are still quite cute and perfect for scribbling messages on before sharing. Plus, the company hopes, the Instagram-loving, hipster crowd will fall in love with Printic’s (faux) vintage feel.
Using the app is straightforward – it connects you with photos from your Camera Roll or Android gallery, as well as Facebook or Instagram, and you can then crop the photo, or type in a caption to be added to the white border at the bottom of the print. Compared with larger photo-printing services like Shutterfly, the cost per print is a bit pricey – it’s 99 cents in the U.S. or 79 euros. But if you’re ordering just a small handful, it’s not too painful. Plus, shipping and tax is included anywhere in the world.
Since the debut of the iPhone app in January, Printic has seen “tens of thousands” of users sign up, 40 percent of whom live in France, with 60 percent coming from elsewhere in the world. The U.S. accounts for about a third of Printic’s overall user base, and the remainder of the users are in other parts of Europe.
The startup also has a small round of seed funding from The Leclercq’s Family Office, the founder of French retailing giant Decathlon Group, as well as from L’Accélérateur, a French startup accelerator founded by Michel de Guilhermier. (They did not participate in the three-month program, only received an investment.)
Printic is available for download from here for iOS and here on Android.
Sony May Take Another Stab At A Smartwatch And Show It Off Next Week
Neither of Sony’s two previous smartwatches were runaway hits, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the Japanese electronics giant from taking another crack at the concept. A slew of tweets hash-tagged #itstime started appearing on the official SonyXperia account the other day, and they hinted heavily that the company is preparing to show off yet another smartwatch at the Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai next week.
Sony seems content to keep all the juicy details under wraps for now, but it’s holding press conferences in Shanghai and Germany next Tuesday so all will be revealed in short order. Of course, if Sony really does bring another smartwatch to market, will it actually sell? Sony hasn’t exactly had the best luck pushing its Xperia smartphones (though the flagship Xperia Z seems to be doing pretty well), so pushing yet another smartphone-centric accessory into the field may prove problematic.
To Sony’s credit, it looks like the company is even more cognizant of the developer community than before — as they should, since apps crafted for the wrist-worn gadget will really determine whether people take the plunge. Sony’s second smartwatch (called, unimaginatively, the SmartWatch) was eventually augmented by some 200 custom applications in the Google Play Store, and Sony recently sought to make the thing even more useful by letting developers cook up their own firmware for it.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if Sony would’ve taken another chance on a smartwatch if it weren’t for some popular, buzzy startups. The meteoric rise of the Pebble and the wrist-worn gadgets that appeared in its wake signaled a resurgence and popularization of a concept that’s been kicking around with varying degrees of success for years. Subsequent (and persistent) rumors that Apple, Samsung, and even Google are eagerly eyeing up the smartwatch market may have only added fuel to Sony’s competitive fire. The company been churning these things out for the better part of 6 years now — hopefully this time they’ve got enough experience under their collective belts to really crack the formula.
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