Wednesday, July 31, 2013

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Moscow subway to spy on users' smartphones

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 05:12 AM PDT

The Russian police have decided to set up equipment which will read the data on mobile telephones of passengers as they are waiting for subway trains.

The head of police for Moscow's subway system, chief Andrei Mokhov, told Izvestia the device would be used to help locate stolen mobile phones.

Mokhov said the devices have a range of about five metres and can read the SIM card. They will then check to see if the card is on a kist of stolen phones, and it is then the system automatically sends information to the coppers.

Then the time and place of the alert can be matched to closed-circuit TV in stations so that the suspect can be filmed to make his arrest much easier.

However. Izvestia quoted experts who said that the devices can be used more widely to follow all passengers without exception.

Mokhov said that it was illegal to track a person without permission from the authorities, but that there was no law against tracking the property of a company, such as a SIM card. 

Apple loses pinch-to-zoom patent case

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 03:32 AM PDT

Apple's patent trolling has suffered a serious blow after the US patent office ruled that its iconic 'pinch to zoom' patent did not spring fully formed from the genius of Steve Jobs.

The patent figures prominently in an infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics, according to documents filed by the South Korean company in a US federal court.

Apple has up to two months to respond to the USPTO decision and it will almost certainly appeal, and seek a judicial review.

The patent was involved in Apple's lawsuit against Samsung in the court, when a jury last August awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, but the court has ordered a partial retrial to review the damages to be paid to the iPhone maker.

According to PC World, the patent office thinks that the  'pinch to zoom' idea was anticipated in U.S. Patent No. 7,724,242 awarded to Daniel W. Hillis and Bran Ferren.

"Hillis teaches distinguishing the number of contact points and determining whether the event object matches a gesture pattern," the USPTO wrote in its decision.

The USPTO had already rejected multiple claims of another patent that figured in the lawsuit, known as "overscroll bounce" patent.  Apple said that the reexamination is not finished, and it is entitled to file a response to the action which may result in a withdrawal of the rejection or certification of the claims under re-examination.

It puts the entire Apple versus Samsung case in trouble. While Samsung is clearly going to have to pay Apple something, Samsung can now argue for much lower damages. It will also mean that Apple's plans to keep Samsung smartphones off the shelves will be bogged down for much longer. 

Facebook shafts Zynga

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 03:28 AM PDT

Social not-working site Facebook appears to be shafting its troubled, but long term business partner, Zynga.

According to its developers blog, Facebook is rolling out a pilot program for small and medium-sized game developers and will work with select game developers and provide promotional support for their games in placements across mobile apps.

The cunning plan is to give developers access to the social network's "800 million monthly mobile users." Also on the menu is a variety of analytics tools for measuring their games' impact, and a "targeting ability" for finding the right audiences and give them a cut of the games' revenue.

For those developers it favours, it will help to cultivate high-quality, long-term players for their games.

This is all well and good, but those are the sort of things that gave Zynga its privileged status on Facebook.

In its day, Zynga's "FarmVille" franchise made Facebook a pile of dosh. But it found its user base and revenues falling, Zynga shut down games and initiated punishing rounds of layoffs.

Xbox executive Don Mattrick took over as CEO recently but he really will have his work cut out turning the outfit around.

His work will be that much harder now that Zynga's relationship with Facebook is demoted.

Other developers have worked out how they can use many of Zynga's tricks and the social network's audience for their own ends.

If Facebook encourages more small and medium-sized developers to jump into social gaming, it could fill the arena with even more competitors. 

Samsung attacked over fudged benchmarks

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 03:24 AM PDT

 

Apple fanzine Appleinsider discovered the much touted Samsung Galaxy S4 figures had been inflated by benchmark fixing.

Daniel Eran Dilger said that Samsung had been increasing the clock speed of its Android-based Galaxy S4 when running certain benchmarks.

Versions of Samsung's Galaxy S4 equipped with the company's new Exynos 5 Octa SoC were announced as Samsung's answer to Apple's A6X.

Both chips are manufactured at Samsung's System LSI chip fab and Apple uses its own DIY "Swift" CPU core design, paired with GPU core tech it licenses from Imagination Technologies, providing four PowerVR SGX 554MP4 cores to power graphics on the iPad 4.

Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa used ARM's stock Cortex-A15 CPU core design, and pairs four of them with essentially the same Imagination GPU design as Apple.

So there was a bit of spat to see which of them was faster. Samsung appeared to win hands down, so the Apple fanboys looked at Samsung's chip.

They found that Samsung was specifically enabling full speed GPU performance only when running specific benchmarks, and then reverting to slower 480MHz speeds when being used to play games or run other apps.

It is worth pointing out that Samsung never publicly claimed the maximum GPU frequencies for the Exynos 5 Octa.

When running LBenchmark 2.5.1, AnTuTu and Quadrant the device "triggers a GPU clock not available elsewhere: 532MHz".

The CPU side behaved similarly when running benchmarks, but it used maximum performance modes

AppleInsider sniffed that there are strings for Fusion3 and Adonis indicating that Samsung isn't just cheating on benchmarks for one of its processors, it's part of the company's culture.

It is possible that a spec war similar to what happened on PCs is taking place in the smartphone industry. Every chip maker has been accused of doing this at one time or another.

What is interesting here is that the Apple press did not look for similar code under the bonnet of Apple's toy. We are not saying it exists, but if you are going to accuse one side of breaking the rules of engagement you have to also look at the other side too.

Nor did they point out that even if the fudging was taken into account, the Samsung set-up was still faster. 

Fox steals smartphone, sends SMS

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 03:19 AM PDT

At last a Fox story which is probably true - a Norwegian fox pinched a smartphone and used it to send an SMS.

According to Live Leak,  Lars Andreas Bjercke, 16 downloaded an application on his smartphone which aims to attract nearby foxes.

Apparently the phone app attracted foxes by imitating rabbit sounds. This is opposed to the rabbit app which attracts bunnies by making the sound of a lettuce.

The application worked so well that the fox circled around Lars's yard for several nights looking for the tasty sounding bunny boomer.

Then Lars hit on the idea of putting the phone in the middle of the road.

The fox walked up to the phone. At first, he was afraid of it, but soon dared to get closer and smell it. Then it grabbed the phone and ran into the bushes.

Later, looking for his phone, Lars called his number and was answered by the Fox. Since one person was a teenager and could not speak more than a few grunts, and the other one was a fox it was not a great conversation.

Then the next day his mate cornered him and asked him why he had been sending him odd SMS's.

The message said: "I FRY o a0ab 34348tu åaugjoi zølbmosdji jsøg ijio sjiw." Tragically no one spoke Fox.

Lars still has not found his phone although he has seen the fox hanging around. Clearly he must have removed the sim or sold it on. 

Intel moves to save 2-in-1Ultrabooks

Posted: 30 Jul 2013 10:35 AM PDT

Intel is hosting a symposium in Taipei attempting to get its supply chain partners to help reduce the costs of its 2-in-1 Ultrabook laptops.

Ultrabook take up has been as fast as a complete orbit around the galatic rim, and part of that has been because people are short of readies to by anything more expensive than a tablet or a smartphone.

Intel has set up an ecosystem symposium which is expected to draw hundreds of participants from local suppliers.

The idea is to discuss designs for 2-in-1 devices that can help switch between laptop and tablet modes, as well as how to reduce the power consumption of processors and the weight of components used in the devices.

Zane Ball, Intel vice president and general manager of global ecosystem development, said at a briefing that he expects the prices of 2-in-1 lightweight laptops to fall in the coming year because of lower component costs.

Most companies in the ecosystem can currently deliver a price point of US$399 for 2-in-1 Ultrabooks, but added that it will be a challenge to get the price down to US$299.

Of course this will mean giving Intel OEMs and other assorted riff-raff a Chinese burn until they say "uncle".

Intel is still pinning its hopes on the Ultrabook as a way out of its troubles. It hopes the 2-in-1 idea could prevent the whole concept from dying completely.

Apple supplier works pregnant women 11 hours a day

Posted: 30 Jul 2013 08:39 AM PDT

China Labor Watch has slammed Apple for 'unkept promises' about stamping out worker abuses and rights violations across its supply chain.

The investigators published a lengthy report that alleges Apple suppliers are guilty of at least 86 rights violations, made up of 36 legal violations and 50 ethical violations, falling into 15 categories. These are: dispatch labor abuse, hiring discrimination, women's rights violations, underage labor, contract violations, insufficient worker training, excessive working hours, insufficient wages, poor working conditions, poor living conditions, difficulty in taking leave, labor health and safety concerns, ineffective grievance channels, abuse by management, and environmental pollution.

The accusations are a patchwork of disaster for the company, trying to clean up its image among activists as one of the chief enablers of worker misery.

This report cast its eye over Pegatron, a top Apple supplier, which has had its orders boosted in what is believed to be preparation for the 'cheap' iPhone, as well as AVY and Riteng.

In Apple's compliance report earlier this year, CLW pointed out, the company boasted it had pressured the vast majority of its suppliers into adhering to the company's orders for a 60 hour work work. But, CLW said, this is well short of China's 49 hour legal limit - and in reality, the average weekly working hours in three factories were 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours. Further, the investigation found that in Pegatron Shanghai, workers had to sign forms showing their overtime was less than the real levels.

Undercover activists from CLW exposed squalid living conditions, where it is alleged workers were forced to sleep in cramped dormitories. At supplier AVY, it was found garages had been converted into filthy shower rooms with no hot water, while the toilets were dirty and limted to one room for each domitory floor.

An investigator's diary for AVY claims workers were rushed into signing contracts as they arrived - without having had the chance to read them. Training was found to be inadequate too, with slideshows rushed through for the purpose of signing attendance sheets and the correct answers simply copied into exam papers.

The work itself was mostly non-technical but monotonous, and the investigator had to stand on their feet for long lengths of time without breaks. "Even 10 minutes would help," the investigator wrote, "but soon team leaders came to tell me that the 10 minute break was cancelled".

Meanwhile, at another supplier, Riteng, it was found that a lot of female workers were not aware of their right to maternity leave - with some pregnant women working typically almost 70 hours per week. Of those that are aware of their rights, Riteng told them they could not have maternity leave unless they had a birth permission document from the government. Those out of wedlock were denied maternity leave too.

Executive director at CLW, Li Qiang, said in a statement that conditions at Pegatron are "even worse than those at Foxconn factories".

"Apple has not lived up to its own standards. This will lead to Apple’s suppliers abusing labor in order to strengthen their position for receiving orders. In this way, Apple is worsening conditions for workers, not improving them.”

Huawei cast as bogeyman in web of intrigue

Posted: 30 Jul 2013 07:47 AM PDT

Huawei's in the headlines again - as scrutiny is placed on the Chinese company by the Intelligence and Security Committee - with the usual accusations of links with the Chinese state and secret surveillance dredged up yet again. But what does the government suspect Huawei is up to, and how does that compare with we know about the British government?

The BBC claimed the filtering system proposed by David Cameron would be controlled wholly by Huawei, citing how it recently emerged the company designed Talk Talk's web filtering system, Homesafe.

That didn't really just emerge at all - and has, in fact, been public knowledge for some time.

The panic is that Huawei will have full control over Cameron's proposed opt-out porn filters, but in light of recent relevations about the British state, the concerns are deeply hypocritical and stink of jumped up paranoia, ignoring the more widespread, grave questions about  the secret surveillance state erected in the UK.

First, some background. Huawei has long had a relationship with the United Kingdom. It has also frequently been the target of the American network lobby and US neo-McCarthyism.

Huawei has been the go-to Chinese boogeyman for American lawmakers.

Citing spying concerns, there have been efforts to restrict the use of goods from Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE. Perhaps for good reason: there have been murmurings of backdoors discovered in Huawei routers and ZTE was flagged for selling surveillance capable equipment to Iran. But there has not been any solid evidence about Huawei to date.

It's a complicated question that is tied to the global productive process, where it is cheaper and more cost productive to produce in, and buy from, countries such as China.

Other US lawmakers alleged that Huawei could be receiving funding from state owned Bank of China, which would mark it as in breach of anticompetition laws. Although not precisely comparable, US and European bank bailouts with state money let these institutions continue selling and speculating their financial products on the world stage, and when US companies such as Google, Microsoft or Intel are flagged the penalties are so minimal compared to their profits they amount to being slapped with a wet bus ticket.

China's long history of web monitoring and censorship provides an easy backdrop to scapegoat these companies. But who benefits most from a blockade on these goods? Could it be... American networking companies?

The constant whispers among the networking giants such as Cisco and Juniper are that companies such as Huawei essentially use the wonders of a globalised free market against them. They (it has been alleged) buy up American kit and reverse engineer it with cheaper components, then flood emerging markets with affordable kit that prices American corporations out of the market. Huawei proudly boasts it has an extensive patent portfolio of its own.

In recession, it is tempting for Western private enterprise to use the products too. Indeed, Huawei has an established market presence across Europe and in Australia. It is understandable companies like Cisco would be terrified of Huawei touching their profits.

To further complicate, or clarify - depending on your perspective - Cisco's CEO is the politically active Republican donor John Chambers, who has pledged over $1 million to various political causes.

If Chinese enterprise is indeed funded by the government, in the United States it is the other way around.

A thorough response comes in the form of this open letter from Huawei's Ken Hu, part of the company's drive to address the criticisms levied against it. 

It includes clarifications about CEO Ren Zhengfei's time in the People's Liberation Army, funding from the Chinese government, and the allegations of intellectual property infringement. In each case, it compares itself to accepted business practices from non-Chinese companies.

Critics will say Huawei's resistance to an Initial Public Offering is evidence of its lack of transparency. But in fact it's possible the company is guarding itself from the volatile markets and hostile forces within those markets.

Speaking of markets - attempts to block Huawei in the USA don't seem to be particularly damaging. Although, as it is a corporation, it would naturally like access to all markets, a scramble for Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe and Latin America has ensured Huawei will be lucrative with or without US cooperation.

Existing relationships

Huawei already has links to the western networking companies. Have a quick look at a list of corporate execs and you'll see plenty of ex-Ciscoers on board. In effect, Huawei is winning at capitalism, an intriguing turn for a company that claims to be a collective in a country that claims to be communist.

Not only does Huawei have the hiring power to headhunt execs with the relevant knowledge on how to capture crucial - booming - emerging markets and established Western markets, it also has links with ex government forces here in the UK. With Prime Ministerial permission, ex UK CIO John Suffolk publicly posted on his blog that he was to join Huawei.

The stated purpose of Huawei's Banbury cyber security centre was to soothe fears of 'Red' China snooping on these green and pleasant lands. It was opened with the blessing and cooperation of GCHQ, Britain's spying agency, to vet and test Huawei equipment for its spying capabilities.

Presumably with the view to removing any indiscrepancies, but, hey, you never know.

A former deputy director at GCHQ is now, the Times reports, on Huawei's payroll. It cannot be a wholly mysterious entity to British intelligence.

 

Huawei and Five - why Huawei, and why now?

Considering what is now public knowledge about the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand with their 'Five Eyes' prograame, British Tempora and the USA's Prism, this fuss about Huawei is certainly cropping up at an interesting time.

A D-Notice was issued to the UK nationals politely asking them to drop reporting on the Snowden revelations. Although D-Notices aren't enforced by law, they exist to tell the press to drop a particular story, especially if it is a matter of defending the national interest.

Before the Edward Snowden story was transformed into a fugitive drama, Snowden's revelations revealed something much more meaty.

The UK, in cooperation with other English speaking countries, was spying on an absolutely unprecedented scale with some pretty impressive feats of engineering. GCHQ, an exclusive Guardian report revealed, was tapping international fibre-optic cables to collect and store "vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls", sharing them with the USA's National Security Agency.

So what do we know about GCHQ and the NSA, and what are we speculating about with Huawei?

The fear is that Huawei equipment in every home could lead to widespread intelligence gathering by the Chinese government. This is possible but not proven.

The fact is that the UK, the USA, New Zealand, Canada and Australia are conspiring, worldwide, to track and store information of citizens worldwide. This is proven.

Why, now, is Huawei being targeted by the British media as part of Cameron's ill thought out, unpopular and technically impossible filtering system?

The focus is shifted from Cameron's arrogant censorship posturing and onto the mysterious, foreign Huawei.

We should be asking, in light of the Snowden revelations, where our representatives, our governments, in our names, have embarked on a program of blanket surveillance - effectively treating us all as suspected criminals - where is the transparency with government? Because we, as citizens, could benefit a lot more from that than speculation about Huawei.
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