The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry

Last week, the world was shocked—shocked!—to discover that downloading an electronic book to a device such as a Kindle actually increases the weight of the Kindle. Not by any truly measurable amount, said the New York Times, but still: adding data to a device apparently results in trapped electrons which "have a higher energy than the untrapped ones."

And though the amount of data contained in a tiny e-book file is so miniscule as to render it almost irrelevant, the results become more meaningful when you measure a much larger set of data. In that spirit, how much does all the information on the entire internet weigh?

The conclusion: about as much as a strawberry. Check out the above video for the explanation, which includes details about the Kindle stuff, too.

Quoted from Techland

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'Anonymous' Abandons Attack Against Mexican Drug Cartel?

Just days after announcing its intent to reveal information about civilians who have assisted the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas, the group has seemingly backed down for fear of possible violent reprisals.

REUTERS

Two apparently self-identified Anonymous members, Skill3r and Glynnis Paroubek, were quoted in Mexican newspaper Milenio as saying, "We didn't want irresponsible administrators to condemn participants [in the operation] to death. We've discussed it extensively and we all decided to remove it."

This statement follows a post on the Anonymous Mexico Facebook page that reads in part: "Our fight is not of this kind and our ideals are not in tune with that operation. The note [announcing Operation Cartel] published in many electronic media is completely false."

The decision may be a smart one; global intelligence company Stratfor released a report yesterday claiming that "Los Zetas are deploying their own teams of computer experts to track those individuals involved in the online anti-cartel campaign, which indicates that the criminal group is taking the campaign very seriously," a comment which comes with the extra weight of earlier internet-related murders as a warning to "internet snitches" trying to intervene in the drug war.

Despite this, it's possible that Anonymous is split over the decision to withdraw from this particular operation; according to a tweet from Anonymous member Sabu, "#OpCartel is very much alive and like I said to others in private our war is on corruption on both sides of the spectrum. Vamous a GUERRA!" We may not know until November 5th whether or not the operation is still in existence... which, admittedly, may be part of the plan.

Quoted from Techland

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Our Friends Electric: Facebook Info Open to 'Socialbot' Snooping

Perhaps it's time to start paying more attention to whom you're friending on Facebook. A recent study designed to evaluate how safe social networks are from being invaded by programs pretending to be real people resulted in more than 250GB of personal information being collected from thousands of Facebook users by the researchers' "socialbots."

NORBERT VON DER GROEBEN / REUTERS

Researchers from the University of British Columbia's Vancouver campus released 102 socialbots onto Facebook as part of the eight week study, each one given a name and a profile picture so as to better convince real users that they were, in fact, entirely genuine. Each bot then proceeded to send 25 friend requests per day—limited to prevent setting off spam alerts—and within two weeks, 976 requests had been accepted.

For the next six weeks, the bots sent requests to the friends of their new friends, with 59% of that second wave accepting, leading to what the researchers call "a large-scale infiltration" of the site.

The researchers said that the exercise proved how ineffective existing safety measures are against this kind of attack, with only 20% of their socialbots being caught by Facebook's "Immune System," with even that low percentage only happening because users flagged the friend requests as spam.

A report on the experiment, "The Socialbot Network," explains the danger this presents:

"As socialbots infiltrate a targeted OSN, they can further harvest private users' data such as email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal data that have monetary value. To an adversary, such data are valuable and can be used for online profiling and large-scale email spam and phishing campaigns."

A Facebook spokesperson deflected criticism by attacking the report, saying that the company has "serious concerns about the methodology of the research by the University of British Columbia, and we will be putting these concerns to them."

Sources: Techland

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Samsung Bests Apple In Smartphone Sales

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co overtook Apple Inc as the world's top smartphone maker in the July-September period with a 44 percent jump in shipments, and forecast strong sales in the current quarter in a clear warning to its rivals.

Samsung only entered the smartphone market in earnest last year, but its sales have skyrocketed thanks to a sleek production system that rapidly brings new products to market. Apple introduced its first iPhone in 2007.

"In the handset division, Samsung has no real rival models to challenge its products except for the iPhone 4S. Apple and Samsung will continue to dominate the market in the fourth quarter," said Kim Hyun-joong, a fund manager at Midas Asset Management, which owns Samsung shares.

Profits from the South Korean firm's telecoms division, announced on Friday, more than doubled from a year ago to a record 2.5 trillion won ($2.2 billion) and accounted for 60 percent of Samsung's total profit, offsetting a plunge in earnings from its bread-and-butter memory chips.

Shipments of smartphones jumped 44 percent from the preceding quarter to 27.8 million units, up nearly four times from a year ago, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

Apple's iPhone sales shrank by 16 percent to 17.1 million units in the third quarter. Samsung had 23.8 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter, 9 points higher than Apple. Samsung's flagship Galaxy line of products is powered by Google's Android software.

Apple sold fewer phones in the third quarter, missing street expectations for the first time in year, as customers held off buying iPhones until the October launch of the latest version.

Samsung shares were up 1.6 percent by 0500 GMT (1 a.m. EDT), versus a 0.6 percent gain in the wider market.

The world's biggest technology firm by revenue reported a 4.25 trillion won operating profit for the July-September quarter, broadly in line with its earlier estimate of 4.2 trillion won.

That was down from 4.9 trillion won a year ago but up from 3.8 trillion won in the preceding quarter.

Samsung said its fourth-quarter earnings could be better than the third, boosted by one-off gains from its $1.4 billion sale of its hard disk drive business to Seagate Technology.

"I am cautiously optimistic on the fourth quarter outlook at this point," Robert Yi, head of Samsung's investor relations, told analysts.

"Looking ahead into the fourth quarter, when industry demand is traditionally at its peak, Samsung expects sales of mobile devices to remain strong and flat-panel TV shipments to increase," the company added in an earnings statement.

Apple, whose iPhone sales account for nearly half the firm's total sales, reported a 40 percent gross margin, or the percentage of sales left after subtracting the cost of goods sold. Samsung's phone division reported a 16.9 percent operating margin, which further takes account of marketing costs.

Nevertheless, Samsung faces challenges as the new iPhone introduced earlier this month is notching up strong sales.

Nokia is also fighting back with its first phones based on Microsoft's Windows software. And Sony Corp announced on Thursday it would take full ownership of its mobile venture, Sony Ericsson, in a bid to exploit its music and video library.

Samsung on Thursday announced the launch of its Galaxy Note mobile device, adding to the flagship Galaxy lineup of products. The device, powered by Android, will square off against a series of new models released by Apple, Nokia and HTC Corp.

The iPhone, introduced in 2007 with the touchscreen template now adopted by its rivals, is still the gold standard in the smartphone market.

Samsung may not have come up with the concept, but it has adopted Apple's breakthrough smartphone idea perhaps better than any other handset maker. It tries to offer the Apple experience at a better price with better functionality.

"Samsung's rise has been driven by a blend of elegant hardware designs, popular Android services, memorable sub-brands and extensive global distribution," said Alex Spektor at Strategy Analytics.

"Samsung has demonstrated that it is possible, at least in the short term, to differentiate and grow by using the Android ecosystem."

Q4 SEEN BETTER THAN Q3

Profits from Samsung's chip business more than halved to 1.59 trillion won, but the division held up well as its relatively high exposure to lucrative mobile chips helped the firm offset a sharp plunge in prices of commodity computer memory chips.

Samsung was the sole profitable firm among major global dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip makers in the third quarter.

Second-ranked computer memory chip maker Hynix Semiconductor and Japan's Elpida Memory swung to deep losses as prices of DRAM chips used in PCs tumbled about 50 percent in the third quarter.

Samsung's chip business is also benefiting from strong demand for mobile processor chips used in Apple's iPhone and iPad tablet as well as its own Galaxy smartphones.

Samsung expected demand for PCs to remain weak in the fourth quarter because of weak seasonality, while demand for mobile devices and servers will be relatively strong.

"I see some signs that chip prices have hit bottom as inventories are running out. However, we don't yet know when the industry is going to pick up since macroeconomic uncertainties overshadow the demand outlook," said Park Hyun, an analyst at Tong Yang Securities.

Samsung's display business posted losses for a third consecutive quarter on weak demand for TVs and PCs.

But losses narrowed from the previous quarter, helped by strong earnings from the OLED display, which is widely expected to replace LCD as the next-generation flat-screen in mobile devices and TVs.

($1 = 1,115.250 Korean won)

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park and Jungyoun Park; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner, Miyoung Kim and Dean Yates)

Lets see pictures of the state of the global smartphone market, according to Strategy Analytics.

1. Samsung

2. Apple

 3. Nokia

4. Other Vendors

Sources: Huf Post TECH

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