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Apple had a pretty good quarter. And by “pretty good,” I mean it was the biggest quarter in history. And not just for Apple. For any company. Ever. This page charts the past record holders. Until today, Russia’s Gazprom (the largest natural gas extractor in the world) held the record at $16.2 billion in a quarter. Apple now holds the record: $18.04 billion in profit, fiscal Q1 of 2015. Absolutely. Insane. For reference, that means Apple makes around $8.3 million dollars per hour in profit (24 hours a day). Of the current Top 20 record holding earners, 15 are Oil/Gas...

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 first quarter ended December 27, 2014. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $74.6 billion and record quarterly net profit of $18 billion, or $3.06 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $57.6 billion and net profit of $13.1 billion, or $2.07 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 39.9 percent compared to 37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 65 percent of the quarter’s revenue. The results were fueled by all-time record revenue from iPhone and Mac sales as well as record...

Google Inc. is preparing to offer its high-speed fiber-optic Internet service in four new metro areas, the latest step in a careful expansion of the service. Google will announce launches of Google Fiber in Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh-Durham, N.C. and Nashville, Tenn. in coming days, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Just cute stuff to brighten one's day.

Apple today released iOS 8.1.3 which includes bug fixes, increased stability and performance improvements, including: • Reduces the amount of storage required to perform a software update • Fixes an issue that prevented some users from entering their Apple ID password for Messages and FaceTime • Addresses an issue that caused Spotlight to stop displaying app results • Fixes an issue which prevented multitasking gestures working on iPad • Adds new configuration options for education standardized testing. For more information on the security content of this update, visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222 iOS 8.1.3 is available via iTunes and also via...

Apple today released OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 which: • Resolves an issue that may cause WiFi to disconnect • Resolves an issue that may cause web pages to load slowly • Fixes an issue that caused Spotlight to load remote email content when the preference was disabled in Mail • Improves audio and video sync when using Bluetooth headphones • Adds the ability to browse iCloud Drive in Time Machine • Improves VoiceOver speech performance • Resolves an issue that causes VoiceOver to echo characters when entering text on a web page • Addresses an issue that may cause the...

IBM denies the rumor about the layoffs of more than 100,000 IBM employees. The company says that only “several thousand” IBM employees will be affected by the layoffs. In an email statement from IBM to Reuters, IBM officially denied the rumor concerning as many as 112,000 employees. According to the Jan. 26 Reuters report, “IBM is in the process of layoffs, as disclosed in its latest earnings report last week, but it will affect ‘several thousand’ employees only.” The layoffs of as many as 112,000 of the company’s employees would affect 26 percent of its global workforce. Robert Cringely, a...

The world’s first robotized sales assistants were rolled out last month in California. They are nifty, cute — and terrifying. Nicknamed OSHbots, the two machines cost $50,000 apiece, are five feet of plastic on wheels and carry built-in natural language processors, computers, product scanners and navigation tools. Named after the Orchard Supply Hardware store where they work in San Jose, they greet customers, ask if they need help, identify items, then offer to guide them to the appropriate aisle without bumping into anyone or anything. At night, they do inventory by cruising the store to identify missing products and update...

Adobe on Saturday released an updated version of its Flash player software that patches an undisclosed vulnerability which could allow remote attackers to take control of Macs or PCs, urging users to update as the problem is being actively exploited by malicious actors. Flash versions up to and including 16.0.0.287 on OS X and Windows and 11.2.202.438 on Linux are susceptible to the attack, the cause of which has yet to be detailed. Mac users with Adobe's automatic update feature enabled should begin receiving updates to version 16.0.0.296 immediately, and the company is preparing a standalone patch for manual installation...

I used to enjoy several talk shows in my area on terrestrial radio stations.I listened to various local talk shows about politics and social issues. In the last three of four years little by little, almost all of my favorite shows have been ended, and replaced by Infomercials, Finance shows and Vitamin Advice for Health Maintenance. I don't mind listening to any of those replacement shows once in a great while, but when those are the only choices, I feel deprived of good radio. I keep hearing that 'Terrestrial Radio is Dead!" almost no one in the high spending demographic...

A new smartphone market report reveals Apple is dominating as iPhones represented nearly half of the new device activations in the fourth quarter of 2014. "Apple had virtually double the sales of Samsung, and five times that of LG. No other brand accounted for as much as 5 percent of U.S. sales," says Lowitz. "The Amazon Fire and Blackberry smartphones registered slight share, which we attribute to random sample fluctuation as much as actual sales." The report found iPhone activations nearly doubled from the previously quarter. Apple smartphones accounted for about 28 percent of new activations in third quarter of...

Any freepers play battlefield 4, pm me with your psn Id and maybe we can squad up and have some fun

This is such clever and awesome idea! Who would have thought putting your iPhone 4 inside a guitar and using its camera could create such cool and creative video. I never really did see this coming and this is such a novel idea that most people haven’t seen or tried such an experiment before. Learn more from this video and you might want to try it for yourself! Have you seen such before? See video at link

31 car companies and counting. Apple is closing in on adding every major, or exotic, car manufacturer on the planet to their CarPlay solution. Third party makers such as Alpine and Pioneer are also making aftermarket CarPlay receivers. Kenwood said only months ago it really did not need CarPlay, but in early January at the Detroit Auto Show, Kenwood announced its forthcoming CarPlay decks, as did JVC. The four major aftermarket deck manufactures are now building for CarPlay. High-end smartphone market share was clearly going to shape which platforms auto makers would support, and Apple is dominating the U.S....

Privacy advocates say the Obama administration needs to make more changes to protect consumer privacy on the government’s health insurance website. The administration reversed course Friday and scaled back the release of personal information from HealthCare.gov, after The Associated Press reported that such details as consumers’ income and tobacco use were going to private companies with a commercial interest in the data.The episode could become a blemish on what’s otherwise shaping up as a successful open enrollment season for the second year of expanded coverage under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Lawmakers continue to insist on a full explanation....

Following a lengthy lawsuit that pitted Sirius XM Radio against members of classic rock band The Turtles in a fight over royalties for music recordings made before 1972, new class action lawsuits have been filed against Apple, Sony, Google, and Rdio over their streaming music services (via The Recorder). As noted by Law360, Beats Music has also been hit with a suit. According to the suits, filed yesterday by Zenbu Magazines Inc., streaming services like iTunes Radio, Beats, and Google Play Music have been making money off of pre-1972 music recordings without paying any royalties to the owners of the...

Apple's VP of education on how ingenuity, online services and deformed frogs helped his son win his science fair and why that matters for our schools. "Steve Jobs saw technology as an amplifier for our intellect" recalls John Couch, who first met Jobs in the early days of Apple. Apple's vice-president of education remembers the then 20-year-old Apple co-founder comparing computing to a bicycle, referencing its power to augment humans' natural abilities. As someone who exposed his children to computers from an early age, Couch claims to have witnessed this multiplier effect firsthand. Jobs gave an Apple II to Couch's...

“Don’t look now, but Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research program may have dropped more zero-day vulnerabilities—this time on Apple’s OS X platform,” Dan Goodin reports for Ars Technica. “” “In the past two days, Project Zero has disclosed [three] OS X vulnerabilities,” Goodin reports. “At first glance, none of them appear to be highly critical, since all three appear to require the attacker to already have some access to a targeted machine.” ‘Still, the exploits could be combined with a separate attack to elevate lower-level privileges and gain control over vulnerable Macs,” Goodin reports. “And since the disclosures contain proof-of-concept...

I have had it with my internet provider (Time Warner cable). They just keep jacking rates, nearly every month they go up. I live in a rural part of NC. Do I have any other options for internet out here? Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!

I've been using the same code to center images forever. It stopped centering. Is my beeber stuned or what? The computer is plugged in. Both my socks are the same color. This is series!

The Norse blog is meant to be a destination for those interested in learning about advanced threats and cyberattacks, threat intelligence, and the trends shaping and moving the industry towards more intelligence-based approaches to security and fraud prevention. Over the past few months, our Threat Thursday series has covered a variety of threat oriented topics in posts such as; being hacked in 276 seconds, securing the Internet of Things, the SANS-Norse healthcare IT report, and others.

On January 20, Samsung announced what appears to be an exceptional new storage product, a one ounce USB 3 external Flash drive, essentially a portable Flash SSD, called the T1. I did some initial testing and the results suggest Mac owners should defer a decision on this new product until more details are sorted out. _____________________ When I received the Samsung Electronics Portable SSD T1 last week for review, I was enthusiastic about reviewing it. After all, a one ounce (actually just 26 grams), fast, external SSD with a 500 GB capacity looked to be a remarkable and useful product....

In a new patent lawsuit with the Northern California District Court on Tuesday, so-called "patent troll" TriDim Innovations claims Apple infringed two 3D user interface patents with Safari for iOS 7 and iOS 8, Cover Flow and Time Machine. Cover Flow as seen in Safari 4.0. TriDim, a patent holding firm, (a non-performing entity — Swordmaker) , is asserting two patents against Apple, claiming it has suffered and continues to suffer damages through distribution and sale of iOS 7 and iOS 8 devices running Safari, as well as various implementations of Cover Flow and Time Machine. The suit was spotted...

Literally every time I work in the computer store, we'll get a customer whose Mac is plagued with problems they don't understand: Their Mac is acting slow. It crashes. And more. And in more cases than not, we find that they've installed a program called MacKeeper. Removing MacKeeper fixes the problem. So what is MacKeeper and why should you avoid it? MacKeeper was originally developed by a company called Zeobit and was sold a couple of years ago to another firm called Kromtech. The software purports to be a suite of more than a dozen individual utilities that are actually...

SEOUL, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Apple Inc is chipping away at Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's dominant position in its home turf of South Korea - thanks to its new iPhone 6 series. Apple captured a record 33 percent market share in South Korea in November, the highest ever for a foreign brand, according to a monthly report released by Hong Kong-based market research company Counterpoint on Wednesday. In contrast, Samsung's share slipped to 46 percent after hovering around 60 percent for five months. Apple's gains in South Korea are telling, as November was the first full month that the...

It was a mere two months ago that Israeli cyber-security researchers hacked into a device that plugs into the diagnostic port of a car and determined they could remotely control the vehicle from anywhere in the world. At the time, the simulated attack seemed like the automotive version of a canary in a coal mine. If researchers could breach this one device, perhaps other aftermarket products that plug into diagnostic ports were also vulnerable? In short order, another cyber-security firm now reports finding serious flaws in a device used by more than 2 million motorists. Researchers at Florida-based Digital Bond...

Today I want to consider the outlook for bitcoin. 2014 was its worst year on record. It fell by 67%, from $800 to $320 a coin. In doing so, it beat the likes of the Russian rouble and the Ukrainian hryvnia, to the dubious honour of being the world’s worst-performing currency. You know what the world’s best-performing currency was by the way? Nope, not the US dollar, but the Somali shilling. Yup. It surprised me too. Anyway, back to bitcoin… The bursting of the bitcoin bubble So far, 2015 has not been any better than 2014 for bitcoin. At one...

Big layoffs are coming to eBay. The company is planning to slash 2,400 workers across the eBay and PayPal parts of the business. The cuts will impact 7% of the workforce. The layoffs will be made before the end of March. EBay said it was "simplifying organizational structures" in its quarterly earnings released Wednesday. A company spokesperson told CNNMoney that some of the cuts were to unfilled positions, but would not say how many.

Microsoft gathered a bunch of reporters together in its Redmond, Washington, headquarters Wednesday to show off the next version of Windows, Windows 10, which is expected to come out later this year. You can check out our live blog of the event at the bottom of this page, but here were the highlights: * Holograms. The coolest thing was a set of new products that will let people see holographic images. The hardware is called Microsoft HoloLens and looks a lot like Google Glass. There are also software tools within Windows 10 that will let programmers create apps that use...

The Apple Watch may be the most anticipated tech product to launch this year, but the company's first stab at the watch market dates back 20 years. Most fans probably don't remember the original Apple Watch. It wasn't a real product for consumers; Apple created a limited number as a promotional freebie for Macintosh users who upgraded to Mac OS 7.5 software. The upcoming high-tech Apple Watch will connect with the iPhone via Bluetooth; the first "Apple Watch" came with scratch resistant glass, a blue bezel, a colorful Apple logo and "Mac OS" emblazoned on the wristband. YouTube user Jonathan...

Signal amplification is ubiquitous to all electronic and optoelectronic systems for communications, imaging and computing - its characteristics directly impact device performance. A new signal amplification process discovered by a team of University of California, San Diego researchers is now poised to fuel new generations of electrical and photonic devices - transforming the fields of communications, imaging and computing. In the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, the team describes their work behind this discovery. "For many years, the semiconductor industry has relied on photodetectors for optoelectrical conversion, followed by low-noise electronic amplifiers to convert optical signals into electronic...

I grew up in rural West Virginia, and I don't remember learning how to shoot. All I know is I was certainly shooting well before the time I was 8. I grew up in a gun culture, with many relatives in the military, and I went to school at West Virginia University, which won its 16th NCAA Rifle Championship in 2014. In short, I know guns and I know just how hard it is to shoot accurately at extreme ranges such as 1,000 yards. Even at my best, I was never able to do it reliably. (Image: TrackingPoint) Or rather,...

Hello FReepers. I'm looking for advice on which dashcam to purchase for my vehicle. Just looking for something quick and easy to use. Any suggestions or advice provided is greatly appreciated! Thanks

Friends of a Temple University freshman who fell eight stories to her death said a Facebook post just before her tragic fall hints that it may have been suicide. Rebecca Kim, 18, was visiting two friends at a Rittenhouse Square apartment in Philadelphia when she leaned out the window to take pictures and tumbled to her death around 6 p.m. Thursday, police said. Kim allegedly posted to her Facebook page just before her fatal fall: "It was intentional." "It was shock, a lot of shock. I really didn't know how to react to it at first," classmate and friend Rachelle...

Go to the link for details, but herein I break it down for ya bruvva Introducing styluses Small iPads Large screen iPhones Lifelike-looking software/icons ("skeuomorphism") Restoring philanthropy

Happy Sunday! Ready to have your mind blown?By mixing ultra-bright projectors and advanced facial tracking with some damned fine visual design, these guys are able to use their faces as a canvas some truly wild work. ==>>>Watch on as they morph from human, to alien, to cheetah, to robot overlord on the fly.<<<==So how does it work? To oversimplify it: an array of cameras tracks the dots on their faces, akin to the way Hollywood motion capture systems work. They then take some truly amazing texture/animation work and digitally morph it around a model of each guy’s face — essentially...

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Two weeks ago, I researched online about what "asymmetrical warfare" is, and then all heck broke loose since that time for two weeks. I got knocked off the internet on the average of every ten minutes, every single day. Internet Explorer had monumental issues, but when I did get on I utilized weather data for my area, then on to FR as usual. But when I was on FR, I would get bumped off AGAIN... I had a tech come to the house to find out whether there was any kind of issue with the internet, and he said there...

Remember when Samsung was the new Apple? Well, that little bit of wishful thinking has run its current course, and now it's time for the next "new Apple." It's a company called Xiaomi, and you may have seen all kinds of coverage on the company's new (supposed) iPhone-killer, the Xiaomi Mi Note. This device is a sleek beauty with specs that best many of the specs in the iPhone 6 plus. And it's cheap, at roughly $370 in China. The iPhone 6 Plus is roughly a grand. Here's a promo video for the device: You Tube of the Xiaomi Mi...

OneWeb Announces Plans to Launch a New Satellite Constellation to Bring High-Speed Internet to Underserved Areas Around the World (Full Title) WorldVu Satellites Limited, operating as OneWeb, Ltd, today announced plans to build, launch and operate a low-earth-orbit satellite constellation to help bring high-speed Internet and telephony to billions of people around the world. Qualcomm Incorporated and The Virgin Group have been announced as initial investors, with Qualcomm Executive Chairman Dr. Paul Jacobs and Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson to join OneWeb founder Greg Wyler on the company's board of directors. Financial terms of the deal have not been...

The company said in an advisory Tuesday that the updates will address security flaws that "could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system." Users of Flash Player on Windows, OS X, and Linux are advised to update to Flash Player version 16.0.0.257, while users of Adobe Flash Player (Extended Support Release) should update to version 13.0.0.260. Those running Linux systems should update to Flash Player 11.2.202.429. Flash, which comes included with Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer on Windows 8 (and above) will automatically update to the patched version. Meanwhile, Adobe Air users on desktops should update...

Does an uninstalled walware REALLY uninstall the threat ?

Just the other night I was watching a rerun of the Big Bang Theory episode, The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification, in which Sheldon bemoans the fact that he won’t live long enough to have his intellect fully uploaded into a robot and creates a Mobile Virtual Presence Device. It now looks like Sheldon will have to rely on his robotic doppelganger a bit longer because the days of useful android options have been pushed back even further. Ladies and gentlemen… Google Glass is dead. The company insists it is still committed to launching the smart glasses as a consumer product,...

Back in late November, iPhone case maker Urban Armor Gear sent an iPhone into space using a weather balloon, and in early January, the site shared a video depicting the iPhone's journey to the stratosphere in an Urban Armor Gear case. The iPhone soared 101,000 feet into the atmosphere, and was subjected to 70 mile per hour winds and temperatures that dropped to -79 degrees Fahrenheit. Though turned on at launch, the iPhone later shut off and froze due to the cold weather Urban Armor Gear hooked the iPhone up to a weather balloon rig that also included a GPS...

FReeper techies question.I got the Windows 7 start button moved to the right,any way to get the frickin menu to open on the right side without moving the taskbar to the right side?see screenshots.It's trivial,but it bugs me,and hey,I'm on vacation;)

The perfect desktop is undoubtedly the one you would design yourself. However, lacking the necessary time and expertise, many users hop instead from desktop to desktop desktop with the same enthusiasm as others hop between distros, hoping to find the ideal distribution.In many cases, they never find their ideal, and for good reason -- even the simplest Linux desktop is a mixture of advantages and disadvantages.Here, for example, are some core reasons for both accepting and rejecting the seven leading desktops of today:Cinnamon Leading Advantage: Like MATE, Linux Mint's other desktop, Cinnamon is a classic desktop for GNOME-based applications. However,...

Dish's grand experiment is called Sling TV, and before going on, we need to point out that it has very little to do with the Sling brand you may already be familiar with. There's no direct partnership with Slingbox or Sling Media, though both it and Dish are beneath a single parent company, EchoStar. So right off the bat, it's a somewhat confusing name that Dish maybe could've done better with. Another thing: though this is a service designed by and coming from Dish, you wouldn't know it without being told. The satellite provider's own logo is nowhere to be...

On Monday David Cameron managed a rare political treble: he proposed a policy that is draconian, stupid and economically destructive. The prime minister made comments widely interpreted as proposing a ban on end-to-end encryption in messages – the technology that protects online communications, shopping, banking, personal data and more. “[I]n our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?”, the prime minister asked rhetorically.

Speed kills, and the iPhone goes from 0 to a good picture faster than anything else I was at Intel’s CES booth, composing a photo with my Android smartphone, when a pair of anonymous hands thrust a shining iPhone 6 Plus into my line of vision. A nonchalant tap of the camera shutter button later, the hands were pulling back, having captured a stupendously clear and sharp picture on the first attempt. By the time I’d completed my routine of setting proper focus and steadying myself, the dude who’d beaten me to a better shot with none of the effort...

Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama said Tuesday the cyber attacks against Sony and the Pentagon's Central Command highlight the need for toughened laws on cybersecurity. Obama made the comment as the White House unveiled a proposal to revive cybersecurity legislation stalled over the past few years.