Apple TV hits $US1 billion revenue | Jobs actor to design smartphones for Lenovo | Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox files for bankruptcy with debts of $63.6m.
Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ, reveals The Guardian. The paper says 1.8 million Yahoo users have been targetted in the past six months alone by Optic Nerve, a progamme - developed with US agency the NSA - that has captured images from the web cam usage of millions of people not suspected of any wrongdoing. An outraged Yahoo says its the worst state surveillance of its users' privacy yet. The Guardian says the GCHQ has no technology to tell if web cam images are of UK or US citizens. Many of the images are sexually explicit, the paper says.
Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox files for bankruptcy with debts of $63.6m, reports Computerworld. Earlier this week Mt Gox, was taken offline after what it says was a major security issue, reportedly involving the theft of 744,408 bitcoins.Mt Gox’s problems are is a blow for Auckland-based PKF liquidators Anthony McCullagh and Stephen Lawrence, who have been chasing Mt Gox for access to accounts held by New Zealand-registered Bitcoinica Limited Partnership, which ran a now defunct online currency and bitcoin trading platform. The NZ liquidators are chasing $43 million in Bitcoin (read NBR's full report here).
Apple TV did over $1B in 2013 revenue, says CNet, quoting CEO Tim Cook in an exchange with activist investor Carl Icahn. The company's Apple TV widgets sell for $159, and allow customers to download TV series and movies to their regular television over wi-fi (or in NZ, just movies - though there are ways around it). Netflix recently reported December quarter profit of $US48 million on revenue of $US1.2 billion.
Dude, Where’s My Phone? Lenovo, Ashton Kutcher to Launch Line of Phones This Year, reports Recode. Kutcher played Steve Jobs in Jobs last year. Now, he seems to be taking the method acting a little too seriously. “I know on one level, it sounds corny, but it is real,” Lenovo Chief Marketing Officer David Roman said in an interview with Recode. “He not only sees himself as an engineer, but he is an engineer. If he sees a problem, he wants to solve it.” Lenovo has is buying Motorola's mobile phone business from Google for $US2.9 billion.
