October 25, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC
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>> STAT DU JOUR: Same old Amazon: All sales, no profit, by Brad Stone: "Amazon just posted a healthy $17.09 billion in net sales during its third quarter, a 24 percent jump compared with the same period a year ago. But the company lost .09 cents per share. This is what amounts for good news to Amazon shareholders: analysts had predicted sales of $16.77 billion and accurately predicted that nine cent loss. Naturally, shares rose about one and a half percent in after-hours trading." BloombergBusinessweek
>>>> Amazon Web Services continue to tear it up GigaOM
>>>> Amazon hits 109,800 employees, passing Microsoft's headcount for the first time TNW
>>>> Amazon added 'millions' of Prime members in Q3, thanks in part to streaming video GigaOM
>>>> Amazon's set-top box runs into further delays The Verge
>>>> TechBrief wonders: When will Kiva robots (now 1,382) outnumber employees?
>> STAT DU JOUR DEUX: Microsoft crushes FQ1 expectations with revenue of $18.5B, EPS of $0.62, $400M in Surface top line, by Alex Wilhelm: "Enterprise, strong - Consumer, middling...net income was $5.24 billion, and its operating income was $6.33 billion. Microsoft ended the quarter with just over $80 billion in cash and equivalents... keep in mind that most of that cash is overseas... Surface revenue for the quarter was $400 million, with Microsoft reporting that that figure represents 'sequential growth in revenue and units sold over the prior quarter.' That figure is almost half of its former tally for several quarters, including launch...That decent Surface figure is contrasted in the quarter by slipping Windows OEM revenue. According to Microsoft, revenue derived from selling Windows to its OEM partners fell 7 percent on a year-over-year basis." TechCrunch
>>>> Microsoft hits 2 million-plus Office 365 Home Premium subscriber mark ZDNet
>>>> The PC slump finally hits Microsoft, though cloud cushions the blow ReadWrite
>>>>> Microsoft sells another 1.2M Xbox 360s in Q1; console approaching 80M in lifetime sales VentureBeat
>>>> Microsoft plunks a 17-foot-tall Surface tablet down in London's Trafalgar Square TechHive
>>>> TechBrief wonders: How much does Microsoft's new accounting method impact the picture?
>> STAT DU JOUR TROIS: Across desktop and mobile, Chrome is used more than Firefox, IE, and Opera combined, by Emil Protalinski: "Social analytics firm Shareaholic today released browser share data for the year 2013 so far. There are quite a lot of figures to go over, but the biggest trend that immediately jumps out is Chrome's utter dominance. In September, Chrome was used more than Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera combined." TNW
>> TO SERVE MAN: LinkedIn 'Intro'duces Insecurity, by Bishop Fox: "LinkedIn released a new product today called Intro. They call it 'doing the impossible,' but some might call it 'hijacking email.' Why do we say this? Consider the following: Intro reconfigures your iOS device (e.g. iPhone, iPad) so that all of your emails go through LinkedIn's servers. You read that right. Once you install the Intro app, all of your emails, both sent and received, are transmitted via LinkedIn's servers. LinkedIn is forcing all your IMAP and SMTP data through their own servers and then analyzing and scraping your emails for data pertaining to...whatever they feel like." Bishop Fox
>> PRO TIP: Mozilla's Lightbeam tool will expose who is looking over your shoulder on the Web, by Adam Sherwin: "Users who activate Lightbeam will be able to see a real-time visualisation of every site they visit and every third-party that is active on those sites, including commercial organisations which might potentially be sharing your data.... Mozilla wants users who install the Lightbeam add-on to Firefox, to crowd-source their data, to produce the first 'big picture' view of Web tracking, revealing which third-parties are most active.... Lightbeam promises a 'Wizard of Oz" moment for the web, "where users collectively provide a way to pull back the curtains to see its inner workings," Mozilla claimed." The Independent
>> FIRST LOOK: Twitter prices its IPO at a conservative $11B, by Peter Kafka: "Twitter said it is looking to sell its shares for $17 to $20 each in its upcoming public offering. If the company sells at the top end of its range, it would raise $1.6 billion in its IPO, and value the company at around $11 billion. That $20 figure is significant because it's less than the $20.62 value Twitter assigned to its shares on August 5, the last time the company went through a valuation before letting the public take a look at its financials." AllThingsD
>>>> Twitter hires NBC's Vivian Schiller to boost its news cred PCWorld
>> SPY VS. SPY: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts, by James Ball: "NSA encourages senior officials in its 'customer' departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their 'Rolodexes' so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems... one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately 'tasked' for monitoring by the NSA... Angela Merkel on Wednesday accused the US of tapping her mobile phone. After Merkel's allegations became public, White House press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement that said the US 'is not monitoring and will not monitor' the German chancellor's communications." The Guardian
>>>> Organizers hope for big crowd at surveillance protest Saturday in Washington DC ITWorld
>> WEARABLES WATCH: Move over Google Glass, here comes $300 competition from France, by Cyrus Farivar: "The 70-gram glasses themselves felt like large industrial protective eyewear with a huge case enclosing all the electronics on the right side... At least 11 companies are battling for your face." Ars Technica
>>>> Patent filing shows Samsung preps electronic eyewear Wall Street Journal Digits
>> BIG PICTURE: The value of zero-priced software, by Horace Dediu: "Apple's latest product launch (new OS X, iPads, Macs and iWork/iLife) came with a change in pricing for software. OS X and iWork and iLife and updates are now made available free on new Macs and, in the case of the suites, on iOS devices as well... usage of the products determines their value and therefore placing powerful software in the hands of more users means they will value the entire system more. This leads to the notion of greater 'stickiness' or 'lock-in' but also to higher satisfaction and loyalty, rate of upgrades, and even more third-party purchases and yet more usage." Asymco
>>>> Apple, Microsoft and free software TechCrunch
>>>> The truth about "Free" Mac App Store software upgrades in OS X Mavericks MacTrast
>>>> OS X Mavericks adoption reaches 5.5 percent 24 hours following public release Chitika
>> GRAND THEFT AUTOUPDATE: Apple offering 'free' updates to all owners of Aperture, iWork and iLive; not worried about unethical users, by Jordan Golson: "As part of its efforts to ensure that all eligible software owners are able to upgrade to the latest versions of its software on the Mac App Store, Apple is intentionally allowing users with any version of Aperture, iLife and iWork installed on their system to upgrade to the latest versions on the Mac App Store -- even illegally acquired or trial versions" MacRumors
>> FIRST LOOK: Former Googler's Cover app makes Android lock screens more useful, by Liz Gannes: "An Android app called Cover has developed a new version of the Android lock screen that adjusts based on each user's habits around time, place and other factors. With permission, Cover monitors users' daily activity. Then it picks the six apps it thinks users are most likely to want at any one moment, and lines them up on the left side of the phone." AllThingsD
>>>> Former Googler's would-be WebEx killer Highfive gets $13.5M before even launching AllThingsD
>> FOR THE LOSE: Microsoft Surface 2 deep-dive review: Better hardware, but still with Windows RT, by Preston Gralla: "Surface 2 is no winner. And that's too bad, because it's a well-designed tablet with solid hardware and an improvement over the original Surface RT -- but it's doomed by a problematic underlying operating system and a too-high price. It's not likely to save the Windows RT operating system for Microsoft by itself." Computerworld
>> DEMOTIVATIONAL POSTER: Measuring America's decline, in three charts, by John Cassidy: "In basic literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills... younger Americans are at or near the bottom of the standings among advanced countries." New Yorker
>> Samsung's profit up 26 percent on memory chip, smartphone sales InfoWorld
>> PHP.net compromised and used to attack visitors InfoWorld
>> Instagram provides details on "sponsored" media ads in feeds GigaOM
>> Zynga beats estimates, but user base continues to crumble CNet
>> Taiwan fines Samsung US $340K for defaming HTC with fabricated reviews PCWorld
>> Healthcare.gov: Why didn't the White House use WordPress? Politico
>> Apple cuts MacBook Pro prices up to 13% Computerworld
>> New Relic to mine performance data for business insights PCWorld
>> Tweetbot 3 for iPhone arrives: gorgeous new design, same great features 9to5Mac
>> Self-driving cars could save more than 21,700 lives, $450B a year Computerworld
>> File-sharing site UploaderTalk was a year-long pirate honeypot TorrentFreak
>> A (relatively easy to understand) primer on elliptic curve cryptography Ars Technica
>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "The police came for me as I was using my 3D printer - so I made a bolt for the door" @rupertg
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