Edited by T. Trent Gegax & Woody Leonhard | August 22, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC
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>> DRIVING THE DAY: NSA gathered thousands of Americans' e-mails before court ordered it to revise its tactics, by Ellen Nakashima: "For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion... In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans." WaPo
>>>> Government turns to Tumblr and Twitter for new intelligence transparency drive, by Evan Dashevsky: "Today, the government unveiled an official Tumblr page dubbed IC on the Record (where 'IC' stands for Intelligence Community'; and not 'I Con The Record' as the URL unfortunately also spells), along with a corresponding Twitter account (@icontherecord)... to provide 'immediate, ongoing and direct access to factual information related to the lawful foreign surveillance activities carried out by the U.S. Intelligence Community.'" InfoWorld
>> BREAKING: Multiple iCloud services down, iMessage and Photo Stream among affected, by Appleinsider staff: "Apple's iCloud faced a fairly wide ranging outage early Thursday, with service like iMessage, Photo Stream and Backup & Restore down for some. According to Apple's iCloud system status webpage, the downtime started at around 12:30 a.m. EDT and has continued for nearly six hours as of this writing... Less than one percent of users are affected by the outage, though that number could be in the millions given iCloud now has over 300 million members." AppleInsider
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>> DEPARTURE LOUNGE: HP replaces enterprise chief, posts Q3 sales drop, by Stephen Lawson: "Hewlett-Packard reassigned Enterprise Group chief Dave Donatelli on Wednesday as it reported an 8 percent decline in revenue for its fiscal third quarter, saying all of its major divisions except software brought in less money than a year earlier... COO [and former Microsoft Windows exec] Bill Veghte will take over the Enterprise Group, which makes the company's x86 and Itanium servers and its enterprise networking and storage products." InfoWorld
>>>> HP Promotes Bill Veghte, puts him in line to be the next CEO, by Julie Bort: "Looks like Bill Veghte is being groomed for CEO Meg Whitman's job whenever she decides to vacate it. Today the company named him COO." Business Insider
>>>> The consumer PC market will implode quicker than anybody thinks, by Matt Rosoff: "HP reported earnings this afternoon, and once again the news was bleak, with overall revenue down 8%... The PC market is getting crushed by tablets. In fact, I think we've reached a tipping point that will mean the near-total collapse of the consumer PC market within three years. By mid-2016, consumer PC sales will be less than half of where they are today. Probably way less." CITEWorld
>> JUJITSU: Yahoo beats Google to take top spot in comScore's monthly US Web rankings, by Josh Ong: "The latest numbers from comScore's Web rankings pegged Yahoo as the top US Web property in terms of unique visitors for the month of July, beating out long-time rival Google. The victory is strong vindication of CEO Marissa Mayer's turnaround at Yahoo. The company had an estimated 197 million unique visitors for the month, compared to Google's 192 million. Microsoft, Facebook and AOL rounded out the top five, respectively. According to MarketingLand, this is the first time Yahoo has been at the top of this list since March 2008." The Next Web
>> #FAIL: Canonical's Ubuntu Edge crowdfunding dream is over, by David Meyer: "There was an initial burst of enthusiasm from Canonical's fanbase and others who wanted a very highly-specified concept smartphone that doubles as a PC when hooked up to a keyboard and monitor, but after that pledging levels were just too low." GigaOM
>> PLUGGED: Cisco patches serious vulnerabilities in Unified Communications Manager, by Lucian Constantin: "Cisco Systems has released new security patches for several versions of Unified Communications Manager (UCM) to address vulnerabilities that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands, modify system data, or disrupt services... the call processing component of Cisco's IP Telephony solution. It connects to IP (Internet Protocol) phones, media processing devices, VoIP gateways, and multimedia applications and provides services such as session management, voice, video, messaging, mobility, and web conferencing." InfoWorld
>> CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS: Poison Ivy, used in RSA SecurID attack, still popular, by Jeremy Kirk: "A malicious software tool perhaps most famously used to hack RSA's SecurID infrastructure is still being used in targeted attacks... Poison Ivy is a remote access trojan (RAT) that was released eight years ago but is still favored by some hackers... It has a familiar Windows interface, is easy to use and can log keystrokes, steal files and passwords." PCWorld
>> BEHIND THE CURTAIN: Why is Goldman Sachs having trading glitches?, by Phil Albinus: "On a glorious summer day, Goldman Sachs suffered a trading error that could cost the respected and reviled investment firm up to $100 million once the scope of the snafu is revealed. And of course, this fee doesn't include any fines that might arise once the regulators look into the trading mess. Even an investment powerhouse that is awash in cash, smart people, and presumed state-of-the-art IT can experience a spectacular trading error. But why are they even happening?" Wall Street & Technology
>> NEW TRICKS: Can the U.S. Postal Service find a future running a gov't cloud-based authentication service?, by Ellen Messmer: "Can the U.S. Postal Service find a new future running a cloud-based authentication service for the government? USPS intends to try and do just that under a three-year $15.12 million contract awarded to SecureKey Technologies today for some foundation technology to build a cloud-based authentication exchange. " Network World
>> NEOMONEY: Does Bitcoin promote illicit Ecommerce?, by Kenneth Corbin: "The much buzzed-about digital currency has aroused concern for its use in illicit activity, but George Mason University researchers urge a cautious regulatory approach. " CIO
>> CLOUD UPGRADE: Box rolls out new cloud storage plans catering to small and medium businesses, by Tony Bradley: "... launching new, more affordable pricing plans to attract small and medium businesses to its cloud data storage and file sharing service, and it is doubling the amount of storage it provides for free personal accounts. " PC World
>> COMING ATTRACTIONS: Linux hackers rebuild internet from Silicon Valley garage, by Cade Metz: "Inside that Palo Alto garage... [Alex] Polvi and his colleagues are fashioning a new computer operating system known as CoreOS. This isn't an OS for running desktop PCs or laptops or tablets. It's meant to run the hundreds of thousands of servers that underpin the modern internet.The project is based on Google's ChromeOS... but unlike ChromeOS, it can run more than just your personal machine. It can run every web service you ever visit, no matter how big." Wired
>> SIREN: At Apple, Tim Cook leads a quiet cultural revolution, by Poornima Gupta, Peter Henderson: Reuters
>> GEEK ALERT: About EdgeBSD, by khorben: "EdgeBSD is to provide an ambitious environment for working as a bigger community together on the NetBSD Project... should be just as fun and attractive as a Research & Development platform while delivering a modern, robust, and industrial-grade system for all ranges of computer devices." (via Hacker News)
>> TROLLOSPHERE: Patent troll backs down, agrees to stop suing public transit agencies, by Joe Mullin: "ArrivalStar will have to limit its trolling to the private sector from now on." Ars Technica
>> TOOTING OWN HORN: Windows Phone, Latin America's second most widely used mobile platform: "In one year, the operating system went from fourth to second place with good growth figures, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru." Microsoft
>> MICROSOFT MISCHIEF: Microsoft turns Scroogled into 'Schoolgled' in new anti-Google attack ad, by Gregg Keizer: Computerworld
>> TWEET O' THE DAY: Only Windows would assume it's ok to reboot your computer to update some stupid DLL and let you lose your work. @thatjeffsmith
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