Microsoft's Surface tablet and Xbox businesses are booming

Microsoft's Surface tablet and Xbox businesses are booming

Microsoft appears to be well past the days when it was writing off unsold Surface tablets and struggling to match Sony in game console sales. The Windows developer reports that its Devices and Consumer group's revenue grew 8 percent year over year in the last calendar quarter of 2014, thanks in no small part to healthy Surface and Xbox sales. It's not revealing shipment numbers for the Surface, but it notes that revenue for the slate computers shot up 24 percent versus a year earlier, thanks in no small part to the Surface Pro 3.

The company also notes that it sold a healthy 6.6 million Xbox systems during the holidays. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't breaking that down by model. While there's no doubt the Xbox One turned a corner this fall through aggressive discounts and a better game selection, it's hard to know how many of those sales were modern systems. Sony was quick to say that it sold 4.1 million PlayStation 4s just during the last month of holiday shopping, so it's apparent that there was at least a fierce fight between current-generation platforms.

It's otherwise a quarter for the Redmond crew. The company posted a rare net operating loss of $243 million, although you can largely chalk that up to the costs of both its massive restructuring plan and integrating Nokia's former mobile team. Windows licensing revenue is down 13 percent year-over-year thanks to both an unforgiving PC market and free Windows licenses for small devices, but that's offset by the company's continued successes in cloud efforts, such as Bing search and Azure. In short, Microsoft is still transitioning away from an old-school strategy where Windows sales reign supreme. The upcoming release of Windows 10 will undoubtedly be important, but it won't be quite as much of a make-or-break product as its ancestors.
Microsoft

Jon Fingas

Engadget 

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Facebook suffers outage affecting users worldwide

Facebook suffers outage affecting users worldwide

SEOUL, South Korea — Facebook is suffering a widespread outage Tuesday affecting users in the United States, Asia and Australia.
The social media giant's Instagram service is also inaccessible.
Instagram said on its Twitter account that it is aware of an outage and is working on a fix.
There was no immediate statement from Facebook.
Facebook had 1.25 billion monthly active users at the end of September.

Associated Press

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Nathan Sykes Wrote a Song About Ariana Grande

Nathan Sykes has opened up about his split from Ariana Grande — and even revealed that he's writing a song about their breakup! In a new interview with The Sun, he confirmed that his solo album will definitely have a track about the end of their relationship.

"The most emotional song [on the album] is about me telling myself not to be angry at the breakup because sometimes things just don't work out. That's life," he said.

"The time we broke up was really tough. The Wanted decided to take a break and I lost my grandad. I was not in the best place. She was my first grown-up relationship. But sometimes you have to go into a place like that to be able to find the best music out of it."

However, he won't be slamming his ex, or going into the gory details of their split.

When asked if Ariana knew about the song, he said, "No. But it's important not to be selfish with writing so there's no detailed version of events. And there's no bad blood. She's a lovely girl."

Since the "Break Free" singer is so happy with her boyfriend Big Sean, we're glad that Nathan's not holding it against her! But we're definitely interested in seeing if he'll pull a Taylor Swift and include some sneaky references to the singer in his track.

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Michael Clifford Fires Back at Abigail Breslin's Diss Track

Michael Clifford Fires Back at Abigail Breslin's Diss Track

5 Seconds of Summer's Michael Clifford has fired back at Abigail Breslin for her breakup song
about him.
After the actress tweeted against bullying, writing, "i mean calling each other ugly and stupid and gross for what? what is it worth? what do you gain from it?" another Twitter user accused her of doing that with her blistering diss track

After she responded by calling it a "joke song," the 5SOS guy said he didn't find it very funny!

She didn't directly respond to his tweet, but she did throw shade at him.

She called him out for "hiding behind a screen."

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Happy Birthday ! Celebrate Calum Hood's Coolest Selfies Ever

We can't believe it either, but Calum Hood is celebrating his 19th birthday today! In honor of the 5 Seconds of Summer artist's birthday (and last year as a teenager!!!!), we decided to round up some of his coolest Instagram pics of all time and marvel at his extreme cuteness!

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Google explains why it's not fixing web security in old Android phones

Google explains why it's not fixing web security in old Android phones

You might not be happy that Google isn't fixing a web security flaw in your older Android phone, but the search giant now says that it has some good reasons for holding off. As the company's Adrian Ludwig explains, it's no longer viable to "safely" patch vulnerable, pre-Android 4.4 versions of WebView (a framework that lets apps show websites without a separate browser) to prevent remote attacks. The sheer amount of necessary code changes would create legions of problems, he claims, especially since developers are introducing "thousands" of tweaks to the open source software every month.
Ludwig suggests a few things you can do to avoid or mitigate problems, though. For a start, he recommends surfing with browsers that don't use WebView but still get updates, like Chrome (which works on devices using Android 4.0) and Firefox (which runs on ancient Android 2.3 hardware). Hackers can't abuse the vulnerable software if you're not using it, after all. The Googler also tells app creators to either use their own web rendering tech or limit WebView to pages they can trust, like encrypted sites.
The advice should help if you're either a tech-savvy user or write apps. However, it still hints that quite a few people will remain at risk until those older releases of Android ride into the sunset. Many Android device owners aren't aware of alternatives to the stock Android browser, or can't easily get them (you have to jump through hoops to install Chrome if you can't use the Google Play Store, for instance). Also, there's no simple way to tell whether or not an app is using WebView. The chances of an attack are low if you're careful, but it could take a long, long while before the majority of Android gadgets are truly safe from WebView-related web exploits.
Adrian Ludwig (Google+)

Jon Fingas

Engadget 

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Diplo Thinks Taylor Swift's Fans Are 'Mean-Spirited, Evil Human Beings'

Diplo Thinks Taylor Swift's Fans Are 'Mean-Spirited, Evil Human Beings'

Diplo has more to say about his feud with Taylor Swift in a recent interview with GQ.

“Taylor Swift fans are really crazy,” the 36-year-old DJ told the mag. “They threatened to murder me and stuff. It’s really bizarre, and disgusting. They’re the worst people in the world.” and he said some more mean stuff about all the swifties! ! 

further he said "She has like forty million Twitter fans. Forty million! Yeah. It’s crazy. I’m a fan though. Her powers — she’s big. She’s strong, bro. Taylor Swift is very strategic with her friends and enemies. And I know lots of secrets. I can’t divulge, but I know a lot of stuff about her. And she’s definitely, there’s definitely scary stuff going on. And I’m scared. I’m scared for my life.”

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Twitter doesn't want its biggest users to post Instagram links

Twitter doesn't want its biggest users to post Instagram links

In December 2014, Instagram overtook Twitter's monthly active user number. Well, someone from Twitter must have found that alarming, because the microblogging website is now urging its most prolific users not to tweet out links to Instagram photos. In a screenshot obtained by Mashable (embedded below the fold), you'll see the splash page the company's showing its power users, asking them to post their pictures directly on the website.

A source confirmed to the publication that Twitter unleashed the prompt to a number of notable entertainment, media and sports accounts, in part to remind them that the website does have native photo editing tools and to show them how those work.

Yes, Twitter does have its own photo editor and filters, in case you've been too busy crossposting pictures to notice. They were even launched around the same time Instagram killed off Twitter photo integration. But, and we're sure you'll agree, people still choose to crosspost Instagram content even if they show up as links instead of actual pictures, because, well, it's just more convenient that way. It's unclear if the rest of us will see the same prompt in the future, but for now, Twitter's likely hoping its influential clientele can set an example, so to speak.
Mariella Moon
 Engadget

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Johnny Depp Disses Your Favorite Stars Like Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus

Johnny Depp Disses Your Favorite Stars Like Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus

Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp basically just insulted pop stars like Demi Lovato,Selena Gomez, and Miley Cyrus because they all got their start acting! In a recent interview, he was asked about actors who launch singing careers, and said that he thinks they're exploiting their fame.

"That whole idea for me is a sickening thing, it's always just made me sick. I've been very lucky to play on friends' records and it's still going. Music is still part of my life. But you won't be hearing The Johnny Depp Band. That won't ever exist," he said.

“The kind of luxury now is, anybody with a certain amount of success, if you have a kind of musical being, you can go out and start a band and capitalize on your work in other areas. I hate the idea, ‘Come see me play the guitar because you’ve seen me in 12 movies'."

In fact, he even dissed actors-turned-singers for distracting people from their music.

"It shouldn't be [that way]. You want the people who are listening to the music to only be interested in the music."

Since he's met One Direction before, we know he doesn't hate young stars, but it definitely sounds like he has a serious beef with singers who got their start on Disney and Nickelodeon. We can think of so many, like Ariana Grande and Bella Thorne, who first broke out in the acting field, and then transitioned into singing projects. But we love their stuff anyway!

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Please don't use these passwords. Sincerely, the Internet

Please don't use these passwords. Sincerely, the Internet

Think you're protected from data breach fallout with your strong passwords? When hackers commandeer computers to create botnets, the damage they cause affects plenty of other users. And their ticket in is often stupid-simple: terrible passwords. SplashData has just released its annual list of the worst of them, and things have changed depressingly little over last year. The most commonly hacked password is still "123456," which edged out a past champion of apathy, "password." Other top picks in the an alphanumeric hall of shame are "12345678," "qwerty," "monkey" and new this year, "batman." According to security expert Mark Burnett, the top 25 passwords (below) represent an eye-popping 2.2 percent of passwords exposed.

The good news is that fewer people are using bad passwords than in 2013, perhaps thanks to some well-publicized data breaches at Sony, Target and elsewhere. SplashData reminds folks to create passwords with eight, mixed characters not based on easy-to-brute-force dictionary words -- even with substitutions like "dr@mat1c." As pointed out by Buffer Open, other methods include pass phrases, mnemonic devices and other memory tricks -- including a gem from XKCD. Since you shouldn't use the same password on more than one site, it's also a good idea to use one of the many password managers out there, like LastPass or SplashID. Those let you access your entire collection of passwords with just a single passphrase -- one that had better be a lot stronger than "123456."

RankPasswordChange from 2013 1 123456 Unchanged 2 password Unchanged 3 12345 Up 17 4 12345678 Down 1 5 qwerty Down 1 6 123456789 Unchanged 7 1234 Up 9 8 baseball New 9 dragon New 10 football New 11 1234567 Down 4 12 monkey Up 5 13 letmein Up 1 14 abc123 Down 9 15 111111 Down 8 16 mustang New 17 access New 18 shadow Unchanged 19 master New 20 michael New 21 superman New 22 696969 New 23 123123 Down 12 24 batman New 25 trustno1 Down 1

Engadget  
Steve Dent

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Ashton Irwin Shaves Off His Beard

Ashton Irwin Shaves Off His Beard

Ashton Irwin has said goodbye to his beard! The 5 Seconds of Summer drummer decided to let his facial hair grow out during the holiday season, but he is now back to his clean-shaven look.

Ash took to Twitter to let us know that he was getting rid of the stubble and posted this post-shave selfie to show off his beardless face. He seems to be a bit sad about it, since naturally he got attached to this fuzzy addition. He even tweeted, #RIPASHTONSBEARD! 

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Is Zayn Malik's Man Bun Still Intact?

Is Zayn Malik's Man Bun Still Intact?

Zayn Malik gave us quite the shock when he decided to cut off his long waves, but maybe we shouldn't be so quick to think his man bun has been sacrificed. Zayn's latest photo shares might be hinting that his style is a combo of long and short hair.

Let's recap, shall we? First, Zayn shared one of his hottest selfies of all time to show off his fresh-from-the-barber new style:

But just as we were freaking out that he had ditched his longer locks forever, the One Directionsinger shared an awesome fan art drawing of his new look: and it shows that though his head is shaved on the sides, he's still got a bun tied up in the back!

Zayn even made the artwork his Twitter profile pic, so does that mean he still has some long hair left? Or is it just an artistic interpretation? 

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