Anonymous on cyber war with Israel

As the Israeli military and Hamas militants continue to trade rockets in a renewed phase of conflict, a notorious third party is stepping into the arena with an unconventional tactic. Anonymous, best known in the U.S. for its hacking and leaking campaigns against politicians and their corporate allies, announced on Sunday that it would “wage a cyberwar against the state of Israel.”

The announcement, posted on Pastebin, promises that “Israel will feel fear tingling in their servers, and homes” on Friday, but it does not elaborate on what specifically the country’s government or its citizens should expect.

“We’ve been fighting Israel and their terrorist state for over 4 years, and we have not grown weary or tired,” the group’s bold declaration reads. “It has only made us stronger.”

The announcement from the vigilante group follows a meeting of “an anonymous council” that deliberated for more than a week on how to respond to what it perceived as Israeli aggression. As Mother Jones points out, Anonymous’s new campaign joins a larger offensive, waged by hackers from the Middle East and other regions, to use cyberwarfare tactics to disrupt Israeli government websites. Anonymous officially endorsed the #OpSaveGaza offensive on Twitter last week.

This is only the latest phase of Anonymous’s campaign against Israel. In November 2012, the Daily Dot wrote about the #OpIsrael movement, which saw Anonymous members offering “a care package for Palestinians that includes instructions in Arabic and English on how they can get their message out if Israel cuts off their Internet access.”

The Israeli government has not spoken to the media about this latest Anonymous offensive, but a spokesman for Israel’s National Cyber Bureau, which defends the country from cyberattacks, dismissed such campaigns in April 2013. 

“Anonymous doesn't have the skills to damage the country's vital infrastructure,” said the NCB’s Yitzhak Ben Yisrael. “And if that was its intention, then it wouldn't have announced the attack ahead of time. It wants to create noise in the media about issues that are close to its heart.”

Already the new hacking campaign has succeeded in taking down the Israeli defense ministry’s website (which was still down as of this article’s publication) and leaking an as-yet-unverified list of login credentials for the Israeli government’s official site, gov.il.

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Why iPad sales are going down

Apple released its earnings today for the past quarter, and iPadsales were down once again. Once thought of as the next product that Apple would lean on after the iPhone, the iPad has not met sales expectations this year. There are a number of factors that play into the decline of iPad sales, but the biggest reason for the drop off isn't because tablets haven't replaced laptops yet or that people simply prefer iPhones: It's the hardware.

The iPad hasn't received a significant feature update since the Retina display was added to the iPad 3 back in 2012. Yes, since then the iPad has gotten thinner and lighter, it has received a faster processor, and a lightning port has been added, but those additions and refinements were to be expected. Those aren't new features as much as they are Apple keeping up with the industry.

Just look at the iPhone, a device Apple has consistently improved on over the years, and one of the clearest examples of the consistent reinvention blueprint Apple should been following with the iPad. A few months before the iPad with Retina display was released in 2012, Apple released the iPhone 4S, a device that had Siri, which was at the time a major step forward—and a feature we had not seen integrated into a product like the iPhone.

A little over a year before the iPhone 4S was announced, in 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4, a complete redesign of the iPhone. Within 16 months, Apple had completely reimagined the hardware and added innovative software to the iPhone. In 2012, Apple did it again, making the iPhone larger, following it up in 2013 with a complete redesign of iOS, while adding the iPhone 5C into the rotation.

Every iteration of the iPhone since 2010 has been given a dramatic update, be it hardware or software, but the iPad has not received the same treatment. Since 2012, the biggest update the iPad line has gotten was the addition of the iPad mini, which intitally came for some inexplicable reason without a Retina display. Apple didn't put a Retina display into the iPad mini until eight months ago.

The problem with the iPad isn't laptops or smartphones being able to accomplish everything you could want, thus reducing the need for a tablet. It's the product itself. Apple has dragged out updates on the iPad to the point where people see no need to upgrade the one they already have. If you bought an iPad after 2012 and it still works, you have no incentive to buy another one.

The iPad has become the automobile of the tech industry—slight improvements are made every year, but there's no need to buy a new one if yours still works well.

The decline of the iPad is a crisis of poor judgement. With the iPad, Apple expected people to buy whatever it put out, even if it was nearly the same product it released the year before, and the public did not comply.

Apple has sold 225 million iPads to date, and it will continue to sell more. Apple has a partnership with IBM that will finally make them a force in enterprise, and the iPad is still doing well in schools, with 85 percent of the education market. iPad sales are up over 50 percent in India, China, and the Middle East, as first-time buyers make up 50 percent of iPad purchases. Apple isn't in dire straits with the iPad globally, but at home in the U.S., where Apple already owns the tablet market, its habit of dragging out substantial updates has grown stale.

Running the iPad division with the innovative speed of GM is not something that can be sustained in the U.S. It will take the same time and effort Apple puts into building new hardware and features for the iPhone to revive American interest in the iPad. The days of repackaging last year's iPad with a new processor and a slightly better camera and still hitting a grand slam are over for Apple.

There is no more coasting with the iPad. Apple has to work at it now.

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A social network you've never heard of is valued at $4 billion

Want some proof that the stock market is absolutely insane? Look no further than Cynk, a tech company whose value has soared 25,000 percent in the past month or so to $4 billion. That’s a ridiculous amount of value for any stock to gain, and it gets even more absurd when you consider the fact that nobody seems to know if the company even actually exists. (Yes, you read that correctly.) 

As far as anyone can tell, Cynk has a single “product,” if you can even call it that. It’s a social network of sorts called IntroBiz, which claims to be able to connect you to a ton of high-profile celebrities, as long as you’re willing to shell out some cash. How much? Prices range from $50 to $5,000. There are a total of two “socialites” selling their contacts—you can apparently get Tom Cruise’s phone number for just $50—but that’s it. 

Both the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider have done some serious sleuthing on Cynk and come up with more questions than answers. The company’s business filings show a rapidly spinning CEO position that has hosted four different people in the past six years, and a confusing mix of contact information that includes locations from Belize to Miami to Nevada. 

But why is it suddenly such a high-dollar item? That’s the biggest unanswered question of all. Theories run the gamut from stock scams to a bunch of bored investors just having some fun, but it’s abundantly clear at this point that the value is unsustainable. 

With zero revenue, a half-baked product, and nothing in the way of a coherent business plan, Cynk will almost certainly lose most of its value in short order. Until then, it remains a puzzling curiosity that makes the stock market look like a painfully embarrassing parody of itself. 

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Every Facebook like came back to haunt you

When you press that all-important “like” button on a link fromFacebook, you’re essentially casting your own personal vote for whatever article, photo, or random website you found enjoyable in some way. But what exactly happens to all those likes? It’s not as though those countless clicks can be revisited, right?

A Portuguese company called ColorElephant is changing that with an ambitious Web app called LikeManager. 

LikeManager functions as a massive archive of your every piece of content you’ve liked on Facebook, allowing you to take a trip down memory lane and revisit things that made you smile, even if it happened several years ago. All you need is a Facebook account to login to the site, but you’ll need to cough up a few bucks to get the full experience. 

A free account lets you browse a few handfuls of you most recent likes, while a premium account—starting at around $10 for six months—offers access to all of your past likes. Depending on how long you’ve had Facebook and how much you care about it in general, it’s a relatively small price to pay for heaps and heaps of nostalgia. 

It’s fairly easy to lose a few hours re-watching old YouTube videos you once adored or reading a particularly gripping article that has long since left your memory, but what you may not be prepared for is the amount of dead links that now litter your Facebook history. Any changes in a site’s URL will cause one of your past likes to show up as “Non-Existent Domain,” which is a bit of a bummer if you’re looking to hunt down a specific site or video. 

After taking the site for a spin and upgrading to get the big picture, I found quite a bit of joy in exploring my likes of years past. Unfortunately, after spending some time in a haze of pleasant nostalgia, I’m now essentially “done.” I can’t imagine I’ll want to do this again anytime soon, which makes the idea of a subscription fee seem a bit silly. Still, I’m sure in another five years I’ll once again have a great time looking backwards, if only for an afternoon.

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