SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: November 8, 2012

Welcome to Thursday evening everyone – just one more work day to go and we’ll have arrived at the weekend once again. This afternoon we received more information about that massive Twitter password reset that occurred earlier in the day, while we learned that a number of Windows Phone 8 handsets will be available to order at both Verizon and AT&T tomorrow, including the HTC Windows Phone 8X. Verizon is expecting to complete its roll out of 4G LTE by mid-2013, while we learned that Grand Theft Auto V will feature Rockstar’s biggest in-game world yet.


Hulu has launched its new Hulu Kids service for paying subscribers, while the Samsung Galaxy Express and the MiFi Liberate are headed for AT&T. The creators of Expendable Rearmed have been working with NVIDIA to bring the classic Dreamcast game to Android, and we heard that Foxconn may be thinking about expanding into the US. Google began teasing its Niantic Project earlier today, and speaking of Google, it launched Free Zone today as well, a new program that will attempt to give feature phone owners access to basic Google services.

Hitachi has revealed its lineup of HDTVs and Smart TVs for fall 2012, and scientists have spotted a “Super Earth” in the habitable zone of a star that’s 42 light years away. The HTC One S has popped up at T-Mobile with a price tag of zero dollars, and AT&T is willing to shave $100 off the price of a new tablet so long as you’re willing to sign a two-year data agreement. Flomio has taken to Kickstarter to raise funding for its FloJack NFC reader for iOS, and Mimo has introduced a new touch screen monitor that’s compatible with OS X.

We learned when Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going free-to-play, and GameFly is offering BioShock as a free download for a limited time, so if you haven’t played it yet, have at it. AT&T has backtracked somewhat on its FaceTime restrictions, and the Humble Bundle for Android 4 has launched with six games that are all worth checking out. Finally tonight, Chris Burns gives us his review of Evernote 5 for iOS, so be sure to have a look at that. That’s all for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night folks!


SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: November 8, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


The Story Behind the Internet’s Most Popular Photo

This photo, along with the simple caption “Four more years” became the most tweeted and most liked on Facebook photograph ever, and it did so with incredible speed. We thought you’d like to hear the story behind it. It’s probably not what you imagined. More »

Sayonara: Get Notified When Jerks Unfollow You on Twitter

Everyone loves to focus on the “social” part of Twitter. But what about the anti-social part? You know, the part where someone decides they’re sick of your avatar or your mundane updates about hunger and weather, and they unfollow you as if you’re worthless. You don’t get a friendly e-mail from Twitter that notifies you that your “friend” now thinks you’re lame More »

Twitter compromised accounts overshadow massive election victory

It’s not that Twitter was rooting for Obama, but that they survived the entire election day, night, and next morning that the micro-blogging site would be joyous about if it weren’t for the massive password-reset blunder occurring today. Twitter has had a bit of a break-down today and over the past 24 hours with some break-ins on accounts both large and small. The funny thing is though that their break-in wasn’t nearly as gigantic as their own password reset blast made it seem.

The news earlier today was that Twitter was experiencing problems of unknown proportions, with masses of people reporting in with their own message saying they’d have to re-set their password to continue using the service. Twitter later in the day (before noon, EST) sent out a message saying that they’d sent the message to many, many more people than they’d needed to, also chalking up the matter to routine re-sets that would have happened either way. The great news though for the greater sphere of users is that Twitter recently set themselves up with a fabulous Ruby-to-Java move that kept them up during one of the heaviest usages in their history.

Twitter’s Vice President of infrastructure operating engineering made it clear this week that Twitter really kept its head about it – with an average of 9,965 messages per second between the hours of 8:11 PM and 9:11 PM Pacific the night of the Presidential Election in the USA (Tuesday of this week). He also noted that during one of the seconds inside 8:20 PM, there were 15,107 new posts at once. He also noted that the traffic peak was 874,560 posts in a single minute.

“The bottom line: No matter when, where or how people use Twitter, we need to remain accessible 24/7, around the world. We’re hard at work delivering on that vision.” – Rawashdeh

Twitter did not break down in any way at all even with these massive amounts of traffic due in no small part to their recent move away from a backend software written in Ruby, living on the Ruby on Rails framework. They moved to a new software stack instead, built on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) instead – and it worked wonders. This may very well mean you might never again see a legitimate Fail Whale on Twitter – saddest day!


Twitter compromised accounts overshadow massive election victory is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Twitter resetting passwords due to alleged security threat

If you are receiving an email from Twitter prompting you to change your password, then it’s probably best to heed what the company is saying. After all, it’s better to be safe than to compromise. For some reason, Twitter has reportedly sent emails to a number of users asking them to change their passwords because of a potential security threat. The email reads, “Twitter believes that your account may have been compromised by a Web site or service not associated with Twitter. We’ve reset your password to prevent others from accessing your account.” (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Twitter security flaw allows for brute-force password discovery, Twitter phishing scam pretends to be concerned about you,

Twitter Password Reset-gate mostly a mis-step

It would appear that Twitter is a bit quicker on the trigger than they need to be, today letting the world know that if they did receive a “compromised” email about their account, it may just have been routine. They’ve been clear with TechCrunch that there were indeed compromised accounts earlier today, but that they’d sent out far too many response emails in reaction. The worst that’s come of this, it would seem, is a bit of a panic and a few extra moments in re-setting on the part of the public.

The incident did happen earlier today and several high-profile accounts were hacked into – so to speak – while Twitter acted what appears to be rather quickly with a wave of password resets. In the wake of this incident, Twitter has done lots of damage control. This damage control at the moment appears to be more on the unaffected side than it does on the “you got busted into” side.

We’re committed to keeping Twitter a safe and open community. As part of that commitment, in instances when we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users.

In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.

As always, we recommend that people review these tips on how to keep their Twitter accounts secure:
https://support.twitter.com/articles/76036-keeping-your-account-secure#

If you’re worried about the security surrounding your own Twitter account at this moment, please feel free to change your password at this time. If you’ve got the same password for Twitter as the rest of your user accounts for other services online, now would also be a good time to change those up as well. Don’t let Twitter be the Jenga block that knocks your whole tower down!

Meanwhile feel free to check out the Twitter timeline below to see recent incidents and updates in the Twittersphere. This situation is just one of many in a battle that rages on not just inside Twitter, but in the whole password-protected internet as well. Stay safe!


Twitter Password Reset-gate mostly a mis-step is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Your Account Probably Wasn’t Hacked, Twitter Is Just Paranoid

If you got a password reset notice from Twitter last night or this morning, don’t worry, your account wasn’t hacked. When Twitter notices suspicious activity indicating that an account might have been compromised, it resets the password just to be on the safe side. That’s a good thing! But last night the system spazzed. According to the company: “We unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised.” So breathe easy people. Your passwords are probably safe. [Twitter via FWD] More »

Melotweet: Evian makes Twitter musical, encourages you to buy water (video)

Melotweet Evian makes Twitter musical, encourages you to buy some water video

We do love quirky iPad apps that help us make music in unusual ways, and this is the first we’ve seen that turns Twitter into part of that process. Melotweet is a promotional app from Evian*, that turns your Tweets into a series of droplets that you can bounce off objects to make the sort of plinky-plonky music that compels you into buying French mineral water. It’s available for free on iOS or Android devices, and you can see the app in action in the video we’ve got for you after the break.

* Other waters are available.

Continue reading Melotweet: Evian makes Twitter musical, encourages you to buy water (video)

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Melotweet: Evian makes Twitter musical, encourages you to buy water (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 13:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: November 7, 2012

We did it folks – we made it through another election, which means that we finally get a break from those endless political ads. It won’t be long before those ads are playing all over the place again, so savor the moment while you can. We found out today that President Obama set Twitter records with that a tweet that was shared more 600,000 times, and Apple was hit with a hefty fine in a case over patents related to FaceTime. Foxconn is saying that it’s still having issues keeping up with iPhone 5 production, and Pixar has named a new building after Steve Jobs.


We had a couple of quarterly reports land this afternoon, with both Activision and Qualcomm looking great as they charge into Q4 2012. Apple executive Eddy Cue has joined Ferrari’s board of directors, while AT&T is putting up a whopping $14 billion to boost its LTE and U-Verse services. There were rumors of an iPad Mini 2 with Retina Display floating around today, and ZTE was spotted teasing a new Windows Phone 8 device with a massive 5.9-inch screen.

Gearbox has squashed a nasty exploit in Borderlands 2 with a new patch, and we learned that Kim Dotcom’s new website has been killed before it even got off the ground. AT&T has revealed off-contract pricing for the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820, and Time Warner Cable is trying to lure new customers in by giving away free Xbox 360s. We got to see Nintendo President Satoru Iwata unbox the Wii U, found out which features will be on the Wii U from launch day, and were even told that the Wii U will allow for 12 user accounts per console.

Verizon is waiving voice and text fees for those who were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, and Microsoft has released its SkyDrive app for Windows Phone 8. A new Sandvine report gives us an idea of just how popular Netflix is in North America, and Yahoo has hired a former National Geographic photographer to head up Flickr. A*STAR has revealed a new hybrid disk drive that’s only 5mm-thick, and DC Comics are now available digitally through iOS, Kindle, and NOOK devices.

Finally tonight, Don Reisinger asks if Apple actually helps its competitors, we take a closer look at Qualcomm Halo, and Chris Davis gives us his review of the Phillips hue lightbulb. That does it for tonight’s edition of the Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night everyone!


SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: November 7, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Being Excited When Things Don’t Suck Is Technological Stockholm Syndrome

Twitter is bragging because it didn’t go down on Election Day. The info-bloat peaked at 327,452 tweets-per-minute last night, and not a single Fail Whale appeared! High fives all around! Way to… work like you’re supposed to. More »