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CommStar will launch a relay satellite to talk to astronauts on the Moon
CommStar Space Communications plans to launch a data relay satellite that will serve as communications infrastructure for government and commercial space ventures.
Facebook simplifies its Group privacy settings
Facebook wants to make it easier to understand its Group privacy settings. It's doing away with public, closed or secret settings. Instead, Groups will be "private" or "public." Facebook claims this will simplify who can find a Group and see its members and posts.
Machinima's YouTube gaming channel has effectively disappeared
Machinima's YouTube gaming channel has been essentially scrubbed from the internet, as most videos on the site have been set to private and unplayable. Neither video creators nor users of the channel were notified, Kotaku reported, so the news sent a shockwave around the gaming and streaming communities. "Wow, they finally went ahead and deleted everything we've done," tweeted Ricky Hayberg, aka @RickyFTW. "Seven-plus years of work... lost to the sands of time #RIPMachinima."
All GitHub users can keep their code private
Historically, if you've wanted to create a private repository on GitHub, you had to be a paying user, but that's about to change. Starting today, free GitHub users will have access to unlimited private projects as long as there are three or fewer collaborators on board. For larger projects, you'll have to join a paid plan or make your code public, as GitHub isn't changing how it manages public repositories.
Elon Musk: Tesla will stay public
Remember a couple of weeks ago when Elon Musk, out of the blue, tweeted that he had "funding secured" and would consider taking his car company private at a price of $420 per share? Well, you can forget it, since the billionaire announced tonight in a blog post that Tesla will remain a publicly traded company for now. While questions surrounding the circumstances of his initial announcement remain (partially thanks to Azealia Banks' Instagram Stories feed), Musk said that based on conversations with shareholders, the board of directors and firms like Morgan Stanley, the message received was "please don't do this." Separately, six members from Tesla's board of directors posted a statement of their own confirming the matter is closed and saying that they've dissolved a committee formed in the wake of Musk's tweet to investigate taking the company private. In a series of followups to the tweet explaining his process, Musk said he wanted to pay investors a premium, believed conversations with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund meant it would back the plan and denied he was "stoned" at the time. Now, even though the plan is no longer in play, there's still an SEC investigation -- as well as lawsuits that have been filed by investors and suggestions Musk may not be the person best suited to run the company -- to potentially worry about. Still, for now he closed out his blog post by saying "Moving forward, we will continue to focus on what matters most: building products that people love and that make a difference to the shared future of life on Earth. We've shown that we can make great sustainable energy products, and we now need to show that we can be sustainably profitable. With all the progress we've made on Model 3, we're positioned to do this, and that's what the team and I are going to be putting all of our efforts toward." At least for now, Elon isn't even tweeting about Tesla, instead focusing on SpaceX and a bridge installed at the launch complex in Florida to assist with crewed missions. Update: Musk did eventually tweet, and said: "In talking to our public investors, most were supportive of optimizing for long-term value creation over quarterly earnings. This was also a factor in remaining public."
Elon Musk says 'the worst is over' for Tesla
Elon Musk said he's had an "excruciating" year so far, often working 120-hour weeks to get Tesla Model 3 production on track, according to a New York Times interview. He also described the sequence of events that led to his infamous "taking Tesla private" tweet but said "I was not on weed, to be clear." In the same article, the NYT reported that Tesla is actively recruiting a second-in-command, and Musk said the company approached Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg about the position a couple of years ago.
Tesla's board discussed going private before Musk's tweets
Turns out not everyone was in the dark about Elon Musk's plans to take Tesla private. A post from the board on the electric-vehicle manufacturer's investor relations site says the idea came up last week during a board meeting. "This included discussion as to how being private could better serve Tesla's long-term interests, and also addressed the funding for this to occur." So, in theory, the entire board went along with CEO Musk's sophomoric pot reference stock-buyback price. The brief post concludes that the board has met several times since to evaluate the move.
Facebook can keep your trash talk private during live events
Facebook wants to be a serious destination for online video, and it's fleshing out its Live streaming experience to help it get there. Consider the process of talking about up-to-the-minute events unfolding in a Facebook Live stream. Rather than just throwing your comments into a huge, messy pool of commingled conversations, you'll soon be able to privately chat with others in a separate space while the Live feed plays on.
Audit shows Hillary Clinton's private emails broke federal rules
Hillary Clinton's email woes are far from over. Earlier this morning, the State Department's inspector general delivered a report to Congress stating the Democratic presidential candidate violated federal rules by using a private email server for official business during her tenure as secretary of state. "At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service," the report reads. "Because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act."
Future commercial satellites will be launched from New Zealand
New Zealand has been chosen as the home for what's likely to be the world's first private satellite launchpad. Rocket Lab, makers of the first 3D-printed rocket engine, has announced that it'll build a facility on the Kaitorete Split near Christchurch. It's a popular location for space launches and has been used by NASA to get craft into suborbital flight. Rocket Lab's idea is that a permanent base in the area will enable it to offer satellite launches for a fraction of the going rate.
Twitch rolls out a private-message system called Whisper
Psst. We heard something about Twitch that you might enjoy. Lean in. A little closer. A little closer. Perfect: You can now send private messages to friends on Twitch, even if your buddies are watching different streams than you at the time. It's a feature called Whisper and it works by typing "/w" in a Twitch chat box, followed by the username you want to chat with. This creates a message that only you and your friend can see. For now, Whisper messages populate in the standard Twitch chat window and you can't set up private group messages, but the company is working to establish pop-out private messages and offline delivery. And, of course, you can block Whisper messages from certain users and dictate privacy preferences in Settings. See what those options look like below.
'Photofucket' devs arrested for selling their pic-stealing app
Years before stolen pictures of celebs hit the internet in a massive bundle, news that Reddit posters were searching for private photos popped up under the term "fusking." As detailed by Buzzfeed in August of 2012, Reddit channels were dedicated to using a security flaw in Photobucket.com to search for pictures posted in private folders. If anyone on the internet knew (or could guess) a private photo's direct URL it was visible, and guessing the default filename of digital photos isn't very difficult. Today the US Department of Justice is announcing the arrest of two men for selling "Photofucket" software that it says stole guest passwords for protected albums and sought out those private pictures.
Jeff Bezos' first proper test rocket has successfully launched
Elon Musk may be the most famous tech billionaire with an interest in spaceflight, but he's certainly not the only one. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also has a company, Blue Origin, which is doing similar research into reusable craft to get us to-and-from the heavens. The normally secretive outfit has just revealed that its first test vehicle, New Shepard, made arguably its most important, partially successful test flight yesterday. In the experiment, the priapic craft took an (empty) crew capsule to a height of 307,000 feet before releasing it to float gently back to earth.
The Big Picture: Private jets swarm out of Arizona after the Super Bowl
If you've just returned from a boutique hermitage in the middle of nowhere, you might have missed the fact that the Super Bowl has just finished. While most people, naturally, will be driving away from the University of Phoenix's stadium, a higher class of sports enthusiast will be taking a private jet back home. If you check into a flight tracking service like FlightAware right now, for instance, you'll see the sky over Arizona blocked out by a fleet of Gulfstreams and Cessnas. Judging by the map, there's going to be more than a few east coast-bound flights that'll run out of champagne in the not-too-distant future.
Send a message that's impossible to screenshot with Zeph
While Snapchat popularized the idea of sending photos that disappear after a quick view, sometimes you might need to just send a quick message to someone without a visual that you don't want the receiver holding on to. Enter Zeph. A free app for iPhone requiring iOS 7.0 or later, Zeph has pioneered a unique way to send messages to friends that not only disappear, but are impossible to screenshot. Everything about Zeph is extremely easy to use, right from the start. Signing up simply requires a username and password, just like logging in would. The only extra step is to follow up with your mobile phone number for verification and to check for any contacts already on Zeph. After logging in, the app displays a list of contacts who have messaged you. Though the color scheme is blue and white, Snapchat is no doubt the inspiration behind the design. If you have an unread message, tap the contact read it. I received an automatic greeting from "Teamzeph." It's in the way you read the messages where Zeph really works its magic, or perhaps rather in the way Zeph displays them. The team at Zeph calls it "rolling glow technology." When you view a message, only a small part of it is shown at once, about the length of a word or two. The rest of the message will gradually fade in as the previous parts fade out and disappear entirely. Imagine you wrote a message in invisible ink, shined a black light on it to reveal the words and then slowly moved your hand (and thus the light) across the length of the message. That's the illusion of this rolling glow technology. When the message is completely gone, you have two options at the bottom: replay or reply. The replay button disappears a few seconds after the message does, so you have to act fast if you want to see it a second time. If you decide to replay, you won't be able to do so again for the same message. Two strikes and you're out. Tapping the reply button slides the keyboard in and allows you 160 characters to type out a response, the standard amount for an SMS text message and 20 more than a tweet. Composing a new message works the same way, but is done so instead through the top right button above your main list of messages. To send messages on Zeph, it does require that you have friends or family already using the app. Sending invites through the app should help out with that, but they have to join to view your messages or respond to them. A tad bare bones for now, Zeph is teeming with the potential for even more powerful features. Snapchat does offer the ability to just text chat with friends without sending any photos, but the problem with the app as a whole is that it's relatively easy to screenshot and keep pictures and messages. Zeph fixes Snapchat's problem in a simple, yet elegant manner that's totally fool-proof in my experience.
Snowden reports NSA employees intercept, share private nude photos
Edward Snowden is currently holed up in Russia, but the Guardian recently paid him a visit, and today published an interview today in which the former government contractor discussed numerous privacy violations, including the "routine enough" practice of intercepting nude photos shared privately through email and other means. According to Snowden, NSA employees come across nude photos on a regular basis, but rather than labeling such content as irrelevant, they often pass it along to colleagues. "They turn around in their chair and they show their co-worker. And their co-worker says: 'Oh hey, that's great. Send that to Bill down the way.' And then Bill sends it to George, George sends it to Tom. And sooner or later this person's whole life has been seen by all of these other people."
Facebook stops oversharing, defaults status updates to just friends
Previously, when you first joined Facebook, all of your posts would be shared with the world by default. Anyone who stumbled upon your profile could read anything you previously shared, be it a short update or a personal photo, unless you deliberately clicked away from "Public." Now, the social site's switched things up for the better, making "Friends" the new default for status updates. You don't have to do anything to take advantage, but now's as good a time as any to pay very close attention to your Facebook privacy settings. And maybe be a bit more selective when it comes time to add a new friend.
Dell officially goes private, says focus is on you
Michael Dell's acquisition of his namesake company is now complete. The purchase under Dell and investment firm Silver Lake Partners was valued at $24.9 billion and, as Dell said during a September investor's call, the company is committed to innovation and customer service as a newly private company. He reiterated that point in a statement today, saying, "Our 110,000 team members worldwide are 100 percent focused on our customers and aggressively executing our long-term strategy for their benefit." In the lead up to the deal, Dell seems poised to re-focus the business around emerging markets, enterprise R&D and acquisitions, and the PC, tablet and virtual computing space. The move to privatize comes after multiple quarters of dwindling profits and lackluster tablet sales for one of the World's biggest PC makers. Credit: Getty Images
Reuters: BlackBerry leadership is open to the idea of going private
As BlackBerry continues to claw its way back into the smartphone race, a Reuters rumor tonight suggests its next move may be to pull a Dell and go private. Among other possible options including licensing the BlackBerry 10 OS or "other partnerships," the idea is that this could let it fix problems away from the public eye. The paper's "sources familiar with the situation" indicated BlackBerry has talked with private equity firm Silver Lake Partners -- currently best known for its part in the still-in-limbo Dell buyout -- about teaming up on enterprise computing, but that those talks did not include buyout-related discussions. Of course, being open to the idea is hardly actually taking the jump, and many analysts, investors and potential partners have their own ideas about how to repair things in Waterloo. We'll see if these rumors ever pan out, feel free to leave suggestions for Thorsten & Co. -- remember, BBM on iOS and Android is already happening -- in the comments below.
TUG offers your own private island with your rules
In Nerd Kingdom's The Untitled Game (TUG), the focus is on complete freedom. One of those freedoms is the ability for anyone to make his or her own server in the form of a floating island with any rules. Official servers are broken into two categories: Survival, where your items are not safe, and Adventure, which follows more of a traditional RPG/MMO ruleset. But in the private servers, your floating islands will be yours to do with as you please. TUG is currently still in its Kickstarter campaign with 9 days and around $75,000 to go before the project is funded. Head on over to its Kickstarter update page to learn more about private islands and the other features found in this sandbox game.
