While many people in Saudi Arabia may be using Twitter, it doesn’t mean some Saudi officials are happy with that.

Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Azziz al-Sheikh told BBC News that Muslims who use Twitter or any other type of social media have “lost this world and this afterlife.”

While the use of social media is increasing, Saudi Arabia’s religious police force disapprove of the sites.

Saudi government is worried social media could help the political opposition in the country organize and spread, as it has in other Middle Eastern countries.

“The Kindom is particularly concerned with how Twitter has been used to keep people informed of human rights activists who have been tried for the crime of free speech,” writes Jonathan Truly, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School. “Leaders on the web have been detained while others have been charted with apostasy and other crimes for statements made on these sites.”

A few years ago, Saudi Arabia threatened to ban BlackBerry devices unless the company allowed the government to read users’ messages. According to reports, the company reportedly decided to agree to those demands.

In a recent blog post, software engineer Moxie Marlinspike said that Saudi Arabia wants the ability to spy on other messaging services like Viber and WhatsApp as well.

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Some 900 million smartphones and tablets running Google Inc’s Android software have been activated since the platform’s inception in 2010, executives said at the company’s annual developers’ conference on Wednesday.

Google said revenue from Android, the software used by Samsung and other mobile device makers that competes with Apple Inc, is also gaining momentum. Google executives said revenue per user for Android applications developers is now 2-1/2 times its year-earlier level.

Roughly 5,500 software developers are attending this year’s “Google I/O” convention at San Francisco’s Moscone Center from Wednesday through Friday.

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Cars that are’talking’ to each other to avoid crashes, will save lives but the cost of the systems will determine consumers’ acceptance of such technology.”These are definitely safer vehicles. At what cost though?” Ray LaHood told reporters at a connected-vehicle conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “To me, that’s what the bottom line’s going to be. Safety has a cost and we’re going to have to make that judgment.”

LaHood declined to estimate what the cost of the technology that allows vehicles to communicate with each other and surrounding infrastructure would need to be to attract wide adoption by consumers.

“It will be up to car manufacturers to help us figure out what the cost of all this is going to be,” LaHood, the outgoing transportation chief, said at a University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute conference.

Since last August, U.S. officials have been testing a fleet of “talking” cars in Ann Arbor that may help American drivers avoid crashes and traffic jams.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and the University of Michigan fitted almost 3,000 cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles with wireless devices that track other vehicles’ speed and location, alert drivers to congestion, or change a traffic light to green.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication may help avoid or reduce the severity of four out of five crashes that occur when a driver is not impaired, U.S. regulators have said.

Results from the study will help the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decide whether the technology should be mandatory. A decision on such a rule will not be made until the testing in completed in August, officials have said.

LaHood said transportation officials have been studying the first six months of data from the test, but he does not expect any conclusions for about a year. He said the technology has operated just as officials expected.

Officials in the test program said about 8 billion transmissions between vehicles and infrastructure have been sent since the test in Ann Arbor began.

The road test in Ann Arbor, a college town of nearly 28 square miles (73 square kilometers), is the largest of its kind and cost $25 million. Eight major automakers, including General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp, supplied the cars.

The vehicles in the test can communicate with roadside devices in 29 areas in Ann Arbor. If conditions are safe, the vehicles can change the traffic light to green or let the driver know if a light is about to change.

Connected vehicle systems use a technology similar to Wifi called dedicated short range communication, which is unlikely to be vulnerable to interference, U.S. officials said.

The cars can track other cars’ location and speed. They can also determine if a driver is braking or turning the wheel. Details such as the license number or VIN number are not shared.

The road test represents the second phase of the transportation department’s connected vehicle safety program. In a study conducted in 2011 and early 2012, the department found that nine out of 10 drivers had a “highly favorable” opinion of vehicle-to-vehicle technology. LaHood said he assumed there would be a third phase in the testing.

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Yahoo Inc plans to ramp up advertising and marketing efforts as it seeks to break its reliance on an “aging demographic” and become more relevant among young adults, the company’s finance chief said on Tuesday.

The struggling Web portal’s brand will be more visible on outdoor billboards and at sporting events, among other places, as it seeks to woo 18-to-34-year-olds and get the word out about new products, CFO Ken Goldman said at the conference in Boston on Tuesday.

“Part of it is going to be just visibility again in making ourselves cool, which we got away from for a couple of years,” said Goldman.

He noted that the efforts will require spending to advertise across various mediums. Goldman gave no specifics on budget or expenditures.

Yahoo is trying to reverse a multi-year decline in revenue and user engagement on its website, amid competition from new social networking and mobile websites such as Facebook Inc and Twitter, and from search giant Google Inc.

“One of our challenges is we have had an aging demographic, if you will,” said Goldman.

Marissa Mayer, who became Yahoo’s chief executive in July, was one of Google’s earliest employees and is respected in technology circles for her online product-design expertise. Since taking over, Mayer has launched new versions of key products, such as Yahoo’s Web email and its Flickr photo sharing service, and acquired several small start-up companies.

Yahoo shares have surged roughly 70 percent since Mayer took over, though analysts say much of the rise is due to stock buybacks and the growing value of Yahoo’s Asian assets.

Goldman hinted that Yahoo could buy back more shares once its current stock repurchase authorization is completed. He added, however, that any future buybacks would depend on the stock price.

“I do like the idea of buying back stock,” he said. “So I don’t necessarily suggest at all that the fact that we’ve got a little bit more to go on the existing purchase does not mean that we would not go beyond that and buy more.”

Goldman said the company continues to explore the best course of action for its 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, including everything from working with the company more closely to potentially selling the stake. He described Yahoo’s 2012 sale of half of its 40 percent stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group as “unfortunate” and a result of Yahoo’s unstable situation at the time.

Shares of Yahoo were up 1.4 percent at $26.75 on the Nasdaq at midday on Tuesday.

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Nokia unveiled a lighter, metal model in its Lumia smartphone range, as it tries to catch the eye of buyers to close the huge market lead of rivals Samsung and Apple in the lucrative handset market.

The Lumia 925, to be sold for $610 before taxes and subsidies through carriers such as Vodafone and China Mobile, is the latest in Nokia’s range using Windows Phone software, on which CEO Stephen Elop has pinned the future of the loss-making company to reverse a dramatic drop in revenue over the last two years.

The phone weighs 139 grams, compared with 185 grams for the earlier 920 model, which some critics had said was too heavy.

The new phone will be rolled out globally starting in June, and is due to be sold in the United States by T-Mobile.

On Friday, Nokia unveiled the Lumia 928 for the U.S. market, priced at $99 after a rebate and a two-year deal with Verizon Wireless.

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Smartphone makers should help stem the tide of iPhones being swiped in the state, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said today.

Schneiderman sent letters to the heads of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung asking them to help prevent theft and questioning why phones aren’t better protected from being resold on the black market.

He cited a rise in violent street crimes including phone thefts, often called “Apple picking.”

“I would like to know what Apple is doing to combat this growing public safety problem,” Schneiderman wrote in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

He asked why “companies that can develop sophisticated handheld electronics, such as the products manufactured by Apple, cannot also create technology to render stolen devices inoperable and thereby eliminate the expanding black market.”

The NYPD has reported that smartphone thefts are increasingly on the rise in the city, even as other crime declines.

Thieves often swipe them from their owners’ hands – the subway is a frequent setting, just before doors close or on a platform – then wipe the devices and resell them for hundreds in cash.

According to Schneiderman’s office, between January and September of last year, 11,447 smartphones were reported swiped, an increase of 3,280 from the year before.

And too many of these robberies are violent, Schneiderman said.

This month, a woman was mugged at gunpoint in Crown Heights for her Android phone. In February, three people were stabbed on a Queens subway platform in a fight over the phone, and last April, a 26-year-old Museum of Modern Art chef was killed for his phone in the Bronx.

Schneiderman asked the companies to give information about what they tell consumers regarding safety. He also requested whether they financially benefit when customers have to shell out cash to replace stolen phones.

“Cracking down on violent and dangerous cell phone thefts is important for New Yorkers,” Schneiderman said. “The companies that dominate this industry have a responsibility to their customers to fulfill their promises to ensure safety and security.”

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Red buttons flash before me. The oxygen levels are falling sharply and smoke floods the cockpit. “WARNING! Your pilot is drunk,” the PA system announces. Moments later the craft swings out of control and we are finished.

Rather than floating in the Atlantic Ocean, we emerge into the backyard of a central London warehouse, surrounded by half-built machines and imported beer. The spaceship simulator I just crashed is one of the star attractions at the launch of London’s new hackspace, where innovation meets intoxication.

There are more than 1,000 hackspaces in the world, bringing together tech-minded people in community hubs from Iraq to Albania, and this new arrival is believed to be the largest yet with more than 700 members. The launch party hopes to draw in many more and offers a diverse menu.

Deep underground we visit the biohack lab, where genes are spliced and DNA is tested. “It will be the first completely public laboratory; you can have your meal tested for horse-meat,” says hackspace trustee Mark Steward, referring to the recent Ikea meatball scandal.

Down the corridor are metalwork labs, 3D printers and a row of drills. Doors open at the swipe of hacked London transit cards, while smart readers on the wall show internet connectivity and energy consumption. Food hacking offers ice cream cooled in liquid nitrogen – slightly thicker than normal – and experimental cocktails.

“It’s the old meaning of hacking, which is building and creating,” member and programmer Dave Ingram says. “There is very little ‘cracking’ – breaking into security systems – although we do workshops to learn how the systems work.”

The space operates as a nonprofit company, entirely owned and funded by its members, with a board of trustees for legal purposes. “It’s a cooperative, and you don’t see those in London now,” says founder Russ Garrett, who launched the first hackspace in 2009 in response to a broken chair.

Free access and equality are guiding principles – behind Rule Zero: Do not be on fire – and the hackers have realized their role in the community. Among the workshops in radio production, space exploration and lock-picking are classes for local youths who would otherwise miss out.

But expansion brings its own challenges. Members generally use the honor system’with resources and safe behavior, but as the group grows so does the risk. In a facility full of toxic chemicals, deadly blades and alcohol, new members are more likely to cause accidents. “I worry a lot more now,” says Russ.

The space has begun to attract serious commercial interest. NASA funds one startup here, while resident drone producer “Universal Air” is valued in millions of dollars, and the message board is flooded with offers.

But despite the money, there is loyalty to the hackspace spirit. “We spent all yesterday freezing kiwis with liquid nitrogen and smashing them with hammers,” says longtime member Tim Reynolds. “That’s what it’s about.”

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Korean electronics giant Samsung said this morning that it had successfully tested so-called 5G that would allow an entire movie to be downloaded in just one second.

Samsung said the Fifth Generation technology, which would be available by 2020, can handle data speeds of tens of gigabits per second, as opposed to the 75 megabits per second offered by modern 4G Long Term evolution devices. That means the new wireless service is several hundred times as fast as 4G networks.

That will permit users to “transmit massive data files, including high quality digital movies, practically without limitation,” Samsung said.

Samsung, the world’s largest maker of smartphones, said it had overcome the previously insurmountable issue of sending data at more than 1 GB per second by using 64 antenna elements.

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From the governor to New Yorkers visiting an ATM, this week’s cybercrime arrests are amping up cybersecurity efforts.

After several were charged in a $45 million ATM heist, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer released a report today about cybercrime, cautioning New Yorkers to be more careful, even during routine ATM withdrawals.

The report offers consumer tips on avoiding identity theft as well as suggestions on how to toughen laws.

“The stunning scope of this crime is a sobering wake-up call for New Yorkers, from the highest levels of the financial community to millions of citizens who need to feel secure when they use ATM machines,” Stringer said.

Today, Gov. Andrew Cuomo also announced a new Cyber Security Advisory Board, which will advise state officials on how to protect state infrastructure and information systems.

Cuomo also noted this week’s arrests.

“The need to increase cyber security to guard against these threats is urgent,” he said. “In the 21st century, almost all of our daily activities are linked to the internet – from banking to shopping to using our telecommunications networks and physical infrastructure systems.”

How to protect yourself against cybercrime:

• Always use your other hand to shield your hand typing in your PIN at an ATM.
• When you can’t see your credit card, for example at a hotel or restaurant, always use a credit card instead of a debit card. Credit card companies have stronger protections against fraud, Stringer said.
• Keep a firewall on your home computer to protect from hackers.
• Never open an email attachment from someone you don’t know or even forwarded attachments from people you do know.

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In this “showdown” between the two actors, Nimoy and Quinto face off in a race to the golf course. We won’t spoil who is victorious in the end, but keep in mind that there is only one true Mr. Spock.

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Even though he holds the keys to heaven – sorry, the future of entertainment – Robert Kyncl is remarkably easygoing man. Or perhaps that’s the reason why. As Global Head of Content at YouTube, Kyncl has successfully steered the company from being an online depository for cat videos to a position as an entertainment powerhouse.

Renowned TV producers now defect to YouTube, where they have their own channels. At the same time, bedroom YouTubers are going professional. What will the future of entertainment look like? Metro met Kyncl, a fit former Czech top athlete with a ready laugh, for an exclusive interview at YouTube’s Los Angeles office. (It’s a sign of the times that it has moved there from Silicon Valley.)

Metro: Is TV, as a box in one’s living room, dead?

Kyncl: The TV set isn’t dead, but there are many other devices, what I call ‘work machines’ – computers, phones, tablets, which are wifi-enabled and transmit video. And because of this, suddenly we’ve uncovered a lot of other consumption patterns and demand from consumers for other forms of content that doesn’t necessarily fit the same format as the TV set. People are spending more and more time consuming such videos.

Those changing viewing habits, with viewers spending more time on “homemade” content, are also blurring the lines between entertainment consumer and producer. What does that mean for the future of entertainment?

It just means that there are many more creators than in the past. In the past, the entire television industry was based on a closed system: a cable, satellite or telecommunications company delivering the content to you into a device that was sitting in your living room or hanging on your wall. Today it’s an open system, where anyone can deliver content to a device, and you consume it through a number of apps on those devices, and of course you can still view it on your TV set as well.

But professional content is very different from videos of one’s cat. How can you increase the professionalism of these new home-producers? And how do you make people watch it?

The good news is that production costs are dramatically decreasing. Today you can shoot a video with the camera on your smartphone. So it’s much more possible to create content and make it look really great. And people who’re learning to build their audiences on YouTube, and how to retail, are the ones who’ll have the most powerful, because they’re the retailers of their content. That’s different from the past, when you had to sell your content to a TV network, which then had to find an audience for it. And when you’ve built your own audience, you own it. That’s incredibly liberating, and it levels the playing field.

So, there’s a new trinity in media: a platform like YouTube, the consumer and the producer, but the middleman is gone?

Yes, several middlemen. Traditionally a producer would create a TV show and license it to a TV network. The network’s marketing people would then market the show. Those two segments are collapsing together. Those who create content also market it and handle audience development.

How will all of this change society and the way we go about our daily lives?

Look at mobile media consumption. For us at YouTube, in the past two years it has gone from 6% of all of our consumption to 30%. In some countries, like South Korea and Saudi Arabia, it’s more than 50%. Mobile devices are becoming the first screen instead of the second screen, and we’re all connected.

Is that good or bad?

I think it’s a good thing. People used to sit around the TV and more or less be quiet. Today people are sharing, and sharing means commenting and having conversations. People start these conversations in text form, but they’ll very quickly move over to a live form. And watching content on mobile devices allows us to have that experience anywhere, not just the living room. Of course, everything has to be in moderation. If everything you do all day is watch YouTube on your smartphone it’s not very good.

How much YouTube do you watch everyday?

About half an hour. A couple of years ago it was less than five minutes a day.

What’s the key ingredient to success in today’s entertainment world?

In the past, if you were a great content creator, you created your thing and then handed it over to someone else. On the internet, you can go directly to the consumer, but you have to do the other parts yourself. The other parts are analysis: analyzing trends and your consumers and quantify them. And pay attention: this means that you have to good in math. Math will be increasingly important in our increasingly measurable world. Your ability to, for example, expand your YouTube channel will rely on your ability to spot and measure trends with data. Creativity and analytical skills are a phenomenal mix, a true recipe for success in entertainment. When you do it, you’ve got a long-lasting value that you’ve created. Lastly, you have to be incredibly savvy in dealing with consumers.

So teenagers should be paying more attention in math class?

That’s what I tell my daughters every day. And science. And learn how to code!

So I have the first step, good analytical skills, and the second step, creativity. But I’m one out of a million producers. How do I find my audience?

You have to be passionate about what you do. If you’re passionate about what you do, it will show. You’ll find great, creative ways of standing out from the crowd. You’ll find a way to measure it, get smarter and increase your audience. Then you repeat it. CCC – create, curate and comment – that’s the recipe for success in new media.

What do you think the living room of the future will look like?

It will have a big fireplace where the TV set used to stand [laughs]. I’ll tell you what my house looks like: we have a living room and a family, which look pretty much the same. In one of them we have a TV, and in the other one we have a fireplace, a piano, couches, etc. Guess where I like to spend most of my time! I love watching TV, but I love the other room better because I can watch great TV shows on my iPad, my computer or my phone. I’m not tethered to the living room. Whenever people talk about the “war in the living room”, I say, go ahead, there are plenty of other places. Entertainment is portable. It’s not centered in the living room. And entertainment on your iPad and similar devices is a lot more fun because it’s personalized. I only watch things on TV when it’s something I watch with someone else so we don’t have to huddle over a small screen. The future is a fireplace and a piano!

It seems very 19th century…

It’s combining the simple things in life with high-end technology. Because you have video around you all day long, you don’t necessarily feel that you have to sit in your living room and watch TV in the evenings.

Speaking of TV evenings…what will be YouTube’s hit shows of the future? Homeland or Mad Men, so to speak?

It’s difficult to predict. Nobody knew that Homeland would become such a hit on TV. It’s my favorite TV show as well, along with Netflix’s House of Cards. There are shows on YouTube today that are getting audiences larger than shows on TV. But the mainstream audience doesn’t know about it, which is why most people don’t know about it. We just haven’t told the world about it. But we’re working on it.

But are particular genres particularly suited to becoming online hit shows?

The early success you’ll see is in shows like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. For example, in Egypt we have the Jon Stewart of the Middle East, Bassam Yousef. He started his show on YouTube and became incredibly popular. The show is done exactly the same way, interview-style with a live audience. Large TV channels then came to him and licensed the show for TV, so now the show lives both on TV and the internet. How-to, like cooking, is also a good genre for the YouTube format, as is game-play. The key to success is a unique set of content that audiences are passionate about. They’ll congregate to such channels, and the channels will then break out into the mainstream audience.

How to become a YouTube star

• Have a vision and be passionate about it.
• Be flexible and willing to fail. Fail often. On YouTube it doesn’t even cost you anything to fail.
• Expand your YouTube audience by connecting with your audience on other social media.
• Ask your audience for feedback. Be dependable but not predictable.
• Remember that it’s not just about money.

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Taking that idea one step further, Brian Anderson turned “Breaking Bad” into a Lego video game, complete with the whole gang of characters done up as Lego people, cut scenes and Xbox achievements.

While you can’t control what the characters do, you can get a sense of their illegal antics and can easily imagine how fun this would be to play in real life.

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Twitter has become an invaluable tool for everyone. As reporters, it helps Metro on a daily basis. Beyond that it provides us with the endless entertainment, silly links and amazing gifs of cats.

In a time of crisis it can also be an excellent tool to express feelings. This is especially true during events like the Boston Marathon.

A new website has produced metrics that state April 15, 2013, the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, as the saddest day on the Twitter in the last five years.

Hedonometer.com uses tweets to establish whether the users’ moods are positive or negative.

For negative days, the site picks up on words such as “victims” and “tragedy.” For positive days the site picks up on phrases such as “hahaha.”

According to Poynter, Hedonometer uses a sample of about 50 million tweets per day, which is only a small percentage of the daily tweets.

Stephanie Pappas of LiveScience.com writes:

“The saddest day of them all was the date of the Boston Marathon bombings, with a happiness score of 5.88 on a scale of 1 to 9. But even though it had less-sad score, Dec. 14, 2012, the date of the mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, may have actually been sadder, Danforth said.

That’s because the Newtown shooting happened on a Friday, a generally happy day when people otherwise would be tweeting positive vibes, he said. The Boston bombings happened on a Monday, when unrelated grouchy tweets about returning to work would have driven the average happiness down.”

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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“A Boy and His Atom” is so small that in order to see it, the creators had to magnify it 100 million times.

Painstaking moving each atom into place to create their desired structure, they then photographed the final image, started all over again to do the next frame and then put all their pictures together to create the final product

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“UPDATE (04/29/2013 0715) “We are being attacked once more. This time the forums are under attack as well. Access is intermittent, so hopefully some of you can read this.” “ – Dread Pirate Roberts

This announcement from the founder of Silk Road, the world’s largest online drugs market, sent shockwaves through the ‘dark web’ and forums buzzed with anxiety. “I have $2800.00 in there right now,” said one user. A long thread discussed how to find and kill the attacker.

With $2 million of transactions per month, Silk Road is big business. It is the poster boy of the ‘dark web’, an encrypted network of illicit sites that run parallel to the regular internet, or ‘clearnet’. Silk Road offers a global marketplace of 7,000 drug listings much like eBay, connecting buyers and sellers of everything from experimental hallucinogens to ‘super skunk’ marijuana. Convenience, quality and security are at the click of a mouse.

But in recent months the attacks have intensified, with suspicion falling on law enforcement, hackers and new competitors that have profited from the site’s problems. The ‘Atlantis’ market undercuts Silk Road prices and makes offers to its star sellers. ‘Black Market Reloaded’ clears $400,000 a month with a different model – anything goes. Assault rifles, private bank details and contract killers are available for the right price ($10,000).

“We saw an opportunity with the recent Silk Road issues and decided to create a new marketplace,” Vladimir, Atlantis founder, told Metro in an interview via encrypted chat, in which he denied involvement in the attacks. “We aimed to utilize a modern user interface and to create a better user experience for both vendors and buyers.”

The demand exists to support the growing market. The Global Drug Survey 2013 found that 20% of users buy online, with the dark web making drugs more accessible than ever. “Users tend to be 20s-40s, professionals, relatively tech-savvy,” Eileen Ormsby, writer of the ‘All Things Vice’ blog, told Metro. “But they come from every demographic imaginable.”

User Glenn Watkins explained the advantage. “You connect with the best people with the best product, and the users make it a real community. In one forum they test every type of LSD to find the best. Once I wasn’t 100% satisfied with my purchase and the follow day I was sent double the quantity for free.”

Yet the honor system has not been foolproof. Silk Road’s biggest and most trusted heroin seller scammed over $250,000 last year, while virtual wallets have been stolen.

Most users worry little about police, benefitting from double encryption: the website is hosted on the untraceable Tor browser, and uses Bitcoins, an untraceable, virtual currency. Both the FBI and the UK Serious Organized Crime Agency have expressed fear the networks are beyond their reach.

The anonymity does not only serve criminals; activists in the Arab Spring revolutions used Tor to avoid detection from the regime, and it is a common tool for journalists to correspond with sources. “Tor has 500,000 daily users and we have no idea what they do,” Tor security developer Runa Sandvik said. “I can’t imagine law enforcement ever cracking it.”

Many of the dark web sites operate on ‘anarcho-libertarian’ principles in line with groups such as WikiLeaks and Anonymous, rejecting the “tyranny of government”. So far the police have been outflanked, leaving users to fear only each other.

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Apple Inc wowed the debt markets on Tuesday with the largest non-bank bond deal in history, pricing a whopping $17 billion as the U.S. computer giant switches strategy to placate restless shareholders.

Just a week after announcing its first drop in quarterly earnings in a decade, Apple came to market with the massive deal to raise funds for an ambitious program that will return $100 billion in cash to holders of Apple shares.

Sources said investors could barely submit orders fast enough to get in on the deal from Apple, the only major tech company without a single penny of debt on its books.

The six-part all-dollar offering attracted more than $50 billion of orders by midday in New York – a massive level of demand even in the current red-hot climate of the bond markets.

“Apple made its intentions clear that this deal is for shareholder-friendly activity, but they have tremendous metrics and brand recognition,” Rajeev Sharma, portfolio manager at First Investors Management Co, told IFR.

“Apple is something everyone wants in their portfolio.”

The $17 billion size easily trumps the previous biggest single deal according to Thomson Reuters/IFR data, a $14.7 billion deal from Abbott Laboratories spin-off AbbVie last November.

Earlier, a source said potential investors had been told on Monday that this would be Apple’s only bond deal of the year, apparently scuttling hopes of possible euro or sterling issues – and helping fuel demand for Tuesday’s mega-deal, which was led by Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

CHANGING THEIR TUNE

The massive deal caps a milestone week for Apple, which in seven days has changed tack to satisfy its investor base, becoming the world’s biggest dividend payer and recapturing its mantle as the world’s largest company by stock market value at $413 billion.

Investors unhappy with Chief Executive Tim Cook’s previous reluctance to share any of Apple’s massive $145 billion cash pile with shareholders – and unimpressed by its diminishing prospects for earnings growth – had been relentless sellers of Apple’s stock since its share price topped out above $705 in late September.

The stock tumbled more than 45 percent from September 21 to April 19, falling by roughly $320 per share.

But the stock has rallied more than 12 percent in the past 10 days as a new class of income-oriented investor, enticed by its dividend yield of nearly 3 percent, snaps up shares. They rose more than 3 percent on Tuesday to over $444.

Expectations for future profit growth have trailed off significantly in the past year. After 10 years of high double-digit profit growth, analysts on average now expect a 10-year compound annual earnings growth rate of less than 7 percent, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine, which tracks analyst forecasts.

RAISING THE CASH

Although the company has a staggering $145 billion in cash, only $45 billion of that is readily available in the United States – meaning Apple needs to raise about $60 billion over the next three years to fund the shareholder capital return plan.

Analysts suggest that hitting the debt markets now makes sense with interest rates – and thus the cost of raising funds – near record lows.

But the maker of the iconic iPad and iPhone failed to win the highest Triple A rating from agencies. S&P rated the company AA+, while Moody’s rated it Aa1.

Nevertheless, the massive investor interest allowed Apple to tighten every tranche of the deal – from 3-year to a maximum 30-year tenor – by five basis points (bp) from guidance to launch.

The company sold $1 billion of three-year floating-rate notes, $1.5 billion of three-year fixed-rate notes, $2 billion of five-year floating-rate notes, $4 billion of five-year fixed-rate notes, $5.5 billion of 10-year fixed-rate notes and $3 billion of 30-year fixed-rate notes.

Analysts had initially suspected that the overwhelming interest would allow Apple to price the deal even inside last week’s bond from Microsoft.

But some investors said Apple was leaving some spread on the table so that the deal would eventually trade tighter than the Microsoft issue – and so that Apple could get even better pricing next time round.

“If they are going to come back with another deal, be it in dollars or another currency, they will need to satisfy a similar investor type, so you want to leave a good taste in everyone’s mouths,” said Matt Duch, senior portfolio manager at Calvert Investments.

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The first time Mario set his hefty foot atop a hapless Goomba, the 2-D sidescroller was born. With each passing generation, game designers find new and innovative ways to keep this ancient genre alive. Here are reviews of two brand new sidescrollers that merge the best parts of the last thirty years.

‘Guacamelee!’
Drinkbox Studios
PS3/Vita
4 globes

This game technically falls into a category called “Metroidvania,” meaning that it owes great allegiance to both “Metroid” and “Castlevania.” This means an open world to explore, with plenty of sidescrolling action. Exploration is rewarded with new moves and abilities, which in turn let you explore new areas to find even more stuff. The perfect addictive cycle!

The hook with “Guacamelee!” is the world, which is set in Mexico and loosely based on the customs surrounding Day of the Dead. It’s colorful, laugh out loud funny and controls great. One caveat. The platforming in this title can be brutal. You may have to time travel and get your nine year old self to beat some of the more difficult segments.

‘Terraria’
505 Games
PS3/Xbox/PC
5 globes

Unless you’ve been hiding under an Internet-disabled rock, you have no doubt heard of indie darling “Minecraft.” That game’s mix of action and literal world-building has made its creator one of the most powerful men on the planet. “Terraria” takes the randomized, build anything you want tomfoolery of “Minecraft” and makes it 2-D. Yeah. It’s as good as it sounds.

“Terraria” is more a brutal, life-changing addiction then a video game(in a good way.) Once you enter your randomized world, you’ll be able to explore every nook and cranny at your leisure. And we do mean every nook and cranny. You can dig all the way to hell and build bridges all the way to space. There’s also plenty of treasure to find and enemies to fight, including some really cool bosses.

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Yahoo is on its way to make working for the company a little more enjoyable.

Two months after Yahoo prohibited employees to work from home, the company is now doubling paid leave for new parents.

Yahoo mothers are now eligible to take 16 weeks of paid time off, compared to the eight they were eligible for before. As for fathers, they are now allowed to take eight weeks off, according to NBC Bay Area.

“Over the last several months, we’ve introduced new benefits like free food to make Yahoos’ days easier, new smartphones to encourage innovation, and updated computers to speed productivity,” Yahoo said in a statement to Mashable. “Recently we rolled out some new and improved benefits to support the happiness and well-being of Yahoos and their families.”

Yahoo also told Mashable that it will reimburse employees for up to $500 worth of “daily habits,” such as laundry, child care and house-cleaning.

This launches Yahoo in line with other Silicon Valley companies. Google offers 22 weeks of paid maternity leave and Facebook gives both its male and female employees four months of paid leave.

Two months ago Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who took over last July when she was pregnant, came under fire for cracking down on employees working from home.

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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Take a trip down memory lane with these images of phones from the past.

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Researchers at the CERN research institute in Europe have launched a project to reproduce the world’s first web page, just 20 years after it was produced.

Despite Al Gore’s claims that he ‘created the internet’ it was in fact Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, who was behind the initiative.

A memo issued by Sir Tim to his colleagues, in April 1993, marked the start of the now ubiquitous world wide web. He referred to it as W3.

He said the aim of the world wide web was ‘to give universal access to a large universe of documents.’

In its early days the web was accessible by only a handful of CERN scientists.

CERN said it wanted to recreate the first web page to demonstrate just how far the internet had come in just 20 years – and how relatively sophisticated the first web page was, despite its simple appearance.

“You might have thought that the first browser would be very primitive but it was not. It had graphical capabilities. You could edit into it straightaway. It was an amazing thing. It was a very sophisticated thing,” said James Gillies, CERN’s head of communications.

CERN is better known for running the Large Hadron Collider, which aims to reproduce the so-called God Particle.

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A wax-covered cardboard disc is seen in this undated Smithsonian National Museum of American History image. REUTERS/Smithsonian Institution Archives/Handout

Nine years after he placed the first telephone call, Alexander Graham Bell tried another experiment: he recorded his voice on a wax-covered cardboard disc on April 15, 1885, and gave it an audio signature: “Hear my voice – Alexander Graham Bell.”

The flimsy disc was silent for 128 years as part of the Smithsonian Museum’s collection of early recorded sound, until digital imaging, computer science, a hand-written transcript and a bit of archival detective work confirmed it as the only known recording of Bell’s voice.  

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  PHOTOS: A look back at the telephone

Carlene Stephens, curator of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American history, first saw this disc and nearly 400 other audio artifacts donated by Bell when she joined the museum in 1974, but she didn’t dare play them then.

“Their experimental nature and fragile condition … made them unsuitable for playback,” Stephens said by email.

“We recognized these materials were significant to the early history of sound recording, but because they were considered unplayable, we stored them away safely and hoped for the day playback technology would catch up with our interest in hearing the content,” she wrote.

That day came in 2008, when Stephens learned that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California had retrieved 10 seconds of the French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” from a 1860 recording of sound waves made as squiggles on soot-covered paper. That was nearly two decades before Thomas Edison’s oldest known playable recording, made in 1888.

If the Berkeley scientists could coax sound out of sooty paper, Stephens reckoned, perhaps they could decipher those silent records she had guarded for decades.

She contacted Carl Haber at Berkeley and Peter Alyea, a digital conversion specialist at the Library of Congress. They chose six recordings from the collection, including the one that turned out to be the Bell audio, and made ultra-high-definition three-dimensional images of them.

The Berkeley lab’s scanner captures gigapixels of information, and not just width and height but the depth of the grooves, with measurements down to 100 nanometers, or 250 times smaller than the width of a human hair, Haber said by telephone.

DEEP WIGGLES

Depth is important with these old recordings, Haber said, because a lot of the information about how it sounds is stored in the deep parts of the grooves.

“It’s not necessarily a groove that wiggles from side to side, it wiggles up and down,” he said. “If you just took a regular (two-dimensional) picture of it, you don’t get the information you need.”

Haber and Berkeley colleague Earl Cornell used an algorithm to turn that image into sound, without touching the delicate disc. The system is known as IRENE/3D, short for Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.

Most of the recording is Bell’s Scottish-accented voice saying a series of numbers, and then dollar figures, such as “three dollars and a half,” “seven dollars and 29 cents” and finally, “$3,785.56.”

This suggests Bell was thinking about a machine for business recording, Stephens said.

“The recording on its own is historically interesting and important,” Stephens wrote. “It answers questions about Bell personally – what kind of accent did he have? (he was a Scot who lived in England, Canada and the United States) … How did he pronounce his middle name? (‘Gray-hum’ not ‘Gram’).”

The job of authenticating the disc began with a hand-written transcript of the recording signed by Bell (online at http://newsdesk.si.edu/photos/alexander-graham-bell-transcript-voice-recording).

In 2011, Patrick Feaster, an Indiana University sound-media historian, inventoried notations on the discs and cylinders in the Smithsonian’s collection. Many were scratched on wax and all but illegible, Stephens recalled.

“We then matched up one wax-and-cardboard disc, from April 15, 1885,” Stephens wrote. “When we recovered sound from the recording … the content matched the transcript word for word. It is a recording of Bell speaking.”

Similar scanners are used in quality assurance for micromanufactured products such as microchips, optical components and to assure the flatness of touch screens. Dentists use them to take three-dimensional pictures of cavities to aid in making custom fillings.

The Berkeley lab has worked with the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress to learn more about the earliest audio records, some on tinfoil or even paper. And while Haber and his colleagues now know how to authenticate the recordings, they cannot do all the records that may exist.

The Northeast Document Conservation Center in Massachusetts is working with the Berkeley lab on a digital reformatting service for early audio recordings. There could be as many as 46 million of these early recordings in the United States.

The Bell recording was made at a time of creative ferment, Haber said, as Bell, Edison and others invented devices to change the way Americans communicate.

“Those guys were creating the future,” Haber said.

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Jackie Frank)

(This story was refiled to corrects to 128 years from 138 years in the second paragraph)

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Wealthy travelers wanting to fly in style can book empty seats on private planes with a new app for a jet-sharing service.

Although there are dozens of apps for buying seats on commercial flights, BlackJet is a new iPhone app that connects travelers with private jets that have extra room on their planes.

Flights are shared with from two to 14 other passengers, and the price is on par with a premium fare on a commercial airline, according to the San Francisco-based company.

“We had the idea to use the existing aircraft out there and to leverage the excess capacity,” said BlackJet chief executive Dean Rotchin.

Passengers who are members of the service and pay an annual fee of $2,500 can book a seat on any of 4,000 airplanes the company has access to through partnerships. They can also buy add-on services such as meals and ground transportation.

The service is geared primarily towards business travelers looking for convenience, time-savings and reliability, according to Rotchin.

Travelers using the app can buy a seat in advance but they will not get a precise itinerary until the day before the flight.

“On the day of travel the experience is completely different than at the major airports. You’re basically driving right up to the plane, getting on the airplane, and within 15 minutes the airplane is leaving,” he said.

Flights booked with the app cost between $900 for a trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to $3,500 for a coast-to-coast flight.

The company offers flights from San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles and South Florida, and plans to expand service to Chicago, Washington, Boston, Dallas and Seattle.

Since the web app was launched in October, more than 3,000 flights have been booked through it, the company said.

Another app called PrivateFly, which is available worldwide for iPhone, iPad and Android, allows jet-setters and companies to book an entire private jet.

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Google Inc is bringing its Google Now technology to the iPhone, where it will compete head-on with Apple Inc’s Siri to serve as the primary service that smartphone users rely on to get everything from weather updates to traffic forecasts.

Google Now, which made its debut last year on mobile devices powered by Google’s Android operating system, will be available as a feature in the new version of the Google Search app for iPhones and iPads starting on Monday.

Personal assistant technology such as Apple’s Siri, Google Now and products created by various start-up companies aspire to play what could become a critical role on smartphones by helping users with daily chores such as looking up information on the Web, handling calendar appointments and managing travel plans.

Some analysts believe Apple’s Siri, which comes pre-loaded on iPhones and iPads, represents a growing threat to Google, the world’s No. 1 search engine. The information that Siri provides on common topics such as sports scores and nearby restaurants reduces the need to visit Google’s search engine, the analysts say.

Johanna Wright, Google’s vice president of Search and Assist for Mobile, described Google Now as the next phase in the evolution of search, in which answers are served up without a user needing to type in a query.

The technology taps into Google’s various online services, from Web search to personal Gmail email and Google Calendar entries, to deliver relevant information throughout the day in pop-up windows that Google refers to as “cards.” By accessing an email with a flight itinerary, for example, Google Now can automatically remind a traveler about an upcoming trip and suggest the best time to leave for the airport based on current traffic conditions.

Unlike the Android version of Google Now, in which users can swipe the phone’s homescreen to quickly access the pop-up cards, the version for Apple’s iOS will only display these cards when a user has opened the Google Search app.

The smartphone has emerged as a key battleground between Google and Apple as consumers increasingly access the Web with mobile devices instead of personal computers.

In September, Apple replaced the Google Maps app that once came pre-loaded on iPhones with a new maps app that Apple created in-house. The Apple maps service contained embarrassing errors, drawing fierce criticism from consumers and reviewers and forcing Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook to offer a public apology.

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The first time Mario set his hefty foot atop a hapless Goomba, the 2-D sidescroller was born. With each passing generation, game designers find new and innovative ways to keep this ancient genre alive. Here are reviews of two brand new sidescrollers that merge the best parts of the last 30 years.

‘Guacamelee!’
Drinkbox Studios
PS3/Vita
4 (out of 5) Globes

This game technically falls into a category called “Metroidvania,” meaning that it owes great allegiance to both “Metroid” and “Castlevania.” This means an open world to explore, with plenty of side-scrolling action. Exploration is rewarded with new moves and abilities, which in turn let you explore new areas to find even more stuff. The perfect addictive cycle!

The hook with “Guacamelee!” is the world, which is set in Mexico and loosely based on the customs surrounding the country’s Day of the Dead celebration. It’s colorful, laugh-out-loud funny and features great controls.

One caveat though: The platforming in this title can be brutal. You may have to time travel and get your 9-year-old self to beat some of the more difficult segments.

“Terraria” plays like internet sensation “Minecraft” in 2-D.
Credit: 505 Games

‘Terraria’
PS3/Xbox/PC
505 Games
5 (out of 5) Globes

Unless you’ve been hiding under an Internet-disabled rock, you have no doubt heard of indie darling “Minecraft.” That game’s mix of action and literal world-building has made its creator one of the most influential, and wealthiest, men in the video game world. “Terraria” takes the randomized, build-anything tomfoolery of “Minecraft” and makes it 2-D. Yeah. It’s as good as it sounds.

“Terraria” is more a brutal, life-changing addiction than a video game (in a good way). Once you enter your randomized world, you’ll be able to explore every nook and cranny at your leisure. And we do mean every nook and cranny. You can dig all the way to Hell and build bridges all the way into space. There’s also plenty of treasure to find and enemies to fight, including some really cool bosses.

The post Sidescroller: 2-D games can still charm the 3-D world appeared first on Metro.us.

A few weeks ago, whether he wanted to or not, Bill Clinton joined Twitter when Stephen Colbert set up an account for him under the handle @PrezBilly Jeff.

The former president is not tweeting for real, under his own handle name @billclinton. Twitter has verified the account.

Earlier this month the ‘Colbert Report’ aired an interview with the former president, which was taped at the annual Clinton Global Initiative University.

During the interview Colbert asked why he doesn’t tweet. Clinton explains that he’s “sort of insecure.”

Colbert sent out the first tweet which read, “Just spent amazing time with Colbert! Is he sane? He is cool! #cgiu.”

Just an hour after the episode aired, Clinton had more than 20,000 followers. Now, under his real name, @billclinton has more than 375,000 followers.

The first message on the @billclinton account is what Colbert tweeted a few weeks ago, and the next three are directed to Colbert, so you know, it’s a slow transition for President Clinton. His newest tweet indicates he might be getting lessons from his daughter, Chelsea.

Seems like a good idea to us since Chelsea Clinton has almost 140,000 followers and has tweeted almost 1,000 messages.

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In one of Mexico’s most dangerous states, bravery is trending. Valor Por Tamaulipas (Courage for Tamaulipas) is a Facebook and Twitter account that reports on violence in Tamaulipas, the northeastern Mexican state that borders Texas stricken by violence carried out by rival drug cartels. Launched in January last year, the crime watchdog posts citizen complaints and so-called “risk situations” related to organized crime in the region.

Last month, the anonymous administrator of the watchdog project reportedly shut down its site after flyers offering a reward of 600,000 pesos ($46,000) for information on his identity were distributed in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas. Undeterred, the blogger vowed to keep tweeting to his thousands of followers “to the very end,” he tells Metro Mexico.

How did you get the idea for this project?
I am just continuing the work of a Facebook page called Un grito de ayuda por Tamaulipas (A cry for help for Tamaulipas), but that page decided to discontinue publishing risk situations after the administrator of a similar site in Nuevo Laredo (in Tamaulipas state) was killed. I first decided to make a page reporting missing people, and then I started to publish risk situations and expose impunity and injustice.

Why did you create the account?
To be honest, I think that I made the account because I was powerless at not being able to help in another way, to see how organized crime chooses who will live and can inculcate fear in everybody.

Recently you announced that you would close your account. Why did you decide not to do it?
Yes, I did announce it. I thought I could create a new account, a safer one with less focus on organized crime, but it was not possible. I had to keep it open to answer questions from my followers on Twitter. I knew that if I stopped it completely, that would be a victory for the criminals. Organized crime with or without VxT keeps causing violence, but at least with VxT it’s likely that some crimes are reported.

Do you see any changes in the pipeline?
Besides having my trusted partners make some adjustments, I need to control every action I have on Twitter. I think what has changed in me is the decision to stay with VxT to the end. I never thought about giving up but I thought I could change my platform. Now I see that my platform is VxT, and I must defend it.

Who or what could shut down your social media accounts?
I can’t answer that because it would only give ideas to the criminals. I can just say that I’ll be here to the very end.

Are you afraid of being found out?
Always. I have faced it in the best way that I could. The gangs would have to live in the area where we live, and know how to end the lives of those who decide not to follow crime’s rules, to know how to have those who have refused to obey murdered. But how can we not be afraid if we know what awaits us the day we get caught?

Criminals offered 600,000 pesos for uncovering your identity. How did this make you feel?
They constantly make threats. I have always faced them. The answer has been the same as with previous threats and it would continue in one or another way, though. When the flyer [offering a price on the blogger's head] was released in different media, I was concerned that the risks for my followers would increase.

Do social media accounts do the job of police authorities in your region?
It seems that the existing authorities in the region only make us cling to a hope that the Army or Navy could regain control of the state – so far this has not happened. Social networks are no substitute for the authorities and the government has to enforce the rule of law, but at least we can expose this situation. But it’s sad to see that the government itself is part of the corruption and criminal groups. And while the government has its own battles, people are still suffering criminal control.

The post Anonymous blogger vows to expose Mexico’s drug cartel violence appeared first on Metro.us.

Machines with the ability to attack targets without any human intervention must be banned before they are developed for use on the battlefield, campaigners against “killer robots” urged.

The weapons, which could be ready for use within the next 20 years, would breach a moral and ethical boundary that should never be crossed, said Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, of the “Campaign To Stop Killer Robots”.

“If war is reduced to weapons attacking without human beings in control, it is going to be civilians who are going to bear the brunt of warfare,” said Williams, who won the 1997 peace prize for her work on banning landmines.

Weapons such as remotely piloted drones are already used by some armed forces and companies are working on developing systems with a greater level of autonomy in flight and operation.

“We already have a certain amount of autonomy,” said Noel Sharkey, professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield.

“I think we are already there. If you asked me to go and make an autonomous killer robot today, I could do it. I could have you one here in a few days,” he told reporters.

But the technology is a long way off being able to distinguish between a soldier and a civilian.

“The idea of a robot being asked to exercise human judgment seems ridiculous to me,” Sharkey told Reuters.

“The whole idea of robots in the battlefield muddies the waters of accountability from my perspective as a roboticist,” he added.

The British government has always said it has no intention of developing such technology.

“There are no plans to replace skilled military personnel with fully autonomous systems,” a Ministry of Defense spokesman told Reuters.

“Although the Royal Navy does have defensive systems, such as Phalanx, which can be used in an automatic mode to protect personnel and ships from enemy threats like missiles, a human operator oversees the entire engagement,” the spokesman added.

But the organizers of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots say Britain’s rejection of fully autonomous weapons is not yet watertight.

“We’re concerned that there is a slide towards greater autonomy on the battlefield and unless we draw a clear line in the sand now, we may end up walking into acceptance of fully autonomous weapons,” said Thomas Nash, director of non-governmental organization Article 36.

Rapid advancements in technology have allowed countries such as the United States, China, Russia, Israel and Germany to move towards systems that will soon give full combat autonomy to machines, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

“We think that these kinds of weapons will not be able to comply with international humanitarian law,” Steve Goose, Human Rights Watch executive director, told Reuters.

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The images were taken by NASA’s SDO spacecraft and the video shows a number of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, that throw solar radiation in the direction of the earth, interfering with satellites and communication systems.

The post Video: Three years of solar activity in three minutes – NASA timelapse appeared first on Metro.us.

Official carillonneur Lyle Anderson performed the “Game of Thrones” theme song using the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Carillon Tower, which contains 56 bells ranging in weight from 15 to 6,823 pounds.

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Mobile job search apps, which enable you to apply for a position from your phone, are popping up all over. Major search sites like Monster and Career Builder offer an app that lets you to browse postings, update your status and apply right from your phone. But is all this technology making the search for a new job easier, or is it just one more thing to keep track of?

According to Luis Salazar, more mobile application programs would mean a greater chance at job placement for many hourly workers. Salazar is co-founder and CEO of Jobaline, a mobile platform that connects job-seekers with companies. “The hourly workers, which are 59 percent of our economy, are especially left behind,” says Salazar.

“These important workers often either lack Internet access or only access the Web using mobile phones. When we bridge the gap by providing mobile recruitment tools that address job search needs, workers and employers alike will have the ability to find a better fit.”

Companies that create an app need to focus on keeping it concise and user-friendly. “A well-designed mobile recruitment system can reduce the amount of time and effort necessary for a candidate to apply, leading to higher application rates and fewer orphaned applications,” explains Mahe Bayireddy, CEO of iMomentous, a mobile talent recruiter.

“By integrating with DropBox, Google Drive, and social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, applying for a job through mobile can be simple. Forms that once took upward of 20 minutes to complete can be automatically pulled from existing profiles,” Bayireddy says. Like so many other technological advances, if you’re not keeping up with the times, you’re falling behind.

“Five years from now, it’s impossible for us to imagine a world where most job searches and applications will not happen through a mobile device,” says Proven’s CEO, Pablo Fuentes. Proven is a job search app that lets users send résumés to job sites. “Today, people are doing banking, travel, and taxes on their phone. Tomorrow, mobile will be the standard for job searches.” Julia west

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