Category: News

Passmark Software has released OSForensics 2.0, the latest edition of its excellent computer forensics package. And while it’s more about improving on what’s gone before than adding any major new functionality, there are still some very useful additions here.

While previously the program could only index the documents on one drive at a time, for instance, OSForensics 2.0 now allows you to specify as many drives per index as you like, and search them in a single operation later: seems like a small change, but this makes the program much more convenient to use.

If you regularly use the indexing feature then the good news is it’s no longer necessary to configure its fine details each and every time. A new Template option allows you to define the file extensions you’d like to check, what exactly you’d like to index (title, content, file name, metadata), exclude filters, stemming rules and more, and you can then reload the template you need for a particular job in a couple of clicks.

And while indexing itself can still take a very long time, improved caching means file searches can sometimes be as much as 500% faster than the previous release.

Elsewhere, there have been various improvements to the email, raw disk and internal file viewers. Many are small, but still very welcome, such as the new ability to maximise the file viewer window. And a further key change sees the program now able to open Office documents directly, another positive step which should significantly improve performance.

The OSForensics internal web browser has been extended with the ability to add or save complete web pages, as well as a region of the screen.

And there are the usual stack of smaller enhancements, from performance improvements with FAT volumes, to enhanced compatibility with Opera, and a lengthy list of bug fixes (the official What’s New page tells all).

What hasn’t changed, though, is the generous licensing model, where an enormous amount of functionality is available for free, with only minimal restrictions (the new web page images have watermarks, for instance).

OSForensics 2.0 offers file search tools, undelete functions, memory and disk viewers, password recovery options, drive imaging tools and a whole lot more, for instance, so you may find the program useful even if you’ve no specific interest in computer forensics. Take a look: it’s one of the most powerful free tools of its kind available anywhere.

Photo Credit: Phil Holmes/Shutterstock

For some time we’ve been hearing about small cells and the big capacity boost they’ll bring to mobile data networks, but what we haven’t seen so far are any actual commercial small cell launches. That will change this summer, according to Ericsson EVP and head of networks Johan Wibergh.

Starting his summer Ericsson, the world’s largest mobile infrastructure vendor, will begin shipping its first commercially viable small-cell base stations and remote radio heads, Wibergh said in an interview with GigaOM. He wouldn’t name any particular customers, but in the U.S. at least, it’s not hard to guess. Both Sprint and AT&T have committed to large-scale small cell rollouts starting this year (Ma Bell has already begun experimenting with the technology in Missouri and Wisconsin). Both are major Ericsson customers, as is Verizon Wireless, which has also talked up small cells in the past.

Before we go any further, I should probably explain what Wibergh means when he says small cell. There are a lot of things out there that are called small cells such as home femtocells and distributed antenna networks. Also, carriers have been deploying the building blocks of small cell networks, picocells and microcells, for years. But ultimately those have been coverage solutions, injecting mobile signals into nooks and crannies where big tower-based macrocells can’t reach.

What the true small cells networks of our near future will bring is the creation of an alternate yet complimentary high-capacity network. Instead of cramming picocells onto cellular gaps, carriers will mount picocells on lampposts and buildings, right under the gaze of towers with which they’ll share the same airwaves. That’s a hard feat to pull off because any time two signals use the same frequency in the same space, you get interference. For the last several years, Ericsson and rest of the mobile industry have been trying to figure how to mitigate that interference. That’s why it’s taken so long to convert an ordinary picocell into a true small cell.

The industry, however, appears to be the ready, at least it better be. AT&T has promised to have 40,000 small cells transmitting away by the end of 2015. Ericsson probably doesn’t want to leave egg on the face of one of its most important customers.

Wibergh, however, cautioned that small cell technologies still have some evolving to do. At first, small cell network will function much like an extension of the large cell counterparts. The network will pass us from big cell to small and vice versa. The key difference is that when we occupy that small cell we’ll have a lot more bandwidth at our disposal.

But as cellular standards evolve networks will be able to pull off an even neater trick. Our devices will be able to link to multiple cells simultaneously, Wibergh said. The same signals that once interfered with one another will reinforce one another creating an even more powerful connection. High-capacity Wi-Fi will get layered in, creating into a heterogeneous network in which our devices can establish multiple simultaneous connections using multiple radio technologies. What that boils down to is an awful lot of bandwidth.

Density image courtesy of Shutterstock user higyou

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• New solutions for the evolving mobile network
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE

An interview with Jeanne Meister, partner at Future Workplace and contributor to the HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across.

Download this podcast

A written transcript will be available by February 8.

The Department of Energy is putting a collective $9 million into 7 projects being developed at universities and government labs that will us big data to lower the cost of solar in various ways. The projects, at places like Yale, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, will be focused on using analytics to lower the cost of solar installations and making solar cells more efficient.

Apple’s massive solar farm in North Carolina, photo by WCNC-TV

Here’s the 7 projects:

• A solar financing model: NREL and solar financing startup Clean Power Finance will use $2.26 million to analyze data from 1,300 solar installation companies to try to create new types of community and regional financing methods.
• A publication and patent reader: SRI International, the University of Toledo and GE will use $600K to create software that can read and analyze science publications and patents to unearth innovations that can lower the cost of solar.
• Articulate a solar theory: Gordan Moore had his own law for chips, and some in the solar sector talk about a Swanson’s Law for the dropping cost of solar, but folks at MIT will use close to $500K to study the tech evolution process of solar and to create an overarching theory.
• Better forecasting of production costs: Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Arizona State University and the University of Oxford will use almost $950K to analyze data about patents, prices and production to create better forecasts of solar cell, wafer and panel prices.
• A model for solar markets: Sandia National Labs, the University of Pennsylvania and the California Center for Sustainable Energy will use $2.3 million to process data about solar markets and to create a model looking at how economic and social issues impact solar installations.
• Better strategies for community-led solar purchasing: Yale and SmartPower’s New England Solar Challenge will use $1.9 million to develop new strategies to that can make community solar buying programs work better.
• More effective solar installation in Texas: The University of Austin will use close to $500K to collaborate with six Texas utilities to create more strategic ways to install and interconnect solar in the state.

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Martin Casado, co-founder and chief technology officer of Nicira, which VMware bought last year for $1.26 billion, has gotten tired of people discussing and agreeing on the importance of virtualizing networks. He wants to get out there and start solving networking problems with network virtualization.

He said as much on Wednesday at a Churchill Club forum entitled “Is Software-Defined Networking the Next Revolution?” at Ericsson’s office in San Jose, Calif.

It turns out Facebook wants to make networking more efficient, too. Najam Ahmad, director of network engineering at Facebook, said so while sharing the stage with Casado and others at the event. Ahmad is looking for potential solutions to problems such as getting applications to send packets onto servers’ network-interface cards and getting confirmation that that’s happened. No more lost packets that you don’t know are lost.

“We’re just starting out (with software-defined networking),” Ahmad said. “I wouldn’t say by any means that we’re using it wide-scale. We’re looking at use cases and developing that more prototype stage in that sense.”

But use cases are hard to come by, even though AT&T, eBay, Fidelity Investments, NTT and Rackspace have implemented Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform, as my colleague Stacey Higginbotham reported. But software-defined networking and network virtualization hasn’t exactly gone mainstream. As Casado himself put it, the conversation needs to move toward actual use cases and how to change people’s lives with network virtualization, just as server virtualization has changed people’s lives — or at least IT.

For now, the hype around SDN continues. We’d like to see some network virtualization use cases, too.

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Fans of Star Wars can take their love of droids and kitten heels to the streets with this DIY Instructables project. Created by Mike Warren, an editor at the site, these are the droid shoes you’re looking for.

DIYers take note: this isn’t easy stuff. Note the tools list, for example:

MIG welder
soldering iron
propane torch
rotary tool
elecric drill
rubber cement
foam glue
2-part epoxy (extra strength – not “quick setting”)
white spray paint

Seriously. A MIG welder. For shoes.

You’ll also need a pair of shoes, some R2-D2 toys, and a little thinger that will light up like R2′s weird eye thinger. More important, the shoes Warren used came from outside his house because someone threw them away. In short, they were almost free!

So whether you’re trying to please your own Princess Leia or need to stab one of Jabba’s Daleks with your stiletto, now you have the perfect tool.

This afternoon, Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, sat down with a group of immigration reform advocates and leaders from across the country to discuss President Obama's plan to fix our broken immigration system in a live Google+ Hangout. During the virtual roundtable discussion, participants asked questions about the President's vision on topics ranging from creating an earned path to citizenship, the DREAM Act, Startup visas for entrepreneurs, and the role of the faith community in the immigration reform debate.  In case you missed the live event, check out the full video and learn more about the plan.

This "Fireside Hangout" was moderated by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of Define American, and guests included America Ferrera, co-chair of Voto Latino's I'm Ready for Immigration Reform campaign, Jim Wallis, President and CEO of Sojourners, Cristina Jimenez, Managing Director of United We Dream and Shervin Pishevar, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures and co-founder of Start Up Visa Movement. 

The hangout is part of an ongoing series of conversations with administration officials on Google+. In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll continue to host hangouts with White House staff on a range of second term priorities. Follow us on Google+ for updates from the Administration and opportunities to participate in online engagement events.

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During recent days we have had the honor as part of a U.S. Presidential Delegation to accompany more than 150 U.S. Special Olympians to the 2013 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. In addition to the Opening Ceremonies of the games on Tuesday, the Presidential Delegation had a unique chance to spend time with the athletes and view some of the events.

While we have made a special effort to cheer on the U.S. athletes on behalf of the President, the Special Olympics is about far more than winning – it’s about encouraging diversity, celebrating inclusion and recommitting to the human rights of persons with disabilities around the world.

People with disabilities come from all walks of life, genders, every social class, and all religious traditions. Most of us have a family member, friend or acquaintance with a disability. People with disabilities make tremendous contributions to our society, to our families, to our neighborhoods – adding to the diversity that makes America a unique and special place to call home.

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Uber and Lyft have come to agreements with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) this week, establishing ride-sharing companies in the state in another development on the bumpy road toward government acceptance. In October, the CPUC issued a cease-and-desist orders against rideshare companies like Lyft and Sidecar, which it said did not have the right permits to carry customers, but now it looks like those companies can continue in California.

While Uber is not currently offering peer-to-peer ride-sharing, the CPUC agreement allows for “drivers not specifically licensed to drive a limousine or taxi” to provide rides, which could include Uber’s drivers, the company notes. And Uber wrote that it could pave the way for ride-sharing in the future.

Update: As TechCrunch first reported and Uber later confirmed with us, the company plans to expand into ridesharing, although it has no immediate specifics to announce. “It would be natural to expect us to go into competition,” an Uber spokesman said.

Lyft’s parent company Zimride announced Wednesday that it had entered into an agreement with the state where the CPUC would drop its earlier cease-and-desist order and fine against the company. Lyft wrote in a blog post that the company has worked to improve safety measures, increasing liability insurance and performing background checks on drivers, and is pleased the state will let them continue operating for the time being:

“This agreement supports the continued legal operation of Lyft and sets a precedent for the upcoming rulemaking process. This agreement would not have been possible without the outpouring of support from the community,” wrote the company co-founders.

Uber announced Thursday that they also have reached an agreement with the CPUC over the company’s technology used to hail rides and has confirmed that its legal in California:

“This settlement agreement is part of a steady drumbeat of progress in which pro-consumer, pro-innovation jurisdictions like Washington D.C., New York City, and Massachusetts are recognizing that everyone wins when new technology that fosters efficiency, affordability, and choice in transportation is allowed to flourish. California has always been on the cutting edge. The CPUC agreement further demonstrates how the Golden State welcomes and supports not only technological advancement, but a better future for drivers, riders, and our cities.”

Rideshare and next-generation taxi companies like Uber and Lyft have struggled to gain acceptance in cities across the country even as users embrace their services, with Uber facing regulatory challenges in D.C., push-back from cab drivers in San Francisco and Chicago, and earlier problems in the more stringent New York City market. With Lyft and Sidecar, questions revolved around how the companies would properly insure drivers and riders.

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RIM BlackBerry revealed its new BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 handsets at a packed press conference Wednesday morning. The event was live streamed, but it also took place at 10 a.m. EST/7 a.m. PST so some of you on the West Coast may have still been in bed for it. Fear not, lovers of sleep, you can now watch the keynote in its entirety.

Sit down, grap some popcorn, and watch the obviously scripted keynote that caused BlackBerry’s stock to fall by 11 percent. Those without nefarious intentions might want to check out the keynote to see all the new features coming to BlackBerry 10, like Hub or BBM Video Chat.

If the keynote has ignited your interest in BlackBerry 10, be sure to check out our extensive coverage of the new mobile platform from BlackBerry.

Court records show that startup Coda Automative, already wrestling with layoffs and very slow sales of its first electric car, has been fending off a number of lawsuits for not paying its bills on time. Vendors, including car engineering and development company RLE International (as well as an affiliate contract work company RTECH), vehicle development services company EDAG, and vehicle testing company FEV, have all filed lawsuits against Coda within the last six or so months, alleging that Coda owes them money for services.

When RLE filed its lawsuit in late October it said Coda owed RLE $356,500; when EDAG filed its lawsuit last June it said Coda owed them $608,770; and when FEV filed its lawsuit in December it said Coda owed them $268,200. RTECH, an affiliate of RLE, also has a lawsuit against Coda for failing to pay for contract workers, which it filed December 2012.

The parties agreed to dismiss three of the cases. In the RTECH lawsuit, the dismissal occurred after Coda filed papers stating that the contract in question forced RTECH to resolve the issue through arbitration. It’s possible this is why the other two cases settled. The FEV case is ongoing.

While Coda lawyers seem to be dealing with these suits, it’s the latest bad sign for the electric car maker, which in December laid off staff. While press reports at the time said the layoffs were massive, Coda tried to soften the blow and said it had laid off 50 employees, or 15 percent of staff.

The problem is that the company hasn’t been selling its cars. Some reports have put the number of Coda sedans sold at less than 100 since it went on sale in March 2012. That launch was actually delayed, from late 2010, then to late 2011, and then early 2012. The company also had a recall of the cars it had sold in August due to a mis-installed side curtain air bag.

The car itself isn’t that competitive in a market where you can buy a Tesla Model S, a Nissan LEAF or a Chevy Volt. As auto reporter Jim Motavelli described it:

The strategy of buying a bargain Chinese car sounded good at the time, but it’s plain that making the Coda competitive was a Herculean task, despite a larger battery, battery management and more range than the Nissan Leaf. One big problem is that Chinese styling is 20 to 30 years behind the West, and attempts to dress up the Coda didn’t do much to disguise the 1985 Toyota Corolla design. The car looks dated.

We’ll see what happens to Coda. Fisker Automotive, another struggling electric car startup, is heads down trying to sell itself to Chinese auto companies. Coda already has deep partnerships with Chinese firms — the company has a joint venture with China battery maker Lishen, called Lio (oil spelled backward), and a deal with auto maker Great Wall Motors Company to co-develop a low cost electric car. Given these relationships Coda probably has a better chance than others to find a Chinese acquirer.

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Remember that $4 per month modem fee time Warner Cable implemented — the one that had Wall Street all excited about its potential boost to revenue? Well, it seems that people were miffed enough about the charge to affect how many subscriptions the nation’s second largest cable company added during the quarter — 75,000, which is less than the 129,000 Wall Street anticipated. But before feeling vindicated, know this — the fee generated about an extra $1.83 per month from each subscriber.

And in the long term, analysts think it will pay off for the cable giant, which reported financial results Thursday. Especially as consumers find themselves stuck between Time Warner Cable’s modem fee and slower DSL-based service offering. From an analyst note issued today by Stifel Nicolas:

Residential PSUs declined by 20,000 versus our estimate of +48,802, primarily due to weaker-than-expected HSD [high speed data] adds. We believe that the company’s residential HSD net adds (+75,000 vs. estimate 129,000) were negatively affected by higher-than-expected churn as a result of the company’s recent introduction of a modem fee (~$4). While the “fallout” from the modem fee could spill over into 1Q13 results, we don’t expect this to be a long-term issue for the company’s residential HSD product. In fact, the modem fee contributed ~3/4 (~$1.83) to the 6.3% increase in HSD ARPU during Q4.

So there you have it. Customers clearly are put off by the modem fee, but it won’t last. Likely because they don’t really have another option for broadband in many areas. Yet, plenty of people are still unconvinced that ISPs engage in anti-competitive behavior in the broadband market.

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Facebook may be getting a little more specific with their suggestions for how to properly celebrate your friend’s birthday.

Soon after launching their new ecommerce platform Facebook Gifts, the social network began suggesting that you send friends a gift when it’s their birthday. Suddenly, a cheesy Timeline post ceased to be enough. Facebook wanted to promote the new Gifts platform by attaching it to birthdays – which is understandable.

Now, it looks like they’re taking it a step further by suggesting that you gift friends with a Starbucks e-gift, specifically.

Facebook told Business Insider that this is an “experiment.”

We’ve noticed that if the birthday boy or girl “likes” Starbucks, that information will show up alongside the Starbucks logo. That way, you’ll know that getting him/her a Starbucks gift card would be a good idea. You know, because they “like” it.

It’s unclear what the arrangement is here, and whether Starbucks (and presumably any other Facebook Gifts partner) would pay for the birthday suggestions placement in the future. As with all Facebook “tests” or “experiments,” there’s always the chance that it will never reach a large audience. But something about this one makes me feel like we’ll be seeing more and more of it as Facebook looks to further promote and monetize Gifts.

A new study from the University of Adelaide has shown that humans, not diseases, were responsible for the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger.

The Tasmanian tiger, also known as thylacine, was a marsupial carnivore found in Tasmania until the species went extinct in the 1930s. According to researchers, the Tasmanian government encouraged the hunting of the animals from 1886 until 1909, paying bounties for thylacine carcasses. The last known wild Tasmanian tiger was captured in 1933.

“Many people, however, believe that bounty hunting alone could not have driven the thylacine extinct and therefore claim that an unknown disease epidemic must have been responsible,” said Thomas Prowse, leader of the project and a research associate at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Environment Institute. “We tested this claim by developing a ‘metamodel’ – a network of linked species models – that evaluated whether the combined impacts of Europeans could have exterminated the thylacine, without any disease.”

The researchers used a modified version of mathematical models developed by conservation biologists to simulate extinction risks to populations of endangered species, called a population viability analysis (PVA). Prowse and his colleagues added species interactions to the normal PVA model.

“The new model simulated the directs effects of bounty hunting and habitat loss and, importantly, also considered the indirect effects of a reduction in the thylacine’s prey (kangaroos and wallabies) due to human harvesting and competition from millions of introduced sheep,” said Prowse. “We found we could simulate the thylacine extinction, including the observed rapid population crash after 1905, without the need to invoke a mystery disease. We showed that the negative impacts of European settlement were powerful enough that, even without any disease epidemic, the species couldn’t escape extinction.”

(Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Facebook, as you may know, released its Q4 and full-year earnings on Wednesday. Between the release and the earnings call, the company provided plenty of info for us all to absorb, including various statements made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

COO Sheryl Sandberg had plenty to say during the conference call as well, discussing Facebook’s focus on building products and tools for brand marketers, direct marketers, local businesses and developers.

There are some key points Facebook wants marketers to take away from what she talked about, so here are the highlights, via an email from the company:

• For brand marketers, Facebook is now working with every one of the Ad Age Global 100 advertisers. Wal-mart used this target block over the Thanksgiving weekend to deliver 50 million mobile ads to their existing and potential customers. Michael Kors used Facebook to launch a new line of sneakers. Many of the sneakers sold out online and in stores, and they achieved a 16-point increase in awareness of the new sneaker among the 36 million people that the campaign reached on Facebook. That’s the equivalent of 5.8 million new people in the brand’s target audience who are now aware of the new line of shoes.
• For direct marketers, tools including Offers, Custom Audiences and FBX are fueling growth. Nearly 42 million unique users are claiming an Offer. Costs per redemption compare favorably to those from email, newspaper, paid search, and display media based on data from the Direct Marketing Association. JackThreads, an online shopping site for men, used Custom Audiences to target specific segments of its customer database and target them with ads for products in categories the company knew were most relevant to them such as sneakers. As a result, the company achieved a 30% lower cost per acquisition than other platforms and saw a 6x return on advertising spend. And despite only becoming available to all marketers in September, by December, FBX served nearly one billion impressions daily and supported over 1,300 advertisers each day.
• Revenue from local businesses was particularly strong in the fourth quarter: local business Pages that advertise on Facebook nearly doubled since the beginning of 2012, fueled by Promoted Posts, which makes it easier for businesses to create and purchase ads directly from their Facebook Page. Almost 500,000 Pages have used Promoted Posts. About 30% of those are new advertisers to Facebook and more than 70% have become repeat customers.
• Developers are seeing success with mobile app install ads, launched in October and already being used by 20% of the top 100 grossing iOS apps to accelerate growth. According to research conducted by comScore in December, Facebook is the top driver of awareness of new mobile app downloads and, among people who learn about new apps on Facebook, 48% click directly from the Facebook app to download new mobile apps. A new game, Car Town Streets broke into the Top 10 Games list on iOS in many countries while achieving a 40% lower cost per installation compared to their other advertising with mobile app install ads.
• Research from Aggregate Knowledge showed that Facebook is an increasingly powerful tool to help marketers reach more people and drive sales. In a study of fourth quarter marketing campaigns, they found that media plans that included Facebook reached people who would not have seen the campaigns otherwise. In fact, 45% of those reached were reached exclusively through Facebook. The study also found that Facebook had a 68% lower cost per acquisition and drove 24% more new sales than other online channels.
• Facebook built a deep relationship with PepsiCo, working with its Lay’s brand to drive sales significantly ahead of plan and a 5x return on advertising spend for their “Do Us A Flavor” campaign on Facebook.

According to Sandberg, 65% of Facebook’s advertisers are using ads in News Feed (mobile and desktop). That’s a 50% increase from the end of the third quarter. News Feed ads drive over eight times the incremental offline sales than ads on the right hand side, according to the company.

Google Play has always lagged behind Apple’s App Store in terms of pure revenue since its inception. That trend has not changed, but Google Play is at least starting to show signs of major growth after months of very little.

App Annie recently released a study that compares revenue growth between Google Play and Apple’s App Store. The findings show that the iOS App Store is still by and large the dominant force in mobile revenue, but Google Play is starting to show some serious growth of its own.

As you can see, both Google Play and iOS App Store saw a marked increase in revenue during Q4. The growth of Google Play was far more impressive, however, as app revenue doubled between Q3 and Q4. iOS App Store revenue only increased by one-fifth, but it still made plenty more considering its already sizable lead in revenue.

So, who’s responsible for app revenue growth on these platforms? The iOS App Store’s five biggest contributors were the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada in that order They note that China is quickly closing in, however, and the nation is now ranked sixth in overall revenue contribution.

As for Google Play, the three biggest contributors were the United States, Japan and South Korea. The U.S. was pretty consistent since the beginning of 2012, but the market in Japan and South Korea really exploded near the end of the year. The increase in Google Play revenue in these countries may correlate to increased sales of Android devices, especially in Japan where the Nexus 7 beat out the iPad during the holidays.

These numbers make it easy to label winners and losers, but doing so would distract us from the real winners here – the app developers and consumers. Increased revenue across the board means more developers will be willing to develop apps for more mobile platforms. The more mobile platforms supported means more consumers buying apps. It’s a cycle that leads us to even more revenue and more app development. In short, everybody wins.

By Shyam Sankar and Gabe Rosen

The Internet is the new Wild West, a frontier big enough for every pioneer and outlaw to roam free. Today, The New York Times revealed that hackers in China had spent the last four months infiltrating its computer systems and pilfering employee passwords. As in the old West, it’s not a question of if you’ll be hit — but when and how. Online, primitive DDOS attacks rain down like arrows, while artful hackers can steal the data equivalent of 5,000 head of cattle before any breach is detected. There’s no choice but to defend the homestead as best you can – and retreating to civilization is no longer an option.

According to Mandiant, the infosec firm that conducted the investigation, the Times was first compromised on September 13. The attackers established at least three backdoors and installed 45 pieces of malware, only one of which was detected by Symantec security software. After two weeks, the attackers found the domain controller that contained all staff passwords. Times executive editor Jill Abramson maintains there is “no evidence that sensitive emails or files” were accessed, yet the investigation found that the attackers “created custom software that allowed them to search for and grab [Times journalists] Mr. Barboza’s and Mr. Yardley’s e-mails and documents.”

As the TED Blog recently recounted, we know a bit about this sort of thing at Palantir. Our platform was used to investigate “GhostNet”, a Chinese cyber espionage network. In 2008, an unnamed country received an email from China warning them not to host the Dalai Lama for a scheduled visit. The email was startling because this visit was not public knowledge. The country sought to find out how this sensitive information had been leaked. Not only the Dalai Lama’s personal computer been hacked, but 1,300 computers across the globe had been infected in the same way. This network had been operating for two years without notice.

Naturally, when we heard about The New York Times hack today, we looked for parallels. The Dalai Lama’s office was infiltrated by “spear phishing” — where hackers research a person and create an email, with an attachment, that looks like it came from a confidant. Spear phishing is suspected, though not confirmed, in the Times attack. Like GhostNet, the Times attackers covered their tracks through intermediaries in numerous countries, and employed remote access tools (RATs) and malware. The attacks also appear related to Chinese political sensitivities, though the exact loyalties in play are murky.

While it’s important to resist easy conclusions, Occam’s razor and common sense shouldn’t be ignored. The difficulty is that positive attribution is rare in cyber warfare, so when something looks like the work of someone who was never actually identified, it may not be exceptionally meaningful. As open-source sleuth Jeff Carr points out, there are several doubts. Beijing’s time zone includes numerous other cities. The attacks were ultimately traced to Chinese IPs, though their geo-locations encompass millions of people. The attackers used RATs, but these are widely available and hardly confined to China. According to Richard Bejtlich, Mandiant’s chief security officer, “When you see the same group steal data on Chinese dissidents and Tibetan activists, then attack an aerospace company, it starts to push you in the right direction.” Given the vast spectrum of potentially interested parties, it’s a very general direction – but it’s a start nonetheless.

The lack of clear answers notwithstanding, Mr. Bejtlich is certainly correct that cyber defense “requires an internal vigilance model.” You have to sleep with one eye open, and preoccupation with one mode of attack leaves you vulnerable to others. As in the old West, it’s essential to make common cause with your neighbors, however distant. During the recent spate of suspected Iranian DDOS attacks, two global Top 20 banks shared threat data in real time with each other as well as US law enforcement, and collaboration across public/private lines is essential to countering the matrix of state and non-state combatants.

Above all, we need to adopt a Wild West approach of our own. The sheriff’s only hope is to become as swift, resourceful, and adaptive as the outlaws.

Shyam Sankar is the Director at Palantir Technologies. He gave the TED Talk “The rise of human-computer collaboration” at TEDGlobal 2012, as well as the talk embedded above at TED2010. Gabe Rosen works in Business Development at Palantir.

Roseanne Barr has been slowly making her way back into the mainstream after years of staying low on the celebrity radar. After “Roseanne” went off the air in 1997, she had a few, mostly short-lived projects which unfortunately didn’t showcase her talents enough to keep her around.

But the comedienne is working on a new sitcom idea for NBC with her “Roseanne’s Nuts” partner, Steven Greener. Coincidentally, she’s also about to make a three-episode appearance on the network’s long-running comedy “The Office” as a talent agent who sets out to help Andy break into show biz.

Roseanne made headlines last year after announcing she was on the ballot for presidency and becoming a regular user on Twitter, where she posted about the election and her reasons for running. She also aligned herself with Anonymous after the highly publicized and controversial Steubenville, Ohio rape case.

Though she’s been seen as somewhat quirky over recent years, many of her old fans would love to see her back in a successful vehicle so many years after “Roseanne”. Until the NBC deal is finalized, however, we’ll just have to settle for watching her work her magic on “The Office”.

Now that EA has revealed to investors that its third quarter revenue was down compared to one year ago, the publisher has been taking the opportunity to reveal bits of news that might not have gone over well before the financial release. It admitted that Medal of Honor: Warfighter was a disaster, and announced that the Medal of Honor games are now “out of the rotation.” EA also announced that the upcoming sci-fi shooter Fuse will be delayed anywhere from one to three months.

Among the bad news, EA has seen fit to tease something that is probably great news for the company. The EA sports website now contains an announcement for Madden 25.

What is Madden 25? That’s a straightforward question, but EA hasn’t released any details at all concerning the title. All that is known for sure is that Madden 25 will be released on August 27, 2013. That date is almost exactly one year from August 28, 2012 – the day that Madden NFL 13 was released. With that in mind, it’s likely that Madden 25 is a rebranding of the franchise for its anniversary, though it could also represent an event or downloadable content of some kind.

The teaser logo shows that it celebrates the 25 year history of Madden video games, from 1989 to 2014. The original John Madden Football for the Commodore 64 was actually released in 1988, but since Madden 25‘s release date is in 2013, the math still works out.

The Madden NFL series is one of EA’s most consistently profitable series. The publisher’s latest earnings report stated that Madden NFL 13 saw both unit sales and revenue increase over last year’s numbers.