E-sports team win $1.4m Dota 2 prize

12 August 2013 Last updated at 08:23 ET

A Swedish e-sports team have won $1.43m (£924,000) after emerging victorious at a Dota 2 tournament.

It is the biggest single-event prize awarded at a video games event.

The final in Seattle was a close-run affair. Alliance only secured victory after destroying the stronghold of runners-up, Ukraine-based Na'Vi, in the final game of a best-of-five challenge.

The news comes months after the US began recognising gamers as pro athletes.

The move means that highly skilled players can now apply for a P-1 work visa on the same basis as other sportsmen and sportswomen.

'Slug fest'

Dota 2 is the sequel to Defense of the Ancients, a fantasy-themed battle game created by hundreds of volunteers who modified the real-time strategy game Warcraft 3.

The follow-up was developed by Valve, which also hosted the tournament - the International - and put up $1.6m of the prize money.

The total pot was $2.9m thanks to money raised by taking a cut of the sales of a $10 interactive pamphlet released to help fans follow the event.

Sixteen five-player teams from 12 countries took part in the five-day event at Benaroya Hall.

The Seattle Times reports that about 1,700 spectators attended, while an online video stream attracted as many as 600,000 simultaneous views at one point.

To win, the teams had to co-ordinate in-game characters called "heroes" to destroy their opponents' bases while defending their own.

The organisers reported that Na'Vi lost the first of the final five games after picking a "bizarre" draft of characters in a high-risk move that backfired.

However, the next three games were closer, leading to a 2-2 score and leaving the final battle as the decider.

"In a tournament filled with great games, it was the greatest game we have ever seen," reported the Dota 2 blog of the final match.

"Not one single action by one team went uncountered by the other. It was a slug fest of team fights."

Alliance ultimately emerged the victor after managing to be the first to destroy their opponents' towers, allowing them to lay waste to a structure known as an "ancient".

The Stockholm-based team were only formed this year, competing in their first Dota 2 competition in April. Since then they have built a reputation for drafting teams including characters that are often neglected by others.

They have now come first in nine different Dota 2 tournaments including the G-1 Champions League in Shanghai.

Gaming visa

Alliance's latest achievement follows news that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services has granted a Canadian pro-gamer a visa.

Danny Le became the first international e-sports player to be given the right to work and live in the US after his application was approved on May 29.

Officials had previously turned him away at the border when he had tried to move to live close to his Riverside squad-mates.

The team compete in tournaments for League of Legends, another battle-themed video game.

The title's developer, Riot, subsequently argued that the competitions qualified as a major sports league because six or more teams competed and they generated combined revenues or more than $10m.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Mr Le now planned to take part in League of Legends contests for at least five more years before returning to complete his university degree in Canada.

It added that other e-sports players, including an Argentinian and an Armenian, had also been granted work visas after Mr Le's breakthrough.

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Halt called to London tracking bins

12 August 2013 Last updated at 08:41 ET By Joe Miller BBC News

The City of London Corporation has asked a company to stop using recycling bins to track the smartphones of passers-by.

Renew London had fitted devices into 12 "pods", which feature LCD advertising screens, to collect footfall data by logging nearby phones.

Chief executive Kaveh Memari said the company had "stopped all trials in the meantime".

The corporation has taken the issue to the Information Commissioner's Office.

The action follows concerns raised by privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, after details of the technology used in the bins emerged in the online magazine Quartz.

Mr Memari told the BBC that the devices had only recorded "extremely limited, encrypted, aggregated and anonymised data" and that the current technology was just being used to monitor local footfall, in a similar way as a web page monitors traffic.

He added that more capabilities could be developed in the future, but that the public would be made aware of any changes.

The bins, which are located in the Cheapside area of central London, log the media access control (MAC) address of individual smartphones - a unique identification code carried by all devices that can connect to a network.

A spokesman for the City of London Corporation said: "Irrespective of what's technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public."

Legal 'grey area'

Mr Memari insisted that the bins were just "glorified people-counters in the street" and that his company held no personal information about the smartphone owners.

While the collection of anonymous data through MAC addresses is legal in the UK, the practice has been described as a "grey area".

The UK and the EU have strict laws about mining personal data using cookies, which involves effectively installing a small monitoring device on people's phones or computers, but the process of tracking MAC codes leaves no trace on individuals' handsets.

Websites or companies wanting to use cookies to tracks users' habits have to ask for permission. By monitoring MAC addresses, which just keeps a log of each time a wi-fi enabled device connects to another device, they can work around this requirement.

Presence Orb, the company that provides the tracking technology to Renew London, calls its service "a cookie for the real world".

'Data and revenue'

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said: "I am pleased the City of London has called a halt to this scheme, but questions need to be asked about how such a blatant attack on people's privacy was able to occur in the first place.

"Systems like this highlight how technology has made tracking us much easier, and in the rush to generate data and revenue there is not enough of a deterrent for people to stop and ensure that people are asked to give their consent before any data is collected."

Reacting to the City of London Corporation's call, an Information Commissioner's Office spokesperson said: "Any technology that involves the processing of personal information must comply with the Data Protection Act.

"We are aware of the concerns being raised over the use of these bins and will be making inquiries to establish what action, if any, is required."

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ZTE's Firefox phone to sell on eBay

12 August 2013 Last updated at 12:36 ET By Joe Miller BBC News

Mobile manufacturers ZTE are to become the first company to sell a smartphone running the new Firefox operating system in the UK and the US markets.

In an unusual move, the handset, priced at £59.99, will be available exclusively on e-commerce site eBay.

The ZTE Open runs applications written in the web-based HTML5 language rather than a unique company-owned platform.

Mozilla, the creators of the Firefox web browser, says the phone will inspire a "new wave of innovation".

A spokesman for the Chinese manufacturers ZTE said the handset was aimed at first-time smartphone users.

The phone is already on sale in Spain, Colombia and Venezuela, via telecommunications company Telefonica, and ZTE says the Open will be available "soon" on eBay in the UK and the US.

It will be not be locked to a specific mobile network operator.

'Being different isn't enough'

The phone features a 3.5in screen and 3.2-megapixel camera and is powered by a 1GHz processor.

Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at consultancy firm Ovum, said the decision to sell the phone on eBay "is an admission by ZTE that most carriers around the world are not yet ready to sell Firefox OS devices".

He added that "being different isn't enough" in a marketplace already crowded by Google, Apple and Windows.

"If you have to explain to people why Firefox provides a better user experience, then it's not particularly compelling."

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Musk unveils 'Hyperloop' idea

12 August 2013 Last updated at 18:32 ET

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Passengers would undergo forces of gravity similar to an aeroplane, Mr Musk said

US-based entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled his proposed near-supersonic "Hyperloop" transport concept to link Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The SpaceX, Tesla and PayPal founder envisions using magnets and fans to shoot capsules floating on a cushion of air through a long tube.

If the Hyperloop is ever built, a trip on it between the two California cities would last about 30 minutes, he said.

But Mr Musk says he is currently too busy to develop the project himself.

In a paper outlining the Hyperloop proposal, Mr Musk suggested the solar-powered system would be a faster, safer, less costly, and more efficient mode of transport between Los Angeles and San Francisco than the high-speed train currently under development.

Continue reading the main story

Elon Musk has given us his vision of 21st Century intercity travel. So how would it work?

He's proposing a pod in a tube solution. Ideally, you'd remove the air from the tube so the pod doesn't have to push up against it. But it's very difficult to make a vacuum tube that's 600km long.

So Musk suggests just reducing the pressure and then putting a compressor on the front of the pod to pass the remaining air to the rear of the vehicle as it moves along. Some of the air would also be used to create a smooth cushion on which the pod could ride.

An onboard battery would be sufficient to drive the compressor, but electric induction motors at the beginning, end and at intermediate points along the tube would be needed to accelerate, boost and decelerate the passenger cars. And all this would run on solar power.

Can he make it work? He's used his aerodynamics and motor experts in SpaceX and Tesla to sketch out the initial details (PDF).

What was interesting about his statement was that he is now prepared to at least build a subscale demonstrator. When Elon Musk says he'll do something, he's usually true to his word. This means we're likely to hear about Hyperloop a lot more in the future.

"Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome... the only option for superfast travel is to build a tube over or under the ground that contains a special environment," he wrote.

'$20 a ticket'

Mr Musk estimated the system linking the two cities, which are 380 miles (610km) apart, would cost $6bn (£3.9bn).

Capsules could depart as often as every 30 seconds and could also carry cars, travelling at up to 760mph (1,220 km/h), nearly the speed of sound.

Passengers seated in cabins inside the capsules would experience slightly more than the force of gravity, more like on an aeroplane than a roller coaster, he said on a conference call.

He said he would likely build a prototype of the concept, but not immediately, as he is busy with his commercial space project SpaceX.

A demonstration model would take up to four years to complete, he said.

He said the concept would best work between cities closer than 1,000 miles, because beyond that supersonic air travel would be preferable.

But for the shorter distance, his new concept would beat the plane, he argues, because it would not waste time ascending and descending.

The San Francisco to Los Angeles route would be elevated alongside a current California motorway, which would enable it to be constructed with minimal disputes over land rights, Mr Musk said. The tube and supporting columns would be designed to withstand earthquakes.

He estimated a trip would cost $20 (£13).

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China's Sina Corp in surprise loss

12 August 2013 Last updated at 22:39 ET

Sina Corp, which runs China's biggest micro-blogging site, posted a surprise loss in the second quarter as it looks to increase its mobile offering.

The company posted a net loss of $11.5m (£7.4m) compared to a profit of $33.2m a year earlier, it said in a statement.

Many analysts were expecting a net profit.

Sina's micro-blogging service has more than 500 million users, with many increasingly looking to access services on mobile devices.

The service has become an important forum for the exchange of opinions and information in China, however, it has not generated huge revenues for Sina.

The company also faces increased competition from rival Tencent, which has launched a hugely popular mobile messaging service called WeChat.

In April, Sina looked to compete by way of a deal with China's largest e-commerce company Alibaba, giving them 18% stake in its Sina Weibo micro-blogging service for $586m. The partnership is expected to generate revenue from advertising and social commerce services for Sina.

However, that meant a one-time charge of $27.1m in stock-based compensation, in the second quarter.

Charles Chao, chairman and chief executive of Sina said in a statement: "Our strategy to diversify Sina's revenue stream to beyond big-brand advertisers and to leverage Weibo's continued traffic growth to develop social and mobile advertising as well as value-added services is placing Sina in a good position for more profitable revenue growth while making heavy investments for the future".

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Dalai Lama's Chinese website hacked

13 August 2013 Last updated at 06:44 ET By Joe Miller BBC News

The Chinese-language website of the Tibetan government-in-exile, whose spiritual head is the Dalai Lama, has been hacked and infected with viruses.

Experts at computer security company Kaspersky Lab warned that the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) site had been compromised.

It is believed the malicious software could be used to spy on visitors.

Technical evidence suggests the hackers carried out previous cyber-attacks on human rights groups in Asia.

Tibet.net is the official website of the CTA, which is based in Dharamshala, northern India.

The organisation's spiritual leader is the 14th Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed anti-Chinese uprising, and set up a government-in-exile. China considers the Dalai Lama a separatist threat.

Constant threat

Kaspersky says the CTA website has been under constant attack from the same group of hackers since 2011, but previous breaches have been quietly identified and repaired before attracting significant attention.

Other Tibetan organisations, such as the International Campaign for Tibet, have also been targeted.

Kaspersky Lab researcher Kurt Baumgartner says the hackers used a method known as a "watering-hole attack".

A security bug in Oracle's Java software might have been exploited, giving hackers a "back door" into browsers' computers.

"This is the initial foothold," Mr Baumgartner said. "From there they can download arbitrary files and execute them on the system."

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North Korea 'makes own smartphone'

13 August 2013 Last updated at 07:24 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

North Korea says it has produced its first home-grown smartphone, but experts have disputed its origins.

The Arirang handset, described as a "hand phone" in state media, was shown to leader Kim Jong-un during a factory tour.

The country has had a mobile network since 2008, but activity is heavily monitored and restricted.

Last year the country launched a tablet, but it later emerged it was likely to have been made in China.

Clues to the tablet's origin were uncovered by Martyn Williams, an expert on North Korean technology, who noted that parts of the tablet's software code suggested links to a manufacturer in Hong Kong.

The Arirang smartphone, named after a popular folk song, was unlikely to have been made in the country, Mr Williams added.

He noted that actual manufacturing was shown, and that the device was "probably made to order by a Chinese manufacturer and shipped to the May 11 Factory where they are inspected before going on sale".

The leader was accompanied by the Korean Workers' Party propaganda chief and the head of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a hint that the devices could be used for widespread dissemination of government information.

Illegally owned mobiles

Mr Kim was seen to be demoing the device, which appeared to be running a version of Google's Android mobile operating system.

There are no further details available about the smartphone's exact specifications, but the KNCA reported that the leader praised the "high pixels" of the built-in camera.

The article said Mr Kim had high hopes for the "educational significance in making people love Korean things".

He advised that factory workers should "select and produce shapes and colours that users like".

Mobile phones in the secretive country have been available since 2008. The national network is maintained thanks to a joint operation by the North Korean government and Egyptian telecoms company Orascom.

Phones on the network are heavily restricted. They cannot access the internet and can only make calls within North Korea.

For a short time, foreigners in the country were able to use mobile internet, but this access was later revoked.

It is believed that many in North Korea, particular those near the borders, use illegally owned mobiles to contact people outside the country.

One man, a 28-year-old who left North Korea in November 2010, told a research paper: "In order to make sure the mobile phone frequencies are not being tracked, I would fill up a washbasin with water and put the lid of a rice cooker over my head while I made a phone call."

Being found in possession of a foreign phone would be a very serious crime, the paper's authors said.

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

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Norway blocks Apple map flights

13 August 2013 Last updated at 10:17 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

Norwegian officials have confirmed they are refusing to let Apple take aerial photographs of Oslo to create 3D images for its Maps app.

Anyone wishing to fly over the capital to take pictures requires a licence from the authorities,

Norway's National Security Authority said it had security concerns, but added there were other ways the tech firm could get the data it wanted.

Other map brands have used flat satellite images for their services.

Nokia also has 3D-images of Oslo's buildings in its Here product but only for parts of the city.

News of the denial was first reported by the local newspaper Aftenposten. It said officials were worried about the public having access to detailed views of government buildings.

Security measures have tightened in Norway since Anders Breivik planted a bomb outside government premises in Oslo before carrying out a killing spree at an island youth camp two years ago.

"There has been a major debate in Norway about security since the shootings, including how secure government offices should be," Henning Carr Ekroll, a security reporter at national newspaper Aftenposten, told the BBC.

"That applies both to physical security but also to aerial photography.

"The government is unable to do anything about satellite images but you still need permission to fly and you get higher definition pictures from a plane."

However, a spokeswoman for Norway's National Security Authority indicated there might still be ways for Apple to add a Flyover view of Oslo to its app.

"It is correct is that we have denied Apple the possibility to take air photos over the Oslo area," she told the BBC.

"The reason is that there are restriction areas in this region. We have suggested alternative ways to get the images it wants, as we generally do to be flexible.

"One way would be to contact a Norwegian supplier who already has a licence. Another way would be to just buy the needed mapping from the Norwegian Mapping Authority."

Norwegian companies such as navigation website Gule Sider have previously been allowed to take aerial pictures but there are gaps in the content available on the site, Mr Carr Ekroll added.

"If you search for Oslo you won't get details in particular areas. But they did take photos from aeroplanes," he said.

"It's easier for Norwegian operators to get licences because [the ministry] can have more control over the photos."

Aftenposten points out that neither the US Department of Defense in Arlington or the CIA headquarters at Langley are currently available in 3D on Apple's maps.

A spokesman for Apple was unable to provide comment at this time.

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Twenty hurt at LG promotional stunt

13 August 2013 Last updated at 10:37 ET

Twenty people were injured, with seven sent to hospital, when a promotional stunt in Seoul for LG's G2 smartphone went wrong, the company has said.

LG has cancelled a series of events promoting the handset as a result of the incident in Seoul on Friday.

People arrived with BB guns and knives on sticks for a race to grab smartphone vouchers hanging from helium balloons.

LG has taken responsibility for the situation and said it would cover related medical costs.

"LG Electronics deeply regrets that a number of Korean participants were injured during an outdoor promotional event in Seoul, Korea," a statement from the firm said.

"We can confirm that seven participants were hospitalised and, although none of the injuries were serious, LG takes full responsibility for the unfortunate situation and has offered to cover all related medical expenses.

"LG is investigating the incident to ensure that such an occurrence can be avoided in the future."

The company added that other planned events had been called off because of safety concerns.

Surge of people

LG released 100 helium balloons, each with a free smartphone voucher, at the so-called G in the Cloud event, which took place in an outdoor park in the South Korean capital city.

The phones, which sell for KRW 950,000 in South Korea ($851; £550), would be given to people in possession of the voucher, the company said.

Customers arrived with BB guns to shoot down the balloons and surged forward when they were released.

One person carried a pointed staff to the event.

One regional TV channel has dubbed the scrum "World War G" - a comparison to the film World War Z in which zombies scramble over each other to climb over a wall.

The handset was released in New York last week, after weeks of build-up on social media.

It is expected to be available globally with more than 130 carriers within several weeks.

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British Library wi-fi blocks Hamlet

13 August 2013 Last updated at 11:12 ET By Joe Miller BBC News

A man using the British Library's wi-fi network was denied access to an online version of Shakespeare's Hamlet because the text contained "violent content".

Author Mark Forsyth was writing his book in the library, and needed to check a line from the famous play.

The British Library said the fault was caused by a newly installed wi-fi service from a third-party provider.

One security expert said the incident highlighted the "dysfunction" of internet filters.

Mr Forsyth revealed on his blog that the filter had logged his attempt to access the page.

A spokesperson for the British Library said Hamlet had since been made accessible.

"The upgraded service has a web filter to ensure that inappropriate content cannot be viewed on-site," he added.

Continue reading the main story

One of the functions of deposit libraries is to keep everything, including smut"

End Quote Prof Ross Anderson

"We've received feedback from a number of users about sites which were blocked, but shouldn't have been. We're in the process of tweaking the service to unblock these sites."

Filters 'pointless'

Internet filters have recently come under increased scrutiny, after the government announced that pornography will be automatically blocked by UK internet providers, unless customers choose otherwise.

Digital rights activists raised concerns about the move, fearing that the lists of "banned" sites could be expanded to include pages that should be publicly available.

Prof Ross Anderson, a security expert at Cambridge University, told the BBC that internet filters were "pointless" and that it was "completely inappropriate" to have one in the British Library.

He added: "Everything that is legal should be available over the library's wi-fi network. The only things they should block are the few dozen books against which there are court judgements in the UK.

"One of the functions of deposit libraries is to keep everything, including smut."

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