Twitter grows users but shares slide

27 October 2014 Last updated at 22:07

Twitter has reported a doubling in sales and a 23% increase in the number of active users of its micro-blogging site for the third quarter.

The firm, known for its 140 character messages, said it added 13 million monthly active users between July and September, meaning it now has 284 million users.

Sales rose 114% to $361m (£223m), but it made a loss of $175m for the period.

Its shares fell 8% in after hours trading.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo said it was a "very strong financial quarter".

"I'm confident in our ability to build the largest daily audience in the world," he added.

However, it predicted fourth quarter sales of between $440m to $450m, compared to average analyst forecasts of $448m.

It also reported a 7% slide in timeline views per user, a figure seen as a key measure of user engagement, which was also slightly below analyst forecasts.

High expectations

Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott attributed the sharp share price fall to the high expectations for the firm, and said Twitter had failed to keep up with social network rival Facebook.

"Their user growth is mildly encouraging, but I want to see better. Users is their key metric; they need to get people using the site everyday. Facebook is constantly giving people new reasons to come back to the site, Twitter needs to do more of that," he added.

Twitter's shares have had a bumpy ride since they were listed on the New York Stock Exchange last November.

Its shares initially rocketed but then eventually lost almost a third of their value, before recovering to trade around $48 per share, comfortably above their initial $26 per share flotation price.

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said the shares' rise suggested investors had expected more from Twitter's results.

"For a stock like Twitter, which is up a bit since the last quarter, expectations were high. People expect more than just in line," he said.

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Internet tax prompts Hungary protest

27 October 2014 Last updated at 08:00

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Nick Thorpe reports from Budapest on the planned internet tax

Thousands of protesters in the Hungarian capital Budapest have demanded a halt to a proposed law which would place a tax on internet use.

Demonstrators held their mobile phones aloft outside the economy ministry and hurled old computer parts at the gates of the ruling Fidesz party.

Campaigners say the legislation is "anti-democratic" and will hit the poor.

Ministers have promised to place a cap on the tax.

The draft law, proposed by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, would levy a fee of 150 forints (£0.40; €0.50; $0.60) per gigabyte of data traffic.

But many of those who gathered in Budapest on Sunday are worried about the consequences.

Rally organisers said the move "follows a wave of alarming anti-democratic measures by Orban that is pushing Hungary even further adrift from Europe".

In response, the ruling Fidesz party said it would submit an amendment to the law ensuring that monthly payments of the tax were capped at 700 forints.

Despite divisions within Fidesz, Mr Orban commands broad popularity in Hungary and the party has won three elections this year.

But his opponents have decried what they see as his increasingly authoritarian style and his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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IBM offers Ebola tracking system

27 October 2014 Last updated at 00:05

IBM will put its super-computing data crunching to use in Sierra Leone, as part of the fight against the deadly disease Ebola.

It has launched a system which allows citizens to report Ebola-related issues and government, health agencies and others to keep track of the disease.

Citizens can use SMS or voice calls that are location-specific.

The data will then be analysed to identify correlations and highlight issues.

Already, regions with growing numbers of suspected Ebola cases have been pinpointed and the delivery of urgent supplies such as soap and electricity have been sped up.

"We saw the need to quickly develop a system to enable communities directly affected by Ebola to provide valuable insight about how to fight it," explained Dr Uyi Stewart, chief scientist of IBM Research in Africa.

"Using mobile technology, we have given them a voice and a channel to communicate their experiences directly to the government."

Khadija Sesay, director of Sierra Leone's open government initiative, said it had helped "open up a channel with the general public so that we can learn from their input and create actionable policies in the fight against Ebola".

Radio broadcasts are being used to encourage people to use the system and telco operator Airtel has set up a free number via which citizens are able to send SMS messages.

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Keyless cars 'targeted by thieves'

27 October 2014 Last updated at 13:06 By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Organised criminal gangs are increasingly targeting high-end cars with keyless security systems, a UK motoring industry group has warned.

The thieves are able to bypass security using equipment intended only for mechanics, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said.

Manufacturers are trying to stay ahead of the thieves by updating software.

It has been reported that some London-based owners of Range Rovers have been denied insurance over the issue.

The warnings echoed those made by the US National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), which earlier this year said it had seen a "spike" in car thefts involving equipment to spoof keyless entry.

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WATCH: "Thieves are somehow getting access to the car's onboard computer"

Keyless entry and ignition typically works by the driver keeping a fob on their person which automatically opens the car and activates it so it can be driven.

As the popularity of keyless systems has increased, criminals have been buying equipment online that is able to re-programme keys.

"The criminal act of stealing vehicles through the re-programming of remote-entry keys is an on-going industry-wide problem," said Jaguar Land Rover.

"Our line-up continues to meet the insurance industry requirements as tested and agreed with relevant insurance bodies.

"Nevertheless we are taking this issue very seriously and our engineering teams are actively working in collaboration with insurance bodies and police forces to solve this continuously evolving problem."

The statement added: "This has already resulted in a number of prosecutions."

A specific case reported by The Times involved insurers AIG refusing insurance cover to a motorist. In a statement the company said it treated every case individually.

"We do not have a blanket policy to exclude certain vehicles from cover.

"Given the increasing likelihood that replacement vehicles may be a target for thieves we may ask for additional security measures such as secure off-road parking.

Continue reading the main story

By far the most common way of a car being stolen is still from thieves breaking into homes and stealing keys"

End Quote Ian Crowder AA

"This could be, for example, secure private garaging or the installation of mechanically moveable bollards. If this is not possible then, as a last resort, we may refuse to offer insurance cover but only after exhausting every avenue."

Thatcham Research, which collates data on behalf of UK insurers, acknowledged the problem was widespread.

"Whilst BMWs and Audis appeared to be the early targets, it's fair to say that this was largely associated with their desirability across Europe, rather than any specific security lapse.

"Recently we've seen evidence of a range of makes and models being affected, including the Ford Fiesta and Focus, Range Rover Evoque and also now including light commercial vehicles such as the volume-selling Ford Transit and Mercedes Sprinter."

Weakest link

It is becoming much harder to steal cars. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, car theft has fallen from 318,000 in 2002 to 77,500 last year.

But thefts involving computer equipment used to circumvent security are rising. The SMMT is pushing for stronger legislation to help reverse this.

"The challenge remains that the equipment being used to steal a vehicle in this way is legitimately used by workshops to carry out routine maintenance," a spokesman said.

"As part of the need for open access to technical information to enable a flourishing after-market, this equipment is available to independent technicians. However a minority of individuals are exploiting this to obtain the equipment to access vehicles fraudulently.

"We need better safeguards within the regulatory framework to make sure this equipment does not fall into unlawful hands and, if it does, that the law provides severe penalties to act as an effective deterrent."

But Ian Crowder, from motorists' group the AA, warned the risk should not be overstated.

"By far the most common way of a car being stolen is still from thieves breaking into homes and stealing keys," he said.

"The keys are still the weakest link in a car security chain. If someone has your keys, they have your car."

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

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Xiaomi to open data centre in India

27 October 2014 Last updated at 15:22

After India warned its military not to use Xiaomi devices owing to privacy fears, the Chinese firm has announced plans to open an Indian data centre.

Xiaomi, which specialises in low-cost smartphones, has ambitions to sell 100,000 handsets in India every week.

But the country's air force warned its personnel against using the devices, citing security concerns about data being kept in Beijing.

Xiaomi said it never collected user data without permission.

The company has already begun the process of moving non-Chinese data out of Beijing, and instead into data centres owned by Amazon.

The decision to open a facility in India is another move by Xiaomi to allay privacy fears.

Concerns over how data is held by the firm are seen as perhaps the only significant barrier to its rapid expansion around the world.

The company, which poached a high-profile Google executive to spearhead Western efforts, has produced feature-rich smartphones that are considerably cheaper than some rivals.

Less favourable is Xiaomi's reputation as a copycat brand.

When Apple executive Jony Ive was asked for his thoughts on the company, he said: "I don't see it as flattery, I see it as theft."

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'Smart cycle lanes' pitched to UK

28 October 2014 Last updated at 00:00 By Kevin Rawlinson BBC News

A stretch of glow-in-the-dark road markings has been installed in the Netherlands after being proposed as one of several "smart highway" features that could be put to wide use.

Route 66 of the Future uses special green paint, charged by daylight.

It is designed to be clearer than existing cat's eye reflective spheres.

Its creators are also due to test glow-in-the-dark cycle lanes, which they said had already attracted the interest of UK planners.

"The glowing lines are a little ... Daft Punk look-alike but they are to do with safety," said artist Daan Roosegaarde, one of the road markings' designers.

"The three lines merge into one and you feel that it guides you. With fog, you see them more than with standard light,"

He has worked on the project - and many others - with Hans Goris, a civil engineer at infrastructure firm Heijmans.

"There is much less energy used," said Mr Roosegaarde of the photo-luminescent paint he uses.

"There will be big projects, we have requests from China and India - these are places where you need safe roads that are disconnected from the energy grid."

A stretch of road at Oss, near Nijmegen in the south of the country, is being used to showcase the design.

Their first cycle highway, called the Van Gogh-Roosegaarde Light Emitting Bicycle Path, is due to be launched in December in Nuenen, which was once home to the Dutch post-impressionist artist.

According to Mr Roosegaarde, it was inspired by Van Gogh's masterpiece "Starry Night". He said he had demonstrated the technology to authorities from Birmingham and London earlier this month.

Both, he said, were due to watch follow-up tests in the coming months with a view to introducing the innovation to the UK.

Prof David Bailey, an automotive expert at Aston Business School in Birmingham, backed the idea of a test to see it it truly made cyclists more visible at night and encouraged motorists to give them more space.

"The Netherlands is much better organised than the UK, they have a much better laid-out network of highways," he commented.

"It is a good idea to try it, though.

"There is a possibility of reducing electricity use as well."

Mr Roosegaarde said that his team had around 20 ideas that it wanted to try to implement over a five-year period.

He was speaking from Beijing, where he said he was constructing a "smog-free park by building the largest vacuum cleaner in the world".

"We think half of the ideas will influence roads in the future to make them energy neutral and functional," he added.

"It is not just an artwork, we want to update reality."

'Great connection'

He also remarked that Britain's tradition of blending craftsmanship and function made it a perfect place to install his cycle highway.

"For a small country like the Netherlands, we have to be creative - that is how we will survive. I won't say what the UK should and shouldn't do but I can see similarities. You cherish your heritage but you want to make it contemporary too.

"There is a great connection between the art and the technical in Britain - the Spitfire is a good example."

He said he hoped that, if the project went ahead, it would be finished within two years.

Both the Mayor of London's office and Birmingham Council were contacted about the tests but neither were able to confirm plans to send a delegation.

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Met Office supercomputer confirmed

28 October 2014 Last updated at 07:41 By Jonathan Webb Science reporter, BBC News

Funding has been confirmed for a £97m supercomputer to improve the Met Office's weather forecasting and climate modelling.

The facility will work 13 times faster than the current system, enabling detailed, UK-wide forecast models with a resolution of 1.5km to be run every single hour, rather than every three.

It will be built in Exeter during 2015 and become operational next September.

The Met Office said it would deliver a "step change" in forecast accuracy.

"It will allow us to add more precision, more detail, more accuracy to our forecasts on all time scales for tomorrow, for the next day, next week, next month and even the next century," said Met Office chief executive Rob Varley.

As well as running UK-wide and global forecasting models more frequently, the new technology will allow particularly important areas to receive much more detailed assessment.

For example, forecasts of wind speeds, fog and snow showers could be delivered for major airports, with a spatial resolution of 300m.

Continue reading the main story

It makes us world leaders not only in talking about the weather, but forecasting it too"

End Quote Greg Clark, MP Minister for Universities and Science

The extra capacity will also be useful for climate scientists, who need massive amounts of computing power to run detailed models over much longer time scales.

It will address one of the key challenges of climate projections - to "answer the real questions people need to know", said Mr Varley.

"We can tell you that the global average temperature is going to increase by 3C or 4C if we carry on as we are - but the critical question is what is that going to mean for London?

"What is it going to mean for Scotland? What is it going to mean for my back garden? At the moment the general looks that we can produce really don't answer those kinds of questions," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.

Analysis by David Shukman, BBC Science Editor

For an island nation that sits at a turbulent cross-roads between Atlantic moisture, Arctic cold and continental extremes, our weather is notoriously hard to forecast. Fickle winds, complicated topography and innumerable local influences add to the challenge.

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The BBC's David Shukman says it will be "one of the world's fastest computers"

But because the weather matters so much - to everything from whether to leave home with a brolly to preparing for closed runways at an airport - all eyes are on the Met Office, and the glances are often hostile.

The biggest failures have now entered the national vocabulary: Michael Fish's denial of an approaching hurricane in 1987 and the infamous suggestion of a "barbecue summer" in 2009 when the reality proved relentlessly soggy.

The Met Office asserts that people never notice everyday successes, a gradual increase in reliability that has seen each decade allow the forecasts to reach another day into the future.

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Rob Varley, Met Office, on how the supercomputer will change forecasting

The new supercomputer should accelerate that process, crunching bigger numbers at a finer scale and more frequently than ever before.

But it may also raise expectations about accuracy. And, in a country obsessed with the weather, that brings its own risks.

Mr Varley said he was "absolutely delighted" the government had confirmed its investment, which was first promised by the chancellor in the 2013 Autumn Statement.

The new system will be housed partly at the Met Office headquarters in Exeter and partly at a new facility in the Exeter Science Park, and will reach its full capacity in 2017.

At that point, its processing power will be 16 petaflops - meaning it can perform 16 quadrillion calculations every second.

The "Cray XC40" machine will have 480,000 central processing units or CPUs, which is 12 times as many as the current Met Office supercomputer, made by IBM. At 140 tonnes, it will also be three times heavier.

It marks the biggest contract the Cray supercomputing firm has secured outside the US.

"It will be one of the best high-performance computers in the world," Science Minister Greg Clark told journalists at the announcement, adding that it would "transform the analytical capacity of the Met Office".

Mr Clark said the supercomputer would put the UK, appropriately, at the forefront of weather and climate science. "It makes us world leaders not only in talking about the weather, but forecasting it too."

The improved forecasts, according to the Met Office, could deliver an estimated £2bn in socio-economic benefits, including more advance warning of floods, less air travel disruption, more secure decision-making for renewable energy investments, and efficient planning for the impacts of climate change.

Prof Tim Palmer, a climate physicist at the University of Oxford, also said the announcement was "very exciting news" and emphasised the necessity for more and more powerful computers.

"Unlike other areas of science, you can't really do lab experiments," he told the BBC. "We can only do two things: wait and see what happens, or try and simulate it inside a computer."

This means, Prof Palmer explained, "fantastically complex machines" like the XC40 - and whatever comes next.

"This is the start of an important investment, but it's by no means the endpoint."

The most detailed climate simulations currently being proposed, Prof Palmer said, will need exabytes of storage: another vast increase on the capacity of the Cray XC40, which will have storage capacity of 17 petabytes (a petabyte is one million gigabytes; an exabyte is 1,000 petabytes).

Piers Forster, a professor of climate change at the University of Leeds, said the increased power should "massively improve understanding of extreme weather and climate change", but added: "We also need to support brain power.

"When the Met Office opened some of its computers to work with UK university academics it benefited everyone.

"These problems are too big for one computer or organisation to solve, but as long as our fruitful collaborations continue, we can realise the promised benefits."

Follow Jonathan on Twitter

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Takata sued over faulty airbags

28 October 2014 Last updated at 12:07

Japanese airbag manufacturer Takata and several carmakers that used its products are being sued in the US over allegations they sold unsafe vehicles.

The class action lawsuit comes after millions of cars were recalled over potentially dangerous airbags.

It claims Takata and automakers such as Honda and Toyota hid the alleged airbag defects from consumers.

At least four deaths and more than 30 injuries in the US have been linked to faulty airbags made by Takata.

The airbags can potentially spray deadly shrapnel at passengers if deployed with too much force.

Honda and Toyota are among the carmakers named as defendants in the case, which was filed in a US district court in Florida on behalf of consumers across the country

The lawsuit said Takata "had a duty to disclose these safety issues because they consistently marketed their vehicles as reliable and safe", Reuters said.

Global recall

US car safety regulators are investigating whether Takata's airbags are defective and recently expanded a recall of vehicles with potentially dangerous Takata airbags to almost eight million.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also warned owners should take "immediate action" if they have an affected vehicle.

They have identified 10 manufacturers who used Takata as a supplier, including General Motors, Honda and Toyota.

Takata estimates that around 12 million vehicles around the globe may contain the parts.

The fallout from the recalls has already started hitting the bottom line at Japan's third-largest carmaker.

Honda cut its annual profit forecast for the first time in three years because of the recalls and slower sales in Japan and China.

Honda said on Tuesday that its operating profit fell 4.1% to 164bn yen ($1.5bn; £932m) in the July-September quarter, missing analyst estimates.

The recalls are also expected to have a negative impact on earnings at Japan's largest carmaker Toyota, which reports next week.

The company's chairman and chief executive, Shigehisa Takada, has issued an apology in response to the safety crisis caused by its airbags.

"We deeply regret that the recent recalls of vehicles equipped with our airbags have likely raised significant concerns and troubles to our product users, our customers, shareholders and other stakeholders," he said in a statement.

Takata shares have lost more than 50% of their value this year.

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'Terror' wi-fi signal delays flight

28 October 2014 Last updated at 12:36 By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

A wi-fi signal named "Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork" (sic) has resulted in a long delay for passengers on a plane at Los Angeles airport.

A passenger alerted American Airlines cabin crew when his smartphone identified the network as one available nearby and police were notified.

After an investigation lasting several hours, police at the airport said no crime had been committed.

The flight from LA to London on Sunday was eventually rescheduled for Monday.

Many broadband subscribers re-name their home wi-fi network to personalise it.

When a device comes within range of the network, its name will appear on a list of potentially available wi-fi connections.

While some use their family name or the name of their house, others take a more satirical approach.

'Sometimes it's funny'

"It can be a kooky way of saying you support a local football team or you want to bait your neighbour who supports the opposing team," said Stuart Miles of tech review site Pocket Lint.

"Some people use it as advertising. It's an unwritten code of spreading a message that you're allowed to do - but obviously sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's not."

In a discussion about favourite wi-fi names on community site Reddit, users admitted to using titles like "FBI Surveillance Van", "ISIS HQ" and names that sounded like computer viruses to alarm passers-by.

The acronym LAN (Local Area Network) - the name given to a network linking a small group of computers in a home or business hub - has also been the subject of puns.

'Get off my LAN', 'the promised LAN' and 'WuTangLAN', a homage to US rappers Wu-Tang Clan, are popular choices.

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'Shazam for birds' set for launch

28 October 2014 Last updated at 13:32

An app that can automatically recognise bird sounds is to be launched in time for spring, its creators have said.

Warblr has been developed by two scientists using a grant from Queen Mary University of London.

They hope to raise more money in a crowdfunding drive but, after tests with the BBC that suggested problems, admitted there was still work to do.

In three separate attempts, the app was unable to correctly identify the bird in question.

"It is not perfect... this is obviously very new technology, so we have a bit of work to do still," said Warblr's co-founder and chief executive Florence Wilkinson, who demonstrated the app to BBC producer Jat Gill.

The app works by identifying a recorded sound and returning a list of the most likely results, with percentage weightings indicating their respective levels of likelihood.

In the first test, Ms Wilkinson recorded a canada goose. But she said that interference from a "screaming child" caused the app to misidentify the calls as those of a crow, with the correct answer in second place.

"Bearing in mind it had quite a lot of background noise in there, I think that's a pretty good result."

In test two, she tried to identify a moor hen and some coots. "I don't know if we can count that as a victory because [the coot] came up as the last result [on the list], although they are all pretty close," she said.

"We've got a few that are clearly wrong there, we've got the black-tailed godwit, a fieldfare, for example. The bottom result that we've got at six per cent is the coot, which is actually the bird that was making the noise."

The final test was more successful in picking out the same species, with the coot listed second - not first, again. "I'm pretty pleased with that."

Dan Stowell, a Queen Mary University of London academic and one of Warblr's co-founders, developed the technology on which the service runs. He said the app was similar to the music-recognition service Shazam.

'Challenge'

"It's really surprisingly difficult to recognise automatically any particular bird, what species it is, because a single species can make a different sound, depending on the time of day, depending on how old it is, depending on whether it is mating or not," said Mr Stowell, who is an expert in natural sciences.

"If you think about the challenge of trying to recognise 'which music recording is this?' it's exactly the same recording every time, whereas, here we are trying to recognise a general category of bird sounds."

He said the system used "machine learning" to take examples labelled by the developers and learn to generalise from them.

He said the app was able to recognise 88 species, covering most common birds in Britain, plus some less common ones.

Mr Stowell said the technology had other possible applications, including recognising genres and emotions in music, and could also be adapted for bird species in other countries.

The pair plan to raise £50,000 towards their planned spring launch using the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. At the time of writing, they had raised more than £1,100.

Although other apps, such as Bird Song ID, which can recognise and identify bird calls exist, Warblr's developers claim its database is significantly larger.

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