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11 Or 12 Things I Learned About Life From Day Trading Millions Of Dollars
Nov 02, 9:00AM
I was a day trader for many years, and it almost killed me. I made money by making profits on my own money and also taking a percentage of the profits for the people I traded for. I traded up to $40 million or $50 million a day at my peak. I did this from 2001 to 2004. I learned about day trading but I also learned a lot about myself and what I was good at, what I was horrible at, and what I was psychotic at. Things that had nothing to do with day trading.
Britain's GCHQ Collaborated With Other EU Nations To Enable Broad Internet Surveillance
Nov 01, 10:13PM
Today The Guardian reported that the GCHQ, Britain’s NSA equivalent, worked with several foreign governments to help them tap Internet traffic and phone communications. The Swedish, French, Spanish, and German governments are said to be involved. It has been known for some time that the United States and British governments, through a number of programs such as the UK’s Tempora effort, directly tap the fiber-optic cables that are the backbone of the Internet, collecting data in massive quantity. That four other countries do the same is, therefore, not surprising, but it is dispiriting. It will be far harder than we initially perhaps hoped to end this sort of mass surveillance. That the GCHQ was willing to provide what is described as “a leading role in advising its European counterparts” in how to get around legal restrictions is simply depressing. The NSA acts in a similar fashion. After it was banned from collecting data sent in between data centers of private companies on the country’s soil, it started doing so overseas. Problem? Solved. Presumably the GCHQ, close cousin and partner in crime to the NSA, is teaching similar methods. Previously, James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, joked that furor over news of NSA’s spying on the phone of the German Chancellor was asinine: “Some of this reminds me a lot of the classic movie ‘Casablanca’: ‘My God, there’s gambling going on here!’” Clapper is correct, it appears. The losers here are the regular folks who are having their Internet traffic and telephony data absorbed by more than just their own governments, but by apparently a cadre of nations working in concert to ensure that digital privacy is kaput. The GCHQ is zealous in its will to help allies get around their own law. The Guardian’s quote about Holland is downright depressing: “The Dutch have some legislative issues that they need to work through before their legal environment would allow them to operate in the way that GCHQ does. We are providing legal advice on how we have tackled some of these issues to Dutch lawyers.” Frankly, I think that at this point it is reasonable to state that wholesale monitoring of the raw data that flows through the trunk cables of the web will not stop. The only solution is some sort of new encryption technique that is unhackable – though the NSA is working on ending that protection as well.
Google's Barges Likely Glass Exhibition Spaces, Lease Indicates
Nov 01, 10:00PM
The furor over Google's mystery barges in San Francisco and Portland has reached a fever pitch over the past week. According to our sources the various reports about the barges being showcases for Google's Glass retail efforts are correct. Today, a report by The Los Angeles Times’ Chris O’Brien notes that most of the reporters going after this barge story have been looking at the wrong San Francisco lease. O’Brien notes that the correct lease’s purpose is the “fabrication of a special event structure and art exhibit only and for no other purpose.” The sources we spoke to were still uncertain about the exact uses that all of the barges would be put to in the end, but aiding Google in showcasing Glass for its eventual retail run is the likeliest fate of the units docked behind San Francisco's Treasure Island. A story from CBS KPIX yesterday, which we mentioned earlier today, outlined a luxury showroom with a 'party deck' up top and spaces below for retail stores that could showcase Glass and other Google products. This report was said to be 'pretty accurate' by our sources. The barges are composed of shipping containers stacked together, with cutouts that have had large bay windows put in place and then covered up. The shipping container is already a favored construction block of Google, which has used them for years to house data centers that can be easily expanded. The rationale behind using containers in this instance is that the barges likely won't be a permanent home for the showcases, which could theoretically be disassembled and moved wherever Google needs them to be, on land or sea. Lack of retail stores in which to demonstrate Glass effectively and publicly has always been a concern with regards to making the head-mounted computers available widely at retail. In my time with Glass, it became incredibly evident that people had no idea what they really did, how to use them or what the value proposition was. Poor demo conditions in many places that I showed them to other people limited them to what amounted to a head-mounted video camera. A proper mis-en-scène for Glass will be all-important for having people 'get' the thing, and apparently Google is working to provide just that. News of the barges, which are being built by a shell company called 'Buy and Large Llc‘ (an apparent Wall-E reference) was broken widely by
OS X Mavericks Is Now Installed On More Than 10% Of Macs, Smashing Mountain Lion's Adoption Rate
Nov 01, 9:17PM
If Apple decided to make updates to its OS X operating system free in part to drive more rapid consumer uptake, it was a great decision: Market adoption of its new OS X Mavericks operating system has beaten adoption of the preceding Mountain Lion version by a large margin.
Bing Renews Its Firehose Deal With Twitter
Nov 01, 8:38PM
Microsoft today announced that it has renewed its partnership with Twitter, giving Bing access to all of the public content Twitter’s users create. The terse three-sentence announcement is short on details, but a Microsoft spokesperson told us it extends, for an unspecified amount of time, the deal the two companies made four years ago. “The past four years partnering with Twitter have been great, and we're excited to continue that relationship in order to help deliver the best possible search experience,” the spokesperson told us. Unlike Google, Bing has made social search a cornerstone of its strategy. Its close relationship with Facebook has long given it the ability to highlight posts from the popular social network, as well as from Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Foursquare, Klout and other services in its social sidebar. With Bing’s latest redesign, which dropped the number of columns on its search results pages from three to two, the social sidebar now features even more prominently on the site. Twitter itself started giving access to its public firehose feed to partners in 2010, and it continues to keep a very tight grip on who gets access to this information. It’s providing a full feed to large partners like Microsoft, Google and others, though a small number of select resellers like Gnip and DataSift can provide anybody with the right resources (both financial and technical) with access to this data.
A Love Story That Spawned A Hardware Revolution In The Kitchen
Nov 01, 8:32PM
Neither of them had any entrepreneurial history before they met. Abe Fetterman was a plasma physics Ph.D. at Princeton and Lisa Qiu had worked in hospitality at Jean-Georges and Mario Batali before entering the magazine world. But while watching Top Chef episodes during their first week of dating, they clicked.
Gillmor Gang Live 11.01.13 (TCTV)
Nov 01, 8:14PM
Gillmor Gang - John Borthwick, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. Live chat at http://friendfeed.com/realtime-network/5d54b6dd/gillmor-gang-recording-live-today-1pm-pt Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Disrupt Europe Aftermath, The iPad Air, And Google's New Nexus
Nov 01, 8:05PM
It’s been a long road home for the TechCrunch Gadgets team, but the lure of new hardware was too much to resist so we huddled around our microphones on a dreary Friday morning to gab about them all. So what’s on the docket this time around? Some choice hardware highlights from Disrupt Europe start things off on a positive note, and since Apple’s iPad Air went on sale earlier today, we felt compelled to dig into Cupertino’s latest (and apparently greatest) fondleslab. Meanwhile, Newton’s Third Law of Gadget Dynamics (that’s a thing, right?) ensured that Google had a new hardware announcement of its own to counter with this week. It wasn’t much of a surprise when Google pulled back the curtain on the Nexus 5 yesterday, but we managed to express some love for the smartphone in our own peculiar ways. Join John Biggs, Matt Burns, Darrell Etherington, and me, Chris Velazco, as we enter the hardware breach once more, won’t you? We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here. Click here to download an MP3 of this show. You can subscribe to the show via RSS. Subscribe in iTunes Intro Music by Rick Barr.
Exactly What It Sounds Like, Sizem Made A Fit Calculator To Find Your Correct Bra Size
Nov 01, 8:02PM
If you're a lady, you're probably well aware at this point that you're wearing the wrong bra size. Which is a bummer, because as women's magazines and lingerie companies will tell you, the right bra is like an unlimited month of pilates class for your boobs. 
JD Power Explains Why Samsung Beat Apple In Its Latest Tablet Study: Price
Nov 01, 7:21PM
Yesterday, JD Power released its newest tablet satisfaction study and the Internet went a bit nuts. For the first time, Samsung had edged out perennial favorite Apple in customer satisfaction on tablets. This was a stark change from volume one of the study which had Apple handily beating its competitors. There was outcry about how close it was, about how the JD Power chart and scoring (835 to Samsung, 833 to Apple) simply didn't add up. I have to admit, I was fairly curious about that, and supposed that it had to be about price. So I reached out to JD Power and spoke to Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecommunications services.
The First Instagram Ad Has Been Spotted In The Wild
Nov 01, 7:03PM
About a month after Instagram announced that it would start running Sponsored Photos and Sponsored Videos, and about a week after it published previews of those ads, it looks like Instagram ads have arrived. The first ad comes from designer Michael Kors, and as promised, it's a regular Instagram photo, but it's also showing up in the feeds of users who don't follow the Michael Kors account, albeit with a "Sponsored" label. Instagram has said that users will be able to tap a button with three dots under the ad to hide it and provide feedback.
Windows 8.1 Doubles Its Market Share In October To 1.72%, Handily Beating Windows 8′s Initial Rollout
Nov 01, 6:55PM
Microsoft's Windows 8.1 grew quickly in the first month of its general availability, outpacing the launch of its predecessor, Windows 8, according to numbers out today from NetMarketShare. In October, Windows 8.1 doubled its market share to 1.72 percent, up from 0.87 percent in September, which is a precise 97.7 percent in the month-long period. Yesterday, I guessed that the end-of-October figure would be around 1.5 percent. Keep in mind that this is not 1.72 percent of Windows machines, but all desktop-based computers. For comparison, Apple's OS X controls 7.73 percent of the global PC market.
Yes, Only 6 Users Signed Up On Healthcare.gov Launch Day, But Don't Panic
Nov 01, 6:40PM
New documents reveal that a mere six people managed to sign up for health insurance through the government's beleaguered e-commerce website, Healthcare.gov on it's opening day. Naturally, the press is milking every last ounce of this click-bait statistic, but in reality, it probably doesn't matter. Young, uninsured consumers are compulsive procrastinators. When Massachusetts launched its own e-commerce portal for a similar health insurance law back in 2006, a substantial portion of new registrants (12,000) came on just two weeks before the deadline.
Fab.com Files Counterclaim Against JustFab, Says JustFab Is A "Predatory" Bargain Clothing Peddler
Nov 01, 6:36PM
The latest chapter in the legal dispute between online retailers Fab.com and JustFab is unfolding. In July 2013, JustFab filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Fab.com, accusing it of infringing on JustFab's trademark by using a "confusingly similar" name, along with related allegations including unfair competition. Now Fab.com has hit back with a counterclaim that accuses JustFab of "predatory conduct." 
PLAiR 2 Launches To Take On Chromecast With Netflix, Hulu Plus, Spotify, And Pandora Apps For $49
Nov 01, 5:00PM
What do you do when your startup launches a product in a nascent category and then a behemoth like Google enters the space and validates it? And eats your lunch in the process? If you're video-streaming startup PLAiR, you go back to the drawing board and start from scratch.
Unii, A Student-Only Social Network, Signs Up 100,000+ Users In Six Months In The U.K.
Nov 01, 4:42PM
U.K.-based startup Unii is building a social network exclusively for students, with a plan to monetise that community by providing a range of student-centric services. The site launched back in May, at a sub-section of U.K. universities and colleges, and has managed to gain a decent bit of traction among its 18-24 user-base, announcing today that it has pushed past 100,000 users.
Bezos, Amazon And Refusing To Act Your Age
Nov 01, 2:36PM
In early 1998, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CFO Joy Covey co-authored a letter to shareholders discussing the previous year's accomplishments. That letter has become holy writ inside the company, and is republished every year in its annual report. The letter and its contents struck me as incredibly prescient, or perhaps simply potent, as I read through Brad Stone's excellent The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon. It's no surprise that the letter has continued to be viewed as a touchstone for the company and its employees. The tenets set out in it are clearly represented by the way that the company develops and releases products, and the approach that it takes to everyday business. One of the most commonly discussed aspects of Amazon's business is its attitude toward profit margins. The company famously makes a ton of money every year and manages to spend most of it, ending up with slim or no profits shown on its quarterly balance books. For some folks, obsessed with the way numbers look in a column, this is endlessly frustrating. How can a company that makes so much money, and continues to be such a darling of the stock market, end up with so little profit to show for it? The letter holds the answer, and makes Amazon and Bezos' views incredibly clear. Here's the relevant passage: We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position. The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital. Our decisions have consistently reflected this focus. We first measure ourselves in terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. We have invested and will continue to invest aggressively to expand and leverage our customer base, brand, and infrastructure as we move to establish an enduring franchise. The letter follows that up with a nine-point layout that describes Amazon's decision-making approach. You can view the letter here to read the points, but if you look at
Google's Barge Likely A Modular, Floating Retail Space To Feature Glass
Nov 01, 12:05PM
Google caught some attention this past week for mooring a huge barge in SF Bay for mysterious purposes. Rumors have been flying about what that barge could be used for, with some suggesting it’s a floating data center, which Google does indeed have a patent for. But reports from a Bay Area local CBS affiliate and CNET suggest it’s a retail play, and now CBS is reporting (via 9to5Google) that as confirmed from multiple sources. According to our sources the various reports about the barges being showcases for Google's Glass retail efforts are correct. The sources we spoke to were still uncertain about the exact uses that all of the barges would be put to in the end, but aiding Google in showcasing Glass for its eventual retail run is the likeliest fate of the units docked behind San Francisco's Treasure Island. The CBS story outlined a luxury showroom with a 'party deck' up top and spaces below for retail stores that could showcase Glass and other Google products. This report was said to be 'pretty accurate' by our sources. CBS affiliate KPIX 5 says that the barge will eventually include luxury showrooms for gadgets such as Google Glass, as well as a party deck, and provide hands-on experiences to select potential clients by invitation only. It’s the brainchild of Google X, the skunkworks at Google designed to build some of that company’s more experimental products and services, including Google Glass and self-driving cars, and it’s overseen by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Brin is reportedly the driving force behind this retail barge experiment, and the purpose of the plan is to compete with Apple’s dominating retail presence, according to the CBS report. While the barge doesn’t look like a luxury showroom at the moment, it’s built out of modular 40-foot shipping containers and is designed to be quickly torn down and put back together easily. It’s not a strictly seaborne affair, either – Google could reportedly assemble it on trucks or on freight trains, too, adding new meaning to the term “road show.” CBS says that the barge’s launch has been delayed because of how it’s been designated by the U.S. Coast Guard, which is so far complying with Google’s apparent request that its purpose be kept secret. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that suggested Google would begin opening its own retail stores in time for this year’s holiday season.
iFixit's iPad Air Teardown Reveals Tightly Packed Innards Dominated By A Big Battery
Nov 01, 11:15AM
Apple's iPad Air goes on sale today – it's easily the best iPad Apple's put out so far, but we're waiting with bated breath for the iPad mini with Retina display. Until then, however, the Air is also the most remarkable feat of engineering in any tablet device in terms of what goes on under the hood, or at least that's what it looks like based on iFixit's traditional day one teardown of the brand new device.
Groupon Redesigns Web And Mobile Apps To Focus On Personalization, Local And Search
Nov 01, 10:47AM
Groupon hasn’t had a great go of things since becoming a publicly traded company; founder and CEO Andrew Mason was ejected earlier this year, and its so-called “third-party” or daily deal revenue seems to be in a state of continuing decline as more customers shy away from or ignore those emails offering flash sales. But under current CEO Eric Lefkofsky, the focus has shifted to a place where users go to search for deals, which is why the redesigns of its mobile and web presences announced today make a lot of sense. On mobile, Groupon now has a “Local Explorer” feature, which automatically bubbles up content in the city in which a user is currently located (it used to serve this via a ‘Nearby’ tag only). It detects location changes in the background and sends targeted deals via push notifications, too, which is clearly designed to remind users that the app exists when they’re on holiday and perhaps more likely to be in need of discounted meals at restaurants, etc. There’s now a search bar at the top of every screen on mobile, emphasizing that new focus under Lefkofsky, and users are also greeted with personalized deal collections unique to each when they launch the app, instead of just a generic layout based on their hometown location. Groupon also moves into 12 new markets on the iPad with this update, which is key if the company is targeting travelers. On the web, there’s likewise a personalized homepage with “curated collections of deals based on the customer’s interests, previous purchases, [and] purchases by other customers with similar interests,” and there’s a new persistent search bar on every page of the site, which also features autocomplete suggestions. Those, too are designed to increase discoverability. Also new on the web are results that cross all of Groupon’s lines of business, spanning local deals, travel, restaurants and more, which is clearly aimed at generating some generative cross-market sales from users who are looking for more than one thing at once. Search also gets new filters that are designed to help users pinpoint their own specific areas of interest much more clearly. Groupon may not be doing as well as some would’ve anticipated five years ago on its birthday, but these redesigns are the surest recent sign that it’s turning the prow of what has become a rather large and lumbering ecommerce ship towards new
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