The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, July 15
Intel reports earnings Wednesday and it's expected to be a lackluster quarter for the chip giant as PC sales continue to slow. Analysts expect revenue to be down 6 percent from last year, and profit is forecast to fall as well. PC shipments declined 10 percent last quarter, according to Gartner, and Intel's results are likely to reflect that.
Hacking Team CEO insists customers' spy tools aren't compromised
The founder of the Italian surveillance software company that suffered a disastrous data breach last week sought to reassure clients on Tuesday, insisting that Hacking Team's anti-terrorism tools have not been jeopardized. "If the client has followed our instructions there are no problems for security. Only a part of the source code has been stolen," Hacking Team CEO David Vincenzetti said, adding that the hack, which resulted in the theft of 400GB of data and the publication of around 1 million company emails on the WikiLeaks website, had not compromised its most innovative products.
'Right to be forgotten' is no den of thieves
The "right to be forgotten" created by a recent European court ruling to allow ordinary citizens to hide their private lives from search engines is mostly being used by... ordinary citizens, according to information discovered by the Guardian newspaper. Google had said the decision would open the door to violent criminals and former politicians seeking to cover up wrongdoing. Instead, about 95 percent of the requests came from people who aren't well known, The Guardian said.
Photos from Pluto There's a network for that
How do you send images 3 billion miles through space Very slowly, if you're the New Horizons space probe passing Pluto. The signals take 4.5 hours to reach Earth, and the pictures come from New Horizons at 1990s dial-up modem speed over NASA's Deep Space Network, which talks to a dozen or more spacecraft at a time using giant dish antennas located around the world.
Software glitch could turn off hybrid cars: Toyota recalls 625,000
A software bug could shut down the hybrid system in some Toyota vehicles while they are being driven. The company is recalling 625,000 Prius cars and minivans built through November of last year, 120,000 of them in North America, in order to apply a patch, the BBC reports. It's only a couple of months since Toyota recalled nearly 5 million cars due to a problem with some airbag inflators.
Uber settles with family of child killed in accident
Uber has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of a girl who died in an accident with a car used by one of its drivers. The driver was logged in to the Uber app but not carrying a passenger at the time of the accident, raising questions about whether the company should share responsibility for the accident. The company's refusal to treat drivers as employees leaves many such gray areas.
No, Twitter isn't being acquired by Google -- and former CEO Dick's name isn't spelled Costello
The day scam artists start employing copy editors, the stock markets could be in trouble. The Wall Street Journal has the background on how a fake news report caused Twitter's stock to shoot up 8 percent, while The Verge reports on how a misspelling of former CEO Dick Costolo's name was the biggest clue that the story was a fake.
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Here's what to look for in a front-facing Android phone camera.
One last thing
All it takes to start a smartphone company is a logo, a marketing plan, and $1000 for your first fifty units and you could be nipping at Samsung's heels. Bloomberg has your business plan right here.