Apple

Humor: iMorons (Video)

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– iMORONS UNITE (The Burning Platform, Sep 20, 2013):

You can’t make this shit up. Three minutes that will crush any illusions you might have of the masses rising up and shaking off the yoke of corporate fascism. The decades of mass media propaganda and dumbing down of the people through our government run public education system has succeeded beyond Edward Bernays’ wildest dreams. I give you the next head of the Department of Commerce:


YouTube

From the commentaries:

DOOMED I TELL YOU!!!!

Lowest labor participation in 35 years, 47 million people on foodstamps, and real incomes haven’t gone up in four decades, but idiots by the thousands will stand in line for two days to whip out their credit cards for a fucking phone that they can order on-line. We are so fucked. And most of these iMorons are Millenials.

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider”
– George Carlin

SPIEGEL: NSA Has Full ‘Back Door’ Access To iPhone, BlackBerry And Android Smartphones

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a BlackBerry Z10 smart phone: Will the company face a setback following claims the NSA can spy on its phones? (REUTERS)

– Privacy Scandal: NSA Can Spy on Smart Phone Data (Spiegel, Sep 7, 2013):

SPIEGEL has learned from internal NSA documents that the US intelligence agency has the capability of tapping user data from the iPhone, devices using Android as well as BlackBerry, a system previously believed to be highly secure.

The United States’ National Security Agency intelligence-gathering operation is capable of accessing user data from smart phones from all leading manufacturers. Top secret NSA documents that SPIEGEL has seen explicitly note that the NSA can tap into such information on Apple iPhones, BlackBerry devices and Google’s Android mobile operating system.

The documents state that it is possible for the NSA to tap most sensitive data held on these smart phones, including contact lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information about where a user has been.

Read moreSPIEGEL: NSA Has Full ‘Back Door’ Access To iPhone, BlackBerry And Android Smartphones

Edward Snowden’s NOT The Story … The Fate Of The Internet Is

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– Edward Snowden’s not the story. The fate of the internet is (Guardian, July 28, 2013):

The press has lost the plot over the Snowden revelations. The fact is that the net is finished as a global network and that US firms’ cloud services cannot be trusted

Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. This insight seems to have escaped most of the world’s mainstream media, for reasons that escape me but would not have surprised Evelyn Waugh, whose contempt for journalists was one of his few endearing characteristics. The obvious explanations are: incorrigible ignorance; the imperative to personalise stories; or gullibility in swallowing US government spin, which brands Snowden as a spy rather than a whistleblower.

Read moreEdward Snowden’s NOT The Story … The Fate Of The Internet Is

‘Facebook Is A Monstrous Surveillance Engine’ – ‘Mobile Phones Are Surveillance, Tracking And Listening Devices’ (RT Interview With Dr. Richard Stallman)

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– Richard Stallman: “Facebook is a Monstrous Surveillance Engine” (Liberty Blitzkrieg, July 17, 2013):

“If you want to have the possibility of some privacy someday, you’d better join the fight now, because now a bunch of other people are joining the fight. Now is the moment when you can make a difference. If you wait until the day you wish you had some privacy and only then try to do something…well, that day you will be one of a few people doing it and that won’t be enough. You’ve got to help make a critical mass when other people are doing it – and that’s now.”“We call Windows 8.1 ‘Windows PRISM Edition’ because it’s designed to require people to send data to Microsoft servers, and of course, Microsoft will hand over any of that data to the US government on request. It puts the users in PRISM.”

– Richard Stallman in the interview embedded below

If you don’t know who Richard Stallman, aka RMS is, it’s time to to get up to speed. I can’t think of a better way to do that than by watching the video interview below. He starts off explaining why he doesn’t own a mobile phone (it can continue to listen to you even when it’s turned off), and then goes on to answer almost every technology question imaginable to a layperson. Definitely worth the time.

Washington Post Releases Four New Slides From NSA’s Prism Presentation

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– Washington Post releases four new slides from NSA’s Prism presentation (Guardian, June 30, 2013):

Newly published top-secret documents detail how NSA interfaces with tech giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft

The Washington Post has released four previously unpublished slides from the NSA’s PowerPoint presentation on Prism, the top-secret programme that collects data on foreign surveillance targets from the systems of nine participating internet companies.

The newly published top-secret documents, which the newspaper has released with some redactions, give further details of how Prism interfaces with the nine companies, which include such giants as Google, Microsoft and Apple. According to annotations to the slides by the Washington Post, the new material shows how the FBI “deploys government equipment on private company property to retrieve matching information from a participating company, such as Microsoft or Yahoo and pass it without further review to the NSA”.

Read moreWashington Post Releases Four New Slides From NSA’s Prism Presentation

Foxconn CEO Terry Gou: “We Have Over 1 Million Workers. In The Future We Will Add 1 Million Robotic Workers. Our [Human] Workers Will Then Become Technicians And Engineers.”

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– Foxconn to speed up ‘robot army’ deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories (ITworld, June 26, 2013):

Manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group is on track with its goal to a create a “million robot army”, and already has 20,000 robotic machines in its factories, said the company’s CEO Terry Gou on Wednesday.

Workers’ wages in China are rising, and so the company’s research in robots and automation has to catch up, Gou said, while speaking at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Taipei. “We have over 1 million workers. In the future we will add 1 million robotic workers,” he said. “Our [human] workers will then become technicians and engineers.”

Foxconn is the world’s largest contract electronics maker and counts Apple, Microsoft and Sony as some of its clients. Many of its largest factories are in China, where the company employs 1.2 million people, but rising are threatening to reduce company profits.

Read moreFoxconn CEO Terry Gou: “We Have Over 1 Million Workers. In The Future We Will Add 1 Million Robotic Workers. Our [Human] Workers Will Then Become Technicians And Engineers.”

Mid Year Digest – Where Are We Now? – A World View

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– Mid Year Digest (Kunstler, June 24, 2013):

by James Howard Kunstler

Wondering why the money world got its knickers in a twist last week? The answer is simple: the global economy is breaking apart and its constituent major players are doing face-plants on the downhill slope of a no-longer-cheap-oil way of life. Let’s look at them case by case.

Read moreMid Year Digest – Where Are We Now? – A World View

Max Keiser: ‘The Moment Barack Obama Took The Constitution And Wiped His Butt With it’, ‘1776 To PRISM!’, ‘Thanks Barack, You Killed The Country’ (Video)

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YouTube Added: 11.06.2013

Full Keiser Report:

Keiser Report: PRISM, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, etc. Copyright Prostitutes!

(Don’t miss his guest “The artist taxi driver”!)

YouTube Added: 11.06.2013

Google, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo And AOL Blatantly Lying To Users In Denying NSA Spy Grid Scheme PRISM

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Related info:

– President Obama & America’s Internet Companies Are ALL LYING – Here Is How Your Data Is Handed Over To Uncle Sam

– UK’s Electronic Eavesdropping And Security Agency GCHQ Also Accesses NSA’s Secret PRISM Programme

– Obama Regime To Shoot The PRISM-Gate Messenger, Launches Criminal Probe Into NSA Leaks

– President Obama Defends Unconstitutional Surveillance Programs In San Jose Speech

– How Google, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo and AOL are all blatantly lying to their own users in denying NSA spy grid scheme (Natural News, June 8, 2013):

What do Google, AOL, Skype, Facebook, Apple, Hotmail and Yahoo all have in common? They have all been caught turning over private user data to the government’s spy agency, the NSA. All these companies routinely turn over the emails, voice calls, text chats, photos, files and even logins and passwords of their users, including Americans.

“There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal,” journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Piers Morgan (who knows all about spying and hacking people’s private data). “And that is to destroy privacy and anonymity not just in the United States but around the world.”

Tech companies rush to issue (false) denials

Read moreGoogle, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo And AOL Blatantly Lying To Users In Denying NSA Spy Grid Scheme PRISM

President Obama & America’s Internet Companies Are ALL LYING – Here Is How Your Data Is Handed Over To Uncle Sam

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– “You Should Use Both” – How America’s Internet Companies Are Handing Over Your Data To Uncle Sam (ZeroHedge, June 8, 2013):

In the aftermath of the PRISM spying scandal, the first and logical response was an expected one: lie. The president did it, and so did the various companies implicated in the biggest US surveillance scandal ever exposed. To wit:

  • Zuckerberg: “Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers.”
  • Google CEO Larry Page: “We have not joined any program that would give the US government – or any other government – direct access to our servers.”
  • Yahoo: “We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.”

One small problem: they are all lying.

The NYT explains just how the explicit handover of private customer data from Corporate Server X to NSA Server Y takes place.

The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.

In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.

Read morePresident Obama & America’s Internet Companies Are ALL LYING – Here Is How Your Data Is Handed Over To Uncle Sam

UK’s Electronic Eavesdropping And Security Agency GCHQ Also Accesses NSA’s Secret PRISM Programme

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UK security agency GCHQ gaining information from world’s biggest internet firms through US-run Prism programme


Documents show GCHQ (above) has had access to the NSA’s Prism programme since at least June 2010. Photograph: David Goddard/Getty Images

– UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation (Guardian, June 7, 2013):

The UK’s electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world’s biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America’s top spy agency, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The documents show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year.

The US-run programme, called Prism, would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside the UK.

Read moreUK’s Electronic Eavesdropping And Security Agency GCHQ Also Accesses NSA’s Secret PRISM Programme

Spy state shock: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple all secretly sharing private user communications with NSA

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– Spy state shock: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple all secretly sharing private user communications with NSA (Natural News, June 7, 2013)

Breaking News: Disclosed Classified Docs Show Vast, Real-Time, Warrantless NSA Online Surveillance

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– Disclosed classified docs show vast, real-time, warrantless NSA online surveillance (RT, June 6, 2013):

Classified information obtained by the Washington Post and The Guardian has revealed a massive, warrantless online surveillance system in use by a US military intelligence agency, giving access to Americans’ search history, emails, live chats and more.

The 41-page PowerPoint presentation, which has been verified by both papers and published almost concurrently on Thursday evening, outlines details of a previously undisclosed program known as PRISM, which allows the fabled military intelligence agency to harvest massive amounts of data on everything from electronic correspondence to file transfers.

The slides were meant to be declassified in 2036.

According to the documents, the program currently boasts access to some of the largest Internet companies in the world, with Microsoft thought to be the first corporation to sign onto the surveillance arrangement in 2007.

That company’s participation was followed by Yahoo in 2008, Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, Skype and AOL in 2011, and Apple joining in 2012. Meanwhile, cloud storage company Dropbox is described as “coming soon.”

With the participation of those companies, PRISM and thereby Washington intelligence workers have access to the bulk of Americans’ email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype) chats, file transfers, social networking details and more.

Read moreBreaking News: Disclosed Classified Docs Show Vast, Real-Time, Warrantless NSA Online Surveillance

Apple Launches $17 Billion Bond Offering: Largest Ever For Non-Financial Firm

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– Apple Launches $17 Billion Bond Offering: Largest Ever For Non-Financial Firm (ZeroHedge, April 30, 2013):

And there it is. Moments ago Bloomberg disclosed the final terms of the just launched Goldman-led syndication of AAPL paper. The total size: $17 billion, which surpasses the previous record set by Roche at $16.5 billion, and makes it the biggest corporate bond synidcation in history. The breakdown:

  • $1B 3Y FRN LAUNCH AT 3ML + 5 BPS
  • $1.5B 3Y FIXED NOTES LAUNCH AT + 20 BPS
  • $2B 5Y FRN LAUNCH AT 3ML+25 BPS
  • $4B 5Y FIXED NOTES LAUNCH AT + 40 BPS
  • $5.5B 10Y FIXED NOTES LAUNCH AT +75 BPS
  • $3B 30Y DEBT LAUNCHES AT +100 BPS

30 Year paper in a tech company whose market cap has fluctuated by roughly $500 billion in the past year, and yielding just under 4%?

Sold to you.

$600 Billion In Trades In Four Years: How Apple Puts Even The Most Aggressive Hedge Funds To Shame

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– $600 Billion In Trades In Four Years: How Apple Puts Even The Most Aggressive Hedge Funds To Shame (ZeroHedge, Jan 27, 2013):

Everyone knows that for the better part of the past year Apple, Inc. (“AAPL”, or “The Company”) was the world’s biggest company by market cap, with Exxon finally regaining that title on Friday, following AAPL’s latest price drop in the aftermath of its disappointing earnings. Most know that AAPL aggressively uses all legal tax loopholes to pay as little State and Federal tax as possible, despite being one of the world’s most profitable companies.Many also know, courtesy of our exclusive from September, that Apple also is the holding company for Braeburn Capital: a firm which with a few exceptions (Bridgewater; JPM’s CIO prop trading desk) also happens to be one of the world’s largest hedge funds, whose function is to manage Apple’s massive cash hoard, with virtually zero requirements, and whose obligation is to make sure that AAPL’s cash gets laundered legally and efficiently in a way that complies with prerogative #1: avoid paying taxes.

What few if any know, is that as part of its cash management obligations, Braeburn, and AAPL by extension, has conducted a mindboggling $600 billion worth of gross notional trades in just the past four years, consisting of buying and selling assorted unknown securities, or some $250 billion in 2012 alone: a grand total which represents some $1 billion per working day on average, and which puts the net turnover of some 99% of all hedge funds to shame!

Finally, what nobody knows, except for the recipients of course, is just how much in trade commissions AAPL has paid over the past four years on these hundreds of billions in trades to the brokering banks, many (or maybe all) of which may have found this commission revenue facilitating AAPL having a “Buy” recommendation: a rating shared by 52, or 83% of the raters, despite the company’s wiping out of one year in capital gains in a few short months.

The Perfectly Legal Tax Evasion Scheme

Read more$600 Billion In Trades In Four Years: How Apple Puts Even The Most Aggressive Hedge Funds To Shame

Apple’s Flash Dump In The Last Second Of Trading Caught On Tape

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– Apple’s Flash Dump In The Last Second Of Trading Caught On Tape (ZeroHedge, Jan 25, 2013):

Sure, the retail “investors” are coming back into the “markets”… They are coming back in shifts.  And just so they know what to expect, here is what happened to Apple stock in the last second of regular trading today, courtesy of Nanex. Unlike traditional flash crashes where the trade is an HFT error, or a few shares traded through the entire bid or offer stack, in this case it looks like a very premeditated unloading of some 800K shares (some $350 million worth) of AAPL in the last second, with the full knowledge it was shake the market. Why anyone would want (or wait until the very last second) to do that, while covering the offsetting ES short in the pair trade, to ramp the market into the close, is anyone’s guess.

….

– Apple Is No Longer The World’s Most Expensive Company (ZeroHedge, Jan 25, 2013):

Irony of all ironies; on the 1-year anniversary of AAPL replacing XOM as the world’s most-expensive market capitalized company, the incessant fall of the formerly invincible has dragged it back below XOM once again. This one-year of glory is disappointing as when MSFT managed to top XOM in 1998, it held on to the top-spot for almost 3 years before relinquishing it back to the company that runs the world’s most valuable limited resource.One-year on – and AAPL is now less than XOM once again…

…

Apple (AAPL) Trades Under $500 For First Time In 11 Months

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– AAPL Trades Under $500 For First Time In 11 Months (ZeroHedge, Jan 14, 2013):

While the furious defense of $500 the second AAPL crossed under the psychological barrier – the first time it did so in regular trading since February 15, 2012 – was promptly launched as otherwise the hedge fund community, which as we reported two weeks ago, and as Bloomberg caught on today, is more levered and long than at any moment in the past 9 years and is mostly invested in AAPL, we expect this intervention to eventually succumb to the inevitable French military campaign conclusion, as not even every HFT algo programmed to lift every offer under $500 can delay the inevitable arrival of a very sad cashflow reality. As for the Bank of Israel which is now about 5% underwater on its AAPL cost basis: don’t worry – Ben will bail you out too.

Read moreApple (AAPL) Trades Under $500 For First Time In 11 Months

There Go Apple’s Margins: iPhone 5 To Sell At Wal-Mart For A Third Off Original Price

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– There Go Apple’s Margins: iPhone 5 To Sell At Wal-Mart For A Third Off Original Price (ZeroHedge, Dec 15, 2012):

Remember when less than brisk sales of the iPhone 5 after it was first unveiled (to the usual fawning media Borg collective ooh-ing and aah-ing) were blamed on “supply issues” even as “reputable” Wall Street analysts conducted channel checks which foretold of epic holiday sales and massive pent up demand. As it turns out the only commodity in short supply was, well, demand, particularly that coming from consumers, very much as we predicted during the last earnings report (which was merely the latest consecutive earnings miss in a row). And, as Reuters reports with its Friday night bombshell report, Apple has finally thrown in the towel on pretending there is a supply shortage and admitted there is simply not enough demand at the given price point, by proceeding to sell the margin flagship iPhone 5 at a third off the original price, at the bargain basement commodity expert Wal-Mart of all places. And not only the iPhone, but the Ipad too (we have no idea which generation is the latest one: the iPad 3, the New iPad, the iPad 4s, the iPad Mini, the MAXiPad, etc…) And just like that, the “niche premium” magic of the once uber-cool gizmo is gone, not to mention AAPL’s profit margins, very much as the stock price has been sensing over the past two months, during which time it lobbed off some $150 billion in market cap. And with the reflexivity of fad-ness, as long as the price of the stock is soaring for whatever reason, interest and demand in the product remains at virtually any cost. Sadly for AAPL bulls, the opposite is also true, as is being witnessed right about now.

Read moreThere Go Apple’s Margins: iPhone 5 To Sell At Wal-Mart For A Third Off Original Price

Apple: New ‘Generational Low’ For AAPL

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– New “Generational Low” For AAPL (ZeroHedge, Dec 14, 2012):

Unless you bought Apple stock before Valentine’s Day this year, you are now underwater. In what must be the best evidence of how quickly a liquidity-fueled over-owned bucket of over-optimistic extrapolation can see sentiment swing violently against it, AAPL just plunged back (on heavy volume) through its previous “generational low” from 11/16/12. At under $505.75 ($505.58), AAPL is at its lowest level since mid-February and is almost 30% off its highs on 9/21/12 as it appears the much poo-poo’d Death Cross may just have been on to something. WWJTD? and do not forget to ask WWDKD?

The two major selling days when the professionals decided now was the time… middle pane – huge average trade size…

U.S. Apple Factory May Be Robot City

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– U.S. Apple factory may be robot city (Computerworld, Dec 7, 2012):

Apple’s planned investment of $100 million next year in a U.S. manufacturing facility is relatively small, but still important. Apple has the money, talent and resources to build a highly automated factory that turns out products that are potentially cost competitive with those it now makes in China.Apple has already demonstrated its use of automation in the manufacturing of some of its MacBook products, including the MacBook Air. It was built with what the company calls its “unibody design” that was crafted from a single sheet of aluminum.

Read moreU.S. Apple Factory May Be Robot City

Apple Shifting Small Portion Of Manufacturing Away From China Back To The U.S.

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– Apple to Invest in Manufacturing Macs in U.S., Cook Says (Bloomberg, Dec 6, 2012):

Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to spend more than $100 million next year on building Mac computers in the U.S., shifting a small portion of manufacturing away from China, the country that has handled assembly of its products for years.

“Next year we’re going to bring some production to the U.S.,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money.”