Revenues double at China's Xiaomi

5 January 2015 Last updated at 02:22

Chinese handset maker Xiaomi said it more than doubled its revenue in 2014, just a week after it was named the world's most valuable tech start-up.

The firm said it made 74.3bn yuan (£7.8bn; $11.97bn) in pre-tax sales last year, up 135% from 2013.

Now the world's third largest smartphone maker behind Samsung and Apple, it sold over 61 million phones last year, up 227% from a year earlier.

Last week, Xiaomi received $1.1bn in funding that valued the firm at $45bn.

That figure surpasses the $40bn value of taxi booking app Uber, which previously held the title of the most valuable private technology company.

The firm also surpassed its target of selling 60 million phones in 2014, up from less than 20 million a year earlier.

Looking forward, the company said it planned to unveil a new flagship device in January.

'Starting from scratch'

In a translation of a post on chief executive Lei Jun's Sina Weibo microblog on Sunday, the co-founder said the company had come a long way since starting "from scratch" in April 2010.

"2014 is a year of important milestones for Xiaomi. We came from behind and became market leader in China," he said.

With its business model of producing cheap smartphones, the fast-growing firm overtook global market leader Samsung in sales last year in the world's largest smartphone market, China.

Mr Lei, however, does expect growth in the Chinese market to ease this year and plans to enter more overseas markets.

"We have successfully entered seven markets outside mainland China.

"In India, we sold over 1 million smartphones in less than five months," he said, despite the intellectual property challenges it faced in the country last month.

Xiaomi sales were temporarily halted in India after Swedish firm Ericsson filed a patent complaint against it.

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Child porn tops Tor hidden site visits

30 December 2014 Last updated at 18:24 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Most traffic to sites hidden on the Tor network go to those dealing in images of child sexual abuse a study suggests.

The six-month study sought to catalogue hidden services on the so-called "dark net" and work out which were the most popular.

It found lots of sites peddling illegal drugs but the most popular were those involved with abuse.

However, the researcher behind the study said it was hard to conclude that people were behind all the visits.

Drug traffic

Tor, or The Onion Router, is an anonymising system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in. The anonymity offered by the network has encouraged many people to set up hidden .onion sites that offer content, services and goods that it is illegal to sell openly.

Carried out by Dr Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth, the study set up servers to join the Tor network and catalogued hidden services found on it. The system was also able to visit the sites to download HTML content so they could be categorised and to track how many visits each one received.

Traffic to hidden services on Tor represents about 1.5% of all the data passing across the network on any given day.

Over the six months of the study, Dr Owen and his colleagues saw about 80,000 hidden sites on Tor.

"Most of the hidden services we only saw once. They do not tend to exist for a very long time," he said during a speech at the 31st Chaos Communications Congress in Hanover, where he presented his findings.

The top 40 hidden services were involved with controlling botnets - networks of home computers compromised by malicious programs. Many of these botnets have been shut down which has left their client computers fruitlessly polling Tor seeking the now dormant command systems.

The study found that the biggest number of hidden services were dedicated to selling illegal drugs. Also in the top five were underground markets, fraud sites, mail services and those dealing in the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Although the number of sites dealing in images of abuse on Tor is small, traffic to them dwarfs that going to other sites, said Dr Owen.

About 75% of the traffic observed in the study ended up at abuse sites, said Dr Owen.

"When we found this out we were stunned," he said. "This is not what we expected at all."

Despite the findings, Dr Owen cautioned against drawing too many conclusions since he did not know which visits were done by people and which by machines.

"It's not as quite as straightforward as it looks," he said. "It might look like there are lots of people visiting these sites but it is difficult to conclude that from this information."

"What proportion are people and which are something else? We simply don't know." he said, adding that "crawlers" run by law enforcement and other agencies that police abuse sites could be responsible for the steady stream of traffic.

Roger Dingledine, one of the original developers of Tor, also said the methodology of the study - which only scanned long-lived sites to see what content they offered - made it hard to draw conclusions about what people did on the network.

"Without knowing how many sites disappeared before he got around to looking at them, it's impossible to know what percentage of fetches went to abuse sites," he said.

"There are important uses for hidden services, such as when human rights activists use them to access Facebook or to blog anonymously," he added.

"These uses for hidden services are new and have great potential."

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New energy rules for domestic devices

1 January 2015 Last updated at 00:47 By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analyst

European Union rules will oblige new networked devices such as modems and internet-connected televisions to switch themselves off when not in use.

Many gadgets are connected to the internet 24/7, using 25-100 watts while their owners sleep.

But new devices sold from Thursday will fall to sleep, using a trickle of power when they are not in use.

The European Commission said the move would save an average household about £32 a year.

The change is part of the EU's Ecodesign initiative, which aims to cut costs, improve competitiveness and reduce carbon emissions.

Energy labels on online products will also be improved, while gas ovens will have to display energy ratings.

The Commission said the best gas oven would typically save £143 over its lifetime compared with the worst.

Critics argue that such regulations - which recently included banning the sale of popular high-wattage vacuum cleaners - are denying consumer choice.

Energy experts have told the BBC that manufacturers deliberately increased the wattage of some vacuum cleaners to make them appear more attractive to consumers - even though the machines produced more heat and noise, rather than more suction.

Coffee machines

The UK technology guru James Dyson backed the efficiency regulations in principle and said many vacuum cleaners could use less power without compromising their ability to clean.

But he said some manufacturers had conspired to skew EU efficiency tests to their own advantage.

The new EU rules even extend to the coffee machine. Drip filter machines with non-insulated jugs must power down 40 minutes after the end of the last brewing cycle.

Domestic drip-filter coffee machines with insulated jugs - which keep the coffee warm and preserve its taste without further heating - must switch off after five minutes.

Coffee drinkers may be alarmed by the changes, but the Commission claims consumers will not even notice, as coffee in drip-filter machines without an insulated jug is undrinkable after 40 minutes anyway.

The Commission says its measures on stand-by devices will reduce energy consumption by almost 75 terawatt-hours (TWh) without affecting product performance.

This will reduce CO2 emissions by 28 million tons, equivalent to the annual emissions of 1.5 million households.

An analysis for BBC last month estimated that the efficiency rules have reduced the average individual's electricity consumption by 10% over five years.

Manufacturers who do not comply with the new rules will be judged by member states.

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Travel firms sue cheap airfare site

30 December 2014 Last updated at 14:14

United Airlines and travel firm Orbitz have launched legal action against a site that seeks out cheap "hidden city" airfares.

The site finds cheap fares by looking for flights that have a stopover at the city someone wants to travel to.

The two firms allege the site is engaged in "unfair competition" and seeks to recoup lost revenue.

The developer behind the site said he was doing nothing wrong by exposing the "inefficiencies" in airline ticketing.

The legal action has been filed in Illinois.

No luggage

The Skiplagged website works by looking for longer flights that include a stop in a big city en route to another destination. One example might be flying from New York to Lake Tahoe that has a stopover in San Francisco.

If someone wanted to travel to San Francisco they might spend less on the fare by booking the stopover flight and not travelling to Tahoe than they would simply booking a flight to San Francisco from New York. In some cases, the site suggests, travellers can save 40% or more on ticket fares.

The trick only works with one-way flights. Travellers cannot check in any luggage as that would then travel on to the flight's final destination.

Twenty-two-year-old developer Aktarer Zaman, who created the site, told CNNMoney that he had made no profit from Skiplagged. He declined to comment specifically on the case to CNN.

Mr Zaman has launched a fundraising campaign to gather cash to fight the legal battle against United and Orbitz. So far he has raised $10,538 (£6,776) of the $15,000 needed.

In its legal filing, United and Orbitz said the site was "intentionally and maliciously" interfering with the travel firms' business and was making it breach its contracts with its partners.

The documents added that "logistical and public safety concerns" meant using "hidden city" tickets was prohibited and, as a result, using Skiplagged broke these rules.

The two firms are seeking damages of at least $75,000 in revenue they claim they have lost as a result of Skiplagged operating.

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Wind-up radio inventor honoured

30 December 2014 Last updated at 22:34 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Inventor Trevor Baylis has been made a CBE in the New Year Honours list.

Best known for creating the Baygen wind-up radio, Mr Baylis was honoured for services to intellectual property.

Throughout his colourful life, which involved a stint as a stuntman, Mr Baylis has spent much of his time inventing or involved with engineering.

Most recently he has campaigned to make the UK a more hospitable place for inventors, and is seeking to help them safeguard their creations.

Stolen property

"It was a great surprise," said Twickenham-based Mr Baylis of learning of the award. "I got an OBE in 1997 and that was one of the best days of my life."

"I've been pushing hard to help other inventors because so many people get ripped off like a turkey or find they do not have the money to pay the lawyers to protect themselves."

Mr Baylis is currently heading a venture called Baylis Brands, which advises inventors about the best way to develop ideas and puts them in touch with other experts that can help turn their creations into marketable products.

He is also working to get laws changed to help inventors and engineers if they find someone else is profiting from their work.

"I'm trying to get patent theft recognised as a white collar crime," he said, adding that the idea had received a sympathetic hearing from the Metropolitan Police.

Mr Baylis' best known invention is the Baygen wind-up radio, which he came up with in 1991 while watching a documentary about Aids in Africa that proposed using educational radio programmes to tackle the virus' spread. An appearance on the BBC's Tomorrow's World in 1994 helped turn his invention into a commercial product.

Despite its success, Mr Baylis did not profit from his invention and the design is now under the control of the Freeplay engineering firm.

"Inventing is not about the money," he said. "Who wants to be the richest man in the graveyard? There are no pockets in a shroud."

He said many others could go through the same experience as he did and become an inventor of a household object.

"I want to make sure everyone is aware they are an inventor," he said. "I don't want people to think you have to be a genius to be one."

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Nasa to hack 'amnesiac' Mars rover

31 December 2014 Last updated at 11:44

Mars rover Opportunity, which has been exploring the Red Planet for more than 10 years, is suffering from memory problems, Nasa has said.

The six-wheeled vehicle - not to be confused with Curiosity, which launched in 2011 - keeps resetting unexpectedly.

The Opportunity team thinks an age-related fault affecting the flash memory used by the robot is to blame.

It believes it has found a way to hack the rover's software to disregard the faulty part.

Speaking to Discovery News, Nasa project manager John Callas outlined how his team intended to solve the issue.

'It forgets'

He explained how the rover, like a typical computer, has two key types of memory - volatile and non-volatile.

• Non-volatile memory "remembers" its information even if it is powered down, making it ideal for long-term storage, similar to how a hard drive works on a PC
• Volatile memory - comparable to a PC's random access memory, or RAM - is quicker to access but requires power, so when the machine turns off, any data stored within the volatile memory is lost

The problem with Opportunity is that its non-volatile memory is suffering from a fault, probably related to the hardware's age.

It means that when the rover tries to save telemetry data to the flash memory it fails, and so it then writes it to the volatile memory instead. When the rover powers down, the information is then wiped.

"So now we're having these events we call 'amnesia,'," explained Mr Callas in Discovery News.

"Which is the rover trying to use the flash memory, but it wasn't able to, so instead it uses the RAM... it stores telemetry data in that volatile memory, but when the rover goes to sleep and wakes up again, all [the data] is gone.

"So that's why we call it amnesia - it forgets what it has done."

Old rover

The problems are becoming more severe, Nasa says, with the memory issue causing the rover to reset itself, and in some cases stop communicating with mission control altogether.

In an attempt to solve the problem, the Nasa team is attempting to "hack" the rover's software so that it ignores the faulty part of its flash memory, and instead writes, permanently, to the healthy hardware.

The process will take a couple of weeks, Mr Callas told Discovery News. However, he added that Opportunity is ageing and could be heading towards the end of its useful life.

"It's like you have an aging parent, that is otherwise in good health - maybe they go for a little jog every day, play tennis each day - but you never know, they could have a massive stroke right in the middle of the night," he said.

"So we're always cautious that something could happen."

Even if the rover fails now, it will have comfortably exceeded the initial goal of spending three months on the Red Planet.

Ten years after it first landed, Opportunity has covered 26 miles (41.8km) of the Mars surface, and sent back vital intelligence about the planet's biological make-up.

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HMRC defends 'tweet us' suggestion

2 January 2015 Last updated at 11:21

Tax officials have defended asking people to tweet their inquiries after an MP said the idea was "laughable".

Stephen Hardwick, director of communications for HM Revenue and Customs, said Twitter would be a "supplement" to calling helplines.

But Mr Hardwick said people should not tweet any personal data.

He apologised for long waiting times on HMRC's phonelines and promised more staff for an expected spike in self-assessment calls this month.

When HMRC suggested using its new @HMRCcustomers Twitter account for some queries, Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said the idea was "laughable".

She added: "No customer based service should tolerate such a poor service and both ministers and senior management should simply sort this out."

'Same question'

Conservative MP Mark Garnier said he was unable to think of even a simple tax query which could be expressed within Twitter's 140 character limit, while shadow Treasury minister Shabana Mahmood said it "beggars belief" that the government would encourage people to "publicly tweet about their tax affairs".

But Mr Hardwick told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are serious about the use of Twitter as a supplement to going online and using the telephone.

"What we don't want people to do is to give us any personal details.

"It's a very useful social media device to get guidance, to help point people to where they can get information online.

"It's a pilot, it is starting small, but the whole point of social media is you answer a question once and hundreds or thousands of people can see the answer, rather than answering the phone to all of those people asking the same question."

HMRC figures show that average waiting times for its contact centre telephone queues reached 10 minutes and 53 seconds in September - more than double the five minutes and 21 seconds recorded at the same point in 2013.

'Really sorry'

Some 34.5% of calls were cut off, compared with the 20.5% recorded last year. And the number answered in under two minutes dropped from half to a quarter.

Mr Hardwick said he was "really sorry" the phone service was not up to standard.

"What we are doing for the self assessment peak in January, which is one of our two big peaks in the year along with the tax credits peak in July, is we are putting 1,500 people on the phones to help," he said.

"We are a bit like the Royal Mail with the Christmas post - you don't staff up all year for a very short-term peak, so we are moving people flexibly in and out of the telephones."

The deadline for filing an online self assessment tax return is 31 January.

Revealing HMRC aimed to answer 89% of calls first time this month, Mr Hardwick urged people not to leave their tax affairs until the last minute.

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Apple sued over 'shrinking' storage

2 January 2015 Last updated at 11:36

Apple is facing a lawsuit for not telling users about the amount of memory required by its flagship operating system.

The legal complaint revolves around iOS 8 and the amount of memory it reserves for itself on iPods, iPhones and iPads.

The complaint alleges that it takes up so much space that far less than advertised is left for people to store their own data.

Apple has yet to issue any official comment on the lawsuit.

Update upset

The complaint has been filed in California by Miami residents Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara who say that iOS 8 can occupy up to 23.1% of the memory available on some Apple devices.

In addition, upgrading devices from the earlier iOS 7 to 8 can cause people to lose up to 1.3 gigabytes of memory, said papers filed in support of the legal action.

The amount of memory taken up by iOS 8 can mean users run out of storage and, the pair allege, this is helping Apple force people to sign up for its fee-based iCloud storage system.

The lawsuit is seeking millions of dollars in damages for those using Apple devices facing the storage squeeze.

So far, Apple has not responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

The latest upgrade to iOS 8 was released in late September but Apple was forced to withdraw and then re-issue it because the first version meant a lot of iPhone 6 and Plus handsets could no longer make calls.

Apple issued a public apology over the botched update but said only 40,000 people were affected by it.

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Anger at India website blocking

2 January 2015 Last updated at 11:44

A government block on more than 30 high-profile websites has caused anger across India.

India's Department of Telecoms ordered the blocking of the sites in order to prevent the publicising of "jihadi activities".

After considerable pressure, four of the sites - Weebly, Vimeo, Daily Motion and Github - were unblocked.

Officials said the other sites would have their blocks lifted if they complied with the "law of the land".

The Indian Ministry for Communication and Information Technology said in a statement: "It was stated that Anti National group are using social media for mentoring Indian youths to join the Jihadi activities."

It went on to say that the primary concern was that users posting material on the sites did not require any authentication, and that identities could be hidden.

The four websites that have been unblocked were said to have worked with the Indian government to address concerns - although it is unclear what changes, if any, have been made.

Some users were reporting that they were still unable to reach the apparently unblocked sites.

Pranesh Prakash, from the India-based Centre for Internet and Society, said: "Any intelligent person can see these sites don't incite terrorism."

'Many complaints'

Ahead of the ban lifting, a Vimeo spokeswoman said: "It is Vimeo's longstanding policy not to allow videos that promote terrorism, and we remove such videos whenever we become aware of them.

"We have not received notice from the Indian government concerning such videos and have contacted them requesting the blocking order to identify, and evaluate the video in question."

Many internet users in the country are angry that other sites remain blocked, in particular Pastebin - a site used for "dumping" text online anonymously - and The Internet Archive, a US organisation that offers a database of old websites.

The Internet Archive said on Twitter that it had received "many complaints" from users who were unable to access the service.

India has a history of sporadically blocking websites, or issuing warnings about online content.

In August 2012, 245 sites were blocked by the government in an attempt, it said, to quell violence.

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Calorie-counting wristband tested

5 January 2015 Last updated at 12:12 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

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The BBC's Richard Taylor tests the new GoBe fitness band

A controversial calorie-counting wristband, which had been denounced by some medical experts, has been put to the test by the BBC.

The creators of the GoBe wristband say it can automatically, non-invasively count the calories eaten by the wearer.

After crowdfunding $1.1m (£707,000) to build the product, the company experienced an intense backlash - with critics saying it was a "scam".

The BBC challenged its makers to prove it was capable of doing what they said.

After the GoBe team sought cash for the project, medical experts warned that they thought the kit was either vapourwear that would never exist, or would fail to live up to its inventors' claims.

And when the bracelet's Indiegogo page raised more than a million dollars - more than 10 times its target - members of the medical profession lined up to explain that even if the tech did monitor blood's glucose concentration, as suggested, that still wouldn't deliver a reliable guide to calorie intake.

It didn't help that when the start-up involved, HealBe, published details of "independent" research into its tech, it emerged that claims of an 84%-93% accuracy rate were based on tests that had involved only five people monitored over a five-day period.

So when George Mikaberydze - the firm's co-founder - agreed to let the BBC test GoBe, we were slightly surprised.

Spoiler: it worked better than we expected, but our test was hardly scientific and far from conclusive.

Food test

On the plus side, the experiment involved eating and drinking a meal of our choosing after we rejected HealBe's offer to pick out the food that would be consumed.

On the minus side, we did not have the opportunity to try out GoBe ourselves as we were told "it takes time to calibrate" to a specific person, and so the results were based on us stuffing Mr Mikaberydze with snack food.

Here's what we fed him:

• Half a cheese and turkey sandwich (125 calories)
• A bottle of apple juice (210 calories)
• A small Snickers chocolate bar (220 calories)

The smartphone app, which connects to the GoBe wirelessly over Bluetooth, started rising within 15 minutes.

But because it takes time for the body to digest its intake, we had to wait about two-and-a-half hours to get a final reading.

The result was that the software estimated Mr Mikaberydze had eaten 514 calories, which wasn't far off the 555 calories suggested by the food labels. And to be fair, the number was still slowly climbing when we had to part company.

So, how is the wristband supposed to have achieved this?

Electrical current

The hardware itself isn't revolutionary.

The sensor involved uses a technique called bioimpedance, which involves passing an imperceptible electrical current through the body to measure its resistance to the effect. Best-selling fitness tracker-maker Jawbone also makes use of bioimpedance in its latest model to measure users' heart rates, and the effect has also been utilised by specialist medical equipment for years.

What makes HealBe stand out, however, is that it suggests that it is the first to have developed an algorithm that can turn the bioimpedance reading into a calorie count.

"When you eat food, you have proteins, carbs and fats," explains Mr Mikaberydze.

"Carbs from the meal convert to glucose, and the glucose goes to the cells.

"When glucose goes into the cells, water goes out - that means the water balance changes. The bioimpedance sensor used measures this water flow, in and out.

"And [knowing this] we can build a glucose curve… and calculate the carbs."

He adds that since the amount of fat and protein eaten influences the shape of the glucose curve by flattening it, his software can deduce all three nutritional elements, and go on to deliver the calorie intake estimate.

He adds that the mathematical equations involved have taken a decade to work out and put into practice.

But some medical professionals have disputed the science involved, casting doubt over whether bioimpedance can accurately measure intracellular glucose concentrations.

The blog TechHive memorably concluded that GoBe was the "modern fit-tech version of snake oil", and some of the project's crowdfunders have asked - and obtained - their money back.

'Holy grail'

But if - and it's a big if - HealBe can go on to prove its device really does give a close estimate of calorie intake, the rewards could be huge, saving tech-loving dieters the hassle of manually inputting what they've eaten into apps such as MyFitnessPal.

"It's one of the holy grails in regards to wearables," comments Ben Wood, chief of research at the CCS Insight tech consultancy.

"If you can crack these types of really tough measurement challenges it opens whole new avenues of opportunity in the wearables space."

He adds that selling GoBe wristbands would be the tip of the iceberg. The real riches would be secured by licensing the algorithm involved to others - something HealBe says it is already in talks to do.

But Mr Wood adds that there would be other hurdles to overcome.

"Any type of wearable device that claims specific medical capabilities will be heading towards an absolute minefield," he states.

"Making such claims risks getting the US Food and Drug Administration involved, and it sets some very tough bars from a regulatory performance perspective."

'Something revolutionary'

One of the so-called red flags that has caused so many people to doubt HealBe's claims is the theory that if a calorie-counting wristband were possible, one of the bigger tech firms would have already invented it.

But Mr Mikaberydze disputes this idea.

"Not all the ideas come from the big companies," he says.

"Take the example of Tesla. Its [electric cars] weren't produced by BMW or Mercedes or Chevrolet.

"Small companies are more eager to learn something new and to bring something revolutionary to the market."

Mr Mikaberydze says 12,000 devices have been manufactured. About half will be delivered to Indiegogo funders, with the remainder going on sale later this month.

Feedback from those customers will help determine whether the sceptics were wrong, or whether HealBe's claims are just too good to be true.

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