Jack Linshi

"This is not a breach"

Apple Pay competitor CurrentC defended the security of its mobile payment system in a Wednesday conference call, just hours after its parent company MCX reported that hackers had obtained some users’ e-mail addresses.

MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson said the attack, which targeted the company’s email vendor, was “not a breach” of the CurrentC app itself. He also emphasized that the incident affected mostly dummy e-mails used in the yet-unreleased service’s ongoing testing phase. Davidson also revealed that some dummy zip codes were stolen and that CurrentC’s systems had withstood several repeated attacks during the past week.

Davidson added the hack hasn’t made the company hesitant to store customer information in the cloud, a plan that’s been criticized given that CurrentC’s main competitor, Apple Pay, doesn’t collect any traceable information at all.

“In terms of consumers’ information and any payment credentials, they’re not stored on a device. They’re not actually present in the physical world,” Davidson said. “And that we think is a design or implementation that makes it far more secure than the world we live in today, and far more secure than many of the alternatives that have been advanced over the last few years.”

While MCX is a joint venture by retailers in order to create a retailer-owned payment system, Davidson said that the service is “first and foremost” about customer engagement. Part of that customer engagement will include a consumer privacy dashboard so that users can elect what information, if any, they would like to share with merchants.

MCX has been under scrutiny after reports suggested that MCX members CVS and Rite Aid disabled Apple Pay because of a contractual agreement for exclusivity. However, Davidson said that the company welcomes competition, and that it is the merchants’ choice whether or not to accept other forms of mobile payment. He added that MCX member retailers are not subject to fines if they choose to adopt Apple Pay, which registered 1 million credit cards in its first three days.

Davidson added that although some MCX merchants have blocked Apple Pay, MCX is open to member retailers using both Apple Pay and CurrentC simultaneously once the latter service goes public early next year.

“We have a great deal of respect for Apple, of course, and Apple Pay,” Davidson said. “We believe and our merchants believe we require two to three strong players in the space to build the ecosystem.”

Retailers joined forces to create the digital wallet, which has received cold reviews

No one expected the game maker to turn a profit this quarter

Nintendo’s latest earnings report surprised everybody. On Oct. 28, the struggling Japanese games maker said its net profit was $224 million from July to September. Most analysts had expected the company to post earnings nearly four times less, according to the Wall Street Journal. The stunning earnings also helped the game maker recover from a nearly $75 million loss last year.

Here’s why Nintendo is beating everyone’s expectations:

Gamers worldwide still love Super Smash Bros.

Nintendo said Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, which was released in Japan and began overseas shipping in Sept., has already logged 3.22 million units in sales globally.

Nintendo’s life simulator game has become a hit overseas.

Sales of Tomodachi Life, a life simulation game, marked 1.27 million units in worldwide sales this fiscal year. The popularity of the 3DS-only game, along with that of Super Smash Bros. for 3DS, also helped boost sales of the handheld console.

The Mario Kart franchise isn’t hitting the brakes.

Mario Kart 8, the latest racing game in the series supported by Wii U, has displayed steady sales even though it was released in May.

A spinoff of The Legend of Zelda is reigniting old flames.

Nintendo’s new video game Hyrule Warriors is gaining popularity with global audiences who are getting a second chance to play with legendary characters Zelda, Link and Lana from the Zelda series.

The Yen is depreciating, which is working in Nintendo’s favor.

Nintendo said it logged 15.5 billion yen ($143 million) in exchange gains due to the depreciation of the yen, which was greater in recent months than it was last year.

They were down to only 15 about 50 years ago

Giant tortoises endemic to the Galapagos Islands are back from near extinction, according to a study published Tuesday in PLOS One.

The Espanola giant tortoises, a species that can live for over 100 years, had numbered in the thousands but dropped to 15 by 1960 due to human exploitation, the study said. Between 1963 and 1974, conservationists brought the 12 female and three male surviving giant tortoises into captivity. Over 1,500 of their offspring have since been released onto the island, and the species’ survival no longer requires human intervention, scientists said.

“The population is secure. It’s a rare example of how biologists and managers can collaborate to recover a species from the brink of extinction,” said James P. Gibbs, the study’s lead author and a professor of at the State University of New York’s Environmental Science and Forestry, in a press release.

Reintroducing the giant tortoise population not only promotes biodiversity but also restores their position as “ecosystem engineers” who disperse seeds and other organisms, according to the report. While the population is stable, the number of Espanola giant tortoises is not likely to increase substantially until other problems in the environment, such as the overgrowth of woody plants, are resolved.

The singer has remembered the Alamo since he was a child

Phil Collins recently brought his Alamo artifact collection back to its original San Antonio home, a site the 63-year-old has been fascinated by since he was young.

The In the Air Tonight singer said he became fascinated by the U.S. historical site ever since he saw the 1955 film Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier as a child in London, according to Reuters. The British rocker has since amassed a large collection of artifacts from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, when Mexican troops attacked the Alamo Mission, a chapel built to spread Christianity to those living in the region. The Alamo’s defenders sought revenge, and later defeated the Mexican Army to establish the Republic of Texas, which would be later become a U.S. state.

Collins’ collection will be housed temporarily at a building near the Alamo before they are moved into a $100 million museum called the Phil Alamo Collins Collection.

“This completes the journey for me,” Collins told Reuters. “These artifacts are coming home.”

The artifacts include a leather pouch that Davy Crockett, who died at the Battle of the Alamo, brought from his home state of Tennessee to Texas during the Texas Revolution. Collins also owned one of only four remaining rifles that were owned by Crockett, and an original Bowie knife owned by Jim Bowie during the Battle of the Alamo, where he also died.

[Reuters]

The singer would be the first to have three albums that sold 1 million copies in their first weeks

Taylor Swift’s latest album, released Monday, is on track to hit 1 million in sales during its first week, according to Billboard. That would make 1989 the first album in 2014 to reach that watermark, and it would make the 24-year-old the only singer ever to have three albums achieve the one-million-in-one-week feat.

Taylor’s last million-selling debut week was Red, which was released in 2012 and sold 1.21 million copies. (Red was also the last million-selling debut week, period.) Before that, the singer had released Speak Now in 2010, which promptly sold 1.05 million copies.

[Billboard]

The former dictator of Panama sought damages for a character based on him

A California judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit filed by former dictator Manual Noriega against a video game he claimed depicted him in a bad light.

Manuel Noriega, who ruled Panama for most of the 1980s, sought charges in July against video game publisher Activision, for creating a character based on him without permission in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Wall Street Journal reported. Noriega said the 2012 shooter game unlawfully depicted him “as a kidnapper, murderer and enemy of the state,” according to court documents.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William H. Fahey tossed the lawsuit on grounds that Noriega’s likeness was sufficiently “transformative”–meaning that its use was adopted for the sake of commentary or expression. Fahey also argued that the video game did not benefit from Noriega’s inclusion, as the former soldier and convicted drug trafficker had argued.

“The Court concludes that the marketability and economic value of the challenged work in this case comes not from Noriega, but from the creativity, skill and reputation of defendants,” Fahey wrote in court documents.

The dismissal was supported by former NYC major and Activision co-counsel Rudy Giuliani, who called Noriega’s claims “audacious,” as it touches on the issue of the many other video games and works of art that draw from and freely interpret historical or political figures.

“This ruling is an important victory and we thank the court for protecting free speech,” said Rudy Giuliani. “This was an absurd lawsuit from the very beginning and we’re gratified that in the end, a notorious criminal didn’t win. This is not just a win for the makers of Call of Duty, but is a victory for works of art across the entertainment and publishing industries throughout the world.”

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