In a detailed post, the site’s tech team has published a fairly thorough tick-tock on how the attack was carried out.

This is the opposite of what companies usually do when they experience a security breach. The pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army has been attacking the Twitter accounts of many Western media organizations in recent weeks, including CBS News, the BBC, Associated Press, and others). None of those organizations have followed up with any significant disclosure about what happened.

When companies and organizations suffer a computer breach of any kind, the impulse is to keep the details of how it was carried out close to the vest. There are many legitimate reasons for this, not the least of which is that it’s embarrassing. And the details can shed light on internal processes and procedures that might be of value to competitors.

In addition, there’s a public relations consideration. Stories about hacking attacks are negative. If there’s any media coverage, there’s an understandable desire for the coverage to stop. Disclosures about how it happened yield another round of coverage that would otherwise be unwanted. In cases like this, the desire for no coverage wins out.

As one media organization after another has fallen for the Syrian Electronic Army’s tricks, there seemed to be a common thread that ran through the circumstances of each incident. All appear to have fallen prey to some kind of “phishing” attack. These are spoofed emails that look legitimate but which contain attachments or links that are used to gather information like usernames and passwords to carry out the attack.

What The Onion has disclosed is that the attackers in this case used a sophisticated multilayered attack, using information gleaned in the first round to then launch a second that gathers more information, and so on, until at last they had penetrated the target: The Onion’s Twitter account, with a healthy five million followers.

This is by far the most detailed account of any of these attacks that I’ve read. And the more people who read it the better, because eventually the methods used will stop working.

I’ve long thought that there ought to be more transparency from private companies in these matters, especially from media organizations that have a certain amount of accountability to the public that they serve. When hackers thought to be based in China attacked several media organizations, including The Wall Street Journal (which, like this website, is owned by News Corp.) and the New York Times, the apparent intent was to monitor communications about reporting what those organizations were doing about Chinese officials and companies.

In the case of the Syrian Electronic Army, the intent was to take advantage of the Twitter followers these organizations have attracted and hijack their accounts to spread political propaganda. The attacks do some short-term damage to reputations and result in some embarrassing press coverage for a day or so. Usually, no one ever learns anything useful, because the details remain obscured. Yesterday, The Onion changed that. It’s an example we can all learn from.

This one comes courtesy of the BBC’s official weather account, which a few hours ago was putting out innocuous stuff like this:

There’s an amber warning for #rain in south west England now. Keep up to date with this & all our weather news here: bbc.in/ce0V

– BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

But about an hour ago someone claimed the account in the name of the “Syrian Electronic Army,” with this tweet:

Syrian Electronic Army Was Here via @official_sea #SEA #Syria

– BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

And since then things have gotten more … interesting.

Tsunami alert for Haifa: Residents are advised to return to Poland.

– BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

Saudi weather station down due to head on-collision with camel

– BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

Scandal: Edinburgh storm warning station decommissioned after maintenance fund diverted to arming Syrian opposition

– BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

(Image courtesy of Radoslaw Lecyk/Shutterstock.com)

But mostly it’s a ton of fun to watch him assess children’s backpack designs, on the BBC kids’ show “Blue Peter”:

Today there are millions of people making stuff and putting it into the world: that’s become part of our identity and it shouldn’t be limited to people who fancy themselves writers, or who are particularly witty or talented: curation is a new, more accessible way to express yourself.

– David Karp, Tumblr CEO, to BBC economics editor Paul Mason

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Like others, I’ve asked Amazon how it manages to keep Kindle prices low while still offering some of the latest hardware, and, like others, I’ve never managed to coax out a straight answer. Just last month, I posed the question to CEO Jeff Bezos, and he dodged again, acknowledging only that “we don’t want to lose a lot of money on the device.”

But apparently Bezos has tired of dancing around the subject, because when the BBC asked on Thursday, he answered: “We sell the hardware at our cost, so it is break-even on the hardware.”

The comments came a week after the company started shipping the Kindle Paperwhite, the well-reviewed new e-reader that comes with a glowing screen. The new Kindle Fire HD with an 8.9-inch display will start shipping Nov. 20.

It should not be a surprise that Amazon doesn’t make money off the sale of these devices. Many teardowns have suggested that the hardware components alone cost close to the sale price. Additionally, Bezos has made it clear that he wants the devices’ success to be measured by the amount of books and other content people buy on them — not on the sale of the hardware alone. That’s probably why Amazon declines to disclose how many devices it sells each quarter despite pleas from Wall Street.

Amazon’s model is familiar to other retail business, where margins are low and made up on tremendous volume. But that’s in contrast with most consumer electronics companies, like Apple, which sells hardware at generous margins. Bezos declined to say which approach was better. In my interview with him, he explained: “Our approach is our approach, and we don’t even claim it’s the right approach. It’s not something that’s new, but it’s something we’ve done since the founding of the company.”

I really was surprised by the BBC, using this very arty and animated promo video for the upcoming Olympic Games there.

But it’s head and shoulders better than the rah-rah-agony-of-defeat ones you see in the U.S. In this case, at least, CGI is better than the real thing.

Enjoy:

But when it comes to the verdict, surely the reporter should rush to the live microphone or camera first — even if that means being beaten by a rival tweeter?

– BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones on the BBC’s new guidelines that prohibit its reporters from breaking news on Twitter

But when the Tehran family settled on the couch with a bowl of pistachios and switched on the television, all they saw was scrambled imagery. The satellite signal was being jammed.

“We were very disappointed that we couldn’t see the film,” said Shohreh, who declined to let her last name be used.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

But even though the world’s biggest video site is on a mission to upgrade its content to include more “premium” stuff, there’s plenty of it on the site right now. It’s just that you have to know where to look for it, and a lot of it is only going to appeal to a relatively small group of people.

Here, for example, is a full-length biography of physics genius Richard Feynman. Given that it doesn’t appear to be uploaded by the BBC, which made the show, I’m not quite sure if it’s supposed to be there. On the other hand, it appears to have been up on the site for a full year, and has attracted thousands of views, so presumably the Beeb could have had it yanked if it wanted to. (YouTube, by the way, used to have a 10-minute limit on uploads, in part to prevent people from playing entire movies on the site. But it dropped that requirement a while ago.)

No big takeaway here, other than these two things:

• If you’re at all interested in modern science, and have an hour and a half to spare, this should be on your list.
• There’s lots of other stuff like this buried in the 48 hours of video per minute that users upload to the site. You just need someone to point you to it. In this case, that would be the excellent Maria Popova.

That means you can watch “The Heart is But a Child,” a Hindi romantic comedy, with English captions. And you could also watch part of the movie with Thai subtitles, too — but you won’t be able to watch all of it until Viki’s volunteer translators finish their work on the film.

When I last talked to Viki CEO Razmig Hovaghimian about his company, I obsessed over the idea that Viki’s volunteer workforce would demand a cut of of the company’s revenue or equity as it grew. At the time — a little more than a year ago — the company had just raised $4.3 million from Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and Hovaghimian told me he thought his volunteers would keep working for free even with the new money.

Apparently he’s right — he says he now has 500,000 translators working on his movies, up from 100,000 a year ago. And now he’s raised another $20 million in funding with the BBC and SK Telecom unit SK Planet, along with earlier investors. Hovaghimian, a former NBCUniversal executive, says the money and partnerships will help him secure more content and distribution — in addition to his own site and YouTube, you can currently find some some of this stuff on Hulu and Netflix, and there’s more on the way.

Revenue? Last year I got Hovaghimian to tell me he was on a $1 million annual run rate, before factoring out payments to distributors and content partners. But this time he has wised up and is staying mum.

The last one means Wolff is particularly in demand these days, which is why he showed up to the BBC’s satellite studio in New York today.

The Beeb had other (unintentional) plans. You must watch this clip:

As Sky News reminds us, this is not the first time the BBC has brought the wrong dude on camera. Here’s a clip of Guy Goma, who had shown up to a BBC studio for a job interview in 2006, and was instead put on air and asked about Apple.

(Not terribly necessary disclosure in this case: Both Sky News and this Web site are owned by News Corp., the company at the center of the scandal that prompted Wolff to go on air today.)

That’s a big change for the video rental company, which has previously made its money on movies and tv shows that someone had already shown somewhere else.

But Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos doesn’t see it that way. His argument is that this is just like the company’s deals to buy other shows — just a bit riskier.

How much risk, exactly? Sarandos wouldn’t discuss the terms of the deal, though people familiar with the company have already batted down the $100 million-plus figure that Deadline.com threw out when they first reported the story.

But Sarandos did say Netflix won’t cover the entire costs of production with its license fees: That’s the responsibility of Media Rights Capital, which will produce and own the show. So even if the show does cost $4 million or more per episode, for 26 episodes, Netflix won’t be on the hook for the entire thing.

No matter what the details are, it’s still a big bet, and a big move. Sarandos walks me through the company’s rationale in an edited Q&A:

Peter Kafka: This is a pretty big move for you guys, right?

Ted Sarandos: It’s not much of a radical departure in what we do every day. There’s an added risk factor, in that this is the first time we’re licensing something that hasn’t been produced, or at least completed.

But there’s no risk factor in terms of delivery, because we’re not investing development money, and we don’t pay for it unless they deliver the show. But it is the first time we’ve made a very large commitment to a series that hasn’t been produced.

It’s just a matter of your philosophy around development. Networks can typically invest tens of millions of dollars in the development of a pilot. And if they put the show on the air and it fails, that’s all lost money. There’s no monetization of a broken series.

We’re betting on the creative team and the source marterial. “House of Cards” is incredble source material–the BBC version is quite popular already on Netflix. David Fincher’s work has all been incredibly well-received on Netflix, and Kevin Spacey’s films have all worked on Netflix. The notion that that team will produce a very good product is a pretty safe bet.

Kafka: You’re not producing the show yourself–Media Rights Capital will do that. Will you cover their costs, or will they deficit finance it?

Sarandos: They’ll deficit finance it. We’re coming in at a percentage of the budget.

Kafka: So where else will can they make their money?

Sarandos: Anywhere in the world. Syndication, DVD. Same as any other show. It’s traditional in the windowing, it’s just that Netflix owns the first window.

Kafka: So what will it cost?

Sarandos: No comment. But I will say this: If the show proves very popular, it won’t be any more expensive than licensing a popular show off of a network. So economically, it’s not a seismic shift, if it’s popular. If it isn’t, then we’ll have paid more for an unpopular show than we normally would have.

Kafka: The TV networks pick shows for a living, with mixed success. But the other thing they do is use their reach to promote their shows. You don’t have a network to promote this stuff, so how do you compensate for that?

Sarandos: The models are radically, radically different. They’re trying to develop a show that will be watched in very big numbers on Wednesday night at 9 pm, so they can sell advertising against it, for that time slot.

I don’t care if people watch it Wednesday night at 9pm. They can watch it anytime in the life of the license, and it’s economically neutral.

The fact that we can algorithmically bring an audience to a show, we’ve proved for 11 years, on DVD. So I have very high confidence that the same methods and algorythms that we’ve used to pre-determine size of audience for a show will work, here. Even if the show doesn’t have a massive external marketing campaign, or even large external awareness.

Kafka: What about the notion of Netflix as a show-picker? The nature of the business is that you could still end up with a bad show, or a good show that people don’t like. Can you really afford to rifle-shot these shows, one at a time? Don’t you need to do a lot of these?

Sarandos: Think of this as a piece of content on the continuum of the shows we acquire. Everything from the Andy Griffith Show to TV shows in the previous seasons. And now just take it to the next level of the continuum, which is the premeire season of a show.

These one-hour serialized dramas have proven incredibly popular on Netflix. So our desire is to have a lot of them, because it really encourages long-term engagement.

Kafka: Will you do more of these deals? Or is it a test?

Sarandos: It’s not a test. It’s a large commitment. If the right properties show up, we’ll do more, but we’re not under any pressure to do it. I don’t look at is a change in our business model, as much as an evolution of our licensing abilities.

There was a time where we wouldn’t have been able to attract a show like this, because we were too small, and perceived as too low-profile for such a high-profile product. I think it speaks volumes to the perception of Netflix as a distribution channel among content creators that we could even be in the competition for a show like that.

Kafka: I’ve previously suggested that part of your motiviation is here is about perception–specifically, that your ability to get shows like this increases your negotiating leverage with distributors like Starz. Does that play into your thinking?

Sarandos: To the extent that I would prefer to license previous seasons of HBO, Showtime, Starz’ shows? Sure. And if those shows are not going to be made widely available in decent windows, then my other alternative would be to compete with those guys for those shows.

Kafka:You’ve been adamant about saying you’re not interested in getting into the “next-day” window for TV shows, like Hulu does–where a show airs on a Tuesday and you can stream it on a Wednesday. Is that still the case?

Sarandos: Our value proposition to consumers is so much more about completeness than freshness. Having the complete season is so much more valuable, in our business model, than having last night’s episode.

That is demand fulfilment more than demand creation, and demand fulfillment tends to be a much lower-margin busienss. And I look at the series that we have today: The most watched episode of almost any given series on any given day, is episode one, season one.

So we have new people coming to these shows constantly. So there’s much more value in having the entire series experience, than it is having last night’s episode, or some kind of convoluted, rolling 5-episode model [like Hulu does].

Kafka: And the fact that you’re getting an exclusive window with this show doesn’t change that?

Sarandos: Not at all. Because remember that we’ll have the show, in its complete form, all the time.

(And yes, that image above has nothing to do with House of Cards, Fincher or Spacey. But finding an image from a yet-to-be produced TV is too challenging for me today.)

David Fincher’s “House of Cards” Starring Kevin Spacey to Be Streamed Instantly in North America Exclusively from Netflix

New television series from Media Rights Capital brings
the highly anticipated adaptation of the award-winning BBC political thriller
to Netflix members in late 2012

Beverly Hills, CA (March 18, 2011) – “House of Cards,” the much-anticipated television series and political thriller from Executive Producer David Fincher and starring two time Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey, will debut exclusively in the United States and Canada from Netflix, the world’s leading Internet subscription service for enjoying movies and TV shows.

Netflix has committed to a minimum of 26 episodes of the Media Rights Capital drama, which is expected to be available to the more than 20 million Netflix members, beginning in late 2012. Fincher, the Oscar-nominated director of The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, will direct the pilot written by Beau Willimon (Farragut North and film adaptation, The Ides of March). A satirical tale of power, corruption and lies, “House of Cards” is based on the book and acclaimed BBC mini-series of the same name.

“The gripping, serialized one hour drama has become a very important part of the Netflix experience,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. “David Fincher’s unique vision, the indelible performances of Kevin Spacey and the original version of “House of Cards,” all have a big following among our members, giving the series a very good chance of becoming a fan favorite. We are thrilled to be working with this amazing team.”

Originally written as a novel by former U.K. Conservative Party Chief of Staff Michael Dobbs, “House of Cards” explores the ruthless underside of British politics at the end of the Thatcher era. Reset against the backdrop of modern-day U.S. electoral politics, the new one-hour drama follows an ambitious politician (Spacey) with his eye on the top job.

Scripts for 13 episodes will be delivered before production on the “House of Cards” pilot begins in the spring of 2012. Production on subsequent episodes of “House of Cards” will commence several months later, allowing producers time to carefully develop the series.

Media Rights Capital’s “House of Cards” stars Kevin Spacey (Casino Jack, American Beauty, Seven) and was developed by Beau Willimon (The Ides of March). David Fincher (The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seven), Josh Donen (Spartacus: Blood and Sand), Academy Award-winner Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), along with Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti of Trigger Street Productions (The Social Network, 21) are Executive Producers for the series. Emmy Award-winner Andrew Davies and Michael Dobbs, who produced the original BBC series, also serve as Executive Producers, with Willimon as Co-Executive Producer. The “House of Cards” pilot is written by Willimon and will be directed by Fincher.

Videoscape is Cisco’s attempt to bring TV and Web content, including social media, into what it calls an “immersive” experience, whether at home or on a mobile device. Inlet’s technology is widely used in streaming video, and can adjust its quality based on network conditions.

Inlet’s customers include Major League Baseball, the BBC, Microsoft, NBC and Yahoo. Its investors are Capitol Broadcasting, which operates a group of TV stations in North Carolina, Core Capital Partners, Telecommunications Development Fund, two VC firms based in Washington, D.C., and Technology Venture Partners, a VC firm based in Minnesota.

For Cisco, it’s the latest in a string of small acquisitions. Last month it acquired Pari Networks, a networking management firm. And in December it acquired LineSider, which makes network management software. Both of those deals were small enough that terms weren’t disclosed. Cisco still sits on roughly $39 billion in cash, among the biggest hoards of cash in the tech universe.

And as it happens, that pile just got bigger. According to a recent SEC filing, Cisco just authorized the issuing of up to $3 billion in corporate debt. The filing, dated Jan. 31, says that Cisco will use the proceeds for “general corporate purposes,” which includes a litany of things: Buying back stock, repaying debt, paying dividends and, notably, acquisitions.

Given that it has so much cash, I thought it interesting that Cisco was issuing debt. I asked Cisco spokeswoman Kristin Carvell about it. She told me it’s something Cisco regularly does for financial flexibility. “In this case, commercial paper rates are extremely attractive as a source of added liquidity going forward.”

Does that added liquidity suggest more acquisitions? It just might. Time will tell.