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Reuters - South Korea fires rounds at North in response to shell.

South Korea said it fired tens of artillery rounds toward North Korea on Thursday after the North launched a shell toward a South Korean loudspeaker that had been blaring anti-Pyongyang broadcasts, as tension escalated on the peninsula.

North Korea did not return fire but later warned Seoul in a letter that it would take military action if the South did not remove the loudspeakers within 48 hours, the South's defense ministry said.

In the letter, North Korea's armed forces called the South's propaganda broadcasts a "major challenge" to the North.

South Korea said its detection equipment had spotted the trajectory of a suspected North Korean projectile launched at around 3:52 p.m. (0652 GMT), which did not appear to have damaged the loudspeaker or caused any injuries.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye told top defense officials to "react firmly" to North Korean provocations, a spokesman quoted her as saying. South Korea's military raised its alert status to the highest level.

"Our military has stepped up monitoring and is closely watching North Korean military movements," South Korea's defense ministry said.

There was no mention of the firing in North Korean state media, which does not typically make immediate comment on events.

The suspected North Korean shell landed in an area about 60 km (35 miles) north of Seoul in the western part of the border zone, the defense ministry said. South Korean residents in the area were ordered to evacuate, according to the South's Yonhap news agency.

The projectile appeared to have landed in a mountainous area near a South Korean military base in the town of Yeoncheon, Yonhap said.

The exchange of fire was the first between the two Koreas since last October, when North Korean soldiers approached the military border and did not retreat after the South fired warning shots, the South Korean Defense Ministry said at the time. The North's soldiers fired back in an exchange of gunfire that lasted about 10 minutes, with no casualties.

Tension between the two Koreas has risen since early this month when landmine explosions in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of the border wounded two South Korean soldiers. Seoul accused North Korea of laying the mines, which Pyongyang has denied.

Seoul then began blasting anti-North Korean propaganda from loudspeakers on the border, resuming a tactic that both sides had halted in 2004.

North Korea on Saturday demanded that the South stop the broadcasts or face military action, and on Monday began conducting its own broadcasts.

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Apple and Google are going to go to war over self-driving cars

Hidden within the comparisons between tech giants Apple and Google, lies a rather inconvenient fact -- the two companies have distinct (and mostly differing) business models. For Google, its core business is search, while Apple sells premium hardware integrated with software.

Even where the two do directly compete, their strategies are different. For smartphone operating systems, Google has taken a mostly open source model to accelerate adoption, opting to monetize user data, mobile search, and transactions through its Google Play Store. For Apple, its highly integrated, "walled-garden" operating system pairs with its hardware and software in order to sell more high-margin devices.

However, more recently the rumor mill has decidedly pointed to a new product where Cupertino and Mountain View are aiming to compete: an autonomous car. If the rumors are correct, the battle to reinvent the driving experience may be even more fierce than the smartphone wars.

Apple's further along than many thought

According to correspondence obtained by Britain's The Guardian, Apple is building an autonomous car and is currently in the process of finding locations in San Francisco for testing purposes. There are a few big surprises in this article -- the first of which is the fact Apple's car is self-driving. Earlier this year, a self-driving car rumor was leaked by Reuters, only to be disputed by The Wall Street Journal, which reported the vehicle would be a conventional car.

The second, and perhaps more interesting, is Apple's pacing in regards to bringing a self-driving car to potential market. According to the article, engineers from Apple's "Project Titan" met with officials from GoMentum Station, a secretive defunct naval base that has found a new usage as a testing ground for self-driving vehicles.

It is also interesting to note this seems slightly out of step with Apple's high-margin strategy, as cars are notoriously low-margin, but it seems the company is aiming to compete with one of Google's "moon shots."

The question, of course, is how important first-mover advantage would be in this market. Unlike a smartphone or another consumer-electronics gadget, the consequences of releasing a flawed self-driving vehicle are inherently more dangerous and should be tested extensively to mitigate any issues. It is for that reason, why I expect a longer testing period before the technology is available and may require legislative approval before being bought to market.

In the beginning, and if both are able to bring a self-driving car to market, I expect fierce competition between the two companies as they seek to compete for early adopters. However, as this technology becomes more widely accepted, the potential losers are entrenched automotive manufacturers that haven't developed competing technologies and professional drivers whose jobs could be automated.

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Hackers dump data online from cheating website Ashley Madison.

Hackers dumped online personal details of more than a million users of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com, tech websites reported on Tuesday, the latest high-profile cyber attack that threatens to wreak strife in relationships across the globe.

After threatening to release salacious details on as many as 37 million customers of the website, which uses the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair," hackers claimed to publish a huge cache of email addresses and credit card data stolen in July.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the authenticity of the posting. Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison and Established Men, widely described as a "sugar daddy site," did not verify the data was real, but said it was aware of the claim.

The hackers used the dark web which is only accessible using a specialized browser.

Still within hours, thousands of email addresses from North America and Europe including many linked to corporations and universities sprouted up on other sites as people decrypted the database. It is possible to create an Ashley Madison account using someone else's name and email.

The hackers have appointed themselves as "the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society," the company said in a statement.

"These are illegitimate acts that have real consequences for innocent citizens who are simply going about their daily lives," it said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the theft alongside the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and local police, it said.

The hackers, who call themselves The Impact Team, leaked snippets of the compromised data in July and threatened to publish names and nude photos and sexual fantasies of customers unless Ashley Madison and another site owned by Avid Life were taken down.

"Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men," tech website Wired quoted The Impact Team as saying in a statement accompanying the online dump.

"We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM (Avid Life Media) and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data," the hackers said, according to Wired.

Other higher-profile attacks such as those on big companies, like Sony Pictures Entertainment and Target, have seen credit card data of customers stolen, unleashing massive financial damage to individuals and companies.

But this data dump appeared to confirm that the hackers were not driven by blackmail or commercial motives, but rather ideological ones.

The intrusion into the private lives of individuals marked a watershed moment in cyber crime as the data spread across the web, said Ajay K. Sood, General Manager for Canada of cyber security firm FireEye Inc.

"These guys want as much notoriety as possible. This isn't cyber terrorism. It's cyber vigilantism," he said.

Avid Life has said it is convinced the hackers were formerly connected to the company.

Still the dump was massive, according to Troy Hunt, a Microsoft security expert, who said more than 1 million unique email addresses were attached to payment records.

Wired said 9.7 gigabytes of data was posted, and appeared to include member account and credit card details. (Reuters).

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Despite recent controversies, Donald Trump is only expanding his big lead after his debate performance.

Real-estate developer Donald Trump doesn't appear to be slowing down as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Two new polls this week have found that the outspoken businessman has only expanded his lead since the first official debate earlier this month.

A CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday placed Trump in the No. 1 position, with 24% support among registered Republicans. That was more than double the 11% support of his next-nearest competitor, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida.

Many of the other candidates were clustered close behind Bush: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 9%; Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin at 8%; Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 6%; Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio at 5%; and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas in 10th place at 4%.

According to CNN, Trump expanded his lead by 6 points since July. That rise suggests Trump's combative performance in the August 6 debate did little to harm his candidacy.

A Fox News poll published Sunday found that, despite dominating the Republican field, Trump was "judged in the poll as having the worst debate performance and being considered the least likable Republican candidate."

During the debate, Trump fielded numerous tough questions, including about his corporate bankruptcies, his threat to run a third-party campaign for president, and derogatory comments he has made about women. In the days after, Trump went to war with Fox News, which hosted the debate, as well as one of its moderators, Megyn Kelly. The network and Trump finally brokered an uneasy truce last week.

But CNN and Fox News weren't the only two outlets with favorable polls for Trump this week. A Morning Consult survey published Monday found the real-estate developer with 32% of the vote among registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

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Another big fall seen in china.

The Shanghai Composite shed 6.2% on Tuesday, once again bringing the key index below the 3,800 point mark. The cause of the sell off was not immediately apparent, but it was a return to form for Chinese markets, which have been rocked by volatile trading sessions for most of the summer.

Beijing managed to stabilize equities with a dramatic rescue in late June and early July, intervening in a number of ways to limit losses for investors.

But the rout has now resumed: Tuesday's slump was the sharpest decline since July 27.

A majority of companies listed in Shanghai, including some large state-owned firms, fell by the maximum daily limit of 10%. Losses in Shanghai, and on the smaller Shenzhen Composite index, accelerated into the close.

Shenzhen, which is heavy on tech stocks, closed down 6.6%.

Investors are worried about a possible withdrawal of stock market support by Beijing, and signs of a sharper slowdown in China's economy.

Tuesday's performance extends a volatile period in Chinese markets over recent months.

The first signs of trouble came in June, after the Shanghai Composite peaked at more than 5,100 points, a gain of roughly 150% over the previous 12 months. When the bubble burst, the index lost 32% of its value in just 18 trading sessions.

Beijing reacted forcefully. The People's Bank of China cut interest rates to a record low, regulators suspended new market listings, and threatened to throw short sellers in jail.

The country's market regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, organized the purchase of shares using cash supplied by the central bank. Companies were allowed to suspend their own shares -- at one point 50% of all listed stocks were frozen.

Stock markets were calmer in recent days as investor attention shifted to the yuan, which declined sharply following Beijing's decision to change the way its daily exchange rate limits are calculated.

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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Defends Workplace in Response to Article

Amazon said late Sunday that it would not tolerate the “shockingly callous management practices” that were described in an article in the New York Times over the weekend. Jeff Bezos, the retail giant’s founder and chief executive, said he did not recognize the workplace portrayed in the article and urged any employees who knew of “stories like those reported” to contact him directly.

“Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero,” Mr. Bezos said in an email circulated to all the retailer’s employees.

The article gave accounts of workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises who said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover in Amazon’s intense and fast-paced workplace.

Mr. Bezos wrote that he “very much” hoped workers did not recognize the workplace depicted in the article — “a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard.”

At Amazon, the article said, the winners get the thrill of testing new projects with hundreds of millions of customers. They also become rich through a stock that has increased tenfold since 2008. But the losers are pushed out in regular cullings. One former Amazon human resources director called it “purposeful Darwinism.”

Amazon declined a request to interview Mr. Bezos for the original article, but made several executives available. Over all, The Times interviewed over 100 current and former Amazon employees, including many who spoke on the record and some who requested anonymity because they had signed agreements saying they would not speak to the press.

Mr. Bezos urged his 180,000 employees to give the Times article “a careful read” but said it “doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day.”

Here is a part of Bezos’s letter to his employees:

Here’s why I’m writing you. The NYT article prominently features anecdotes describing shockingly callous management practices, including people being treated without empathy while enduring family tragedies and serious health problems. The article doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day. But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.

The article goes further than reporting isolated anecdotes. It claims that our intentional approach is to create a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard. Again, I don’t recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don’t, either. More broadly, I don’t think any company adopting the approach portrayed could survive, much less thrive, in today’s highly competitive tech hiring market. The people we hire here are the best of the best. You are recruited every day by other world-class companies, and you can work anywhere you want.

I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.

But hopefully, you don’t recognize the company described. Hopefully, you’re having fun working with a bunch of brilliant teammates, helping invent the future, and laughing along the way.

Thank you,

Jeff 

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