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Mobile shopping was all the rage this Black Friday, accounting for 39.7 percent of all online traffic -- a jump of an impressive 34 percent over last year's post Thanksgiving Day shopping free-for-all.

That's according to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark report for Thanksgiving weekend 2013, which tracked millions of transactions from about 800 U.S. retail Web sites.

Actual sales from mobile gadgets were strong too: 21.8 percent of total online sales, an uptick of almost 43 percent over last year.

Here're some other Black Friday numbers and factoids from the IBM report:

• It was a record Black Friday for e-commerce, with online sales climbing 18.9 percent over last year. Average order value was $135.27, a 2.2 percent increase over 2012.


• Smartphones accounted for 24.9 percent of all online traffic, compared with 14.2 percent for tablets. When buying time arrived, however, tablets were tapped twice as often: logging 14.4 percent of all online sales, compared with smartphones' 7.2 percent.


• Tablet users spent $132.75 per order on average, compared with $115.63 from smartphone users, a 15 percent difference.


• Apple's iOS mobile operating system had the edge on Android. Users of iOS spent $127.92 per order, compared with $105.20 from users of Android. iOS traffic accounted for 28.2 percent of all online traffic, compared with Android's 11.4 percent, and iOS sales reached 18.1 percent of all online sales, compared with Android's 3.5 percent.


• In the social-media realm, shoppers referred from Pinterest spent 77 percent more per order on average than shoppers referred from Facebook -- $92.51 as opposed to $52.30. But quantity counts too: Facebook referrals converted sales at nearly four times the rate of Pinterest referrals.


• Black Friday prompted people to install retailers' mobile apps so they could get the latest updates on deals. Average daily retail app installations on Thanksgiving Day and BF combined were 23 percent higher than they were during the two months leading up to the Mad Shopping Weekend. And retailers took advantage, sending 37 percent more push notifications on T Day and BF combined, compared with those same two months.


• The top five cities for online shopping on Black Friday were New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

The dipole antennas of the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope can pick up reflections from up to 620 miles away.

(Credit: Murchison Widefield Array)

Australian broadcaster Triple J plays a mix of pop and alternative tunes that are being recruited to serve science -- by helping track space junk orbiting above us.

The station is among FM broadcasters whose signals are bouncing off decaying satellites and other debris and into the giant "ear" that is the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia.

The high sensitivity of the radio telescope launched earlier this year allows it to detect objects smaller than 1 meter (3.2 feet), according to its director Steven Tingay of Curtin University. Tingay wants to use the array to improve knowledge of the thousands of bits of scrap that may threaten working satellites.

FM radio transmitters send waves over the Earth but also into space, where they bounce off satellites and space junk. Some of those waves get reflected back to Earth.

The array, which consists of 2,048 dual-polarization dipole antennas arranged in 128 formations of four-by-four tiles, is a precursor to the international Square Kilometre Array radio telescope. It can pick up reflected waves from objects up to 620 miles away.

In 2009, an Iridium communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite, creating an unprecedented cloud of more than 2,000 bits of debris, which worried operators of other satellites as well as the International Space Station.

Earlier this month, the European Space Agency's 1-ton Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer fell back to Earth, mostly burning up in the atmosphere with bits hitting the southern Atlantic.

In a study in The Astronomical Journal, Tingay and collaborators showed how they used the Murchison Widefield Array to track the ISS based on how it reflected FM radio broadcast signals originating in southwestern Australia.

"Because the telescope has such a large field of view, monitoring vast patches of the sky at any given time, we can simultaneously image hundreds of these objects every day and track them for long enough to determine their orbits," Tingay says in a recent video.

"We can do all this at the same time as our primary mission. That is, to look way back into cosmic time."

Check out the slideshow below on the persistent threat posed by the junkyard above our heads.

iPad Mini Retina.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

The iPad Mini Retina's speed seals the deal.

A lot has been written about the Mini Retina's display. For good reason, of course. Take a display with 786,432 pixels (iPad Mini original) and put it up against one with over 3 million (iPad Retina) and you notice the difference.

But I have been more impressed with the performance of the Mini Retina. After using it for two weeks, the speed is what has sold me.

The best analogy I can think of is going from a circa 2009 MacBook Air to today's fastest Haswell-based MacBook.

It's that dramatic. Those numbers (below) don't lie.

The reason is pretty easy to understand. The iPad Mini has a very old (in computer years) A5 chip -- that's the same chip that debuted in the iPad 2 in March 2011.

The Mini Retina has Apple's latest chip, the A7, with more RAM.

What does all of this speed add up to? With a tablet as good as the Mini Retina, it's another reason to use a laptop less.

One of the greatest barriers to productivity (you know, doing actual work, not just browsing social media or watching movies) on a tablet is performance. Add a keyboard, and you're three quarters of the way to a laptop.

Which leads me to a final thought. The A7, or its successor the A8, would work just fine in a new-fangled future 64-bit Apple device.

PC makers are already doing this with Intel's new "Bay Trail" chip, which is similar in performance to the A7.

Take Dell's Venue 11 Pro high-end tablet. It can be converted into a professional productivity platform via its modular design.

I have to think Apple has bigger plans for the A series chips than just the iPhone and conventional iPads.

An iPad Pro, anyone?

Geekbench scores for first-gen iPad Mini (top) and Retina Mini. Numbers are single core benchmark (left) and multi-core. And, yes, it actually feels that much faster.

(Credit: Brooke Crothers)

Downsizing is one of the automotive industry's biggest buzz words at the moment, with most manufacturers swapping large engines for small turbocharged versions to cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Sounds great, but the idea is nothing new.

Back in the 1980s there was an entire crop of forced induction superminis breathing fire into the small car segment. By the 1990s they'd almost all died out as small hot hatches used larger, naturally aspirated engines. It's ironic to see their descendants going full circle.

There's still a lot of fun to be had with a boxy, boosted old hatchback. Turbo and superchargers engines mean easy power gains, and light, tinny bodies mean you don't need many more horses to really scare yourself. Plus these pre-2001 cars all benefit from cheap road tax as a result of their tiny engines. Here's a guide to some of the silliest city cars of the 1980s.

Daihatsu Charade GTti Looking a little like the Fiat Cinquecento, the square-backed Charade had a 993cc turbocharged three-cylinder engine and was the first production car to offer over 100bhp per litre. Just. Its factory 99bhp can easily be heated up, taking advantage of a sub-800kg kerb weight.

Fiat Uno Turbo The boxy Uno took its first step into turbocharging in the mid-1980s, using a 103bhp 1.3-litre engine from the larger Fiat Ritmo. Chronic rust problems put plenty of these into early retirement, the rest hit by over-boosted engines and trips through B-road hedgerows. Fragile, fast and fun.

Lancia Y10 Turbo The Uno Turbo's smaller sibling, the Y10 gave most of the same enjoyment but in a smaller and less well known package. Power this time came from a 1.0-litre engine, producing 84bhp with plenty of tuning potential and even less weight to carry around. Rust problems were similar to the Uno's.

MG Metro Turbo British Leyland didn't quite capture the Mini spirit with the Metro, but the Mini didn't get a turbocharger until BMW took over. Tuned by MG and Lotus Engineering, the Turbo built on the basic MG Metro's 1.3-litre engine to reach 93bhp. Rust and engine-scavenging Mini owners mean there are few left.

Mitsubishi Colt 1400 GT Turbo Long before the Lancer took over as the hot Mitsubishi of choice, the Mirage (known in Europe as the Colt) was being sold in Japan as a 103bhp GT Turbo model. It's a rare car outside Japan with a bit of a cult following, helped by the natty and typically Eighties go-faster graphics and bonnet scoop.

Nissan March SuperTurbo Unique in this list as the only car to feature both a supercharger and a turbocharger, Nissan's boxy first-generation Micra had 108 lag-free horsepower on offer from its 1.0-litre engine. There's never been another quite like it, so 24 years forward its 7.7-second sprint to 60mph means it's still the fastest-accelerating Micra ever made.

Renault 5 GT Turbo Beloved of the Max Power generation and Ali G, it's easy to forget just how good looking the Renault 5 is without being fiddled with. It wasn't quite as silly as the mid-engined road-going rally cars of the early 80s, but with 113bhp on tap and more boost easy to find, it's a deserved performance icon.

Suzuki Cultus (Swift) Turbo Europe got a selection of hot Swifts, but not the Turbo sold in North America and Japan. This had a three-cylinder engine producing 80bhp, later 82bhp, reaching 60mph in around nine seconds. Admirable effort, but ultimately slower than the European-spec 1.3 GTI that followed.

Volkswagen Polo GT-G40 Another unique car in this list, the Polo G40 had a small supercharger bolted onto its 1.3-litre engine, producing almost as much power as the 8v Golf GTI. A full production model was sold from 1990, but in 1987 Volkswagen made 500 pre-facelift cars and sold them to its employees. They're all black, all left hand drive, and almost all modified above their 113bhp factory output.

Look how substandard the Galaxy Tab is.

(Credit: Microsoft/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

If you're in business, you have to get used to criticism.

If you're in the gadget business, however, you're nobody unless Microsoft criticizes you.

What other conclusion can one reach after Redmond's assault on its various rivals?

There's the constant poking at the iPad's foibles. Then there's the sublimely gauche Scroogled campaign, which accuses Google of being little more than a malevolent dictatorship.

Samsung, though, has been relatively free of Microsoft's barbed fire. Until now, that is.

For Microsoft has chosen the Thanksgiving weekend to give thanks that its own Surface RT is so much more intelligent and useful than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

I'll admit I haven't seen an enormous proliferation of Tab 10.1s adorning coffee shops, holding cells and public transport. So it makes for a slightly odd target for Microsoft.

However, Redmond wants you to be clear, should you be vacillating between a Tab and a Surface RT that its machine is superior.

It has a full-size USB port, which allows you to do, well, full-size USB porting. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 has one micro USB port, which means you can't power and connect to an external device at the same time.

And then there's the need for connectors that you have to buy as extras.

Microsoft is looking to find any and every possible rational reason to persuade you that the Surface is all things to all people with computing needs.

Indeed, more ads targeting the Galaxy Tab appeared last week -- including a family sharing comparison similar to one of the most recent anti-iPad ads.

Sadly, the initial launch of Surface, with its embarrassing dancing teens and business people, continues to hamper progress.

When people don't have their emotions positively disposed to your brand, it's so much harder to persuade them that you're as great as you think you are.

A woman tries out the Rebecca Minkoff digital storefront at the Westfield Shopping Centre in San Francisco.

(Credit: eBay)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Uri Minkoff, CEO of fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff, climbed through an opening in a wall leading to an empty retail space inside the Westfield Shopping Centre in downtown San Francisco. It was an unexpected sight: The stylish Minkoff, sporting a slim-fitted blazer and designer jeans, checking out the dark room, construction material strewn about.

But Minkoff doesn't care about the room itself; he cares about the entrance, where there is a computer setup that, he hopes, will boost his sales this holiday season. That's where potential shoppers will touch a piece of glass, iPad style, to shop.

This giant touchscreen, created by eBay, is the focal point of this new digital storefront. eBay converted two large panels of the glass into a touchscreen that lets shoppers browse virtually through a selection of products and then make a purchase. Minkoff stood inside the empty store, which currently isn't rented out, observing the back end of the setup. People on the other side would stop and tap on the screen, their hands creating small, moving shadows on the translucent wall.

Minkoff's digital storefront, along with ones for Toms Shoes and Sony, serve as the centerpiece of Westfield and eBay's vision of the future of shopping -- one where you can shop anytime, anywhere, and on any device. That a brick-and-mortar mall and an online auction-and-market site would join together in this initiative underscores the blurring of lines between the physical and virtual worlds, which both sides believe will ultimately serve the consumer better through new technology.

We're going to take this technology and the idea of using glass and move it out of the mall -- on the bus, train, at the airport. Anywhere people are waiting, congregating, or milling about."

--Steve Yankovich, eBay's vice president of innovation and new ventures

"My goal is 'Minority Report,'" said Steve Yankovich, eBay's vice president of innovation and new ventures, referring to the 2002 movie that features predictive technology and Tom Cruise using hand gestures to control computer actions.

For a brand like Minkoff, which largely sells through big department stores, opting for what is essentially an interactive billboard over an actual store is a relatively safe way to test the waters for a larger retail presence.

The digital storefront is part repurposed, part custom technology. What consumers see is a large digital image with a touchscreen area showing the products for sale. After customers choose a product, they enter their mobile number (the entered digits are hidden, but the touchpad is fairly visible, so if you're not careful people around you can see you entering your number), and complete their purchase on their smartphones.

What makes the display possible are layers of projection film and touch foil adhered to the glass, as well as a custom-made Sony 4K projector and eBay's proprietary software running on a computer out of sight, behind the glass. Induction speakers cause the glass to vibrate, turning it into speakers. This lets users hear sounds when they make contact with the screen.

The projection film allows for crisp images, and the touch foil, a thinly wired adhesive skin that's normally used on top of bulkier consoles, allows for accuracy in a shopper's touch. The 4K projector, typically used in research-and-development labs to examine detailed images of things like motor parts or circuitry, produces sharp images without blinding the viewer.

The storefronts are customizable in look and size. The Rebecca Minkoff display looked like it was made of two glass doors, and it had four rotating images. Sony, which also has a small presence in the mall one floor down, decided to create a display that took over an entire wall and had sensors programmed to sync the movement of its product images with the movement of anyone standing in front of it.

While the tech behind the glass touchscreens is definitely cool, the really exciting part for retailers is the the top of the display, with its several black squares. The squares are Kinect sensors, using infrared to monitor customers' movements within a 15-foot range, and gathering valuable data for retailers on what actually catches a customer's eye or will make people stop in their tracks all together.

"It's such a completely different way of thinking about retail," said Healey Cypher, who leads eBay's retail innovation group. Traditionally, retailers don't have any hard metrics to tell whether a store display is doing its job to entice customers. What's more, the digital storefronts also track shopping activity, the same as a Web site would: How much time consumers spent browsing the products, which products they clicked on, what they ended up purchasing in the end, whether they wanted to have it delivered to their homes, or, in Sony's case, pick it up elsewhere in the mall.

Coupled with the physical foot traffic data, the futuristic glass walls give retailers a more complete picture of their customers' spending habits.

Minkoff --who is actually a techie himself, having founded a software company before taking over the business side of his sister's fashion brand -- said retail brands like his could use the data before investing in a physical storefront, to test which locations work well for their products. Inversely, the mall could use it to test out retailers before leasing them a space. His brand is mainly carried in retailers like Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom, but he has three stores in Asia and is opening the company's first US flagship store in New York this spring. Having a digital storefront could help Minkoff decide where he may want his next physical location.

eBay did a similar setup for Kate Spade's pop-up stores in New York and the retailer used the data gathered from the storefronts to decide where else to open popup stores.

"The metrics were so huge, they opened it in a place where they wouldn't have," Cypher said, adding that the shops showed a definite correlation between the data and the sales made. "One of our concerns was people using it only because it's cool tech, but what we found was that it's about the brand."

eBay is continuing to improve on the shopping experience and the speed of the setup. While the Kate Spade storefront took about a week to set up, Cypher's team can now put one together in less than three days. The storefronts aren't permanent; the ones at the Westfield mall come down after January 12. Yankovich said digital storefronts are a more attractive option for malls that have any open spots for rent because they're easy and fast to set up, and more attractive than the placeholders malls currently use. But he doesn't want to stop at malls.

"We're going to take this technology and the idea of using glass and move it out of the mall -- on the bus, train, at the airport. Anywhere where people are waiting, congregating, or milling about," he said.

For Westfield, the digital storefront is just a sampling of what's to come.

Kevin McKenzie, who leads Westfield Labs -- a department created by the company to think of ways tech can be used to keep shoppers at malls -- knows that malls have to adapt technology to stay in the game. And it's not about stopping retailers from selling things online.

"Consumers don't think about offline and online, they're just like 'I just need to buy something,'" he said. "So, we don't get caught up in the brick and mortar and online. We just look at our buildings as real estate to facilitate commerce, online and offline. I think the whole industry is starting to wake up to that."

Kevin McKenzie, Westfield Labs' chief digital officer, demonstrates how to make a purchase on a digital storefront.

(Credit: eBay)

McKenzie sees the mall as a platform, much like eBay except in physical form. And as a platform, the mall has to provide an experience that will compel shoppers to use it. That includes attracting quality food vendors, and figuring out ways to serve consumers before, during, and after they're at the mall.

"It used to be that years ago, before online, you were inspired by coming to the mall. You couldn't discover anything beforehand because the Internet didn't exist," he said. To mimic that kind of Internet discovery, Westfield is piloting searchable mall directories in Australia and Europe. These digital directories don't just show where stores are, they can go into detail, letting a shopper know where a specific type of product is available throughout the mall. In December, Westfield is rolling out infrared-enabled sensors in the parking lot, so people can reserve specific parking spaces through their phone before they arrive.

While McKenzie admits that he doesn't know if any of these things will keep shoppers coming in, he's excited to try. And, though he said it's not about online or offline anymore, he's thinking about what a mall can do outside of the digital box.

"What advantages do we have?" he said. "What can we do that Amazon can't do?"

The Galaxy S4 and S3 could have a new sibling sooner than later.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

The latest round of rumors has the presumed successor to Samsung's Galaxy S4, a more powerful Galaxy S5, sporting unicorn-esque specs, perhaps some new flexible materials, and craziest of all: Launching as little as ten months after the Galaxy S4 was introduced.

A Korean site reports that "industry sources" say production of the Galaxy S5 could begin in January with Samsung's next flagship phone shipping with Android KitKat and alongside a revamped Galaxy Gear 2 watch as early as February or March. That would be a few months ahead of many early-adopting Galaxy S4 owners' one-year anniversaries with their devices.

While this sounds like wishful thinking on the part of some overzealous reporter and a who-knows-how-well-infomed supply chain source, it's also not a crazy plan for the likes of Samsung. The Korean monolith has the ability to make just about anything on a massive scale as quickly as it likes and likely has no qualms with cannibalizing sales of its zillions of other smartphone models, including the Galaxy S4.

But more importantly, what kind of unicorn is Samsung's S5 team designing this time around?

The same report claims the phone could be available in a plastic case or a more premium model with a metal body, and will come loaded with some serious digital beef -- a 64-bit processor, 3 GB of RAM, a 16 megapixel camera and a huge 4,000 mAh battery to power a 5-inch flexible display that could jam as many as 560 pixels into each inch of screen real estate.

Samsung had no immediate response to a request for comment, but certainly many Galaxy S4 owners won't be as speechless when the flagship phone they proudly brought home this year is eclipsed in less than the time it takes us all to make a single trip around the sun.

What do you think? Is it too soon for a new Samsung flagship or never soon enough? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter @crave and @ericcmack.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenburg Air Force Base in September.

(Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was slated to hurtle into outer space on Monday, but unusual pressure readings canceled the launch. Then, Falcon 9 was scheduled to have a famed Thanksgiving Day lift off; but, once again, the flight was nixed -- this time due to unexplained technical issues.

It's been a tough week for SpaceX but that hasn't deterred the company from working to get its rocket aloft. SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk took to Twitter after the second canceled launch on Thursday to say that the company was playing it safe.

"We called manual abort. Better to be paranoid and wrong. Bringing rocket down to borescope engines," Musk tweeted.

The Falcon 9 is SpaceX's most powerful rocket. The nine-engine, 224-foot-tall rocket features a longer first stage and triple redundant flight computers.

This week, the rocket was scheduled to blast off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and carry a SES-8 communications satellite for placement in orbit. While SpaceX has launched satellites before, this would have been the first time SpaceX launched a commercial communications satellite.

In September, an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket successfully placed a Canadian science satellite into orbit.

Ever since NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011, private companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and Boeing have been competing for contracts that would allow them to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.

NASA has awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion to provide 12 cargo flights to deliver equipment and supplies to the International Space Station. SpaceX is also gearing up to one day provide commercial flights into space.

According to Reuters, SpaceX is attempting another launch of the Falcon 9 rocket on Friday.

Motorola's Moto G.

(Credit: Andrew Hoyle/CNET)

Motorola surprised the smartphone world by launching its new Moto G cell phone on it Web site months early. Now, the device can also be bought on Amazon.

The e-commerce giant began selling both the 8GB and 16GB versions of the smartphone on Friday. The prices are the same as Motorola, which has the 8GB going for $179 and the 16GB at $199. Amazon says that the device will start shipping on December 4, while Motorola will begin shipping on December 2.

The Moto G is being launched around the world, which could mean it'll sell better than its costlier predecessor. It has nearly an identical design to the Moto X and also offers a host of colors, 720p 4.5-inch display, and the Android Jellybean operating system.

Initially, Motorola said it was planning to launch the Moto G in the US in January. However, the company surprised users by debuting the device in the US this week. In an interview, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside told CNET that early demand for the phone has been strong overseas and the company was able to ramp up the manufacturing process faster than anticipated.

Via Android Central.

Following Apple's loss in court earlier this year, Judge Denise Cote tapped former Assistant US Attorney and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich to keep tabs on the company for the next two years. Bromwich's job as a monitor is to work from inside Apple to maintain the company's compliance with US antitrust laws.

Apple claims in its filing that it's being gouged by Bromwich. The company pointed to the $138,432.40 he charged for his first two weeks of work. "Mr. Bromwich appears to be simply taking advantage of the fact that there is no competition here or, in his view, any ability on the part of Apple, the subject of his authority, to push back on his demands," Apple said in a filing.

Apple said that Bromwich's hourly rate of $1,100 is "excessive," according to the filing. The company said Bromwich also is retaining a partner at law firm Fried Frank to assist him at an hourly rate of $1,025.

In addition, Apple complained that Bromwich has stepped out of line, "operating in an unfettered and inappropriate manner." The company claimed that Bromwich's requests to interview executives and board members, including Tim Cook, Al Gore, and Jony Ive, were "premature" and not in accordance with the judge's order.

Bromwich, for his part, isn't too thrilled with Apple either. In a letter to Apple's board of directors, he complained that Apple hasn't been complying with his requests. "Our requests to meet with key Apple personnel have been largely ignored, and when not ignored the responses have been extremely slow in coming," he wrote.

He briefly mentioned the disagreement over fees, but much of the letter reiterates his disappointment with the company. "Apple has sought for the past month to manage our relationship as though we are its outside counsel or consultant, to whom it can dictate terms and conditions, and whose approval is required before we can undertake our work," he wrote.

The two years that Judge Cote asked Bromwich to monitor Apple is a shorter time span than the actual five-year injunction that Apple faces, but she said it can be extended by one or more one-year periods.

A worker loading orders in one of Amazon's factories.

(Credit: Amazon)

Hundreds of trade union workers in Amazon's German factories have staged a series of strikes over the last year demanding better wages and working conditions. They're now planning a major strike for the holiday season.

However, Amazon executives don't see too much cause for concern.

"Snowfall in Germany is the bigger problem in the Christmas business...That is what gives me worry lines," Amazon's head for Germany, Ralf Kleber, told Reuters in an interview Friday.

Next to the US, Germany is Amazon's second-biggest market. According to Reuters, the company's nine German distribution centers employ 9,000 warehouse staff plus an additional 14,000 seasonal workers. Over the last year, Amazon's sales in Germany grew by nearly 21 percent to $8.7 billion, which is a third of the company's total international sales.

With e-commerce becoming increasingly more popular and the holiday season being the busiest time of year, it would seem that striking workers might put a dent in Amazon's factory efficiency and delivery timeliness. But Kleber maintains the company's deliveries have been unaffected by the strikes.

"We are talking about a minority who take part in actions brought on by the union," Kleber told Reuters. "Amazon is a fair employer. Many of our workers have been with us for more than 14 years. The majority of workers would say it is a good, well-paid job."

According to Reuters, this dispute between Amazon and its workers led to roughly 1,000 employees walking out from German distribution centers on Monday.

Kleber said that Amazon pays its factory workers well and doesn't drive them too hard. He added that distribution center work can be demanding, but that's part of the industry.

"We are a logistics company," Kleber said. "Trucks arrive, are unloaded. Goods are sorted, packed, and loaded into trucks again."

CNET contacted Amazon for comment. We'll update the story when we get more information.

Thanksgiving 2013 was Instagram's busiest day yet.

(Credit: Instagram)

Photos of golden-crisp cooked turkeys, dark red cranberry sauce, family football, and the lighting of menorahs crowded Instagram on Thursday. In fact, so many people took to the photo-sharing social network that the company announced it was its busiest day ever.

"We saw record usage as Instagrammers shared a heaping helping of holiday cheer," the company wrote in a blog post on Friday. "Your Thanksgiving and Hanukkah-related photos and videos helped make yesterday our busiest so far -- and for that we give thanks to you."

In the three years since it launched, Instagram has grown tremendously. The social network says it now has 150 million active users worldwide. Earlier this month, the service -- which sold to Facebook for $1 billion last year -- announced that it was starting to run advertisements in an effort to monetize its business.

While Instagram noted that Thanksgiving this year was its "busiest" day ever, the company didn't provide specific details on the numbers of users and photos uploaded.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Bogdan Alecu, a system administrator at Dutch IT services company Levi9, reportedly found that the vulnerability can occur when an attacker sends around 30 so-called Flash SMS messages -- messages that appear immediately on the phone's screen upon arrival -- to the Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus 4, or the Nexus 5. If the messages aren't promptly dismissed, it opens the phones up for attack. Alecu plans to present his findings Friday at the DefCamp security conference in Bucharest, Romania.

One of the problems that Nexus users face is that they won't be automatically alerted with an audio tone when a Flash SMS message is received, which could allow an attacker to send a lot of them quickly before they're noticed or dismissed, PC World reports.

According to Alecu, the SMS overload can result in several issues, including the phone rebooting, which is the most likely outcome. In that case, if a PIN is required to unlock the SIM card, the phone won't connect to the network after rebooting. Another problem that can occur is that the messaging app crashes, but the system then automatically restarts it.

Alecu told PC World that while the issue appears to affect the latest Nexus smartphones running Android versions Ice Cream Sandwich through KitKat, it hasn't worked on other phones he's tested.

We've reached out to Google for comment on how the company plans to address the issue and will update this post when we learn more. Alecu told PC World that he reported the issue to Google, but it hasn't yet been addressed.

Google's Chromecast media app-to-TV broadcasting dongle.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

In the spirit of Black Friday, Google is offering shoppers credit if they buy the Chromecast video dongle within the next week.

To get the deal, shoppers can buy Chromecast at several retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, and on Google Play.

Google's Chromecast is like a more limited version of an Apple TV or Roku. It's a small wireless video dongle that streams Netflix, YouTube, HBO Go, Hulu Plus, Pandora, and Chrome to television sets using Android or iOS tablets as remotes. It retails for $35.

Via The Verge.

The Vietnamese government is increasingly censoring its citizens online. The country's capital, Hanoi, is shown in the above photograph.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

Vietnam is joining the ranks of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China, as being known as a country that censors its citizens on social media.

The government introduced a new law this week that fines people $4,740 for posting comments critical of the government on social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, according to Reuters. Some people could also face extensive prison terms.

While the law is unclear about what kind of speech sparks government censorship, it does says that "propaganda against the state" and "reactionary ideology" would elicit fines.

Vietnam's communist government has increasingly censored its citizens' free speech over the past few years. According to Reuters, arrests and convictions for criticizing the government online has skyrocketed the last four years.

Human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the Vietnamese government for its crackdown on free speech. In a report published earlier this month, the group lists 75 prisoners of conscience in Vietnam who were jailed for alleged "propaganda" against the government. Some of these prisoners face harsh conditions, like solitary confinement and torture.

"Vietnam is fast turning into one of South East Asia's largest prisons for human rights defenders and other activists," Amnesty International Vietnam researcher Rupert Abbot said in a statement. "The government's alarming clampdown on free speech has to end."

Vietnam isn't the only country that censors its residents on social media sites. Several countries in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Bahrain, either censor of forbid social networking. China is also known for extreme censorship when it comes to social media and blogging.

In a recent Global Transparency Report, Google said that it has seen an alarming incidence in government requests to gather information on their citizens. Some of the top offending countries in Google's report include the US, India, and Germany.

A Black Friday 'hola' from Spain.

(Credit: Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

This week, America's retailers have put on their finest makeup and highest heels in order to make themselves supremely attractive.

My inbox has been full of enticements, all to celebrate the Feast of the Black Eye Friday.

One seductive missive caught my eye, though. It promised: "Black Friday, sólo 3 días con ofertas irrepetibles?."

Well, I suppose my name does look a little Spanish after a few sangrias.

The offers were, of course, very special. A Lenovo Intel Core i7, for example. A mere 579. A Bosch washing machine for just 289.

It was then that my brain intercepted my eyes and whispered: "Hey, those prices are in euros."

This was, indeed, an e-mail from the Spanish department store El Corte Ingles. Oh, don't ask how I got on the mailing list. (Soccer aficionados will understand if I say I'm a Real Betis fan.) Ask what on Earth El Corte Ingles is doing celebrating Black Friday.

What used to be an American phenomenon (especially the Fight Club brawls over cheap TVs) has gone worldwide.

It seems that Black Friday and Cyber Monday, celebrated on the very same days everywhere, are consistently the two days on which worldwide shopping reaches its peaks.

Michael DeSimone, CEO of Borderfree, a company that works with major retailers to customize their online retail in different languages, told CNBC: "In the Middle East much of the population doesn't even celebrate Christmas, but they are still shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so I think it's an interesting way that we have sort of exported our American retail culture."

They watch our movies. They listen to our music. They worship our shopping days.

One reason that retailers in, for example, Australia are offering Black Friday bargains is that they feel the need to compete with American retailers who, naturally, think everywhere is America.

How sad it would be if, the world over, these two days became symbols of rampant consumerism.

Why can't America take on a few more traditions from overseas, at least to keep world culture in balance?

I, for one, would definitely favor a Pamplona-style running of the bulls toward every store that opens early on Thanksgiving.

ISON (or fragments thereof) emerges from behind the sun on its path back out of the solar system and past Earth.

(Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/GSFC)

It made for perhaps the nerdiest Thanksgiving moment ever when I plugged a Google Chromecast into my mother's TV on Thursday and proceeded to put a live NASA Google+ Hangout on Comet ISON's sun-grazing journey on the screen in the living room.

By the time all the pumpkin pie had been knocked back and the turkey set to work lulling me into a coma, ISON had failed to emerge from the sun's shadow after reaching perihelion, leading many observers to conclude that the comet had been destroyed by its close encounter with the massive nuclear furnace at the center of our galactic cul-de-sac.

ISON is a breed of comet fresh in from the Oort Cloud, the likes of which have not been observed from Earth in many years. If it were to survive perihelion, it would be flung back out to deep space, perhaps giving off a spectacular light show for us on planet No. 3 in the process.

That's the best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario is that ISON is basically swallowed by the sun, and for most of Thursday that seemed to be the actual-case scenario as well.

Then NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite sent back an image that seemed to show...something. Here's how NASA's Karen Fox described it in a blog post:

The question remains whether it is merely debris from the comet, or if some portion of the comet's nucleus survived, but late-night analysis from scientists with NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign suggest that there is at least a small nucleus intact.

In other words, Comet ISON seems to have survived in some form, but it's not yet clear if what remains of it will put on the spectacular light show in the coming weeks that we've been hearing about for months now.

Fox says ISON has been behaving in unexpected ways, so the way its long-anticipated Thanksgiving perihelion went down seems true to form. Now it's time to sit back and await the big show...or the big disappointment.

Meanwhile, NASA created an elegant GIF of ISON's encounter with the sun.

And so the police intervene.

(Credit: TheBlackhawk715/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

You might still be digesting your meal of vast gratitude.

Indeed, you might have barely begun to digest it when many of your fellow humans lined up outside America's retailers to express their buyer's enthusiasm.

For Black Friday came early on Thanksgiving this year.

Which means the fights over gadgets at Walmart did too.

A quick trawl of YouTube already reveals at least one brawl.

At this unnamed Walmart, there is frenzy beyond Bieberism. Yes, this is consumerism.

There are cheap TVs to be had, and many people are desperate to have them.

Shouts of "STOP!" are heard. But who can stop when the bargains are this good? Who can even muster any sense of control when Thanksgiving can be made more meaningful with one little purchase of a big TV?

So it is left to the police to restore order.

Two officers pin a woman to the ground, presumably for the offense of having torn the TV from another woman's grasp.

A lady from Walmart shouts, apparently toward the person filming this pastoral scene.

"STOP! STOP NOW!!" she screams.

You might think this was an isolated incident, but, as the Sun reports, one police officer was taken to a hospital after a skirmish at the Walmart in Rialto, Calif.

The store had decided to open even earlier than its scheduled 8 p.m. because 3,000 people had already gathered for the communal feasting on bargains.

Perhaps they should rename it Black Eye Friday.