SIM Cards Have Finally Been Hacked, And The Flaw Could Affect Millions Of Phones  —  Security researcher Karsten Nohl says some SIM cards can be compromised because of wrongly configured Java Card software and weak encryption keys; Photo credit Luca Melette  —  Smartphones are susceptible …

As part of iPhone sales push, Apple Store app to be redesigned & gain free iTunes content  —  Next week, Apple will debut a new element of Tim Cook's plan to sell more iPhones direct from Apple Retail.  The company, on Tuesday, July 23rd, will release an updated version of its Apple Store application …

“What Is That Box?”  — When The NSA Shows Up At Your Internet Company  —  For nine months, this Utah ISP had a little black box in the corner, courtesy of the NSA.  Its owner tells his story.  When people say the feds are monitoring what people are doing online, what does that mean?  How does that work?

Facebook Premium  —  Everybody thinks because I'm one of “the Twitter guys” that I must be good at using all social media.  The truth is, if I can't figure an app out in a minute, I usually move on to something else.  Too many settings and options frustrate and confuse me.

Locket Puts Ads On Smartphone Lock Screens, Pays You To Use Your Phone  —  Would you install an Android app that put ads directly on your smartphone's lock screen?  No?  What if you were paid to do so, and whenever you swiped to unlock your device, you made a little money?

Zune 2.0: is Microsoft making the same mistakes with Surface RT?  —  History is in danger of repeating itself  —  Back in June of last year, Microsoft started teasing a “major announcement” that would soon be revealed as its first tablet: the Surface RT. There was an air of excitement …

Mozilla unveils ‘aggressive’ Firefox OS schedule: Quarterly feature releases, security updates every six weeks  —  With Firefox OS version 1.0 out the door, Mozilla has decided that it's time to unveil its strategy for new versions.  The company is planning to make feature releases available …

Cydia developer Saurik exploits and fixes Android's Master Key vulnerability with ‘Impactor’  —  The severity of the Master Key vunerability (bug #8219321) Bluebox Security discovered has been disputed and folks often are willing to look past theoretical vulnerabilities until a widespread zero day goes public.

“Designing Facebook Home” Video Gives Rare Look At Prototypes And Iteration Process  —  Facebook Home's launcher was inspired by Lunchables.  That's just one nugget of insight into Facebook's design process from a presentation it gave to Bay Area designers in May and that it's now released as a video.

France clears Iliad of intentionally slowing down YouTube  —  France's telecom regulator has cleared Iliad, the country's second-biggest broadband provider, of intentionally slowing down Google's video-sharing site YouTube, following a six-month investigation.

Here's what's inside the Moto X  —  Motorola is set to unveil its new flagship Moto X smartphone August 1st, but even before the company makes things official, The Verge can confirm several of the device's hardware specifications.  A tipster who has used a CDMA variant of the phone firsthand tells us …

NVIDIA Shield now shipping July 31  —  NVIDIA this morning announced that Shield — its handheld, Android-based gaming system — will ship on July 31, a little more than a month late.  Shield originally was to ship June 27, but an unspecified “mechanical issue” with a “third-party component” pushed the launch into July.