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10th December 2012 Archive

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  • Iran draws veil over lolcats, launches local YouTube knock-off

    Culturally-appropriate video sharing

    Iran took another step in its plans to eradicate Western influence from its Internet, with the weekend launch of its very own, government-sanctioned, censored and monitored video-sharing site, called Mehr. The site – its name means “affection” in Farsi, according to Agence France Presse – is intended to give Iranians video …

    Government 10 Dec 01:19

  • Australian Police say don't use Apple's iOS 6 Maps

    'Distressed motorists stranded' in desert after Cupertino misses by 70kms

    Police in the Australian state of Victoria have issued a warning not to use iOS 6 maps, after “a number of motorists were directed off the beaten track in recent weeks.” The warning is no laughing matter as it was issued by Police in the town of Mildura, which is located near the Murray-Sunset National Park, a spot where …

    Networks 10 Dec 02:07

  • Telstra offers cash in flaming exchange afternath

    Services still down in parts

    Telstra has announced new compensation plans for beleaguered customers affected by a fire that swept through a telephone exchange in Warrnabool last month. Services in the area remain disrupted. In the latest update Telstra said that there now fewer than 3,000 fixed line services and under 1,000 internet services remaining to …

    Networks 10 Dec 03:17

  • Telecom NZ slashes cost of unexpected journeys

    Flat rate roaming for Kiwis - now what about the rest of us?

    Telecom New Zealand has announced flat-rate international roaming charges. The antipodean carrier announced today that its customers will pay just $NZ6 each day they use mobes while visiting The West Island Australia, and a tenner in UK, USA, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia. Data costs have been …

    Mobile 10 Dec 03:37

  • White Van Man could become a rolling radio relay

    Vehicle-to-vehicle networks work better when tall vehicles shift data

    The idea that cars should share data among each other to automate some aspects of driving and make more efficient use of roads is not new. But researchers from the Universidade do Porto and Carnegie Mellon University have noted an important impediment to its adoption: cars are smaller than other vehicles – like lorries and …

    Networks 10 Dec 04:30

  • Hitachi calls time on chip production

    Another one bites the dust...

    Japanese electronics giant Hitachi has decided to stop in-house production of processors by 2014 as part of efforts to boost its competitiveness on the world stage. The Tokyo-headquartered conglomerate, which produces everything from nuclear and wind power plants to dump trucks and fridges, said the Micro Device Division of …

    Business 10 Dec 05:00

  • Brit physics student debuts zombie flick shot inside LHC

    'Higgs bio-entanglement simulation' goes horribly … braaaiiiiins

    What do you get when some attractive students stay up too late inside the Large Hadron Collider and aren't told about radiation leaks? Zombies and lots of scary moments inside very long subterranean tunnels seem to be the answer, judging by the preview below for Decay, a film written and directed by actual PhD candidate and …

    Hardware 10 Dec 05:24

  • Pakistan Cyber Army declares war on Chinese, Bangladeshi sites

    Hacktivists go on web defacement spree

    Hacktivists claiming to hail from the Pakistan Cyber Army have defaced over 400 Chinese government web sites and also hit in excess of 20 Bangladeshi government sites. A hacker known as ‘Code Cracker’ is claiming responsibility for the attack on the official web site of Xuchang City People’s Procuratorate and a whopping 436 …

    Security 10 Dec 05:33

  • New York invites designers to invent Future of Phone Booths

    But where will Superman* change now?

    The Mayor of New York has kicked off a competition for those with ideas on the future of the city's 11,000 phone boxes, with a view to deploying something new when the existing contract runs out in 2014. The Mayor is looking for something interesting, and something which will help New Yorkers communicate, especially in an …

    Networks 10 Dec 05:56

  • Max Headroom style fake celebrity avatar plan seeks Kickfunding

    Or you could lavish parental attention on pretend kids

    A plan to create digitised people is less than a grand short of its $5K goal, and promising to create Max-Headroom-style characters from celebrities and personal friends, ready for early next year. Max Headroom, for the younger readers, was an electronic avatar created to present the "What I Want To Know" show and prevent …

    Bootnotes 10 Dec 05:57

  • Hong Kong cops open £700k cyber security centre

    27-man centre will try to spot and combat CNI attacks

    The Hong Kong government has thrown HK$9 million (£730,000) at a new Cyber Security Centre in a bid to tackle the growing threat to critical infrastructure in the Special Administrative Region of China. Police commissioner Tsang Wai-hung said at the opening ceremony last Friday that the 27-man centre would be staffed by …

    Government 10 Dec 07:21

  • Pocket strokers will barely feel Qualcomm's new tiny bonk chip

    40nm NFC tech easy on batteries, case sizes

    Qualcomm's Atheros subsidiary has come up trumps again: this time in the form of a tiny NFC chip designed to use less power when transferring data over the airwaves. The snappily monikered QCA1990 is about half the size of existing NFC chips, and uses a 40nm fabrication process to significantly reduce the power needed. This …

    Mobile 10 Dec 08:02

  • That square QR barcode on the poster? Check it's not a sticker

    Crooks slap on duff codes leading to evil sites

    Cybercrooks are putting up stickers featuring URLs embedded in Quick Response codes (QR codes) as a trick designed to drive traffic to dodgy sites. QR codes are two-dimensional matrix barcode that can be scanned by smartphones that link users directly to a website without having to type in its address. By using QR codes ( …

    Security 10 Dec 08:58

  • Are you ready for the 40-zettabyte year?

    IDC gazes at its balls

    An IDC study sponsored by storage giant EMC tells us that, surprise, we need to buy more storage because the digital universe will reach 40 zettabytes by 2020. That's 40 trillion gigabytes and is estimated to be all the data created, replicated and consumed in that year. It's the result of the amount of digital information in …

    Storage 10 Dec 09:32

  • What's the way ahead for Dell storage?

    Blocks+Files HP are weak, but the chance isn't being grabbed

    Where has Dell's storage business model gone awry? Dell storage has exhibited declining sales for about two years despite Dell buying some of the hottest storage startups around, like EqualLogic and Compellent. Why is this? When Dell buys companies it goes to great lengths to keep their employees and ensure their culture stays …

    Storage 10 Dec 09:54

  • Tor node admin raided by cops appeals for help with legal bills

    'I'm on my own and require a good lawyer' says bloke

    A sysadmin had his flat raided and equipment seized by police last week for hosting a Tor exit node. William Weber from Graz, Austria, was questioned by cops after someone allegedly distributed child abuse images over one of the Tor exits he administered. Contrary to some early reports Weber was only questioned by police, who …

    Security 10 Dec 10:29

  • This is out of hand now: Apple attempts to trademark the LEAF

    Presumably next it will be blank space around the logo

    If you thought Apple patenting the rectangle was a gratuitous abuse of intellectual property, you may be pained to hear that Apple has now applied to trademark a leaf. Specifically, Apple wants to protect the leaf on its company logo. Apple applied for to the European Trademark Registry on 3 December, with the help of London …

    Law 10 Dec 11:10

  • HP still top of PC league, but trailing fourth in all-devices rankings

    The slabbening of the world gathers pace

    HP may still be clinging onto the top spot in the global PC stakes but in the world of smart connected devices it is becoming less and less of a relevant player, market stats show. The boxes - desktops, notebook, tabs and smartphones - sold globally in Q3 have been counted by abacus fondler IDC and the US titan has come out of …

    The Channel 10 Dec 11:42

  • Review: Apple Mac Mini 2012

    Update Nice media centre, shame about the HDMI glitches

    On 10 December 2012, Apple posted the called for Mac Mini HDMI-centric firmware update, after this review was written and published. We will be testing the machine with the new code, and will report back here shortly. I should say right up front that, much as I quite like the Mac Mini’s form-factor, looks and, more particularly …

    Tablets 10 Dec 12:00

  • Nook Video store launches, brings UltraViolet to Blighty

    First digital retailer for universal content library

    UK bookseller Barnes & Noble has become the first retailer in the UK to support UltraViolet, the online film library that’s the closest thing we have to a universal digital content format - and which Tesco reckons is "too complicated" for Brits. Enter Nook Video, a B&N service with makes movie and TV show downloads available …

    Media 10 Dec 12:30

  • Valve chief confirms Steam-centric console-killing PC

    'We will do it,' pledges Newell

    Expect to see a Steam-brand console-style living room PC in 2013, Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, has revealed. There have been hints the company is working on such a box. The debut earlier this year of a TV-centric UI for the Steam client, called Big Picture, which came out of beta last week, is perhaps the most important one …

    Games 10 Dec 12:34

  • Parliament to unleash barrage of criticism on Snoopers' Charter

    Unseen spook Farr back again with plan to tap the UK net

    The joint parliamentary committee scrutinising the government’s Communications Data Bill - universally dubbed the “Snoopers' Charter” - is set to slate the draft law in its official report published tomorrow. Most of the committee members felt the Home Office had failed to make a convincing case for the scale of requested …

    Government 10 Dec 12:38

  • 'UK DNA database by stealth' proposed in £100m NHS project

    Mighty archive to 'unlock the power of DNA' - Cameron

    Prime Minister David Cameron is to announce plans for the NHS to create a massive database of patients' DNA, which experts have advised could lead to massive health benefits and advances in medical technology. However the creation of such a database has obvious and far reaching privacy implications. In an attempt to address …

    Government 10 Dec 13:15

  • RIM is really in trouble when even Windows Phone 8 looks great

    Opinion Once-plump BlackBerry now just a smear of gunge

    RIM has seen its once dominant market position in corporate mobile plummet from a great height in the last couple of years. The Canadian giant has suffered a huge fall in stock price and, more importantly, penetration - currently around eight per cent market share - with continual declines, quarter upon quarter. So there is a …

    The Channel 10 Dec 14:00

  • LOL: Twitter faces fines for late UK financial filings

    Blabber ziggurat #notagoodwayofgettinginfo

    Twitter UK Ltd faces an embarrassing fine of £375 after failing to file its latest company accounts on time. Twitter-owned British subsidiary Tweetdeck is also late on turning in its financials and also faces a penalty. Companies House, which maintains the official register of businesses in the UK, expects annual summaries of …

    Networks 10 Dec 14:11

  • Saudi Aramco: Foreign hackers tried to cork our gas output

    Worm outbreak targeted oil giant's sensitive machinery

    Hackers who used the Shamoon worm to attack oil giant Saudi Aramco were bent on halting its fuel production, according to the company and Saudi government officials. The attack on Saudi Aramco — which supplies a tenth of the world’s oil — failed to disrupt oil or gas output even though it infected 30,000 computers and crippled …

    Security 10 Dec 14:56

  • Patrick Moore: Lived with cats, accompanied Einstein on the piano

    Much-loved stargazer and class act passes away aged 89

    A nobleman among geeks, the great stargazer Patrick Moore passed away yesterday at the age of 89. Born in 1923, the great man racked up many geek accolades in his long career of star watching, contributing to the NASA moon landings and holding the world record for the longest running TV show with the same presenter for his 55 …

    Science 10 Dec 15:59

  • John McAfee: Let me go to the USA - or old Blighty

    You can trust what I say - I don't use McAfee AV

    Former anti-virus mogul turned fugitive John McAfee has appealed to be allowed to return to the United States rather than deported from Guatemala to Belize. Authorities in Belize want to question McAfee as a person of interest in the murder of his neighbour, Gregory Faull. McAfee went into hiding with his 20-year-old …

    Security 10 Dec 16:57

  • Big Blue etches silicon nanophotonics with regular chip tech

    Exterminate! Copper wires, Exterminate!

    The path to exascale supercomputing computing is going to require the development of a number of technologies, and one of them is the shift from copper to optical signaling between chips in a complex of computing and memory. And IBM thinks it is going to have an edge in this effort now that it has cooked up photonics components …

    Hardware 10 Dec 17:57

  • Mystery X-37B robot spaceplane returns to orbit on Tuesday

    Second flight for small, secretive 'space warplane'

    The United States Air Force will mount the third mission into space by its small space-shuttle lookalikes, the X-37Bs (once memorably dubbed "secret space warplanes" by the Iranian government) on Tuesday if all goes to plan. The third Orbital Test Vehicle mission, aka OTV-3, will see the same X-37B which flew the inaugural OTV …

    Science 10 Dec 17:58

  • Google honors computing's first developer Ada Lovelace

    Babbage's 'Enchantress of numbers' remembered

    Google has started the week with a Google Doodle offering a rather belated acknowledgement of the contribution of computing of Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first theoretical software algorithm for her friend Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Lovelace, daughter of mad, bad, and dangerous to know Lord Byron, was a close …

    Science 10 Dec 19:54

  • Boffin: Android's on-board malware scanner utterly FAILS

    App blocker detects just 15% of malware

    Google has added new anti-malware capabilities to Android 4.2 "Jelly Bean," but relying on them to block malicious apps might not be a good idea, says a computer science boffin from North Carolina State University. The latest Android – currently only found on a select group of handsets – includes an on-device "application …

    Security 10 Dec 20:53

  • Bear backs down: Russia soft-pedals ‘net regulation proposals

    US delegation denies veto threat

    As US ambassador Terry Kramer denies having threatened any walk-out or veto of the contentious ITU WCIT meeting in Dubai, reports are emerging that controversial Internet regulation proposals have been withdrawn. If true, this report at Communications Day indicates that a turnaround has been reached, with Russia withdrawing …

    Policy 10 Dec 21:38

  • Facebook T&Cs vote falls 299.5 million short of quorum

    Brief experiment in social democracy snuffed

    Facebook's three-year experiment with user democracy now looks doomed, with a vote over the social network's new terms and conditions coming just under 299,500,000 votes short of the total needed to block the changes. The proposed changes will eliminate the current user voting system, which was established in 2009 as a token …

    Business 10 Dec 21:58

  • Apple updates maps to remove Australia’s ghost-city in the desert

    Register hack locates a source for the error

    As Apple pushes out an update to iOS 6 maps to remove the now-notorious “desert Mildura”, I’m going to sound an unusual note of fairness to Cupertino for the mistake. It wasn’t actually Apple’s fault. It looked bad compared to Google Maps, because the Chocolate Factory has spent an awful lot of money, time and petrol on …

    Networks 10 Dec 22:10

  • Group vows new webOS smartphone by 2016

    All-volunteer org aims to revive HP's dead OS

    The webOS smartphone platform may be dead at HP, but a group of volunteers hopes to see it rise from its ashes by bringing a new device using the OS to market within the next three years. Calling itself Phoenix International Communications, after the legendary reincarnating bird, the group says its goal is "to assist in the …

    Operating Systems 10 Dec 22:45

  • CSIRO top brass sent to anti-bully boot camp

    Victims group doubts toxic culture can be turned around

    Australia's nexus for scientific research, the CSIRO, is continuing to grapple with the fallout from allegations of widespread bullying practices through the organisation. In an internal email to all staff from the CSIRO’s CEO Dr Megan Clark distributed yesterday, the chief executive addressed concerns and outlined the steps …

    Government 10 Dec 23:21