P2P badboy The Pirate Bay sets sail for the Caribbean
Torrent freaks are off to the tropics
The Pirate Bay has fled to the Caribbean after Swedish authorities launched yet another attempt to seize its domain name.
Swedish prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad filed a motion at the District Court of Stockholm yesterday calling for the seizure of TPB’s Swedish addresses - thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se - as well as its Icelandic …
Give it up for Live 8-bit: Muso devs raise dosh for Bletchley Park kids
Audio Electronica album sales pumped into programming lessons
Synthesizer-loving programmers have released their very own electronica album to raise cash for kids' classes at Bletchley Park.
Software developers Jason Gorman, Chris Whitworth, Brian Hogan, Lance Walton, Yuriy O'Donnell and Peter Camfield formed a band with the snappy name Music By Programmers and released their debut on 29 …
Apple: You thought Google dodged taxes? Get a load of THIS
'The market is going to be all over it...'
Apple has embarked on one of the biggest bond offerings in history as part of a ploy to avoid tax.
Cupertino will soon begin issuing bonds in what will be one of the biggest debt sales of all time, it announced today. The plan is part of a scheme to funnel cash back to investors over the next three years.
After its stock price …
BT and O2 ink deal to build mega 4G network
Prodigal child needs paternal backend support
BT has reached out to its prodigal child O2 and offered to help build it a flashy new 4G network - for a few hundred million quid.
It has signed a 10-year deal with O2 owner Telefonica UK to work on a 4G network which will be used by millions of O2 mobile customers. The deal is said to be worth around £500m over the next decade …
Oi, journos. Try NOT to get hacked again. Lots of love, Twitter
Hackers have painted a bullseye on hacks' heads, chat site warns
Twitter has warned news agencies that hackers could strike again unless journalists take basic precautions - like using a decent password.
The micro-blogging site wrote to a number of news outlets warning that hackers consider them "high value" targets.
Their note of caution comes as the Syrian Electronic Army continued their …
2,000km-wide Eye-of-Sauron MONSTER hurricane spotted on Saturn
Cassini craft spots massive swirler atop planet's north pole
Stargazing NASA scientists have snapped an image of a massive hurricane on Saturn whose vortex is 20 times larger than the average size of the eye of its earthly cousins.*
The blowy behemoth boasts an eye estimated to be over 2,000km (1,250 miles) wide, which is more than large enough to spot any troublesome hobbits heading its …
British biz walking around with 'Hack Me' sign taped to its back
Gov cyber strategy? There is one? Good lord
Britain’s businesses are being left vulnerable to crippling cyber attacks due to a severe lack of security skills, according to a technology trade body.
The Institute of Engineering and Technology found that barely one in ten small to medium enterprises (SMEs) had “sufficient skills and resources in place” to repel threats from …
Continued lack of women in tech bemoaned by ex-techie lady MP
'Women would never have made automated supermarket tills'
The number of women enrolled in training courses preparing them to work in the tech industry has not changed for 30 years, an MP has told the House of Commons.
Ahead of a debate last Friday on “attracting girls to ICT careers”, Labour MP and former shadow minister for innovation Chi Onwurah warned that Britain's tech sector was …
Google Plus minus Meebo Bar equals Google minus $100m
'Buy 'em out, boys'
Google will axe the website widget Meebo Bar just one year after buying the company that built it.
The advertising giant said it scrapped the tool to focus on its Google+ plugins.
Google bought Meebo on 4 June reportedly for $100m, before proceeding to strip away much of its functionality.
It started as an instant-messaging …
Science of the lambs: Boffins grow GLOW-IN-THE-DARK sheep
Baa baa hacked sheep, why the day-glo wool?
Shepherds who watch their flocks by night could soon have a much easier job: South American scientists have successfully reared fluorescent sheep.
Boffins at the Animal Reproduction Institute of Uruguay implanted a glow-in-the-dark gene from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish into nine of the woolly animals.
The bright-minded …
Microsoft off the hook for billions in Motorola Mobility payout
Court case hinges around patents used in Xbox
Microsoft has triumphed in a court battle after a judge dismissed claims it owed Motorola Mobility billion-dollar royalties for technology used in the Xbox 360. The judge broke new ground by determining specific royalty fees to be paid for the use of standard-essential patents, which he said should amount in the millions rather …
Hey, monkey: Just 'cos your mates eat FOUL corn, YOU have to eat it too?
Science: Um, well... yes
Monkeys are just as prone to peer group pressure as humans, according to new research.
Boffins at the University of St Andrews found that primates are heavily influenced by the behaviour of their peers, just as humans are.
The discovery has been hailed as a rare example of "cultural transmission" in non-human animals. …
Apple fanbois get one last chance to see spectre of Steve Jobs
Extra tickets printed after WWDC 2013 sells out in SECONDS
Apple has taken pity on fanbois who were too slow to buy a ticket to its 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference, which sold out in seconds.
The iPhone giant has now coughed up a few more passes to keep its choked-up coders sweet.
Software programmers hoping to attend this year's annual love-in were floored after all the $1,599 …
Can't find your motor? Apple patents solve car park conundrums
Cupertino to enable world+dog to find its lost Ladas
Apple has filed a series of patents which will help people find their motors in a crowded car park and then open the doors without using a key.
The patents that emerged today are called "method for locating a vehicle" and "accessing a vehicle using portable devices".
The first sets out a system for anyone who wants to leave …
'Facebook, Twitter, Google: Ad companies masquerading as tech ones'
Says cross advertising man (not pickled herring)
The boss of Britain's largest advertising company has slammed Google, Facebook and Twitter for being "media owners masquerading as tech companies".
Speaking at the FT Digital Media Conference in London today, Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, said his company spent $2bn on buying advertising from Google last year, up …
Peak Apple: Cupertino belatedly spends some money on R&D
Jobsian diktat 'innovation nothing to do with R&D' binned
Apple is ploughing more cash into research and development ahead of new product launches expected in the coming 12 months.
Cupertino shelled out a hefty $1.19 billion on R&D in the first three months of this year; an increase of 41 per cent on the $841 million it spent in the same period last year.
If the pattern continues, …
Virgin Media: SO SORRY we fined your dead dad £10 for unpaid bill
'Being deceased, it's probably slipped his mind' says son-in-law
Virgin Media has apologised after charging a dead man £10 for being unable to pay his broadband bill.
The bloke's son-in-law Jim Boyden posted a photo of the demand for the tenner on Facebook, along with an open letter accusing the UK internet provider's staff of a "special kind of meanness".
Almost 100,000 people have now …
Bogus gov online test tells people on dole they're just SO employable
'Devised by sinister US TORTURE PROF' yells angry blogger
Bloggers have discovered that the Department for Work and Pensions is using an obviously defective personality test in a bid to get jobseekers off the dole and into work.
The psychometric test in question is supposedly designed to assess an unemployed person’s “signature strengths”. However, it was actually primed to give …
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO: NASA rovers scrawl giant willy on Mars
Pic Jet (Propulsion) Set Willy
Space cadets tittering at the mention of Uranus have a new celestial object to giggle at: A giant penis drawn on the surface of Mars by NASA robots.
Hard-up NASA in space knob outrage ... the rover's actual pic. Credit: NASA
The US space agency's $820m exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity set out for Mars in 2003 and, …
Spectre of Steve Jobs in one last outing at WWDC
WWDC Cupertino sets conference date for 10 June - tickets on sale tomorrow
Tickets for the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference will go on sale tomorrow, offering fanbois the chance to ogle some of Steve Job's final creations.
Launched with a flash new logo resembling a day-glo jelly mould, the event will showcase the work that has been going on in Cupertino over the past year. Apple has …
Free French app app booted by Apple, triggers 1m-strong petition
'Extrêmement brutale et unilatérale' rages minister
Almost a million people have signed a petition demanding Apple rethink its decision to pull a popular free-app-finding app from the App Store.
French-designed AppGratis - which describes itself as an "app-discovery" service - was pulled from the App Store earlier this month after falling foul of Apple's new rules regulating apps …
Indian IT consultant becomes idol to legions of football fans
Hat-trick hiccup bloke declines offer to join Premier League
Jubilant Manchester United fans have celebrated Robin van Persie's astonishing hat trick by bombarding an Indian IT consultant with congratulatory tweets.
Despite a picture that clearly shows him to be a bespectacled middle-aged Indian man rather than the slick-haired striker, football fans have mistaken Ravi Visvesvaraya …
Cook: iPad is a gateway drug which leads to harder Mac addiction
Though curiously Macs are down as fondleslabs surge
Apple CEO Tim Cook has claimed that surging iPad sales could result in people buying more Mac computers.
Answering questions after he announced quarterly results last night, the Cupertino overlord said that tablet sales could end up getting users hooked on Apple products, perhaps encouraging them to graduate to more expensive …
Apple slips Antennagate victims $15 each. The lawyers get $16m
But hey, don't forget the free iPhone 4 case, right?
Apple has sent out $15 cheques to fanbois whose iPhones suffered from dicky phone reception.
The Cupertino idiot-tax operation agreed to dish out the small payments after punters lodged a class-action lawsuit over the iPhone 4 "Antennagate" flaw.
When the smartmobe went on sale in 2010, its users complained about poor mobile …
Reddit: So very sorry for naming innocent man as Boston bomber
Front page of internet maybe not where you read the news
Condé Nast-owned community website Reddit has issued an apology for an "online witch hunt" launched by its users in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt.
Reddit enthusiasts banded together in a bid to find the people responsible for the bombs, but mistakenly named missing 22-year-old student Sunil …
Bill Gates offends Koreans after sticking hand down trousers
'American style' session with madam president
Bill Gates has managed to offend the whole of South Korea after brazenly breaking the country's strict but unwritten handshake rules.
He greeted female President Geun Hye Park with the customary one-handed palm press, but neglected to remove his other hand from his trouser pocket.
Using one mitt with the other stuffed in a …
Verizon: 96 PER CENT of state-backed cyber-spying traced to China
Lock up your data, folks
Spooks carrying out state-sponsored cyber-espionage were responsible for one in five data breaches last year, researchers have claimed.
New statistics contained in Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report 2012 found that 19 per cent of all attacks were carried out by agents acting on behalf of their government. Researchers …
Peak Apple: First 'profit slip' in a decade - and, boy, it's gonna be BIG
Clammy hand of Steve Jobs felt on cold Q2 numbers, say analysts
Apple will reveal its first profit fall in a decade when it unveils its quarterly earnings later today, analysts say.
According to Bloomberg, Apple's fiscal second-quarter income will probably have declined by 18 percent, year on year, to $9.53 billion. And even though revenue may be up 8 percent to $42.4 billion, this is the …
Microsoft: Worried about web privacy? Tell us everything...
Redmond wants to look at your privates
Microsoft has launched a drive to stop people splurging their personal information all over the internet - by asking them to splurge their personal information all over the internet.
As well as series of telly commercials, Microsoft have designed a special questionnaire designed to discover whether visitors are “carefree surfers …
iPhone too heavy? Volkswagen brings out motorised ride-on dock
Forget swapping batteries! Just plug in a petrol engine
Apple and Volkswagen have joined forces to produce a new version of the iconic Beetle enhanced with all sort of Cupertino-inspired bells and whistles.
Teams from both firms worked together on the iBeetle, which looks pretty much like the car which used to be produced without a lower case 'i' inserted in front of its name.
It …
Blogger, activist pals answer Anons' CISPA website blackout call
Oh noes, I can't access filmsuck.net
Almost 400 websites around the world have shut down services as part of a protest against new US cybersecurity laws.
The blackout was organised by hacktivist collective Anonymous in protest against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) - in a similar way to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) blackout last year …
Who's a Siri boy, then? Apple hoards your voices for TWO years
Privacy campaigners demand 'high justification' for query cache
A leading UK privacy warrior has urged Apple to explain itself after the tech titan admitted Siri queries are kept on record for two years.
Nick Pickles, director of pressure group Big Brother Watch, spoke out after the iPhone maker today revealed exactly how long it retains questions fired at its voice-controlled personal …
Shut the CANUCK up! Sony offers $1m to hacked gamers
Not our fault, but here's free stuff anyway, Canada
Canadian gamers affected by the hacking of Sony's Playstation Network have been offered compensation worth $1m by the entertainment giant.
An email titled “PSN-SOE-Canada Settlement” went out this week to gamers in Canada offering small sops to anyone affected by the outage in 2011.
Any Canadian who started an account on the …
Game designer spills beans on chubby-fancying chap with his stolen Mac
'He's f*cked with the wrong nerd', rages bloke
A video game designer says he's planning to cash in on his story of spying on a chubby-fancying pr0n-lover who came into possession of his stolen laptop.
The London-based designer, who prefers to remain anonymous, is looking to monetise his (NSFW) Plumpergeddon blog detailing his surveillance of his Macbook Pro’s new owner.
The …
PEAK APPLE: Fondleslab giant no longer world's biggest biz
Share price shenanigans nudges ExxonMobil ahead
Apple has lost the title of world's biggest company after a share slide allowed oil giant ExxonMobil to take the top spot.
Fears over future sales for iPhones and iPads sent shares in the fruity firm falling on Wednesday from $420.27 to a low of $398.11, before recovering to end the day at $402.80 - a drop across the day of 4.16 …
Google Glass will SELF-DESTRUCT if flogged on eBay
Techno-specs are for life, not just for Christmas
Buyers of Google Glass have been warned they cannot sell their pricey new techno-spectacles on eBay or anywhere else.
In terms of sale posted on its website, the advertising giant said a Google Glass was for life, unless you wanted to give it away for nothing. Anyone who failed to follow the rules will have their devices …
Apple branded porno-peddling perverts by Chinese Pravda
State rag claims it found Cupertino's XXX stash
A state-run Chinese newspaper has attempted to name and shame Apple for allegedly spreading smut in the People's Republic.
The Foxconn rebrander appears on a rundown of 198 dodgy and mostly obscure websites accused of breaking obscenity laws that ban the online distribution of XXX material. The list was published today in …
Samsung: Posting of fake HTC hate was 'unfortunate'
Watchdog probes anonymous comments slating rival's mobes
Samsung staffers slated smartphone arch-rival HTC in fake online reviews - and now a Taiwanese watchdog is investigating.
Sammy has since ended the practice of allowing its employees to post anonymous comments, describing the whole affair as "unfortunate" and one that went against its "fundamental principles". It has even been …
Boffins: Tireless star spurted deadly jets for half an hour at a time
Long-lasting gamma ray bursts were death throes of a supergiant - study
Scientists studying one of the biggest cosmic explosions ever recorded have theorised that the enormous bang, from which super long-lasting gamma ray bursts were emitted, was caused by the death of a massive star up to 1,000 times bigger than the Sun.
A team at the University of Warwick studied a mysterious explosion recorded on …
Gov.uk named THE BEST THING Britain has made all year
Website beats Raspberry Pi, The Shard, Olympics et al
It's a website with all the visual flair you would expect from something designed by "cool" Whitehall bureaucrats.
But even though it's something of a plain Jane, the government portal gov.uk has been named Design of the Year 2013 by the Design Museum in London. A suitable gong was handed to the website's team at a ceremony last …
AMAZEBALLS: Buy a doomed Apple TV, get a replacement free
3rd-gen Wi-Fi-hungry telly boxes can't do Wi-Fi
Apple has admitted its third-generation Apple TV box is dicky and has offered to replace faulty units.
The fruity firm confessed that "small numbers" of the units suffered from dodgy Wi-Fi connections. Although the set-top box has a wired Ethernet port, the flaw is crippling for fanbois who are allergic to trailing cables and …
At LAST, scientists tackle the problems faced by alcoholic rats
Fresh rodent kidney created in lab
Scientists have grown an artificial rat kidney in the laboratory, heralding an era when humans can replace their own knackered organs with off the shelf stand-ins.
Boffins at Massachusetts General Hospital used a technique which had previously been used to create fully working hearts, lungs and liver tissue.
They first took a …
Ex-hacker leaves Pentagon's TOP-SECRET war boffins for Google
What will he do? We don't know - it's a secret
Google has hired a former hacker who has spent the last three years working for the US Department of Defense's secretive military research bureau.
The Chocolate factory poached Peiter "Mudge" Zatko from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and will put him to work in its own research skunkworks.
He will take up …
Twitter buys music firm We Are Hunted, preps soundtrack for 200m twits
What do you mean you don't like what EVERYONE ELSE is listening to...
Twitter is set to finally make some noise as it prepares to launch a new music service.
The microblogging behemoth has snapped up a music-search service called We Are Hunted which scours the internet to identify what people are listening to and then makes recommendations based upon its findings.
We Are Hunted confirmed the deal …
Wales slams Amazon over lack of Kindle support
Anger after giant doesn't 'recognise' land of song language
A publisher has attacked Amazon over its failure to offer books in Welsh on the Kindle e-reading device.
More than 1,500 people have also signed a petition demanding the all-conquering badboy of bookselling change its policy after the imprint attacked it in the Welsh press.
Y Lolfa, a small publisher based near Aberystwyth, is …
'You can keep it' - Brit's nicked laptop turns up on Iranians' sofa
Tracking app on swiped PC snaps pics of family
A British animator who used tracking software to trace his stolen laptop to Iran has apologised to its “innocent new owners” after pictures of them were splashed all over the internet.
Dom Del Torto's Macbook Pro was nicked from his London flat in February and he was able to watch its 3,000 mile odyssey to the Islamic Republic …
Brit cops blow £14m on software - then just flush it down the bogs
Plods lose love for Siren, decide to go with another system
Surrey Police has pulled the plug on a multi-million-pound computer system it spent years developing.
Way back in 2005, the force began overhauling its criminal intelligence setup. Since then it has spent £14.8m developing gear called the Surrey Integrated Reporting Enterprise Network (Siren). It is unclear how much of this dosh …
Go-go Gadget watch? Apple posts job ad for 'flexible display' bod
Recent posting sought 'senior optical engineer'
Apple has pulled a job advert looking for a flexible display expert just a week after it was posted.
The fruity firm placed an advert on its American site on 1 April which said it had a role as a "senior optical engineer" that needed to be filled.
The notoriously secret firm has not revealed why it binned the message, but it is …
Microsoft Xbox exec quits after ENRAGING the INTERWEBS
'Always-on' Twitter gaffe provoked wrath of gamers
A high-flying Microsoft creative director has quit after enraging Xbox owners with a widely publicised tweet saying they should get used to consoles being constantly connected to to the internet.
A week ago, Adam Orth provoked the wrath of bedroom-bound gamers and industry experts alike after sharing his thoughts on the always- …
Dinosaur embryos FOUND: Resurrection 'out of the question'* - boffin
Fast-growing bones point to SUPER-SHORT incubation period
Dinosaur embryos wiggled around in their eggs just like the embryos of modern birds, scientists have found. The boffins made the discovery after a cache of fossilised dino bones and eggs were dug up in southwest China.
The scientists are hoping to find out more about the Jurassic-era creatures by analysing remnants of complex …
