Exposed: ‘new’ Dick Smith hard drive full of pirated movies

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22 December 2011
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Sydneysider Darryl Mason bought a new portable hard drive from Dick Smith only to find that it was filled with pirated movies and potentially contained malware that has ruined crucial footage for his documentary.

The retailer has since admitted that it sells second hand hard drives as new, but in this instance forgot to wipe it clean.

The Minister for Fair Trading, Anthony Roberts, said he was very concerned with Dick Smith’s actions and that the retailer may be liable for compensation under Australian consumer laws — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Mexican authorities disband Veracruz police force in bid to stem corruption

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22 December 2011
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The entire police force in the Mexican port of Veracruz was dissolved on Wednesday in an effort to root out corruption, and armed marines were sent in to patrol.

A state spokeswoman, Gina Dominguez, said 800 police officers and 300 administrative staff had been laid off. They can re-apply for jobs, but must meet stricter standards with officers “who are better trained and more committed and who can deliver under our current security circumstances,” she said.

Armed marines barricaded police headquarters and navy helicopters flew over the city where 35 bodies were dumped in September in one of the worst gang attacks of Mexico’s drug war.

The change was agreed on Monday by the governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, and the federal interior secretary Alejandro Poiré — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Liquid metal capsules used to make self-healing electronics

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22 December 2011
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A crack team of engineers at the University of Illinois has developed an electronic circuit that autonomously self-heals when its metal wires are broken. This self-healing system restores conductivity within “mere microseconds,” which is apparently fast enough that operation can continue without interruption.

The self-healing mechanism is delightfully simple: The engineers place a bunch of 10-micron (0.01mm) microcapsules along the length of a circuit. The microcapsules are full of liquid metal, a gallium-indium alloy, and if the circuit underneath cracks, so do the microcapsules (90% of the time, anyway — the tech isn’t perfect yet!). The liquid metal oozes into the circuit board, restoring up to 99% conductivity, and everything continues as normal. This even works with multi-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs), such the motherboard in your computer, too. There’s no word on whether this same technology could one day be used by Terminators to self-heal shotgun blasts to the face, but it certainly sounds quite similar — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Scientists unveil first MS stem cell model

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22 December 2011
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Australian researchers have developed the world’s first stem cell model of multiple sclerosis, opening up new ways to study the disease and test treatments.

The deputy director of Monash University’s immunology and stem cell laboratory, Claude Bernard, said he and his colleagues had used skin cells from MS sufferers to create induced pluripotent stem cells that have the capacity to become brain cells targeted by the disease.

This effectively creates a disease in a dish that can be replicated and studied by researchers who have previously had only blood cells, autopsy tissue and cerebrospinal fluid to work on. The cells also mean scientists can avoid using human embryos, overcoming ethical concerns.

Professor Bernard said this would create a limitless supply of the cells for researchers to study the mechanisms of the disease and to test new drugs — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Websites allow Kenyans to report bribes and battle corruption

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22 December 2011
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Ask a Nairobi resident to name the most frustrating part of living in Nairobi, and they’re likely to answer: bribing a cop.

Well, now Kenyans have a way to combat corruption, by text messaging, emailing, or even tweeting an incident to a website called hatari.co.ke. Hatari (which means danger in Swahili), is just one of several private anti-corruption initiatives aimed at fighting corrupt practices that cost Kenya as much as $1 billion a year.

Kenya, a country where scandals make daily headlines and where public opinion polls show a declining trust in political leadership, has made small strides this year in bringing down corruption in government institutions. A Bribery Index published by Transparency International in October 2011 found that the prevalence of bribery had actually dropped slightly, making Kenya the fourth rather than the third most-corrupt nation in East Africa. Even so, Kenya’s police remained the most corrupt institution, the survey found — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The French Connection / Deus

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21 December 2011
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In Design
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The French MotoGP rider Randy de Puniet has been spending a fair bit of time in Australia lately. So when he needed a bike to get around Sydney, he gave Deus a call. Randy’s design brief was for a middleweight, 2-up twin,/q> says Deus creative director Carby Tuckwell. Easy enough to kick around the city, and with enough legs for out of town. Deus’ head wrench Jeremy Tagand is also French, so this custom Kawasaki W650 has been dubbed The French Connection — via Bike EXIF

Nuance to acquire mobile speech software provider Vlingo

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21 December 2011
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Consolidating the rapidly growing market for voice recognition systems and services, Nuance Communications is in the process of acquiring Vlingo, a provider of mobile voice recognition and analysis software, the two companies announced Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Nuance plans to uses Vlingo’s resources — personnel, research and technologies — to aid in the development of its own next generation natural language interfaces, according to Nuance — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Doodle Holiday Tags / CRAFT

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21 December 2011
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Happy holidays! I can’t believe that Christmas is in less than a week! Anyway, while shopping winds down and wrapping becomes the main focus, I’ve made some doodle gift tags for you to use! Just download the file, print, colour in the doodles, crop, and add to your gifts — via CRAFT

It’s up to parents to resist the tyranny of the pink princesses

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21 December 2011
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In Business, Rights
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On our kitchen wall are photos of our two daughters as a toddler and a baby. The older one is in navy blue and dark green, the younger in a red-and-blue checked shirt and cute little red trousers. Only the other day, our 18-year-old asked, “Why did you dress us as boys when we were little, Mum?

The answer is that I didn’t. I just dressed them as children. When our daughters were little, Babygros came in white, pale blue, yellow, lilac, red, navy and, yes, pale pink. But there was no pressure to put the girls in pink. In fact, most of their baby clothes were hand-me-downs from their male cousins and no-one even noticed.

It is only in the past decade or so that saccharine pink girliness has spread through Britain like the Ebola virus. These days, most babywear websites have a girl and a boy section in which not just the clothes but the bibs, booties and blankets are colour-coded. (Kudos to Mothercare, which allows babies to be unisex up to the age of one.) And the virus has spread to toys, too. If you’ve done any Christmas shopping for children this year, you’ll have seen the floor-to-ceiling walls of sickening pink fluffiness in the girls’ section and all the fun action and adventure toys in the boys’ — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google and Bing fight off ‘content farms’ in effort to improve online searches

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21 December 2011
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Online search engines are meant to pick out high-quality sites amid the sea of knockoffs that repeat information produced elsewhere, but even they get overwhelmed. As recently as March, for example, the first 10 results from a Google search for how to organise your desktop contained nine links to pages churned out by content farms — Web sites that publish reams of articles that aim simply to attract clicks and advertising dollars.

That prompted New Scientist magazine to ask computer scientist Richard McCreadie at the University of Glasgow to look into the issue. The results show that Google and Microsoft’s Bing seem to be regaining the upper hand in the fight against content farms.

Most of the credit has been given to Google, which announced in February that it had updated its search algorithm in a bid to prioritise sites that publish original and well-researched material. It won’t provide details, but many site owners noticed that the update penalized sites that publish multiple, near identical articles, a favourite tactic of content farms — via redwolf.newsvine.com

RockPod 2

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20 December 2011
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Looking for an easy-to-use audio/video converter? Check out PC User RockPod 2. For the first time ever, our popular media converter is yours to download for free — for a limited time. RockPod 2 isn’t the latest version, but it still offers plenty of must-have features

Skunks / Boston’s Museum of Science

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20 December 2011
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Boston’s Museum of Science is excited to introduce its two new baby Striped Skunks! These babies arrived at the Museum on 10 November. They were captive born on 24 September. When they get a bit bigger they will begin their careers as education animals here at the museum. Best known for their powerful scent used as a defence mechanism, Striped Skunks are one of four species of North American Skunks and are native to New England — via ZooBorns

Spanish village happy to be left feeling blue by Smurfs

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20 December 2011
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pueblo pitufo
pueblo pitufo, originally uploaded by manuelfloresv.

It was meant to be a short-lived publicity stunt for a film that became a box-office smash despite withering reviews. But for the 221 inhabitants of Juzcar in southern Spain, The Smurfs in 3D has brought them an unexpected lifeline in tough economic times – and yesterday they voted overwhelmingly to keep it.

The tiny pueblo of white-washed buildings near Malaga in Andalucía was selected by the filmmakers this summer to be painted entirely in that unique hue, Smurf blue.

While Sony had promised to return the village to its former glory after filming and publicity, the residents have found that being blue is not so bad at all, and yesterday in a referendum voted 141 in favour and just 33 against to remain the world’s only Smurf village — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Kim Jong-il, North Korean leader, dies

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19 December 2011
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Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s dear leader, has died aged 69, state television announced this morning.

An announcer said he died on Saturday from physical and mental over-work. It is thought that he suffered a stroke in 2008, but had apparently recovered.

A tearful anchor, dressed in black, said he had died at 8.30am while on a train trip on the way to give field guidance to workers — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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