A top media rights watchdog has listed Australia along with Iran and North Korea in a report on countries that pose a threat of internet censorship. Paris-based Reporters Without Bordersput Australia and South Korea on its list of countries under surveillance
in its Internet Enemies report. Australia was listed for its government’s plan to block access to websites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse. Critics say the plan is a misguided measure that will harm civil liberties
Most polymers — materials made of long, chain-like molecules — are very good insulators for both heat and electricity. But an MIT team has found a way to transform the most widely used polymer, polyethylene, into a material that conducts heat just as well as most metals, yet remains an electrical insulator
A broke former New York Life employee was busted on charges he tried to extort $200,000 from the insurance firm by threatening to smear it with a spam attack of six million emails. Anthony Digati, 52, allegedly vowed to use a spam service
and his skills as a huge social networker
to drag the company through the muddiest waters imaginable
The journey from London to Beijing by rail could take just two days under a Chinese plan to build an international network for trains that can travel almost as fast as aircraft. Three networks are planned, with the Britain to China route to be extended to Singapore, and built within a decade. Passengers on a second route would travel to the north of China and through Russia and on to Germany, where the network would join the European railway system
Deforestation has revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa. The 36-46km-wide feature, identified in DR Congo, may be one of the largest such structures discovered in the last decade. Italian researchers considered other origins for the ring, but say these are unlikely
A US Transport Security Administration analyst has been indicted with tampering with databases used by the TSA to identify possible terrorists who may be trying to fly in the US. Douglas James Duchak, 46, was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday with two counts of damaging protected computers. According to a federal indictment, Duchak tried to compromise computers at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operations Center (CSOC) on 22 October 2009, seven days after he’d being given two weeks notice that he was being dismissed. He was also charged with tampering with a TSA server that contained data from the US Marshal’s Service Warrant Information Network
iiNet has confirmed it is involved in early negotiations for the potential acquisition of rival ISP Netspace, among others, following the issuing of a trading halt on the Australian Securities Exchange. The Perth-based ISP responded to media speculation it was gearing up to acquire rival Netspace for up to $75 million, but said the figure was way off the mark
Twitter launched a new link-screening service aimed at preventing phishing and other malicious attacks against users of the popular microblogging service. Part of the new service is a new Twitter tool to shorten URLs, so users will see some links in e-mail notifications and direct messages from other users written as twt.tl
Internet service providers linked to the notorious Zeus botnet have been taken down, knocking out a third of the command-and-control servers that run the network of hacked machines. Two ISPs, named Troyak and Group 3, were home to 90 of the 249 known Zeus command-and-control servers. Zeus Tracker, a Web site that tracks the botnet, noticed the steep drop in servers on Wednesday morning
It’s been a long time coming. While Arthur C Clarke’s satellites have taken to space, and James Bond’s futuristic mobile technology has become common place, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us. But the future is here! Finally we can all take flight as Martin Aircraft in New Zealand releases the first commercially-available jet pack
This week, Elliot Associates, a hedge fund, offered to buy Novell. The offer signals a bid to break up the company, and could be extremely bad news for open source… and also for Microsoft
Archaeologists say they may have found proof of the oldest and most southerly human habitation in the world at the site of a major road project in Tasmania. Archaeologists and Aboriginal heritage officers have been removing sediment from eight trenches along the Jordan River levee at the Brighton roadworks site, north of Hobart. Initial findings suggest the sediment is between 28,000 and 40,000 years old, making it the oldest, most southern site of human habitation in the world. It is believed up to 3,000,000 artefacts could be buried there
Secretary Clinton’s recent speech on Internet Freedom has signalled a strong interest from the US State Department in promoting the use of the internet to promote political reforms in closed societies. It makes sense that the State Department would look to support existing projects to circumvent internet censorship. The New York Times reports that a group of senators is urging the Secretary to apply existing funding to support the development and expansion of censorship circumvention programs, including Tor, Psiphon and Freegate
Technology that could see an end to the bane of many commuters — people talking loudly on their mobile phones — has been shown off by researchers. The prototype device could allow people to conduct silent phone conversations. The technology measures the tiny electrical signals produced by muscles used when someone speaks
Some computers bestowed to schools in Canberra’s $2 billion computers-in-classrooms scheme are not connected to the internet. Education Minister Julia Gillard said 780,000 computers — one for every student in Years 9 to 12 — would be handed out by December next year
Engineering researchers have crafted a flat surface that refuses to get wet. Water droplets skitter across it like ball bearings tossed on ice. The inspiration? Not wax. Not glass. Not even Teflon. Instead, University of Florida engineers have achieved what they label in a new paper a nearly perfect hydrophobic interface
by reproducing, on small bits of flat plastic, the shape and patterns of the minute hairs that grow on the bodies of spiders
This is the story of how, in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the email accounts of two Harvard Crimson reporters using data obtained from TheFacebook.com’s logs. The details are drawn from a broader investigation of the origins of Facebook, the sourcing of which is described here
A new study from two academics at BYU tracking the sales of printed books following free ebook releases found that generally, a free ebook release is correlated with increased sales. Interestingly, the exception is for a group of ebooks that were released for a week and then withdrawn — part of Tor.com’s launch strategy, and a success in getting large number of people signed up to the site. Very nice to see some crunchy data in the mix — via Boing Boing
There is a recent and rather macabre addition to the marine biologist’s toolkit. Scientists in Canada are using the bodies of dead pigs, diverted from the butcher’s shop, in their undersea laboratory. By ending up in ocean experiments (rather than on the dinner table), the pigs have provided scientists with some intriguing new data. The dead pigs were not my idea,
says Dr Verena Tunnicliffe, professor of marine biology at the University of Victoria in Canada. She explained that she and her colleagues were piggybacking
on forensics research in order to study low-oxygen zones, sometimes known as dead zones
, in the ocean
Cruelty to animals, it is said, is often a precursor to graver crimes. So would there not be some usefulness to a registry of individuals convicted of felony animal abuse? Legislators in California want the Golden State to be the first to establish such a record — just as California was the first in the nation to create a registry of sex offenders
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