Google is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more
A security researcher has discovered a cluster of infected Linux servers that have been corralled into a special ops botnet of sorts and used to distribute malware to unwitting people browsing the web. Each of the infected machines examined so far is a dedicated or virtual dedicated server running a legitimate web site. But in addition to running an Apache webserver to dish up benign content, they’ve also been hacked to run a second webserver known as nginx, which serves malware
Virus writers keep getting sneakier. In an effort to evade detection, they’ve begun hiding their command and control instructions in legitimate Web 2.0 sites such as Google Groups and Twitter. Recently, security vendor Symantec spotted a Trojan horse program that’s been programmed to visit a private Google Groups newsgroup, called escape2sun, where it can download encrypted instructions or even software updates
The company known as China’s eBay will aim for expansion abroad in the long term, but first it wants more foreign products sold on its platform in China. Taobao.com, a booming auction and retail site, does not have a concrete plan for the overseas market but will likely target regions with cultural similarities to China first. Alibaba Group, Taobao’s parent company, wants 1 billion global users shopping on the site in 10 years, group CEO Jack Ma earlier told reporters. The target, more than one-seventh of the world’s population, compares with Taobao’s current average of up to 25 million shoppers each day
Librarians, youth-workers, and local vicars are being encouraged to apply to a fund which will provide free net access in selected UK communities. The fund is run by Freerunner, a company that installs wi-fi hotspots. The firm has said it will install 50 access points in communities across the UK, no matter where they are
Andy A multimillion-dollar collection of original artwork by famed pop art icon Andy Warhol was stolen last week from a West Los Angeles home, according to police. On 3 September, a housekeeper for noted art collector Richard L Weisman walked into the dining room of Weisman’s residence on Angelo Drive and noticed several pieces were missing, said Detective Donald Hrycyk, head of the LAPD’s Art Theft detail. A dozen large portraits that had adorned the walls the day before were gone. Hrycyk said there was no sign of forced entry into the home and that nothing else was disturbed, including several other Warhol paintings hanging on nearby walls. There were no immediate leads or suspects, Hrycyk said
The Prime Minister has released a statement on the Second World War code-breaker, Alan Turing, recognising the appalling
way he was treated for being gay. Alan Turing, a mathematician most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes, was convicted of gross indecency
in 1952 and sentenced to chemical castration. Gordon Brown’s statement came in response to a petition posted on the Number 10 web site which has received thousands of signatures in recent months
Frame4 Group is a Dutch company that has made its name specialising in different fields within IT: project and change management, process engineering, test coordination and quality assurance. Their customers include T-Mobile and British American Tobacco. But it’s because of their security services that they came to Help Net Security’s attention, specifically because of the Malware Distribution Project (MD:Pro). This is a large security archive with a massive collection of downloadable malware and computer underground related information for the purposes of analysis, testing, research and development
The Lost Orphan Mine below the Grand Canyon hasn’t produced uranium since the 1960s, but radioactive residue still contaminates the area. Cleaning the region takes an expensive process that is only done in extreme cases, but Judy Wall, a biochemistry professor at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is researching the use of sulfate-reducing bacteria to convert toxic radioactive metal to inert substances, a much more economical solution
Australian researchers have demonstrated a way of storing quantum pulses of light that could be used in an optical memory device, similar to the way computers store and retrieve digital information. The technology, developed by a team at the Australian National University (ANU), in Canberra, also has applications in quantum cryptography, a secure means of communication that utilises properties of light to encrypt information. Cryptography works if the information sender and receiver share a secret key
A South African information technology company proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom, the country’s leading internet service provider. Internet speed and connectivity in Africa’s largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage. It is also expensive. Local news agency SAPA reported the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km from Unlimited IT’s offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg. Including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds — the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using a Telkom line. SAPA said Unlimited IT performed the stunt after becoming frustrated with slow internet transmission times
Hackers temporarily shut down Kevin Rudd’s web site last night in an apparent protest at federal government proposals for a mandatory internet filtering system. The web site of the Australian Communications and Media Authority was also taken down by the attack at about 7.20pm, but both sites were reported to be back online an hour later. There was also an apparent attempt to shut down the website of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy
Decades of inbreeding is causing immense suffering for pedigree dogs, who are plagued by painful and deadly genetic diseases as a result of breeding for appearance, a UK investigation has found. The BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed (video), aired on ABC1 on Thursday, shows boxers suffering from epilepsy and spaniels with brains far too big for their skulls. Other painful disabilities and deformities, including poor gait and severe heart and respiratory problems, plague purebreds like west highland terriers, golden retrievers and german shepherds
A team of CSIRO researchers and international scientists say human trials of a new chemotherapy skin patch could be revolutionary. The patch, made up of tiny diamond particles, could also be applied internally to provide a slower non-toxic release of the chemicals into the patient’s body. Trials on mice show the patches require 20 times less of the drug to be as effective as conventional chemotherapy
Submitted by the Australian branch of Scientology to the local Human Rights Commission is a proposal to eliminate anonymity on the net and the removal of critical web sites (MS Word document). The submission is listed as #1931 at this page at the Australian Human Rights Commission — via Slashdot
Google will make concessions to European publishers and authors in an attempt to stem rising anger over its move to digitise and sell millions of books online. The company has agreed to have two non-US representatives on the board of a body that will administer a US legal settlement over the controversial online project, the Financial Times said. The newspaper cited a letter sent to 16 European Union publishers’ representatives at the weekend. According to the letter, Google also promises to consult European publishers before cataloguing some European works in its digital library
Much of the world knows Petra, the ancient ruin in modern-day Jordan that is celebrated in poetry as the rose-red city, ‘half as old as time’
, and which provided the climactic backdrop for
You can tell a lot about a person from their eyes, and now that seems to extend to memories hidden deep in the brain. By relating subtle eye movements to activity in the brain, researchers in California have shown that a structure called the hippocampus can retrieve memories of past events or experiences — even when people have no conscious recollection of them
A Bigpond internet outage that affected a suburban neighbourhood in southern Perth for almost a week has raised questions about Telstra’s customer complaint handling systems. Residents from Safety Bay, Rockingham, have complained that their BigPond ADSL broadband connection suffered an outage from 29 August until the night of 3 September. The outage, which one resident said Telstra confirmed to have affected 57 households in the neighbourhood, occurred after a hardware failure in the local exchange. Instead of notifying customers that the outage would last several days while a replacement part was flown in from the east coast, the telco left customers scratching their heads
A Sony Music office in Mexico has been raided after the label refused to hand over the recordings of one of Latin America’s biggest artists, Alejandro Fern?°ndez. Police took over 6,000 CDs that Sony refused to return, even though Fernández’ contract with the label had ended
RSS – Posts