Rogers, a huge cable internet provider in Canada, has decided to hijack all unregistered domains, and replace them with Yahoo! advertisements. This means Rogers users who type in a domain that doesn’t exist, are now getting Yahoo ads instead of the normal not found
error. Interestingly, Rogers also decided to do this with subdomains
A discovery leads to questions about whether the odds of people sharing genetic profiles are sometimes higher than portrayed. Calling the finding meaningless, the FBI has sought to block such inquiry
A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall
Scientists are searching within the virtual world and finding real viruses. Every hour, HealthMap, an infectious disease-tracking Web site, culls through news Web sites, public health list servs, the World Health Organization’s online pages, and other Web sites in six different languages to pinpoint outbreaks of disease that real-world doctors can then act on
Materials scientists have been singing graphene’s praises since it was first isolated in 2005. The one-atom-thick sheets of carbon conduct electrons better than silicon and have been made into fast, low-power transistors. Now, for the first time, researchers have measured the intrinsic strength of graphene, and they’ve confirmed it to be the strongest material ever tested. The finding provides good evidence that graphene transistors could take the heat in future ultrafast microprocessors
Kaspersky Labs has discovered malware that inserts links to malicious Web pages within ASF media files, posing a danger to Windows users who download music files from P2P networks. Infected files launch IE and load a page that asks the user to download a codec. The download, a Trojan horse, installs a proxy program to route other traffic through the PC. The malware also has worm-like qualities, according to Secure Computing. It searches for MP3s, transcodes them to WMA format, wraps them in an ASF container, and adds links to further copies of the malware, all without modifying the .MP3 extension — via Slashdot
Google said it will pay US$140 million for a Russian contextual advertising company as it seeks to expand its services to advertisers and web site publishers outside the US. The 6-year-old company, Zao Begun but known as Begun, has a search and contextual advertising business, with about 40,000 advertisers and a network of 143,000 Russian-language web sites
Google’s most popular web applications will work offline. After Google Reader and Google Docs, two other services will integrate with Gears. Gmail and Google Calendar will add offline support in approximately six weeks
A 27-year-old man was sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday for blasting AOL subscribers with spam over a four-month period. Adam Vitale was also ordered to pay AOL US$180,000 in restitution, according to his attorney, David Touger. He was sentenced in US District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan
Microsoft is in discussions with Time Warner over how to combine Microsoft and AOL’s online groups
Freeview will launch in Australian in 2009. The ABC, SBS, the Seven Network, the Nine Network, Network TEN, Prime, WIN and Southern Cross have joined forces to deliver the free-to-air digital television platform. The media companies will comprise a new not-for-profit organisation, chaired by the ABC’s Kim Dalton. Freeview will offer 15 television channels from free-to-air broadcasters on digital platforms, including new channels from the big three commercial networks. It will not include subscription TV
Flash memory chips with a potential lifetime of hundreds of years have been developed by Japanese scientists. The new chips also work at lower voltages than conventional chips, according to the scientists from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and the University of Tokyo. Current Flash chips are estimated to have a useful lifetime of around a decade for most applications
Mozilla has patched a pair of critical vulnerabilities in Firefox, taking the unusual step of updating the older version 2.0 on Tuesday but delaying the fixes for the newer version 3.0 until Wednesday. Both updates, labeled Firefox 2.0.0.16 and Firefox 3.0.1, plug two holes rated critical
by Mozilla, which uses a four-step threat ranking system. One of the flaws patched in 2.0.0.16 and 3.0.1 was credited to security researcher Billy Rios, who wrote last month about a blended
threat to Windows users who had both Apple’s Safari browser and Firefox installed on the same system
YouTorrent is without a doubt the most talked about newcomer in the BitTorrent scene this year. The site initially indexed all the popular torrent sites, but switched to purely verified
torrents after receiving legal threats. Today, YouTorrent officially relaunches with 67,170 legal
torrents, good for 6TBs of data
UK ISPs will be invited to tender for a British government scheme to monitor all internet communications and telecommunications in the country. But Britain’s information commissioner, Richard Thomas, has raised serious concerns about a government plan for a vast new database holding the telephone numbers and email accounts of everyone in the country
A deal struck today lets Google cloak identities of YouTube users while complying with a court order to show Viacom the video viewing habits of everyone who has ever used the popular web site
Tissue engineering has stalled in part because bioengineers haven’t been able to replicate the structural complexity of human tissues. Now researchers have taken an important first step toward building complex tissues from the bottom up by creating what they call living Lego. These building blocks, biofriendly gels of various shapes studded with cells, can self-assemble into complex structures resembling those found in tissues
eBay scored a major legal victory on Monday when a federal judge absolved it of taking more steps to police fake Tiffany jewelry sold on its web site and held that brand owners are ultimately responsible for protecting their own trademarks. All of Tiffany’s trademark infringement claims against eBay were rejected — a knockout blow to the four-year-old lawsuit that had been closely watched by Internet companies as well as luxury goods makers seeking to stop the sale of counterfeit products online. The ruling is expected to be appealed
eBay’s recent deal with Buy.com appears to be seriously irritating its veteran individual sellers. The deal allows Buy.com and other large fixed-price retailers to list millions of items on eBay without paying listing fees, and appears to be the direction that eBay will follow in the future. Understandably, individual sellers are outraged — via Slashdot
An Amazonian language with only 300 speakers has no word to express the concept of one
or any other specific number, according to a new study from an MIT-led team. The team, led by MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences Edward Gibson, found that members of the Piraha tribe in remote northwestern Brazil use language to express relative quantities such as some
and more
, but not precise numbers. It is often assumed that counting is an innate part of human cognition, said Gibson, but here is a group that does not count. They could learn, but it’s not useful in their culture, so they’ve never picked it up
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