There’s a rumour doing the rounds that Cisco is considering buying mobile handset maker Nokia in a bid to gain its wireless infrastructure technology
Charlie Stross just won the Hugo award for best novella for The Concrete Jungle. How can you not love a geek whose response to a Hugo win is a resounding w00t! Congrats Charlie
The EFF is reporting that the Federal Communications Commission issued a release [pdf] announcing its new rule expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). Practically, what this means is that the government will be asking broadband providers — as well as companies that manufacture devices used for broadband communications — to build insecure backdoors into their networks, imperiling the privacy and security of citizens on the Internet. It also hobbles technical innovation by forcing companies involved in broadband to redesign their products to meet government requirements
There has been a massive identity theft ring uncovered by security software firm Sunbelt. According to one of their employees, Alex Eckelberry, during the course of one of their recent investigations into a particular Spyware application — rumoured to be called CoolWebSearch — they’ve discovered that the personal information of those infected
was being captured and uploaded to a server
Americans don’t seem to get tea. And worse still, what Starbucks tries to pass off as chai is nothing like the chai that any Indian knows and loves. After experimenting in the office and finally perfecting (sort of!) the art of making good clean-livin’ Indian chai with just a mug and a microwave, Hob Gadling wrote this little guide. Enjoy!
By mixing phosphorescent material with the usual white fluorescent material, American Environmental Products has developed a tfluorescent ube that continues to glow when shut off. Originally intended for submarines, and then used in places where terrorists could disrupt services, they are also perfect for power outages, providing some light so you don’t have to thrash around in the dark looking for your candles and flashlights. Since the hack is inside the tube, they can also be removed from their fixtures and carried around, as well as provide light even if they’re shattered
Heat & Glo has a new product that makes fire from water. Ordinary tap water (preferably distilled) is supplied to the fireplace through a pipe or tank, a 220 volt electrical service then separates the hydrogen and oxygen atoms through electrolysis, the Aqueon ignites the hydrogen, and ta-dah, fire! The oxygen is then added for colour and brightness, while the rest is released into the room. It doesn’t require venting because it doesn’t produce any harmful emittents like carbon monoxide — just water vapour. The manufacturer’s web site has more information on the science behind the product
Jeffrey Veen‘s The Art and Science of Web Design
has been an influential work for many web designers for half a decade now, and to celebrate, Jeff’s made a PDF of the book available on his blog for free download.
Though, as Jeff points out, some of the technical points are slightly out of date, the core principles are still important today, and the download is well worth a look — via ProNet
Described by founders as a citizen journalists’ photographic agency
, a new startup called Scoopt.com plans to resell mobile phone snapshots to news organisations, sharing proceeds with shooters. Company owners originally planned to launch the site on 7/7 — the day of the first round of London attacks — but delayed to 14/7 — the day of the second attacks. The site is now live — via BoingBoing
Freelance reporter and blogger Steven Vincent was murdered Tuesday night in Basra, Iraq. Reports Vincent wrote on ties that link Iraqi police with extremists likely led to his killing — via BoingBoing
A South Carolina man packed up a brush trimmer for a FedEx return to Country Home Products in Vermont and inadvertently included five kittens with the shipment. Apparently, the box was in his barn and the kittens snuck in before he sealed it. Fortunately, they survived the two-day trip — via BoingBoing
Two prominent science fiction authors have recently released their newest novels as free downloads to coincide with their in-store releases.
The first is Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, by Cory Doctorow. This is an unconventional story about an entrepreneur, who happens to be the child of a mountain and a washing machine, who gets involved in a scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless mesh network, among other things.
If you want to get hold of a signed copy, you can order it through Aust Gate. The overseas shipping is reasonably priced, but super fast. My copy was posted on Monday and arrived on Friday.
The second is Accelerando, by Charles Stross, which tells the tale of three generations of the Macx family, beginning with perptually-slashdotted venture altruist Manfred Macx, in the years leading up to and beyond a technological singularity — via Slashdot
Many of the files that are shared on P2P networks tend to be junk. Organisations such as the RIAA and music labels regularly pollute these networks with nonsense files masquerading as real music or video files. These junk files make it difficult for users to find what they want on P2P networks. Some researchers at Cornell University have developed a reputation system called Credence, that works on the Gnutella network, allowing users to tell the good files from the bad ones
US firm, Prolacta Bioscience, is looking to commercialise breast milk by selling it to hospitals for the treatment of sick babies. They also wants to carry out research to develop breast milk-based therapies. Breast milk, with its minerals, digestive enzymes and antibodies, has long been credited with keeping babies healthy and boosting intelligence
A teenaged Israeli soldier has been lynched by a crowd after shooting dead four people on a bus in an Israeli Arab town
The Mozilla Foundation has created a commercial subsidiary to continue development of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. Don’t let the word commercial
scare you, the new Mozilla Corporation will be owned 100% by the Mozilla Foundation. The change is mostly a legal/tax thing to avoid the problems of pursuing revenue-generating avenues while remaining a non-profit. There will be no change to the development process and end-users won’t notice much difference either
German police are holding a woman suspected of manslaughter after the bodies of nine new-born babies were found buried in a garden. The 39-year-old woman is believed to be the mother of the children found in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, in Brandenburg state, near the border with Poland. The grim discovery of little bodies found buried in flower pots and buckets has shocked Germany. The bodies were discovered after someone clearing a garage at the site found human bones stored in a fish tank — via Warren Ellis
South Korea’s king of cloning
has successfully cloned an Afghan hound called Snuppy. But producing the pup was far from easy. The team transferred 1095 embryos into 123 surrogate mothers — but just three pregnancies resulted
Working for the city of Auburn, goats are doing what a bulldozer could never do without tearing up the place — they are reducing a thicket of blackberry foliage into an ankle-high tangle of leafless if not lifeless blackberry canes and fist-sized piles of biodegradable pellets. From New England to the Southwest, goats and sometimes sheep are nibbling across areas heretofore dominated by the chemical industry
Preliminary testing has begun on a new weapon that threatens to scuttle efforts to stop illicit online music swapping. Internet privacy activists at Freenet Project posted word on their web site that they were looking for other users to test a refined version of darknet
software designed to keep file swappers anonymous. The new software is being heralded as scalable
, which means it would enable large numbers of computer users to freely share files online without revealing their identities
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