How far would you go to help save an endangered animal? How about allowing someone to jab ink into your skin with tiny needles, 150 times a second? That’s exactly what hundreds of volunteers signed up for last weekend at ExtInked, where people came from far and wide to have one of Britain’s most endangered species permanently tattooed on their body, making them a life long ambassador for that species
The EFF, with the help of a group at the UC Berkeley Law School, has issued a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to federal agencies, asking for their policy on the use of social media content during investigations. Having received no response, they’re now taking six government agencies to court
Cameroon (.cm) web domains supplanted those in Hong Kong as most likely to harbour malware, with more than one in three (36.7 per cent) of domains registered in the West African country hosting viruses or malicious code. The .cm used by Cameroon is a common typo for .com, a factor that security firm McAfee speculates may explain why cybercriminals have set up fake typo-squatting sites that lead to malicious downloads or spyware under the country’s domain
Facebook is enhancing privacy controls and eliminating its regional framework for online communities as the internet’s most popular social networking service tops 350 million users. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes and the milestone in a blog post, saying new privacy features will let users determine who gets to see pictures, comments, videos and other material in profiles
Intel has unveiled a prototype chip that packs 48 separate processing cores on to a chunk of silicon the size of a postage stamp. The Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), as it is known, contains 1.3 billion transistors, the tiny on-off switches that underpin chip technology. Each processing core could, in theory, run a separate operating system. Currently, top-end chips for desktop computers typically contain four separate processors. Intel and rival AMD will both launch new six-core devices in 2010, allowing computers to simultaneously tackle a number of complex tasks, such as processing graphics
Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google. The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages. Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription web sites. Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued a formal warning to online retailer Topbuy, following an investigation that found the company had breached the Spam Act 2003 by sending three commercial electronic messages to consumers without their consent. The ACMA formed the view that the breaches it found were indicative of broader systemic issues. The ACMA’s investigation related to complaints alleging that Topbuy had sent emails to people who had previously requested to be unsubscribed from Topbuy’s mailing list or who had not consented to receive commercial electronic messages in the first place. Topbuy claimed in at least one case that it had obtained consent through a family and friends’ referral campaign
Rhino poaching around the world is on the rise despite efforts to protect the animals. The global surge in the illegal trade has been driven by demands from Asian medicinal markets, the study by conservationists concluded. It suggests that a decline in law enforcement is the main reason for the rise in poaching in Africa. The report found that 95% of rhino poaching in Africa since 2006 had occurred in Zimbabwe and South Africa
JB Hi-Fi’s web site was redirecting customers to malicious web pages over the weekend in a cyber attack that appears to have affected several other Australian websites in the lead-up to Christmas. The exact details of the attack are not yet clear as the retailer has refused to comment but users first started reporting problems on Friday night
An online database, ArachnoServer, will catalogue the venom components of hundreds of spiders and help scientists investigate how their toxins could be used, for example as natural insect sprays or painkillers
Last week researchers from Purdue and Penn State University launched a rocket that uses an unconventional propellant: aluminum-ice. The fuel mix, dubbed ALICE, is made of nano-aluminum powder and frozen water, and gets its thrust from the chemical reaction between the ingredients. The propellant is environmentally friendly, and it could perhaps allow spacecraft to refuel at locations like the moon, where water has been discovered
Researchers in the Netherlands created what was described as soggy pork and are now investigating ways to improve the muscle tissue in the hope that people will one day want to eat it. No one has yet tasted their produce, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years
Bit.ly, the service Twitter uses to shorten URLs to keep them under the service’s 140-character limit, has announced partnerships with Verisign, Websense and Sophos that are designed to keep spam and malicious software off of the network
General Electric has reached a tentative agreement to buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for about $5.8 billion, helping clear the path to a sale of the television and movie company to Comcast, people briefed on the matter told DealBook. But much remains to be negotiated, these people warned. The Vivendi agreement values NBC Universal at $29 billion, less than the $30 billion or so that GE and Comcast had agreed to last month
German federal president Horst Köhler has refused to sign a law to block child pornography that passed Parliament earlier this year, stating that he needs more information
. In Germany, the federal president has the right to reject a law only if its passage violated the order mandated by the constitution, or if it is obviously unconstitutional — he can’t veto a law simply because he disagrees with it. The law was passed under a coalition government, but a different coalition took power before the law reached the president’s desk. Political observers guess that the political parties would like to get rid of the law without losing face, but since it has already passed the Parliament, they can’t simply abandon it — via Slashdot
Real-time torrent search engine NowTorrents has returned by popular demand. The owner has decided to put the website back online after hundreds of users wrote emails saying they much preferred the old NowTorrents to the new TorrentFly
Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) showed off a number of flexible display screen technologies in Taipei as part of a show promoting e-readers and e-paper. One of the newest technologies from ITRI was a flexible 4.1-inch color OLED (organic light emitting diode) display
For more than a year, BitTorrent search engine isoHunt has chased the Canadian music industry in court. In an act of self-defence, the founder of the site has sued the Canadian branch of the RIAA, asking the court to legalise its operations. After an initial setback, isoHunt submitted a full claim to the court this week
Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. Among the most promising materials for these batteries are conducting polymers. However, until now these have impractical for use in batteries — for instance, their ability to hold a charge often degrades over use. The key to this new battery turned out to be an often bothersome green algae known as Cladophora. Rotting heaps of this hairlike freshwater plant throughout the world can lead to unsightly, foul-smelling beaches. This algae makes an unusual kind of cellulose typified by a very large surface area, 100 times that of the cellulose found in paper. This allowed researchers to dramatically increase the amount of conducting polymer available for use in the new device, enabling it to better recharge, hold and discharge electricity
The Netherlands-based file-sharing website Mininova has removed all torrents that enabled users to download copyright-protected material
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