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chrb writes:
Nintendo has announced that its new Wii U console will feature a social network called the Miiverse in which users can video chat, see what others are playing, share game content and swap tips.
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chrb writes:
British student Richard O'Dwyer, creator of the TVShack website, has had his extradition to the United States approved by Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May. Mr O'Dwyer now has 14 days to appeal the decision. The extradition was requested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which has accused O'Dwyer of aiding copyright infringement by publishing links to pirated content hosted on external sites.
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chrb writes:
Apple has failed to get a patent ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N and the Nexus phone in Germany. Presiding Judge Andreas Mueller stated "Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection". The patent in question covered list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display. This news follows the recent Appeals court ruling that upheld the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 ban.
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chrb writes:
Asim Kauser, a 25 year old British man, has been jailed for 2 years and 3 months for downloading recipes on how to make bombs and the toxin ricin. Police discovered the materials on a USB stick that Asim's father gave to them following a burglary at the Kauser family home. Asim pled guilty and claimed that he only downloaded the materials because he was curious. A North West Counter-Terrorism Unit spokesman said "I also want to stress that this case is not about policing people's freedom to browse the Internet. The materials that were downloaded were not stumbled upon by chance — these had to be searched for and contained very dangerous information that could have led to an explosive device being built."
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chrb writes:
An International Trade Commission judge has issued a preliminary ruling that Motorola Mobility infringed one of Microsoft's patents. The disputed patent covers storing a meeting request on a mobile device, and was rejected by the European Patent Office as being "obvious". The judge also ruled that six other Microsoft patents were not being infringed. Experts say that this will strengthen Microsoft's hand in collecting patent fees on Android. Microsoft recently claimed that it now collects patent fees on over half of all Android devices sold.
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chrb writes:
A U.S. company Aerospace Corp. has paid $2.5 million to settle a case that they defrauded the Air Force by knowingly billing for the services of a rogue software developer. The rogue developer, William Grayson Hunter, was being paid for two full time jobs at two different aerospace companies, but spent most of his time in bars, amusement parks and movie theaters. On some days, he billed his employers for over 24 hours work.
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chrb writes:
Bloomberg writes about Western companies supplying monitoring equipment to Iran. There are few regulations restricting the sale of intelligence monitoring systems to the Iranian government, and large corporations like Ericsson and Nokia have supplied the equipment used to identify dissidents and suppress anti-government protests.
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chrb writes:
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project — an independent study of Earth's historical temperature record partly funded by climate sceptics including the Koch brothers — has released preliminary results that show the same warming trend as previous research. Project leader and physics professor Richard Muller, of the University of California, has stated that he was "surprised" at the close agreement, and it "confirms that these studies were done carefully". The study also found that warming in the temperature record was not caused by poor quality weather monitoring stations — thus rejecting a frequent claim of sceptics. Climate sceptic Stephen McIntyre has previously said "anything that [Muller] does will be well done" So, does this finally settle the argument over whether global warming is real?
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chrb writes:
According to Security News Daily, Anonymous has taken down more than 40 darknet-based child porn websites over the last week. Details of some of the hacks have been released via pastebin #OpDarknet, including personal details of some users of a site named "Lolita City", and DDoS tools that target Hidden Wiki and Freedom Hosting — alleged to be two of the biggest darknet sites hosting child porn.
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chrb writes:
The DNA of W115 — an anonymous woman who lived to the age of 115 years and left her body to science — has been sequenced. Despite her old age, W115 showed no signs of dementia or heart disease, and tests at the age of 113 showed she had the mental abilities of a woman aged 60-75 years. Dr Henne Holstege, of the Department of Clinical Genetics at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, has suggested W115 had rare genetic changes in her DNA which protected against Alzheimer's and other late-life diseases.
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chrb writes:
Linux Journal points out PLAYterm — an interesting project that offers up recordings of Linux command line sessions, with the aim of helping viewers to improve their skills by watching gurus at work.
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chrb writes:
BBC News is reporting that an Irish coroner has ruled that a dead man was killed by spontaneous human combustion The controversial finding is a first in Irish history.
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chrb writes:
The BBC have an interview with HTC CEO Peter Chou. Last week, a judge at the International Trade Commission found that HTC had violated two of Apple's patents. HTC shares fell 7% on the news. Chou predicts that HTC will win an appeal against the ITC finding in December. He also reveals that HTC is preparing to fight back; it will soon acquire an extra 235 patents from its takeover of S3 Graphics — including two that Apple has already been found guilty of infringing.
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chrb writes:
Xinhua is reporting that a Chinese bullet train has derailed, resulting in two of the train's coaches falling off a bridge. This comes only a few months after officials at the Railways Ministry expressed concerns that builders had ignored safety standards in the quest to build faster trains in record time — a claim that was subsequently retracted.
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chrb writes:
BBC News reports that U.S. cities are installing more roundabouts than ever before. The first British-style roundabout appeared in the U.S. in 1990, and now some cities — such as Carmel in Indiana, are rapidly replacing intersections with roundabouts. Supporters claim that roundabouts result in increased traffic flow, reductions in both the severity and incidence of accidents, and fuel savings. Critics say that roundabouts are more difficult to navigate for unfamiliar American drivers, lead to higher taxes and accidents, and require everyday acts of spontaneous co-operation and yielding to others — acts that are "un-American".
