Erica Ogg | November 15

CNET - The Cray XT5 supercomputer known as "Jaguar" has finally clawed its way to the title of fastest computer in the world.

Sitting back at No. 2 on the Top500 list of supercomputers for more than a year, Jaguar overtook IBM's "Roadrunner" according to the twice-yearly list that will be unveiled Tuesday at the SC09 Conference in Portland, Ore.

Guardian - One of the best kept literary secrets of the decade was revealed last night when 34-year-old scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti announced she was the writer masquerading as call girl Belle de Jour.

The author behind the bestselling books detailing her secret life as a prostitute decided to come out to one of her fiercest critics, Sunday Times columnist India Knight, after claiming anonymity had become "no fun". "I couldn't even go to my own book launch party", she said.

Until last week, even her agent was unaware of her name. But now Magnanti, a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol, has spoken of the time six years ago she worked as a £300 an hour prostitute working through a London escort agency. Magnanti turned to the agency in the final stages of her PhD thesis when she ran out of money. She was already an experienced science blogger and began writing about her experiences in a web diary later adapted into books and a television drama starring Billie Piper.

Minorities find a warm reception through online channels

Washington Post, By DeNeen L. Brown, November 15

A black superwoman appears on your laptop in shimmering blue tights, green socks and a midnight blue cape. Her hair in Afro puffs, she is sitting on a promenade bench. She looks worried and a bit worn out. Her makeup is smeared, probably from crying.

She tells us she has just caught her boyfriend with a "second-rate superhero." The nerve of him.

Zenit - FACEBOOK, WIKIPEDIA AND YOUTUBE IN THE VATICAN

Nov 13 | Rome | Jesús Colina
There are not a few voices in the Church calling for the message of the Gospel to make better use of the Internet -- Benedict XVI's is among them.

And yet, when representatives of some of the most successful Internet initiatives met in Rome today with the European bishops' Commission for the Media, a great difference in mentality became obvious, even if there was also evidence of a genuine desire for mutual understanding.

The chamber of the former hall of the synod of bishops -- which the producers of "Angels and Demons" rented for millions of euros -- witnessed two views of reality: On one hand, an institution, the Church, founded for 2,000 years on the proclamation of Truth; and on the other, exponents of successful business initiatives, which arose a few years ago, based on giving everyone the chance to express "his own truth."

I think Rupert Murdoch might succeed at this.

On Sunday, the day before the 20th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall, Rupert Murdoch appeared in an interview on Sky News in Australia, and promised to erect pay walls around all his company’s Web sites and then block Google from searching and linking to them.

Then again, anything that tweaks Google is usually something I approve of. But there is also a very real risk here of creating a full on right wing media ecosphere. The repercussions of such a development might be a purely right wing search engine full of fancy and empty of fact.

But I do think the days of free indexing are long gone. It's only a matter of time before content producers start charging for it to be indexed.

Andy Greenberg | November 8

Forbes - The first real-world iPhone cyber-attack has shown its face. And that face belongs to 1980s pop star Rick Astley.

Over the weekend, researchers at cybersecurity firms Sophos and F-Secure detected the world's first active iPhone worm, spreading among Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) smart phone users in Australia. Only users who have "jailbroken" their phones--altered them to run applications not authorized by Apple--are vulnerable, and among those, only those who failed to change their default password for a secure shell (SSH) application that allows file transfers between smart phones.

Anne Eisenberg | Los Angeles | November 7

NYT - Microscopes are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive.

Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

Nov 6

BBC -
China is planning to hold a robot Olympics in 2010.

The international event will be held in the city of Harbin and will see robots take part in 16 different events.

Robots will be able to compete in familiar Olympic sports such as athletics as well as those more suited to machines such as cleaning.

Entry to the competition will be restricted to robots resembling humans. They must possess two arms and legs. Wheels are banned.

The organisers of the games expect from more than 100 universities from around the world to send competitors to the event.

Philanthropy is not a life style choice for most of Australia's rich and famous.
But Australian science, especially the federal Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO )got a major financial boost due to a 10 year struggle fighting with HP, Apple, Dell et al. over the invention of WiFi; that was settled back in April.

However, Australian politics and science remain closely related, and casting aspersions on the ruling parties attitude to global emissions is not kosher.

Observer.UK

It is a vast device the size of London's Circle Line but is engineered to a billionth of a metre accuracy. Ensuring that no flaws arise at scales and dimensions like these pushes engineering to its absolute limits.

Cern almost succeeded last year. Now it is convinced that it has got it right this time. "All I can say is that the LHC is a much safer, much better understood machine than it was a year ago," said Myers.

Most physicists believe he is right. "If it works, we will have built the most complex machine in history," said one. "If not, we will have assembled the world's most expensive piece of modern art."

Seoul | October 30

BBC - The internet is set to undergo one of its biggest changes, with the expected approval of plans to introduce web addresses using non-Latin characters.

The board of the net regulator, Icann, will decide whether to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts at its annual meeting in Seoul.

More than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts.

Michael Inbar | October 12

MSNBC - Want to have Ben Affleck’s baby? While that appears to be the exclusive domain of Jennifer Garner, women can now at least give themselves a fighting chance of having a child who looks like a movie star, sports hero or world leader.

A Southern California sperm bank has taken to matching its donors to the celebrities they most resemble, putting an actual image to a process that previously had prospective parents sort through an often confusing jumble of printed characteristics, from ethnicity to eye color.

October 26

Some people who are upgrading their PC's from Windows Vista to Windows 7 are finding the upgrade paralyzes their computers, leaving them in a never ending rebooting cycle, unable to use either operating systems.

Many users started to post the problem in a forum on Microsoft's own website on Friday, one day after the highly touted new operating system was released. As of this afternoon, 3 days later, there are still people posting the same problem and no fix from Microsoft for most of the users.

A Censored Headline and why it Matters:

German High Court Outlaws Electronic Voting

Justices of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Image

(DailyCensored.Com) The justices above are clearly the most rational group of high level functionaries in the industrialized world. They did what no other court would do in Europe or the United States. They effectively outlawed electronic voting. On March 3, 2009, the German Federal Constitutional Court declared that the electronic voting machines used in the 2005 Bundestag elections for the German national parliament were outside of the bounds of the German Constitution.

They reasoned that electronic voting is not verifiable because citizen votes are counted in secret. It obscured a technology inaccessible to all but a very few initiates. Most importantly, the German high court noted, electronic voting machines don't allow citizens to "reliably examine, when the vote is cast, whether the vote has been recorded in an unadulterated manner" Mar. 3, 2009.

The written opinion effectively bars electronic voting in future elections based on the complexity of voting machines and the inability of voters to watch their vote being counted. This raises the bar of acceptability well above the meaningless solutions offered by "paper trails" for touch screen voting or the so-called "paper ballots" for computerized optical scan voting machines, the most popular form of voting in the United States.

Germany's 2009 Bundestag elections were conducted with hand counted paper ballots.

Have you heard that one of the world's leading economic powers, the fourth largest economy in the world, banned electronic voting; said it was undemocratic? Given the multitude of problems encountered in the U.S. and the number of questionable election results, wouldn't it make sense that when Germany banned electronic voting and replaced it with paper ballots, there would be at least a days worth of national coverage in the United States?

Nothing like that occurred. The Associated Press (Times of India) story on the verdict danced around the periphery of the world media market with coverage in Turkey, India, Australia, and Ireland. But there were no major media takers for the AP story in the United States.

There was every reason to carry the story. In a 2006 Zogby poll, 92% of the 1028 registered voters surveyed said they agreed with this statement:

Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes - 92% agree. New Zogby Poll On Electronic Voting Attitudes Aug. 21, 2006

Melissa Rohlin | Helsinki | October 15

LAT - Life, liberty and the right to broadband access?

If Thomas Jefferson and our enlightened forefathers were here today, perhaps our unalienable rights would mimic Finland's, which will now include the right to broadband access. According to Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communication, 1-megabit Web access will become a legal right for all citizens in July.

France is one of the few countries that has made it a human right but Finland said it's the first country to make it a legal right.

Stephen J. Dubord | Raleigh, NC | October 13

The New American - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now able to scan millions of driver’s licenses using facial recognition technology as they seek to track down fugitives.

The project, initiated in North Carolina, has led to at least one suspect being apprehended. Now the Bureau wants to expand the program nationwide, but privacy experts are warning that this puts innocent people into a virtual criminal lineup.

“Everybody’s participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver’s license,” stated American Civil Liberties Union attorney Christopher Calabrese. And there is no way to opt out of the lineup other than not having a driver’s license.

Simon Hancock | Reykjavik | October 9

BBC - Since the financial crisis, Iceland has been forced to retreat back from high octane bubble living to nature.

Fortunately, there is a lot of that nature to retreat to.

It is a breathtaking world of volcanoes, endless prairies and ethereal winter landscapes.

Cecilia Kang | Washington | October 6

WaPo - Bloggers who offer endorsements must disclose any payments they have received from the subjects of their reviews or face penalties of up to $11,000 per violation, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday.

The agency, charged with protecting consumer interests, had not updated its policy on endorsements in nearly three decades, well before the Internet became a force in shaping consumer tastes. The new rules attempt to make more transparent corporate payments to bloggers, research firms and celebrities that help promote a product.

Sep 30 | The Tech Blog

Don't like the idea of your neighbors rudely snooping on the wireless signal you slaved to pay for from the lazy comfort of their living room? It's not just about slowing down your connection; while they're downloading Mad Men via bittorrent, you could be on the hook for their actions.

Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best.

Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint.

Venessa Lee | Singapore | Oct 3

AFP -

They go by names such as GhostNet and botnets but they have nothing to do with harmless computer games. Instead, they are associated with something more dangerous - spying in cyberspace which, in the worst-case scenario, can undermine a country's national interests.

Earlier this year, Canadian researchers uncovered a cyber-espionage operation involving GhostNet, an electronic spying network that uses malware, or malicious software, The New York Times (NYT) reported in March.

Through the network, the camera and audio-recording functions in an infected PC can be activated, enabling a stranger to see and hear what is going on in the room where the computer is located.

According to the NYT, GhostNet had stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices, including those of the Dalai Lama. It had infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries.

The researchers believed that its targets included the governments of South Asian and South-east Asian countries.

The threat posed by GhostNet is just one of the many serious forms of cyber attacks that have led governments worldwide to set up special agencies to counter them.

On Wednesday, the creation of Singapore Infocomm Technology Security Authority (Sitsa), a special agency to protect Singapore from cyber attacks, was announced.

The threat from cyber attacks, which can be politically or criminally motivated, is apparently relentless.

"Every quarter of a second, there is an attack somewhere on the Internet," said Mr Ilias Chantzos, director of government relations at Symantec Corporation, maker of Norton security products.

Sept 29

BBC - The US government is expected to relax control over how the internet is run when it signs an accord with net regulator Icann on Wednesday.

The "affirmation of commitments" will reportedly give Icann autonomy to run its own affairs for the first time.

Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann - drawing criticism from other countries.

Earlier this year, the EU called on the US to relinquish its control and Icann to become "universally accountable".

"The US government is the only body to have had formal oversight of Icann's policies and activities since its inception in 1998," it said.

"The Commission believes that Icann should become universally accountable, not just to one government but to the global internet community.

"This is particularly relevant given that the next billion of internet users will mainly come from the developing world."

I just upgraded to the new version of iTunes. It's hellishly ugly in design. Anyone else feel the same way? I mean, iTunes, iPods, Macs, etc . . . are always elegant, right?

I hope everyone is enjoying their gmail fail as much as I am!

Oh dear, another concern troll, bemoaning today's youth and their infatuation with technology. Look, I'll be the first to admit that I worry a lot about today's youth, but I care far more about the basic education they are lacking--basic science and math literacy--than something as vague as losing their ability to read the 'silent langauge' of non-verbal cues or their infatuation with using two thumbs to communicate. I'd also be the first to say that buying the kid a sandpile and a swarm of GI Joe figures is probably much better for their long-term imaginative powers, but hey, I'm biased. I had Luke Skywalker and Han Solo to play with. (I was always partial to Han Solo.)

I really think this is silly. The bottom line is this: kids--especially early teens--are already hardwired to read the non-verbal cues that society has on offer. I mean, really, it's not like they were born with a Crackberry in their hands and their first word was texted to their mom.

Steven E.F. Brown | Aug 30

The Business Review (Albany) - A report on Internet speed in the United States says the country isn’t likely to catch world leader South Korea for 15 years.

Or for much longer — at current growth rates, the United States will only reach South Korea’s speed today in 15 years.

The report, by the Communications Workers of America, details Internet download and upload speeds all over the United States and some of its affiliated territories. In the last year, the average upload speed in the United States “barely changed,” the report said, and download speed only grew a little, from 4.2 megabits per second in 2008 to 5.1 megabits per second in 2009.

In South Korea, average download speed is four times faster — 20.4 megabits per second. The United States also lags Japan (15.8 mbps), Sweden (12.8 mbps), the Netherlands (11 mbps) and 24 other countries.

At average U.S. speed it takes about 35 minutes to download 100 family vacation photos, and four hours to upload them.

The report said U.S. speeds aren’t sufficient for the needs of in-home medical monitoring, distance learning programs, or to run a modern business from home.