Posts Tagged ‘internet’

Hacker training site reappears after takedown by China

// February 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Chinese authorities are making a cursory effort to crack down on hackers as of late, and have shut down hacker training website Black Hawk Safety Net. According to state-run news organization Xinhua , police in the Hubei Province made three arrests associated with the massive recruiting site and have confiscated numerous assets, including cash, servers, and a Honda Accord. With all eyes on China thanks to the Great Google Scandal of 2010 , a move like this may calm fears that China is allowing itself to become a Wild West of cybercriminals. The problem is that Black Hawk already has a contingency plan in place and may be back sooner than later. Police allege Black Hawk Safety Net is responsible for distributing hacking tools, viruses, and malware for members to use, and say that it is among the largest—if not the largest—of such sites in the country. According to Xinhua, the site has more than 12,000 VIP members plus 170,000 free members, and has collected over 7 million yuan (just over US$1 million at today’s conversion rates) in membership fees. When police raided the site, they confiscated nine servers, five computers, and froze some 1.7 million yuan in cash, though the paper reported that this was part of a long-term effort to investigate the site.

Missing funny bone leads to DMCA for Awkward Stock Photos

// February 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

One of the most recent Internet meme trends has been to launch a site of ridiculous, funny, or awkward photos of things and people that are otherwise found in everyday life. You’re probably familiar with some of them: People of Walmart , LATFH , Awkward Family Photos , Regretsy , and so on. Usually these sites become so virally popular that they end up getting book deals, but that’s not the case for one such site. Awkward Stock Photos , a site that featured some of the more questionable pictures found in stock photo databases, received a DMCA notice for the contents of its entire site, despite the fact that it removed no watermarks, linked back to the original stock photo page, and made no money off the venture. Awkward Stock Photos (ASP) was originally born on Facebook as a give-and-take between Mark Hauge and his friends, who encouraged him to start a blog. Once he finally bit the bullet and signed up with Tumblr, ASP became an immediate hit, and Hauge started receiving hundreds of submissions from readers. An Ars reader and graphic designer himself, Hauge was familiar with how finicky some companies can be, so he made sure to try and cover his bases. Or so he thought: “I made sure to only use watermarked photos that I downloaded and re-uploaded to Tumblr (so I wasn’t hotlinking) and then linked them back to their original source,” he told Ars.

Apple may be paying to get flawed iMacs back in the UK

// February 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Apple is reportedly offering UK iMac owners full refunds plus 15 percent of the original purchase price for 27″ iMacs suffering any of the maladies that have plagued the model since its release in October of 2009. According to an Apple Authorized shop speaking to  Gizmodo , Apple has already completed the transaction with two of the shop’s customers. Apple seems to be brokering the deals due to a shortage in parts needed to repair the units, as well as a repair backlog of over 200 machines. The 27″ iMacs have had problems from the get-go with some users reporting issues with discolored displays and others reporting flickering screens. Most recently , there were reports of an internal support document telling technicians to explain that slight screen variations are normal, but if the customer continued to complain, to say that the machine could be repaired in “approximately three weeks.” If that wasn’t enough, they were told to offer a refund, but not a replacement. When Ars called an official Apple Store in the US to inquire about refunds, they were of little help and recommended we make an appointment with a “Genius” or call the AppleCare support number. Likewise, when we called two Apple Certified dealers, we received very similar responses. One tech did direct us to the recently released firmware update, but was unable to tell us anything regarding refunds or part lead times. The reports are based on a small number of cases, but Gizmodo’s source seemed quite confident that these were not isolated results. Nonetheless, we remain skeptical of Apple offering refunds—let alone refunds plus 15 percent—until more reports come in. That being said, if you are at your wit’s end with your iMac, it can’t hurt to ask. Maybe with the extra cash you can upgrade to a Mac Pro.

Teens think blogging is about as cool as Rick Astley hits

// February 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Blogging is falling out of favor among the young’uns these days as they move to quicker-moving social networking sites. At the same time, older adults are getting into blogging and teens still aren’t hot on Twitter, at least according to the latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life project. Only 14 percent of teenage Internet users said that they blogged last year—that’s half the number from 2006. Similarly, teen commenting on blogs is way down from 76 percent in 2006 to just over 52 percent in 2009. It doesn’t matter whether the blog is on Blogspot or buried within MySpace, either—blogs in general are definitely not the new black.

Italy preparing to hold YouTube, others liable for uploads

// February 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

User-generated content sites have always resisted the idea that they should be regulated like traditional broadcasters, but Italy has been the democracy that has gone furthest in that direction. The move toward regulation continues with a new policy that could force sites like YouTube to obtain TV licenses from the Italian government. Such sites could also be fully liable for copyright infringement and libelous or illegal material posted by users. The Italian government has already gone after Google in a highly public fashion, suing several top executives over a YouTube video that showed classmates abusing a student with Down’s Syndrome. In that case, the argument was that Google had a duty to screen such material and keep it from appearing on the site—a claim that Google and others have always said would make user-generated content sites almost impossible to run.

Mass Effect 2 text illegibility on SD TVs result of design decision

// February 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Mass Effect 2 relies heavily on dialog and story to grab gamers, but many playing the game are having problems reading the text. The problem is most acute for those with standard-definition sets or those with smaller high-definition televisions. There is a 14-page thread in the official forum with gamers complaining about the text, and we’ve had readers e-mailing us about the problem as well. “I can barely make out what some of the words are, even on my friend’s HD TV it’s nearly microscopic, very annoying,” one annoyed gamer wrote. “On ME1 I enjoyed reading about planets and so forth, now I nearly go blind from trying to read blurry small text on ME2 .” Another gamer pointed out that the color of the text doesn’t help.”Most of the time the text is unreadable for me. Granted, I don’t have an HD TV… part of the problem I have isn’t the size of the text, but rather the color used. It would be nice if there were an option to change the colors.” If you’re hoping for a response and a fix, holding your breath would not seem to be a great strategy. “I’ve gotten a number of PMs about this. Messaging me more will not speed up the process. We are looking at the threads, but unless we necessarily have traction on it—we can’t post information we dont have,” Bioware’s Michael Gamble responded. It’s not looking good for gamers squinting to read the text. “I’ll have to talk to Casey about this (as any way to address it would have far reaching changes in the game), but please don’t expect any decisions or a fix in the near future (as we are supporting a number of issues at this time). This was a design choice, not a bug.” We reviewed the game on the 360, with a 56″ high definition television and had no problems. If you’re having issues reading the on-screen text, sound off and leave details on your display.

Google Email Uploader now available for Mac

// January 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Google today released a Mac version of its Google Email Uploader , an application geared toward easing the transition to a Google Apps account. The application is designed to simplify the process of uploading hundreds of messages at a time from any three of the major Mac e-mail applications: Mail, Eudora, and Thunderbird. Currently, the Email Uploader will not transfer mail to an ordinary Gmail account; it requires a Google Apps  for a business account. This is good news for Mac-based businesses looking to outsource their e-mail and take advantage of Google’s system, but have dreaded transferring years’ worth of old messages. The application is far from perfect, though: for instance, the system limits the uploader to one message per second after 500 messages, but the automation might make it worthwhile to do 500 messages at a time. One can only hope that Google will soon allow the same thing for regular users of Gmail. Painlessly uploading thousands of old messages from one of my older e-mail accounts would not only be a good use of the space Google provides, but it would allow me to use Google’s search to sift through them all.

Week in tech: iPad protestors, RIAA vs. Thomas-Rasset redux, and stupid Facebook users

// January 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

The iPad made finally debuted last week, but not everyone was happy to see it. A group of protesters from the Free Software Foundation picketed the launch event saying that Apple’s new tablet is nothing more than a golden calf of DRM. A federal judge slashed the RIAA’s $1.92 million copyright infringement damage award by 97 percent, reducing it to just $54,000. The labels offered to settle for $25,000, but Jammie Thomas-Rasset wants no part of it, so a third trial looks inevitable.

BitTorrent census: about 99% of files copyright infringing

// January 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

It has never been a secret that the majority of files being shared over BitTorrent are movies and music that are likely being shared illegally. (Sorry, Linux distro nerds.) Princeton senior Sauhard Sahi confirmed this recently after setting out to survey the content available on BitTorrent and, although there are caveats to his findings, they highlight the relationship DRM has with illegal file sharing. As in: the more DRM there is on the legit versions of the content, the more popular it is on P2P. Sahi chose a random sample of 1,021 files from the trackerless Mainline DHT and classified them by file type, language, and apparent copyright status. He found that nearly half (46 percent) of files were nonpornographic movies and TV shows—the largest single category of content. 14 percent of the files were porn, tied with the 14 percent dedicated to games and software. Just 10 percent of the files were classified as music, and one percent were books and guides.

Simpsons, Powerpuff Girls porn nets jail time for Australian

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

We’ll just come right out and say it: some people are into cartoon porn. Heck, even if you’re not “into” it, you may have accidentally happened upon it just by running an innocent Google Image Search with SafeSearch turned off (guilty as charged). If you live in Australia, however, you may want to take extra care that your porn stash doesn’t contain cartoon imagery of children. A man in Australia was recently convicted for possessing pornographic images depicting characters from The Simpsons and The Powerpuff Girls , and is now a registered sex offender. Twenty-eight-year-old Kurt James Milner was turned into police for having questionable material on his computer in early 2008, but due to technical difficulties, police were unable to retrieve information from his machine for more than a year. Once they were able to do so, however, they found 64 sexually explicit images depicting characters from the aforementioned TV shows. As many of you Simpsons fans know, there are numerous children who make regular appearances on the show, and they were apparently “not excluded from these images.”

« Older Entries


eXTReMe Tracker