The news is everywhere this morning about Microsoft's $44.6B offer to buy Yahoo. The offer represents $31 a share, a 62% premium over Thursday's closing price; and Yahoo's stock price has been rising in after-hours trading. Microsoft has been making overtures to Yahoo since 2006, according to the CNet article, including a buyout offer last February that was rebuffed. Mediapost.com has some perspective on the deal from the point of view of ads and eyeballs. Such an acquisition, which would be Microsoft's largest by far — it bought Aquantive last year for $6 billion — would need approval by US and EU authorities. A European Commission spokesman declined to comment.

juct writes "The long-standing suspicion that the anonymizing network TOR is abused to catch sensitive data by Chinese, Russian, and American government agencies as well as hacking groups gets new support. Members of the Teamfurry community found TOR exit-nodes which only forward unencrypted versions of certain protocols. These peculiar configurations invite speculation as to why they are set up in this way. Another tor exit node has been caught doing MITM attacks using fake SSL certificates."

An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow, founder of Boing Boing, says he doesn't have a problem in principle with the automated network defense systems that guard the Internet against malware, spamigation bots, and other network nasties. However, in his article 'The Future of Internet Immune Systems,' he bemoans the problems caused by 'Internet autoimmune disorder' — where the network defenses designed to block network attacks are automated and instantaneous, but the systems in place to reverse erroneous lockdowns are manual and unresponsive."

An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has disclosed another fire started by one of the 17,000 Avestor batteries in its broadband network. The first fire caused a violent explosion in suburban Houston. This second incident occurred just 20 miles away."

Shifty Jim writes in with an article at space.com reporting that a cluster of galaxies harboring black holes may be the source of a massive cloud millions of light years across. Quoting: "A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might be formed by the collective sigh of several supermassive black holes, scientists say. The plasma cloud... might be the source of mysterious cosmic rays that permeate our universe... The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away near the Coma Cluster and is spread across a vast region of space thought to contain several galaxies with supermassive black holes... embedded at their centers."