22511188
submission
siliconbits writes:
A new worrying phenomenon has cropped up in China and Apple has been its first victim; meet the first fake Apple Stores, entire buildings that have been designed to look like the real ones. Chinese companies have long been known for being master copiers but this takes the concept of plagiarism and copying to a whole new level. As expected, everything, from the architecture of the building, the colour of the paint, to the products, the T-shirt worn by the staff down to the logo and the badge design come from Cupertino.
22489552
submission
siliconbits writes:
After having pwned Rupert Murdoch's flagship news website, thesun.co.uk, by redirecting its readers to a spoof front page and pilfer its email servers, Anonymous' unofficial mouthpiece, Sabu, has revealed that the group is "sitting on [the sun's & NOTW's] emails" with a press release from Anonymous & possibly more coming in a few hours.
While that website has already been taken down (you can check a screen capture of the web page here), the email bounty is likely to be potentially more damaging with Sabu releasing details of two of the Sun's top three employees, Rebekah Wade and Bill Akass, the former editors of the Sun and News of the World respectively as well as Lee Wells & Danny Rogers, Editorial Support Manager at News International and Sun Online Editorial Manager respectively, as a taster of what's coming next.
22306708
submission
siliconbits writes:
Microsoft has filed an application with the US Patent Office which shows a familiar smartphone tablet hybrid concept; the handset that can be hidden out of sight in a slide out tablet which acts like a docking station. The design reminds us of the Asus Padfone, which was shown at Computex back in May. The main difference being that the Asus smartphone would lodge itself at the back of its tablet host. The detachable smartphone tablet hybrid concept from Microsoft is intriguing for at least two reasons; there's no Windows Mobile Tablet and both devices are designed to work independently.
22122896
submission
siliconbits writes:
Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC has announced that it is buying VIA's stake in S3 Graphics which the press release says is "a leading provider of innovative graphics visualization technologies used in PCs, game consoles and mobile devices".
Obviously those in the tech trade for long enough will remember that S3 used to manufacture graphic chipsets towards the end of the last century before being purchased by VIA in 2001 after S3 filed for bankruptcy. The acquisition comes only a few days after Apple was found guilty of infringing two patents owned by S3 Graphics which covered IP found in SoC used in iOS Devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV)
22096576
submission
siliconbits writes:
Cash-rich China is apparently looking to purchase a rather large piece of social networking website Facebook, enough to give it a say in decision making within the company and to make millions of users slightly worried.
Three separate sources have confirmed that China has suddenly become VERY interested in the world's largest online property whose membership is bound to each one billion users (up from 750m) once it becomes officially available in the most populous country in the world. (NB : Even though Facebook is not in China yet, there are already more than half a million Facebook users from there).
The first source came from someone within a fund that buys Facebook stock from former employees while the second one said that Citibank is trying to buy up to $1.2 billion worth of Facebook stock for China's sovereign wealth fund (SWF) as well as another Middle Eastern SWF. The third source, from an investment bank, said that he also heard of a rumour about Citibank wanting to buy Facebook shares on behalf of China.
22027740
submission
siliconbits writes:
Despite countless WikiLeaks copycats popping up since the secret-spilling site first dumped its cache of State Department cables last year, the new generation of leaking sites has produced few WikiLeaks-sized scoops. So instead of waiting for insider whistleblowers, the hacker movement Anonymous hopes that a few outside intruders might start the leaks flowing.
22001446
submission
siliconbits writes:
Sergey Golavanov, a Kaspersky Labs researcher, has detected a new iteration of the TDSS malware which he claims is the "most sophisticated threat" to computer security in the world and has apparently been used to take over more than 4.5 million computers in what is by far the biggest botnet in the world. This is roughly six times the size of the Rustock botnet which had hitherto been considered as one of the most successful botnets ever with over 800,000 Windows PCs.
21953050
submission
siliconbits writes:
... And 1 million by October 2011... The growth of Android is accelerating rather than slowing down and the latest update about that acceleration comes from none other than Android's head honcho, Andy Rubin, who tweeted earlier today that there are now over 500,000 Android devices being activated every day. He also revealed that the rate of growth is currently standing at 4.4 per cent per week; that's nearly 19 per cent in one month, 75 per cent over a quarter (13 weeks) and, if the growth rate is maintained, Android will reach the one million activation per day milestone in 16 weeks from now, towards the end of October
21923144
submission
siliconbits writes:
The disbanding of Lulzsec coincided with hacking brotherhood Anonymous releasing another set of files which includes documents and links to security and hacking resources on the internet, many of them free, various template letters, hacking and counter hacking tools as well as the addresses of FBI bureaus in the US. The 654MB ISO file (SENTINEL Security Utilities — Cyberterrorism Defense and Analysis Center) is now widely available online and seems to have come from the US FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Counter Terrorism Defence Initiative training program.
21764444
submission
siliconbits writes:
Intel has laid down its roadmap in terms of computing performance for the next seven years in a press release; in addition, it revealed its expectations until 2027 in one deck of slides shown last week. The semiconductor wants a supercomputer capable of reaching 1000 Petaflops (or one Exaflop) to be unveiled by the end of 2018 (just in time for the company's 50th anniversary) with four Exaflops being the upper end target by the end of the decade.The slide that was shared with us also shows that Intel wants to smash the ZettaFlop barrier — that's one million Petaflops or one billion Teraflops — sometimes before 2030. This, Intel expects, will allow for significant strides in the field of Genomics research, as well as much more accurate weather prediction (assuming Skynet or the Matrix hasn't taken over the world).
21762946
submission
siliconbits writes:
US Electronics retailer Best Buy has been slow but steady in the fight to protect its Geek Squad trademark but some are wondering whether the 800-lbs gorilla of tech retailing sector is not going too far in its war to right some wrongs.
The word "Geek" is a century-old word that used to mean a fool or crazy but has, since the beginning of the 1980's, been associated with fans of technology in general and computers in particular.
That hasn't prevented a number of geek-related themed companies from being hit over the last decade by Best Buy's legal team including Geek Housecalls, Rent a Geek, Geek Rescue, Speak with A Geek and, not surprisingly, archrival Newegg.
21756930
submission
siliconbits writes:
Welcome to Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec) — we encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path. We fully endorse the flaunting of the word "AntiSec" on any government website defacement or physical graffiti art. We encourage you to spread the word of AntiSec far and wide, for it will be remembered. To increase efforts, we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships.
21627220
submission
siliconbits writes:
Watch an ad, (download and) play a game (and keep it). A little known game vendor called GamersGate wants to change the way games are being played by introducing a new free-to-play ad supported platform for PC and Mac systems called FreeGames. Like Spotify, users will have to live through a short advertisement before the launch of the game after which they will be able to play the game. Set to be launched at the beginning of September, Freegames promises to be radically different from in-game advertising solutions. There will be a limit of five games per month although users will be able to add more games to their accounts by paying for them. Up to 200 games are expected to be available at launch from a catalogue of more than 3000 games.
21524468
submission
siliconbits writes:
A notorious hacker group has warned the NHS that its computer networks are vulnerable to cyber attack. Lulz Security, which claims to have been behind a recent hack on Sony, sent an email to NHS administrators revealing it had found a way to breach the service's network.
21393904
submission
siliconbits writes:
Chinese firm Netcom has managed to cram an 8GB flash memory and NFC electronics and antenna into microSD card and had a running demo at Computex 2011. This is by far the smallest implementation of a user-removable near field communication module we've seen yet and paves the way for some very interesting applications including adding NFC capabilities to phones (and tablets and ultrabooks) with a microSD card reader. Netcom's Dan Lau told us that the card doesn't currently have any direct competitor on the market, that it may cost around $30 for OEMs/ODMs and that they are already in talks with a number of phone manufacturers to integrate their technology into handsets by the end of the year.
