Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post: "I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."

CWmike writes "Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."

knifeyspooney writes in with an Ars Technica report that a federal judge has issued a strong rebuke to government lawyers attempting to invoke the "state secrets" defense to quash a lawsuit over warrantless wiretapping. This is not the high-profile case the EFF is bringing against the NSA; instead the case is being pursued by an Islamic charity that knows it had been wiretapped. "At times, a note of irritation crept into [Judge] Walker's even, judicial language. At one point, he described the government's argument as 'without merit,' and characterized another as 'circular.' He also seemed impatient with the Justice Department's refusal to provide any classified documents addressing Al Haramain's specific claims for review in chambers. 'It appears... that defendants believe they can prevent the court from taking any action under 1806(f) by simply declining to act,' wrote Walker."

madgreek writes "Here is a short story about my switch to Ubuntu from XP at work. I have been Microsoft-free for 3 months now at a Microsoft heavy shop. Few people know I am using Open Office and Linux. I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office. From the article: 'When I first started my experiment I was trying to keep it a secret out of fear of attacks from angry Microsoft worshipers (especially from the admins and desktop support). What I am finding out is that most of the folks that I was hiding from are sick and tired of supporting Windows and are proponents of Linux. Several of them are using Linux at home. One of the guys I talked to has Vista and XP installed on his laptop. He swaps out the hard drive when switching between OS's.'"