It has been revealed that good old Goldman Sachs received one rather large Christmas present in the form of unpaid interest from Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs, following a long legal battle over one of the US bank’s tax avoidance schemes.
You know that thing in sort-of-science-fictional shows or awful police procedurals where they have a blurry photo which they zoom into indefinitely and then use television magic to ‘enhance’ it and keep it from turning into the pixelated jpeg it should be? Adobe Photoshop can do that now.
There is a shareholder advisory campaign calling for the removal of Rupert Murdoch, his two sons, James and Lachlan, and 10 other directors from the board of directors at the next NewsCorp shareholder meeting on 21 October. The radical shakeup would see 13 of the company’s 15 directors removed after the shocking events that took place at NewsCorp.
A young fashion designer from Germany has produced the first man-made synthetic fibre entirely without chemicals. And she did it with a staple you can find in your fridge — milk! The fabric is called QMilch, and is made from high concentrations of the milk protein, casein. The best part is that it looks and feels like silk but doesn’t smell.
As part of its promotional campaign for the new Chrome operating system, Google has quietly opened up its first retail store in London, called the “Chrome Zone”. The store is Google’s first venture in realspace retail, using the location to sell its Chromebook computer line.
Millions of BlackBerry users from all over Europe, Asia and Africa have been without online services such as email and BlackBerry Messenger for the last few hours. A spokesperson for RIM has not yet passed comment, but we do know a major fault at the RIM data centre in Slough is responsible.
Dr Rowan Williams, otherwise known as the Archbishop of Canterbury, delivered what some of his aides are calling the “sermon of his career” when he addressed more than 15 000 Anglicans during his controversial visit to Zimbabwe yesterday. He told them that Mugabe’s tyrannical rule was no better than the colonial rule it had replaced.
Well this can only end well. The US Air Force’s unmanned combat drones in the “Predator” and “Reaper” class have been infected with computer viruses that they can’t get rid of, in case you weren’t sufficiently terrified of the world when you woke up this morning.
Ian Neale holds the world record for growing the heaviest swede, weighing in at 38kg. Last week, the 68-year-old from Newport in South Wales, received a special video message from Snoop Dogg. The rapper wanted specific cultivation advice in return for some VIP passes for one of his gigs. The record-breaking vegetable grower accepted Snoop’s invitation.
The companies jointly announced in a statement released a few hours ago that they have scraped the widely anticipated October 11 San Diego launch of the Nexus Prime, Samsung’s Android-based smartphone running the new Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. Does it have something to do with Steve Jobs’ passing on Wednesday?
It looks like the tides that swept up the Occupy Wall Street protest campaign – ongoing after three weeks – have broken national boundaries; ‘Operation Ubuntu’ has been set up to launch a simultaneous protests on the 15th of October in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Grahamstown, as part of the global Occupy Revolution campaign.
News of Steve Jobs’ death resonated around the world this morning. A sad day for many, but Steve’s death has put tremendous momentum behind the move to have 14 October named as “Steve Jobs Day”.
British politics is theatrical at the best of times. They’re dealing with cat-gate at the moment, so it just became even more theatrical. A judge has actually ruled that an illegal immigrant could avoid deportation partly because the judge feared separating him from his pet cat and partner risked “serious emotional consequences”.
This was the world’s first taste of Steve Jobs’ genius. RIP. Click through for the advertisement.
Steve Jobs, the man who changed all of our lives forever, has died. As the news hit in the US while the whole of South Africa was sleeping, many a South African will be waking up to the the news of his premature death at age 56. This, from CNN: Steve Jobs, the visionary in […]
Can’t afford an iPad? Still confused about whether RIM is or isn’t discontinuing the BlackBerry tablet (er, or as a technology company generally)? You may be interested in the Aakash. It means ‘sky’ in Hindi – and it’s been launched today in India under the tagline “the cheapest tablet computer in the world”.
The majority of the furore surrounding the Dalai Lama not coming to South Africa is beginning to blow over, so let’s take a moment to remember what this was all about to begin with – the Arch’s 80th. You want to wish him, don’t you? Have you ever met him? How has he impacted your life? Well, wish him happy birthday, and you could be on CNN for your efforts.
Klingon is a fictional language spoken by an alien warrior race in the Star Trek series – those guys that look like they have six-packs on their foreheads. But, according to Jonathan Brown from the UK, it also has some other uses. Although getting laid is not one of them, he does claim it can help people suffering from dyslexia.
The Japanese have proved that they are some of the most resilient people on earth. With the earthquake and tsunami that struck earlier this year, numerous acts of heroism emerged. Now they’ve invented the Noah Disaster Shelter as a very probable device for protection when particular natural disasters strike.
The South African media giant, Naspers, has bought the Russian version of Gumtree: Slando, for an undisclosed amount. The original founders of Gumtree, Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall, confirmed the deal overnight. The site has 11 million users, and has sold items including Stalin’s clothing, a slew of diamonds, a MIG 21 aircraft and one whole oil refinery.
2oceansvibe has long been the authority on when summer truly starts, with our annual “opening of summer” declaration (past declarations here and here) usually appearing in late September or early October. It hasn’t happened yet this year, but I can feel it coming soon. MTN, on the other hand, has begun flirting with the madness that […]
Terms and conditions: we never read them, but we know we know should. Here’s what you should know about Amazon’s Fire and the new Silk browser it comes with: they make it clear that the company is entitled to retain your tablet’s unique ID, plus the URL’s of pages you have visited, for up to 30 days.
NASA wants to put somebody on an asteroid by 2025 because they don’t know how else to get people’s attention. And to succeed in this entirely worthwhile endeavour, they’ve designed a mechanism by which to harpoon asteroids, so that vehicles can land on the thing despite the weakened gravity. Call me Ishmael.
How do you wake a deaf person, especially if the building that they are in is on fire? You squirt a puff of wasabi at them, obviously. Seven Japanese researchers were awarded the Ig Nobel prize for chemistry in the 21st annual Ig Nobel awards, a spoof of the real Nobel awards, at Harvard University last night for their invention.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Amazon have become synonymous with what we perceive as “cool” on the internet today. But these vintage screen caps of some of the world’s most-loved sites suggest one thing: if the net was high school back then, none of these websites would have had any friends.
Facebook has finally admitted that it has been watching the web pages its 750 million members visit. The huge privacy breach was simply a mistake, it says. Software that automatically downloaded to users’ computers when they logged in to Facebook “inadvertently” sent information to the company, whether you were logged in or not.
The unmanned spacecraft, Tiangong-1, which translates awesomely to Heavenly Palace, is set to blast off tonight from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu province, marking the start of China’s first rendezvous and docking mission. That guy is set to take off between 13h16 and 13h31 GMT.
The South African and Vietnamese governments have come together and agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding that will seek ways to stop rhino poaching. Ironically, the Vietnamese officials asked that a domestic medical research institute verify that rhino horn had no medicinal properties, and to make this information public.
As a mother, there is nothing more frightening than living with the suspicion that your son might be one of those gays. Luckily help has arrived in the form of a new Android app, called “Is My Son Gay?” Over the course of 20 questions, it claims it can determine whether the survey-taker’s offspring is a homosexual, or not. Example: “Does he like to dress up nicely?”
Well hey, that sounds at least a little familiar. Ivan Lewis, shadow culture secretary is presently proposing a licensing scheme for journalists at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, which would have the power to prohibit people from doing any sort of journalism – which would have to include tweeting, blogging, and uploading pictures of stuff.