Members of “hacktivist” group Anonymous have denied that they’re planning an attack on Facebook, in spite of a video claiming to speak for the group that has declared that the social network will be brought down on January 28th. This would be the second fake Anonymous threat in some months.
The “birther” movement is back in the news, trying to prove US President Barack Obama is not an American citizen by birth. He’s been ordered to court in Georgia on Thursday to hear yet another charge that he’s not who he says he is.
Start your Tuesday the way your forefathers did, with an amazing time-lapse video of the International Space Station passing over a storm-struck African continent with the Milky Way popping in to say hello in the background. Also visible is Comet Lovejoy, two weeks after its near-fatal sunburn. Please, go look. You’ll feel better about being up.
This is little Juliet. She’s eight years old, and she and her mummy recently posted a video to Youtube where she sings about her pet dog Robert, whom she loves, and her stinky fish tank. All set to thrash metal. Odd doesn’t quite cover it, but who can argue with 12 million hits on YouTube. Take a look.
Alright. Yes. Pairing your product with an attractive woman is not exactly an original advertising tactic, and if anything the world could do with a little less of that. But because this happens to be a Brazilian TV ad for a language school, and a funny one, we can put these concerns momentarily aside.
Last week a massive anti-doping lab was unveiled by the Olympic organisers, and has been hailed as the most high-tech in the history of the games.
The rumours began to do the rounds towards the end of last week, but now a top-level source within the South African Rugby Union has let it slip that Heyneke Meyer will be announced as the new Springbok coach on Friday.
Hacker group, Anonymous, evidently not content with taking down three major corporations and the US Department of Justice’s websites, are continuing their MegaUpload revenge spree, having gained access to CBS.com and deleting every file on the server, while keeping Universal Music inoperative with sustained denial-of-service attacks.
A teenage girl from the Netherlands sailed into St Maarten harbour on Saturday, ending a year long solo journey around the globe. The Guinness World Records has said it’s not going to back that up though. It no longer recognises records for youngest sailors because it wants to discourage dangerous attempts.
Political views and campaign promises aside, Barack Obama seems like a pretty cool guy. Often he indulges not-so-serious questions, jokes with reporters and he always seems to keep a level head in just about any situation. At a recent fundraiser in Harlem he once again demonstrated his ability to keep it real.
Man, Samsung, you guys have been losing pretty much everything against Apple in the past couple of weeks. Germany’s Mannheim Regional court reached a decision on one point of the continuing lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, rejecting the claim that Apple have infringed upon Samsung’s German 3G patents.
I love the fact that we still live in a world where people care enough to do something like this. A horse recently fell down a 15m rocky cliff in Wales. It survived the fall only to find itself trapped by rough seas. This video details the rescue operation by two lifeboat crews who just happened to pass by as the incident took place.
We reported earlier today on the protests currently happening in Morocco. Protestors are dissatisfied at the lack of jobs in the country, particularly for university graduates – resorting to self-immolation. Associated Press has now procured a cellphone video that has captured the entire thing – from dousing themselves to catching fire. Full video after the jump.
Obviously. The credibility of Rupert Murdoch’s News International has been thrown into further disarray as the media giant finally admitted in the High Court that it had also illegally been accessing emails. This follows the emergence of some 36 hacking settlements yesterday.
As part of their ‘reinvention of the textbook,’ Apple yesterday unveiled three new applications for use in the digital educational under their Apple in Education program: iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U. The tools are designed to allow for interactive textbooks, digital textbook creation, and open-access educational resources from top universities, respectively.
Yesterday the popular file-sharing site, MegaUpload was taken down by the US government. In response, hackers aligned with the global cyber-collective known as Anonymous took down at least six prominent websites, including those of the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group.
A British man has been arrested and questioned by UK police regarding his involvement in the alleged theft of a fragment of a statue of Saddam Hussein from Iraq in 2003, more specifically its ass.
Do you know what self-immolation is? It’s the rather rare practice of setting oneself on fire to show how strongly you feel about something. Go figure. In the Middle East and North Africa though, it’s become more commonplace ever since a Tunisian vegetable seller did it to protest police harrassment, evoking an uprising at the end of 2010.
A Costa Cruises executive, and a woman with an obviously cold heart, has brandished her colleagues the “true heroes” of the Costa Concordia disaster. She also accused the passengers of “sensationalism” in a letter in which she discussed the tragedy that saw the Costa Concordia cruise ship capsize off the coast of Italy.
A short while ago, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper company agreed to pay damages to 36 high-profile victims of tabloid phone-hacking. On top of this, News Corp has acknowledged to victims that executives covered up the scale of the unlawful activity by destroying evidence and lying to investigators.
Following criticism over pretty much everything he’s done in the past decades, Star Wars creator/destroyer George Lucas announced his planned retirement in a recent interview with the New York Times – adding, “Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”
Though it did well on the festival circuit, South Africa’s “Skoonheid” has missed out on a nomination for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards. Unfortunate, but what films did make the shortlist, and which is the favourite tipped to win the gong?
This is sort of like Robocop! Brazilian police forces are testing out glasses fitted out with cameras linked to a central computer network that stores a database of criminal suspects’ faces, so that they’ll be able to arrest people during the 2014 World Cup without having to ask them their names.
Google has joined Wikipedia, BoingBoing and a number of other popular websites in the SOPA protest – not just by ‘blacking out’ their logo, which is cute but largely ineffective, but by putting together a comprehensive and informative infographic on the SOPA bill and piracy, along with access lines for voters to contact members of Congress through.
Controversy is raging on both sides of the Atlantic over a British publisher’s plan to reprint Adolf Hitler’s anti-semitic manifesto, Mein Kampf, in German for the first time since the end of the Second World War.
If you’re anything like me, going even a few minutes without music can seem like torture. However as it turns out, a few minutes without music blaring in your ears could actually save your life.
Wikipedia joined a number of other websites by going offline for 24 hours in an attempt to protest against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US. Users see a black screen and a political statement: “Imagine a world without free knowledge,” but if you really need to access the website, just hit the ‘Esc’ key when you land on your desired Wikipedia page.
In retaliation against Saudi Arabian hacker 0xOmar, who leaked the credit card details of 15 000 Israeli nationals and took down a secondary Tel Aviv stock exchange site last week, Israeli hackers calling themselves the #IDF-team have targeted stock exchanges in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates yesterday.
The White House was forced to be locked down for over an hour last night when protestors from the “Occupy DC” movement lobbed a smoke over the wall. The group consisted of about 1500 protestors, from all across America. Nobody was allowed to leave the property.
Foreign interference from the USA could have been behind the $165 million failure that was the Phobos-Grunt probe to Mars by Russia. This is the opinion of Russian space agency Roscosmos, which is investigating the most recent disaster in what has been a series of “major space mishaps” for the nation.