IT News HeadLines (HardOCP) 05/09/2010

4chan Decides to Do Something Nice For a Change
From a website that is not known for its philanthropic nature,this is in itself news. The back story is pretty amazing also, so we send Kudos to 4chan for having a heart. We would like to join in wishing WWII vet William J. Lashua a very happy and memorable 90th birthday. Today, someone at 4chan decided that the Internet should get together and wish 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua a happy birthday, and by lunchtime, his local branch of the American Legion said that they had heard from people as far away as Sweden. Comments
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From Canada To Mexico On One Tank of Diesel
A prototype car built by Craig Henderson in 1984 just broke its own Guinness World Record driving 1,478 miles using 12.4 gallons of diesel at 119.1 mpg. My weed eater burns more fuel The Avion is a car Craig Henderson originally built with partner Bill Green way back in 1984 as a prototype for a high-mileage vehicle he hoped to sell. Commercial plans never came to fruition, but Henderson never abandoned the Avion. Over the years he's kept tinkering with it, improving its powertrain and aerodynamics along the way. Comments
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Google Announces a Don't Miss Press Conference
Next Wednesday Google is having a press conference to share their latest technological innovation and evolution of Google search. The announcement comes without details, but with a 'don't miss this' tagline. Maybe they bought themselves a country My guess is that this will be similar to the "Searchology" events that Google's held in 2007 and 2009. This is a general update on things Google's doing in search, usually peppered with a few product announcements, but nothing that dramatically huge. Last year, we got news of Google Squared, Rich Snippets and Google Sky, said Danny Sullivan. Comments
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Satellites Bump During Secret Maneuvers
The Chinese have been conducting experiments with their satellites in space. China's SJ-12 satellite has been maneuvered at least 6 times, one resulting in 'bumping' another Chinese satellite. Speculation on the maneuvers ranges from space station preparation to military to purely scientific. A close encounter of the Chinese kind. Such close encounters could allow China to practice rendezvous procedures between its future space station and other spacecraft, as well as learn about satellite formation flying, said Brian Weeden, a former U.S. Air Force orbital analyst and now technical adviser for the Secure World Foundation. Comments
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Flash Card Speeds to Triple by 2012
New standards for flash memory cards are being developed by the SD Card Association which will increase data transfer by close to 300%. The specs should be complete early 2011 and be in production early 2012. Today's SD cards have data-transfer buses with a maximum speed of 104MB per second, though actual read and write speeds are somewhat slower. The new specification, just called SD 4.0 for now, will increase that to 300MB/sec, said Kevin Schader, the association's director of communications. The SD speeds are increased through the addition of a second row of electrical contacts on the bottom face of the card, though the association is still debating just how many new pins to add, Schader said Comments
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How Websites Make You Spill Your Secrets
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered that internet surfers are more prone to giving up their private information on websites that appear to be less reputable than others. Darwin would be proud. One site displayed an official-looking logo, formal fonts, and staid colors. Another site was designed to appear neutral. And the third used lurid colors, less professional-looking fonts, and a cartoonish devil icon. The researchers found that people were nearly twice as likely to admit to having engaged in "illicit" or "socially questionable" activities when presented with questions on the third site--the least reputable-looking one Comments
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AMD Bulldozer Octa-Core Slated for 2011
A new 32nm AMD 8 core CPU will mainly be aimed at the server market, but that will not deter hard core hobbyists on having the biggest and baddest in their boxen. The new 32nm design promises to confuse the very notion of cores, however, with AMD referring to the chip's building blocks as modules. Each module will feature a pair of 128-bit floating point units and share L1 cache and other resources, essentially allowing a module to function as a dual-core unit while making the overall chip more efficient. Comments
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World of Warcraft Running On iPad-Streamed
Back in May Steve wrote about the possibility of running World of Warcraft on an iPad. It is no longer just a possibility, but a beta reality. No thanks to Apple for this achievement. aikai is a game streaming service currently in beta. It would allow you to play games using a Flash client on any desktop and, apparently, a native client on the iPad (or iPhone, I presume). In theory, an application like this would allow any kind of game to be played in the iPhone OS without going through the App Store payment system, something that is not going to make people in Cupertino happy. Comments
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German Court Rules Against YouTube Over Copyright
The Hamburg State Court ruled uploaded videos on YouTube of performances by singer Sarah Brighton violate existing copyright laws, disregarding current directives of the European Union. "This decision results in a substantial legal uncertainty for all providers of video platforms, opinion forums, social communities, blogs and many other Internet services in Germany," Haller said in a statement. Comments
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New Malware Spoofs Microsoft Security Essentials Webpage
Beware of a new malware scam that looks incredibly similar to Microsoft Security. The Rogue:MSIL/Zeven malware automatically detects your browser and issues a fake warning page. The new twist here is the use of the user's trust in their browser integrity. While the malware is a pretty good attempt, it's not perfect. The goal is to get the user to download and install something, shelling out some cash in the process, which neither of the three browser vendors would ever recommend. Comments
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Prison Cell Phones Take Flight
A unidentified Brazilian teen gave new meaning to the term air waves recently when he air lifted contraband cell phones via bow and arrow into a prison. I guess you would have to consider these as dropped calls. Authorities say the boy was caught after one of the arrows he launched struck a police officer on the back. The officer was not seriously injured because the cell phone was tied to the tip of the arrow and softened the impact. Comments
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Nigerian 'Prince' Gets 12 years for Scams
We ran a story several days ago on the Top 7 Internet Scams and the Nigerian Lottery Scam was right up there at the top. If you still have business pending with the 'Prince' you may contact him via the Federal Prison System for the next 12 years. One down, hundreds of Nigerian Princes to go. Diamreyan made more than US$1.3 million in a scam that suckered 67 victims between 2004 to 2009, prosecutors said. This type of fraud, called an advance-fee scam, was the number-one type of Internet fraud in 2009, according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Last year, advance-fee fraud accounted for nearly 17 percent of the Internet fraud logged by the FBI. Comments
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