Vast Electronic Spying Operation Discovered

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 3-22-2009

Section:

We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does!  Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…

• Source claims next gen iPhone has video capabilities
• Take our readership survey, win an Xbox 360
• Rumors: A new iPhone, a 3G netbook and more
• Appletellcast weekly Apple podcast, March 22nd 2009
• Boxee announces partnership with Pandora, PBS app and more

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Verizon to sell HP Mini 1000 with data service?

Verizon recently confirmed that it’d be selling a discounted netbook in order to push its data plans, and it appears from a spreadsheet leaked to BGR that the inaugural device will be the from the HP Mini 1000 series.

More specifically, the 1151NR, which contains a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, 10.1-inch screen at 1024×576 resolution, three-cell battery, and weighs 2.45 pounds. The 1151NR is found in HP’s business line, so it’s no stretch that Verizon’s offering may be to business customers as well.

Most people seem to be guessing that the netbook would cost $99 plus a two-year service contract but no official pricing or availability has been confirmed by Verizon yet.

[via BGR]

Steel Cage Debate On The Future Of Online Advertising: Danny Sullivan Vs. Eric Clemons

Editor’s note: Last Sunday, we published a guest post by Wharton Professor Eric Clemons on “Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet.” The post questioned a basic assumption that many of us in the tech industry hold near and dear. It sparked a blogstorm and 600-plus comments, most of them filled with rage. Even Danny Sullivan, the normally unperturbable editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand, couldn’t believe that Clemons could be serious, and let loose in his own post. He even offered for us to republish it here (and he wasn’t the only one champing at the bit to write a response).

Instead, we invited Sullivan to present a more concise counter-argument, absent some of the raw emotion that fueled his initial response. It is presented below, followed by a rebuttal from Clemons, and then another round. We instructed both to fight clean, but fight hard. In his rebuttal, Clemons offers this startling long bet: “In five years revenues from internet advertising will constitute less than 20% of internet business revenues, excluding revenues from the sale of physical goods. Winner buys the loser lunch and gets to gloat.” Danny counters with his own wager. These two can’t even agree on what to bet on.

Danny Sullivan Believes In The Future Of Online Advertising:

Eric Clemons caused a stir earlier this week with his assertion that advertising will fail on the internet, that “it is going to be smaller, not larger, than it is today.” I disagree. In particular, I disagree with his position that search advertising is “misdirection” where companies like Google are “diverting” customers to places other than where they wish to go unless advertisers pay them. Search advertising, in the way he describes it, sounds like some type of protection racket you might see on The Sopranos.

Clemons provided no proof for the allegations he made against search advertising. He linked to no research nor any studies showing that any of the things he asserted were actually happening. Despite this, he made broad statements such as “misdirection frequently takes the form of charging companies for keywords and threatening to divert their customers to a competitor if they fail to pay adequately for keywords.”

I’ve covered the search space for nearly 15 years now. I’ve covered Google since it first existed. This type of misdirection is what Clemons called “Google’s business model.” But somehow in all my years of covering Google, I’ve never heard of any company being “threatened” in the manner he describes. Not once. If this were commonplace, I think I’d be able to dig up a story or two from over the years that supports the business model he asserts. I cannot.

Certainly there have been lawsuits over the years about Google showing ads that appear in response to terms that are also trademarks. These have produced different rules for different countries. For example, in the United States, you can be prevented from using a trademarked term in the ad copy, but the term can “trigger” an ad to appear. In France, you can be prevented from buying an ad on Google that appears in response to a term that someone has claimed a trademark on.

Somehow, Google has struggled on in France. That it continues to earn money there underscores an important point — not all searches involve brand names. Searches don’t always have the “one answer” that a searcher could potentially be diverted from. Search for “apple,” and what did you want? Apple computers or information about apple the fruit? Search for “fixing a Macbook,” and did you want official advice only from Apple or perhaps third-party resources. If you wanted third-party resources, which among them were the “right” choice that Google might have prevented you from going to by showing an ad? Search for “financial crisis,” and does anyone know which “one” resource was supposedly threatened not to appear unless they bought an ad?

Only a chunk of all searches involve a “one source” answer that would fit into Clemons’s characterization. What percentage that is, I don’t know. I don’t recall stats like this being published, nor did Clemons provide any to base his assumptions on.

Let’s assume it is a large chunk. Let’s further assume that perhaps Google doesn’t need to tell brand owners that they need to buy ads or risk exclusion — they just know that’s how the “game” works. From those assumptions, let’s then look at how it breaks down.

Search for “Yahoo” on Google. No ad, but you get Yahoo at the top of the “free” listings. Search for “American Airlines,” and the same thing happens. So, too, for “Target” or “TechCrunch” or my own site, “Search Engine Land.” Same for “Proctor & Gamble,” “NFL” or “Taco Bell.” Are these companies all ignorant of Google’s shakedown scheme and lucky? Are they carefully crafted pre-positioned exceptions in case this type of debunking was needed?

Search advertising is not misdirection. Search advertisers themselves can attempt to misdirect consumers (and have faced lawsuits and legal actions when they’ve tried). But to say, as Clemons did, “Misdirection, or sending customers to web locations other than the ones for which they are searching. This is Google’s business model,” is a gross mischaracterization that should be obvious for anyone to see.

This also brings things back to his overriding assumption — that internet advertising is failing. Search advertising is the strongest segment of internet advertising, and it has continued to grow. In the midst of the worst economic recession the US has seen in decades, search spending looks to either grow only less slightly than in the past or perhaps have a small single digit contraction. That’s not a failure, not in my book.

Moreover, the downturn in internet advertising seems far more a failure of the economy right now than a failure of existing advertising models. Ironically, while Clemons argues that no one wants to view advertising, there’s plenty of evidence that they will do so in return for things provided for free.

TV viewership is down, yet millions still flocked to watch Battlestar Galactica last weekend because they wanted to see it live — as it happened — and endured the commercials as a result. If they shot over to Hulu to watch it because they lacked a DVR, they again endured commercials in return for the convenience of seeing the recorded show.

Elsewhere on the web, more and more are encountering overlay ads, those ads that appear before you can proceed into a web site. They interrupt the viewing experience. I don’t like seeing them myself. But as a publisher who has used them, I can also tell you they are amazingly effective — nor do they result in mass numbers of people abandoning your web site, where they get good information, free of charge.

Advertising, especially offline, has an issue in that people will avoid interruptions if they can, nor do they particularly trust interruptions. In addition, offline ads are poorly targeted compared to those online and tracking performance is laughable compared to metrics for internet ads. But that advertising still works. On the internet, which continues to grow its audience, advertising is smarter, more targeted, more measurable and ultimately will find a place to be more successful, in my view.

Clemons’ Rebuttal:

Great response.  I disagree with parts of it, but it is well-reasoned and in places quite convincing.  Mr. Sullivan presents no data and no studies, but some very persuasive stories. Nicely done.

What is the strongest point of disagreement between us?  Mr. Sullivan argues that in all his years thinking through and working through issues in internet advertising he has never heard any company or any individual complain about paid search.  In contrast, I have been hearing this complaint from senior vice presidents in travel companies for years, and this year the chorus has been joined by retailers and manufacturers..  I am not suggesting that Mr. Sullivan is deaf, out of touch with reality, or in denial; he just does not work with the same executives I do.

As for others who believe that some types of paid search are a form of misdirection, I suggest that interested readers check out the website for Alliance Against Bait and Click, which is funded by several companies, all of them large household names, all of them major players in their industries, and all of them quite angry. Although it did not pass, Utah House Bill 450 sought to criminalize part of Google’s current business model—specifically the selling of trademarks as keywords to trigger paid search ads.  Readers interested in more detail on the subject of abusive search advertising can review the blog of Professor Ben Edelman at Harvard; Professor Edelman has a law degree and takes a more formal legal and regulatory stance in his blog than most readers of TechCrunch might enjoy.

I am convinced that at least some major corporations view sponsored search the way I do, in part because my views were informed by discussions with them.  Their principle concern, and mine, is not solely the abuse of corporate trademarks in sponsored search and trigger ads, but the entire nature of sponsored search and Google’s monopoly power in the area.  And, of course, Google mostly does not misdirect; it is too clever for that.  If most sponsored searches were unresponsive to consumers’ needs, sponsored search would fail.

Google’s business model is to threaten misdirection on sponsored search, but actually to engage in it as infrequently as possible.  If the company consumers really want (Marriott, Continental Airlines, 1-800-CONTACTS) pays enough then it is listed in the top lines of sponsored search.  If it does not, then Google places a competitor there.  Obviously, if the sponsored search links never got consumers what they wanted, sponsored search would not work either for consumers, or, ultimately, for Google.  Google does not require that the top companies bid top prices, but it does require that they pay.  Google knows who to place on top, but will not do so unless the companies actually bid sufficiently high prices for relevant keywords.  This was all treated in considerable detail in my previous post.

All of this really has little to do with the main argument of my original article.  Regardless of what Google does or does not do it is not the business model that the rest of the net is going to follow.  The New York Times, BusinessWeek,, and LinkedIn are not going to fund their Websites by operating search engines.  This should not need to be stated.  I am arguing, based on discussions with editors, that they are not going to fund themselves with ads either.  This is the essential takeaway of the first half of the post.

I’d like to offer Danny the following wager:  I bet that in five years revenues from internet advertising will constitute less than 20% of internet business revenues, excluding revenues from the sale of physical goods. Winner buys the loser lunch and gets to gloat.

Sullivan’s Rebuttal to the Rebuttal:

Many searches are ambiguous about what should be the “one true answer” that Clemons seems to believe exists. If you search for “is Coke better than Pepsi,” who is wrong for buying an ad that appears in response? Coke, Pepsi or both? Trademark owners have reserved rights to a word, not all uses of it. And in a search for “Are diet colas bad for you,” there’s no trademark usage involved. Who is Google supposed to “threaten” about not getting placement, in that case?

As for the bet, I won’t take that one. That’s because I agree, many sites cannot sustain themselves solely on advertising. Mine certainly doesn’t. Our revenue comes from online ads, paid memberships, lead generation and conference attendance. As a veteran web publisher, I know that in my particular space, online ads alone don’t cover the bills.

There are plenty of other examples. Right now, some newspapers are reconsidering whether they should have “opened” their sites to non-paid subscribers, since ad revenues are plummeting. But even when ad revenues were high, the ads alone weren’t covering all the costs that go into producing the New York Times. Other streams such as print ads and print classifieds were helping to keep the online site going.

But that also reflects the fallacy in Clemons’ argument. In the offline world, do advertising revenues generate more than 20% of total revenues outside the sales of physical goods? I don’t know. I suspect not, and I suspect they never have. Even before the web, the New York Times was not covering its costs 100% through ads. In its pure bricks-and-mortar life, it was using multiple revenue streams.

So yes, I agree that many sites need to diversify their revenue with alternatives to display ads. Some of these methods will be alternative advertising models. Some of them won’t be advertising at all but still generate revenue. Ads certainly haven’t been the sole source of revenues for many web sites in the past, and there’s no reason to think that will change. Similarly, there’s no reason to assume that ads would be the sole source of “real world” revenues for a company.

I also agree that ads cannot be the sole source of funding for the internet. Of course, I never said that this was the case. Nor do I know of anyone who has ever seriously suggested this. Clemons seems to be arguing against an idea few people have had.

Just because many web sites on the web or many companies in the real world don’t earn the majority of their revenue through advertising doesn’t mean advertising is failing. In terms of the internet, I think internet advertising will continue to grow as more people come online and the space continues to mature. And I’m happy to bet this will happen with a far better wager.

Clemons wrote that internet advertising revenues will never be as high again as they are now. I disagree. In five years, let’s look at internet advertising spend reports from some commonly accepted sources, such as the IAB. If advertising is above today’s levels, I win. If not, he wins. The loser pays $1,000 to the charity of the winner’s choice.

Clemons’ Final Reply

I offered Danny what I thought was a pretty clear wager, based on the degree of outrage he expressed in his original post.

It appears that Danny actually agrees. That was the real point of my original article. It looks like we have agreement after all. Internet advertising will be a small percentage of internet revenues. The other business models will become more important. At less than 20% internet advertising must fail as the main support of the internet.

Now we can move on and develop those business models.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

China shaken by 4.2-magnitude earthquake

Amazing art made with old audio cassette tapes

youtube adds Upload Progress Bar, Simpler HD Parameters, more - Afterdawn.com

PC World

youtube adds Upload Progress Bar, Simpler HD Parameters, more Afterdawn.com youtube, in their latest blog post, has made a list of the new updates made to the extremely popular video sharing site. * Upload Progress Bar: A new Flash uploader is up for all supported browsers and it comes with a long-awaited (and much-requested) ... youtube gets college channel, Twitter button, and more CNET News youtube Gives Twitter Love PC World ChannelWeb - USA Today - PC Magazine - Washington Post all 59 news articles

Wrist cuff doubles as coffee sleeve

I looove your fashionable wrist cuff! Thanks, it doubles as a coffee sleeve! Wow, that’s incredibly weird! Thanks, I know!

If you really love coffee and you really love the environment (though not enough to bring your own mug to Starbucks) might I suggest this handmade $65 black walnut veneer wrist cuff that serves double duty as hand-protecting coffee sleeve?

It’s available at Veer.com – the product description is as follows:

Answer the siren call of the coffee shop in style. When your drink is called, the Coffee Cuff slips off your wrist and onto your cup, taking the place of a cardboard sleeve. Your hand stays cool and so does your environmental footprint – Coffee Cuffs are shaped by hand from reclaimed black walnut veneer.

Will you buy one? Hell, buy two or three!

Coffee Cuff [Veer.com via TreeHugger]

The Texas-Size Debate Over Teaching Evolution - Newsweek

Newsweek

The Texas-Size Debate Over Teaching Evolution Newsweek By Christopher Hitchens | NEWSWEEK Mention the name "Texas" and the word "schoolbook" to many people of a certain age (such as my own) and the resulting free association will come up with the word "depository" and the image of Lee Harvey Oswald ... Texas on evolution: Needs further study Salon Texas Opens Classroom Door for Evolution Doubts Wall Street Journal Dallas Morning News - CNN - The Associated Press - Youth Radio.us all 504 news articles

Dell targeting the back to school crowd with their Latitude 2100 Welsh?

Section: Computers, Laptops, Netbooks

There’s a rumor just leaked over at Gizmodo that Dell is coming out with a new laptop.  According to their “tipster”, their latest is the Latitude 2100 “Welsh” 10.1-inch netbook.

Not too much is known about it yet obviously, but it is supposed to sport a 1.6GHz Atom processor, and up to 2GB RAM.  It also is said to come with an optional SSD drive, three USB ports, an Ethernet port, SD/MMC slot, and 802.11 a/g/n.  It’s also got Bluetooth and options for three and six cell batteries.  Rumor also has it there just may be touchscreen…although that isn’t confirmed.  They’re supposed to weigh less than three pounds, so it won’t weigh down the bookbag.

Now, the fun part for the kiddies?  The colors.  Get this…you’ve got School Bus Orange, Red Apple, Blue Ribbon, and what looks to be Chalkboard Black. 

So, if the report is true, they are due to hit the shelves this May for just under $600.  Just in time for a graduation gift to send junior off to college….or…for summer school if he didn’t quite make it.

Via: Gizmodo

Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Riverside County Customers Receive More 3G Coverage With Two New Verizon Wireless Cell Sites

Photo: Yaciretá hydroelectric power plant

Nilton Ramos Quoirin shot this:

This is a picture of Yaciretá hydroelectric power plant. Yaciretá is a binational power plant which belongs to Paraguay and Argentina. Its 20 generators can deliver up to 3200 MW. It is located on the Paraná river, between Ayolas (Paraguay) and Ituzaingó (Argentina).

US Adults Average Eight Hours A Day Looking At Screens

Buy two get one free Wii games at Target

Starting tomorrow, Target will be running a buy-two-get-one-free deal on all regularly priced Wii games. It’s an in-store only deal and the free game must be of equal or lesser value than the other two, but it oughta be a good way to load up on games for the long, bright, hot summer ahead. Check the ad in your Sunday paper tomorrow — if your town still has a paper.

[via Joystiq]

Conficker Trackers Wait To See What Worm Does April 1st

Alaska’s Mount Redoubt Still Showing Its Fury

Cablevision Told To Change Advertising Claims

CrunchDeals: 26-inch monitor for $229 (today only)

Here’s a magnificent one-day-only deal on a 26-inch Westinghouse monitor. PC Connection is selling the L2610NW-SP for just $229.95 — that’s a lot of monitor for under $250.

Specs include a 1920×1200 resolution, 2ms response time, 3000:1 contrast ratio, 350cd/m2 brightness, and there’s HDMI and VGA inputs.

Westinghouse 26-inch L2610NW-SP Widescreen LCD Monitor [PC Connection via dealnews]

More complaints about energy-saving bulbs

Lights Dim Around The World For Earth Hour

Tesla Motors Model S Backed by Google Founders Brin, Page - eWeek

Siliconrepublic.com

Tesla Motors Model S Backed by Google Founders Brin, Page eWeek By Nicholas Kolakowski Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are two of the investors pumping money into Tesla Motors, which has revealed the prototype for its all-electric, zero-emission sedan, the Model S. Drivers will theoretically be able ... Tesla Motors CEO: Model S is cheaper than it looks CNET News Tesla Shows Off Family-Friendly Electric Car TechNewsWorld Red Herring - New York Times - Luxvelocity - Bizjournals.com all 426 news articles

Risk Aversion And The Perils Of Selling Too Early (Israeli Startups, Part II)

Right now I’m at an un-conference called KinnerNet. It’s hosted by famed Israel entrepreneur Yossi Vardi and set near the Sea of Galilee. Funny thing: There are a few hundred entrepreneurs here, mostly Israeli. And only one has said something negative to me about my post earlier this week about the poor venture returns for Israeli startups that incited such passionate feelings everywhere else in the world.

No one is arguing that the returns have been good for Israeli companies in the last eight years. But there are some legitimate questions about how Dow Jones (whose numbers I used) slices its data and how the numbers could be quite so low. Since 2001, according to Dow Jones, $10 billion in venture investments have yielded only $860 million in IPO and M&A exits. The study of venture economics is at best imperfect, so it’s quite likely there are several big Israeli exits the numbers are missing. It’s like measuring Web traffic. Most Internet companies will tell you their traffic logs report higher numbers than measurement agencies like Hitwise or comScore.

But the Dow Jones numbers aren’t likely to be off by, say, a factor of 50 or 100. And since the same sources—usually venture firms—give firms like Dow Jones the investment data and the liquidity data, the relationship between the money going in and the money going out is pretty reliable, even if the absolute numbers are not. Put another way, if Dow Jones is missing some exits, they’re likely also missing some investments going into the country. In any case, the returns are down dramatically from the 1990s—period. Be mad at me all you want; those are still the numbers.

The more interesting question—and I think what’s creating such passion around the topic—is why the numbers are down? We’re actually going to do a session on this tomorrow at KinnerNet. It’s also the one question I’ve been asking Israelis pretty much non-stop for the week I’ve been in the country. Two interesting cultural answers have emerged that I wouldn’t have imagined. Both have to do with a phenomenon that’s hurt venture returns in the United States too: Entrepreneurs selling companies too early.

Both Roi Carthy (who occasionally writes for TechCrunch from Israel) and Matthew Hertz, who’s starting a deep-web people search company called Pipl.com, said many Israelis live in the “temporary.” Put another way, when Matt heard I was filling in for Michael Arrington “temporarily” in February, he laughed and said, “We Israelis know temporary is the most permanent state there is. Short-term is a way of thinking here.” (True enough, it’s March, and I’m still here writing on TechCrunch.)

That “temporary” mindset drives the same unabashed courage that makes quitting a job and starting a company so natural for Isreali entrepreneurs. But both Carthy, Hertz and a dozen or so other entrepreneurs I spoke with said there’s a flip side to that: When you live for the short term, and you get a $30 million acquisition offer; you’re more likely to take it. In other words, several entrepreneurs here have described themselves as having a huge appetite for taking risk on the front end; but being risk-adverse when it comes to turning down a huge chunk of money for a $1 billion IPO dream.

In my last book, David Sachs, an American entrepreneur who was the COO of PayPal and has started Geni and Yammer since, put the same feeling another way: Most people in the world would take the certainty of $1 million over a chance they could make $30 million. I’m not knocking that. I’ll sell SarahLacy right now for $1 million. (Takers?) But I tend to think of people who make that decision as being risk-adverse. What was surprising to me, is that people who have a huge tolerance for risk on the front end– literally creating something out of nothing—become risk-adverse when they’ve proven that it’s actually worth something.

I was discussing this idea last night with Nimrod Lev, who sold kSolo to MySpace and has worked in the Israeli Internet scene since its earliest days. He had a different cultural take on the same phenomenon. He said the fun part for Israelis, or at least for him, is solving a hard, technical problem. In other words, “the art of the hack.” Once it’s solved, managing the company, growing revenues, taking on HR problems—all of that is the boring part. He loves starting companies and has been successful at it, but he has zero desire to build one into the next Google. There are a lot of guys like that in the Valley, too, but they’ve also got a huge pool of experienced managers to hand the company off to.

I’ll give Israel another reason that returns have fallen so hard on a percentage-basis. And it has nothing to do with Israeli culture. In fact, it’s something the United States screwed up: Sarbanes Oxley. SarbOx put a chill on small-but-growing companies’ ability to go public on the Nasdaq. The costs of being SarbOx-compliant are so high, that unless you have more than $40 million or so in annual revenues and strong growth, it’s just not cost effective. And other regulations surrounding the Chinese Walls between research and trading mean that small companies get little research coverage and are too thinly traded to really be considered liquid stocks.

This has hurt the Valley, when it comes to returns, for sure. But the Valley also is replete with large companies that buy each other for enough money that investors can eke out enough to keep going. Geographic proximity does help in working these kinds of things out. (You think YouTube didn’t benefit from sharing an investor with Google? VCs actually count this as one of their so-called “value adds.”) A good number of European companies have gotten around the SarbOx problem by going public on the London exchange over the last few years, to the extent where several articles were written about the London Stock Exchange becoming a bigger financial force than the Nasdaq.

So if it was a problem for all startups, why do I bring it up in relation to Israel? Because pre-Sarbanes Oxley, Israel had more Nasdaq-traded companies than any other country. Outside the Valley, they were, by definition, the most vulnerable to the change. Perhaps in the intervening years, it’s not the entrepreneurs that have lost their mojo; there’s just no good financial system for their investors to profit off of said mojo. That’s certainly a hack I’d like to see a smart Israeli pull off because its not just hurting the Israeli startup ecosystem—it’s dragging down returns for investors everywhere.

(Photo by Hans Splinter).

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

InternSHARE Blends Internship Postings With Ratings

internSHARE is an all-in-one internship job and review portal where students can not only find a internship but also access the reviews of internships at companies, submitted by former interns. Internships can often be a hit or miss in terms of experience. Some companies merely make interns fetch coffee and make copies while others let interns step into the roll of a full-time junior employees. Regardless of how a company decides to handle its interns, it’s always helpful to know exactly what your role will be prior to the internship.

The site’s reviews seem fairly comprehensive, offering overviews (provided by Wikipedia) and reviews of a range of companies including Research in Motion, IBM, and Amazon.com. The site also has a feature where existing interns can post descriptions about the interview process and give prospective interns tips about the interviews. Another cool feature is the ability to use Facebook Connect to integrate Facebook friends and features into internSHARE.

internSHARE, which is student-run, recently merged with Coop.com, another Canadian-based internship database, boosting its users from to 8900 and creating over 2400 reviews for companies. Its seems that the site is slightly Canadian-centric. Most of the mid-size and smaller companies reviewed are Canadian based. And the job data base, whose listings are pretty paltry (there are currently only 6 internship listings, all in Canada), needs to be expanded in order for the site to really serve as a all-in-one solution to prospective interns.

InternshipRatings provides a comprehensive database of U.S. internship reviews but doesn’t feature internship listings. InternshipIN and AfterCollege just offer internship listings. I think internSHARE has a good idea in trying to be a comprehensive database for students but needs to add internships in a variety of areas to appeal to U.S. students as well. And the site needs to offer more than 6 prospective jobs to college students.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Verified by Visa: British banks phish their own customers

"Frame inline displays the VbV authentication page in the merchant’s main window with the merchant’s header. Therefore, VbV is seen as a natural part of the purchase process. It is recommended that the top frame include the merchant’s standard branding in a short and concise manner and keep the cardholder within the same look and feel of the checkout process."

Or, in other words: Please ensure that there is absolutely no way for your customer to know whether we are showing the form or you are. In fact, please train your customer to give their “Verified by Visa” password to anyone who asks for it.

Craziness. But it gets better - obviously not everyone is pre-enrolled in this stupid scheme, so they also allow for enrolment using the same inline scheme. Now the phishers have the opportunity to also get information that will allow them to identify themselves to the bank as you. Yes, Visa have provided a very nicely tailored and packaged identity theft scheme. But, best of all, rather like Chip and PIN, they push all blame for their failures on to the customer

Russian capsule docks at space station - The Associated Press

Seattle Times

Russian capsule docks at space station The Associated Press KOROLYOV, Russia (AP) - A Russian cosmonaut steered a Soyuz capsule carrying US billionaire tourist Charles Simonyi to dock successfully at the international space station Saturday after a last-minute problem with one of the capsule's engines. Video: American-Russian crew ready to blast off to ISS RT US software mogul set to roar into space history Reuters BBC News - TG Daily - FOXNews - Space.com all 1,044 news articles

British cops identify 200 schoolchildren as potential terrorists

The police say it's all right, though, so that's OK.

A Home Office spokesman said: "We are committed to stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists or violent extremists. The aim of the Channel project is to directly support vulnerable people by providing supportive interventions when families, communities and networks raise concerns about their behaviour."

Psychology of nerding and the joy of reckless tech

Reading this, I realised that the rage is itself an attractive part of the process because it feels so good when it is over, and everything dissolves into order. There is something in this process of destruction and recreation that resembles the state that long articles and still more radio programmes get into, just before they get right: everything is spread out in ways that look chaotic to everyone except me, and even I can’t quite explain how they will go back together. I can only show, if I keep my concentration. The element of risk makes it far more attractive than the times when everything goes smoothly and by routine. You feel you have discovered a hidden order to the universe. Alternatively, as sometimes happens, you take it all apart and it never ever goes back together properly. All you are left with is a heap of broken junk. But that’s more common with words than with computers.

Bletchley Park rebuilds the bombes -- code crackers that won the war

Bletchley Park is a national treasure. Every visitor to Britain should go.

During World War II, British brainiacs helped save their country and defeat the Nazis. Recently, the equipment they used has been rebuilt and the surviving members got together for a reunion.

The rebuild project appears to be a maker's delight: code, electronics, old-school manufacturing, and rapid prototyping all wrapped up in a world-changing quest to win the war.