The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry

Last week, the world was shocked—shocked!—to discover that downloading an electronic book to a device such as a Kindle actually increases the weight of the Kindle. Not by any truly measurable amount, said the New York Times, but still: adding data to a device apparently results in trapped electrons which "have a higher energy than the untrapped ones." And though the amount of data contained in a tiny e-book file is so miniscule as to render it...

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'Anonymous' Abandons Attack Against Mexican Drug Cartel?

Just days after announcing its intent to reveal information about civilians who have assisted the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas, the group has seemingly backed down for fear of possible violent reprisals. REUTERS Two apparently self-identified Anonymous members, Skill3r and Glynnis Paroubek, were quoted in Mexican newspaper Milenio as saying, "We didn't want irresponsible administrators to condemn participants [in the operation] to death. We've discussed it extensively and we all decided to remove it." This statement follows a post on the Anonymous Mexico Facebook page that reads in part: "Our fight is not of this kind and our ideals are not in tune with that operation. The note [announcing Operation Cartel] published in many electronic...

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Our Friends Electric: Facebook Info Open to 'Socialbot' Snooping

Perhaps it's time to start paying more attention to whom you're friending on Facebook. A recent study designed to evaluate how safe social networks are from being invaded by programs pretending to be real people resulted in more than 250GB of personal information being collected from thousands of Facebook users by the researchers' "socialbots." NORBERT VON DER GROEBEN / REUTERS Researchers from the University of British Columbia's Vancouver campus released 102 socialbots onto Facebook as part of the eight week study, each one given a name and a profile picture so as to better convince real users that they were, in fact, entirely genuine. Each bot then proceeded to send 25 friend requests per day—limited to prevent setting off spam alerts—and...

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Samsung Bests Apple In Smartphone Sales

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co overtook Apple Inc as the world's top smartphone maker in the July-September period with a 44 percent jump in shipments, and forecast strong sales in the current quarter in a clear warning to its rivals. Samsung only entered the smartphone market in earnest last year, but its sales have skyrocketed thanks to a sleek production system that rapidly brings new products to market. Apple introduced its first iPhone in 2007. "In the handset division, Samsung has no real rival models to challenge its products except for the iPhone 4S. Apple and Samsung will continue to dominate the market in the fourth quarter," said Kim Hyun-joong, a fund manager at Midas Asset Management, which owns Samsung shares. Profits...

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