The Human Rights Watch and American Civil Liberties Union have come out with a report to condemn the actions of the US government and spy agencies like the NSA, which have been mass collecting data on American and international citizens. The 120-page document is titled, “With Liberty to Monitor All: …
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Google criticised by Obama over EU tax avoidance
Tax avoidance is a difficult topic, not least because anyone that's ever filed a tax return through an accountant is likely engaged in it one way or another. However while many morally deplorable newspapers like to point the finger at rich individuals who have dodged tax on their several millions, …
Read More »Rob Zombie and Tony Moore collaborate on AC: Unity history
Musician and director Rob Zombie isn't necessarily the man you'd associate with explaining the real history behind something as nuanced as the French Revolution, but that's what's happened. He's teamed up with comic book artist Tony Moore (of Walking Dead fame) to give the world an animated, comic and violent …
Read More »Russia offers multi-million bounty for Tor hacks
The Russian interior ministry has offered a bounty of just under four million roubles (£66,000) for information that allows the government to track users of the Tor browser anonymising network. It's believed that the authorities were keen to not only find out who's using the technology and what hardware they're …
Read More »Kim Dotcom pledges Internet Party will stop mass snooping
Surveillance, snooping, the mass collection of data and the oppressive oversight of governments around the world has been a big topic over the past year. Kim Dotcom is someone that knows about it all too well, considering he himself was spied upon illegally before being arrested with an invalid warrant …
Read More »First non-IBM Power8 servers set to emerge early in 2015
Last year IBM established the OpenPower consortium and opened up Power8 processor specifications and architecture to its partners. The goal of the organization is to create an eco-system of Power8-based servers designed for future data centers and cloud computing. The first fruits of the collaboration may become available already early …
Read More »Don’t forget the UK rushed through the DRIP snooping law
Do you know what the government hopes the most about its recently rushed through DRIP legislation? That you'll forget about it. For those that don't know, DRIP, or the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers law, is a bill that was pushed through last week that forces ISPs and in-fact any …
Read More »Apple-IBM deal: good news for Apple and IBM, bad news for BlackBerry and Microsoft
The agreement between Apple and IBM will inevitably have a lot of effects on the industry of personal computers as well as mobile devices. For example, BlackBerry and Microsoft Corp. will clearly lose sales because of the new collaboration. Meanwhile, the partnership essentially brings IBM back to the personal computing …
Read More »The Elder Scrolls Online has around 770,000 subscribers
There's a lot of negativity towards The Elder Scrolls Online floating around the web but the game must be doing something right as it still has around 770,000 active subscribers according to a report published by SuperData Research. Neither Bethesda or Zenimax have shared exact sales or subscriber figures but …
Read More »Two more special edition PS4’s announced for Japan
Sony has announced two more special edition Playstation 4 consoles for Japan. In addition to the recently announced Frozen themed console, Japanese buyers will also be able to get a Destiny themed white PS4 or a black ‘The Last of Us' themed console. The white, Destiny themed console looks similar …
Read More »ISPs name GCHQ as biggest ‘internet villain’ at award show
At least it looks like the public and open rights groups aren't the only ones that find GCHQ's snooping antics leave a bad taste in their mouth. The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has had its annual award ceremony where it gives props to some of the best and brightest …
Read More »Parliament rushes through snooping laws after EU rights ruling
The British government is rushing through a new set of laws to allow intelligence agencies like GCHQ and ISPs, to continue legally collecting meta-data on phone calls and digital communications, and in some cases the content of those conversations, in the wake of the EU ruling data retention as a human rights …
Read More »UK porn filters are blocking anti-drug-war sites
Much of our coverage of the British government last year involved David Cameron's courting of Chinese firms and how he was very interested in the filters they put up to stop citizens looking at a large variety of content, including anti-government messages. However, the big problem Mr Cameron saw in …
Read More »Worldwide ISPs and Privacy International go after GCHQ
GCHQ, the British intelligence agency that is responsible for Tempora, the UK's version of the NSA's PRISM spying scheme which hoovers up data on citizens and foreign nationals alike without permission, is going to have to defend itself in court, as a handful of internet service providers from around the …
Read More »Google Glass is now available in the UK
The Google Glass was first made available in the US last year but the wearable is now making its way over to the UK for the first time. In addition to the UK launch, the Google Glass is getting a hardware upgrade too, bumping it up to 2GB of RAM …
Read More »UK Home Secretary calls for more government surveilance
Despite last year's Edward Snowden revelations kicking off big debates about government intrusion in the day to day lives of internet and telephone users the world over, the British government doesn't feel like it has enough eyes on its citizens. The Home Secretary, Theresa May, recently made a speech about …
Read More »Intel licenses wireless charging technology from WiTricity
At the Computex 2014 trade-show Intel Corp. announced that its reference designs based on the Skylake generation of microprocessors will support Rezence, a wireless charging standard developed by the Alliance 4 Wireless Power (A4WP). This week Intel actually licensed wireless charging solutions for computing devices designed by WiTricity. The A4WP’s …
Read More »Judge halts Megaupload civil suits
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been legally embattled for almost two and a half years. Originally arrested during a raid on his mansion back in January 2012, he's been fighting his extradition from New Zealand ever since. In recent months however, he's won a few legal skirmishes, enough so that …
Read More »They’re making a Sonic movie with live action
Despite being as fast as ever, Sonic doesn't quite have the same industry clout that he once had. While his long-time opposite number Mario continues to impress and delight fans the world over, Sonic has disappointed enough times that he's just not looked on with quite the same fondness. But …
Read More »ZTE wants to sell more high-end smartphones
It is not a secret that Apple and Samsung are the most profitable smartphone makers in the world thanks to sales of their high-end lines, whereas the competition of other manufacturers has pushed margins so narrow that their low-priced handsets are barely profitable. In a bid to earn more money …
Read More »Kingston begins to ship SSDs in M.2 form-factor
Kingston Technology this week started to ship its first solid-state drives in the M.2 2280 form-factor. Such SSDs will soon become popular as the latest platforms based on Intel’s 9-series chipsets support the M.2 SSDs with the PCI Express 2.0 x2 interface and up to 1GB/s of bandwidth. Unfortunately, the …
Read More »Intel wants to get rid of cables with ‘Skylake’-based devices
The upcoming systems powered by the Core M “Broadwell” microprocessors will certainly be impressive. But the real revolution awaits us sometimes in 2015 – 2016, when Intel Corp.’s partners roll-out devices based on the code-named “Skylake” central processing units. Those mobile systems are expected to be completely wireless and therefore …
Read More »Microsoft calls on US government to re-address NSA concerns
It was this very week in 2013 that first saw revelations of the NSA, GCHQ and the US government's advanced spying regime first hit the internet, as Edward Snowden divulged masses of secretive documents to Guardian journalists and ultimately, to the world, from his hideout in Hong Kong. Since then …
Read More »Evolve will have single player, bots and 12+ maps
One of the biggest concerns people have had with Turtle Rock's upcoming monster hunting epic, Evolve, is the same one they had with Titanfall: it forces you to play with other people. Fortunately it turns out, that's simply not true. Evolve won't go the same way as Respawn's game, and …
Read More »It’s now legal to copy in the UK, if you’re disabled
In a surprising change to copyright law in the UK, it's actually now legal for anyone with a disability to copy a CD, DVD, or MP3 file that they've purchased, as long as they have no intention of exploiting the copying for the purpose of commercial ventures. This news comes …
Read More »Movie studios want to freeze Dotcom assets, again
It was announced last month that Kim Dotcom would be likely to regain all of his frozen assets, after New Zealand's high court ruled that it would not extend the foreign restraining order against them, thereby giving a real timeframe that would see Dotcom's cars, personal property like laptops and …
Read More »Samsung wants us to start waving at our watches
Samsung has a history of filling its flagship devices with gimmicky gesture based controls that people rarely find a good use for and now, it wants to bring similar features to its smart-watches. The Korean based device maker has patented a circular smart-watch to battle with the Moto 360 and …
Read More »DVD Ranger cracks Cinavia anti-piracy protection
For two years, Cinavia anti-piracy protection has been a thorn in the side of pirates the world over, by popping up a message that mutes audio and halts visuals on DVD and Blu-Ray players if an unauthorised copy is detected. The technology has been around so long, it was often …
Read More »Flagship offers a very different take on the RTS: First Person
One of the core gameplay elements of the RTS, is that it's in fifth person, or seventh – essentially, up in the sky looking down. You tend to have a HUD with extra information on it and there might be some advisory character in the corner telling you what a …
Read More »The Elder Scrolls Online to get a big update this week
The Elder Scrolls Online hasn't been the most critically acclaimed MMO in recent years but maybe over time it will improve. Zenimax is due to release a big content update later this week, adding in a new adventure zone as well as new monsters. The Craglorn update was announced to …
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