Insane Demand Causes Google to Shut Down Invite Process for Google+

Just a single day after Google unveiled Google+, the company's brand new social networking service, Google decided it would be a good idea to open up the invitation process late Wednesday afternoon to all those fortunate enough to have already been invited to participate in the service.

Before, the keys to Google+ were only given to those very select few who were fortunate enough to be allowed in at launch. So naturally an invite was a precious and prized commodity. Google has stressed that Google+ is in its very early stages though whatever it was that Google was aiming for with its field trial must have been pretty darn successful. The reason I say that is because every single person that was invited to the service is now able to invite other people in as well.

But that wasn't all, the people who were invited by the initial users were able to invite friends of their own too. Even better was the fact that people writing about the decision to open up the invitation process were suddenly struck with a lot of popularity amongst readers. MG Siegler from TechCrunch wrote on his Google+ page on his own story that, "I'm not sure any TechCrunch post has gotten comments at such a fast rate."

This amount of attention seems like it must have been a bit more than Google had asked for. After nearly six hours, Google shut the invitation process down over what Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google Vic Gundotra called "insane demand". Gundotra posted on his Google+ page late on Wednesday night, "We need to do this carefully and in a controlled way." Gundotra did not specify when the invite functionality would be back up and running.

Source: PC World - Google+ Invite Process Shut Down Amid 'Insane Demand'

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Japan Creates World's Fastest Supercomputer

When it comes to the most powerful supercomputers in the world, I don't think it is to anybody's great surprise that the most powerful one is located in Japan. This new Japanese supercomputer has just recently earned the top spot among all the supercomputers in the world with a performance that makes other supercomputers look like a TI-82.

Known as the "K Computer", this device is three times faster than its closest rival from China, which previously held the number one spot, according to Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University Tennessee at Knoxville Jack Dongarra. Dongarra also keeps the official rankings of computer performance.

The K Computer, which was created by Fujitsu and is located at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, represents an incredible step forward in the realm of speed. This computer will also, more than likely, become a great sense of national pride for Japan, especially for computer scientists, who take the race to have the fastest computer in the world very seriously.

According to Dongarra, "It's a very impressive machine. It's a lot more powerful than the other computers." The latest ranking of the top 500 computers is determined with a simple mathematical equation. The computer who gets to take the top spot is able to make 8.2 quadrillion calculations per second which also calculates to 8.2 petaflops per second. The performance of the K Computer is the same as linking around 1 million desktops.

Supercomputers have many uses including earthquake simulations, climate modeling, nuclear research and weapons development and testing. Businesses also use supercomputers for oil exploration as well as rapid stock trading. However, building a supercomputer isn't cheap and it usually involves connecting thousands of small computers in a data center.

The K Computer is made up of 672 cabinets filled with system boards. The K Computer is considered to be energy-efficient even though it uses enough electricity to power around 10,000 homes at an estimated cost of $10 million annually. I'd hate to see the statistics for the non-energy-efficient ones. The lab that the K Computer calls home is planning on increasing the size of the computer to 800 cabinets which is predicted to raise the speed of the supercomputer that is already faster then its five closest competitors.

The K Computer received its name from the Japanese word "Kei" which translates to 10 quadrillion, the overall goal for the number of calculations the supercomputer should be able to perform. The previously leading supercomputer was China's Tianhe-1A which was located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China. The Tianhe-1A was the first Chinese supercomputer to hit the top spot which acted as a beacon of the country's growing technological prowess.

The fastest supercomputer in the United States is located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It placed third behind the K Computer and the Tianhe-1A. Countries in Asia have made sizable investments in supercomputing and currently dominate the upper echelon of the field. Japan and China alone hold four out of the top five spots.

However, when it comes to the top 10, the United States is still the leader, holding five of the top 10 spots. Japan's top supercomputer ranking marks the country's first since 2004. The United States and China were previously the only countries to hold that title. These rankings, issued every six months, are frequently changed and reflect just how fast computer power is advancing.

Source: The New York Times - Japanese 'K' Computer Is Ranked Most Powerful

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Facebook Creating an App for the iPad

Facebook is planning on releasing an app for the iPad in the next couple of weeks that is said to feature a "slick design" as well as new Facebook Chat and Groups functionality. In addition to that, the app is also said to feature an "amazing" photo and video experience.

This news comes right after another report that Facebook was preparing an HTML 5 web app for iOS devices. In addition to that, Facebook is supposedly working on a new website optimized for the iPad. However, Facebook's refreshed site is only meant to be a "supplement" to the iOS apps from Facebook, not a replacement.

With the high popularity of the iPhone's Facebook app, it is surprising that Facebook hasn't created one for the iPad. To make up for the lack of an app, iPad users have been forced to turn to third party apps like Friendly, MyPad and Facely HD or just go with Facebook's actual website.

However, that could all change if the latest round of rumors turns out to be true. It has been said that the proposed iPad app has been in development for over a year. It has been said that CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is heavily involved in the design of the app as well as its features. Photos and videos will be displayed full size at full resolution and the app is also expected to be free, just like all of Facebook's mobile apps.

Source: PC Mag - Facebook Crafts an iPad App

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Samsung's New 30nm DDR3 DRAM

Samsung has just recently introduced 30-nanometer-class1 DDR3 synchronous dynamic random access memory (DRAM) modules designed for upgrading your PC. This new generation of faster, energy efficient DRAM modules is going to be available via consumer retail channels this summer.

According to Samsung Electronics America's Senior Vice President of Mobile Entertainment Marketing Reid Sullivan, "Replacing your DRAM can be one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to upgrade your PC's performance, and these new products offer the most energy-efficient option currently available to consumers. Samsung is committed to bringing performance-enhanced computing to consumers, and our 30nm-class process technology offers an outstanding combination of advanced low-power DDR3 technology, with blazing speed up to 1,600 megabytes per second."

You can get this new DRAM from Samsung in either a 2GB or 4GB model and both are available in very low profile unbuffered dual in-line memory module configurations for desktop PCs and small outline DIMM configurations for notebook PCs. They are also backwards compatible with systems designed for previous DDR3 and DDR2 memory and can be purchased in single or dual pack quantities.

These memory sticks are also more energy efficient, using up to two-thirds less energy than those manufactured with industry standard 60nm class technology. What is great about that is that this boost in energy efficiency does not come at the cost of performance. The new modules transfer data at up to 1,600 Mbps which is 20% faster than the current 40nm-class generation of DDR3 DRAM from Samsung.

The new 30nm-class DDR3 DRAM modules will be available from Samsung this summer with single pack modules costing less than $30 to less than $55 and dual pack modules ranging from less than $55 to less than $110.

Source: Engadget - Samsung's 30nm DDR3 DRAM boosts speeds, cuts power consumption

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Internet Access Shut Down In Most of Syria

According to Renesys, a service that focuses on monitoring Internet connectivity, due to the civil unrest that is going on in Syria, most of the country’s Internet services have been shut down.

According to a blog post that was posted by Renesys on Friday, June 3 at approximately 6:35 a.m. local time, close to two-thirds of the entire country’s networks were disabled. The company said that “over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table."

Unfortunately for Syrians, most of their Internet access is brought to them by a company called SyriaTel, which is state-owned. "They buy most of their Internet transit from Turk Telekom and Deutsche Telekom, with some contribution from PCCW, Tata, and Telecom Italia," Renesys said. "Connectivity has historically come in over submarine cable from Cyprus; activation of new terrestrial fiber connections to Turkey have been delayed by this year's political unrest."

Well, what about the other third of the networks, some might ask? Unfortunately, Renesys said that all of those connections belong to the Syrian government. Of course the country’s Oil Ministry Web site is still online, as is Syrian Telecom’s official page, but government sites like the Ministry of Education, the Damascus city government page and the Syrian Customs site are all down.

Although Renesys had lots of great information, they did not have any evidence of what specific regions or cities were affected by the outages or how the massive outage was coordinated; however, they did say that "if Egypt and Libya's Internet outages are any guide, one might conclude that events on the streets in Syria are reaching a tipping point."

Google confirmed the outages in Syria via its Twitter account, tweeting on Friday afternoon: "Google services currently blocked in Syria."

For months the citizens of Syria of have been protesting against the conditions of their country, but according the Washington Post, the real turning point for everything was this past Wednesday. The Post reports that more than 300 opponents of the current Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, held a meeting at a hotel in Turkey to discuss what their next move should be. According to the Post, "It was significant that the government's opponents were finally coming together to try to present a united front to a world that remains skeptical about the Syrian protest movement."

Just this past February, there were reports that the Syrian government was planning to lift the then current bans on YouTube and Facebook. These bans had been present for over four years and were supposed to be lifted due to the “popular upheaval” about the situation.

In the past year, there has been plenty of civil unrest around the globe. Protest and violence exploded in the Middle East in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. In January Internet services went down in Egypt for a couple days, due to the protests concerning the country’s governmental issues, including the nearly 30-year rule of its “President” Hosni Mubarak. In March Internet services were also disabled in Libya due to similar issues and protests.

The outages in Syria, however, ironically occurred on the same day that the United Nations released its Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression. Frank La Rue’s report discussed the recent increase of governmental restriction on the flow of online information. He noted that this was mostly due to the Internet’s ability to unite individuals together in protest of something; however, in his report he encouraged governments to not restrict their country’s citizens' Web usage. He instead asked them to work on developing a plan that would make the Internet widely available, accessible and affordable to all.

"There should be as little restriction as possible to the flow of information via the Internet, except in a few, very exceptional, and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law," La Rue said in a statement.

"The report by the Special Rapporteur raises concerns about justifying broad surveillance powers under the name of national security or counter-terrorism," said the U.S.-based Electronic Frontier Foundation in a statement. "La Rue should be commended for questioning the ostensible motives for online surveillance."

"As Rapporteur La Rue affirms, the Internet's unique ability to provide ample space for individual free expression can lead to the strengthening of other human rights, including political, economic and social rights," said Cynthia Wong, the Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Project on Global Internet Freedom. "In order for these rights to be realized, governments, civil society and industry must all continue to build on the work begun by the Special Rapporteur."

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Malware on the Rise

Malware is the thing to look out for these days. McAfee claims that they tracked more than six million different unique malware samples in the first quarter alone. Those numbers make the first quarter the most active quarter for malware issues ever.

In a statement, Vincent Weafer, the senior vice president of McAfee Labs, said, "It's been a busy start to 2011 for cybercriminals."

McAfee went on to say that February was the most active malware month. In February, 2011 there were 2.75 million samples alone. According to the company, in March, 2011 there were also more than 350,000 fake anti-virus software samples, which was the highest level in over a year; however, partially in part to the demise of the Rustock botnet, spam is at the lowest level since 2007.

"Even though this past quarter once again showed that spam has slowed, it doesn't mean that cybercriminals aren't actively pursuing alternate avenues," Weafer continued. "We're seeing a lot of emerging threats, such as Android malware and new botnets attempting to take over where Rustock left off, that will have a significant impact on the activity we see quarter after quarter."

The most popular OS for mobile malware is still Symbian, but McAfee reported that Android is gaining on Symbian and came in at number two. McAfee thinks that Android isn’t number one because Google allows for the side-loading of Android apps. This means that it does not have a main spot where it checks apps for any possible suspicious behavior.

Just this past week, Google had to remove more than two dozen apps from their Android Market due to malware issues. NetQuin, a mobile security firm, also identified more than 20 malware filled Android apps that went to the extent of auto-dialing phones to pile up high user fees.

When dealing with spam, McAfee tracked more than 1.5 trillion messages each and every day, but thankfully that number is less than half of what it was just a year ago.

Government agencies across the globe have been working hard to crack down on cybercrime. In September dozens of international cyber-gangsters who were responsible for the creation and spread of the Zeus botnet were arrested. Also, thanks to Microsoft, FireEye (an anti-malware company), the University of Washington and Pfizer (a pharmaceutical firm) Rustock was taken down in March.

In their statement McAfee warned that the creators of the Zeus bot are hard at work merging the Zeus code with the SpyEye botnet. This would affect banking and online transactions, so it could cause some major issues if it isn’t handled.

"There was a strong uptick in new botnet infections toward the end of Q1, most likely due to the reseeding process, where cybercriminals slow down activity in order to spend time rebuilding botnets," McAfee said. "The botnet takedowns have resulted in an increase in the price of sending spam on the underground marketplace, showing that the laws of supply and demand also apply to cybercrime."

So why are people even falling for these threats? Well, cyber-criminals are very sophisticated these days. They make their scams look legit, so it’s hard to tell that it’s a threat sometimes until it’s too late. It seems that the spam that is promoting an actual product seemed to lure in the most people. IGNORE the e-mails advertising iPads and HDTVs. McAfee also noted a rise in “banker” Trojans. They lure people in talking about things like UPS, FedEx, USPS and the IRS. Unfortunately, on top of that, scammers are also taking advantage of crisis events like the Japan earthquake and tsunamis.

It’s just important to pay attention to what you are opening up or downloading before you do it. If you’re careful and take the necessary precautions, you should most likely be able to avoid any issues.

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Fake MacDefender Malware Originating from Russian Payment Processor

For about a month there has been a fake MacDefender malware that has been circulating and plaguing Apple computer owners. No one seemed to know where it was coming from, but finally on Friday, May 27 a computer security researcher made the claim that the fake malware could be traced back to an online Russian payment processor called ChronoPay.

"Some of the recent scams that used bogus security alerts in a bid to frighten Mac users into purchasing worthless security software appear to have been the brainchild of ChronoPay, Russia's largest online payment processor and something of a pioneer in the rogue anti-virus business," wrote security researcher Brian Krebs on his KrebsonSecurity blog.

The fake MacDefender and the incredibly similar scareware called MacProtector and MacSecurity tended to attack from points like infected Google Image search results. Once your computer is infected, it is incredibly difficult for Mac users to remove the malware. The issue is that the malware doesn’t have a dock icon and it attaches itself to the launch menu of the computer.

Krebs was able to trace the newest strains of the scareware back to ChronoPay by simply examining the two different domains that the software directs all of its Mac users to go to for a paid software security solution. While investigating, he found out that both mac-defence.com and macbookprotection.com were associated with the e-mail address fc@mail-eye.com. According to leaked ChronoPay documents, this e-mail address is owned by Alexandra Volkova, the company’s financial controller.

According to Krebs, both of the Mac domains listed above have been suspended by Webpoint.com, which is a Czech registrar; however, Krebs said that the fc@mail-eye.com account was used recently to register appledefense.com and appleprodefense.com. Despite this, Mac users have not yet reported being directed to either of these sites via malware like MacDefender.

"ChronoPay has been an unabashed 'leader' in the scareware industry for quite some time," Krebs writes. Just in 2008, it was the core processor of a site called trafficconvertor.biz. This was an “anti-virus” program that was designed to release the first strain of the Conficker worm. It was an incredibly destructive virus that still works to infect millions of computers across the globe.

"In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove MacDefender malware and its known variants," Apple wrote. “The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware."

Apple also released a document with detailed instructions for Mac users on ways to eliminate MacDefender from their computers.

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Dell Computers Are a Green Choice

In today’s society, many are encouraged to ‘go green’ and help save our planet’s resources. These days our society is focusing on reusing, reducing, and recycling materials. Dell computers are a great choice for those who want to become more eco-friendly. There are many different things about Dell computers that qualify them as ‘green’.

One thing that qualifies Dell computers is what they’re made of. The company consistently finds new ways to incorporate recycled materials into their products, as well as less harmful materials. Much of the plastic used to make Dell computers is recycled material, as well as the plastic used in their packaging. They have also replaced many of the harmful chemicals used to produce their computers with less harmful and/or harmless materials. One major step they took was introducing more computers with LCD screens which reduce the usage of mercury.

Another great thing about Dell computers is the packaging that they come in. Besides using recycled plastic, Dell also uses bamboo when packaging their computers. The bamboo is biodegradable and is a natural, renewable resource. Bamboo also has a lot of tensile strength, which makes it ideal for packaging and protecting the computers.

Not only are the products that Dell creates eco-friendly, but also the way in which their products are manufactured. The company is one of the top five purchasers of renewable energy in the U.S. and is number one when it comes to the computer industry. Dell also strives to reduce their water usage. Many Dell facilities have installed more efficient water fixtures, as well as re-using water for landscaping irrigation after it is treated by on-site sewage treatment facilities. Dell also does not create any industrial wastewater.

Outside of creating and shipping their products, Dell is also eco-friendly in the fact that they have set up a partnership with Goodwill which encourages people to donate their old computer equipment, no matter what brand, in order to help people in economic crises. To find a drop-off center near you, click here. Dell has also partnered with The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org to help the Plant a Tree Program. This program uses donations to plant trees in areas that have been deforested in order to offset greenhouse gas emissions. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so here.

It’s clear that when it comes to going green, Dell has a lot to offer. They strive to continue making their company more energy efficient and eco-friendly in every way possible. To learn more about how Dell is making a difference in the environment, visit http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/dell-earth.aspx.

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