Kunden der Postfinance sind am Montag Opfer einer Phishing-Attacke geworden. Per E-Mail wurden sie aufgefordert, eine neue Sicherheits-Software für den elektronischen Zahlungsverkehr zu installieren.

Apple und Samsung haben sich in ihrem weltweiten Patentkrieg bisher nur einzelne Nadelstiche zufügen können. Mit dem am Montag in San Jose gestarteten Geschworenen-Prozess in Kalifornien könnte sich das ändern. Ein Urteil wird aber nicht vor Mitte August erwartet.

Die Zeit der Gratis-Handys beim Abschluss eines Mobilfunkabos dürfte bald vorbei sein. Nachdem die Abo-Preise gesunken seien, würden nun die Gerätesubventionen reduziert, sagt Sunrise-Chef Oliver Steil.

Eine Universität in Taiwan hat den US-Technologiekonzern Apple wegen Patentrechtsverletzung verklagt. Die Sprachsteuerung Siri im iPhone 4S von Apple verletze zwei von der Universität Cheng Kung gehaltene Patente zur Spracherkennung, erklärte die Universität in der Stadt Tainan im Süden des Landes am Montag.

Europas größter Telefonkonzern Telefonica hat sich im Kampf gegen die hohe Schuldenlast etwas Luft verschafft. Der Mitte Juni bekanntgegebene Verkauf von Anteilen am chinesischen Telekomanbieter China Unicom hat dem Unternehmen nun umgerechnet rund 1,14 Mrd. Euro in die Kassen gespült, wie der Konzern am Montag in Madrid mitteilte.

Teilnehmer der Hackerkonferenz DefCon in Las Vegas haben wegen grosser Sicherheitslücken vor Internetroutern für drahtlose Netzwerke der chinesischen Firma Huawei gewarnt. Felix Lindner von der Berliner Unternehmensberatung Recurity Labs sagte am Sonntag auf der Konferenz, es seien nur einfache Hackerkenntnisse nötig, um Huawei-Router zu knacken - und sich so in Netzwerke einschleusen und Daten ausspähen zu können.

Mehr als drei Viertel der Nutzer von Online-Netzwerken sorgen sich um die Sicherheit ihrer hochgeladenen Dateien. Das ergab eine Umfrage in 14 Ländern. Bei einem Durchschnittswert von 76 Prozent gibt es allerdings erhebliche regionale Unterschiede.

Das EU-Parlament setzt in der Kommunikation mit den Bürgern künftig verstärkt auf Facebook, Twitter und andere soziale Netzwerke und startet dazu einen neuen „Newshub. Die neue Kommunikationsplattform fasst in Echtzeit alle Online-Informationen der EU-Abgeordneten, der politischen Fraktionen und der Parlaments-Nachrichtendienste zusammen.

Die deutsche IT-Dienstleisterin Cancom konnte im Juli eigenen Angaben zufolge steigende Werte beim Auftragseingang und der Faktura verbuchen. Bereits das erste Halbjahr 2012 habe dem Unternehmen ein Plus bei Umsatz und Betriebsergebnis beschert, heisst es in der Mitteilung.

Vier Monate Zeit, um einen Unternehmer im Technologiebereich von Null auf 100 zu bringen: Laut dem globalen Trainingsprogramm Founder Institute ist das kein Ding der Unmöglichkeit. Seit der Gründung im Jahr 2009 besuchen die Studenten Lehrveranstaltungen mit nur einem Ziel vor Augen: Ein voll funktionsfähige Firma zu gründen.

eldavojohn writes "Unless his Facebook account has been hacked, Peter Jackson has announced a third movie for The Hobbit series: 'So, without further ado and on behalf of New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wingnut Films, and the entire cast and crew of The Hobbit films, I'd like to announce that two films will become three.' Other sites are confirming this while Variety notes that filming has been wrapped on the first two so doing a third film will require a restart to all of that effort including re-negotiations with rights holders and acting schedules. **potential spoiler alert** From Peter Jackson's announcement: 'We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance.' How much of Middle Earth would you like to see on film?"

cweditor writes "Grupo Posadas has five data centers supporting more than 100 hotels and other lines of business, but it's moving almost all of those operations to a service provider in Texas. Could cloud service providers help the US become a destination for tech outsourcing instead of an exporter of tech jobs? One stumbling block: The US finds itself on the receiving end of protectionist legislation in other countries that discourages use of non-domestic IT service providers, says the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."

TheNextCorner writes "Images taken by a NASA spacecraft show that the American flags planted in the Moon's soil by Apollo astronauts are mostly still standing. Each of the Apollo missions planted an American flag in the soil at their landing sites. Scientists had previously examined photos of the Apollo landing sites for the flags, and had seen what looked like shadows cast by them on the lunar surface. Now, researchers have studied photos of the landing sites taken at different points during the day (and under different illuminations) and have observed shadows circling the points where the flags are thought to be."

thatpythonguy writes "Core Python Application Programming is the latest addition to a growing corpus of literature serving a growing number of Python programmers and engineers. This Prentice Hall book of 800+ pages covers some traditional areas and touches upon some new ones. I typically do not spend much time speaking about the author of the books that I review; however, this occasion warrants an exception. And it is not because Wesley Chun used Python over a decade ago to build the address book and spell-checker for Yahoo! Mail nor is it because he holds a minor degree in music from UC Berkeley in classical piano. Rather, it is because he is both an engineer and an instructor. In other words, he was not pulled from his geek duties and asked to become a pseudo-writer; he already does that for his consulting practice, authoring (or co-authoring) several books and articles on Python (including "Python Web Development with Django") as well as starring in his own training video (entitled "Python Fundamentals"). The result of that experience is a writing style that is technically sound, yet accessible." Keep reading for the rest of Ahmed's review.

Croakyvoice writes "A few years ago the Homebrew community went from one console to another releasing some excellent software, from the Days of the Dreamcast the first breakthrough homebrew console, to the PSP which gave us the first handheld Nintendo 64, GBA and PSX emulators on a handheld. The last few years we have seen Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Apple all bring out means to thwart homebrew development. The app store on both Android and iOS have taken many homebrew devs over to try and break the market. The major consoles have so many firmware updates that the days of Homebrew seem to be numbered, is there a way back for the Homebrew Community?"

hypnosec writes "Apple has announced that its latest Mac OS X version, Mountain Lion, has had three million downloads in just four days thereby making it the most successful OS in Cupertino's history. Philip Schiller, iPhone maker's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said, "Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever.""

Nerval's Lobster writes "For any software developers with an urge to play around with demographic or socio-economic data: the U.S. Census Bureau has launched an API for Web and mobile apps that can slice that statistical information in all sorts of nifty ways. The API draws data from two sets: the 2010 Census (statistics include population, age, sex, and race) and the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (offers information on education, income, occupation, commuting, and more). In theory, developers could use those datasets to analyze housing prices for a particular neighborhood, or gain insights into a city's employment cycles. The APIs include no information that could identify an individual."

ananyo writes "A flexible electronic sensor made from interlocking hairs can detect the gentle steps of a ladybird and distinguish between shear and twisting forces. The sensor consists of two interlocking sheets of nanofibres. When the sensor sheet is pressed, twisted or brushed, the squishy, metal-coated hairs change position, generating changes in the sensor's electrical resistance (abstract). Such subtle tactile input would be very useful for robots designed to interact with people, says Matei Ciocarlie, a scientist at robotics company Willow Garage. "Skin has been an overlooked part of robotics", says Ciocarlie, because it poses such a challenging problem: in addition to being robust, sensitive and flexible, it needs to be made in very large sheets."

Gunkerty Jeb writes "Moxie Marlinspike, the security and privacy researcher known for his SSLStrip, Convergence and RedPhone tools, has released a new tool that can crack passwords used for some VPNs and wireless networks that rely on encryption using Microsoft's MS-CHAPv2 protocol. Marlinspike discussed the tool during a talk at DEF CON over the weekend, and it is available for download."

jfruh writes "One of the arguments against the now-dormant SOPA legislation was that, in addition to eroding Internet freedom, it would also be ineffective in stopping music piracy. Well, according to a leaked report, the RIAA agrees with the latter argument. The proposed laws would "not likely to have been an effective tool for music," according to the report. Another interesting revelation is that, despite the buzz and outrage over P2P sharing, most digital music piracy takes place via sneakernet, with music moving among young people on hard drives and ripped CDs."

YokimaSun writes "Following on from Last months Mega auction of rare games that went for a staggering 1.2 Million dollars, comes another auction. This time its of the only Legend of Zelda Nes Prototype cartridge in the world, bundled with it is a sealed copy of the retail version of the game, those of you excited by this news will have to dig deep because the price is set at a mouthwatering US $150,000.00."

ananyo writes "A court decision on 23 July could help to tame the largely unregulated field of adult stem-cell treatments. The US District Court in Washington DC affirmed the right of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate therapies made from a patient's own processed stem cells. The case hinged on whether the court agreed with the FDA that such stem cells are drugs. The judge concurred, upholding an injunction brought by the FDA against Regenerative Sciences, based in Broomfield, Colorado. The FDA had ordered Regenerative Sciences to stop offering 'Regenexx', its stem cell treatment for joint pain, in August 2010. As Slashdot has noted before, they are far from the only company offering unproven stem cell therapies."

Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters is reporting that Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University has filed a suit against Apple claiming patent infringement by the Siri voice-recognition software. At issue are two patents dating to 2007 and 2010. From the article: 'The suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, on Friday, it said. "We filed that lawsuit in the Texas court because it processes faster and its rulings are usually in favor of patent owners and the compensations are usually higher," said Yama Chen, legal manager of National Cheng Kung, in the southern Taiwan city of Tainan.'"

twoheadedboy writes "Microsoft is going to release its Surface tablet on the same day Windows 8 goes on general availability, Oct. 26. The news was disclosed in a filing made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which also revealed that the company expects launch and the accompanying marketing to harm its profits. We'll soon find out whether Microsoft has what it takes to take on the seemingly indomitable iPad."