News written by James Delahunty (May, 2019)

An artist has sold an old laptop infected with six of the most financially-damaging pieces of malware in history at auction for more than $1.34 million.

'The Persistence of Chaos' is the name given to this art project. It consists physically of a Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook, running Windows XP SP3, that just happens to be infected with some of the most damaging pieces of malicious software that has spread around the world over the years.

In total, there are six pieces of malware running havoc on this system. ILOVEYOU is a virus that was spread via e-mail and file sharing, which caused over $15 billion in damages as it infected more than half a million systems. MyDoom was a rapidly spreading worm, and is estimated to have caused over $38 billion in damages.

SoBig is a worm/trojan that circulated through e-mail, affecting hundreds of thousands of systems and causing around $37 billion in damages. WannaCry is a piece of ransomware that affected at least 200,000 systems in 120 countries a couple of years back, causing an estimated $4 billion in damages. This malware was responsible for disruption to the UK's National Health Service.

DarkTequilla was a piece of malware that stole banking credentials and other data, mainly targeting Latin America. Finally, BlackEnergy is a cyber-weapon that was used in an attack that caused a widespread blackout in Ukraine in 2015.

Poland has made a complaint to the European Union's top court against controversial new copyright reforms that were approved and adopted by the bloc in April.

There was considerable push-back over the past year against proposed European Union copyright reforms. Two articles in particular provoked the ire of silicon valley and digital rights campaigners alike. One article would result in a search and news service provider like Google potentially having to pay for tiny snippets and links to news websites, while another more controversial article could force the use of upload filters and automatic removal of content it deems infringing.

Opposition on grounds that the new rules would push out new start-ups that couldn't afford such filters, or could harm the Internet's meme and mix-and-match culture, has been vocalized many times before and so won't be repeated here. Instead, the focus of Poland's complaint is fears about censorship.

Censorship is forbidden in the national constitution of Poland itself, but the government fears that enforcement of new EU rules (which would have to be adoped by each member state in their own way) could lay the foundation for effective censorship.

SpaceX has launched the first 60 satellites that will be part of its broadband service, beaming Internet access from 2,000km above the Earth.

Elon Musk, chief executive officer at SpaceX, eyes the Starlink project as a potential source of revenue to help fund SpaceX' lofty goals in space transport and exploration. The Starlink network will provide high-speed broadcast access to customers starting in the United States for a fee, potentially providing high speed options for those stuck in rural areas.

The first array of satellites launched by SpaceX flew atop a Falcon 9 rocket. At 500lb a piece, the total payload is the heaviest carried by the private rocket firm to date. The first stage / booster that carried the rockets had flown two previous SpaceX missions and successfully landed for a third time to potentially fly again soon. That's good news considering that the ultimate goal of SpaceX' Starlink is to have 12,000 working broadband satellites in orbit.

Providing high-speed Internet access from satellites in low-Earth orbit is an idea not exclusive to SpaceX. Amazon is also eyeing its own 3,200-satellite array that would provide Internet access services, dubbed Project Kuiper, and will undoubtedly be helped by founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket firm.

The journey of an Android-based crowd-funded open games console comes to an end on June 25.

In 2012, Ouya raised millions of dollars in a Kickstarter. The idea was appealing to many; an affordable games console that runs on open Android software and would be easy to develop video games and apps for. When it arrived, it was rough around the edges to say the least.

It some performance issues when trying to run games and owners complained about the usability of the controller, as well as a cheap-feeling finish.

In 2015, Ouya was bought by Razer which stopped sales of new Ouya consoles and incorporated the Ouya gaming content and platform into its Forge TV set-top-boxes instead. Ouya console owners could still enjoy support for the console however, but that's about to end.

Razer is discontinuing support for Forge TV and support for Ouya is going with it. After June 25, Ouya owners will only be able to play games they have already downloaded to the device. Razer will be deleting all user accounts permanently and halting all online services.

More information: support.razer.com

A federal grand jury in the United States returned an 18-count superseding indictment today charging Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with offenses related to one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.

Assange is currently serving a 50-week prison sentence in the United Kingdom for jumping bail, and is fighting an extradition request from the United States. The 47-year-old Australian made headlines worldwide from 2009 as Wikileaks published tens of thousands of classified documents and cables.

He had been staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years before the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum status in April, leading to his arrest by British authorities.

The United States sought Assange's extradition to face charges related to the acquisition of classified material. Assange is alleged to have actively encouraged and aided Chelsea Manning in obtaining tens of thousands of pieces of classified information which was later uploaded to Wikileaks.

In a press release outlining the charges, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Assange conspired with Manning to obtain classified information with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation. It then alleges that Wikileaks published classified documents that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world.

Apple has agreed to warn users of older iPhone models about the potential performance impact from software in updates installed on the devices.

Apple was criticized in 2017 when it admitted that software updates installed on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE models could impact overall device performance. The software was intended to manage demands on aging batteries in iPhones, impacting performance to deal with battery degradation.

Consumer protection authorities suggested that Apple should have made it clear that such throttling and management software was included in the updates. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) points out that consumers may have felt compelled to repair or replace devices due to the drop in performance after upgrading.

According to the CMA, Apple has committed to be clearler and more upfront about battery health and performance going forward, and said the company has already started being clearer to users on the issue.

The Cupertino-based firm was also fined by authorities in Italy last year over the same issue.

Google has made a couple of changes to its Search results pages that will deliver some additional information for the user.

When you search with Google, typically you get a ranked set of Search results in plain text (putting aside ads, image results etc.). While you can see part of the URL under the headline and snippet in the search result, Google wanted to make it clearer where the Search result is actually coming from.

For that purpose, Google has added the website logo and name to the top of each Search result card. In the case of ads, Google also now show a bold ad label and the URL.

Additionally, Google will also add actions to the Search result page, such as playing a podcast or purchasing a movie ticket. At the moment, the Search design changes are only rolling out for mobile devices so keep an eye out for them.

Under fire Chinese firm Huawei is dealt another major blow as chip designer ARM halts business activity with the firm.

The latest shock to hit Huawei comes after Intel and Qualcomm both ceased doing business with the company. Huawei licenses chip designs from ARM to fabricate processors and graphics technology for use in its smartphones.

"ARM is complying with all of the latest regulations set forth by the U.S. government," an ARM spokesman said, reports Reuters. "No further comment at this time."

According to internal memos, ARM's designs contain technology with a U.S. origin, and so it believes it is affected by the Trump administrations ban on doing business with the Chinese tech giant.

Huawei reacted to the latest setback by saying it is confident that the situation will be resolved.

"We value our close relationships with our partners, but recognize the pressure some of them are under, as a result of politically motivated decisions," a Huawei spokesman said.

"We are confident this regrettable situation can be resolved and our priority remains to continue to deliver world-class technology and products to our customers around the world."

Here we review Roomba's most affordable robot vacuum cleaner, Roomba 605, which is also sold as Roomba 606 and Roomba 620. The only difference reflected by the various model numbers is the color of the unit; the hardware is exactly the same otherwise.

The model we are reviewing is the Roomba 606, which is black. Roomba 605 comes in white.

Roomba 605 is the cheapest model available (from the current line) from the American firm iRobot, which has made a wide range of robot vacuum cleaners for twenty years.

For our test, we let the Roomba 606 loose in a 70m2 (753.4ft2) apartment as its only floor cleaning tool for a couple of months. This period of time gives us a good indication of how tidy this cleaner can keep a typical apartment long-term.

Additionally, we tested the vacuum cleaner for a few week at another location that provided a myriad of capets and other obstacles for it to manouver around.

Roomba 605 / Roomba 606 - Let's examine the device!

Roomba 605/606 sales package

Stranger Things lawsuit turns upside down as plaintiff drops the case just days before the hotly anticipated trial was set to get underway.

Charlie Kessler claimed since 2018 that Matt and Ross Duffer (aka, The Duffer Brothers) had effectively stolen key elements of Stranger Things from his short film Montauk, and had breached an implied contract when he spoke to them about his ideas in 2014.

The Duffer Brothers insisted that Kessler's claims were bogus and that they had never agreed to make any TV show with him, and further that they had been working on the project that would become Stranger Things since 2010.

Kessler pressed ahead with the lawsuit despite lawyers for the Duffers insisting that they had e-mails and Google Documents dated years before Kessler briefly interacted with them at a film festival to prove they had created the series.

Conspiracies surrounding a location called Camp Hero in Montauk, New York, have been abundant for decades, ranging in content from time travel to cold war experiments on test subjects. In fact, the Duffers originally referred to the project that would become Stranger Things as "Montauk", and you can even read the original pilot script dubbed "Montauk" online.

The conquering of ExaScale supercomputing continues with a $600 million machine to be built by AMD and Cray for the U.S. government.

Dubbed "Frontier", when this new supercomputing beast is fully completed it will be capable of exceeding 1.5 ExaFlop/s. An Exaflop is one quintillion floating point operations per second.

The system will be based on Cray's new Shasta architecture and Slingshot interconnect and will feature high-performance AMD EPYC CPU and AMD Radeon Instinct GPU technology.

"Frontier's record-breaking performance will ensure our country's ability to lead the world in science that improves the lives and economic prosperity of all Americans and the entire world," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.

"Frontier will accelerate innovation in AI by giving American researchers world-class data and computing resources to ensure the next great inventions are made in the United States."

Researchers will harness Frontier's powerful architecture to advance science in such applications as systems biology, materials science, energy production, additive manufacturing and health data science.