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A Romanian man who hacked into the Bush family's e-mails, as well as accounts of celebrities and officials, has been jailed.

Marcel Lazar Lehel was known as "Guccifer" and "Small Fume." He was arrested in January of this year, in Bucharest for a wide range of offenses. Lehel allegedly hacked the e-mail accounts of U.S. president George W. Bush's family, even publishing some of the former president's artwork online.

He also distributed e-mails that were sent to former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell from Corina Cretu, a Romanian member of the European Parliament, which lead to affair speculation.

Along with other targets in the entertainment industry, he also allegedly hacked the private Yahoo e-mail account of Romania's secret service chief George Maior.

It does not appear that the U.S. has filed any request to extradite the alleged hacker as of this time. He could spend up to seven years in prison in Romania.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Romania sentences hacker 'Guccifer' to jail: www.reuters.com

A report from VICE details how cable companies are funding consumer advocacy groups to argue against net neutrality.

The net neutrality debate is as hot as ever in the United States, igniting passionate defenses of the open Internet from web users and groups, and plenty of lobbying on behalf of cable providers. A report by VICE has highlighted a few groups that are funded by providers, and seem to be taking positions against net neutrality aspects.

Those who support net neutrality have suggested that providers need to be reclassified as "common carriers," a kind of public utility. This reclassification would make it easier for the FCC to impose regulations on them, but the industry is absolutely opposed to this move, even describing it as potentially illegal.

They are joined in opposition by Broadband for America, which wrote the FCC strongly advising it to reject any proposals to reclassify Internet service providers. VICE got hold of a disclosure from the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA) - an industry trade group that represents ISPs in the United States - which showed a $2 million donation to Broadband for America. That amounts to 57 percent of Broadband for America's $3.5 million budget.

So this is what the intense Terminator 2 truck chase scene looks like when recreated in Grand Theft Auto V.

Do you remember the T2 truck scene from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, released all the way back in 1991? Of course you do, and if you would be interested in what it might looks like recreated using multiplayer in Grand Theft Auto V, then you're in luck.

"We remade a scene from T-2 (Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and it took quite some time. It mostly took a lot of time because I wanted to try to make it exact," John Chapman wrote on YouTube.

"Yes I may have missed some small scenes but damn we worked hard on this from the actual setting up, to the directing."

So here's the video..

Netflix has brought its 'Post Play' functionality to Android phones and tablets after it was well received on other platforms.

On the Neflix website, the PS3 and several other devices, Netflix will automatically choose what you may want to watch news and pre-buffer it. In the case of TV shows, it lines up the next episode in the season you are currently viewing. In the case of movies, it will provide three recommendations to try next.

Post Play is now available for Android and tablets. However, with Android phones it will only work for TV shows; you need a tablet for it to work for movies.

To take advantage of Post Play with Android devices, you need an Android phone or tablet running Android 4.0 or newer.

Netflix also promised that it will bring Post Play functionality to Chromecast users soon.

Download the new Netflix Android app from Google Play.

Tetris has celebrated a milestone this week, reaching its 30th anniversary while it is still going strong on new consoles and mobile devices.

The iconic puzzle game was released on June 6, 1984 by creator Alexey Pajitnov, who said this week that he never imagined Tetris would be so successful, and that he still plays it several times a week to this day. Since 1984, it would be difficult to find gaming hardware and computer systems that Tetris was not available for.

It is still going incredibly strong too. In April, The Tetris Company revealed that it had reached over 425 million paid downloads on mobile devices so far. That's PAID downloads, not free-to-play varieties - people really love Tetris.

Ubisoft will be bringing the game to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 soon, in the form of Tetris Ultimate.

What was your favorite Tetris iteration over the years?

Google has released the new Chrome app for Chrome OS, letting Chromebook owners watch films and TV shows from Google Play while not connected to the Internet.

Play's video-on-demand service prompted some limitations for Chromebook owners. If you didn't have a decent Internet connection, then you were essentially out of luck.

With the new Google Play Movies & TV Chrome app for Chrome OS, you can store movies and TV shows from the Google Play service for Offline viewing, so you can use your Chromebook for something useful while travelling.

It also brings an improved Chromecast and local playback experience to anyone watching movies through the Chrome browser, and introduces info cards about actors in scenes.

The Offline viewing feature however, is only for Chrome OS devices.

Google Play Movies & TV: chrome.google.com

Developers located in Switzerland are hoping to lead an effort that will keep popular encryption software TrueCrypt alive.

Recently, the TrueCrypt homepage was changed to recommend that users find alternatives to the popular tool. "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues," the sourceforge project page alerts users, before giving instructions on migrating to alternatives on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Currently, there is no evidence that TrueCrypt is actually insecure, it just appears that its development has ceased, and that the warning is for crypto-problems that could be uncovered later on. That hasn't halted rumors that there may have been a government hand in TrueCrypt's fate however.

Some people are determined to keep the popular crypto-tool alive, which can be used for full disk encryption or encryption within a file container, and even for purposes of hidden operating systems and partitions.

A couple of Swiss developers, Thomas Bruderer and Joseph Doekbrijder, launched a page aimed at continuing the development of TrueCrypt. They put together the whole TrueCrypt Source into a github repository, encouraging users to clone.

According to new reports, Google is in early talks to buy Songza, the music streaming service that builds playlists based on your mood, or the weather, or even the time of day.

The six-year old startup has 5.5 million active users, and an acquisition would certainly help Google's playlist features for Google Play Music All-Access, which have been lacking since launch last year.

"Google is offering them around $15 million -- the question is does Songza take it?" say the sources. A second source said the figure was actually much higher, and that Google was not the only bidder.

Songza is popular due to its large offering of curated playlists. Besides time of day, mood and weather, the service can also build work out mixes, mixes for being at work in an office, music for listening in the shower, and everything in between.

The industry for streaming music is quickly consolidating, with the biggest move coming via Apple and their $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics.

Source:
NyPost

Apple's next product launch will be a wearable health-monitoring device, says the Nikkei Asian Review, with the company looking to take the lead in the growing healthcare sector.

At their WWDC event this week, the company announced iOS 8, which will power the coming wearable, as well as the iPhone and iPad, of course. The new wearable will manage users' biometric info via your smartphone, including calories, heart rate, blood glucose and more.

If true, the device should hit in October, when Apple is known to release new products.

Sources claim the wearable will have a curved OLED touchscreen, collect health-related data, and read messages and emails. Apple is rumored to have partnered with the Mayo Clinic and other U.S. health institutes to develop customized ways to analyze the data and apply it to health management. Additionally, the company is said to have partnered with Nike, who is shutting down their Nike Fuel division, and will be integrating their service in with Apple's.

Dropbox has announced the acquisition of startup Droptalk, a service that was working on tech to allow Chrome browser users to share links privately via an extension.

The Chrome browser extension was just released in very limited beta, with betas for Android and iOS slated for later in the year.

Droptalk's web sharing tools aside, the company also had a tool to integrate your cloud storage, which would be obviously appealing to Dropbox.

In addition, the service used a messenger-esque interface and had future plans for mobile messaging with cloud storage integration.

Droptalk was less than a year old and was founded by ex-Facebookers and LinkedIn engineers.

Reads the press release: "We are thrilled to announce that today Droptalk will be joining Dropbox. About a year ago we set out to end the unnecessary friction around communication and collaboration by killing "the work email." The world deserves a better way to do business and an integrated sharing product, which our team rapidly created is the answer."

Good Old Games (GOG) is preparing to launch its own Steam-esque online gaming platform, however, this system will be completely DRM-free and will be optional rather than mandatory like the aforementioned Steam, or EA's Origin.

Dubbed GOG Galaxy, the platform will have auto-updating software, a player communication portal and will add multiplayer gaming for GOG Galaxy buddies and across platforms.

Unlike Steam and Origin and others, the platform will be optional, so won't need to be online to launch your games (or play), and you don't even have to use the client if you prefer to download the DRM-free games right from the game site.

Of course, multiplayer and friend chatting will require the platform and a profile but still not mandatory.

Twitter has announced the acquisition of advertising firm Namo Media in an effort to shore up their own native advertising business.

The microblogging service will integrate Namo into its own MoPub platform. MoPub lets marketers buy native ads in apps that will appear in news feeds or messages.

Reads Namo's blog post: We started Namo Media with the belief that mobile banner ads don't work for users, publishers, or advertisers. We saw native advertising as an opportunity for publishers to create better user experiences, generate higher revenues, and enable more valuable advertising space. We built an advertising solution that lets app developers easily add native advertising to mobile apps.

It's because of that philosophy, and through our conversations with the MoPub team at Twitter, that we realized we'd be able to create better solutions together, so we're making it official by joining the flock! At Twitter we'll continue to work on building the best native advertising platform for app developers with the goal of continuing to improve the native ad landscape for all mobile app developers."

The CIA took to Twitter to speak to the social network for the first time today, and it's first tweet was very fitting.

The folks over at Langley probably will receive a lot of negative tweets throughout the life of its account, but that's not a reason to slack on effort. Given the nature of the CIA's work, this is probably the best first tweet the agency could have come up with.

We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.

-- CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014

A fake Pirate Bay website forces users to download a torrent client they don't need, while pushing other third-party software.

The site, located at PirateBay.com bares the Pirate Bay ship logo, along with a search box and some category filters. It has just a couple of fairly major problems though; the search doesn't actually work and it forces you to download a client you probably don't want or need. The faux pirate tracker was spotted by F-Secure.

Whatever you enter into the search box doesn't matter, as soon as you click search you wind up downloading an installer.

"You must install a torrent client in order to download your files!," a prompt reads.

Toward the end of the page is a disclaimer...

Clicking the search button starts the installation of the Deluge torrent client. This software is open source and enables the user to download torrent files. Additional software may be offered to you via the installation process. All offers are completely optional. Learn more here. This installer is compatible with all Windows operating systems. Deluge is an open source product developed by the Deluge Team, licensed under GNU GPL v3. Source code for Deluge can be found here.

Mexico's trademark body has backed telecoms company iFone in a row over the use of 'iPhone' services by rival providers.

You may recall that Apple had unsuccessfully challenged the "iFone" trademark in Mexico back in 2009, as iFone registered its name in 2003, long before the first generation iPhone was unveiled by Apple.

A dispute still remained however. iFone felt that the use of the term "iPhone" in marketing by rival telecommunications providers was causing confusion among consumers, and that it potentially violated its iFone trademark.

The Mexican Institute for Industrial Property (IMPI) has sided with iFone, finding that America Movil, Telefonica and Iusacell were infringing the brand when they marketed "iPhone" services. Apple has nothing to worry about in this ruling, however.

The three providers now face fines, but have the right to appeal.


Source: Reuters