Earlier this morning, every single one of Google’s search results came with a warning that the site “may harm your computer,” including their own properties like Gmail and Google Maps. They’ve since explained what happened:
Seagate’s SD1A firmware update, meant to fix problems with its Barracuda 7200.11 models, only managed to make things worse—bricking the drives of those who bothered to install it. They’ve pulled the update pending validation.
Reader Gianpaolo was wandering through Burwood shopping centre when he noticed this borked digital sign for Nokia. While it’s no BSOD, it’s good to see that Microsoft isn’t the only software company that can bring a digital display to its knees (click the image for a larger version).
[Thanks Gianpaolo!] More »
Like Yahoo and MSN before them, Walmart is turning off its DRM servers on Oct. 9, effectively putting any DRM’d songs you bought from them into a cold stasis they’ll never wake up from, since they’ll become totally unmovable unless you circumvent the DRM. Walmart went through this earlier with their video store, though it didn’t matter since no one bought anything from it. Walmart’s music store is DRM-free now, though I doubt that’s any consolation to people who actually paid for music that’s now nigh useless.
In case you were still worried about the LHC bringing on the biblical apocalypse, you can calm down, because it turns out the Collider is going to be out of commission for a lot longer than previously thought. The “electrical transformer” problem wasn’t the cause of the shutdown at all, and the real problem means the LHC won’t be back up and running for at least two months.
A major cause of frustration in the Nvidia notebook GPU fiasco–where “significant quantities” of notebook graphics cards are packaged with “weak” materials leading them to overheat and fail at a “higher-than-normal rate”–is that Nvidia is declining to identify exactly which chips are bad, as the WSJ notes today. So you’ve gotta find out from your notebook maker if you’re possibly stuck with a time bomb. Dell is extending its limited warranties by a year to deal with the issue in the following notebooks:
CNBC reports that Netflix’ shipping systems have been at least partially broken since Tuesday. They managed to ship nothing on Tuesday, half of what they were supposed to on Wednesday, and nothing today. What’s the deal?
Today doesn’t seem to be a good day to be an Optus customer, with a broken fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast leaving their landline, mobile and internet services borked throughout Queensland and parts of NSW.
The cable was broken at about 8am, although how is still not known. And although Optus believe services should be back to normal soon, it hasn’t stopped delays from hitting Brisbane airport and countless other businesses.
Anybody out there experiencing problems?
[via News.com.au]
Sorry for the tardiness of the overnight feed – Our CMS was borked by an automatic update. It’s back at the moment, so we’ll be bringing you all the stuff out of the US as soon as possible. Thanks for reading! More »
Oops! According to a law professor at George Washington University, all patent judges appointed after the year 2000 have been done so unconstitutionally, making thousands of patent rulings made by said judges null and void. This will have ramifications on patents worth billions and billions of dollars, and it’s not clear exactly what’s going to happen.
