WordPress v2.5 Released

All you bloggers that use WordPress should check out the new version released today. Looks like they’ve made a lot of changes so you’ll want to read up on how it affects you and your blog if you decide to upgrade.

The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

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VeriSign Raises .com & .net Registration Prices For 2nd Year in a Row

The price hikes are the maximum allowed by their contract with ICANN (7%). VeriSign’s justification for the price hikes includes increased traffic and higher cyber attack numbers on their infrastructure.

Assuming that VeriSign continues the 7 percent rise each year (which seems reasonable given the company's history), registrars will be looking at $9.00 for .com domains by the time the current contract ends in 2012—a 50 percent increase in six years.

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[H]ardware Round-Up: Sitting In Target Edition

Cooling

Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 2900 VGA Cooler @ Bjorn3D

Cooljag Mini LED Flash Fans @ ThinkComputers

Power Supplies

PSU Round-up @ Xbit

Enermax Pro82+ & Modu82+ @ Anandtech

Corsair VX450W @ HardwareSecrets

Cases & Enclosures

Bgears b-Envi mATX @ VirtualHideout

Gigabyte iSolo 210 @ BitTech

Tagan Icy Box IB-390STUS-B SATA HDD Enclosure @ Hardware Logic

Displays

Samsung Syncmaster 943B 19” LCD @ PCStats

Toshiba 20W330DB 20” LCD TV @ TrustedReviews

Storage & Memory

1 TB HDD Round-up @ TechLounge

Patriot Diamond Viper Fin DDR3 PC14400 2 x 1GB @ OCC

iPhone Firmware 1.2.0 Hacked in Less Than 24 Hours

Gizmodo reports that the latest iPhone firmware, 1.2.0, was hacked less than 24-hours after it was released. GG Apple.

As they told us: "Apple will not really be able to patch it this time." Check the new Contacts application, which was in the Touch and seems to have been revealed in this latest revision.

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Gaming News

New Team Fortress 2 content due in April @ ShackNews

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith preview @ GameSpy

Grand Theft Auto History @ IGN

Blizzard sues WoW bot maker @ BBC

Madden NFL 09 release date set @ GameConnect

Why World of Warcraft Made It Big @ Gamasutra

Pwn2Own Winner: Linux

Yesterday, we told you about the Pwn2Own contest where the MacBook Air was taken down in just 2 minutes. The CanSecWest challenge ended on Friday and PCWorld has the results. The Vista laptop wasn’t hacked until the last day of the contest and the Linux laptop was never cracked, which made Linux the obvious winner. However, MS bashers shouldn’t look so smug.

Under contest rules, Macaulay and Miller aren't allowed to divulge specific details about their bugs until they are patched, but Macaulay said the flaw that he exploited was a cross-platform bug that took advantage of Java to circumvent Vista's security. "The flaw is in something else, but the inherent nature of Java allowed us to get around the protections that Microsoft had in place," he said in an interview shortly after he claimed his prize Friday. "This could affect Linux or Mac OS X.”

Continue the discussion here.

Talking Universal Remote Control Robot Coming Soon

Toshiba is releasing a robot named “ApriPoko.” This little guy is a voice-operated universal remote control for multiple devices. Can’t wait to see one of you guys get a hold of one and mod it. I expect chain-guns for arms or perhaps a Linux Penguin facelift.

Our little robot will first observe your behavior and ask you questions in order to learn how to operate various remote controls. ApriPoko detects IR beams and if you use a remote control the robot will ask you want you want to do.

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[H]ardware Round-Up: Elle MacPherson’s 45th B-day Edition

Video

Abit to sell Nvidia video cards @ Digitimes

Asus Radeon HD3850 256MB @ RBMods

Motherboards

XFX MG-630i-7159 mATX @ Bjorn3D

Gigabyte Dynamic Energy Saver EP35-DS4 @ VRZone

Cases

Thermaltake M9 @ 3DGameman

Lian-Li A71 @ NordicHardware

Storage

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB External HDD @ ThinkComputers

Corsair Flash Voyager 32GB USB Drive @ Guru3D

ETC.

Vista Tweaking Companion 2.0 @ TweakGuides (Downloadable .ZIP)

How to take great photos with your mobile phone @ TechARP

Tiger Attack Victim Caught Shoplifting

One of the survivors of the San Francisco Zoo Tiger Attack on Christmas Day was arrested on Friday for trying to steal a pair of Wii Remotes that he hid in his pants. The kicker is that he was busted after filing a lawsuit with his brothers against the City of San Francisco seeking monetary damages for the tiger attack. Nice.

Paul Dhaliwal, 19, reportedly concealed two Wii Remotes in his pants. An undercover security officer witnessed the theft and followed Dhaliwal to the cash registers, where he never made an attempt to pay for the items.

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Hackers Deface Indonesian Ministry Site Over Porn Ban

Indonesia’s parliament recently passed a bill that makes transmitting porn over the internet illegal. In response, hackers broke into the Indonesian Information Ministry’s website and defaced it with fake pics and a political statement. Moral: Don’t mess with porn unless you’re ready for the backlash.

Hackers on Thursday posted a message on the information ministry's Web site saying: "Prove that the law has not been made to cover government stupidity." The message was accompanied by a mocked-up photograph of a local information technology expert, who has been advising the government on the new law, depicted with a bare chest.

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Hacker Group Aims to Expose Black PR

A group of hackers has banded together and created GNU Citizen, a group dedicated to combating companies that employ “Black PR” practices to hide security vulnerabilities in order to protect their businesses.

GNU Citizen's "antiblack PR" unit looks at the broad implications of security problems -- a company's economic interests, what data may be compromised -- and formulates a big picture on the machinations of a company and what's at stake when, for example, banking systems are compromised.

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First Lolcats, Now Graphs

The brains behind popular lolcat site Icanhascheezburger.com have created a new site called GraphJam. This site takes concepts from pop culture and turns them into hilarious charts and graphs. As someone who works around pivot tables and flowcharts for much of my day, this is a refreshing use of Excel.

Unlike creating lolcats, which requires just a photo and a grasp of the broken English of kitty pidgin, GraphJam requires readers to come up with concepts and create pie charts, histograms and bar graphs.

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