Researcher’s Video Shows Secret Software on Millions of Phones Logging Everything | Threat Level

Wired.com has a report and video from Trevor Eckhart about the earlier mentioned rootkit like software from Carrier IQ. The video shows that the software really act like a keylogger even with https and when using wifi. In combination with it rootkit like behavior normally a user will not detect it and not able to remove this shit. It is probably a good idea to rootkit and mod your phone to avoid this unwanted features.

Rooting Kindle Fire bricks videos

The Register has the story that rooting your Kindle Fire will break the ability to watch videos on it. This is not a technical failure but a acknowledged policy of Amazon. The solution to it is already available too by changing the name of the su command. It is known that Amazon sells those devices at a loss in an attempt to gain marketshare. A tactic widely successfully used in selling printers. Of course they want you to buy their stuff. Rooting makes installing alternate content and apps possible so they do not like it. But why did they choose android to run this devices in the first place?

Anonymous "dimnet" tries to create hedge against DNS censorship

Ars Technica reports about new initiative for a decentralized domain name system in response to the very stupid law proposal SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act. The design is not yet a worthy alternative for the current DNS-system. But the more the US media and studio are pushing this kind of legislation the earlier a alternative dns will become feasible and I am looking forward to it.

CarrierIQ the carriers rootkit on your mobile phone

Android Security Test has a story about Carrier IQ rootkit software on your mobile phone like HTC and Samsung and probably much more.Of course Carrier IQ do not call it a rootkit but in practice it for sure is. They literally can log anything you do with your mobi and it is a massive privacy invasion largely invisible for most customers. Of course it is not exactly opt-in too and opt-out is not easy although easier with Samsung then with HTC. The article is about the US carriers but I do not have the illusion that other carriers are any better. I'm really considering to switch back to a simple Symbian telephone which only function is to call or to be called and waive the middle finger to all those Stasi methods.

VIA announces it's new VE-900 mini-itx board

Icrontic reports the announcement of the new Via VE-900 mini-itx board. In all the big news from Intel, ARM and somewhat AMD you almost forget that Via is still active in its own niche of low power, small systems. This new board is intended for use in home mediasystems with native support for VC1, H.264, MPEG-2 and WMV9 HD formats at up to 1080p. With a dualcore processor at 1.4 Ghz it will perform other tasks as well at a reasonable speed too. In the US this board will cost you $89 which is imo a good price for the offered performance. Experience learns that it will be same amount in euros in Europe due to taxing and transport costs.

A faster Web server: ripping out Apache for Nginx

Ars Technica has an item about the thin and very fast webserver Nginx as alternative for Apache webserver. Nginx is small and fast but lacks most of Apache advanced features besides that with enough tweaking Apache is **** fast too. That's the point: you need a specialist to tweak it and in that aspect Nginx shines. But one of the big features of Apache .htaccess is lacking in Nginx and rewrite rules are a bitch to handle. So if you need a quick setup and a lot of features and documentation you choose Apache eventually add a faster processor and more RAM. Do you need a fast webserver for thousands request per second, you serve mainly static content and are tight on resources then you choose Nginx.

ARM rolls out new GPU

ARM has announced a new graphic processor, the Mali T658, which ramps up performance by a quoted four times from its immediate predecessor: Mali T400. Samsung's Galaxy Tab S II already performs quite niceley with this Mali T400 but should be left in the dust with this T658 GPU. Because ARM do not fab processor themselves it will take some time before we see this one in the wild. The Register also reports the departure after 21 years of Tudor Brown one of ARM's founders. Interesting to see if ARM also have a problem replacing him like Apple does with Steve Jobs.

Facebook's "Open Compute" Server tested

AnandTech has tested the custom build Open Compute Servers from Facebook and did compare them to a HP DL380 G7 general purpose server. Facebook does have two system types in use. One based on a Intel motherboard for cpu intensive use and one based on a AMD motherboard with lots of RAM to run Memcached. The servers are stripped from extras like videochip and BMC and have only two USB ports and one expansion slot. The design has been open sourced at Open Compute and with a customer like Facebook there will not be a shortage of supplies other then natural disasters like Thailand flooded. Benchmarks show that those servers really are the energy savers as they are supposed to. Up to 15% maybe do not sound impressive but for a datacenter containing 1000's of servers it is quite a bit. Of course there is a large market for general purpose servers too and HP DL380 G7 is performing quite well in that market. The Open Compute servers are also in the market targeted by the 64 bit ARM serverchips from Applied Micro. It is quite possible that they will replace current AMD based Memcached servers.

Disk-over-Ethernet: startup trousers another $50m

The Register reports about Coraid collecting another $50 million of venture capital. Coraid is the inventor of ATA-over-Ethernet a way cheaper and simpler solution for SAN's then fiber-channel SAN. It will take some time and probably some patent fights but eventually this technique will come to the SOHO market too. Something that never will happen to fiber-channel devices because they are too complex and too expensive. Speed will not be a concern because 10 Gb ethernet already is around the corner.

The end of an era: Internet Explorer drops below 50% of Web usage

Ars Technica reports with a lot of stats and graphs about the decline of the Internet Explorer marketshare. In October IE usage dropped below the 50% mark for the first time in a decade. Chrome is the fastest growing browser on the market and already has a larger marketshare then Firefox. The mobile market is another kind of beast and IE never had a large share in there: it's a Safari (Webkit?) world at large. Maybe that will change when Android tablets finally take off with Honeycomb. Or, you never now, maybe Nokia will ship millions of Windows phones and tablets to put a dent in Apple's IOS business. Not very likely but sometimes strange things happen.