Computers

The day Sven Olaf Kamphuis parked his huge orange Mercedes van with its German numberplates outside Bar Javis, in the Catalan town of Granollers, the owner's son snapped a picture with his mobile phone. "Not a lot happens in this street," Maria Cruz, the bar's owner, explained. "And it was so huge, with all those funny antennas and solar panels poking out of the roof, that it blocked the light to the bar." Even stranger was the 35-year-old Dutch man who parked it in this narrow street after renting a small attic flat with windows made of glass blocks in the poorer end of this nondescript town 15 miles from Barcelona. Even on hot early summer days, Kamphuis wore a woollen hat. And he spoke no Spanish, answering "yes, yes" in English to everything people from this friendly neighbourhood said to him. Kamphuis, 35, is one of the most controversial characters in the murky world of spam and hacking – deemed the internet's public enemy number one by some, though others believe his reputation has been blown out of proportion by the grandstanding of his foes. Capable of rigging up sophisticated computer systems anywhere, including the back of a van, he allegedly masterminded a flurry of March internet attacks that the security company CloudFlare claimed "almost broke the internet", plunging the world into digital darkness. When Spanish and Dutch police arrested him they found the flat occupied by a tangle of cables and computer gear. A copy of the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver lay on the unmade bed. Kamphuis displayed a Napoleonic sense of grandeur. "He claimed he had diplomatic status," said the Spanish police officer who led the operation, but asked not to be named. "He said he was the telecommunications minister and foreign minister of a place called the Cyberbunker Republic. He didn't seem to be joking." "The request to arrest him came from the Netherlands," said the police officer, who heads the cybercrime unit in Barcelona. "But Britain, the United States and Germany were all affected by the massive denial of service attacks that he launched. "The van was fitted out as a mobile office from which he could launch his attacks. Amongst other things we found the IP addresses of his targets and that is part of the evidence we are sending to the Netherlands." Kamphuis has yet to be tried, but Spanish police believe they know his modus operandi. "He brought together hackers from around the world to launch the attacks. It is obviously not all over yet, because the Dutch have been under attack again in recent days – presumably as revenge by his friends. "Some of them have networks of zombie computers, having spread viruses that let them control others people's computers. They all agree to launch the attack and they do millions of requests to the server at the same time." The result was what the New York Times called an attack of previously "unknown magnitudes", producing a 300bn-bits-per-second data stream that targeted the British and Swiss-based anti-spam operator Spamhaus and its allies. This had reportedly blacklisted his CB3ROB/Cyberbunker company, which claims its servers are housed in an old Nato nuclear bunker near Rotterdam, for hosting hundreds of spam and malware websites. Kamphuis happily claimed to be punishing Spamhaus for "abusing their influence". "Nobody ever deputised Spamhaus to determine what goes and does not go on the internet," he told the New York Times in an angry message. He later denied involvement. "We want to be absolutely clear that the DDoS [distributed denial of service] attacks are not and have not ever been orchestrated within CB3ROB/CyberBunker, nor are they conducted under the supervision of Sven," he wrote on his Facebook page. But the huge number of spammers he hosts has led even hacktivists sympathetic to his pro-Pirate party, Anonymous and Julian Assange's stance to question his real activities. Several other mysteries remain. If this was one of the most successful

Anjan Contractor’s 3D food printer might evoke visions of the “replicator” popularized in Star Trek, from which Captain Picard was constantly interrupting himself to order tea. And indeed Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer. But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more important—use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store. Ubiquitous food synthesizers would also create new ways of producing the basic calories on which we all rely. Since a powder is a powder, the inputs could be anything that contain the right organic molecules. We already know that eating meat is environmentally unsustainable, so why not get all our protein from insects? If eating something spat out by the same kind of 3D printers that are currently being used to make everything from jet engine parts to fine art doesn’t sound too appetizing, that’s only because you can currently afford the good stuff, says Contractor. That might not be the case once the world’s population reaches its peak size, probably sometime near the end of this century. “I think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t supply 12 billion people sufficiently,” says Contractor. “So we eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food.” There will be pizza on Mars The ultimate in molecular gastronomy. (Schematic of SMRC’s 3D printer for food.)SMRC If Contractor’s utopian-dystopian vision of the future of food ever comes to pass, it will be an argument for why space research isn’t a complete waste of money. His initial grant from NASA, under its Small Business Innovation Research program, is for a system that can print food for astronauts on very long space missions. For example, all the way to Mars. “Long distance space travel requires 15-plus years of shelf life,” says Contractor. “The way we are working on it is, all the carbs, proteins and macro and micro nutrients are in powder form. We take moisture out, and in that form it will last maybe 30 years.” Pizza is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one substance at a time. Contractor’s “pizza printer” is still at the conceptual stage, and he will begin building it within two weeks. It works by first “printing” a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, “which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil,” says Contractor. Finally, the pizza is topped with the delicious-sounding “protein layer,” which could come from any source, including animals, milk or plants. The prototype for Contractor’s pizza printer (captured in a video, above) which helped him earn a grant from NASA, was a simple chocolate printer. It’s not much to look at, nor is it the first of its kind, but at least it’s a proof of concept. Replacing cookbooks with open-source recipes SMRC’s prototype 3D food printer will be based on open-source hardware from the RepRap project.R

When Yahoo promised that it wouldn't screw up Tumblr, it forgot to add "but wait till you see what we've done to Flickr! Hoo boy!" It's safe to say that the new Flickr design hasn't proved universally popular: users' response to the official announcement has been overwhelmingly negative. Redesign-related uproars are nothing new, of course, but this one's different because it represents a sea change in what Flickr's all about. Taking a TumblrFlickr's users are unhappy about two things: the design, and the new pricing structure. The new design looks awfully like a Tumblr archive, but the problem isn't just how it looks.Users are complaining about basic usability, unwanted infinite scrolling, slow loading, the removal of titles (they only appear on mouseover now), problems finding stuff, the ability for someone else's glamour shots to dominate your front page, the complete impossibility of clicking links in the front page footer... you get the idea. Most of it sounds like the sort of teething problems you encounter when a free service undergoes a radical revamp - but for its most loyal users, Flickr isn't a free service. It's something they pay for, and have done for a long time.And that brings us to the second issue, price. Did Yahoo make up the new tiers in the pub? Before the change, you had a basic, free account and a $24.95 (£16.46 GBP, $25.53 AUD) per year Pro account offering unlimited uploads and ad-free browsing. Now, free and paid accounts both offer 1TB of space.The only difference between a free account and a paid one is that the latter doesn't run ads - but the price of ad-free browsing has doubled to $49.99 (£32.99 GBP, $51.15 AUD) per year. You can spend more if you like: doubling the storage space to 2TB takes the price to a hefty $499.99 per year "with all the benefits of a free account". We think that means adverts.Will Pro accounts go?If you currently have a Flickr Pro account you have a choice to make. Existing accounts will be renewable, although you need to meet certain criteria (a Pro account not just active in January but set to auto-renew) and there's no indication that the price won't rocket. Alternatively you can swap your Pro account for a free account. If you want to do that you need to do it before August because reasons. So that leaves us with four account options: free with ads; sticking with Pro until the price goes up or Flickr kills Pro accounts, whichever happens first; $49.99 per year for ad-free; and $499.99 (£329.91 GBP, $511.58 AUD) per year, possibly with ads.Meanwhile rivals such as 500px offer pro snappers unlimited uploading for $75 per year, you can go ad-free for free by installing an ad-blocker and anyone who spends $499 per year to double their space instead of just registering a second free account needs locking up.In summary, then, either Yahoo has completely lost its mind or Flickr doesn't want the pros any more. The smart money's on the latter. Pros may have made Flickr what it is - and kept it alive during Yahoo's long years of neglect - but they're not a great demographic for ads, and that's what Flickr is chasing now. Flickr used to beg photographers to go Pro. Now, it seems, it wants the pros to go. Read our first impressions of the new Flickr design

Flying Wild Hogs is working on a new Shadow Warrior reboot.

Your cat gets to do whatever it wants everywhere else in the house, so why not give it control of the iPad, too?

Toshiba said it will soon begin mass producing a new type of 64Gbit NAND flash that is the smallest and fastest in its class, though it still lags rival Samsung Electronics in the development of an even denser flash technology.Toshiba said Tuesday that it will begin mass production this month of a 64Gbit chip with an area of 94 square millimeters that can write data at 25MB per second. The new chips, made using a 19-nanometer process, are the fastest and smallest to use 2-bit-per-cell technology, Toshiba said.Main rival Samsung is already a step ahead. The South Korean company said last month that it began mass-producing a 128Gbit NAND chip with 3-bit-per-cell technology, also using a process smaller than 20 nanometers.Toshiba said it is also working on 3-bit-per-cell technology, and aims to begin mass production by September. The company said it would first focus on smartphones and tablet memory with the chips, then expand to notebook PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The new Xbox and PS4 are in danger of forgetting why gamers buy consoles in their rush to become "entertainment hubs", warned former CEO of EA John Riccitiello: it's to play games, obvs.As Microsoft prepares to announce its next console tonight, Riccitiello has written a guest editorial for Kotaku advising it and Sony to keep their focus. He's concerned that the focus on media sharing at the PS4 announcement could leave gamers thinking that gaming is merely a peripheral function of the console rather its dedicated purpose. In his advice to the console manufacturers, Riccitiello wrote: "Ensure the box delivers awesome game experiences, better than anything we've experienced before, and millions of gamers will line up at midnight to buy it. "Delivering a box that raises the question of whether we should buy the new console over the $100 Apple TV device or a $60 Roku player will cause too many gamers to wait it out and commit only when the smoke clears."On the moveHe acknowledges that mobile gaming is on the rise, but doesn't think it poses a significant risk to the console market, explaining that "mobile and console scratch different itches".Expanding on a bizarre Mexican food reference, he continued: "Put down that burrito, because console gaming is very different. I don't have the fastest thumbs, so playing with any skill at all requires my focus. I am fully engaged. All-in. The room with the biggest TV is the most important entertainment room in my house. And there, console gaming rules."If console gaming is to continue its reign, the next generation launches need to get it right this year.

LogMeIn,  the company behind user-friendly web conferencing, screen sharing service and a Dropbox alternative, is about to add identity and application management capabilities to its menu. On Tuesday, the Boston-based company is launching a preview of AppGuru which aims to help IT  deal with the burgeoning bring-your-own-application (BYOA) craze which forces admins to deal with cloud-delivered personal applications that employees use at work but may not be officially sanctioned. AppGuru promises a central console for managing multiple apps; an easy way to create, import or move users which works with Active Directory if it’s installed; and tools for managing licenses. It also vows to provide an easy way to set policy management and granular controls as needed. That’s a mighty tall order. Michael Simon, CEO of LogMeI Michael Simon, CEO of the Boston-based company, said LogMeIn gets invaluable perspective from both the consumer and the IT side of the BYOA divide. “We don’t just have heavily used applications — with 55 million users — but we get visibility from consumer and IT perspectives,” Simon said. AppGuru will manage LogMeIn’s web conferencing and collaboration application; Joinme screen sharing and Cubby, a Dropbox alternative for businesses, as well as Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365, he said. Simon said small and medium sized businesses are the company’s sweet spot but it has some very large enterprise accounts as well. Last quarter, for example, it announced a seven-figure deal with Hewlett-Packard, for LogMeIn Rescue, the company’s’ remote support offering. Simon did not disclose pricing but said AppGuru should be commercially available this fall. LogMeIn may have the chops to attack both the consumer and admin side of the equation, but it also faces formidable competition on the file-sync-and-share side of its business. Dropbox, the consumer champ, is gearing up Dropbox for Business while Google and Microsoft are pushing their respective application and storage tandems; and other competitors include Accellion, Egnyte and OwnCloud. They all claim to combine Dropbox-like simplicity with enterprise management perks. That’s probably why LogMeIn is adding enterprise perks that go beyond file storage and sync. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Dissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital futureWhat Enterprise Software Vendors Could Learn from the Consumer SpaceThe 2013 task management tools market

Today's the day Microsoft wows us (I hope) with it's next generation Xbox. So how does Sony combat that? With an ineffectual teaser that comes across as just sad...read more

Following successful pilots, SAP will step up its hiring of people on the autistic spectrum, the German business software firm has announced. Working with an outfit called Specialisterne, the company will bring in hundreds of autistic staff around the world to work in fields such as software testing, programming and data quality assurance. This is the latest move in what appears to be an interesting new trend. Texas-based CRM firm Alliance Data recently started seeking out workers on the autistic spectrum, as have other IT-related businesses such as the Berlin-based consultancy Auticon. SAP is the first major multinational to adopt similar hiring policies. Because autism tends to impair the sufferer’s social abilities, it can be problematic in a work environment. As a result, many sufferers find it difficult to gain and hold down a job. However, the autistic spectrum is wide and many of those with low-level autistic spectrum disorder – such as the recently reclassified Asperger Syndrome – can function in a work setting. People with autistic spectrum disorders often display highly focused and analytical behavior and, in the context of software testing and programming, it is these characteristics that companies such as SAP and Alliance Data are finding can work to their advantage. In its statement on Tuesday, SAP said it saw “a potential competitive advantage to leveraging the unique talents of people with autism.” According to SAP human resources chief Luisa Delgado: “By concentrating on the abilities that every talent brings to the table, we can redefine the way we manage diverse talents. With Specialisterne, we share a common belief that innovation comes from the ‘edges.’ Only by employing people who think differently and spark innovation will SAP be prepared to handle the challenges of the 21st century.” SAP has previously piloted its new hiring policies in India, where it worked with Specialisterne – a Denmark-based IT consultancy specializing in employing autistic workers – to hire 6 autistic software testers. It claims the result was a boost in productivity. SAP has also recently completed the screening process for hiring 5 autistic workers in Ireland, and is now preparing to take the program global. The company said the global expansion would begin in the U.S., Canada and Germany this year. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.How HR can make the case for workforce analyticsSocial 2013: The enterprise strikes backSocial third-quarter 2012: analysis and outlook