Google apologizes for results of 'Michelle Obama' image search

For most of the past week, when someone typed "Michelle Obama" in the popular search engine Google, one of the first images that came up was a picture of the American first lady altered to resemble a monkey.

On Wednesday morning, the racially offensive image appeared to have been removed from any Google Image searches for "Michelle Obama."

CNN Tech

Congress may probe faked global warming data

The US Congress could start an investigation into leaked emails which suggest climate change statistics have been consistently manipulated to make the case for anthropogenic global warming more credible.

The emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK - which claims to be the repository for the most comprehensive set of climate data on the planet - contain what many observers see as clear evidence that scientists have been altering that data to fit in with their man-made global warming beliefs.

Earlier this week, Oklahoma senator James Inhofe said on his website that the UEA emails suggest researchers 'cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not.' Other senators are also considering whether an investigation is warranted.

TG Daily

Why the future doesn't need us

The new Pandora's boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed. Ideas can't be put back in a box; unlike uranium or plutonium, they don't need to be mined and refined, and they can be freely copied. Once they are out, they are out. Churchill remarked, in a famous left-handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders "invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative." In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all.

As Thoreau said, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us"; and this is what we must fight, in our time. The question is, indeed, Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?

Bill Joy

Medvedev Stresses Modernization in Address

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia needs to move beyond the industrial legacy of the Soviet Union and build a modern high-tech economy to survive, President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday in his annual state-of-the-nation address.

He ordered a sweeping modernization of aging Soviet-built military arsenals, and called for a foreign policy aimed at attracting investment and improving living standards.

"We mustn't puff out our chest," he said, speaking in an ornate Kremlin hall before parliament members and government officials. "We are interested in the flow of capital, new technologies and modern ideas."


The New York Times

Happy Veteran's Day

The 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student said he was walking home from work about 1:15 a.m. Tuesday when he was pulled into an alley and told to lay face down and with a gun to his neck. Four men took his wallet, $16, keys, his cell phone and even a PowerBar wrapper from his pants pockets, he said.

But the hostile tone quickly changed when one of the robbers, whom the reservist presumed was the leader, saw an Army ID in the wallet. The robber told the others to return the items and they put most of his belongings on the ground next to him, including the wrapper, the reservist said.

"The guy continued to say throughout the situation that he respects what I do and at one point he actually thanked me and he actually apologized," said the reservist, who asked not to be identified Tuesday because the robbers still had his keys.

The reservist said he asked the men, who all had hoods or hats covering their faces, if he could get up and they said he could before starting to walk away.

"The leader of the group actually walked back, gave me a quick fist bump, which was very strange," he said.

FOX News

Google Latitude Gets Snoopier: Adds Location History and Alerts

Just when you thought Google Latitude would no longer haunt your dreams, the service has been updated to make it a smidge creepier than before. Now Latitude tracks your location history and alerts you when your friends are nearby -- two add-ons that could make stalking that much easier!


PCWorld

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Well worth the watch. Thanks Melvillian

Murdoch could block Google searches entirely

Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.

In recent months, Murdoch and his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google's search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.

guardian.co.uk

Students suspended for racy slumber party pics, file lawsuit

The line between online and offline life continues to blur as yet another lawsuit is being brought against a school that punished students over pictures posted to an online social media website. Two sophomore girls at Churubusco High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana were banned from extracurricular activities after sexually suggestive pictures posted to MySpace during summer vacation ended up in the hands of school officials. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the girls, claiming that the punishment went too far by violating the students' free speech rights and resulted in their "humiliation" as they were forced to apologize to an all-male coaches board.


ars technica

Is the Death of the DVD Nigh?

The announcement that Best Buy is teaming with CinemaNow on movie downloads is yet another sign that DVDs are plummeting fast into a steep downward trajectory.

As my PC World colleague Daniel Ionescu pointed out today, Best Buy, the leading retail seller of DVD movies, is now seeing those sales fade away as more people move to renting movies through digital distribution.

Let’s face facts here. DVDs can warp or get scratched, immediately making them unplayable. It’s easy to lose a DVD — and it might be hard to get one back after you’ve loaned it to a friend.

PCworld