Price of '.sucks' investigated

Vox Populi says its prices for ".sucks" website names are "well within the rules"

The authority that decides which letters a web address is allowed to finish with says it is concerned at the high charges for the new ".sucks" name.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (Icann) has asked the US and Canadian trade authorities to investigate Vox Populi, which secured the rights to sell the name.

The company denies any wrongdoing.

Many companies and celebrities have bought their name with controversial suffixes such as ".porn" or ".xxx".

Predatory selling

The last part of a web address that follows the final dot, such as ".com", ".org", and ".net", is referred to as a generic top level domain (gTLD).

Icann relaxed the rules governing gTLDs in 2012, and the latest to go up for sale is ".sucks".

Many companies and celebrities buy their brand or name with various gTLDs, to avoid any confusion with their official website addresses or to stop others buying them and posting negative content.

Taylorswift.xxx has been reserved but not used, to prevent others from buying it

For example, singer Taylor Swift bought up taylorswift.xxx to prevent anyone else from using it.

Specialist online website Domain Incite reports that actor "Kevin Spacey, Microsoft, Google and Apple have already bought up '.sucks' sites in a bid to protect their reputations".

This practice is known as "defensive registering".

Icann granted Vox Populi permission to sell the ".sucks" names but is now concerned at the price levels the Canadian company has set.

Kevin Murphy, from Domain Incite, told the BBC two key elements of the way Vox Populi was handling the sale were causing concern.

"They are charging a $2,000 'sunrise' premium to those wishing to register '.sucks' addresses early, before the addresses go on sale to the general public [next month]," he said.

"Also they are using a list of words or names that have been defensively registered in the past, for which they are charging the top amount."

Mr Murphy said the company was working from a list of keywords that had been part of web addresses bought up early on in similar new domain web address sales and using that to decide which ".sucks" addresses to charge more for.

The base fee for any ".sucks" web address is $199 a year

New gTLDs such as ".rocks" or ".forsale" typically sell for between $5 (£3.42) and $20 a year.

Beyond jurisdiction

But Murphy said: "They [Vox Populi] are charging a much bigger amount that you'd expect.

"They were considering a fee of $25,000 at one point when we spoke to them.

"I think they are charging as much as they can get away with.

"It [Vox Populi] justified the $2,000 premium price tag [for certain '.sucks' addresses] as being 'a reasonable part of a company's PR budget'.

"It appears they are basing prices on what firms can afford not on the product services they are providing."

In a strongly worded letter to Icann, the authority's own advisory body, the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC), demanded a "halt" to Vox Populi's "illicit", "predatory" and "coercive" selling scheme.

But even though Icann approved the ".sucks" domain name sale and issued the licence to sell the related website addresses, it appears not to have jurisdiction over how they are sold.

There is no evidence that Vox Populi has done anything wrong, and the company told Domain Incite its pricing and policies were "well within the rules".

Icann has referred Vox Populi to the two bodies it believes may have the regulatory authority to investigate the company's practices: the Federal Trade Commission in the United States and the Canadian Office of Consumer Affairs, as the company is registered in Canada.

But unless the company has broken the law, it is not clear what powers Icann has over Vox Populi's handing of the sale of ".sucks".

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Spoiler alert! Or how to avoid them

Don't read the comments, Daenerys...

I still remember my first spoiler.

It was the movie Sixth Sense, a supernatural thriller from the late 1990s with a clever, brilliantly executed, plot-defining final twist - which I already knew by the time I saw the film because of two over-excited friends and one very loud chat in my local pub.

I was unlucky - wrong place, wrong time - but now as the internet regularly erupts with spoiler chat, pictures and videos, it can be very difficult to hide if you don't want to know everything there is to know about the best films, games and TV shows before you have seen them.

Especially, it seems, if you're a fan of Game of Thrones, the most pirated TV show on the net, with a leak from the new series already online a day before its official release.

So, short of pulling the plug on your broadband connection and retreating to a dark cave here are a few suggestions...

Google told the BBC it didn't have any "official" spoiler-blocker extensions for its web browser Chrome, but there are a few third-party ones on its Chrome Store that allow you to filter social media - with mixed reviews.

Last week, the tech giant was granted a patent in the US for a "system and method for processing content spoilers", but a Google representative pointed out that not all patented ideas ended up as products.

US-based Chrome extension Spoiler Shield, also available as a smartphone app, enables users to filter Facebook and Twitter feeds by selecting shows they wish to "mute", including American sporting fixtures such as the Super Bowl.

Tumblr Savior enables you to set up a "blacklist" and a "whitelist" of key words, which, as the titles suggest, you either always or never want to see on the Tumblr micro-blogging site.

Not such an effective technique online

Although the "mute button" offered by Twitter itself only enables you to tune out a particular user, not hashtags or keywords, social-media dashboard Tweetdeck, owned by Twitter, has mute settings that enable you to block specific words or phrases from your Twitter timeline.

Pick your movie review sites carefully - Den of Geek, for example, clearly signposts its reviews as "spoiler-free" in the headline if that's what they are. Chat forums and message boards, however, do not tend to stick to this etiquette.

Even the most careful of reviews can be spoiled by the comments section underneath. CommentBlocker works on both Firefox and Chrome and will block the comments from view on the sites you choose.

For some film-lovers, however, the spoilers are all part of the fun.

"If I love a show, I'll Google it, I'll want a little peek into what's coming up, and then I'll end up watching a clip on YouTube, then another, then another," said film-maker Reece de Ville.

"Even if I'm 'spoiled', I want to keep up with everyone else. We'll always love spoilers - it's gossip and we all want to be part of that."

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Garmin unveils two HD action cameras

Garmin's new action cameras are waterproof without requiring additional casing

Sat-Nav maker Garmin has unveiled two new HD action camera models.

The Virb X and Virb XE will be priced at £239 ($349) and £319 ($466) when they are launched in the summer.

Both models are waterproof to a depth of 50m without a case, and can capture "action data" such as speed and a G-force using bespoke system G-Metrix which can then be overlaid on the footage itself.

The market is currently dominated by top seller GoPro.

Garmin launched its first action cam, Virb, in 2013. Sony, Polaroid, HTC and Xiaomi are among other tech firms offering rival devices.

Users of the higher-end Virb XE can manually control advanced settings including white balance, sharpness, colour profile and exposure levels.

The XE also shoots video in high definition quality of either 1440p/30fps (frames per second) or 1080p/60fps, with the cheaper X version offering 1080p/30fps or 720p/60fps.

Both models can capture stills images at up to 12 megapixels and have wi-fi and bluetooth connectivity.

GoPro meanwhile announced a partnership with broadcast equipment manufacturer Vislink which will enable its Hero 3+ and Hero 4 models to broadcast high definition wireless video for the first time.

Nasa astronaut Terry Virts took a Go Pro on two space walks from the International Space Station. Footage on the Nasa website.

"GoPro is the undisputed market leader right now and its cameras have become synonymous with the category," said analyst Ben Wood from CSS Insight.

"We expect the next battleground to be with 360 degree action cameras to capture footage for virtual reality headsets.

"It will be interesting to see when GoPro makes the jump into that space."

Mr Wood also said that cheaper rivals - such as the Xiaomi Yi Action Camera which had a launch price of just 399 yuan (£41) - pose more of an immediate threat to the firm.

"GoPro probably won't be too worried about Garmin. The biggest threat comes from low-cost Chinese rivals," he added.

"As the quality of their products improves and prices drop they become more realistic challengers."

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'Robot chef' aimed at home kitchen

A London-based company has launched a prototype "robo-chef" for the home.

Moley Robotics is demonstrating its concept at this year's Hannover Messe - a big trade fair for industrial technology held annually in Germany.

The cooking machine learns by capturing the movements of a human in the action of preparing a meal.

These movements are then turned into commands that drive a sophisticated pair of robot hands.

Tim Anderson, the 2011 BBC Masterchef champion, is training the robo-chef.

At the Hannover Messe, he has got the machine making a crab bisque.

"It's the ultimate sous-chef," Mr Anderson told BBC News.

"You tell it to do something - whether it's a bit of prep or completing a whole dish from start to finish - and it will do it. And it will do it the same every single time."

The product is still two years away from market. Moley wants to make the unit slightly more compact, and give it a built-in refrigerator and dishwasher.

The robot could then do everything from assembling and chopping all the ingredients, doing the cooking on the hob or in the oven, and finishing up by cleaning the dirty pans.

"We want people to be comfortable with this device," says Moley's Mark Oleynik.

"It's not an industrial device; it's not a device that works at 10-times normal speed. No, it's a device that moves like you move, and at the same speed as you do."

The goal is to produce a consumer version costing £10,000.

It is likely find a ready market in the urban apartment where space is at a premium.

The vision is to support the product with thousands of app-like recipes. The motion capture capability would also allow owners to share their special recipes online.

A key innovation is the hands. Produced by the Shadow Robot company, they use 20 motors, 24 joints and 129 sensors to mimic the movements of human hands.

Shadow's Rich Walker believes his robotic appendages will ultimately cope with some of the uncertainties of cooking, such as when beaten eggs decide to peak.

"Something would change; we would see it in the sensor data. Maybe something gets stiffer or softer," he explained.

"We should be able to sense that and use it as the point to transition to the next stage of the cooking process."

The consumer unit would contain a fridge and a dishwasher

Robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) were identified by the UK's coalition government as one of "eight great technologies" that could help to rebalance the British economy - along with the likes of satellites, synthetic biology and so-called "big data" applications.

The potential for RAS is thought to be immense. A recent report by the McKinsey consultancy estimated that advanced robotics could generate a potential economic impact of between $1.9tn and $6.4tn (£1.3tn to £4.4tn) per year by 2025.

But the use of robotics in the home is currently in its infancy.

The setting is not one that many people immediately think of when considering autonomous systems.

That will have to change if robotic chefs and other applications are to be accepted and embraced.

And, in time, it will believes Prof David Lane at Heriot-Watt University.

"It's interesting to note that Dyson is launching its robotic vacuum cleaner in Japan - a traditional early-adopter market," he told the BBC.

"But people more generally are taking the baby steps towards accepting this type of technology.

"The example I always like to give is the Docklands Light Railway in London: everyone gets on it and doesn't think twice that there's no driver, no human, at the front.

"The UK is in a good position to take advantage of the new wave of robotics that is coming.

"It's small, agile, disruptive start-up activity that is going to grow big - and that's where we have to put our energies."

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Podcast 'patent troll' faces setback

The patent describes a way to update websites with details of new audio and video podcasts

A company that claimed fees from podcasters who publish audio and video on their own websites has suffered a patent-ruling defeat.

The decision could potentially prevent Personal Audio LLC legally requiring media groups to pay it if they update their sites to show new episodes.

The Texas-based company had previously targeted US firms including CBS, NBC and Fox.

But its efforts were challenged by a digital rights campaign group.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation had petitioned for a review of the patent in question after raising more than $76,000 from the public via a crowd-funding campaign to cover its legal costs.

It said that Personal Audio should never have been given ownership rights to a way to create an updateable electronic table of contents.

The US Patent Office has now invalidated critical parts of related intellectual property rights it had previously granted to Personal Audio in 2012.

"[The decision] significantly curtails the ability of a patent troll to threaten podcasters big and small," the EFF said in a statement.

The patented technique was described in this drawing

"But unfortunately, our work to protect podcasting is not done. Personal Audio continues to seek patents relating to podcasting. We will continue to fight."

The term "troll" is a derogatory term used to refer to patent-library owners who actively pursue others for payments without making products of their own.

Personal Audio has the right to appeal against the ruling and still lists its patent for "episodic content" on its website.

It could not be reached for comment.

The invention at the heart of the dispute relates to a process by which a website is updated to provide access to new video and audio podcasts as they become available.

Personal Audio's founder James Logan first applied for the rights to the idea in 1996 at a time his company was trying to create a digital audio player, a product it ultimately failed to bring to market.

"I invested $1.6m [£1.1m], and lost it all. Personal Audio LLC, the patent holding company, is the attempt by the investor, me, to get a return on that investment," Mr Logan told the Slashdot news site in 2013, defending his company's business model.

"We are small players in a larger system, one set up to foster innovation by turning inventions into property. We are merely using our property as the system was designed."

Personal Audio focused on patent fees after failing to create a digital audio player

However, the EFF successfully challenged elements of the patent on the basis of two arguments:

• The suggested technique would have been "obvious" to other developers at the time, meaning it should not have been protected. The evidence given for this was that CNN had described a web-based video library of its own in 1995
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published a paper in 1996 detailing its trial of a system that allowed people to download radio shows from the web following their broadcast. This meant the technique had already been "anticipated" - or described in a printed publication - before the patent was filed, meaning related rights should never have been granted

Last year, a Texas jury ordered CBS to pay $1.3m in damages to Personal Audio after finding it had infringed the patent after placing TV shows on its website.

Personal Audio lists Samsung, Apple, HTC and LG among the licensees of other music and podcast-related patents that it owns.

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Turing's notebook sells for $1m

Alan Turing killed himself in 1954 after hormone treatment to "cure" his homosexuality

A scientific notebook compiled by World War Two codebreaker Alan Turing has sold for $1m in New York.

It is one of very few manuscripts from the head of the team that cracked the Germans' Enigma code.

The handwritten notes, dating from 1942 when he worked at Bletchley Park, were entrusted to mathematician Robin Gandy after Turing's death.

The notebook was sold at Bonhams for $1,025,000 (£700,850) to an unnamed buyer.

• After September 1939 Turing developed a new machine capable of breaking Enigma messages on an industrial scale. Turing's cryptanalysis of Nazi codes contributed to many Allied victories against their militia, saving countless lives.
• In March 1946 Turing produced a detailed design for what was called the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE).This was a digital computer in the modern sense.

BBC iWonder – Timeline of Alan Turing's life

Mr Gandy deposited Turing's papers at the Archive Centre at King's College in Cambridge in 1977.

But Mr Gandy retained the 56-page notebook because of a deeply personal message written in the blank centre pages of the notebook which he wanted to keep private.

The notes remained hidden among personal effects until after his death.

Scholar Andrew Hodges, said: "Alan Turing was parsimonious with his words and everything from his pen has special value.

"This notebook shines extra light on how, even when he was enmeshed in great world events, he remained committed to free-thinking work in pure mathematics."

Turing killed himself in 1954 after hormone treatment to "cure" his homosexuality which he was undergoing as an alternative to imprisonment.

The story of his life was told in the 2014 Oscar-winning film The Imitation Game.

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Phishing hits victims 'in minutes'

In less than two minutes a phishing campaign will ensnare its first victim, found the report

It takes 82 seconds for cyber-thieves to ensnare the first victim of a phishing campaign, a report suggests.

Compiled by Verizon, the report looks at analyses of almost 80,000 security incidents that hit thousands of companies in 2014.

It found that, in many companies, about 25% of those who received a phishing email were likely to open it.

"Training your employees is a critical element of combating this threat," said Bob Rudis, lead author on the report.

Tricking people into opening a booby-trapped message let attackers grab login credentials that could be used to trespass on a network and steal data, the report said.

"They do not have to use complex software exploits, because often they can get hold of legitimate credentials," Mr Rudis said.

Analysis of data breaches found that, in many cases, it had taken less than two minutes for freshly sent phishing emails to catch their first victim. And, said Mr Rudis, half of the victims had clicked on the message within the first hour of it being sent.

Although attackers racked up victims quickly, it took companies far longer to notice they had been compromised, Mr Rudis said.

The report also found companies could take straight-forward steps to defend themselves against well-crafted phishing emails designed to make people open them and their attachments.

Teaching staff to spot bogus messages could reduce the proportion of victims to sent emails from one in four to one in 20, he said.

Showing workers the tell-tale signs of a phishing email could also turn them into another line of defence that could catch messages missed by automatic detection systems.

"They should be treating employees as tools in the fight rather than as lambs to the slaughter," Mr Rudis said.

After phishing, some cyber-thieves relied on companies running un-patched software that was vulnerable to old and well-known exploits, he said.

More than 99% of the vulnerabilities exploited in data breaches had been known about for more than a year, Mr Rudis said. And some had been around for a decade.

"There are some vulnerabilities that just linger out there," he said.

A good patching regime would help companies protect themselves against most of the vulnerabilities cyber-thieves abuse, Mr Rudis added.

Find out how to avoid scam emails

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Nokia in talks to buy Alcatel-Lucent

Nokia is in talks to buy French rival Alcatel-Lucent in a deal that could create a European telecoms equipment group worth over €40bn (£29bn).

In a joint announcement, the two companies said there could be "no certainty at this stage" that the discussions would result in a deal.

But a merger for two of the industry's weaker players would be attractive.

It comes a year after Nokia sold its struggling handset business to Microsoft.

Analysts and investors suggested the deal could face potential opposition from the French government, which has previously said it sees the communications industry as strategic, and is sensitive about any potential job cuts.

Shares in Alcatel were nearly 11% higher at €4.28 in mid-morning trading on the Paris stock exchange on Tuesday morning. Shares in Nokia fell 6% to €7.25 in Helsinki.

Nokia is valued at around €29bn, almost three times as much as Alcatel, which had a market capitalisation of €11bn based on Monday's closing share price.

Some investors expressed scepticism over the merits of the proposed deal.

"They are two of the weaker players in the industry," said Clairinvest fund manager Ion-Marc Valahu.

"They could come up with some cost cuts, but just because you combine one weak player with another weak player does not necessarily mean that you will end up with a stronger player."

Analysis: Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology correspondent

When Nokia sold its mobile phones business to Microsoft, it seemed like a sad end to the story of what had just a few years earlier been Europe's leading technology superpower.

But the dull old telecoms equipment business left in Finland has turned out some rather exciting returns for loyal investors, who've seen their shares double in value over the last two years. Nokia has cut costs and has even started making new devices, with a tablet aimed at the Chinese market.

A merger with Alcatel Lucent, another telecoms maker fallen on hard times, might not appear an obvious winner. But together, the two firms would hope to provide real competition to Sweden's Ericsson and, in particular, China's Huawei, which has grabbed a big share of the market as 4G networks are rolled out.

Comebacks are rare in the technology world, but Nokia's investors may look at how Microsoft is doing with mobile phones and reflect that they got the best end of that deal.

The announcement of the potential deal comes at a time of heightened merger and acquisition activity.

Last week, Shell announced a £47bn deal to buy BG Group and create a company worth £200bn.

And US parcels firm FedEx announced a few days earlier that it was to buy Dutch rival TNT Express for €4.4bn (£3.2bn), creating one of the three largest parcel delivery services in Europe, rivalling DHL and UPS if approved by the European Commission.

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Sharp creates 4K smartphone screen

Sharp makes screens for both its own phones and TVs, and other tech firms

Japan's Sharp has announced the first smartphone screen capable of showing images in 4K resolution.

The 5.5in (14cm) component packs in 806 pixels per inch.

That outclasses Samsung's new flagship model by a wide margin. The Galaxy S6 offers 577ppi on a slightly smaller display.

Higher resolutions offer more detail, typically producing crisper images and text. But experts say there is a limit to what the human eye can appreciate.

"At a certain point, the improvements get less visually stunning," Tim Coulling from the Canalys tech consultancy told the BBC.

"Once you jump from 2K to 4K, you're going to struggle to tell the two images apart even if you have perfect vision."

4K - which is also known as ultra-high definition - offers four times the resolution of 1080p HD.

Sharp's new screen trumps a 736ppi 4.1in display it announced last year

Several TV and projector manufacturers are promoting the new format as being ideal for 55in or bigger televisions that families can sit close to, and cinema screens.

One challenge with introducing it to a handset is that higher resolutions typically take a greater toll on battery life.

But Sharp promotes the Igzo (Indium gallium zinc oxide) tech used in the displays as being more energy efficient than the silicon-based LCD screens commonly used in smartphones and tablets, which should help offset their power demands.

With smartphones becoming capable of filming in 4K, Mr Coulling also suggested there would be an energy trade-off that could benefit users watching back such videos.

"You will be able to show 4K content natively on the screen, which means you won't need to process it to get it to display properly."

Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge features what is currently an industry-leading 577 pixels per inch

He added that he believed smartphone-makers would be keen to promote their handsets as being 4K-enhanced, whatever the true benefit, for marketing reasons.

Greek news site Techblog.gr - which was among the first to report the news - said that Sharp planned to put the displays into mass production next year, and expected Chinese manufacturers to be among its first customers.

While consumers have still to get to grips with 4K, parts of the tech industry are already racing ahead to a next-generation standard.

Camera-maker Red has just announced an 8K video camera, offering 16 times the resolution of 1080p HD.

However, its $59,500 (£40,575) cost is likely to limit its appeal to film-makers.

Red's 8K camera is targeted at professionals, but signals where video technology is heading

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Man charged with hacking US lottery

Eddie Tipton is alleged to have hacked the lottery computer to predetermine the winning numbers

The former security boss of a lottery in the US has been charged with fraud after allegedly hacking the computer that picks the winning numbers.

Eddie Raymond Tipton was the security director for the Multi-State Lottery Association when he was arrested in January by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations.

Prosecutors said he had been caught on CCTV buying the winning ticket. The $14.3m (£9.5m) prize was never claimed.

Mr Tipton denies the charges.

It is alleged the security camera in the lottery room stopped recording

Citing court papers filed by prosecutors in the case, the Des Moines Register said the 51-year-old "may have inserted a thumb drive into a highly locked-down computer that's supposed to generate the random numbers used to determine lottery winners".

The offline computer is housed in a glass room and in theory can only be accessed by two people at the same time. It is also constantly monitored by a video camera.

It is alleged Mr Tipton used his position as security director to change the video camera settings and record only one second in every minute. This would have given him enough time to enter the room and plug a thumb drive into the computer.

On that drive, according to the prosecution, was a rootkit: a stealthy computer program designed to do a specific task and, in this case, then erase itself.

That task was to predetermine the winning lottery numbers for the draw that Mr Tipton was to later buy the winning ticket for.

Colleagues say the former Hot Lotto security boss was "obsessed" by rootkits

Mike McLaughlin, senior analyst at computer security company First Base, said the allegation might sound farfetched but was plausible.

He told the BBC: "It is entirely possible to code a rootkit on a USB drive which could interfere with software on a computer then delete itself.

"It would only take a second to run once plugged in.

"However, this can leave traces on the infected machine if you know where to look."

As a member of staff, Mr Tipton was not allowed to win the lottery himself.

The court filings suggest there was an attempt to claim the prize just hours before it was scheduled to expire by a company incorporated in Belize.

If found guilty of the two charges of fraud, Mr Tipton faces up to five years in jail and a fine of up to $7,500.

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