AP reports that drivers in The Netherlands will, from 2012, be charged by distance driven rather than paying an annual road tax and a tax on newly purchased cars. The base rate will be set yearly, with a higher tariff at peak times increasing until a 2018 review of the scheme. Overall, it’s projected that [...]

“The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.” Clive Thompson’s short post on Wired.com argues that far from hindering our writing skills, the advent of [...]

As third parties have integrated Twitter into their ecosystems, I’ve found myself using it more and more as a central status feed which automatically pushes to my other profiles. However, while I want the ability to easily cross-post, increasingly I don’t want the same status updates to appear on every site – partly to reduce [...]

“Using tissue grown in a laboratory, researchers have engineered fully functional replacement penises. The organs were made for rabbits, but the technique may one day be useful for people … Oddly, the procedure seemed to make the rabbits hornier than usual … ‘Most control rabbits did not attempt copulation after introduction to their female partners,’ [...]

People who don’t understand technology really shouldn’t be the key decision-makers about it. As The Guardian reported this morning, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has asserted in his latest ill-informed tirade again the evil Internet that not only is he going to erect pay walls around all his online properties, he’s also going to stop search engines [...]

Heh, couldn’t resist the dig From XKCD, here.

“It’s not that IE6 is out-dated and substandard (although it is), but that large organisations have needed to lock users in to using an approved Web browser … So why do they do that? There can be many reasons, but the largest, and most difficult to dispute is actually of our own creation. We (the [...]

Facebook has just announced its acquisition of FriendFeed, the two year old lifestreaming site, and tech websites are awash with opinions on what it means for the future. Most sites seem to dryly list all the FriendFeed features they can think of without giving context or showing insight (CNET News was particularly disappointing) but Mashable has [...]

The BBC reports on fascinating developments in the development of DNA-based computers. In this case, they used molecules to represent facts and rules rather than the simple true/false state of binary computing. By feeding the DNA computer a molecular rule (‘all men are mortal’) and a fact (‘Socrates is a man’), the DNA system correctly [...]

Ars Technica reports on Tahoe-LAFS, an innovative cross between P2P, cloud computing and storage. The idea is that networks of computers could be used for distributed yet secure storage of files, with applications such as dynamic excess capacity. At a high level, it works like this: Files are split into ten parts, AES encrypted and [...]

Wired has a somewhat amusing, somewhat unnerving article on the stupidity of US Feds at the recent DefCon hacker convention. Law enforcement attended to keep abreast of the latest hacking trends and exploitable vulnerabilities, some undercover and some manning a Meet-the-Feds stand (no, really). While taking basic security precautions would evidently be a sensible move given [...]

Ryan Singel reports on Yahoo’s continuing slide towards Internet oblivion. The brand, which at the turn of the decade symbolised the information age, is rapidly muddling towards insignificance through indirection. Despite owning some of the Internet’s most promising properties, the company has decided not to focus on its products; and regardless of the fact that [...]

Tim Ferguson, writing on Silicon.com, rightfully defends the BBC against criticism of yet another useful service. After rows over BBC iPlayer and Canvas, jealous media organisations are once again complaining that the BBC has innovated before they did, this time in allowing newspapers to use BBC video on their websites. Yes, the BBC is funded [...]

The Guardian reports on the latest Wikipedia censorship row, revolving around the Rorschach ‘inkblot’ test used by psychologists and whether the site should allow publication of all ten tests and their results. For me, this is a difficult issue to reconcile. My gut says that Wikipedia shouldn’t capitulate to those who want to censor the [...]

Wired UK led me to take a look at Wolfram|Alpha, a new ‘computational knowledge engine’ launched this month. In a nutshell, it’s a a little like Google for databases. Instead of searching the entire web and trying to decipher the human-readable content out there, it draws on a vast array of machine-formatted data to compile [...]

This incredible picture shows the Atlantis space shuttle silhouetted against the Sun, barely 24 hours after launch. Truth be told, I was torn as to which photo to post – photographer Thierry Legault has a series of fantastic images on his site, here, and while the sheer scale of the whole-Sun picture is awe-inspiring I [...]

Ars Technica reports on a US court case, where the judge ordered a professional code review of breathalyser software in a drink-driving case. The examination found serious bugs, complex and ill-maintained code, a lack of safeguards and other bad programming practices. While the case is a US one, the issues it raises are global. Why do we [...]

“In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a [...]

Molly Wood writes an insightful piece on her blog criticising reporters who propagate rumours and publish company-generated PR as news. This follows a weekend Wall Street Journal article about Apple, which lacked sources but was nonetheless rapidly reposted as indisputable fact across the web. Wood brings her experience as a technology reporter to bear, noting Apple’s [...]

“The Phorm system learns your interests by snooping on your internet web traffic. Your ISP does the necessary wiretap in exchange for a cut when advertisers pay a premium for learning precisely what to try and sell you. It’s rather like the postman getting money to peek at your letters, so you can receive a [...]