As any self-respecting obsessive e-mail checker could tell you, popular webmail system Gmail went down for more than an hour this afternoon. People raged on Twitter about the outage (Typical tweet: “Ah! No Email! Save Us!”). They complained that outages on Web services have been happening a lot lately. They commented about the outrage on popular tech websites and made snarky comments about other people’s panic.
But even though Gmail users spend hours a day checking their mail and chatting online, the outage didn’t seem to make them any more productive by depriving them of their means of procrastination. Claire Hardy, a 28-year-old jury consultant in Costa Mesa, went to the website The Nest to talk to friends about the Gmail outage. She changed her Facebook status to say, “Claire would like Gmail to work ASAP.” She refreshed Gmail every 20 minutes to see whether the site was working again.
“It made me less productive because I needed to make sure I was communicating with my friends,” she said, “but we were communicating via other means that weren’t as efficient as Gmail.”
She also checked on Google’s official explanation, posted in the dark corner of the dedicated to groups interested in Google help announcements. “The Gmail team is currently aware of a subset of users being affected by the 502 error on login,” the alert said.
The issue has been resolved, according to a Google spokesman. The company line:
“From about 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific Time today, many Gmail users were unable to access their email. The issue is now resolved. We’re very sorry for the interruption in service. The issue was caused by a temporary outage in the contacts system used by Gmail which prevented Gmail from loading properly. All mail is safe, though there may be minor delays with delivery.”
Asked about the Gmail outage on CNBC’s “Mad Money with Jim Cramer,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt later said, “That was a screw-up. We fixed that. We’re not perfect.”
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Tags: Gmail, Gmail Downtime, tech websites, Twitter
Google is investing $10 million to produce electricity from underground heat with a breakthrough technology, as the web search leader extends its clout to clean up the environment.
The move is part of Google’s effort to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into green energy sources, starting with solar thermal, high-altitude wind power and now, geothermal energy. Heat from below the earth’s surface could one day be a massive contributor to the nation’s electricity supplies because it is available around the clock, Google said.
“It’s 24-7, it’s potentially developable all over the country, all over the world, and for all that we really do think it could be the ‘killer app’ of the energy world,” Dan Reicher, Google’s head of climate and energy initiatives, said in an interview. “Killer app” is a term used to describe revolutionary software.
That new “app,” called enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS, improves upon the century-old technology of tapping geothermal energy from geysers, hot springs or volcanoes to generate electricity. With EGS, engineers drill their own geothermal outlets and pump in water to create steam to power a turbine.
The bulk of Google’s first geothermal investment, $6.25 million, will help finance EGS company AltaRock Energy Inc of Sausalito, California. Other investors in the company include some of the top Silicon Valley venture capital firms.
About $4 million of Google’s money will go to Potter Drilling Inc, a Redwood City, California company which has a hard rock drilling technology.
Enhanced geothermal systems that AltaRock is developing can work in a wider range of geographies than conventional geothermal ones, Google said.
“If you drill deep enough anywhere you can get to hot rock,” Reicher said.
The key to keeping the cost of a project down, therefore, is to find hot rocks that lie close to the surface. Nevada has good geothermal resources, Reicher said, as do some Eastern states including West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
To help locate good geothermal resources, Google also announced a $489,521 grant for Southern Methodist University’s Geothermal Lab to update geothermal mapping of North America.
Google is part of a $26.25 million round of funding AltaRock announced on Tuesday. Other investors include Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen’s investment firm, Vulcan Capital, and Silicon Valley venture capital firms Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Advanced Technology Ventures.
Google’s previous clean technology investments include $20 million for two solar thermal companies – eSolar Inc and BrightSource Energy Inc, and $10 million to high-altitude wind company Makani Power Inec.
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Tags: geothermal resources, geothermal technology
Leaked documents have confirmed that carder forum DarkMarket was actually an FBI sting operation.
For the last two years until its shutdown earlier this month DarkMarket.ws posed as a forum where identity thieves, credit card fraudsters, crackers and other ne’er do wells could hang out and exchange tips as well as trading hacker tools and stolen data. In reality, the site was run by Federal agents based in Pittsburgh.
The true identity of the site was revealed by Südwestrundfunk, a German public radio station. The station unearthed documents showing that one of the site’s overlord, Master Splynter, who posed as a spammer, was senior cybercrime agent J Keith Mularski. The DarkMarket sting was instrumental in trapping a German credit card hacker active on its forums.
DarkMarket offered a place to flog stolen credit card information and identities, hardware, and credit card magstripe swipes. The English-language site looked like somewhere the bad guys could get pointers on the quality of stolen information, harvested through phishing scams and the like, before buying goods.
Leaked documents show that the FBI had run DarkMarket as a sting since November 2006. A memo from FBI cybersleuths to their German counterparts boasts that the “FBI has been successful in penetrating the inner ‘family’ of the carding forum, DarkMarket”. In an email dating from March 2007 FBI agent Mularski bluntly states “Master Splynter is me”.
Federal agents used intelligence from the site to develop intelligence reports and mount investigations. It’s unclear how many miscreants were busted as a result of the sting. Further arrests may follow and cybercrooks that frequented the forum are likely to be peering nervously over their shoulders.
Master Splynter announced his intention to close the site from 4 October, supposedly because a Turkish ATM fraudster was drawing “unwelcome attention” to the site. The Turkish hacker (Cha0) was marketing an ATM skimming device – fairly standard activity on the site – but he became famous after allegedly kidnapping and torturing a police informant. Local police arrested a suspect, named as Cagatay Evyapan, last month.
Rumours that DarkMarket was a federal sting were known to more clued-up crackers since the latter part of 2006, after a hacker reported evidence that Master Splynter had logged in from the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh. Some dismissed the warning by Max Ray Butler as mud-slinging and continued to use the forum, even after Butler was arrested last year in a case handled by the FBI’s Pittsburgh office.
The DarkMarket sting is rare but not unprecedented in US law enforcement circles. The US Secret Service placed an informant in the infamous ShadowCrew cybercrime forum four years ago, but the scheme backfired after the alleged source went on to commit more
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Tags: darkmarket.ws, fbi sting, fbi sting operation, master splynter, the darkmarket forum
Food and fuel prices are set to fall, Gordon Brown told hard-up households yesterday.
‘Hard-working families’ in Britain will be better off as a slump in the price of oil and cuts in the cost of borrowing trickle down, the prime minister said.
Speaking after an EU summit in Brussels, he identified fuel costs – which helped push up the price of food because of dearer transport – and mortgage rates as key areas.
‘These are the issues that we are working on every day and I believe that we will see changes as a result of the measures we are working on,’ he said.
His comments came as Asda and Morrisons cut the price of unleaded petrol to 99.9p a litre.
It is their lowest rate since December, after oil costs fell to about $80 a barrel from a high of $150 over the summer. Wholesale gas prices have also fallen by about 20 per cent.
But Mr Brown hit out at some retailers for failing to pass on lower oil prices at the pumps quickly enough.
‘People know that when oil prices go up, that is reflected very quickly in the petrol pump price. And they want to know that when it goes down, it is also reflected in the price,’ he said.
Variations in price which saw some drivers charged £1.20 a litre were ‘unacceptable’, he added.
‘Over the next few days, we will be monitoring what is happening. But I expect companies to follow the path that has been taken by the supermarkets,’ Mr Brown urged.
However, industry experts have warned that household energy bills will not fall overnight.
‘When the oil price changes, there’s normally a four to six-month lag before it feeds through to the local gas prices,’ said independent energy market analyst Nigel Cornwall.
Dual fuel customers with British Gas now pay an average of £1,317 a year –£404 more than at the start of the year.
‘The falls from the absolute highs are welcome but they are still running two-thirds higher than they were last winter,’ a spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Mr Brown has brushed aside suggestions that he may call a snap general election on the back of his recent popularity boost.
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Tags: falling inflation, food bill, fuel costs, fuel prices, price of food
An international website used by criminals to illegally buy and sell credit card details has been shut down, it emerged today.
The Darkmarket forum operated for just under three years and sold information on how to obtain stolen identities and credit card details.
Around 60 people connected with the site have since been arrested in the UK, Europe and the US, the BBC reported.
The website, which before it was shut down could only be accessed through invitation, was attractive to criminals as it offered details contained on the magnetic information strips on the back of credit cards.
The data could then be used to fraudulently access large amounts of money.
The deputy director of the Serious Organised Crime Squad (SOCA), Sharon Lemon, told the BBC: “Darkmarket is a one-stop shop for the online criminal.
“You can go to the forum and engage in criminal activity quite freely.
“You can buy any product you want, you can sell any product you want.”
She added: “They are taking someone else’s money. These aren’t geeks we’re talking about. These are serious and organised criminals.
“And they can vary. You can be the beginner who can go on to the site, get a tutorial and start your life of crime.”
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Tags: buy credit card details, credit card fraud website, organised criminals, sell credit card details, the darkmarket
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