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Jon Martindale

Fancy sending your name to Mars on the next lander?

With all the excitement of Space X's recoverable launch attempts and the Philae lander telling us all about comets, we're almost spoilt when it comes to exciting advances in space. However it doesn't stop there, as in March next year, NASA is launching its InSight lander to Mars, where it …

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Final Fantasy VII now available on iOS smartphones

It's almost as if Square has realised that its most well remembered game is actually still worth something as an IP, as beyond the PC-re-release a couple of years ago, it's finally announced a full HD remastering is  in the works – albeit with a modified combat system – and to top …

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Dotcom’s BABOOM launches, promises bigger artist profits

The music sharing, streaming and networking service BABOOM, originally founded by Kim Dotcom, has now officially launched. Designed to be a competitor of the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, BABOOM offers a mixture of free and paid for streaming content to users, as well as a premium account service …

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Ashley Madison hack confirms paid-delete didn’t work

Although the hackers behind the recent data theft of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com claimed that they were doing so due to the twisted morality of the site, they also wanted to point out that the unscrupulous owners were happy to charge people to delete accounts and then not do so entirely. …

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Amazon announces an end to its trade-in program

Amazon's trade-in scheme, which allows customers to send in old products like games, books and clothes to earn credit against other purchases, is coming to a close. Anyone wishing to take advantage of it has until the 31st of August to get their returns in, after which Amazon will no …

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More sites shut down comments, what’s to be done?

For a long time, certain sites and their comment sections have been considered easily-accessible, but murky parts of the internet, that few wish to spend much time in. Now, a number of high profile websites have recently announced the closure of their comment sections, citing too much management and moderation …

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Ashley Madison hacked data released in 10GB dump

Hackers that made off with the user account and financial details of some 40 million members of infidelity website, Ashey Madison, have made good on their threat and posted them online. The details, posted to a Dark Web address that is only accessibly by Tor, include usernames, passwords, account histories, …

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Copyright lobby group spends 15 times more than it pays to artists

Copyright lobby groups that hope to push pirates and organisations that it feels benefit unfairly from piracy, to pay up, ostensibly do so because they care about the artists they represent. In practice though, that ideal rarely plays out. Take Rightscorp for example, which recently published its quarterly financial reports, only …

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British music videos to have enforced age ratings

In further measures that are designed to protect children from content that is not deemed suitable for them, the music industry has taken a voluntary step – following advice from the government – to add age-gates to music videos aimed at older viewers. That means that moving forward, British artists …

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Former employees say Kaspersky faked malware to damage rivals

Kaspersky anti-virus is being accused by several former employees of attempting to have competitor anti-virus software flag up false-positives that would discredit the programs and potentially even damage the systems of users. According to those same sources, which have remained anonymous for obvious reasons, this was to improve Kaspersky's standing, …

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SpaceVR wants to turn us all into astronauts

Despite decades and decades of flinging things and ourselves into space, only 533 people have left the confines of our little blue marble and orbited around its expanse, truly experiencing what it's like to be in space. One company wants to change that however. Space VR is a Kickstarter campaign …

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Amazon hints at big budget, big salaries for Top Gear crew

The new car show set to be hosted by ex-Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May on Amazon Prime, will be “very, very, very expensive,” for Amazon, according to the company head and 15th world's richest man, Jeff Bezos. While he wouldn't confirm how much any of …

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Someone else is claiming to have made a water powered motor

Every few years, a story appears that suggests some backroom inventor has created a prototype vehicle that runs only on water. While their claims are often fantastical, rarely do they pan out to be of real scientific significance, but perhaps this case will be different. Brazilian civil servant and home inventor, Ricardo …

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U.S. secretary of state believes China, Russia read his emails

It turns out that we aren't the only ones assuming that every government out there is looking at our private communications; even high-ranking United States politicians don't feel safe from hackers and foreign actors. In a TV interview, current U.S. secretary of state and one-time presidential candidate, John Kerry, admitted …

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Chinese investors gain control of MEGA file locker

Following a new round of funding which saw the MEGA encrypted file locker service raise a further $7.5 million to aid continued operations, two Chinese investors have become the company's largest share holders, with only the original lead programmer retaining even a modest share of the company. The news prompted …

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Twitter has dropped the DM character limit

140 characters is all you get with Twitter, which is why some resort to third party services if they want to communicate something longer form on the platform. However now at least users can send longer messages to those that follow them back, since direct messages have had their restrictions …

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