Bcstevieb

You know what sucks? Putting your resume, portfolio, essay, photos, whatever, on a USB stick, bringing the stick to the print shop, and discovering that your data is dead. Don't let it happen to you. The superusers at Stack Exchange offer tips on keeping your USB data intact.

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An 11-year-old girl was sent home from a week-long summer-camp on the Isle of Wight for smuggling in a chocolate bar; a fact that her teachers discovered after they opened a sealed letter addressed to her mother and read it. Her mother, who is unemployed and cares full-time for her autistic son, had to drive 160 miles through the night to pick up the child. She had saved for six months to pay for the trip. Teachers conducted a full search of the child's possessions -- including pulling out her suitcase lining -- to discover the banned chocolates.

"They had been planning the feast weeks before the trip and Holli was in charge of bringing the chocolate,” she said.

"It wasn't even at midnight. They ate the chocolate at about 9.30pm and it only went on for about 15 minutes. It's not like they were having a party or making noise.

"The teachers had no idea about it until they read Holli's letter to me.

"I am furious that they read her letter, it is like being in prison. It's not like she is five - she is 11 and deserves privacy in what she writes to her mum.”

"Holli said she was really upset because they emptied her toiletry bag into the sink and pulled out the lining in her suitcase.

"It was carried out in such a manner you would have thought they were running an international drug smuggling operation from their hotel room.

"I don't see how eating chocolate makes the holiday unsafe. They were not being naughty - they were just having fun."

Child banned from school trip for eating chocolate [Rosa Silverman/The Telegraph]

(via Free Range Kids)

My 10-year-old has been preparing for the day her copy of Crafting with Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat came in the mail. That day is today.

Projects include finger puppets, book covers, portraits, tote bags, coin purses, knickknack boxes, pincushions, badges, mittens & gloves, and hats & scarves.

"These crafts are not recommended for people with cat allergies."

Web blocking and filtering is a hot topic in the UK this week, both for porn and piracy.

Earlier this week TorrentFreak revealed that the Motion Picture Association (MPA), together with FACT, had obtained a court order to block access to the TV torrent site EZTV.

The movie industry group had previously asked the site’s owner to cease operating, but when no reply was received they asked the High Court to instruct ISPs to block the site.

The providers did not fight the case and on June 25 an order was granted by a High Court judge. Yesterday, a month later, all major ISPs began blocking access to EZTV.

Virgin’s blocked notice

Since the order has not been made public it’s not known which IP-addresses and domain names are covered by the blockade, but EZTV’s sister site ezRSS appears to be covered as well. Whether this is intentional or the result of over-blocking is unknown at this point.

Adding to the confusion, FACT previously informed TorrentFreak that YIFY-Torrents is also covered by the court action, but this site is still accessible to most people in the UK. TorrentFreak reached out to FACT to clarify the position and we will update the article when we receive a response.

In any case, the blockade of EZTV certainly won’t be the last of its kind in the UK. The music industry has announced plans to request court orders for a dozen more websites and the movie industry will do the same.

“We have made it clear that we will seek action against sites that continue to provide unremitting mass access to infringing content following due legal process,” FACT told TorrentFreak earlier this week.

Whether the blockade will be very effective remains to be seen. People are still able to access the site though proxies or VPNs and the first proxy sites dedicated to EZTV are already online.

Update: FACT told TorrentFreak that YIFY-Torrents isn’t covered by the same order as the group stated earlier. Instead it is part of a separate case that is still pending in court.

Source: UK Internet Providers Start Blocking EZTV and ezRSS

The much-anticipated final episodes of AMC's Breaking Bad will be available to watch on Netflix UK immediately following their US broadcast. The half-season premieres on AMC August 11th at 9PM ET (2AM BST), and Netflix users in the UK will be able to watch each episode after it finishes airing stateside.

This instant syndication could represent a real shift in the way American broadcasters approach foreign audiences. AMC's The Killing is syndicated to Netflix's UK users in the same way. Although the situation has improved in recent years, British viewers have traditionally had to wait until at least the following night, and often face delays of days to watch their favorite shows. This has led to high rates of piracy for hit US series...

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The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the principal leader of England's state religion, the Church of England, plans to force payday loan sharks out of business. The Church already invests in businesses, and is looking to invest money in credit unions to help them compete with high-interest lenders. The payday loan industry is worth around £2 billion ($3.1 billion) in the UK, and successful companies such as Wonga make hefty profits by charging 5,853 APR on short-term loans.

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On Wednesday, Google announced the Chromecast, a $35 dongle that plugs into the HDMI port on your TV and streams video from the cloud. It's much like a tiny Roku box, except you get to control the experience from any PC, tablet, or smartphone. But what did Google stuff inside that stick to make the magic happen, at such a tiny size and price? Teardown and repair site iFixit ripped open a Chromecast today, so that you don't have to pry.

It's really pretty simple inside: there's a miniature circuit board, with a Marvell processor and an AzureWave combo Wi-Fi chip, along with 4GB of flash memory and 512MB of low-voltage RAM. There's an aluminum heatsink around all the components, and a slab of solid aluminum spanning the entire length of...

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UK PM David Cameron and Claire Perry say that they plan on forcing Britain's ISPs to have a "default-on" censorship app for every connection in the UK. But the UK Open Rights Group have been talking with whistleblowers from the ISPs that have met with the government's censorship grandees, and they report that the censorware will come equipped to block an enormous swath of legal Internet content, and unless you untick the boxes, this will all be censored for your Internet connection:

Do you want to block

☑ pornography
☑ violent material
☑ extremist and terrorist related content
☑ anorexia and eating disorder websites
☑ suicide related websites
☑ alcohol
☑ smoking
☑ web forums
☑ esoteric material
☑ web blocking circumvention tools

You may be saying to yourself, hell, how are they going to be able to sort out which websites are unacceptably pornographic, let alone which sites are "smoking" related? That's a damned good question, and the answer is "with the broadest brush possible." Huge chunks of the Internet will be effectively unreachable, and which sites go into the censorship bucket will be decided upon in secret, by unelected employees of big corporations, like China's Huawei. Sure, you can untick the box if you want, but as David Cameron's advisors will tell you, defaults are powerful and most users never change them.

Sleepwalking into censorship

Ever since its inception in Android 4.2, end-users have wondered why the multi-user function has been restricted to tablets. While switching between profiles desktop-style certainly makes the most sense on tablets, there's no technical reason why it couldn't be enabled for phones as well. Yesterday an official Android engineer took to Reddit to explain the reasoning behind the limitation.

"...it is not at all clear how it should work on a phone, specifically with respect to SMS and phone calls," writes Dan Morrill, Google Engineer and a regular on the popular /r/Android subreddit.

• Here's What Didn't Make It Into Tonight's ICS Demo - Encryption, Disabling Apps, And More
• Rovio Mobile And 20th Century Fox Are After Your Productivity Once Again With Angry Birds Rio
• Bug In Angry Birds Lets You Unlock All Locked Worlds
• Android 4.3 Feature Focus: Multi-User With Restricted Profiles

Google Engineer Explains Why Multi-User Isn't Enabled For Phones, Offers Hope For Future Functionality was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The ability to add a second user profile was added to tablets in Android 4.2, and it's gained even more granular functionality in Android 4.3 with the addition of "restricted profiles." In a nutshell, this lets you choose which applications that restricted user can use.

It's not quite a full-functioned kids mode, and there still are a couple things to watch out for. But for basic account compartmentalization, it works pretty well.

Let's dive into it and show how to use the new "restricted profile" feature in Android 4.3.

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Google is building a mobile translator that will one day make traveling around the world a breeze. Hugo Barra, Google vice president of product management for Android, revealed that the company is in the early stages of developing a “real time” translation tool, The Times reported. He noted that his team has created "tons of prototypes," adding that he plays with the device "every other week to see how much progress we’ve made.” While the technology may be a few years away, the executive said the system is “near-perfect for certain language pairs”, such as English and Portuguese,  and has “close to 100% accuracy” in a room with no added noise. Poor microphones or noisy environments, however, are still proving troublesome. Bara hopes to one day integrate the system with the company's Google Now service on mobile devices.

Beams of light are usually speeding along at around 186,000 miles per second, but for one minute, researchers in Germany brought some to a screeching halt. Using a crystal frozen to temperatures below negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit, a research team managed to hold light in place for a full minute — marking a drastic increase from the previous record of just 16 seconds. The technology will eventually be applied to quantum computing as a way to retrieve and read data, but it'll have to work on a much smaller scale and for much longer periods of time before that can happen.

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In an effort to provide its users with a more personalized experience, Pinterest says it will be "trying out" some new features in the coming weeks. "We want you to feel like Pinterest is really yours," writes software engineer Ke Chen, who says the new tools are designed to help you "see more pins you love, and fewer you don’t." For instance, Pinterest will now — with a user's permission — suggest pins and boards based on web browsing history. Visiting websites that display a "Pin It" button will influence what shows up in your home feed. One example of how this works is found at Pinterest's help center: "If you visited a bunch of cooking websites recently, we might show you more recipe pins, or show you other stuff that people...

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Google's new Nexus 7 tablet wasn't supposed to go on sale until July 30th, but its retail partners apparently had other ideas in mind — Best Buy, Amazon, GameStop, and Walmart all made the tablet available today. Now that the cat's out of the bag, Google has decided to do the same and officially put the Nexus 7 on sale. The company announced the early on sale date via Twitter; you can go place an order now through Google Play if you haven't already picked up the tablet through the aforementioned retailers. This time around, Google's offering free ground shipping — a nice change after the Nexus 4 came with relatively expensive shipping costs. If you want it ASAP, you can pay $13.99 to have it arrive two days after shipments begin on...

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Jane Austen will appear on a new issue of the English £10 note, a welcome break in the sausage-fest that presently constitutes our specie. The new Bank of England governor Mark Carney -- a Canadian, from a country where the money is staunchly blokey -- confirmed the change after the outgoing governor Mervyn King let it slip.

"Jane Austen certainly merits a place in the select group of historical figures to appear on our banknotes. Her novels have an enduring and universal appeal and she is recognised as one of the greatest writers in English literature," the new governor said.

He also announced that the Bank would carry out a review of the process for selecting the historical figures who appear on banknotes, to ensure that a diverse range of figures is represented.

"We believe that our notes should celebrate the full diversity of great British historical figures and their contributions in a wide range of fields. The Bank is committed to that objective, and we want people to have confidence in our commitment to diversity. That is why I am today announcing a review of the selection process for future banknote characters," Carney said. The review will be overseen by the chief cashier Chris Salmon, whose signature appears on banknotes.

What an amazing turn of events. The only thing that would make this better is more women on the money -- I look forward to the Ada Lovelace fiver and the Emmeline Pankhurst 20.

Jane Austen to appear on £10 note [Katie Allen and Heather Stewart/The Guardian]

Fabio Di Donato made this gorgeous video from photos of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft between 2004 and 2012. "Around Saturn"

When I was growing up, my family had a single screen we huddled around every day: the television set in the living room. Nowadays, we “huddle” around multiple screens—laptops, smartphones and tablets—using them almost interchangeably as we navigate through our day. In a world of ubiquitous computing, life would be a lot simpler if we didn’t have to learn new behaviors and interfaces each time we switched screens—if we could have one consistent, intuitive experience no matter where we are or what we’re doing. Today, with the launch of Chromecast and the new Nexus 7 tablet, it’s even more effortless to enjoy content you care about—whether it’s video, music, movies, games—wherever you are, across your devices.

Introducing Chromecast
To help make it easy to bring your favorite online entertainment to the biggest screen in your house—the TV—we’re introducing Chromecast. Chromecast is a small and affordable ($35) device that you simply plug in to your high-definition (HD) TV and it allows you to use your phone, tablet or laptop to "cast" online content to your TV screen. It works with Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, and Google Play Music, with more apps like Pandora coming soon. With Chromecast, we wanted to create an easy solution that works for everyone, for every TV in the house.

Remote-free
Once your Chromecast is set up, you can use your phone, tablet or laptop to browse and cast content to your TV, play and pause, control the volume, and more. But unlike other streaming solutions, you can still multitask—send emails or surf the web—while enjoying what’s on the TV screen. It works across platforms—Android tablets and smartphones, iPhones, iPads, Chrome for Mac and Windows (more to come), so your personal device is also now your remote control.

Cast the web to your TV
In addition to apps like Netflix, you can use Chromecast to bring a broad range of content available on the web to your big screen, thanks to a new feature in the Chrome browser that allows you to project any browser tab to your TV. From sharing your family photos to enjoying a video clip from your favorite news site, it’s as simple as pressing a button. This feature is launching in beta, but we’re excited for people to try it out and give us their feedback.

Google Cast SDK preview for developers
To ensure a great Chromecast experience over time, we've built Google Cast, a technology that enables developers to build consistent, intuitive multi-screen experiences across mobile devices and TVs. Today, we’re launching a preview version of Google Cast with more information for developers on our Google Developers blog. A handful of early developers are already working on enabling Google Cast technology in their apps, so more supported apps are coming soon. And while the Chromecast device is the first instantiation of Google Cast, we expect the technology to be embedded in a range of hardware from our partners in the future.
The new Nexus 7—the sharpest 7” tablet screen ever
Together with ASUS, we took what you loved about the original Nexus 7 and made it even better. The first thing you’ll notice is the sharpness of the screen: the 323 pixels packed into every inch of the screen makes it the world's highest-resolution 7-inch tablet. It’s lighter than ever, with more than nine hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of web browsing or reading. Nexus 7 now features stereo speakers and virtual surround sound from Fraunhofer (the inventors of the MP3 format), giving you rich and immersive audio.

Android 4.3—a sweeter Jelly Bean
Nexus 7 is the first device to ship with Android 4.3, the newest version of Android. Tablets are perfect for sharing with others, so in Android 4.3, we're introducing restricted profiles, which let you limit access to apps and content. For example, restricted profiles enable parental controls, so certain family members are prevented from accessing mature content. Likewise, retail stores can use tablets to show off product information, and shops can use tablets as point of sale systems. Android 4.3 also now supports Bluetooth Smart technology, opening the door to mobile apps that connect to new devices like fitness sensors. Android 4.3 is rolling out to Nexus devices starting today.

Ready to Play
The new Google Play Games app brings your friends together with the games you love, where you can invite a friend and start challenging gamers around the world, compete for top achievements, and race to the top of the leaderboard. You can also enjoy the world’s largest collection of eBooks, listen to millions of music tracks and immerse yourself in thousands of movies, TV shows, magazines and apps on Google Play. Plus, Nexus 7 comes loaded with your favorite Google apps, like Chrome, Maps, YouTube, Gmail and Google Now.

How to get Chromecast and the new Nexus 7
Starting today, the Chromecast device is available for $35 on Google Play, Amazon.com and BestBuy.com. It will be available in Best Buy stores across the U.S. starting July 28. For a limited time, you also get three months of Netflix included. More info available in Google Play.

Nexus 7 starts at $229, and is available in the U.S. beginning July 30 (with more countries coming soon!). Buy Nexus 7 online on Google Play, or check it out at Best Buy, Gamestop, Walmart, Staples, Office Max, Office Depot, Amazon, Home Shopping Network, Radio Shack, J&R and B&H Photo. Nexus 7 (LTE) is coming soon with support for T-Mobile and Verizon in the coming weeks. Learn more on our Nexus site.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Android, Chrome & Apps

British Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed the democratized world’s most aggressive anti-porn laws. Unfortunately, in order to restrict access to something as ubiquitous as porn, he’ll likely have to block most of the Internet.

To protect “children and their innocence,” Cameron has proposed new regulations that will filter online porn by default and completely exclude blacklisted terms from search engines. While details are still scant, all new Wi-Fi routers will automatically filter porn, and millions of existing Internet users will have to opt-in through some type of online consent form to access adult material.

Various Internet and child-protection groups have argued that the ban will not disrupt the secret file-sharing networks of pedophiles, or the cultural factors that enable the worst forms of illicit pornography. But the most glaring issue is just how broad censors must be to completely block out something as ubiquitous as porn.

As a happy accident, my Mac broke this week, and I only have access to a stripped-down Safari Internet browser in Apple’s recovery mode. By default, Apple’s strictest parental controls were enabled, and I’ve found myself blocked off from most of the Internet. Here are a few things I can’t search for on Bing.

BLOCKED: “Child Pornography Prevention Programs”
BLOCKED: “Rick Santorum”
BLOCKED: “Weiner Sex Scandal”
BLOCKED: “TechCrunch.com”
BLOCKED: “Dick Costolo” (CEO of Twitter)
BLOCKED: “Jefferson sex with slaves”
BLOCKED: “Tumblr’s porn problem”
BLOCKED: “Sexual reconstructive surgery”
BLOCKED: “How to tell my boyfriend I don’t want to have sex”
BLOCKED: “How to put on a condom”
BLOCKED: “Pussy Riot”
BLOCKED: “Adult Film Industry and expansion of broadband“

Yep, that’s right, Apple blocks this website probably because we occasionally use curse words and have written about sexual issues. It also blocks out Russia’s fiery dissidents, Pussy Riot, scrubs America’s unsavory history, and would effectively block anyone from learning about the CEO of Twitter or a handful of candidates for higher office.

Cameron seems aware of the problem and has hinted at a solution that prompts users for safer alternatives. A query like “child sex” would prompt a pop-up like “Did you mean child sex education?”

The problem with this approach is that the world isn’t PG-13. Politics, business, and personal health regularly intersect with adult issues. The (very) savvy engineers at Apple have already discovered that you have to apply a tourniquet to the First Amendment to effectively block children from seeing naughty pictures.

In fact, I couldn’t even search for the story about Cameron wanting to block porn. I only accessed it because it was on the front page of Google News. Under Cameron’s Internet, I’ll have great difficulty reading about his own policies after it fades from the front pages.

Even if citizens feel comfortable opting in to a porn-friendly Internet in their own homes, they’d still be blocked from airport Wi-Fi, city Wi-Fi and public libraries.

I’m sympathetic to Cameron’s concerns. Porn is not society’s proudest creation. But this has to be the dumbest Internet policy I’ve ever heard of. And I read about this stuff for a living.

PayPal is widely known for their aggressive stance towards BitTorrent sites, Usenet providers and file-hosting services, but a new development suggests that VPN providers can suffer the same fate too.

PayPal has stopped providing payment services to the Swedish based VPN provider iPredator. In addition, all the organization’s funds have been frozen. iPredator is commonly known as the “Pirate Bay” VPN as it was launched by the old Pirate Bay crew in 2009, but it’s currently operated by an independent non-profit foundation.

Ipredator and Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde informs TorrentFreak that this disconnection came without prior warning and with no explanation from PayPal as to why the organization is no longer allowed to accept payments. PayPal simply stated that there is “an issue with the account.”

For Sunde and his team the disconnection comes at an unfortunate time. Just three weeks ago iPredator was also kicked out by its credit card payment processor Payson, who changed their terms of services and disallowed VPNs. Sunde believes that the two incidents are related.

“It’s not a coincidence that we are banned from Payson, and then PayPal a few weeks after,” he told TorrentFreak.

The iPredator team has tried to contact PayPal to get more information on the reason for the disconnection, but thus far without luck. The VPN provider still has to find a replacement for Payson as well, but to date have been unsuccessful.

Worryingly, one large European payment processor informed iPredator that they have been put on a blacklist of services that are not allowed to accept credit card payments.

“One processor we talked with, to replace Payson, told us that we were on a blacklist of services that are prohibited to accept credit cards. This apparently happened shortly after Payson announced it could no longer process MasterCard and Visa payments for VPN providers,” Sunde explains.

TorrentFreak has asked both MasterCard and Visa about the claims of an operational blacklist, but both companies denied one exists. However, Sunde believes that they are covering something up.

“It’s a sad day for democracy when third parties interfere with legal business, and then lie about it. This is typically something we hope someone leaks so we can see what they are morally censoring,” he adds.

Mastercard’s Senior Vice President of External Communications, Andrew Bowins, further said that they have no policy to ban VPN services, but that they occasionally disconnect merchants who violate their terms.

“We don’t currently have a policy that unilaterally prohibits VPNs or anonymizers. That said, in order to protect the integrity of the payment system and its participants, we do review merchants to determine whether their models are in compliance with our rules,” Bowins told TorrentFreak.

Neither MasterCard nor Visa could confirm that iPredator was allowed to process credit card payments. Several other payment processors and acquiring banks we contacted regarding the matter did not reply, and PayPal has offered no explanation for their decision either.

For Sunde and the rest of the iPredator team it’s this vagueness and lack of transparency that’s most frustrating. If they are for some reason banned, they would like to know on what grounds.

“If someone SAYS what it is, we can at least argue about it. With the enormous power they have accumulated, they are required to offer some transparency and responsibility,” Sunde tells us.

Without a response from PayPal we can only guess why iPredator is banned. Perhaps it’s their affiliation with the Pirate Bay, the fact that they operate a proxy, or because VPNs are starting to become tricky business. Truth is, we just don’t know.

Meanwhile, iPredator is now forced to go to the “dark corners” of the internet to find payment providers who are still willing to work with them. The VPN provider still has a few payment options left, including Bitcoin, and they hope that the public are willing to support them in during these tough times.

Source: PayPal Cuts Off “Pirate Bay” VPN iPredator, Freezes Assets

http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/07/25/agents-of-shield-character-profile-agent-melinda-may

The third character promo.

Keanu goes samurai

Well, this was hardly a surprise. Given that we saw the first character posters for Universal’s long-delayed samurai film 47 Ronin yesterday, the arrival of the trailer was all but foretold. So it was written, so it has come to pass via Apple.

Based – with plenty of mystical embellishment – on a true Japanese story, 47 Ronin finds a group of warriors in disarray.

After a treacherous warlord kills their master and banishes their kind, 47 leaderless samurai vow to seek vengeance and restore honour to their people. Driven from their homes and dispersed across the land, this band of Ronin must seek the help of Kai (Reeves), a half-breed they once rejected, as they fight their way across a savage world of mythic beasts, shape-shifting witchcraft and wondrous terrors.

As this exiled, enslaved outcast becomes their most deadly weapon, he will transform into the hero who inspires the band of outnumbered rebels to seize eternity.

This one has suffered through real production challenges, including talk of re-edited cuts and clashes between first-time director Carl Rinsch and executives. The result appears to be a mash-up of Crouching Tiger with 300, which certainly seems intriguing, even if the proof will be in the execution. A few lines seem ripped straight from the Basic Book Of Action Chat, but there’s enough here to pique our interest. And that includes Rinko Kikuchi apparently turning into the sort of dragon creature she’d ironically be perfect to fight at the controls of a Pacific Rim Jaeger…

47 Ronin is out on December 26.

Michael Sheen, Tim Blake Nelson & more aboard

As it sauntered through development, Jeremy Renner’s next film, true-life journalism tale Kill The Messenger, dribbled out casting announcements with Rosemarie DeWitt, Paz Vegas and Michael Kenneth Williams all aboard. The press release about director Michael Cuesta kicking off production brings a flood of new names, including Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Sheen, Andy Garcia, Tim Blake Nelson, Robert Patrick, Barry Pepper and Oliver Platt.

Written by Peter Landesman, Kill The Messenger chronicles the tragic true story of investigative journalist Gary Webb. Working at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb uncovered evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the spread of cocaine in Los Angeles. The stories tied the Agency to a scheme that funded Contra rebels in Nicaragua via the drug trade. 

His three-part series, called Dark Alliance, hit newsstands in 1996, which led to a long, vicious smear campaign and Webb’s suicide in 2004.

“The story of Gary Webb, and the story he broke, is at once thrilling, emotional, and relevant to all of us in ‘the information age,’” says producer / Focus Features CEO James Schamus in a statement. “Our team of filmmakers has been tireless in working to get this movie made, and we know that audiences will empathize with Jeremy’s compassionate portrayal of a man who did the right thing at great personal and professional cost.”

Shooting has now started in Atlanta, and the film will arrive next year.

A new Nexus 7 to provide another year of great Android tablet experiences

It's been a year since the release of the original Nexus 7, and following up on the undeniable success of the device Google has released a new tablet by the same name with a completely new look and feel. Our full in-depth review of the new Nexus 7 is under way, but we just couldn't hold back our excitement and need to share some of our initial thoughts on the device.

Hang with us after the break for an in-depth video look at the new Nexus 7 now that we've had a little time to give it a proper once-over. If after watching you still have some burning questions about the tablet, be sure to ask us in the forums!

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Prices to start at £199.99 for 16GB, £239.99 for 32GB

Update: Ebuyer is now listing the new Nexus 7 for pre-order too, with availability expected for Aug. 29. That's a couple weeks before Dixons' stock date, but still a good month beyond the U.S. launch window.

Original story: The new Nexus 7 tablet might be hitting the U.S. before the end of July, but consumers in the UK could be in for a substantially longer wait if a couple of major retailers are to be believed. Currys and PC World, both parts of the Dixons group, are listing the 16 and 32-gigabyte versions of the tablet for pre-order, priced at £199.99 and £239.99 respectively. But the tablets are listed with an availability date of Sep. 13, some six weeks after the U.S. launch.

While pre-order dates are subject to change, Currys and PC World were retail launch partners for the 2012 Nexus 7, so there's a good chance they aren't just pulling this date out of thin air. There's also no sign of the European 4G Nexus 7, so UK buyers wanting to take advantage of LTE data on the new tablet could be in for an even longer wait.

We've heard nothing specific about international availability from Google, and at yesterday's launch event the company told attendees that other countries would be getting the tablet "in the coming weeks." The UK was named as one of the first wave of countries to get the new tablet following the U.S. launch, along with Germany, South Korea, Japan, Spain, Canada, France and Australia.

Meanwhile the UK Google Play Store continues to list last year's Nexus 7, with prices starting at £159 for 16GB + Wifi.

Source: Currys, PC World

And, if you're cool like that, you could even watch it on your new Chromecast. (Or in the all-new Android Central app!)

Back in June, the Independent broke a huge story about a scandal whereby the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency sat on evidence of widespread use of phone-hacking and other dirty tricks by rich people, top-flight law-firms, telecoms companies and blue-chip firms.

Today, they've published an update: the list of companies that routinely engaged in criminal behavior is longer than earlier thought -- including pharma companies and many others -- and what's more, SOCA hid this information from the Metropolitan Police force, effectively insulating these top firms and toffs from any consequence for their criminality.

Following weeks of damaging revelations in The Independent, Soca finally bowed to political pressure earlier this week and privately released to MPs the historical details which its investigators ignored for years.

However, the agency has classified the material as secret to safeguard individuals’ human rights and protect the “financial viability of major organisations by tainting them with public association with criminality”...

...Illegal practices identified by Soca investigators went well beyond the relatively simple crime of voicemail hacking and also included police corruption, computer hacking and perverting the course of justice.

Meanwhile, in an extraordinary joint admission on the Soca website, Mr Pearce and Commander Neil Basu of the Metropolitan Police admit the agency sat for years on evidence of criminality, until it was finally forced to act in May 2011 by former British Army intelligence officer Ian Hurst whose computer was allegedly hacked by corrupt private investigators.

Exclusive: 'Bigger than phone hacking' - Soca sat on blue-chip dirty tricks evidence for years [Tom Harper/The Independent]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

Following a second quarter that saw slower-than-expected subscriber growth, Netflix’s letter to shareholders touted the progress that the company has made in original content and its future plans. Perhaps most interesting is its intention to expand beyond TV shows to stand-up comedies and feature-length documentaries.

That’s not entirely new information — Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos had already stated his plans to expand into comedy in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. And it already streams John Hodgman’s comedy special Ragnarok exclusively. However, as far as I can tell, the company hadn’t previously mentioned its documentary plans.

“Netflix has become a big destination for fans of these much loved and often under-distributed genres,” the letter states. I’m guessing that Netflix can also produce this content at a relatively low cost.

As for its other content plans, the company also noted that it has renewed every single one of its first-season shows (Lilyhammer, House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, and Orange is the New Black) for a second season, and that it would “be delighted to produce a fifth season of Arrested Development, if possible, given fan reaction.”

It says all of its shows have “engaged large audiences across our markets,” though as before it didn’t didn’t release any specific viewer numbers. It did attribute part of the current quarter’s growth (600,000 new subscribers) to Arrested Development, which it said brought “a small but noticeable bump in membership” when it was released. That’s less likely to happen to entirely new shows because they’re less established.

Overall, Netflix says original programming accounts for 5 percent of its $3 billion in total amortized content costs.

Oh, and for those of you interested in the previously announced profiles feature, which is supposed to allow different people in a household to use a single account with less pain, Netflix says it still plans to roll it out this quarter.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that an adaptation of 1995's 12 Monkeys, the beloved post-apocalyptic film starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt, is likely headed to the Syfy network. The new series will reportedly start with a 90-minute backdoor pilot, similar to Syfy's Battlestar Galactica, which is said to be followed by an initial season of eight to ten episodes. 12 Monkeys' original producers Chuck Roven and Richard Suckle reportedly submitted the pitch to the network, and 24's Jon Cassar will be tapped to direct the series.

Beyond that, it's still early days for the show, and casting has not yet been announced. Syfy president of original programming Mark Stern told The Hollywood Reporter that the team has a "great pilot" but...

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When you hear the unexpected knock of a police officer on your door, you may not think about the fake ID you purchased a couple of years ago. But it turns out that the Secret Service built a tiny empire selling high quality fake IDs on the underground Carder.su forums, slowly amassing a collection of buyers' addresses and headshots. According to Wired, targets were oblivious to the sting for years, free to go about their lives without charge until the government swooped in and executed a large series of arrests. The operation was highly successful, capturing more than 20 sellers and buyers on the Carder.su forums and successfully shutting down the marketplace. None of the defendants' lawyers have mentioned the Secret Service-run...

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Samsung's Galaxy Note wasn't the first smartphone to feature a massive display, but it was certainly the first to popularize the new "phablet" category. The second-generation model improved upon the first's design in just about every way imaginable — except for build quality, as we noted in our Galaxy Note II review — and as such, we have high hopes for the third version, which is reportedly set to debut in early September. The Galaxy Note III's design is still something of a mystery but gadget blog Techkiddy, which has had a few solid scoops in the past, on Monday published images of what it claims to be a prototype of Samsung's next-generation phablet.

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