Author: Serkadis

As the world remains fixated on the financial problems of Greece, Nouriel Roubini warns that Spain is actually a far larger and deadly financial time bomb.

The Spanish economy is so enormous relative to Greece that a major financial crisis there would easily destroy the euro currency union:

Irish Independent: “Down the line — not this year or two years from now — we could have a break-up of the monetary union. It’s a rising risk,” he said. “The eurozone could drift, essentially with a bifurcation, with a strong centre and a weaker periphery, and eventually some countries might exit the monetary union,” he warned.

For all the focus on Greece, however, he also said that Spain may eventually pose an even bigger threat to the eurozone because it is the region’s fourth-largest economy and has higher unemployment and weaker banks. “If Greece goes under, that’s a problem for the eurozone. If Spain goes under, it’s a disaster,” he said.

If Roubini’s warning is true, it would mean that a Greek backstop by Europe solves nothing. The euro as a currency would still have massive threats ahead regardless. Read more here >

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See Also:

• Greece Once Again Denies It Needs A Bailout Even As China Refuses To Buy Debt And CDS Prices Soar
• EU Privately Freaking Out About Greece And The PIIGS Breaking Apart The Union
• Demand For Greek Debt Jumps 1000% After Government Adds Just 0.3% Yield

The Google Books controversy is stirring up again as the deadline for submitting objections to the revised settlement proposed by Google and the book author and publisher groups passed yesterday. While people had been critical of the updated version of the settlement, its fiercest opponent, at least judging by the big name… (read more)

Paul Krugman trashes the “deficit peacocks” like President Obama who pretend to care about the mountain of debt we’re building up without actually doing anything about it. 

The LAST thing we want to do right now, Krugman says, is cut spending, because it’s the only thing keeping us out of depression.  But we do need a plan to increase spending now and cut it sharply later…and that’s what our government is incapable of providing.

From the NYT:

The nature of America’s troubles is easy to state. We’re in the aftermath of a severe financial crisis, which has led to mass job destruction. The only thing that’s keeping us from sliding into a second Great Depression is deficit spending. And right now we need more of that deficit spending because millions of American lives are being blighted by high unemployment, and the government should be doing everything it can to bring unemployment down.

In the long run, however, even the U.S. government has to pay its way. And the long-run budget outlook was dire even before the recent surge in the deficit, mainly because of inexorably rising health care costs. Looking ahead, we’re going to have to find a way to run smaller, not larger, deficits.

How can this apparent conflict between short-run needs and long-run responsibilities be resolved? Intellectually, it’s not hard at all. We should combine actions that create jobs now with other actions that will reduce deficits later.

Read the whole thing at the NYT >

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See Also:

• Paul Krugman Finally Comes Through With An Incredibly Tepid Endorsement Of Bernanke
• Paul Krugman: "I’m Pretty Close To Giving Up On Obama"
• Obama’s Mistake: He Hasn’t Made It Clear That Everything Is Bush’s Fault

David Spade is developing an animated version of his 2001 box office bomb Joe Dirt for TBS….

“David Spade is a hugely popular comic talent who has created a funny yet loveable character in Joe Dirt,” said Michael Wright of TBS. “We look forward to seeing how he and his fellow writers and producers take this character in new directions as TBS continues exploring the world of primetime animation.”

If you’re having trouble convincing your partner to have sex, tell her it’s good for your heart. A new study found that men who have sex at least twice a week can cut their risk of a heart attack nearly in half.

The study looked at the sexual habits of more than 1,000 men and found that sex has a protective effect on the heart.

The study, conducted by the New England Research Institute in Massachusetts found that guys who have sex regularly are up to 45 percent less likely to develop heart disease than men who have sex once a month or less.

Researchers who conducted the study say that physicians should ask men about their sexual activity when assessing their risk of a heart attack. Scientists believe that sex has positive physical and emotional impact on both men’s bodies. Um, yeah, I’m pretty sure it does – thanks scientists.

An earlier study by the National Cancer Institute found that men who ejaculated at least five times a week – either through sex or masturbation – significantly lowered their risk of prostate cancer.

The New England Research Institute study only tested men, so it is not known if similar beneficial effects of sex will be found for women. One can only hope.

photo credit: Zawezome

Related posts:

1. Can Grating Cheese Lower Your Heart Risk?
2. Get Fit in Just Six Minutes a Week
3. Study: Half of Women Prefer Drunk Sex

 

Courtesy PandaLabs
 

Turning hijacked computers into cash is still hard work for most computer criminals.  They've got to trick the infected PC into sending spam, then trick a recipient into buying a useless product — or they have to steal online banking passwords, log onto a victim’s account, bypass the bank’s money transfer fraud controls, and so on.

It's much easier to just demand cash directly from infected users — a crime that's the Internet's equivalent of kidnapping. 

"Give me all your money or your computer gets it-" is the basic proposition. 

The technique was dubbed "ransomware" many years ago by computer virus researchers, and is not new.  What is new is the explosion of ransomware, thanks to the evolution of ever-more-believable tactics during recent months.

In December, the FBI issued a warning about a broader category of malicious programs called "rogueware.” These programs appear on users' machines and claim to find viruses, then offer to clean them for $50.  Rogueware looks so realistic — complete with Windows-like dialog boxes and scary warnings — that Web users were tricked into sending $150 million to criminals last year, the FBI says.

The new ransomware is similar, but far more aggressive.  Once a computer is infected with it, the program does more than recommend a software purchase –it simply won't let users continue to use their PC until they pay up.

Luis Corrons Granel, a researcher at Panda Security, said use of ransomware by criminals is exploding — 25 percent of all rogueware in the past quarter involved a family of intimidating products named "TotalAntivirus.” It demands that users pay $50 for two years, $79 for a lifetime license.

“The increase (in ransomware) has been really significant,” Granel said. A single family of ransomware programs called “Total Security” made up one-quarter of all rogueware programs detected during the past three months, he said.

To an average user, most rogueware would be indistinguishable from other standard antivirus products.  They look like fully functional software, showing Windows-like screens for firewall settings, file scanning, and every other tab you'd expect from standard antivirus products. “Total Security” even lets users choose their language — English, Spanish, and German are offered.

The switch to ransomware by the bad guys makes sense, says Peter Cassidy, spokesman for the Anti-Phishing Working Group — because computer criminals are refining their programming methods, and getting more aggressive about taking people's money.

See ransomware in action with this video from PandaLabs.

"Instead of trying to fool people and getting one out of 1,000 to pay, what they're doing now is just locking up the PC and telling them they have to pay," he said.  "It's a really violent approach, really nasty."

There might be one silver lining to the rise of ransomware, Cassidy said. 

"It's not in that gray area of selling people useless crap," he said.  “It’s clearly criminal, and extortion does get the attention of law enforcement officials.”

As is customary, computer criminals are fusing this new attack with successful, older methods, said John Harrison, a security researcher at Symantec Corp. In one recent example, criminals first engaged in search engine "poisoning," so their booby-trapped Web sites would rate high in Google searches about Haiti’s earthquake. Visitors who clicked were tricked into downloading the ransomware software; and then were confronted with extortion demands.

"That's their distribution model," Harrison said -. "They used to do it subtly, but now they are doing it much more brazenly."

 

Screen capture provided by PandaLabs.

In some versions, users will see a message that says, "Google recommends you install this," or "Microsoft recommends you turn this feature on- … then, they take over your computer and all of a sudden it looks like you have 900 viruses," he said. 

The latest flavor of ransomware, described on Jan. 8 by security firm F-Secure, doesn't disable all software, but it does something just as debilitating — it encrypts all the files on a victim's computer, and forces them to pay for decryption.  The program, which calls itself Data Doctor 2010, costs $89.

RED TAPE WRESTLING TIPS
In some cases, researchers say, paying the ransom does work, at least initially. Still, it's a terrible idea to pay. On a grand scale, you've just subsidized a criminal. But there are far more practical concerns — why would you trust the author of ransomware with your credit card number?  Perhaps you think you'd never do this, but remember, the FBI says rogueware writers have made $150 million, so someone is paying up.

If an unexpected antivirus dialog box lands on your computer screen, close the window immediately by clicking on the 'x' in the upper-right hand corner.  Don't use the "OK/Cancel" buttons in the window — criminals often reprogram these.

You may or may not be infected anyway — it's possible you are already the victim of a "drive-by download" that doesn't require user interaction. So run an antivirus scan, if you can.

If the rogue software has actually taken over your computer, physically disconnect it from the Internet to avoid having your personal information sent back to the criminal. Then go to a different computer to search for solutions. Type in the name of the rogue software and search for information on well-known antivirus Web sites. Many antivirus firms offer free cleaners you can download or place onto a USB memory stick, and run on your infected computer.

But maintain healthy suspicion at all times. Ransomware authors have gone so far as to create fake software reviews about their products and place them around the Internet, even stealing logos from reputable technology publications, says Harrison.

"The idea is you search for information about the program and this turns up, and you figure it's ok so you install it," he said.  "Some of this is soft sell, some is very hard sell."
As always, it’s never a good idea to follow links in e-mails when heading to Web sites – it takes an extra moment, but always click into your browser’s address bar and manually type the address.

 Become a Red Tape Chronicles Facebook fan or follow me at http://twitter.com/RedTapeChron

Czech Republic’s car manufacturer Skoda has recently confirmed that their 2010 programme in the International Rally Challenge will certainly include the two South American rounds of Brazil and Argentina.

According to Skoda’s spokesperson Karel Pokorny, the Skoda factory team plans to send both cars for these two events, to be driven by Juho Hanninen and Jan Kopecky respectively. However, the announcement did not include the Czech manufacturer’s programme for the entire 2010 IRC campaign, but … (read more)

Earlier this week, BoomTown dispatched All Things Digital intrepid intern Drake Martinet to the campus of Stanford University–located in the heart of Silicon Valley and where he is a student–right after Apple launched its new iPad tablet computer.

His mission: To find out if fellow students at the famous institution of higher learning–presumably one of the big consumer targets for Apple (AAPL)–were going to go out and get the mobile, multimedia device asap.

While there were no dopey jokes about the iPad name, it turned out: Not so much.

Here’s the video:

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Italian chips producer PATA is title sponsor of the Borciani and Guandolini Racing team for the 2010 Superbike World Championship. The team signed up Jakub Smrz to compete on the two Ducati 1098 machines. The Czech rider finished tenth in the overall standings last year, stepping onto the podium at Assen and setting pole and fastest lap at Misano.

"We are honoured that the Gobbi family, the owners of PATA, have decided to sponsor our project, and become title sponsor, Marco Borciani said… (read more)

The device you are about to read here is perhaps just what Japanese carmaker Toyota needs to put the brakes on its out-of-control recall. What Toyota and the police need, that is. All you movie-savvy, sci-fi freaks out there know by now what an EMP, or electromagnetic pulse is: a burst of magnetic energy, usually the result of an explosion of a nuclear nature.

Although under study within military labs for years now, EMPs are still out of reach for civilian use. That was until Eureka Aerospac… (read more)

By Drake Martinet, Intern, All Things Digital

A feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative startups you should know about.

This week: We we had a Skype visit with, asked some questions of and gathered a few pertinent stats about Leslie Fine and Crowdcast, an uber-geeky business intelligence tool that helps decision makers tap into the collective knowledge of employees.

In other words: No one person knows the future, but all of us together might.

Who: Leslie Fine

What: Chief Scientist, Crowdcast

Why: Crowdcast blends ex-Caltech statistical analysis chops with a simple wagering interface to create a game played amongst employees. At its most basic, it provides a way for businesses to download all the experience and knowledge stored in their employees about an arena or pending decision.

Where: crowdcast.com (Web site); @lesliefine (Twitter); San Francisco (analog place)

Who else: Inkling also provides predictive tools, but isn’t as consulting-oriented.

---

Five Stats You Won’t Find in Her Facebook Profile

When Did You Catch the Geek Bug?: When I was at Caltech, my adviser, John Ledyard, was amazing at making very complex analysis problems very folksy. He was very good at telling stories.

Has a Geek Crush On: Are dead people okay? If so, his name is Leo Hurwicz, he won the Nobel Prize in mechanism design a few years ago.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?: I have to grow up?

Wishes There Was an App for: Oh yeah, it’s actually my Plan B. I call it Seat Sniper. You tell it about your seating preferences (window, front, exit row) and in the 72 hours before a flight when seats are moving around, it continually pings the airlines Web site to see if there are any maximizing moves to me made. Then, it does it for you.

Fails At: I’m terrible at delegating, and that’s something I am having to learn here.

---

Bio in 140 Characters

Wesleyan, then to CalTech. She joined HP Labs; wasn’t ready to retire. Became chief scientist for Crowdcast, so she could tell the future.

---

The Five Questions

Crowdcast seems super technical. Break it down for us.

Crowdcast is an enterprise software platform that helps companies make better forecasts by tapping the knowledge stored in their employees. People you hire are the best informed to help businesses understand their own targets. For lack of a better term, we ask them to place bets on things that we then tie back to real incentives when bets are made accurately. The software plays like a stock market or betting game. It is like duck on a pond. It seems simple on top, but underneath there are lots of moving parts at work.

What kinds of questions are you good at answering?

We spent a lot of time in our first year as a new company debating that because prediction markets can, in theory, solve any kind of problem. Where we’ve seen the most traction are in a couple areas.

Questions whose outcomes will be knowable in three months to a year and where there are very dispersed knowledge in your organization tend to do well. An example would be bringing a new product to market, where there are many silos involved and lots of funky incentives. We nail questions like, “When will it (a new product) come out?” “How good will it be?” And, “How much will it cost to do so?”

How do you handle outliers? They might be telling you something you need to know, and they might just be way off.

Yeah, that’s a good question. We pay close attention to game players whose predictions are one standard deviation or more away from the average guess. They get a little light box pop up that asks them why they’ve bid that way, so that we can gather any potential special intelligence.

What’s your ah-ha technology moment, when you realized you were living in the future?

We had this little app at HP Labs called Zoomgraph, this is in 2000, that could look at all the data flows in your computer.

There’s like a million free Facebook apps that do that today, but, in 2000, it was showing back to me, on a screen, a map of my world. It was very navel-gazing, which we did a lot of at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) Labs. It was amazing in a passive way.

You work on developing games that need to tell the future. Are you competitive about this stuff?

Ha ha. Yeah, we use our product internally to predict all kinds of stuff–some business related, some just fun. I’m very competitive with it. We keep track of points here and I think I’m 4x above the nearest competitor. I bought most of my Christmas presents with Amazon (AMZN) gift cards I won that way.

---

The In Living Color Interview

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So, una buncha de architectos have inventados a heat-resistant glue for erecciones, have they? (My real Spanish is pretty damn good, I’m just playing to the gallery, you understand.) Well, why am I not surprised it’s a Spanish invention?

Summers down in the Andalusian city of Seville are hot (but let me tell you this, it’s bleeding brass monkeys at night between November and March) and so it’s not uncommon for plazas in the center to have some form of shelter from the sun. This one above is one of the largest architectural timber structures ever built. Measuring 150 x 70 meters, Parasols, in Plaza de la Encarnación, is made of Kerto-Q (nope, me neither) polyurethane-coated timber beams. The structure is deemed unsuitable for “conventional mechanical joining methods”, whatever they may be. Ergo, glue that can withstand up to 70 degrees C of heat. The august body of cleverclogs that was charged with coming up with the sticky stuff was the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research WKI, in Germany. Phew.

Now then, what I’m about to say is by no means revenge on this little post from earlier in the month (my ex- and I are still on good terms) but architects’ glue that doesn’t melt could only have been invented in Spain. I remember going to Valencia for a long weekend about five years ago and staring, open-mouthed at the exposed brickwork in the bedroom of my (admittedly cheap and nasty) holiday villa. Every third brick had a dollop of mortar on top of it, making the wall looked like it had been mapped out using silly string and a Tim Burton-designed spirit level. I stayed out all night and slept on the beach the next day. [gizmag]

American pistonheads who enjoy the thrills of racing, or maybe just like to build their own automotive project, now have two more reasons to desire a heart transplant…for their cars, as Ford has released two new crate engines.

For the guys who had their wallet on a diet recently, the company offers a 306 cubic inches unit which delivers 340 HP and 310 lb-ft of torque, dubbed X302. This uses forged pistons and high performance aluminum heads. If that is so… why the average performance figu… (read more)

Those of you who were left wondering what will happen with one of the largest Harley-Davidson dealership chains after their owner, Bruce Rossmeyer died in July last year, should find out that three locations have been bought by Roger Penske, the owner of the automobile racing team Penske Racing, the Penske Corporation and other automotive related businesses.

According to some sources close to the matter, Penske toured the three locations in Broward County, Florida last week, meeting the staff… (read more)

It’s pretty early in the game to call the iPad a winner (or loser) but that’s not going to stop analysts and industry execs from their god-given right to bluster. AppleInsider did a nice roundup of Wall Street types predicting year one sales to be anywhere from 1 million and 5 million units with potential to grow as Apple churns out future device iterations, more content and carrier agreements, and a broader global reach of its devices and services. Paul Peng, executive VP of AU Optronics’ global business unit, the company tasked with providing the iPad’s display apparently, sees Apple selling up to 10 million units annually. Then again, AUO’s going to hype this device with all it’s got in hopes of selling additional panels to more clients.

On the surface, these numbers are pretty optimistic when you consider that Apple sells about 13.5 million Macs per year (extrapolating 3.36 million sold last quarter). Even more so when you realize that only 3 million to 4 million tablet PCs are sold annually according to Peng and Endpoint Technologies’ analyst Roger Kay. Problem is, the iPad isn’t really a tablet PC is it? As Technologizer astutely points out, “the iPad isn’t a traditional PC — it’s more of an appliance. You don’t tinker with your television; you turn it on and consume services.” By that logic, it’s not a direct competitor to the netbook or e-reader either (though the markets definitely overlap). The only thing we can say with certainty is that it is divisive and that it has captivated the attention of the entire consumer electronics industry.

Apple’s iPad to demand lion’s share of tablet PC market? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It really was just about three years ago when Apple announced the iPhone and was quickly told that Cisco actually owned the trademark on the word iPhone. A lawsuit followed, but it was quickly settled with some cash changing hands and all was good. So you would think that Apple would take care of such things in advance these days. Apparently not. mrharrysan alerts us to the news that there are a few other companies with various iPad trademarks and Fujitsu in particular is claiming it has no intention of giving its name up. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that since Fujitsu only has a pending trademark (and earlier it had been considered abandoned before the company re-opened the file). Then there’s another company called Mag-Tek that does have a trademark on iPad for PIN-entry keypads, though that might not be considered competitive at all. Still, Fujitsu is posturing about how it doesn’t want to give up the name. Apple has an application in for its own trademark and is disputing Fujitsu’s right to the trademark and chances are, once again, eventually some money will change hands and forever forward the iPad name will be Apple’s to control when it comes to tablet-like devices.

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Although several drivers were linked with Williams F1’s reserve/test driver role for the 2010 Formula One season, the job eventually went to the only one not included by the media in the rumor mill. We’re talking about Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas, whose only worth-mentioning reference to the racing fans is his programme in the Formula 3 Euro Series.

In his rookie season in the aforementioned championship, Bottas took his ART Grand Prix prepared single-seater to 3rd place in the overall cla… (read more)

After the decline of Japan’s core consumer price index accelerated to 1.2% year over year in December from 1% in November, the nations central bank has come under increased pressure to find any means possible to loosen monetary policy even further.

Reuters: Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama echoed his finance chief, Naoto Kan, in calling for BOJ cooperation, telling parliament that the government will work with the central bank to overcome falls in prices. Data showed Japan’s narrowest measure of consumer inflation fell at a record pace in December.

Kan, known as one of the most vocal cabinet critics of the BOJ, took a slightly stronger stance than Hatoyama, calling for the central bank to take a flexible approach on policy to support the economy.

“I expect the BOJ to support the economy by guiding monetary policy appropriately and flexibly, while keeping close contact with the government, in a way that is consistent with government efforts,” he said on a policy speech.

Read more here >

Yet let’s hope they don’t go overboard, because hyperinflation is a real risk for the nation despite the deflation seen today.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Kyle Bass Is So Bearish On Japan, He Financed His Home In Yen
• How Japanese Hyperinflation Could Turn The Dollar Into Toilet Paper
• Why A Hyperinflationary Fiasco Is Brewing In Japan

Just as a precaution, American manufacturer Ford and its Chinese partner, Jiangling Motors, announced the halt in production of the diesel version of the Transit Classic. The reason behind the decision is the fact that the vehicles use accelerator pedals manufactured by CTS Corp.

Ford’s decision reflects badly on CTS, who some believe to be just an innocent victim in this whole Toyota mess. Being a supplier for Toyota, Ford and other carmakers, CTS is manufacturing whatever parts they are req… (read more)

The high demand for the Qashqai crosSUVer has made Nissan launch a temporary third production shift at its manufacturing plant in Sunderland, UK. This shift was withdrawn last January due to the global economic crisis. The vehicle is expected to become more desirable in March when the upgraded version goes on sale across Europe.

The Japanese manufacturer therefore announced that a nightshift will be added to the Qashqai production line starting May and will be maintained for around six month… (read more)