Johnn Luevanos

You may recall a few years ago all the negative publicity Yahoo got after it came out that its Chinese operations handed over information on certain users that resulted in some Chinese dissidents being arrested. This resulted in some lawsuits filed in the US. However, in one such case, the court has noted that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which protects user data in such cases, doesn't apply outside the US, and since this happened entirely within China, there's not much of a case to be made about it. Either way, Yahoo recognized what a blackeye it got from the PR in these cases, and has settled some of them, and I'm guessing the company is now a lot more aware of the potential backlash in dealing with these kinds of issues. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story - Johnn Luevanos

The trailer for this starry drama about the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life does a good job of flogging the film. But then the credits start rolling. Anna Pickard cringes Christopher Plummer appears to have moved into a new phase in his career: the wacky beard phase. 2009 saw him model the matted, rugged look in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. For 2010, he's outdone himself. The Last Station is the story of a rich old man (Plummer's big-bearded Tolstoy, for that is who he's playing) who seems to be besieged by nefarious sycophants (the kind who drink a lot of black tea and hold polite intellectual debates for hours at a time in the garden). The main focus of the story seems to be on the relationship with his wife, an emotionally-fraught Helen Mirren. Here she is, emoting, reliably. And, of course, the whole thing shall be seen through the eyes of a naive, starstruck young man, brought in from outside. The kind of man that is usually played by James McAvoy. An overexcitable,... - Johnn Luevanos

There were quite a few memorable presentations during 2008's TechCrunch50 (that's the conference before last). But if you had to pick one, there's a good chance you'd think of Tonchidot, the startup behind the Sekai Camera. Tonchidot captured the audience's attention with a totally zany presentation and answered judges' questions with non sequiturs like "Look up, don’t look down!" The result was hilarious, but there were some who wondered if the technology behind the company was the real deal. Rest assured, it is. And the company has closed a $4 million series A funding round led by DCM, with existing investor ITOCHU Technology Ventures (ITV) also participating. The Sekai Camera service launched in Japan a few months ago, and has already become a national hit as the top app on the iPhone app store. The service leverages augmented reality and adds a social layer to it, allowing users to add virtual items in the real world (you hold the device up to your face as a viewfinder, then look... - Johnn Luevanos

Credit card reform kicks in Feb. 22, but it won't matter to these 5 readers. They already cut up their cards and use cash. Here's how they did it. - Johnn Luevanos

Interactive: the very best Christmas recipes from 10 years of guardian.co.uk Paddy Allen Peter Storey Alastair Dant - Johnn Luevanos

As a gay man in Uganda, Frank Mugisha is used to the taunts, the slurs and the daily harassment of neighbors and friends. - Johnn Luevanos

Stock futures posted slight gains Tuesday after transportation company FedEx (FDX) boosted its earnings estimates while oil posted slight gains. - Johnn Luevanos

McClatchy: Ad Revenue Decline Slowing - Johnn Luevanos

International M&A Activity To Drop 56%, OECD Says - Johnn Luevanos

H&R Block Shrinks Loss On 7.2% Lower Revenue - Johnn Luevanos

German Industrial Output Down 1.8% In October - Johnn Luevanos

Treasury Confirms Northern Rock Restructuring Date - Johnn Luevanos

PicScout a startup that produces image tracking technology for stock photography agencies, professional photographers and others is adding the CEO of Creative Commons, Joi Ito, to its board of advisors. PicScout originally started off as a content copyright enforcer, hunting down unlicensed images on the web with its flagship ImageIRC technology. The company also launched PicApp, a flash-based image provider that offers legally licensed images from large databases for free. The company makes money by including ads as part of the embedded picture viewer. - Johnn Luevanos

The Hijras of India. Their community, their life and dreams. - Johnn Luevanos

Chairman of the House of Commons science and technology committee has requested a 'comprehensive note' on the university's response to the allegations The university at the centre of a row over leaked emails which sceptics claim show global warming data has been manipulated has been asked to explain the incident to the committee of MPs responsible for science. The material was taken from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit before it was published on websites run by sceptics, possibly in a bid to undermine the global climate summit in Copenhagen. Phil Willis, the chairman of the House of Commons science and technology committee, has written to Professor Edward Acton, the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, requesting a "comprehensive note" setting out what had happened. The letter also calls for the university to set out the steps taken to investigate the allegations and test the integrity of the data held by the unit, how the centre can... - Johnn Luevanos

Genetic screening techniques that allow parents to choose their children's gender are now more accurate than ever and are becoming increasingly mainstream, but experts are divided over whether the technology should be used in this way. - Johnn Luevanos

Thousands of visitors flocked to a doll's house festival in London last month. What's the appeal of this curious hobby? Isabella Kaminski enters a Lilliputian world to find out In pictures: The Kensington Dollshouse Festival A long, winding queue outside Kensington town hall in London is buzzing with ordinary Saturday morning chatter. Couples, groups of women, and young families are discussing whether to splash out on a new chaise longue, invest in an antique chandelier or buy a whole new house. These domestic fantasies may be far beyond the reach of most high street shoppers, but here at the Kensington Dollshouse Festival - the leading event for miniature enthusiasts for the past 25 years - that dream home is just within reach. This year's Christmas fair has attracted around 2,000 visitors from across the UK and as far afield as Japan and Argentina. Newcomers and old hands alike, they are a mix of serious collectors and hobbyists who enjoy decorating and playing with their dolls'... - Johnn Luevanos

Don't let managers fill your mangers - spurn supermarket offerings and go retro this year Where to buy meat for Christmas - our guide to the pick of the UK's producers If you like Christmas, you probably fancy a good old-fashioned one (the good old postmodern Christmas is so over). Mince pies, wassail, rosy cheeks and Jingle Bells. But can a proper old-fashioned Christmas honestly be done by shopping at those cathedrals of the modern nativity, Tesco, and its clones? I think not. As witnessed by Tesco's most recent sales figures, Christmas and capitalist enterprise have gone hand in hand ever since the first one, but when you think of corporations that bring peace and goodwill to all men, you don't start with supermarkets. This year, as always, they are celebrating Christmas with a price war - the "most aggressive in a decade", Asda announced proudly in November. The supermarkets are the Scrooges of our time: mean, hypocritical, deceiving. However they dress it up, Sainsbury's and... - Johnn Luevanos

Children from five will be taught how to steer clear of bullies and paedophiles online Children will be taught to "zip it, block it and flag it," under a new code for internet safety to be taught in every primary school in England from the age of five. For the first time, web safety skills will be a compulsory part of the curriculum to help tackle the problem of cyber-bullying and online grooming by paedophiles. The plans, launched by the prime minister in London today, come after a major review of online safety by the child psychologist Tanya Byron, and were drawn up by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. The "zip it, block it, flag it" code is based on the green cross code. Children will be advised not to disclose personal information, to block contact from people who are bullying or harassing them, and to flag up any problems up to parents, teachers or website providers. Gordon Brown, launching the plans, said: "The internet provides our children with a world of... - Johnn Luevanos

I love the non straight lines, it makes this book case a little different: It’s also available in black at Ligne Roset (but no idea how much it is, I’m guessing quite a bit). Via The Sassy Kathy Related posts:Shelftastic: Stair-case - Johnn Luevanos

It's not easy being Nick Frost, star of Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Spaced and, er ... BBC2's Hyperdrive. Oh come on, not every sci-fi sitcom can be as good as Red Dwarf. Anyway, fab Frost is busy starring in an BBC2 adaptation of Martin Amis's Money. And he's so busy he's not even got time to tweet. Well, almost. "I'm not on tweet strike!" he tells his 55,610 followers. "I'm in every scene so I'm up at 6 home at 9. It leaves little time for anything else. Sorry." Up at 6? Home at 9? Who'd be an actor? ComedyBBCTwitterComedy Monkey guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds - Johnn Luevanos

Poole town centre bosses invested in artificial Christmas tree on safety grounds but traditionalists campaigned to remove it It was likened to everything from a witch's hat covered in artificial grass to a particularly unattractive UFO that had plonked itself in Poole town centre. Today, after an outcry against the town's £14,000 fake Christmas tree, the offending object is being replaced with a real fir. Town centre bosses had decided to invest in a pretend tree on health and safety grounds as in past festive seasons, real ones have swayed precariously in the sea breeze. Rather than fencing off a real tree and having to anchor it down with ropes and wires, the decision was made to invest in the 10m tall artificial version. The problem was, the townspeople hated it. Shopkeepers branded it a joke. Almost 5,000 people joined a Facebook group called: "We don't care about health and safety, Poole needs a proper Christmas tree." The sad tale of Dorset's unloved fake tree caused... - Johnn Luevanos

Independent valuer says a sale of the lender's assets could not have repaid Bank of England's £25bn loan Thousands of Northern Rock shareholders are being told today that they are not entitled to compensation following the nationalisation of the Newcastle-based lender nearly two years ago. After receiving "several thousand" responses, the independent valuer Andrew Caldwell has published a consultation document today in which he concludes that shareholders should receive "no compensation". Caldwell admits that his investigation has taken longer than he originally hoped because of the difficulties he encountered in obtaining the information he needed – and had been promised – when he was appointed by the Treasury 14 months ago. He did not receive some of the information until last month, further delaying the publication of today's consultation document. Caldwell based his calculation on how much money Northern Rock would have had left for shareholders if it had repaid the £25bn loan... - Johnn Luevanos

• Halifax says house prices rose 1.4% in November • Lack of supply cited as reason for continued increase House prices edged up by 1.4% in November, according to the Halifax house price index published today. The lender said prices are down 1.6% compared with November last year but have risen by 8.5% since the low in April this year. It is the fifth successive monthly increase. Prices had fallen by 23% between a peak in August 2007 and April this year. Since then the average home has increased in price by £13,174, Halifax said. Last week, Nationwide Building Society said house prices were showing signs of slowing, following seven consecutive monthly increases. It said prices had gone up by 0.5% in November, bringing the average price back up to levels last seen in August last year. Meanwhile, the Bank of England said approvals for home loans had increased for the eleventh month in a row in October. Commentators have put the increase in prices down to increased demand and a continued... - Johnn Luevanos

We first heard of Seagate's plans to enter the SSD market way back in mid 2007 and then again in 2008. Here we are in the final days of 2009 and guess what: the first Seagate SSD has been announced. Unfortunately, Seagate's 2.5-inch SATA Pulsar SSD targets the raised-floor crowd locked away in your corporate data center, not you directly. The SLC-based Pulsar tops out at 200GB and claims a peak performance of 30,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS and a 240MBps sequential read and 200MBps sequential write -- damn quick compared to Samsung's enterprise-class SSDs released last year clocking 100MBps sequential reads and 80MBps writes. Hopefully, we'll see Seagate push into the consumer sector once they finish milking corporate IT budgets, or what's left of 'em. Seagate's first Pulsar SSDs ready to blast the enterprise originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink   |  Hot Hardware  | Email this | Comments - Johnn Luevanos

High Gear Media, a publishing company focused on automotive digital media, is having a great year. The Palo Alto, CA-based vertical content startup raised a second round of funding last Summer to the tune of $5.5 million and has been growing like a weed. Today, the company's announcing that Chas Edwards is joining its board of directors. Edwards is the former Chief Revenue Officer of Federated Media who in May 2009 left the digital advertising network to become the money guy at Digg. - Johnn Luevanos

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• Sea the Stars and Galileo jockey quits at 50 • Ends 34-year career in racing 'on incredible high' Mick Kinane, the veteran jockey of Sea The Stars, has announced his retirement, ending a 34-year career in the saddle. The 50-year-old leaves the Flat on a high after a memorable 2009 which saw him drive Sea The Stars to six Group One wins, including an unprecedented 2000 Guineas-Derby-Arc treble. In this morning's statement, Kinane said: "I have decided this is the right time to retire from race-riding. At 50 I still feel fit and sharp enough to do any horse justice but, after the season I have just had in partnership with Sea The Stars, I have the privilege of being able to end my career as a jockey on an incredible high and that's what I want to do. "I leave with a huge sense of gratitude to all the great horses I have ridden, all the great trainers whose genius developed those champions and everybody else in racing, from the stable lads to the owners, who have made me deeply... - Johnn Luevanos

Virgin's SpaceShipTwo promises to take passengers out of the Earth's atmosphere into outer space - Johnn Luevanos

U.K. Industrial Production Flat In October - Johnn Luevanos