Lately, it seems that social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have been receiving viruses directly to its members. It was said that this Friday at 10 pm, that the Twitter site was hacked and defaced.

Twitter.com is said to be down. Some tweets are getting through at the moment because parts of the API are up. The search seems to be working. It is suggested that if you use the same password on your twitter account with other accounts, now would be a good time to change your password on those other accounts.

It was said that there is a history between Iran and Twitter. It was well noted and covered in the media that Twitter was used as a tool during the Iranian election protests. The US government actually intervened to assure that Twitter was available to the protestors in Tehran and around the country. This attack maybe an act of reprisal from groups who were not happy with the role that Twitter played during the protests.

But then, luckily that Twitter.com is back. The company even updated the status blog.

The US Air Force on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that it is flying a stealth unmanned aircraft known as the “Beast of Kandahar,” a drone spotted in photos and shrouded in secrecy.

Aviation experts dubbed the drone the “Beast of Kandahar” after photographs emerged earlier this year showing the mysterious aircraft in southern Afghanistan in 2007. The image suggested a drone with a radar-evading stealth-like design, resembling a smaller version of a B-2 bomber.
The air force said the aircraft came out of Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works,” also known as Advanced Development Programs, in California – the home of sophisticated and often secret defense projects including the U-2 spy plane, the F-22 fighter jet and the F-117 Nighthawk.

Robots or “unmanned systems” in the air and on the ground are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps and firing lethal missiles without putting US soldiers at risk.

A 2,700 feet 160-story skyscraper in Dubai opens on January 4, 2010, the fourth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum’s rule in Dubai, a month delayed for its expected opening.  It will be the tallest building in the world which acquires impressive technologies of today like the fastest elevator in the world, traveling at 10 meters per second and double-decker elevators that can accommodate 21 people. To keep out the desert heat, 10,000 tons of coolant with flow through the tower every hour. There are 230,000 cubic meters of concrete form the building’s core, enough to pave 1,180 miles of sidewalk.

The largest shopping center is also located there, with space for 1,200 shops nestled among 30,000 apartments. ith Dubai announcing it financial mess last week, 400 projects are now stalling, including the Burj Dubai — the world’s tallest tower.

As the AP wrote this week:

“Most other of the unfinished super-projects announced in recent years, such as a second palm-shaped island or a tower to surpass the Burj Dubai, are either recession roadkill or being considered on a far smaller scale, if they are still considered at all.”

University of California, Berkeley and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore have just agreed to pursue a research alliance collaboration to focus on the three research areas which are synthetic biology, stem cells and energy efficiency in order to achieve in new peaks in research excellence.

Last March 23-24, 2009, a joint workshop was held which allowed NTU and UC Berkeley faculty to have a face-to-face discussions and the opportunity to get to know the latest research and developments in the three key research areas.

It was agreed that faculty from the two universities will be working on joint research projects on an equal footing which includes the bringing in resources and funding. It is expected the colleagues from Schools outside of NTU’s College of Engineering will likewise participate as the research on these three areas are multidisciplinary.

The first research area which is synthetic biology, which is an emerging multidisciplinary field, actually combines science and engineering to design and build or “synthesize” novel and biological functions and systems. This may be a new area in biological research but it holds a great potential for answering problems in biomedicine, energy supply and environmental remediation.

The second research area is Stem Cell research and it is greatly important to the future of biomedical research as it has major implications for treating and preventing devastating human diseases. In Singapore, there is a critical mass of stem cell researchers working on embryonic including adult stem cells which was built up.

The area of energy fills up the third research area and the important issue in this field is the impact of energy use on climate change and global warming. In order for the adverse impact of climate change be mitigated, energy efficiency needs improvement as it is one strategy to ensure that the economy will grow in an environmentally sustainable manner.

NT President Dr. Su Guaning said “Within the University, we have developed peaks of excellence in energy research and we hope to develop our capabilities further including in collaboration with Berkeley especially in the area of energy efficiency for tropical buildings.” He further stated that the university is widely seen as the best public university in the United States and that Berkeley leads in cross-disciplinary research including in the area of bioengineering and clean energy.

“We are excited to work with Berkeley to tap complementary capabilities in the defined topical areas to achieve new peaks in research excellence. I am confident our collaboration will generate innovative solutions to the global research challenges in the three focus areas, creating positive contributions to the welfare of humankind and deepening our collaboration,” Dr Su continued.

Come April 1st, computer users beware.  Experts are suggesting that this year’s April Fool’s Day could be the year of the most damaging computer virus attack: the Conficker C.

Hackers and malware creators favor April Fool’s as the day they release worms, viruses, spybots and other damaging programs on to the web.  Conficker C has experts racing against the clock to try to beef up security measures against this malware program.  Programmers are busy writing up a storm to try to come up with a cure for Conficker C and are attempting to find the writer before the deadline.

Conficker got its press late 2008 when it infected more than 9 million computers.  Now on its third version no one really knows what this program can do.  There are the usual stand by’s like malware pop-ups, anti virus advertisements or they could be the extra damaging kind such as wiping out your hard drive, stealing personal information, install unwanted soft ware and so on.

Conficker C has grown resistant to anti-virus and other security precautions.  It has become so damaging and complicated, it has Microsoft offering a quarter million dollar reward for the head of the writer of Conficker.

What makes Conficker  so smart, fascinating and dangerous is that it hides its tracks under thousands of URLs to communicate with HQ,  It has grown so virulent from using to just 250 addresses during its infancy to 50,000 during the day it goes active.  This number is so large tracking and disabling it would be impossible to do manually.

Computer users are advised to be extra cautious during the next couple of days as April Fool’s Day arrives.  Make sure that your computer security system has been updated and is actually working since Conficker may have disabled it.  Update Windows if you are using this operating system and your anti-malware software as well.