There's a bug in your Farmville, giving away your personal information.

Facebook has a long history of privacy and web intimacy controversies, but this time they screwed up big time – at least they admitted it. A brillinat Wall Street Journal investigation revealed the fact that some Facebook applications (including everybody’s most loved Farmville, as well as Mafia Wars and Texas Hold’em) transmitted Facebook identities (known as UID) to advertisers and internet tracking companies.

Facebook “official” policies claim that developers can’t disclose user information to advertising networks of any kind… but they did; oh boy they did. They disclosed every single bit of personal information on your Facebook page – and their excuse ? The old “technical difficulties” excuse.

“Our policy is very clear about protecting user data, ensuring that no one can access private user information without explicit user consent (…) Recently, it has come to our attention that several applications built on Facebook Platform were passing the User ID (UID), an identifier that we use within our APIs, in a manner that violated this policy. In most cases, developers did not intend to pass this information, but did so because of the technical details of how browsers work”, a post on the Facebook blog said.

User identities are practically unique numbers assigned to each profile (that id=xxxxx stuff); the ID is public, and you can do a Facebook search on someone using his or her id, but passing on the UID by third parties, that’s something totally different. However, the social media giant dismissed the whole thing by saying it’s not such a big thing, and the media blows the whole thing out of proportions.

“Press reports have exaggerated the implications of sharing a UID. Knowledge of a UID does not enable anyone to access private user information without explicit user consent. Nevertheless, we are committed to ensuring that even the inadvertent passing of UIDs is prevented and all applications are in compliance with our policy.”

Facebook has 500 million users and is currently thriving, partially thanks to the huge success these games have had (Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc).

Here you can download the latest sound card driver for your ASUS U35JK Notebook from Realtek. The U35JC has the following configuration.

Processor & Cache Memory
Intel Core i5 Processor 520M/450M : 2.4 GHz – 2.26 GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 2.93/2.66 GHz;
Intel Core i3 Processor 370M : 2.4 GHz

Chipset
Mobile Intel HM55 Express Chipset

Main Memory
DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM, 2 x SODIMM socket for expansion up to 4GB SDRAM

Display
13.3″ 16:9 HD (1366×768) LED backlit

Video Graphics & Memory
NVIDIA GeForce 310M, with 1GB DDR3 VRAM

Hard Drive
2.5″ 9.5mm SATA
640GB,5400rpm
500GB,5400rpm;7200rpm
320GB,5400rpm

Card Reader
5 in 1 card reader SD,MMC,MS,MS-Pro,XD

Video Camera
0.3 Mega Pixel web camera

Fax/Modem/LAN/WLAN
Integrated 802.11 b/g/n
Built-in Bluetooth V2.1+EDR (optional)
10/100/1000 Base T

Interface
1 x Microphone-in jack
1 x Headphone-out jack
3 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert
1 x HDMI

Audio
Built-in speaker and microphone
Altec Lansing speakers
SRS Premium Sound

Keyboard
19.0mm size

Battery Pack & Life
8 cells: 5600/4400 mAh 84/63 Whrs
6 cells: 4400 mAh 47 Whrs

AC Adapter
Output: 19 V DC, 3.42 A, 65W
Input: 100~240 V AC, 50/60 Hz universal
3/ 2 pin compact power supply system

Dimension & Weight
32.2 x 23.3 x 1.48~2.46 cm (W x D x H)
1.9 kg (with 8 cell battery)

LG’s latest release in home entertainment will literally brighten up your living room. Yes, the LG 72LEX9 3D LCD is here, and yes the 72 stands for 72 FREA-KIN’ inches! Don’t worry about getting your paws on this beauty yet, since it’s not available in the US, not yet that is. The 72LEX9 is still in showcase and very little is known about it, aside from some brief specs like full LED Backlight, a 480Hz True-Motion panel, DLNA support and Web TV features.

Any way, where does one suppose to fir this behemoth?

The much hyped Google Car, which is actually a tuned up Toyota Prius, could be seen driving across California, especially San Francisco roads, these past few months. It was unveiled to the public recently, proving one of the most shocking experiments the Mountainview giant has ever undertaken – a driverless car.

A number of seven test cars have traveled a total of 140,000 miles across California roads, including Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. The sole mishap was when the driverless car was bumped from behind by another vehicle at a traffic light.

According to the World Health Organisation 1.2 million people are killed on the roads across the globe every year, and Google’s efforts with this project are currently directed to decreasing that number by erasing some human errors that occur on the road.

“We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half,” Sebastian Thrun, a software engineer behind the project, wrote on his blog.

Below are two videos that catch the Google Car in full action on California roads. I find it awkward however that California laws permit such action, how noble the scope of this experiment might be. What if something goes wrong? What if the algorithm is misinterpreted?

When the iPad first got out, it was only available at Apples stores and Best Buy. Since it’s launch this year, however, the retail chain has been expanded to Amazon and Target, and most recently it seems to Wal-Mart. The mammoth retail chain is set to sell iPads in half of its stores by the end of October, with the first stores receiving the iPad by next week.

It all broke down when MacRumors shared an internal e-mail addressed to Wal-Mart store managers, informing them that their stores will receive five of each of the six iPad models, as well as iPad accessories like wireless keyboards and charging docs. By the end of November, 800 more stores will carry the iPad.

Since it’s launch the iPad has seen extremely positive sales and with this recent expansion towards the massive retail chains, it seems like Apple is in for some very high figures.

A famous Apple hacker, pod2g, will be allegedly releasing a jailbreak method for the new iPhone 4G, but as of yet, there hasn’t been any official update on the matter. There’s a lot of buzz growing on this topic and, as always, there’s someone to speculate on it. Apparently jail-break will be called “Greenpois0n”, but if you search the web for it, you’ll be in for a surprise, as Raiu very well found out.

Cybercriminals have definitely been riding the buzz around the supposed jailbreaking tool. It’s presumed to be called “Greenpois0n” and it’s expected to be released any day now. Not surprisingly, we’ve seen a number of fake “Greenpois0n” Trojans.

If you search for the Greenpoison on torrent sites you might be in for a surprise:

What you need to note from all of this is that there is no working jailbreaking tool for iPhone 4s running iOS 4.0.2 / 4.1. If the pod2g exploit turns out to be valid, there’ll no doubt be a lot of noise about it, however, until then DON’T BE FOOLED!

The famous hard-drive manufacturer Hitachi just unveiled its new flagship HDD in the enterprise sector, the Ultrastar C10K600 enterprise HDD, which promises to be the fastest 10,000 rpm enterprise class HDD on the market. This very light-weight 2.5-inch drive spins at 10,000 RPM, uses a 6Gb/s SAS interface and will be available at a maximum capacity of 600GB.

The Ultrastar C10K600 HDD is premised by Hitachi as to having 15% better random and 18% faster sequential performance, and is bolstered for its incredible low energy consumption, seeing how the C10K600 needs only 22% less power during operation compared to other similar products on the market.

Hitachi will offer 300GB and 450GB HDD versions in the family.

[via /gear]

Joining the new LG Optimus 7, Samsung’s upcoming handset  the impressive Samsung Omnia 7 promises an enriched user experience and mind blowing performances. It’s enough to state a few Samsung Omnia 7 quick specs like its slim 122.4 x 64.2 x 10.99 mm size or its 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor with 8GB of onboard storage and a 5-megapixel autofocus camera that can do 720p video. From a connectivity point of view, it shines away too -  WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 and A-GPS, along with USB 2.0 and triband UMTS/HSPA (900/1900/2100). Official info can be found at Samsung’s Russian leg.

More pics:

You’ve seen the trailer for Section 8 on YouTube, now it’s time to see it in full detailed, crystal clear quality on your HD display. Just sit back relax and enjoy the spectacle Section 8 has to offer, one of the most sought after shooters of the year!