New squiggles are just unreadable

Those squiggly, hard-to-read strings of letters and numbers that you have to copy out when registering for websites are now so hard to read that even humans can’t decipher them. “Captchas”, as they are known, are supposed to fend off machine registrations. But they can now be read so easily by computers that web designers are having to make them ever more challenging. “They are turning from a human reading test into an intelligence test,” Michael Barrett, chief information security officer at PayPal, said.

nytimes.com
captcha.net

Evening news

At Apple, even the time of day when something happens seems to be big news. This week the computer firm announced that its long-awaited iPhone would be released in the US on June 29 (which we already knew) at 6pm (which we didn’t). By Thursday afternoon, a Google search for “Apple iPhone 6pm” turned up 121,000 results, and the blog aggregator technorati.com recorded 332 posts on the topic.

apple.com
technorati.com

Funny Feds

The FBI does have a sense of humour. A study by the bureau concluded that as many as 1 million computer owners were unaware that their machines were participating in giant networks of zombie computers controlled by spammers, known as “botnets”. The investigation was named Operation Bot Roast.

abc.com
fbi.gov

Dialect dictionary

Microsoft’s call for Britons to submit words from their local dialect to be included in the Outlook spellcheck has had thousands of responses. In future, Outlook will be able to recognise e-mails where you ask your “marra” to get you a “buttie” instead of inserting red lines beneath all the unfamiliar words, a Microsoft manager said.

bbc.co.uk
microsoft.com

Online most read

1 Cool hunter: fitflops
2 Blair talks of “deep freeze” after tense encounter with Putin
3 Gatwick advert lands in trouble
4 The Sopranos final episode: look away now
5 Paris Hilton may be sent back to jail
6 10 bizarre sights in Google Street View
7 Paris Hilton: “I used to act dumb. No more”

Source: Times Online Friday June 8 to Thursday June 14, worldwide users of site