'Anonymous' Hacker Convicted For Attacks On PayPal, Mastercard

The "Anonymous" logo is seen on a tablet screen. Lionel Bonaventure /AFP/Getty Images A hacker associated with the collective Anonymous has been convicted in Britain today for attacks against the websites of PayPal, Mastercard and Visa. Christopher Weatherhead was found guilty following the guilty pleas of three others â€" Jake Birchall, Ashley Rhodes and Peter Gibson. If you remember, the four were arrested for orchestrating denial of service attacks against the companies because they had stopped processing payments for WikiLeaks. The Guardian reports that the men attacked Paypal for 10 days. They also overwhelmed the servers of...

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Fruit Fly Nose Says Steer Clear Of Deadly Food; Human Nose Not So Reliable

Enlarge image Now we know why we'll never see a common fruit fly (Drosophila Melanogaster) sitting on a beet. Jan Polabinski/iStockphoto.com Now we know why we'll never see a common fruit fly (Drosophila Melanogaster) sitting on a beet. Jan Polabinski/iStockphoto.com The earthy smell of a fresh beet may spark delicious thoughts for us, but for a fruit fly, that smell screams danger. Geosmin, a naturally occurring chemical that gives beets, fresh soil, and corked wine their distinctive smell, is also cranked out by bacteria deadly to fruit flies. And it turns out that the tiny flies have a direct pathway from nose to brain...

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Good Joke? Australian Leader Says End Of World Is Coming

She's a kidder: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Chris Jackson/Getty Images Oh those wacky Australians. Wednesday, it was two disc jockeys impersonating Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles to trick a nurse into telling them how the Duchess of Cambridge was coping with her morning sickness. Now, there's word that Prime Minister Julia Gillard has done a promotional video for another Aussie radio show in which she solemnly says the Mayans were right about Dec. 21 and that, "my dear remaining fellow Australians, the end of the world is coming." She says the causes are likely to be "flesh eating zombies, demonic hell beasts...

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