Part 3  I'm pleased to say that what with the relatively warm 2011 and our conservation efforts we had the lowest consumption of electricity and gas at home of any year yet, a bit over 1,500kWh ('units') of electricity and under 4,000kWh of gas. (A typical UK household is nearer 3,300kWh 'leccy and 18,000kWh gas.) With our solar PV exports we were just carbon-negative for power by my calculations.…

Product round-up  You know that really annoying person who is videoing the gig with their camera phone to stick on Facebook when they get home? That's me. These days my TV is HD and my games console is HD, so it only makes sense that my phone – the device I use the most, day in and day out – should be HD too. Luckily, HD on smartphones is becoming more commonplace and so rather than judge these handsets on their mobile merits, this round-up focuses on their HD video camera performance.…

If all goes according to plan, Facebook founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's share of the profit in his company's upcoming initial public offering will result in him facing a tax bill of around $1.5bn for 2011.…

British and American children who are less intelligent are more likely to grow up to be conservative and/or bigots, according to new research published in Physiological Science.…

Steven Appleton, the long-time CEO at memory chip maker Micron Technology, died this morning in a crash of an experimental plane in the company's hometown of Boise, Idaho. He was 51 years-old and one of the youngest CEOs and chairman in the Fortune 500.…

One advocacy group has published a survey it says proves that US small-business owners aren't unduly concerned with government regulations. Another group says that the first group's opinion poll is tainted by bogosity.…

Open ... and Shut  No sooner did Facebook file its S-1 in preparation for an IPO than speculation kicked into high gear on how Facebook could possibly sustain its $75bn to $100bn valuation. After all, despite its hugely impressive revenue and profit numbers, key components of its revenue model – like advertising revenue – are decelerating. So should we expect Facebook to impose a paywall on some or all of its users, as MyLife.com chief executive Jeff Tinsley suggests it could?…

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) treaty, signed by most European countries last week, may not be a done deal after all, as governments across the continent face a storm of protest.…

The US economy added 243,000 net new jobs in January and the unemployment rate has ticked down two-tenths of a point, according to statistics released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.…

A German court has suspended the injunction that required Apple to remove its iPhone 4 and 3Gs, and iPad Wi-Fi + 3G from its online store in that country.…

Half of all Fortune 500 companies still contain computers infected with the DNSChanger Trojan, weeks after a FBI-led takedown operations targeting the botnet's command-and-control infrastructure.…

A Taiwanese gamer sat dead in a chair at an Internet cafe for up to nine hours before fellow players noticed the poor guy had popped his clogs.…

A Wisconsin woman has been charged over claims she tried to sell $1m worth of Facebook shares that she didn't own.…

In the cut-throat tablet market, a Taiwanese company has found one way to make its product stand out: paying an actor to dress up as Steve Jobs and make tasteless jokes about how he's dead.…

Members of Anonymous have released an intercept of a conference call between investigators at the FBI and Scotland Yard during which operations against hacktivist group were discussed.…

IBM's SAN Volume Controller has done the benchmark business, again, and passed the half million SPC-1 IOPS mark using Storwize V7000 storage.…

The story earlier this week on the deportation from the US of A of two Brits who ill-advisedly tweeted they were off to "destroy America" left a few readers pretty shaken up at the way the Department of Homeland Security handles potential terrorist threats.…

One Taiwanese manufacturer took aim at traditional light switches this week and unveiled a lamp that can be turned on and off with the shot of a gun-shaped remote.…

Sysadmin blog  I remember the first time I saw these automated supermarket tills. They intrigued me. Yet I was also afraid of the things. I was afraid that despite all of my knowledge and training I wouldn't be able to figure it out and I would end up looking like a fool. I avoided them for three years; the basis of this avoidance nothing more than irrational fear of that which I might not understand.…

Netbooks are so yesterday's technology. Shipments of the small, not-so-cheap computers plunged during 2011 by 25 per cent, figures from market watcher Canalys show.…