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After many years of dealing with site compatibility issues, Opera found the solution: it will switch from its proprietary rendering engine (Presto) to WebKit and will be powered by Chrome’s open source version, Chromium. “Presto is a great little engine. It’s small, fast, flexible and standards compliant while at the same time handling real-world web sites. It has allowed us to port Opera to just about any platform you can imagine. (…) It was always a goal to be compatible with the real web while also supporting and promoting open standards. That turns out to be a bit of a challenge when you are faced with a web that is not as open as one might have wanted. Add to that the fact that it is constantly changing and that you don’t get site compatibility for free (which some browsers are fortunate enough to do), and it ends up taking up a lot of resources – resources that could have been spent on innovation and polish instead,” explains an Opera employee. ...

I just read this and I decided to share with you: In the hour-long session with the magazine’s editors, he said: – “We are facing the threat of a new arena in warfare that could be every bit as destructive as 9/11 — the American people need to know that. We can’t hide this from the American people any more than we should have hidden the terrorism-attack threat from the American people.” ...

In advance of one of the most significant waves of product launches in Microsoft’s history, today they are unveiling a new logo for the company. Microsoft TechNet wrote: It’s been 25 years since we’ve updated the Microsoft logo and now is the perfect time for a change. This is an incredibly exciting year for Microsoft as we prepare to release new versions of nearly all of our products. From Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8 to Xbox services to the next version of Office, you will see a common look and feel across these products providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs. This wave of new releases is not only a reimagining of our most popular products, but also represents a new era for Microsoft, so our logo should evolve to visually accentuate this new beginning. The Microsoft brand is about much more than logos or product names. We are lucky to play a role in the lives of more than a billion people every day. The ways people experience our products are our most important “brand impressions”. That’s why the new Microsoft logo takes its inspiration from our product design principles while drawing upon the heritage of our brand values, fonts and colors. ...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Google just took your phone a step closer to replacing your wallet in the mobile payment revolution. The company expanded its mobile payments platform, Google Wallet, to accept multiple credit cards. Users can now connect their Visa , MasterCard, American Express, or Discover cards with the new version of Google Wallet. It’s an update from the company’s previous partnership with MasterCard, Citigroup and Sprint. ...

Mashable: Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei joined Instagram last week and so far has posted four photos. Iran’s supreme leader since 1989 chose to share shots that likely show scenes of Ramadan. It comes as a surprise to some that a person who has been slow to get onboard with social media trends — not to mention Iran’s stance toward its citizens’ use of the social media — has joined Instagram. His Twitter account has 4,337 followers so far, and links to his Instagram account. Also posted on his Twitter account are links to YouTube videos and stories about his visits with other world and religious leaders. ...

iol scitech: London – A British computer hacker accused by the United States of breaking into top secret military and space agency networks will learn the result of his six-year fight against extradition within three months, a court heard on Tuesday. Gary McKinnon faces up to 60 years in jail if convicted in American courts for what one US prosecutor has described as the “biggest military computer hack of all time”. ...

h-Online: The developers of the VirusTotal online virus scanner service are currently testing a new sandbox feature to provide users with more meaningful scan results. In a post on the company’s blog, software architect and developer Emiliano Martinez says that, for this purpose, samples uploaded to the service are executed in a controlled sandbox environment where their actions can be “recorded in order to give the analyst a high level overview of what the sample is doing”. ...

Computer World: Security software vendor Symantec said Wednesday that Enrique Salem, its president and chief executive officer, had stepped down with immediate affect, after the company reported that its revenue for the quarter ended June 29 grew 1% year-over-year to $1.7 billion. Symantec said its board of directors has appointed Steve Bennett, the current chairman of the board, to also hold the posts of president and chief executive officer. ...

TechChurch wrote: “Computer pornography has given new meaning to the words ‘home invasion,’” Romney said at a 2007 Values Voter summit, “If I am President, I will work to make sure that every computer sold into the home has an easy to engage pornography filter so that every parent can protect their child from unwanted filth.” Federal obscenity laws used to prosecute porn moguls, such as Hustler’s Larry Flynt_, have largely been limited to child pornography since the rise of the Internet, but there’s an open debate as to whether they could be reactivated. ...

FoxNews: International hacking group Anonymous took at least 10 Australian government websites offline briefly Tuesday in a series of escalating attacks over proposed changes to privacy laws. The Australian arm of the group has warned it will continue the attacks on “.gov.au” sites until plans to force ISPs to store user data and make it further available to security services are shelved. The attacks started after Prime Minister Julia Gillard answered policy questions via webcam in an online Google+ Hangout session on Saturday but the sites targeted so far are all run by the Queensland State Government. ...

Independent: If you’re a fan of fake Rolex watches and cheap Viagra look away now. A huge spam botnet responsible for an estimated 18 billion messages a day has been taken out by security researchers. The four year old botnet – known as Grum – is believed to have been responsible for around 18% of the world’s spam emails. A botnet is a cluster of infected computers used by cybercriminals to send a variety of spam emails – often offering cheap Viagra, fake watches or unusual dating solutions. ...

The Smoking Gun: Christina Aguilera contends that the recent hacking of her e-mail account had stripped her of a “feeling of security” that now “can never be given back,” according to a victim’s impact statement submitted to a U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles. The singer’s statement was prepared in advance of the sentencing of Christopher Chaney, the Florida felon/online stalker who has pleaded guilty to illegally accessing the e-mail accounts of more than 50 victims (many of them Hollywood figures). ...

ZDNet: Indonesia’s communications and information ministry has shut down more than one million pornographic Web sites ahead of Islamic holy month of Ramadan commencing Jul. 19, according to a newswire. Observers of the Muslim month of fasting refrain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from dawn until sunset. All of the sites were reportedly outside the country and more will be clamped down this month, XBIZ newswire reported Wednesday. However, this does not mean that such sites will be allowed to operate during the rest of the year, Indonesia’s communication and information minister, Tifatul Sembiring said. ...

This article is copied from Softpedia: Researchers from Symantec, Kaspersky and Seculert **have all come across Madi (Madhi), a relatively new piece of malware that mainly targets organizations from the Middle East. ** Before we take a look at Madi and compare it to other infamous Trojans such as Stuxnet, Duqu, or Flame, let’s take a quick look at its name. According to Wikipedia, Mahdi is considered to be the redeemer of Islam who will rid the world of tyranny, injustice and wrongdoings. ...

TechChurch: Marissa Mayer, the technology executive who has worked at Google since the search company’s earliest days, has been appointed CEO of Yahoo. The news was first reported by the New York Times. The company has confirmed the appointment in a press release, which is embedded in full below. Mayer’s first day will be tomorrow, which is also when Yahoo’s next quarterly earnings call is slated to take place. Continue Reading Here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/yahoo-marissa-mayer-ceo/