Anonymous gets hacked, meteorite copyright: This week in off-beat tech stories
This week we saw further diplomatic fallout from North Korea's third nuclear test, a "thundersnow" storm in the Midwest, and a spate of high-profile brands being hijacked by hackers. The irony is that even hackers themselves were hacked. All this and more in the off-beat tech stories this week.
Hacktivist group Anonymous (ironically) gets hacked
Anonymous, the group behind dozens of successful hacking missions, suffered a hack of its own. One of the Twitter accounts associated with the hacktivist movement suffered an unauthorized invasion following almost identical hacks of other major brands, including @BurgerKing and @Jeep.
The @Anon_Central account was reportedly breached by a rival hacking group. The tweets that were posted by the Twitter invaders remain on the account's stream, even after Anonymous members reclaimed the account. Security experts are warning Twitter account owners to strengthen their passwords.
German copyright dispute: A Russian meteorite? Huh?
While everyone was glued to their screens watching videos of the Russian meteorite plow into the earth, Germany wasn't. Thanks to an ongoing copyright dispute between YouTube-owner Google and the main German performance rights group, German audiences still aren't allowed to view the videos because YouTube has blocked the video. It turns out the car radio playing in the background is the cause of the ban.
Around 60 percent of the top 1,000 videos are blocked in Germany, due to the "legal and financial risks," the search giant said in a statement to Ars Technica.
104-year-old woman forced to lie about age on Facebook
Reaching your 100th birthday should be something to be proud of. Not according to Facebook, which forced a 104-year-old woman to lie about her age on the world's largest social network because there was a display age limit of just 99 years. According to the Examiner, Marguerite Joseph may be legally blind and hard of hearing, but she still takes the time to reply to her messages and comments from her 109 Facebook friends.
Houston hospital hosts world's first live-tweeted cesarean
This week we learned that the stork in the sky isn't real (sorry, kids) following the live tweeting of a cesarean section. Obstetrician Anne Gonzalez performed the surgery on an unnamed 39-year-old on Wednesday with a Twitter twist -- with pictures, too.
It's not the first time the Houston Memorial Hermann has live tweeted an operation. The hospital hosted the world's first live-tweeted open heart surgery in February and will offer a first-hand view of brain surgery later this year.
Teens arrested after mimicking police lights with iPhone app
It's bad enough seeing blue and red flashing lights in your rear-view mirror, but it's even worse when you're being pulled over by prankster teenagers using an iPhone app to mimic police lights. Police arrested Two Florida teenagers earlier this week after they "were just messing around" using an iPhone app called Police Lights. The joke is on them though after they were arrested for impersonating a police officer.