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Google has informed the Connecticut attorney general that it will not comply with an information request related to the interception of wireless payload data by its Street View cars.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has issued a civil investigative demand to determine exactly what content Google's Street View cars had accidentally captures from unsecured wireless networks while photographing streets for its online services.

The privacy breach occurred in over 30 different countries. "I am disappointed by Google's failure to comply with my information demands," Blumenthal said in a statement. "We will review any information we receive and consider whether additional enforcement steps -- including possible legal action -- are warranted."

Google's popular search engine service now warns users about possibly hacked or otherwise dangerous websites that make it into its search results.

The new warning system was announced on Google's Official Blog on Friday. If Google's system detects any signs that a website has been compromised by hackers, spammed or defaced in some way that may make it a threat to the searcher, it will add a small message reading, "This site may be compromised" directly under the search result.

"We use a variety of automated tools to detect common signs of hacking as quickly as possible," wrote Google director of product management Mike Cassidy. "In addition to protecting users, these notices will also help webmasters more quickly discover when someone is abusing their sites."

An update to Kindle for Android will now allow users to either buy single issues of magazines or newspapers, or subscribe to them.

Users that opt to subscribe to a particular magazine or newspaper will have it automatically delivered to their Android device. Other news features added with the update are the ability to share reading progress through social networking sites and zoom closer to images.

"We want to give customers the freedom and flexibility to buy their newspapers and magazines once, and read them everywhere across the devices and platforms they chose—just like they do with Kindle books today," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Amazon Kindle.

MasterCard has said it will cease processing payments to websites that offer illegal copies of movies, music and other content for download.

The credit card company supports the proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which authorizes the Department of Justice (DoJ) to shut down domain names of U.S.-based websites that are offering pirated content.

As for websites located overseas, the bill grants the DoJ the power to force ISPs, payment processors like MasterCard or online advertising networks from doing business with them.

"MasterCard in particular deserves credit for its proactive approach to addressing rogue Web sites that dupe consumers," Mitch Glazier, Recording Industry Association of America exec, told CNET. "They have reached out to us and others in the entertainment community to forge what we think will be a productive and effective partnership."

Sony's efforts to obliterate the PSJailbreak USB dongle that enables homebrew code to be launched on some PS3 consoles have been dealt a blow in Spain.

After already scoring some victories against PSJailbreak, including a notable victory in Australia, Sony's efforts have been impacted by a court in Spain.

Sony's decision to kill the OtherOS functionality in the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console may have hurt it badly in this case. The feature had originally been killed off due to concerns about the system's security, which remained strong at the time with the known information.

Trend Micro's TrendLabs blog has posted some information on a website that is redirected to from Wikileaks.org.

At present, the Wikileaks.org domain domain redirects to mirror.wikileaks.info, which is hosted on IP address 92.241.190.202. This IP address is registered to Heihachi Ltd, and this is where TrendLabs has put up a flag and felt the need to write about it.

While the site doesn't contain any malware, the TrendLabs blog regards the presence of the WikiLeaks mirror in this neighborhood as disturbing.

Despite the release of at least one fix to address reported problems, users of Call of Duty: Black Ops are still reporting serious problems with online play.

Gamers have complained about connection error messages in the middle of online gaming sessions that appear to be limited to the PC and PlayStation 3 (PS3) versions of the game. Other users report crashes, glitches and lags in the gameplay that can be very frustrating.

Treyarch says it is working hard on a fix and already released an update aimed at the reported issues two days ago. "People buy this game mainly for multiplayer features. The main feature being unplayable makes this nothing but an overpriced paperweight," said gamer "Ian" on the BBC's Newsbeat Facebook page.

Opera Software has pushed out Opera 11, touting some new features to enhance browsing experience for users, and some security enhancements to protect them.

Opera 11 has been released to the general public as a free web browsing solution. It's most touted new feature is "tab stacking", which essentially allows users to group similar tabs together to reduce clutter and better utilize on-screen workspace.

Opera has also gotten support for extensions, an area where it has lagged far behind its rivals in the area. Enhancements made to Opera's under-the-hood security features, geolocation features and its support of HTML 5 bring the browser in line with rival Desktop browsers.

It has an estimated share of the overall market of between 2 and 3 percent, but its success has come with mobile devices and games consoles, being the only available browser on Nintendo's Wii and handheld DS consoles.

Kyle Machulis, considered one of the world's top experts on sex and video games made the call just two weeks ago that he was surprised that no one had used the Microsoft Kinect motion control system to create a 'sex game.'

Yesterday, ThriXXX Software, the company behind 3D role-playing sex simulation games released a demo of an upcoming game using the motion controller.

The company says (via CNet):

"The open-sourcing of device drivers for Kinect have enabled the...device to be used directly from connected PCs operating on Windows 7...The Kinect interface provides another exciting interface option for users of the sex simulation software to control the experience in extraordinary new ways. Controller-free is the next generation of game user interfaces, allowing users to use gestures, spoken commands, or objects to control in-game action that creates a completely new sex game activity and magical experience."

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), besides posting huge piracy numbers for the UK, has also taken shots at Google, claiming the search engine is used just as often as P2P apps for illegal downloads.

Furthermore, the trade group would like Google and other engines to censor their search results and instead push legal services like iTunes, Amazon and others.

Says the BPI (via TF):

"Search engines are as popular as P2P applications as a source of illegal downloads. It’s not hard to see why. Key in the name of any popular artist, add search terms like ‘mp3′ or ‘download’ – both neutral terms – and typically the large majority of results that appear are blatant links to illegal downloads."

Take-Two Interactive has reached one of its major goals in reporting a profit for a year that did not include the release of a new Grand Theft Auto title.

The published reported a 65 percent rise in revenue to $1.16 billion for the 12 months to October 31. It turned a profit of $49.7 million, in stark contrast to a sharp $130 million loss for the 12 months prior. "We have achieved our goal of profitability in a year without a new release of Grand Theft Auto," said outgoing CEO Ben Feder in a statement.

Two titles carried a lot of weight for Take-Two in the time frame; Red Dead Redemption and NBA 2K11. Red Dead Redemption is around the 8 million sales mark worldwide, while continuing to sell pretty strong. Helped by EA's cancellation of NBA Elite 11, the NBA 2K11 title managed to move 3 million copies.

The Nikkei business daily is reporting that Sharp Corp will make a sizable investment in production of small and medium sized LCD panels.

The report states that Sharp is planning to spend around ¥100 billion (US$1.2 billion) on production lines for the LCD panels, which Apple Inc. reportedly will purchase the bulk of for its iPhone and iPod touch line of devices.

Sharp will start installing equipment at the Mie Prefecture plant next year. Mass production then will commence in the second half of 2012. if all goes to plan.

Electronics giants are mulling further investments in LCD production as global smartphone demand continues to increase. Toshiba Corp. is planning to build an Ishikawa Prefecture factory to boost LCD supplies to Apple Inc., according to the report.

Nielsen has released the results of a study into how young teenagers use their gaming consoles as more and more features are added to them.

The survey was conducted on a general U.S. population sample of an unspecified size. It found, for example, that 13 year old PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners spend an average of 49 percent of the time using the device to play video games. It found that 27 percent of the time was spent watching DVD or Blu-ray movies and 13 percent of the time watching movies downloaded and streamed.

Users of the Xbox 360 console spent about 62 percent of the time gaming, 11 percent watching DVD movies and 16 percent watching downloaded/streaming content. Wii users spent 69 percent of the time gaming and 20 percent of the time using the Netflix feature.

Just one day after announcing 600 layoffs, portal giant Yahoo has announced it will likely begin shutting down most of its 'underperforming' assets, such as AltaVista, MyBlogLog, Delicious and Buzz.

AltaVista, the search site of choice for many in the 1990s and early 2000s, has seen its market share dwindle to nothing over the past half-decade.

The online news aggregator Buzz and the social bookmarking service Delicious have seen similar results and are considered "non-core" Web properties.

For now, the company is "still evaluating its options" on the sites and services.

"Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond," added a Yahoo spokesperson (via WSJ).

"We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months," she added. "We will communicate specific plans when appropriate."z18LDrioL5

The National Security Agency (NSA) is working on the assumption that all of the most sensitive computer networks under its guard have been compromised.

Speaking at a cyber security forum sponsored by the Atlantic and Government Executive media organizations, Debora Plunkett of the NSA said that they have to build computer systems based on the assumption that adversaries will be able to penetrate them. "There's no such thing as 'secure' any more," she said, reports Reuters.

She heads the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate which is tasked with protecting national security information systems and networks across the world. "We have to, again, assume that all the components of our system are not safe, and make sure we're adjusting accordingly," she said.

Her comments come as the world's governments and media watch the publishing of U.S. embassy cables and other sensitive information on Wikileaks, but she declined to comment on the website.