When Chinese hackers infected more than 500,000 Web sites with malicious software designed to steal personal information, visitors to those sites received something more disturbing: an invisible password-stealing program on their machines, and an eerie silence from the owners of the sites they'd visited.

There's something definitely wrong with the iPhone's 3G reception. The evidence is undeniable, and as it's scattered across the globe, it sure can't be completely blamed on AT&T, much as we might want to.

I have a question: why are all these researchers and carriers who believe they have pinpointed the iPhone's 3G reception problem in Europe (forcing me to use translation software, too)?

While there's no answer to that question, a Swedish scientist seems to think he has the answer to poor 3G performance on the iPhone 3G: poor signal sensitivity.

The finger-pointing has begun. Much has been made over the iPhone's 3G connectivity issues on AT&T's network, and some (including me) have pointed to the fact that AT&T's 3G network performance isn't exactly stellar. Of course, that doesn't mean it's still not an Apple issue.

T-Mobile, on the other hand, made no bones about it: the issue lies with the iPhone 3G itself, either in software or hardware.

You may recall I wrote earlier about how quiet hybrids are, and the test conducted by the U.S. National Federation of the Blind's Committee on Automotive and Pedestrian Safety. And yes, a hybrid car running totally on battery power is so quiet a blind person, or even a sighted person not paying enough attention, could be in serious trouble when the hybrid "sneaks up" on them.

It was only a matter of time, right? Today Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games announced that Grand Theft Auto IV will be reaching PCs in advance of Christmas (now if only we could get a similar announcement about StarCraft 2).

The difference between Hard and Soft Gold.

With the rise in gasoline prices, something else has risen: Segway sales. Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) seems to have taken notice, as on Friday they announced a "Personal Transport Assistance Robot," the Winglet.

Until now, the only way to get 1080p goodness was on recorded media (e.g., Blu-ray discs). The problem: not enough bandwidth for all the data in a 1080p picture. All you could get via an antenna or cable was 1080i. However, this week, satellite TV provider DirecTV (Monday) and Dish Network (Thursday) both announced that soon they would be offering Pay-Per-View movies in 1080p.

You'll hear a PC labeled as many things, from "an uber-gaming system" to "budget-minded" and more, but this PC is "eco-friendly," or as Dell calls it, its first "conscientious" desktop. It was announced (though unnamed) at Fortune Brainstorm: Green in Los Angeles on (what else) Earth Day, earlier this year, and launched on Tuesday. The idea of this desktop PC was to put laptop components into it, to reduce size and power consumption.