Google reveals government censorship requests are on the rise

Google's updated its transparency report to show how many times governments worldwide sought to censor search results, drop YouTube videos or look at user data in the second half of last year. Each request is logged and detailed, with the most filings coming from the US, UK and India. The requests varied from censoring a video where a Canadian citizen creatively destroyed his passport (not complied with) through to blogs promoting hate speech and violence (complied with). Mountain View's list makes for interesting reading, but it's not all bad news: where videos were merely critical or satirical of the local authorities, the search giant refused to pull 'em, respecting private citizens right to free speech in a great majority of cases.

U.S. regains supercomputing crown, bests China, Japan

New IBM water cooled systems, which use warm or hot water, dominate top 10 of Top 500 supercomputer list

The U.S., once again, is home to the world's most powerful supercomputer after being knocked off the list by China two years ago and Japan last year.

Assimilate UK! The British Music Industry Now Controls Your Internet

One by one the UK’s ISPs are falling to a creeping censorship of the web led not by some secretive government organisation but by the UK’s music industry in the shape of the British Phonographic Industry, the British record industry’s trade association. There is no democratic check on what’s happening and little recourse left open to the average person.