Internet | featured news

Facebook said Tuesday that it has filed a countersuit against Yahoo, claiming that Yahoo violates Facebook patents that relate to photo-sharing, the news feed, tagging digital media and other Web elements that build in social features in Web sites.

One of the Internet's basic tenets—the right to be as much of a myopic, infantile asshat as humanly possible—is currently under attack in Arizona.

Kimberly Hester, a grade school teacher's aide in Michigan, was fired for refusing to hand over her Facebook password to her supervisors. Hester posted a picture of a co-workers' shoes and pants bunched around her ankles on Facebook in April 2011 with the caption, "Thinking of you." She posted the picture in jest, but a parent who's on her Facebook friend list saw the image and reported it to Frank Squires Elementary where Hester was employed, prompting the investigation.

Wikidata, the first new project to emerge from the Wikimedia Foundation since 2006, is now beginning development. The organization, known best for its user-edited encyclopedia of knowledge Wikipedia, recently announced the new project at February's Semantic Tech & Business Conference in Berlin, describing Wikidata as new effort to provide a database of knowledge that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike.

Google has released the newest version of its Chrome Web browser, and in the process fixed nine security glitches and folded in the updated Adobe Flash Player that allows users to set the software to update automatically.

Websites are hawking key chains bearing Trayvon Martin's likeness. Vendors are selling T-shirts and hoodies at rallies. The case of the slain Florida teenager is quickly turning into an Internet-fueled brand.

The hacker group known as LulzSec appears to be back after many months of laying low, claiming to have exposed the accounts of nearly 171,000 members of the military.

At last, Harry Potter's adventures are available electronically. The seven novels about J.K. Rowling's boy wizard are for sale as e-books and audio books on the author's Pottermore website, the site's creators announced Tuesday.

A Tokyo court has ordered that Google suspend its autocomplete search function after a Japanese man claimed it violated his privacy and cost him his job. The case is a first involving the search function, which instantly suggests words or phrases a person may want to look for before the user has finished typing. So far, Google, headquartered in California, has refused to halt the feature, saying it will not be regulated by Japanese law and did not violate any privacy policies, according to the Kyodo news agency.