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Much ado was made when security experts found Stuxnet wreaking havoc, but it's looking as though the malware was just a prelude to a much more elaborate attack that's plaguing the Middle East. Flame, a backdoor Windows trojan, doesn't just sniff and steal nearby network traffic info -- it uses your computer's hardware against you. The rogue code nabs phone data over Bluetooth, spreads over USB drives and records conversations from the PC's microphone. If that isn't enough to set even the slightly paranoid on edge, it's also so complex that it has to infect a PC in stages; Flame may have been attacking computers since 2010 without being spotted, and researchers at Kaspersky think it may be a decade before they know just how much damage the code can wreak.

No culprit has been pinpointed yet, but a link to the same printer spool vulnerability used by Stuxnet has led researchers to suspect that it may be another instance of a targeted cyberwar attack given that Iran, Syria and a handful of other countries in the region are almost exclusively marked as targets. Even if you live in a 'safe' region, we'd keep an eye out for any suspicious activity knowing that even a fully updated Windows 7 PC can be compromised.

The trickle of departures from RIM may turn into a flood in the coming weeks if recent reports are to be believed, but things aren't staying at a standstill in the interim. The company's Chief Legal Officer Karima Bawa has today become the latest top executive to leave the BlackBerry-maker, ending a career with the company that began way back in 2000. That follows last week's departure of another longtime company vet, global sales head Patrick Spence, although Bawa is said to simply be retiring, not moving to another company. According to RIM, Bawa will also stay on to help with the hiring and training of her replacement.

We previously looked at talk of delays for some versions of the Galaxy S III with a jaundiced eye, as there hadn't been much official word at the time. That chatter just grew decidedly louder and more formal: Vodafone UK is now telling Pocket-lint that only the 16GB Marble White version will hit the high streets this week, with as many as two to four weeks before any Pebble Blue variant, or even 32GB white models, are ready to go. There isn't much comfort if you decide to turn elsewhere, either. With a few exceptions, third-party shops are all warning of at least slight delays for blue models that range from June 5th at Clove to a somewhat ominous-sounding "to be confirmed" at Handtec. Samsung is still quiet about what's triggering the delays, although Negri Electronics' founder Ryan Negri is claiming that different regions have been short-changed on different colors. Whatever the cause, it appears as if the Galaxy S III will face a rocky launch, even though the quad-core, Android 4.0-toting beast has otherwise been getting a warm reception.

Taking full advantage of the Lumix FX90's WiFi capability, Panasonic has unveiled its companion apps for both iOS and Android devices. Throwing in shutter functionality and zoom control alongside a larger viewfinder, it's pretty much a glossy dumb remote; there's no further features to make the most of your precious smartphone, although the camera itself is already capable of linking up your camera shots with your major social network of choice. The app requires a firmware update on the camera, but it should ensure all those self-portraits really pop in the future. Download links for the wannabe self-obsessed are waiting below.

Well actually, the Hobbit preview wasn't shaky, it was smooth -- maybe too smooth -- and that's the point. "It does take you a while to get used to," Peter Jackson has admitted, referring to the surprisingly fluid motion of his 48 fps movie footage. But is he right to think audiences will even give it a chance? The launch of high frame-rate (HFR) cinema is surrounded by publicity in the run-up to the Hobbit's debut on December 12th, but it equally has a lot going against it. For starters, the film's 48 fps preview wasn't exactly received warmly. On top of that, the video-style apperance of HFR has a long history of being disliked by movie-goers -- past attempts since the 1970s have all flamed out.

85 years after the first 24 fps movies, the same number of frames are still going stubbornly through the gate (digital or otherwise) each second, so that must be what "filmic" is, right? Or will we look back on 24fps as the bad old days? Read on to see if these new/old-fangled frame speeds might survive, and though a 48 fps Hobbit trailer isn't available, we've provided a couple of clips to help you judge what two-dimensional HFR looks like.

We're very used to Apple prototypes showing up on eBay. It's not often that we see unreleased iPads get the auction treatment, however, which makes a new listing that much more interesting. A 16GB WiFi version of the original iPad has popped up sporting a second dock connector on its side, a feature that we'd previously only spotted in Apple design patents. The advantage, of course, would be to keep the iPad powered and synced while it's playing a favorite movie in landscape mode. While we don't know how one aaps69 managed to get hands on the tablet, there's some clear signs that the seller didn't just carve an extra hole in the aluminum for kicks: the slate is running the familiar SwitchBoard tool that Apple uses for in-house diagnostics, and there's a raft of old and incomplete part details that suggest this particular iPad was never meant for store shelves. We'll likely never know why Apple left us in a land of solo dock connectors, but we'd take a peek at the source link before it's gone, as more recent Apple prototypes at auction tend to return to the source quickly.

In the animal kingdom, reptiles shed their skins. In the mobile marketplace, Android smartphones do just the opposite. So, in keeping with the natural order, Huawei's preparing a June coming out party for a UX of its very own, dubbed Emotion UI. The Chinese manufacturer's no stranger to custom interfaces, as we saw at CES 2012 with the optional 3D launcher it employed on the Ascend P line. But as the company continues its trek towards major mobile player status, certain stock perks were sure to fall by the wayside. It's a bid for differentiation that should arguably "enhance" the user experience, but if forums and comment sections are to be believed, this great leap forward is actually a devolution of the worst kind. Hit up the source below to gander at the garbled word constructions of good 'ol Google translate.

Wipe that insincere, two-faced grin off your face -- your computer knows you're full of it. Or at least it will once it gets a load of MIT's research on classifying frustration, delight and facial expressions. By teaching a computer how to differentiate between involuntary smiles of frustration and genuine grins of joy, researchers hope to be able to deconstruct the expression into low-level features. What's the use of a disassembled smile? In addition to helping computers suss out your mood, the team hopes the data can be used to help people with autism learn to more accurately decipher expressions. Find out how MIT is making your computer a better people person than you after the break.

[Thanks, Kaustubh]

Huawei has filed an EU antitrust complaint against InterDigital to end its "abuse" of the allegedly standards-essential patents it controls. The company has urged the commission to examine its demands, which are considered too hefty to come under the protection of FRAND terms. The shoe normally resides on the other foot, with InterDigital previously instigating battles with Nokia, Samsung and ZTE. This time, it looks like the Chinese giant was tired of being pushed around by what it's derisorily called a non-practicing entity -- which we've taken to be a polite euphemism.

Maybe our skeptic's goggles have fogged over with excitement, but there's something mightily interesting about an entry over at GLBenchmark. First off, the model number and listing info vaguely suggest it could be a variant of the LS970 superphone rumored for Sprint, aka the LG Eclipse, although the ICS build ("geeb_att_us-eng 4.0.4") indicates this 1.5GHz device is one of Ma Bell's. One of the more unusual specs offers some corroboration: the Adreno 320 graphics, which only come in the souped-up Pro or quad-core variants of Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon S4 chipset. That would make the LE970 a rare breed indeed, but unfortunately that's about all we can learn at this point. The actual benchmark scores tell us nothing about the handset's performance other than that it can max out the Egypt Standard test despite its 1280 x 720 screen -- making it impossible to compare it to regular Snapdraon S4 phones like the HTC One X on AT&T or the HTC One S. Oh well, where are those lens wipes?

Update: An earlier version of this post confused the benchmark results with the Egypt Offscreen test -- apologies for the error.

[Thanks, Ketul]

There's really not much to go on, but ASUS has thrown its own brief snippet into the Computex teaser hat. It mentions that "the shape of the cloud is ever changing" -- and, er, not much else. Puzzle away this sunny public holiday by checking out the brief teaser after the break.

[Thanks Sal]

A befuddled Joker once pondered "Where does he get all those wonderful toys?" Soon you'll have a chance to inspire the same sort of wonderment amongst your friends -- at least the more eagle-eyed ones. Nokia has announced it's launching a Batman-themed Nokia Lumia 900, with the minimalist logo of (spoiler alert) Bruce Wayne's alter-ego laser-etched onto the back. It's the same treatment that was given to a special edition Lumia 800 earlier and, no surprise, it'll be available exclusively in Batman's favorite color. It's also exclusive to Europe, at least initially, where it's said to be going on sale in a few weeks. Act fast and you might have yours in time to listen to Christian Bale grumble his way through the conclusion of the Dark Knight Trilogy.

973,086 iOS devices were jailbroken in a single weekend thanks to Absinthe 2.0, which was released on Friday. Chronic-Dev, one half of the Jailbreak Dream Team tweeted the announcement yesterday, adding that 211,401 of those freed were third-generation iPads. If you want to loosen your own Apple-branded handheld from the clutches of Cupertino's control, then the warranty-worrying software is still available -- with the promise that it's so easy, your grandma could do it.

GameStop selling Android tablets in-store isn't anything new, but we've been curious to see how well the initiative would take off following a soft launch at 200 locations last November. Things seem to be going swimmingly, as the company now has "more than 1,600 locations" stocking the slates. If you'll recall, the devices all come with pre-installed titles of the retailer's choosing, with models from the likes of Samsung, Acer, ASUS and Toshiba. There's still yet to be any word about whether you'll eventually be able to trade-in your own, but it would seem like a logical next step -- aside from becoming an AT&T virtual carrier. Hit up the source link below to see if a store in your area is part of the lineup.

Putting the squeeze on those hardware specifications has lead to several more app casualties on Microsoft's ever-growing mobile platform. Unfortunately, it includes one of mobile gaming's biggest hitters: Angry Birds. We gave installation a go on our own Lumia 610 and were met with the unfortunate message seen above. According to WindowsPhoneApps Spanish, it's not the only one affected by the reduction in RAM on these lower-priced smartphones. PES 2012 won't run on the lower-specced smartphone, while videocall app Tango also joins its rival Skype on the no-go list.

Update: Nokia's confirmed that Rovio is, indeed, working on an optimized version of Angry Birds for the Lumia 610, though an exact release date is still up in the air.

Kyocera's innovative Urbano Progresso is set to launch in Japanese stores before the end of the week. The result of a team-up between the handset manufacturer and carrier KDDI, it uses a new vibrational technology that forgoes the more typical earpiece, delivering sound throughout the whole handset. We've toyed with the technology already and it's good to see Kyocera delivering on its promise of a real world application of its smart sonic receiver in the same year. Aside from its audio chops, the phone houses some less ground-breaking, but still respectable, features like a dual-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon S2 processor, Android 4.0, an 8.1-megapixel camera, waterproof casing and a 4.1-inch screen. It'll be out in shops starting May 30th and tempted Japan residents can check out the hard sell -- condensed into a two-minute video -- after the break.

Ask the average geek to describe the Apple II and you'll probably hear something about its legacy or software. Ask Steve Wozniak circa 1977, on the other hand, and he'll write you a technical tome -- or at least he did for Byte magazine. Way back when the classic computer was fresh, a young Woz penned an extremely detailed "system description" for the rig, pouring over specifics on the II's graphical capabilities, memory, peripherals, programming language and more. Perhaps in (slightly late) honor of the machine's 35th anniversary, Information Week has seen fit to reprint the extensive examination for your reading pleasure -- assuming you're up to wading through the technical nitty gritty. No? Well, Woz does have a few nuggets of wisdom for the layman. "To me," he says, "a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive." No arguments here, Steve. Read the man's words for yourself at the source link below.

We've see BBC iPlayer reach many devices over time, but it's been conspicuously absent on Windows Phone. Nokia has stepped into give us some relief, and it's now promising that a port of the TV catch-up service will be ready for your Lumia 800 "in weeks." Good news no doubt, although Nokia's encyclopedic knowledge of British TV streaming is also dashing hopes of using the Sky Go mobile app on Windows Phone anytime soon: the same Nokia rep doesn't see Sky being ready for a "good few months" at the earliest. As such, you'll have no problems keeping up with Doctor Who and Sherlock when they're airing, but we wouldn't count on watching live football matches for awhile.

Update: Pocket-lint is reporting that it quizzed the BBC over this issue and got a firm denial about a Windows Phone version, which suggests that The Inquirer's report, or its Nokia source, may have made an illogical deduction.

Samsung's sub-$200 Galaxy Player offers up PMP-stylings inside a smartphone shell. When our reviewer put it through its paces, we couldn't find much to commend it -- with poor sound quality and battery life that wouldn't manage a long-haul flight. The expandable storage and removable battery made it more desirable than the equivalent iPod touch, but given that it was retailing for $20 more (at the time), we'd have said go for a GoGear or D3 instead. But we suspect that despite our advice, some of you bought one, so tell us how you've found it on a daily basis and what should the company do when it comes time for a refresh?

Smartphone displays are becoming larger in size, and along with that, we're seeing a nice trend that's bringing greater pixel density. While LG Display's newly-announced 1080p HD mobile display isn't the most pixel dense that we've seen -- a distinction that belongs to Toshiba -- the five-inch panel is more appropriate for consumer applications and boasts an impressive pixel density of 440ppi. Its 16:9 aspect ratio was designed with HD content in mind, and the LCD technology isn't anything to sneeze at, either: it's a variant of IPS known as Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching (AH-IPS), which is said to boast wide viewing angles, fast response times and improved brightness efficiency. Best yet, it seems that consumers won't have long to wait before the panel works its way into consumer technology -- the five-inch HD display is set for availability during the second-half of this year. To learn more of the Retina Display-shattering deets, you'll find the full PR after the break.