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Facebook pulls 2,632 bogus accounts and pages in latest crackdown
Facebook's war against shady accounts isn't about to slow down. The social site has pulled 2,632 accounts, groups and accounts for conducting "coordinated inauthentic behavior" across Facebook and Instagram. The perpetrators were linked to Russia, Iran, Macedonia and Kosovo, although Facebook stressed that it didn't find connections between each activity besides similar tactics.
Macedonia accused of spying on 20,000 citizens over four years
Republic of Macedonia's* Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski along with secret police chief Saso Mijalkov have been spying on, well, just about everyone important in the country except themselves, according to the opposing political party. Opposition leader Zoran Zaev from the Social Democratic Party has accused the two of ordering constant surveillance on him for at least five years in a press conference earlier -- years longer than the 14-month max duration of any court-sanctioned eavesdropping. But it's not just Zaev himself: he says the other members of his party and (in a perfect example of what happens with unchecked government surveillance) even Gruevski's own allies are targets of this politically motivated surveillance program.
Macedonia to give every student a PC
While the OLPC continues its slow rollout and finds its price slowly climbing, it looks like other companies are aggressively going after NickNeg's target markets -- Macedonia just announced a deal with NComputing to provide every student with a thin client "classroom computing device" that will link up to an account on a Linux server PC. The deal calls for NComputing to deliver 180,000 of the devices at a price that's only quoted as "less than half the cost of any other proposed solution," -- a number we're guessing is in that all-important $100 range. Macedonia's schools were also impressed with the device's ability to be remotely updated and maintained, a feature that significantly cuts support costs. No word on when Macedonians will see these things pop up in schools, but we'd bet quite a few people in other countries wouldn't mind getting their hands on one either.Update: Okay, that's all for comments. While we're sensitive to the many viewpoints surrounding the formal name of the country, Engadget isn't really the place for that debate. Take it outside, kids.
Singapore to have nationwide WiFi by year's end
From the sound of things it would seem the island nation of Singapore will soon be the latest country to get the 802.11 treatment, having all of its near 700 square kilometers blanketed in WiFi. That would make Singapore the third nation that we know of to completely covered, joining Mauritius and Macedonia, with Estonia not far behind. A government report, "Intelligent Nation 2015," already notes that Singapore currently averages one WiFi hotspot for every square kilometer, so combined with upcoming WiMax technology, Singapore is aiming to be one ginormous hotspot by the end of the year. That's a pretty ambitious project, mind you, even for a country as well off as Singapore. Of course, this report also states (no joke), that they'll have 4G cell phones, "Fibre to the Home," the "Semantic World Wide Web," and "Embedded and Wearable Computers" by 2015, which by our estimation would make them among the most advanced civilzations around. If they do manage any of those, we may just have to open up an Engadget Singapore bureau pretty soon since that FIOS certainly ain't getting hooked up in our cribs any time soon.[Via CNET]
