GPS system in jeopardy

US officials are worried the 20-year-old global positioning system (GPS) that sat-navs and other navigation devices rely on could begin to fail by next year, says Computing.co.uk.

A report from the US Government Accountability Office said a lack of investment in satellites means some are close to failing.

The GPS network is run by the US military and used by a number of commercial firms internationally for satellite navigation systems.

A hard drive containing more than 1TB of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including the personal information of White House staff and visitors, is missing from the US National Archives, reports The Register.

One of the social security numbers lost in the breach belonged to a daughter of former vice-president Al Gore, according to the Associated Press. Other information included logs of events, social gatherings and political records.

A representative of former president Bill Clinton has already been notified of the breach, and federal employees plan to warn other former White House staff soon, a spokesperson said.

Cambridge University researchers have said user photographs can still be found on many social networking sites even after people have deleted them, says the BBC.

They put photos on 16 popular Web sites - noting the Web addresses where the images were stored - and deleted them.

The team said it was able to find them on seven sites - including Facebook - using the direct addresses, even after the photos appeared to have gone.

Last month, Yahoo's on-again-off-again talks with Microsoft over a search and advertising partnership were said to be back on, reports The Wall Street Journal.

After months of finger-pointing and recriminations over who was to blame for the deal tanking, the two sides were again on speaking terms.

The stripped-down deal the two have been discussing involves Yahoo outsourcing its search engine to Microsoft. The companies would also collaborate on advertising. But now we're told that the same "social issues" that bedevilled Microsoft's ham-handed pursuit of Yahoo from the start have resurfaced.