Red-bellied piranhas are already scary enough, but it turns out that these hyper-aggressive carnivorous fish are also quite the talkers. Using hydrophones to record the fish in captivity, Eric Parmentier from Belgium’s Université de Liège recorded a series of sounds that suggest the fish have a lexicon of audio signals produced in a rather unique way. The study has recently been published in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

The researchers were able to identify three distinct sounds, or “barks,” produced by the fish. In their research, they found that these barks were repeated in similar situations, suggesting that the sounds carry some kind of meaning. For instance, a low grunting sound seemed to signal other piranhas to keep their distance from the barking fish. A rhythmic thud bark, the researchers found, was associated with circling and fighting other fish. Lastly, chasing and nipping fish seemed to be the final level of signaling with a soft creating sound produced by their gnashing their teeth.

Once the sounds were discovered, the researchers were then tasked with discovering their origin.

The San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has confirmed that the organization disrupted cell phone service inside subway stations during a protest. Transit officials say that they intended to prevent what they called a disruptive protest planned for August 11. From the release:

Organizers planning to disrupt BART service [...] stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police. A civil disturbance during commute times at busy downtown San Francisco stations could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators. BART temporarily interrupted service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform.

The release goes on to say that BART recognizes the individual right to free speech, but does not allow protests in areas that require payment to enter — including station platforms, and subway cars. Protestors reportedly planned activities in response to the killing of Charles Blair Hill by the BART police on July 3, after Hill apparently pulled a knife on officers. This came after another fatal shooting of an unarmed man in 2009 by BART officers.

Like other transit systems around the country, BART operates underground nodes to provide cell phone coverage to subway travelers.

In the ongoing struggle between Apple and Samsung over the Galaxy Tab tablet computer, Apple seems to have taken the lead for now. The Regional Court of Dusseldorf has sided with the iPad maker in granting a preliminary injunction over the sale and marketing of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in all European Union member states, save the Netherlands. This is the second injunction that Apple has won against the Tab, which was indefinitely blocked from launching in Australia.

Ukrainian zookeeper Alexander Pylyshenko is either incredibly brave, incredibly naive, or perhaps a little of both. Pylyshenko plans to spend 35 days living inside a zoo’s lion enclosure in a cage with a breeding pair of the animals. While Pylyshenko gets along well with the friendly lions now, living with them around the clock may be a different matter, particularly because the female is due to give birth during his five week stay in the cage. Pylyshenko is undeterred by the inherent danger of being in such close quarters with two wild animals.

Pylyshenko is the owner of the private zoo in the Ukranian city of Vasylivka. He intends to live like the lions do, sleeping on the floor and eating the meat that is fed to the lions through the cage bars. However, he has had a toilet and shower installed in the cage for his personal use. He can not use any scented soaps or deodorants during his time in the cage though, because lions are very sensitive to strong smells.

Microsoft has apparently been gathering location information for wireless devices and publishing it through their Live.com API. The API data contains the location of cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots which can be used in locating a mobile device nearby — similar to how early iPhones operated. However, CNet reports that buried amongst the benign information are the MAC addresses of other wireless-enabled devices, which could include phones, computers, and more.

To build their database, Microsoft has been drawing on information “crowdsourced” from Windows 7 Phones and by special vehicles with Wi-Fi sniffing antennas. Does this sound familiar? It should. Cast your mind back a few months to a time when the world looked scornfully at Apple for “crowdsourcing” the location of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers across the country through the iPhone. And just a few short days ago, Google faced similar allegations; that they’re Street View cars were also used to gather wireless access point information and may have posted user’s MAC address online. If you throw the two of those together, you more or less get what Microsoft has been up to.

Responding to CNet’s report, Microsoft says that it only publishes the location information of Wi-Fi devices it knows to be stationary. Presumably, this is done by comparing the data taken over different days. However, it seems that some wireless devices could have slipped through this filter.

CNet is reporting that while attempting to make a complete list of Wi-Fi access points, Google has also recorded (and in some cases, released) a glut of personal location information with their Street View mapping cars. This comes after previous reports supporting the claim, and a hefty 100,000 euro ($143,000) fine from the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) for gathering unique identifiers for Wi-Fi-enabled hardware.

Google’s stated goal was, in addition to mapping the roads of the world, to provide a complete list of Wi-Fi access points. This data could be used for a variety of purposes, from helping weary travelers find easy-to-use Internet connections to aiding completely lost travelers with psuedo-GPS. In an interesting twist, this was the same goal Apple purported to during their own user location data scandal. The difference is that Google seems to have recorded unique identifiers of computers, phones, and other Wi-Fi enabled devices along with Wi-Fi hotspots.

Before you bust out the torches, pitchforks, wetsuits, and tridents and march off to Mountain View, CA., let’s put this in perspective.

Aside from Julian Assange’s house arrest and sundry legal troubles, his brainchild WikiLeaks has been at the center of a so-called “financial blockade” by payment processing companies for over six months. In response, WikiLeaks has announced that unless the blockade is ended by Thursday, July 7, they will file a lawsuit against the companies involved.

At issue are services such as PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard which have refused to process payments supporting WikiLeaks. The companies claim that they cannot support any illegal activity, and have cut off the secret-spilling website from some much needed donation money. WikiLeaks and their payment processor DataCell counter in their suit that the continued blockade constitutes an unfair use of the companies’ market dominance.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Federal Trade Commission is preparing to serve subpoena papers to search giant Google and begin a federal anitrust probe into the company. If the probe goes forward, this could be Google’s biggest legal challenge to date.

The investigation is expected to center around Google’s promotional search and advertising practices. Services like Kayak and Microsoft say that Google holds their sites to a higher standard for search position than Google’s own pages, routing users to Google’s own products unfairly. Google maintains that it has done nothing wrong, and that it simply provides the best search results regardless of their source. The WSJ points out that while it is not illegal in the US to operate a monopoly, companies can be prosecuted for abusing or  illegally obtaining one.

At 5:48 PM yesterday, hacker group Lulzsec claimed responsibility for taking down the CIA.gov website with a distributed denial of service attack. According to news outlets, the site was down or only intermittently accessibly until about 8:00 PM.

Since the CIA site is publicly accessible, the likelihood that any sensitive information was compromised during the attack is highly unlikely. That doesn’t make this attack any less embarrassing for the CIA, who surely do not take kindly to such provocations. While taking down the spy agency’s website may seem like no mean feat, Lulzsec claimed on their Twitter feed that it was far from their “biggest” operation. For that, they directed users to a torrent of data gleaned from an intrusion into Sony’s networks.

Lulzsec followed up their attack by releasing over 62,000 password and email combinations for various web services, which apparently included Facebook and dating websites.

Russia has announced plans to build eight floating nuclear reactors — the first of their kind — to enhance the country’s efforts to explore the Arctic for oil and gas reserves. The arctic is currently more navigable than it has ever been due to the melting of ice, which was previously an impediment to traversing the region. The arctic may be the last natural stronghold of oil and gas reserves in the world, so accessibility and control of the region is of high interest.

The floating power plants are designed to each create enough electricity for 45,000 people, and will have the extra option of purifying sea water into fresh water. With a cost of approximately $335 million each, Russia intends to produce the floating nuclear reactors for mass production. Countries like China, Algeria and Indonesia have expressed interest in purchasing the reactors. The first power plant should be completed sometime next year, and will be deployed to Russia’s Kamchatka region in the far east.