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Friends, this is why we cant have nice things. A McLaren F1 was flipped down an embankment in Italy yesterday, and this video of the crashs aftermath is about as sad as when Old Yeller was shot.

According to Italys La Nazione, this one-off, red-on-white F1 was crashed during a four-F1 tour between the towns of Saline di Volterra and Pomarance in the province of Pisa. Its unclear what caused the driver to lose control and invert our British hero on a grassy hill, although as this is a McLaren F1, we wouldnt be remotely surprised if speed ended up being a factor.

YouTuber Marchettino, an Autoblog reader and well-known source of videos from Ferraris Fiorano test track, was on the scene to capture the video available below. The footage shows the McLaren accelerating away, only to cut away to the aftermath of the wreck. Emergency personnel were tasked with righting the stricken hypercar, a process that was accompanied by the cringe-worthy cracking of its Peter Stevens-designed bodywork. At least they had the decency to cover the crumpled Brit with its fitted black cover as they loaded it onto a flatbed, a fitting yet somehow disturbing visual.

According to reports, the driver and passenger were airlifted from the scene with non-lethal injuries, and both are recovering in a hospital. Given the rising worth and rarity of F1s, despite the extensive damage in evidence, we reckon that this wont be the last the world sees of this special car. Take a look below to view the video.

The sky was falling last week when it emerged that there was a major security hole that could mean 900 million Android devices could be vulnerable to hack attacks - but Google has now rolled out a patch.


It was quite a dramatic state of affairs, with security firm Bluebox reckoning that 99 per cent of Android handsets were vulnerable - there was the potential for nefarious devs to modify app update code.

That would mean that users could be merrily installing what appears to be a legit app update, but is actually riddled with nasty code courtesy of nefarious developers.

Patchwork

However, Google has been working to close the hole since February and has now succeeded.
Exactly when youll get the update will depend on your phone make, with individual manufacturers responsible for rolling out the update.

Samsung owners are quids in though, as Google confirmed to ZDNet that "a patch has been provided to our partners" with "some OEMs, like Samsung… already shipping the fix to Android devices".

Google says that its been a bit of a storm in a teacup though, adding, "We have not seen any evidence of exploitation in Google Play or other app stores via our security scanning tools. Google Play scans for this issue - and Verify Apps provides protection for Android users who download apps to their devices outside of Play."

The timing of tweets is the major clue as to whether they are authentic or not, new research suggests.

Scientists determined the difference between human tweeters and automated Twitter accounts based solely on the timing of tweets.


The researchers, from Imperial College London, found that they could easily tell if humans were responsible for tweets, without even looking at their content, based on when the user’s tweet was posted.

Their technique also enabled them to distinguish between individuals and those accounts managed by groups of people.

Surprisingly, they found that there was not an obvious pattern for automated Twitter accounts, which were more random than humans in terms of the timing of tweets.

The technology behind the research could provide a new way to verify the authenticity of Twitter account users.

The study, published in the journal PloS One, is also providing fresh insights into how our brains operate when using social media tools.

Study author Doctor Aldo Faisal, said: We found that it does not matter whether you are a model in Sao Paulo or a student in Beijing; it seems that we all share something very similar in our tweeting pattern that dictates the timing of when we send out messages.

Why is this important to know? Well, it suggests that there is something fundamentally similar in the wiring of our brains that comes into play when we use twitter to communicate.

Since its creation in 2006, Twitter has accrued more than 200 million active users worldwide, producing 400 million tweets per day. 

The researchers analysed 160,000 tweets from around the world using computer programmes that they developed to spot complex behavioural patterns in Twitter users.

By analysing the timing interval between tweets the team were able to determine that personal accounts holders tweeted more evenly throughout the week and, on each day, more tweets were recorded during typical waking hours of 7am to midnight.

Managed accounts, run by people in corporations, were more active during the five working days and during working hours between 8am and 8pm.

However, tweets from automated accounts were less easy to predict using their method because they were random in terms of when they were sent out.

Dr Faisal added: I am a Twitter user and this project was born out of my curiosity in wanting to know who I’m actually tweeting with.

Sure, there are methods for verifying account holders, but are they fail-safe methods? Are we really speaking to a Member of Parliament on Twitter or a PR representative or a machine? We have now developed a method that can help us determine who it is we are actually tweeting with.