(Photo: Technabob)

Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people in China honor their ancestors by cleaning and repairing their tombstones. Offerings are also made to the dead, typically consisting of food and drink, but because Chinese culture dictates that deceased relatives will need money and other material goods in the after life, many will also burn fake money or paper replicas of homes and cars as offerings.

Now, NBC News reports that a new material good has been deemed essential enough to offer to Chinese ancestors: Apple products.

During this year's Qingming Festival, fake Apple products made out of paper and cardboard were one of the biggest hits. One man, who makes cardboard replicas of luxury products like cars and houses, added Apple goods to his repertoire this year and said they were a hot ticket item. For just $7, you can offer your ancestors a Mac, an iPhone and an iPad, but if you want an iPhone 5, you have to pay an extra 50 cents.

NBC News notes that the uptick in fake Apple products being offered to deceased Chinese relatives indicates a societal shift in what's considered an important luxury item. Guess this means China has accepted Tim Cook's apology.

Get this guy a Magic Mouse, stat! (Photo: NKNews.org)

Greetings from a greying 2008 MacBook, which has more crumbs stuck inside the keyboard than your scarf after eating a muffin and is so painfully slow that just opening up a new Chrome tab can take a full minute.

Know who doesn't have this problem? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. As you read this on the ancient PC your employer so kindly provided for you, Mr. Kim is clickin' around on his shiny new iMac like a boss dictator, probably using all that sweet bandwidth he hoards for himself.

Now more hackable. (Photo: Monday Note)

Dockster is a recently discovered Mac-based malware program that functions as a keylogger, among other things. It's also a trojan, which means it can hide on a host computer quietly recording every keystroke before it contacts a remote server for further instructions. Dockster is considered "low risk," but it has been found embedded on gyalwarinpoche.com--a site dedicated to the Dalai Lama.

F-Secure confirmed the infection and reported that Tibetan sites appear to be frequent targets for similar exploits:

This is not the first time gyalwarinpoche.com has been compromised and it certainly isn't the first time Tibetan related NGOs have been targeted.

Researchers also say that the Mac malware found on this and other Tibetan sites are "very unlikely to be encountered 'in-the-wild' by day to day Mac users."

Don't rest easy assuming these sneaky programs are isolated, state-sponsored efforts targeting one prominent figure or one beleaguered nation like Tibet. As illustrated by this April report from Kaspersky Lab on the SabPub Mac trojan, cyber attackers are finding their way into Macs for a wide variety of reasons. Mac holdouts who have abstained from downloading antivirus software may have some thinking to do.

I mean, WTF.

Hot on the heels of the rumor that some terrible, unfeeling parents have named their newborn Hashtag comes the news that names from Cupertino are the latest thing. The parenting website BabyCenter has released stats on the popularity of various names among the parents registered on the site, and The Next Web reports that Apple has increased its popularity 15 percent as a girl's name. Siri (apparently a real Norwegian name) increased 5 percent. And among the lads, Mac jumped 12 percent.

Hang on--the littlest Yahoo's name is Macallister, which you'd presumably shorten to Mac. What are you up to, Marissa Mayer?

Assessing this year's results, BabyCenter editor in chief Linda Murray said: "What’s becoming more important to new parents is finding a name with meaning."

Perhaps that's why 50 Shades of Grey exerted even more influence on the list than did Cupertino. (Or, as BabyCenter's press release puts it: "It doesn’t get any hotter than this!") Grey is up 20 percent, Anastasia 10 percent. Ana (which we suppose is her nickname in the series) got a 35-spot bump.

The name Christian, however, actually lost ground. BabyCenter speculates: "While moms are physically attracted to Christian, they do not see him as a role model for their sons." No doubt.

We're just disappointed no one's going with accelerometer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LyIwJgQlsc&feature=player_embedded

The response has not been friendly. In fact, people are pretty much falling over themselves to mock the new ads. Hence, a collection of a few particularly withering quips:

1.  The Atlantic evokes the ghost of Steve Jobs, then calls them "boring riffs" on Best Buy's superior Geek Squad commercials, as well as "the marketing equivalent of Michael Phelps' fourth-place finish in the 400 IM." Ouch.

2. The Verge says, "They feel intellectually cheap."

3. Jean-Louis Gassée--a.k.a. the former head of Macintosh called them "cringe-inducing," adding, "First celebrity Siri ads, now this?" Our thoughts, exactly.

4. Ken Segall--another Apple vet--posted a lengthy takedown that opens with the salvo, "These ads are causing a widespread gagging response, and deservedly so." Brutal.

5. A Forbes contributor: "Viewers Give Apple's 'Genius' Olympic Ads A 'D' For Dumb."

6. In perhaps the most unintentionally devastating remark, redOrbit asks,"Are They To Apple What Flo Is To Progressive?" Poor Flo, she deserved so much better.

7. Ars Technica--even while defending the ads from the charge that they're Apple's absolute worst--calls the implementation "too cheesy, even for an Apple ad—and borderline smarmy in all cases."

8. IT World just asks whether anyone else wants to "punch the 'Apple Genius' guy in the face."

Maybe Apple might want to try... thinking different?

Bet you big bucks that cardigan cost more than that suit. (Photo: EOnline)

Even as we speak, you are leaving digital bread crumbs scattered all over the Internet, there for the taking by marketers. Nor do the details have to be anything particularly consequential to translate into a money-making opportunity.

For example: Orbitz has realized that customers who visit its site from a Mac tend to spend more money on hotels. The company is therefore adjusting its search results accordingly.

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

"Orbitz found Mac users on average spend $20 to $30 more a night on hotels than their PC counterparts, a significant margin given the site's average nightly hotel booking is around $100, chief scientist Wai Gen Yee said. Mac users are 40% more likely to book a four- or five-star hotel than PC users, Mr. Yee said, and when Mac and PC users book the same hotel, Mac users tend to stay in more expensive rooms."

Execs 'fessed up to the Journal, but added that users can tinker with their search results so they're ranked by price. Nor are they assigning two different prices to the same hotel room.

OK, Mac users, we can all admit that this isn't exactly surprising, right? This is a safe space, where we can all acknowledge that maybe something without a pretty, pretty user interface would have gotten us to the Internet just as fast as that Air.

Nor is Orbitz the only retailer looking to capitalize on these techniques:

The effort underscores how retailers are becoming bigger users of so-called predictive analytics, crunching reams of data to guess the future shopping habits of customers. The goal is to tailor offerings to people believed to have the highest "lifetime value" to the retailer.

In fact, we can think of a few sites that might benefit from just straight ripping off Orbitz's Apple strategy. For example:

• American Apparel, because hipsters love hoodies.
• FreshDirect, because yuppies love fancy cheeses.
• Etsy, because graphic designers love putting a bird on it.
• Bloomingdales, because hey, Carrie Bradshaw used one.

He doesn't feel so good. (Wikimedia Commons)

Turns out, cybercriminals can bring home some decent money, after all--at least until someone catches on and shuts down their latest revenue stream. After some reverse-engineering, the sleuths at Symantec have puzzled out the motivation behind the Mac Flashback botnet: Stealing Google's ad revenue. Because, as a clever man once said, that's where the money is.

Translating the highly technical Symantec post, PC Magazine explains:

Here's how it works: when an infected user conducts a Google search, Google will return its normal search results. Flashback waits for someone to click on an ad, and once this happens the user is silently directed to another, irrelievant ad that generates revenue for the attackers.

Symantec concludes, "This ultimately results in lost revenue for Google and untold sums of money for the Flashback gang." How much money? At the height of the infection, ballpark $10,000. Per day.

Though we can't imagine that's hurting the GOOG's bottom line too much.

He doesn't feel so good. (Wikimedia Commons)

Freedom from fear of viruses, malware, botnets, and other digital nasties has long been a major benefit of Mac ownership. But today brings sad tidings: That carefree attitude will soon be no more.

Of course, Macs were never protected by some super-secret security technology, but largely by simple lack of interest on the part of bad actors. Apple simply didn’t own a big enough slice of the market to make Macs worth their while. But those days are now done. Ars Technica reports that, in a press conference yesterday, Kaspersky Lab security researchers were blunt: “Mac OS X invulnerability is a myth.”

They continued, hammering nails into the coffin of the Mac owner’s sense of security:

Expect more drive-by downloads, more Mac OS X mass-malware. Expect cross-platform exploit kits with Mac-specific exploits.

It’s worth noting that all this hellfire-and-brimstone talk is largely speculation about the future. Flashback, the exploit that prompted the panic, has proved relatively easy to rout. Since April 6th, the number of infected computers has dropped from 700,000 to 30,000. The inclusion of GateKeeper in Mountain Lion will likely also help keep threats at bay. Nonetheless, researchers recommend the addition of antivirus software, pronto.

Is there an app for that?