A pair of researchers has discovered a way to use modern browsers to more easily build darknets–those underground, private Internet communities where users can share content and ideas securely and anonymously.

Billy Hoffman, manager for HP Security Labs at HP Software, and Matt Wood, senior security researcher in HP’s (HPQ) Web Security Research Group, will demonstrate a proof-of-concept for Veiled, a new type of darknet, at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas next month.

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Forget the new cyber security czar position that President Barack Obama announced last week.

The real sign that the White House might be finally taking cyber security seriously came in an announcement on Friday that Jeff Moss, aka “Dark Tangent” and the former hacker behind the annual DefCon hacker confab in Las Vegas, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council (HSAC).

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At a table in Las Vegas, a town fueled by big bets, IBM (IBM) software chief Steve Mills outlined one he doesn’t want to make: Buying application provider SAP (SAP).

“We’re not changing our strategy,” said Mills, who guides Big Blue’s software strategy for CEO Sam Palmisano. “We have consistently shied away from going deep into the applications space,” he said last week at a series of business meetings.

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Every year, Microsoft (MSFT) puts on a bash for Web designers and programmers in Las Vegas called Mix. At this year’s conference, the company focused on its new Internet Explorer 8 Web browser, reviewed here, but it also took a not-too-subtle dig at Steve Jobs, with a send-up of prima donna executive antics.

The company rolled a video before Microsoft corporate vice president Scott Guthrie took the stage at the conference, showing Mr. Guthrie in the hours before his speech having his hair done, working out in a disco ballroom and getting a tattoo that said “Thug Life.” At one point in the video, a bewildered conference producer barks that Mr. Guthrie has to make a wardrobe selection, when a clothes rack filled with dozens of identical long-sleeved red polo shirts drifts by.

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Users of iPhones beware–state gaming agents are watching you.

California gaming authorities tipped off their Nevada counterparts to a blackjack card-counting program that can be used on either the Apple (AAPL) iPhone or the Apple iPod Touch portable music player.

“The program calculates the true count and does it significantly more accurately,” according to a Gaming Control Board memorandum sent to casino operators last week warning of the electronic device.

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Exactly a year ago today, I closed the door of my flat in East Dulwich for the last time, pushed my keys back through the letterbox and began my life as the littlest e-hobo. Since then, according to my Dopplr account, I’ve flown enough miles to single-handedly warrant the building of a third runway at Heathrow. It’s lucky that I don’t offset my carbon because if I did, the world would be overrun by trees. And no one wants that.

It’s fitting perhaps that–52 weeks to the day after saying goodbye to London for the first time–I’m about to do it again. I’ve reached the end of a two week stay in town to take care of some admin and, most importantly, to finalise a deal to write a second me-me-memoir, this time about my bizarre adventures as a technomad. A sort of Drunk And Disorderly In Paris and Las Vegas, if you will. The fact that the deal is with the same publisher–even the same editor–as my previous book is a frankly damning indictment of the level of sane judgement to be found in modern publishing. Ask anyone who has worked with me in the past and they’ll tell you the last thing they want to do is make the same mistake again. I’m just going to put it down to an administrative error, keep my head down and hope no one at Orion House realises what the hell they’ve done.

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Dell (DELL) called a bunch of reporters to a room at the Palms hotel in Las Vegas and gave them a sneak peek at a widely rumored laptop called Adamo. It was literally just a peek; the stylish, thin notebook PC was held up briefly by a stylish, thin fashion model who goes by the single name Hollis. A small mob of photographers was allowed to snap away for a minute or two, and then the Adamo was hustled out of the room.

The company gave very few details about the device, which it vowed to ship in the first half of the year and appears to be positioned as a Dell equivalent to Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook Air. Adamo will “be the new luxury franchise in the Dell brand lineup,” says Michael Tatelman, vice president and general manager for sales and marketing in the company’s consumer group.

Adamo means “to fall in love with,” Tatelman says, predicting that consumers will do just that when they see the precision craftsmanship of the product. No pricing was given.

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Intel (INTC) has never been much associated with glitz. The chipmaker, after all, essentially sells high-tech widgets that few people think much about these days. But nearly everybody at times has a question or a complaint about PCs–the inspiration for an Intel-sponsored Web site that plans to add to the star power in Las Vegas next week.

The PC.com site, which posts articles and other resources to help computer owners and prospective buyers, was launched with very little promotion last year. Though it doesn’t go out of its way to hide the affiliation with Intel, it doesn’t exactly advertise it either–preferring to keep a bit of editorial distance from its deep-pocketed parent.

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One of the proving grounds for artificial intelligence is games. Classic games have a fixed set of rules, and these make it easier for researchers to develop new techniques and algorithms that enable computers to play (and hopefully win) various games. Tic-tac-toe, checkers, and chess are all games where researchers have developed software that is capable of winning or drawing when paired off against the best human players in the world. Last weekend, researchers at the University of Alberta added another classic game to this list: poker. In a series of matches that took place over the Fourth of July weekend in Las Vegas, the researchers’ Polaris poker program won against a group of top-ranked online poker players.

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