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Daily Cuppa: Apple risks ban from US, pics from Facebook's offices

Did you wake up in a daze? Grab a cuppa and let us fill you in on what happened overnight.
Written by Michael Lee, Contributor

Not long to go now until the end of the week. Let's get you through it with news of what happened overnight.

Remember how many people surmised that Google bought Motorola for its patents? Well, perhaps the web giant is cashing in on its investment again: the US International Trade Commission (ITC) is now investigating Apple after Motorola filed a complaint stating that Apple infringed seven of its patents.

The investigation looks at pretty much everything that Apple has ever made, and could see the Cupertino-based company's products banned from entering the US. No one quite knows which patents are being looked at, and it's certainly too early to tell which way the investigation will go, but it will be a landmark blow against Apple if Google and Motorola are successful.

Apple, on the other hand, is reportedly building a datacentre in Hong Kong. Construction is meant to start next year, and be built on an "unprecedented scale." For comparison's sake, Google's own datacentre there is spread over 7 acres, and Hong Kong isn't a city known for having huge amounts of cheap space.

Speaking of running out of space, now that IPv4 addresses have been all but exhausted, their value is increasing as the rest of the world slowly adopts IPv6. In fact, some are calling on the UK government to sell off 16 million IPv4 addresses that it has stashed away. It owns the 51.0.0.0/8 block of addresses, but doesn't appear to be using them; at least, not publicly. They're estimated to be worth between US$500 million and US$1.5 billion.

In Microsoft's world, the Redmond, Washington, giant is finding itself in hot water over a failure to provide users with a choice of what web browser they can use on Windows 7. Microsoft was meant to provide users with a "browser ballot" to allow them to install whichever browser they desired rather than being locked in to Internet Explorer, but, having missed its deadline to do so, is now in the sights of the European Commission.

And just before you get back to work, we've taken a look around Facebook's Singapore offices. They seem to be huge fans of writing on walls, with funny puns in graffiti splashed over bare concrete walls and meeting rooms, like "I'll be bak choy" and "I'm a Seoul man."

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