Internet Archive

"The New York Times this morning published a story about the Spamhaus DDoS attack and how CloudFlare helped mitigate it and keep the site online. The Times calls the attack the largest known DDoS attack ever on the Internet. We wrote about the attack last week. At the time, it was a large attack, sending 85Gbps of traffic. Since then, the attack got much worse. Here are some of the technical details of what we've seen."

In the past, OS News has discussed how U.S. broadband access lags many other countries in terms of cost, speed, and availability. Now, this detailed report from the New America Foundation tells why. It all comes down to a lack of competition among the carriers, which can be traced back to the days when cable companies were granted local monopolies. The report argues that "...data caps... are hardly a necessity. Rather, they are motivated by a desire to further increase revenues from existing subscribers and protect legacy services such as cable television from competing Internet services." The report's conclusion: don't expect improvements without legislative action.

"In early January, Facebook began testing free calling over Wi-Fi and cellular data for all Messenger for iPhone users in Canada, and said that a US launch could be coming soon. Apparently, the test went well - a new free calling button has appeared in the app. Facebook has confirmed to The Verge that the feature began rolling out to US users today, and requires no update through the App Store. To make a call to another Messenger for iPhone user, all you need to do is open a conversation with that person, tap the 'i' button in the top-right corner, and tap Free Call." Imagine every Facebook user being able to call every other Facebook user for free. This could be very big.

Reedit: "A minimalist, elastic and read-only Reddit web-app client, that lets you create custom 'Channels' with up to 3 subreddits each." Probably the first web application I've used that doesn't make me long for something native. Fantastic work.

"Everyone from CNET to the BBC is freaking out today about Instagram's new terms of service. The new terms, they claim, allow Instagram to sell user's images. Users are understandably upset. Wired published a tutorial on how to download all of your Instagram photos and delete your account. But long-time Instagram users should think twice before pulling the trigger. The truth is that Instagram has always claimed full rights to your images, but has just re-worded their terms of service to make their intentions clearer." People should stop obsessing over individual service's privacy terms. There's a very simple rule on the internet that everyone ought to be aware of: the moment you put something on the web, it's no longer your property. Deal with it. Coincidentally: nobody cares about your stupid Instagram photos.

Samba 4 has been released. It supports being a free/libre Active Directory domain controller and supports two distinct file servers, two DNS solutions, NTP and a lot of new features.

"With the fate of our beloved internet economy allegedly at stake, perhaps it's a good time to examine what Do Not Track is. How did the standard came to be, what does it do, and how does it stand to change online advertising? Is it as innocuous as privacy advocates make it sound, or does it stand to jeopardize the free, ad-supported internet we've all come to rely on?" Do Not Track is inherently flawed because it gives people a false sense of security. Other than perhaps well-known and accountable sites, nobody's going to abide by it anyway. We don't need nonsense like DNT - we need to educate people about that 'private browsing' button. Everybody's already using it for porn anyway; shouldn't be hard to let people know what other things it can be used for.

"In my not-so-spare time I work on a new technology called Hyperaudio. A question I'm frequently asked is 'What exactly is Hyperaudio?'. Well, it can be a lot of things but I often find it useful to distill it into a sentence. I got it down to this: 'Hyperaudio is to audio as Hypertext is to text.' I usually pause at this point because that statement is loaded with implications."

A free, new report from the New America Foundation compares cost, speed, and availabilty of internet connectivity in 22 cities around the world. The report concludes that U.S. consumers face comparatively high, rising connectivity costs, even while the majority have very limited choices -- often only one or two providers. The report argues that U.S. broadband policies need to change, otherwise consumer choice will continue to deteriorate.

"It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens - and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way."

"If you are on Facebook but have never taken a particular shine to Facebook's e-mail capability, Facebook is intent on changing your mind. As of Friday, the company seems to have quietly given or replaced the display e-mail addresses of all of its users with an @facebook.com address, routing any e-mail communiques you would have received back to its own Messages inboxes." Scummy doesn't even begin to describe this.

"Long before the coming of the World Wide Web, the Minitel provided a sort of internet-in-one-country. Long before Facebook, Google or Twitter - millions of French people went 'online' daily to search for information, to book their holidays, chat to strangers or seek cheap (or not so cheap) sexual thrills."

According to StatCounter's figures (whatever they're worth) Chrome is now the most popular browser in the world, overtaking Internet Explorer for the first time. How times change. Let's hope Google, Firefox, and Opera have some good Metro stuff coming up, because IE on Windows 8 has a terrible UI.

"Yahoo's embattled CEO Scott Thompson is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation." I can't even bother to feign interest.