Internet Archive

Google’s Schmidt sees encryption killing censorship

Thom Holwerda 2013-11-21 Internet 75 Comments

"We can end government censorship in a decade," Schmidt said during a speech in Washington. "The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything."

Setting aside the entertaining aspect of the source of said statement, I don't think encryption in and of itself is enough. Encryption performed by companies is useless, since we know by now that companies - US or otherwise - are more than eager to bend over backwards to please their governments.

What we need is encryption that we perform ourselves, so that neither governments nor companies are involved. I imagine some sort of box between your home network and the internet, that encrypts and decrypts everything, regardless of source or destination. This box obviously needs to run open source software, otherwise we'd be right back where we started.

Is something like that even possible?

English has a new preposition, because internet

Thom Holwerda 2013-11-19 Internet 40 Comments

The word "because," in standard English usage, is a subordinating conjunction, which means that it connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other. In that capacity, "because" has two distinct forms. It can be followed either by a finite clause (I'm reading this because ) or by a prepositional phrase (I'm reading this because ). These two forms are, traditionally, the only ones to which "because" lends itself.

I mention all that ... because language. Because evolution. Because there is another way to use "because." Linguists are calling it the "prepositional-because." Or the "because-noun."

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. This is language changing before our very eyes - and thanks to the internet, it happens out in the open, in an easy documentable way, and at an incredibly fast pace.

Technology leaves nothing untouched.

Google outage: internet traffic plunges 40%

Thom Holwerda 2013-08-19 Internet 23 Comments

Worldwide internet traffic plunged by around 40% as Google services suffered a complete black-out, according to web analytics experts.

The tech company said all of its services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive went down for between one and five minutes last night.

The reason for the outage is not yet known, and Google refused to provide any further information when contacted by Sky News Online.

According to web analytics firm GoSquared, global internet traffic fell by around 40% during the black-out, reflecting Google's massive grip on the web.

Woah.

Obama administration wants to revive part of SOPA

Thom Holwerda 2013-08-06 Internet 26 Comments

You probably remember the online outrage over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) copyright enforcement proposal. Last week, the Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force released a report on digital copyright policy that endorsed one piece of the controversial proposal: making the streaming of copyrighted works a felony.

This man has been such a deception.

NSA program collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the net’

Thom Holwerda 2013-07-31 Internet 72 Comments

From The Guardian:

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

This is not PRISM - but a different system. The slides are damning, as always.

It validates claims made by Edward Snowden, and makes it clear that US government officials have been lying all along. There's no court order required for any of this - in a supposedly modern democracy. Crazy.

Remember, remember: British PM to enact internet censorship

Thom Holwerda 2013-07-22 Internet 60 Comments

"Every household in Britain connected to the internet will be obliged to declare whether they want to maintain access to online pornography, David Cameron will announce on Monday." And so, the UK nanny state turns to straight up censorship. Let's look at some of the authoritarian policies that David Cameron wishes to enact.

Guest post by Beta 2013-06-08 Internet 10 Comments

"Bruce Lawson started a very interesting discussion about the Encrypted Media Extensions to HTML a few months ago, with learned and interesting commentary from John Foliot and others. After devoting some thought to this, I believe that the amount of argument around this subject is at least partially caused by its separation of the web from the spirit of the web."

arkOS: self-host everything

Thom Holwerda 2013-06-07 Internet 10 Comments

"It allows you to easily host your own website, email, 'cloud' and more, all within arm's reach. It does this by interfacing with existing software and allowing the user to easily update and change settings with a graphical interface. No more need to depend on external cloud services, which can be insecure 'walled gardens' that require you to give up control over your data. arkOS will have several different components that come together to make a seamless self-hosting experience possible on your Raspberry Pi. Each of these components will work with each other out-of-the-box, allowing you to host your websites, email, social networking accounts, cloud services, and many other things from your arkOS node." I have to look into this.

Camino browser no longer developed

Thom Holwerda 2013-05-31 Internet 35 Comments

"After a decade-long run, Camino is no longer being developed, and we encourage all users to upgrade to a more modern browser. Camino is increasingly lagging behind the fast pace of changes on the web, and more importantly it is not receiving security updates, making it increasingly unsafe to use."

Twenty years ago, the web was donated to mankind

Thom Holwerda 2013-05-02 Internet 33 Comments

Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.

jQuery 2.0 released

Thom Holwerda 2013-04-18 Internet 15 Comments

"As promised, this version leaves behind the older Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 browsers. In return it is smaller, faster, and can be used in JavaScript environments where the code needed for old-IE compatibility often causes problems of its own. But don't worry, the jQuery team still supports the 1.x branch which does run on IE 6/7/8. You can (and should) continue to use jQuery 1.9 (and the upcoming 1.10) on web sites that need to accommodate older browsers."

Does WebKit face a troubled future now that Google is gone?

Thom Holwerda 2013-04-08 Internet 25 Comments

Peter Bright has summarised some of the post-fork discussions on the WebKit mailinglists. "Now that Google is going its own way and developing its rendering engine independently of the WebKit project, both sides of the split are starting the work of removing all the things they don't actually need. This is already causing some tensions among WebKit users and Web developers, as it could lead to the removal of technology that they use or technology that is in the process of being standardized. This is leading some to question whether Apple is willing or able to fill in the gaps that Google has left." There's a clear winner and loser here.

Submitted by MOS6510 2013-03-28 Internet 39 Comments

"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."

Lack of Competition Holds Back U.S. Broadband

jackson 2013-01-24 Internet 41 Comments

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.

The six inch gap

Thom Holwerda 2013-01-22 Internet 12 Comments

"A complete continuum of screen sizes is actually a blessing for Web designers and developers. It forces us toward adaptive solutions that respond to diverse capabilities instead of being able to draw arbitrary cut-off points for separate mobile, tablet, and desktop sites. So I for one, welcome our six inch fonblet/phablet friends and look forward to further diversity in screens that allow us to access the Web." Hadn't thought of it this way yet. Clever. Aside from this, I'm happy with all these sizes - it means there's something for everyone. Just because I prefer 4.3", doesn't mean everyone should, or that I'm going to ridicule those that prefer larger or smaller displays.

Facebook launches free calling for all US iPhone users

Thom Holwerda 2013-01-16 Internet 16 Comments

"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: web applications don’t have be crap

Thom Holwerda 2013-01-05 Internet 17 Comments

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.

The uzbl web interface tools

Thom Holwerda 2012-12-31 Internet 5 Comments

Uzbl is a collection of tools that form a browser (based on WebKit) which adhere to the UNIX philosophy: "write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface."

What you need to know: Instagram’s new terms of service

Thom Holwerda 2012-12-18 Internet 40 Comments

"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.

Guest post by Nth_Man 2012-12-12 Internet 2 Comments

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.