Internet Archive

So, this one slipped by completely undetected late last year (no, I don't grow tired of saying that). CNet reported that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and similarly large, anti-SOPA companies are mulling over the option of taking their websites off the air to replace them with an anti-SOPA message, asking users to contact their elected officials.

Yesterday, it was revealed GoDaddy actively supported SOPA - to the point of arrogance and dedain towards those opposing the US censorship law. As a result, a boycott was instated on reddit, which was picked up all over the web. Today, the company rescinded its support for SOPA - but for some high-profile clients, it's too late. Behold, the power of the internet.

PHP's popularity and simplicity made it easy for the company's developers to quickly build new features. But PHP's (lack of) performance makes scaling Facebook's site to handle hundreds of billions of page views a month problematic, so Facebook has made big investments in making it leaner and faster. The latest product of those efforts is the HipHop VM (HHVM), a PHP virtual machine that significantly boosts performance of dynamic pages . And Facebook is sharing it with the world as open-source.

Google Chrome offers more protection against online attacks than any other mainstream browser, according to an evaluation that compares exploit mitigations, malicious link detection, and other safety features offered in Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.

"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other international leaders urged countries and private businesses on Thursday to fight increasing efforts to restrict access to the Internet by repressive governments and even some democratic ones. Opening a two-day conference on digital freedom here sponsored by Google and the Dutch government, Mrs. Clinton warned that restrictions on the Internet threatened not only basic freedoms and human rights, but also international commerce and the free flow of information that increasingly makes it possible." Uhm, Mrs. Clinton... SOPA...?

There are a lot of browsers these days, some being bloated with features, others serving the bare minimum of web browsing tasks. Marco Peerboom began developing his minimalist web browser xxxterm for OpenBSD in 2010. Within a year the browser became popular enough in the OpenBSD community to find its ways to major Linux repositories. And here's why.

According to Wired, "The Senate is likely to vote within days on a measure that would undo net-neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010, even though they've yet to go into effect... The House passed a similar measure, but Obama has threatened to veto it. It was not immediately clear whether the Senate has the necessary votes for passage." If you care about net neutrality, now is a good time to head on over to Save The Internet and get involved in this issue.

A new report confirms what you might have guessed. Netflix downloads hog nearly one third of the internet's bandwidth. "Netflix consumes 32.7 percent of the Internet's peak downstream traffic in North America, and ... continues to be the most powerful driver of evening traffic, and for that matter, of daily traffic overall." The report continues: "...despite some negative subscriber reaction to price hikes, Netflix has continued to increase its presence by adding 1 million U.S. subscribers since the Spring 2011 report, and by many measures Netflix rules North America's fixed access networks."

"BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin will be asked to offer customers the option to block adult content during subscription According to new measures to be announced by Prime Minister David Cameron, online pornography watchers will have to place a special request with their Internet Service providers (ISPs) to watch pornographic or sexualised content online. The prime minister is holding a summit at No.10 today with 30 media and retail executives, including broadcasters, magazine editors, trade bodies and advertisers, said the Daily Mail. Cameron is expected to announce the crackdown after Mothers Union charity chief executive Reg Bailey submitted a report on the matter after six months of study." The fact that this can happen in Great Britain just goes to show how brittle concepts like freedom of speech really are. Where people in the Arab world fight for the kinds of freedom we have, we in the west just hand them over to extremists. Un-frakking-believable. Any British folk in here? How on earth did you guys let this happen?

"Computer networks proved their organizing power during the recent uprisings in the Middle East, in which Facebook pages amplified street protests that toppled dictators. But those same networks showed their weaknesses as well, such as when the Egyptian government walled off most of its citizens from the Internet in an attempt to silence protesters. That has led scholars and activists increasingly to consider the Internet's wiring as a disputed political frontier."

It might be common, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to wail against it - especially since I was not familiar with this particular case. As it turns out, several of Adobe products' download pages have opt-out checkboxes to also install Google Chrome. This was spyware-like behaviour when Apple did it with Safari and the iPhone Configuration Utility, and it is still spyware-like behaviour when Adobe and Google do it with Chrome.

"There's confusion - way too much confusion - about my status at TechCrunch and TechCrunch's status at Aol after last week's announcement that I was launching a venture fund, partially backed by Aol. The multiple conflicting statements made by Aol on Thursday and Friday of last week are evidence of that confusion, but that isn't the core issue. My employment relationship with TechCrunch and Aol is not the core issue. The only issue being discussed at this point, the only issue that matters, is TechCrunch editorial independence and self determination. Regardless of my role, if any, going forward. I believe that Aol should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence." I honestly don't care about TechCrunch all that much (more ads, Siegler, and nonsense than actual content), but still - raise your hand if you're surprised by this. AOL is pure, concentrated evil.

"After four long years, here comes a new version of PuTTY, the popular free telnet/SSH client for Windows and Unix platforms. PuTTY 0.61 brings new features, bug fixes, and compatibility updates for Windows 7 and various SSH server software. The new version supports SSH-2 authentication using GSSAPI, on both Windows and Unix. Users in a Kerberos realm should now be able to use their existing Kerberos single sign-on in their PuTTY SSH connections."

"One of life's minor annoyances is having to wait on my devices to connect to the network after I wake them from sleep. All too often, I'll open the lid on my EeePC netbook, enter a web address, and get the dreaded 'This webpage is not available' message because the machine is still working on connecting to my Wi-Fi network. On some occasions, I have to twiddle my thumbs for as long as 10-15 seconds before the network is ready to be used. The frustrating thing is that I know it doesn't have to be this way. I know this because I have a Mac. When I open the lid of my MacBook Pro, it connects to the network nearly instantaneously. In fact, no matter how fast I am, the network comes up before I can even try to load a web page. My curiosity got the better of me, and I set out to investigate how Macs are able to connect to the network so quickly, and how the network connect time in other operating systems could be improved." Yes, I'd love to have Windows and Linux reconnect as fast as Macs do. Alas, "Method to quickly reconnect to a wireless or wired network", as well as its completely different "Method to quickly reconnect to a wireless or wired network on a mobile device" are probably patented, so Windows and Linux can't reconnect too fast out of fear of violating a software patent. In case you haven't noticed: I'm joking. Sort of.