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Archive for the ‘internet’ category: Page 277

Oct 4, 2016

Google WiFi is a router that simplifies whole-home wireless

Posted by in category: internet

Those rumors of Google giving WiFi routers another shot? They’re true. Meet Google WiFi, a router designed entirely in-house… and with a few nice advantages over the OnHub line. Apart from being much smaller (no vase-like design here), its big trick is its ability to create an Eero-style mesh network. You only have to add additional units to your network to improve coverage — there’s a Network Assistant app that makes it easy to add more routers and improve your signal.

Companion software also lets you control the devices linked to the router, such as enabling or disabling their connections. You’ll have to wait until December to get Google WiFi (pre-orders start in November), but the pricing at least hits the sweet spot. Routers cost $129 each, and you can get a three-pack for $299 if you need to blanket your home.

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Oct 2, 2016

A Global Monopoly Just Took Over The Internet, And No One Even Noticed

Posted by in categories: government, internet

Hmmmm.


By: Claire Bernish / (The Free Thought Project) On Saturday, the United States ceded oversight of one of the Internet’s most basic and fundamental functions — the so-called “root zone,” which governs new domain names and addresses — handing it over to a small non-profit group by allowing a 47-year contract to expire.

For decades, the U.S. Commerce Department held a contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — whose executives and board of directors must now report to an Internet “stakeholder community,” loosely comprised of academics, activists, engineers, government officials, and corporate interests.

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Sep 29, 2016

What It’s Like to Fight Online Hate — By Anna North | The New York Times

Posted by in categories: big data, business, governance, innovation, internet, journalism, law

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“Brittan Heller has a hard job. The Anti-Defamation League’s first director of technology and society, she’ll be working with tech companies to combat online harassment.”

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Sep 27, 2016

Google is using balloons to provide internet

Posted by in categories: internet, robotics/AI

Google is using AI-infused balloons to give the whole world internet access 🎈.

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Sep 26, 2016

Terrorist in the machine: U.S. DOJ fears IoT for security

Posted by in categories: government, internet, security, terrorism

The huge wave of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices has the U.S. government worried that the technology harbors lurking security threats.

According to a Defense One article, the U.S. Department of Justice has joined other agencies in evaluating IoT technology for national security risks.

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Sep 26, 2016

Quantum Internet Edges Closer As Researchers Teleport Photon State Six Kilometers Away

Posted by in categories: internet, quantum physics

Researchers from the University of Calgary demonstrated that photons’ states could be teleported at a record 6 kilometer distance over “dark fiber.” The team hopes this research could help them establish the fundamentals for a “global quantum internet.”

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Sep 24, 2016

Scientists just demonstrated internet speeds 1,000 times faster than Google Fibre

Posted by in category: internet

Scientists in Germany have achieved internet speeds averaging a sustained 1 terabit per second (1 Tbps) on an optical fibre network.

At that speed, you’re getting a data transmission rate that’s a whopping 1,000 times faster than services like Google Fibre, which delivers 1 gigabit per second (1 Gbps).

While Google Fibre’s 1 Gbps itself might be considered sufficiently drool-worthy for those of us constrained to the even slower speeds of ADSL and cable, it can’t hope to compete to the almost ludicrously fast possibilities of an internet connection that’s 1,000 times faster, delivering 1 terabit per second.

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Sep 23, 2016

Quantum computers will cripple encryption methods within decade, CSE head warns

Posted by in categories: computing, encryption, internet, quantum physics, security

Definitely less than a decade and even less than 7 especially with China Quantum Satellite, Google’s plan release next year of a Quantum device, etc. I hope folks don’t still believe that we’re immune from a QC attack after 2025.


In a rare public speech, Greta Bossenmaier, chief of the Communications Security Establishment, said cryptologists at the CSE and around the world are racing to find new cryptographic standards before Y2Q — years to quantum — predicted for 2026.

She is the third senior CSE official this week to warn publicly of the threat quantum computing poses to widely used public key cryptography (PKC), protecting sensitive data transmissions from hackers, hacktivists, foreign state spies and other malicious actors.

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Sep 23, 2016

Someone is learning how to take down the Internet

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, internet, military

This is definitely something that we should all be aware of, and watching for.


Submarine cables map (credit: Teleography)

“Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet,” according to a blog post by security expert Bruce Schneier.

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Sep 22, 2016

DARPA perfects hacker-proof computer code

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, drones, internet, mathematics, military

When the project started, a “Red Team” of hackers could have taken over the helicopter almost as easily as it could break into your home Wi-Fi. But in the intervening months, engineers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had implemented a new kind of security mechanism — a software system that couldn’t be commandeered. Key parts of Little Bird’s computer system were unhackable with existing technology, its code as trustworthy as a mathematical proof. Even though the Red Team was given six weeks with the drone and more access to its computing network than genuine bad actors could ever expect to attain, they failed to crack Little Bird’s defenses.

“They were not able to break out and disrupt the operation in any way,” said Kathleen Fisher, a professor of computer science at Tufts University and the founding program manager of the High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) project. “That result made all of DARPA stand up and say, oh my goodness, we can actually use this technology in systems we care about.”

The technology that repelled the hackers was a style of software programming known as formal verification. Unlike most computer code, which is written informally and evaluated based mainly on whether it works, formally verified software reads like a mathematical proof: Each statement follows logically from the next. An entire program can be tested with the same certainty that mathematicians prove theorems.

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