Archive for the 'Technology' Category
The Bell Labs of Quantum Computing
July 23rd, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review: Raymond Laflamme can’t yet sell you a quantum computer. But he’ll sell you a $13,000 logic board for measuring entangled photons. It’s a start. Laflamme is head of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, a research center that’s part of a quixotic, grandiose effort by Mike Lazaridis, […]
Google Responsible for More Internet Traffic Than Facebook, Netflix, and Instagram Combined
July 23rd, 2013Via: Wired: Everyone knows Google is big. But the truth is that it’s huge. On an average day, Google accounts for about 25 percent of all consumer internet traffic running through North American ISPs. That’s a far larger slice of than previously thought, and it means that with so many consumer devices connecting to Google […]
Microsoft Drove the Bus Off the Cliff, Now it Tries to Speed Up
July 23rd, 2013Via: SemiAccurate: Microsoft has driven off the cliff into the death spiral and rather than change direction they are trying to speed up their ‘momentum’. Endless reorgs, paid analyst reports, and flat-out lying to anyone who will listen won’t help, they can not succeed from their current position. Last fall SemiAccurate was one of the […]
The Eye of Sauron Is the Modern Surveillance State
July 23rd, 2013Via: Slate: What can literary fiction teach us about recent revelations that the National Security Agency has aggressively been gathering massive amounts of data on American citizens? The novel one usually turns to, of course, is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its terrifying vision of the Thought Police. Even President Obama, in response to questions […]
A Tour Inside CloudFlare’s Latest Generation Servers
July 23rd, 2013This is off topic, but possibly interesting for anyone who wants to see what balls-to-the-wall looks like in the realm of custom server hardware. In short, huge RAM cache and SSDs—lots of SSDs. Via: CloudFlare: CloudFlare operates at a significant scale, handling more than a trillion requests through our network every month. To ensure this […]
‘What Is That Box?’ — When The NSA Shows Up At Your Internet Company
July 22nd, 2013Via: Buzzfeed: They came in and showed me papers. It was a court order from the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) for the intercept, with the agent’s name… and the court’s information. I think it was three or four pages of text. They wouldn’t let met me copy them. They let me take notes in […]
Serious SIM Card Security Flaw Affects Millions of Mobile Phones
July 21st, 2013Via: Cnet: A vulnerability on SIM cards used in some mobile phones could allow malware infection and surveillance, a security researcher warns. Karsten Nohl, founder of Security Research Labs in Berlin, told The New York Times that he has identified a flaw in SIM encryption technology that could allow an attacker to obtain a SIM […]
U.S. Expanding Military Drone Surveillance Operations Around the World
July 21st, 2013Via: Washington Post: As the Obama administration dials back the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. military is shifting its huge fleet of unmanned aircraft to other hot spots around the world. This next phase of drone warfare is focused more on spying than killing and will extend the Pentagon’s […]
San Jose State Suspends Online Classes Project Udacity After As Many As 80% of Students Fail
July 21st, 2013Via: Los Angeles Times: San Jose State University is suspending a highly touted collaboration with online provider Udacity to offer low-cost, for-credit online courses after finding that more than half of the students failed to pass the classes, officials said Thursday. Preliminary results from a spring pilot project found student pass rates of 20% to […]
Google: Ultimately, “The Goal Is To Insert A Chip Inside Your Head”
July 20th, 2013Via: Independent: Ultimately, as Page and co-founder Sergey Brin have asserted, the goal is to insert a chip inside your head for the most effortless search engine imaginable. … In Building 43 of the Googleplex, Ben Gomes talks with barely concealed excitement about a “new epoch”. A Google fellow and the company’s Vice President of […]
