Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Binney Claims FBI Has Access to NSA Mass Intercepts
December 3rd, 2012Intuitively, we all knew this, but here’s a claim by someone who was in a position to know, that FBI has access to the mass intercepts. Via: Russia Today: Related: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone
Australian Government Admits to Accessing People’s Private Telephone and Internet Records 5800 Times Every Week Without Warrants
December 2nd, 2012I wonder what happens when their targets/citizens run persistent VPNs located in other countries? Via: Sydney Morning Herald: AUSTRALIAN law enforcement and government agencies have sharply increased their access without warrant to vast quantities of private telephone and internet data, prompting new calls for tighter controls on surveillance powers. Government agencies accessed private telecommunications data […]
DOE ‘Manhattan Project’ to Build New Energy Storage Technologies?
December 2nd, 2012There’s just one problem with this analogy. The Manhattan Project cost about $25.8 billion (in 2012 dollars). This DOE effort is $120 million over five years. That’s a noise level allocation of resources compared to The Manhattan Project. Of course, if you need a façade to role out stuff you’ve had sitting on the shelf […]
Dear ITU, Please Don’t Bill Internet Use Like Phone Calls
December 2nd, 2012Via: Ars Technica: Telcos lobby for drastic change, think content networks getting a free ride. That’s the input that a number of former monopoly, European telecoms sent to the member states of the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Why? Because, for the first time since 1988, the ITU will be negotiating new international telecom […]
With Internet Down in Syria, Rebels Use Skype Over Satellite Links
December 1st, 2012Mmm hmm. Via: New York Times: In a demonstration of their growing sophistication and organization, Syrian rebels responded to a nationwide shutdown of the Internet by turning to satellite technology to coordinate within the country and to communicate with outside activists. Related: Syria: Internet Taken Down
Was the Author of This Renesys Piece Stoned When New Zealand Was Classified as Having a Low Risk of Disconnection from the Internet?
December 1st, 2012Here is Renesys’ criterion for a country having a severe risk of being cut off from the Internet: If you have only 1 or 2 companies at your international frontier, we classify your country as being at severe risk of Internet disconnection. Those 61 countries include places like Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkmenistan, Libya, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, […]
Microsoft Engineers Predicted that DRM Would Fail Ten Years Ago
December 1st, 2012Via: Ars Technica: Can digital rights management technology stop the unauthorized spread of copyrighted content? Ten years ago this month, four engineers argued that it can’t, forever changing how the world thinks about piracy. Their paper, “The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution” (available as a .doc here) was presented at a security conference […]
British Company Claims Biggest Engine Advance Since the Jet
November 30th, 2012Via: Reuters: A small British company with a dream of building a re-usable space plane has won an important endorsement from the European Space Agency (ESA) after completing key tests on its novel engine technology. Reaction Engines Ltd believes its Sabre engine, which would operate like a jet engine in the atmosphere and a rocket […]
The Secret to Iranian Drone Technology? Just Add Photoshop
November 30th, 2012Via: The Atlantic Wire: Earlier this month, Iran’s news agency provided visual evidence that its government had figured out to make a fancy new drone that could take off and land vertically. What they didn’t tell us is that they used Photoshop to make it stop taking off from the roof of Japan’s Chiba University, […]
How Amazon Followed Google Into the World of Secret Servers
November 30th, 2012Via: Wired: Chris Pinkham was walking through a data center that would one day house Amazon’s seminal cloud computing service — the Elastic Compute Cloud — when he came face to face with a cage of Google machines. This was a decade ago, when Pinkham oversaw the hardware and software that ran Amazon, and the […]
