“Anyone nostalgic for those halcyon days can now thank digital archivist and filmmaker Jason Scott for BBS: The Documentary, a five-and-a-half-hour paean to the era when computers were named Stacy and Lisa, and tech loyalists fought bitter battles over the superiority of Ataris to Amigas.”
– Wired
All 8 parts are available as a single playlist.
The CIA will reorganize to increase its focus on cybersecurity
The CIA will reorganize to increase its focus on cybersecurity
The CIA is planning one of the largest reorganizations in the agency’s history, The Washington Post reports. CIA director John Brennan unveiled the plans in a press briefing today, saying the…
I’m sure nothing will go wrong here.
NSA/CSS on Twitter
“Every move they make, every step they take. We’ll be watching our foreign adversaries. #HappyValentinesDay from the #NSA #vday2015”
Truth in tweeting.
Good news! The US government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex.
–Journalist and activist Barrett Brown in his public statement
The news: In Texas yesterday, Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison and more than $890,000 in restitution for his proximity to sources in the hacker group Anonymous and for linking to leaked Stratfor documents. Often called the “spokesman” for Anonymous against his wishes, Brown has been detained since his arrest in 2012, and since then has taken a plea deal to reduce his sentence from the decades of charges the prosecution was seeking. Journalists and activists alike agree this is just part of the slippery slope as classified government documents are leaked by hackers and journalists do their job investigating said »
Step 1: Strap 94 iPhones to your body and try to smuggle them into China.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit
Mobile is Eating the World – Benedict Evans
There is no point in drawing a distinction between the future of technology and the future of mobile. They are the same. In other words, technology is now outgrowing the tech industry.
Permission to Touch
All the tech giants want to touch your body. The end game of course is to touch your brain but the way they get there is by starting on the outside and politely inching their way closer and closer. First, 18” from your face. Then, into your pants pocket. Then…
Well, then, Google tried to put itself on your face like a bad kiss on a bad first date. Amateur move, Google, you dork. You should have been more subtle, more gentle. Look at how Apple played it. Apple gently touched your wrist first. That feels nice. We do not feel invaded. We’ll take this slow and see what happens next.
It’s funny ‘cause it’s true.
Welcome to the #internet
Bitcoin is going to change the world more than the internet did
Think of the cellphone. There were never more than 1.2 billion landlines. Then the cellphone came and we’re at 6.3 billion. Why? It’s not because only those people wanted to communicate. The landlines were all post-pay. You need to have credit to get one. The cell phones were pre-paid. Suddenly you could get one with cash. It had nothing to do with technology. It was an economic restriction. Now there are 1.5 billion bank accounts, same threshold as land lines. I think bitcoin will allow us to see 6.3 billion people banking on their cell phones. That’s what’s so exciting to me. That’s a much better world than we have today.
It’s easy to see bitcoin as a fluke, but these numbers demonstrate why it’s such a powerful idea. Regardless of what happens with mobile technology, when digital currency is figured »
Six young men and women, who were arrested and detained in Tehran for making a video in which they danced to Pharrell William’’s hit song “Happy”.
The description originally accompanying the video stated: “People of Tehran are happy! Watch and share our happiness! … We wish happiness for all the people around the world…. “Happy” was an excuse to be happy…Hope it brings a smile on your face.” Apparently this is now a subversive message in Iran.
One U.S. Supreme Court justice referred to Netflix as “Netflick.” Another seemed not to know that HBO is a cable channel. A third appeared to think most software coding could be tossed off in a mere weekend.
The people ultimately responsible for making legal rulings in the modern world are often dangerously out-of-touch with it. [via Lawrence Hurley @ Business Insider] (via huffpostpolitics)
what’s on the netflick tonight honey
(via continuants)
Internet shchminternet, am i rite guys?
Internet Machine: A multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet.
The creation of this installation offers us the sensation of “being there” and, through physicality, materiality and context, it aims to refute the idea that these spaces are immaterial and post-geographical, the incorrect myths that surround them, such as the myth of the “cloud”.
“The perfect Tweet length was right around 100 characters.” – The Proven Ideal Length Of Every Tweet, Facebook Post, And Headline Online
Good advice to keep in your brain.
Larry Page: true believer in the future.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
When Pharell Williams released his “Happy” single followed by the stunningly beautiful “24 hours of Happy“, who could have expected it to have influenced hundreds of covers from virtually all corners of the world? Well, people in the Middle East and North Africa were no exception.
The “Happy” Videos of Middle East and North Africa
The internet!
What upsets me isn’t that we created this centralized version of the Internet based on permanent surveillance.
What upsets me, what really gets my goat, is that we did it because it was the easiest thing to do. There was no design, forethought, or analysis involved. No one said “hey, this sounds like a great world to live in, let’s make it”. It happened because we couldn’t be bothered.
Making things ephemeral is hard.
Making things distributed is hard.
Making things anonymous is hard.
Coming up with a sane business model is really hard—I get tired just thinking about it.
So let’s take people’s data, throw it on a server, link it to their Facebook profiles, keep it forever, and if we can’t raise another round of venture funding we’ll just slap Google ads on the thing.
“High five, Chad!”
“High five, bro!”
That is the design process that »
Comcast was the first last mile provider to recognize this and move peering from the realm of network engineers to the MBAs and started systematically refusing to upgrade existing private interconnects and in some cases systematically de-peering in other cases. Comcast neatly side-stepped the entire net-neutrality debate by degrading service to everybody who wasn’t willing to pay for a private interconnect. Comcast has had a relatively free hand because their customers are blissfully unaware of the politics of global peering and instead will just go somewhere else when a website is ‘slow’.
This has put a lot of pressure on companies like Amazon who know that a 100ms delay in the order process can result in a 1% decrease in sales. Since private interconnect arrangements aren’t public my guess is a lot of companies have caved and are paying Comcast to »
Cheese says he is mainly interested in the way people do things online. “Our myths that we have don’t necessarily reflect the things that we do, so I want to create new myths,” he says.
The GIF, he continues, is a 30-year-old file format, which is woefully inefficient and yet despite all the innovation in technology, is used to tell stories all over the internet today. When he looked it up on a Wikipedia, all that was there was was a description of what it was and where it came from, but a disappointing lack of insight into its cultural significance. “I don’t think it’s the facts that are important,” he continues. The GIF has a story of its own — a fairytale, in fact — but it is a story based on emotion, not fact.”