SOPA explained in plain langugae

A number of important sites voluntarily went dark yesterday (BoingBoing, Wired, Wikipedia, etc.) to protest SOPA/PIPA legislation in the United States. There are many places to read about this legislation, but if you want a plain language summary of the implications of the legislation, check out Khan Academy’s explanation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzqMoOk9NWc

Say “Creep!”

One of my students sent me a link to a story about a webcam hacker published in GQ magazine. Luis Mijangos, a self-taught coder/hacker, used a variety of malicious hacks to break into people’s computers and look through their harddrives. On the surface that sounds like basic “run-of-the-mill” hacking… but the really creepy part was when he would hack the computer’s webcam to turn it on and off at will. Since a lot of people keep their laptops/desktop machines in their bedrooms, you can imagine the kind of webcam recordings he was able to download (and eventually use to blackmail his victims). The author of the article, David Kushner, does a great job at trying to understand the psychology of the hacker.

Here’s the link to GQ. It’s worth a read – especially if you need a little Friday the 13th paranoia.

Thanks to Dylan T. for the link.

Move over Dot Com

So the ICANN organization, which overseas the regulation of domain names on the Internet, is planning to open domain names up so that (almost) any name can be used as a top-level domain. Translation: instead of having to find and purchase a “.com” domain name, companies and organizations can apply to ICANN to get a tailored top-level domain. In the future we might see corporations trying to set up top-level domains using their company name (think: .pepsi, .nike, .apple). We could also see cities or organizations moving to this type of URL (think: .nyc, .un, .imf).

It’s kind of like having your own vanity licence plate – albeit a very expensive licence plate: just to apply for one of these custom top-level domains it will cost about $185,000. Critics suggest that the price is out of range for many not-for-profit organizations. They also claim that such a system will be hard to regulate and will be confusing for internet users, but supporters suggest that sticking with the relatively few top-level domains that we currently use doesn’t make sense when there are millions of websites. Something has to be done – so an appeal to vanity might just do the trick.

BBC has the story here.

“Avoid Ghetto”

CBS Seattle has a story about one of Microsoft’s latest GPS patents. Apparently, this patent is aimed at pedestrians who use GPS on their phones to find walking directions. When recommending a walking route, the software directs you around unsafe neighbourhoods (or open air areas that are subject to harsh temperatures). On the surface this seems like a great feature, but you have to wonder how Microsoft (or anyone else) defines “unsafe.”

As The Consumerist points out there is a strange sounding “reward scheme” in one of the claims for pedestrians or advertising providers. Perhaps this opens up the door to GPS systems that deliver preferred routes as deemed by advertisers that pay for pedestrian traffic – and not the GPS routes that are the most efficient.  So you can avoid the ghetto and get rewarded for walking by a business: win, win.

Check out the CBS story here – or The Consumerist version here.

SOPA opera

The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) is set to be debated today in the U.S. House of Representatives – and it’s bound to be an interesting discussion. The proposed legislation would give new powers to content producers and copyright owners as they battle against online piracy. One side of the debate features major content producers like the music and film industries, who obviously want more control over how their content is consumed. If this legislation passes as is, then they will be able to seek court orders to make ISPs, search engines and payment processors block access to sites linked to online piracy. The other side of the debate features Internet heavyweights (Google, Twitter, eBay, etc.) who claim that this legislation will wreck the Internet as we know it. Allowing content providers to have this kind of authority in matters of piracy means that some content will be unfairly censored and this practice may stifle longer-term innovation.

Let the lobbying begin (well, let it continue…)

Read a brief update from the BBC here.

 

R & D Decline

The CBC has an interesting story on the reduction in R&D spending for Canadian firms. Apparently, companies aren’t investing in research and development like they used to – although if you remove a few of the anomalies (e.g. Nortel) the picture isn’t quite as bad as the headline suggests. The article contends that universities and governments (at all levels) in Canada are doing their part to push the innovation agenda and now it’s time for the corporations to step up. When you look at the companies who are investing in R&D, Research In Motion (RIM) out invests everyone by a long shot. Although RIM has had some rough times recently, they still remain one of this country’s most important companies – especially when it comes to the government’s much vaunted innovation-agenda.

Read the full story here.

Anonymous Intro

Considering that we’ve been looking at online security issues in class it seems appropriate that Wired has two features on Anonymous this week. If you’re interested, have a look:

Anonymous 101 (the article)

Anonymous Playlist (the videos)

iPods and Thermostats

Although this isn’t the typical “news” story that I might include on this blog, I think Steven Levy’s article on the new thermostat designed by Nest Labs is worth the read. The story discusses some improvements in thermostat technology that will help us save money (and the environment!) by managing our air conditioning/furnace/HVAC systems more efficiently. In particular the thermostat learns to adjust our heating/cooling requirements from our own patterns (not full artificial intelligence, but neat nonetheless). I originally read this article because the Nest Labs founder, Tony Fadell, designed hardware for the iPod and headed the iPhone team. In the end, I guess I just love good design (both user interface and physical objects). Who knew that my next thermostat could be a piece of modern art?

Read the story from Wired here.

Stuxnet 2.0

A number of news outlets are reporting on another sophisticated piece of malware that has appeared online. Apparently this piece of malware (called Duqu) is based on the Stuxnet worm from months ago. For those who don’t recall, Stuxnet was an advanced piece of malware designed to target specific industrial control systems (in this case, experts believe that the target was nuclear facilities in Iran). You can bet governments and corporations that run core systems (water, power, nuclear, etc) are watching this one closely.

Read more from the BBC.

Fast and loose with facts

The BBC has an interesting video/short article on the fact that young people are a little too reliant on the grand old Internet. Instead of doing a little bit of digging, most young people simply believe whatever they encounter online. Check the source? Who has time for that?

After watching the video I was struck by the sentiment that the websites and stories must be true because they were delivered by Google – as if Google performs some sort of “fact-check” for us when we search. Relevancy algorithms and popularity rankings don’t necessarily deliver the best quality information on the first try (it’s called re-search for a reason).

Here’s the story from the BBC, or check out the video on YouTube below