67635749
submission
blottsie writes:
A new report takes a deep dive into companies like Hacking Team, which have sprouted up in the years since 9/11 sparked a global war on terror and a wired technological revolution. As the U.S. developed the online surveillance tools that, over a decade later, would eventually be revealed to the world by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, savvy businesses across the globe realized there were plenty of countries that might not be able to afford to develop such sophisticated technology in-house but still had money to burn.
67433255
submission
blottsie writes:
If there are two ways in which the Internet is similar in the United States and Canada, it’s that it’s slow and expensive in both places relative to many developed countries. The big difference, however, is that Canada is looking into doing something about it.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission—the northern equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)— is examining how the wholesale market, where smaller Internet service providers (ISPs) use parts of bigger companies’ networks to sell their own services, should operate in the years ahead.
The industry reaction to this proposal provides insights to the potential consequences of re-classifying broadband in the U.S. as a Title II public utility.
67154949
submission
catparty writes:
Twitter wants to know what apps you're downloading to target ads better. Here are instructions on where to look for the opt-out option in both Android and iOS.
66593719
submission
catparty writes:
A number of changes buried in Facebook’s proposed November 2014 ToS agreement will make it easier for any company under the Facebook umbrella to share data—whether the FTC likes it or not.
65719861
submission
catparty writes:
Google didn't invent email, but ten years ago it began refining it. From Gmail to Wave, Buzz, Priority Inbox, Google+ and beyond, Google's quest could end with Inbox.
65137957
submission
catparty writes:
In his apology, Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox claimed that Facebook was caught “off guard” by a lone actor who reported “several hundred” accounts as fake. That individual, known as "RealNamePolice," reported “upwards of thousands" of accounts starting on Sept. 8. "On Monday morning the second week hundreds dropped like flies."
64072835
submission
catparty writes:
Apple makes it very difficult for users to secure their iCloud accounts with two-step verification. After repeated warnings against enabling the safeguard, anyone using a non-Apple email address for their Apple ID is asked to wait 3 whole days before 2-step verification can be enabled.
64066555
submission
blottsie writes:
In a move out of the anti-SOPA campaign playbook, Fight for the Future and other net neutrality activist groups have set up the Battle for the Net coalition, which plans to launch an “Internet slowdown day” later this month.
No actual traffic will be slowed down. Instead, participating sites will display embeddable modules that include a spinning “loading” symbol and information about contacting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the White House, and members of Congress.
63343473
submission
catparty writes:
An examination of what we can know about Facebook's new machine learning News Feed algorithm:
Facebook's current News Feed algorithm might be smarter, but some of its core considerations don't stray too far from the groundwork laid by EdgeRank, though thanks to machine learning, Facebook's current algorithm has a better ear for "signals from you." Facebook confirmed to us that the new News Feed ranking algorithm does indeed take 100,000 weighted variables into account to determine what we see. These factors help Facebook display an average 300 posts culled from roughly 1,500 possible posts per day, per user.
62808265
submission
catparty writes:
A long-isolated Panoan language tribe in Brazil has contracted influenza following its first voluntary contact with the outside world. With only some tribe members immunized, they have since returned back to their home in the forest of the Brazilian state Acre.
"Flu virus is potentially deadly to isolated tribespeople because they have no immunity to it, and such transmission is exactly what anthropologists and medical experts hope to avoid during contact. In case after case, contact has proved tragic as diseases like flu and measles decimated previously isolated tribes."
62806257
submission
blottsie writes:
Out of all the U.S. government agencies, the Department of Homeland Security is one of the least transparent. As such, the number of Freedom of Information Act requests it receives have doubled since 2008. But the DHS has only become more adamant about blocking FOIA requests over the years. The problem has become so sever that nothing short of an Edward Snowden-style leak may be needed to increase transparency at the DHS.
