Reddit has updated its policies to no longer allow impersonation of an individual or entity in a misleading or deceptive manner. "That means the new policies won't just affect things like misleadingly altered videos (like deepfakes), but could implicate simple lies made by people impersonating others online," reports The Verge. From the report: The new policies expand upon the platform's 2018 ban on deepfake porn videos and were made just days after Facebook updated its own platform policies to ban deepfake videos. Here are Reddit's updated policies: "Reddit does not allow content that impersonates individuals or entities in a misleading or deceptive manner. This not only includes using a Reddit account to impersonate someone, but also encompasses things such as domains that mimic others, as well as deepfakes or other manipulated content presented to mislead, or falsely attributed to an individual or entity. While we permit satire and parody, we will always take into account the context of any particular content."

In the announcement post about the updated policies, a Reddit admin said that Reddit updated the rules to "hedge against things that we haven't seen much of to date, but could see in the future." (Reddit says impersonation was the second-lowest "class" of reported policy violation on Reddit in 2018, making up only 2.3 percent of reports.) The admin also cited malicious deepfakes of politicians as an example of content the platform is trying to prevent. The updated policies seem to imply that any kind of misleading impersonation, deepfake or not, could trigger a removal or ban. The new policies do allow impersonation that's seen as satire and parody, however, which could be a hard line to enforce.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Verizon is changing the way it sells its internet and cable packages as customers are increasingly seeking ways to cut the costly cord. The company is eliminating bundles and contracts, Verizon announced Thursday. Instead, it will sell its Fios TV and internet services separately. Long-term contracts are also being trashed in favor of charging customers month-to-month. That is similar to how streaming services charge customers. Verizon is calling the new offers "Mix and Match on Fios." There are now three internet packages and five Fios TV packages. Notably, Verizon will continue selling Google's YouTube TV for $49.99 per month as a TV option under an agreement the two companies signed last year. A home telephone package will also be sold for $20 per month. The new bundle-free packages offer more price transparency for customers, Verizon claims. Not all surcharges are going away though. "Verizon will continue charging a $15 monthly fee for routers in some of its internet packages and a $12 set-top monthly fee in most of its Fios TV packages," the report adds. "But other fees it previously charged, including for regional sports networks, will now be included in the total Fios TV price."

clm1970 shares a report from Georgia State University: A novel nanoparticle vaccine that combines two major influenza proteins is effective in providing broad, long-lasting protection against influenza virus in mice, showing promise as a universal flu vaccine, according to a study by the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University. The double-layered nanoparticle vaccine contains the influenza virus proteins matrix protein 2 ectodomain (M2e) and neuraminidase (NA). Mice were immunized with the nanoparticle vaccine before being exposed to influenza virus, and they were protected against six different strains of the virus. The findings, which suggest this unique vaccine combination has potential as a universal influenza vaccine or component of such vaccines, are published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

The influenza virus protein M2e is found in all influenza virus strains, with each strain having a very similar version, and the protein has mutated very slowly over time. The protein NA is found on the surface of influenza virus and has also mutated much slower than other influenza proteins. This double-layered nanoparticle vaccine uses M2e as its core, and NA is coated on the surface. In the study, mice were exposed to one of six influenza virus strains after receiving the nanoparticle vaccine by intramuscular injection. The vaccine proved to have long-lasting immune protection, which was unchanged against viral challenges up to four months after immunizations.

In an apparent swipe at PayPal's recent $4 billion acquisition of Honey, a popular browser extension that tracks prices and discount codes, Amazon labeled the service as "a security risk" for shoppers over the holidays. Wired reports: "Honey tracks your private shopping behavior, collects data like your order history and items saved, and can read or change any of your data on any website you visit," the message read. "To keep your data private and secure, uninstall this extension immediately." It was followed by a hyperlink where users could learn how to do so. Screenshots of the warning were posted to forums and social media by Honey users, like Ryan Hutchins, an editor at Politico.

Honey isn't some obscure browser extension from an unknown developer. Founded in 2012, the Los Angeles-based startup now boasts over 17 million users. It finds discount codes to save shoppers money at tens of thousands of online retailers, including Amazon. Amazon's warning, which began appearing on December 20, confused and angered many of Honey's users, some of whom complained on its official social media channels. The browser extension has been compatible with Amazon since it was founded, and it is a significant part of Honey's appeal. Amazon declined to explain why it decided to label Honey a security risk so suddenly last month. "Our goal is to warn customers about browser extensions that collect personal shopping data without their knowledge or consent," a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. They declined to answer follow-up questions about the basis for that claim. Honey says in its privacy policy that it doesn't "track your search engine history, emails, or your browsing on any site that is not a retail website."

"We're aware that Droplist and other Honey features were not available on Amazon for a period of time. We know these are tools that people love and worked quickly to restore the functionality. Our extension is not -- and has never been -- a security risk and is safe to use," a Honey spokesperson said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A surveillance vendor that works with U.S. government agencies, such as the FBI, DEA, and ICE, is marketing spying capabilities to local police departments, including cameras that are hidden inside a tombstone, a baby car seat, and a vacuum cleaner. The brochure highlights some of the capabilities on offer to law enforcement agencies, from the novel to the sometimes straight-up bizarre. Special Services Group, the vendor behind the brochure, does not advertise its products publicly. Its logo is the floating-eye-in-pyramid logo seen on the back of the $1 bill, which conspiracy theorists associate with the Illuminati, and the company's slogan is "Constant Vigilance." The company is so secretive that, when asked for comment for this story, it threatened VICE with legal action if we published this article.

The brochure, dubbed "Black Book" by its authors, contains a cornucopia of surveillance devices. "The Tombstone Cam is our newest video concealment offering the ability to conduct remote surveillance operations from cemeteries," one section of the Black Book reads. The device can also capture audio, its battery can last for two days, and "the Tombstone Cam is fully portable and can be easily moved from location to location as necessary," the brochure adds. Another product is a video and audio capturing device that looks like an alarm clock, suitable for "hotel room stings," and other cameras are designed to appear like small tree trunks and rocks, the brochure reads. Other products include more traditional surveillance cameras and lenses as well as tools for surreptitiously gaining entry to buildings. The "Phantom RFID Exploitation Toolkit" lets a user clone an access card or fob, and the so-called "Shadow" product can "covertly provide the user with PIN code to an alarm panel," the brochure reads.

Samsung's "Galaxy XCover Pro" rugged smartphone includes a feature that all but disappeared from the market: a removable battery. "There are a handful of very low-end smartphones that still have removable batteries, but as a mid-ranger, this would be the highest-end removable-battery phone on the market," reports Ars Technica. From the report: It's hard to say if the XCover Pro is currently official or not. Samsung's Nordic division posted a CES press release that detailed the never-before-seen XCover Pro, complete with specs and pictures, alongside several other previously announced phones. A later update scrubbed all mention of the XCover from the press release. The release said the phone would be for sale in Finland on January 31 for $554, but since the release was pulled, it's unclear if that is still accurate.

Samsung Nordic listed the phone with a Samsung Exynos 9611 SoC, an eight-core, 10nm chip with four Cortex A73 cores and four Cortex A53 cores. This would make it a mid-range phone on par with the "Galaxy A" series. The phone has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage that's expandable thanks to a microSD slot, and that sweet 4050mAh removable battery. The display design is... interesting. The display is a 6.3-inch 2400x1000 LCD, which is strange, as most Samsung phones use the company's OLED panels. Like most modern Samsung phones, this device also has a circular cutout in the display for the camera, and while this makes sense on devices with slim top bezels, the XCover's top bezel seems like it would have had plenty of room for a camera. As far as the "rugged" features go, the device features an IP69 water- and dust-resistance rating. There's also a push-to-talk button, side-mounted fingerprint sensor, two rear cameras (25MP + 8MP sensors), and a 13MP front sensor. Strangely, it appears to be running Android 9 Pie instead of the newer Android 10 OS.

Scooter company Lime is laying off about 14% of its workforce (roughly 100 employees) and shuttering operations in 12 markets as it seeks to become profitable this year, the company tells Axios. From the report: After two years of explosive growth, scooter companies have entered a new phase -- survival of the fittest in a capital-intensive, money-losing industry. "We're very confident that in 2020, Lime will be the first next-generation mobility company to be profitable," Lime president Joe Kraus tells Axios. He said that projection is based in part on improvements to Lime scooters' longevity, which in 2019 went from from six months to about 14 months.

Lime is ending operations in 12 markets where it says business was underperforming. In the US: Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio. In Latin America: Bogota, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Lima, Puerto Vallarta, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In Europe: Linz (Austria). Kraus also refuted rumors that Lime is actively raising a new round of funding despite months of ongoing rumors that the company was running out of cash and looking for a fresh infusion. Kraus added that the company is not looking to sell but could be interested in being on the other side of the M&A table. "We always look opportunistically in being a buyer," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: When Valera Zaicev began working in Dublin as one of Facebook's moderators a couple years ago, he knew he'd be looking at some of the most graphic and violent content on the internet. What he didn't know was that Facebook would be counting the seconds of his bathroom breaks. Facebook, which outsources the majority of its content moderation to over 15,000 third-party contractors, didn't always keep those employees on such a tight leash. When Zaicev, 33, joined Facebook's moderation army in July 2016, he found a professional workplace where he felt he received in-depth training and excellent treatment. But that all soon changed. As the number of moderators in the Dublin offices exploded -- rising from 120 to over 800 in two years -- the conditions deteriorated and training for moderators all but evaporated.

By 2018, the number of content moderators worldwide continued to grow into the tens of thousands, and Facebook began testing a "time management system" designed to monitor every single minute of their day -- including lunch breaks, training, "wellness breaks" for counseling or yoga, and even the time they spent on the toilet, according to Zaicev and one current contracted employee, who did not want to be identified. In the past few years, Facebook has tried to fight back against criticism over how it deals with horrific content on the platform. The company has spent at least half a billion dollars hiring human moderators, in addition to the algorithms that already police its pages. Increasingly, Facebook moderators say their every move is monitored. When making decisions about content, for example, moderators have to follow an ever-changing document they call "the bible." And each moderator is given a "quality score." "You're allowed four or five mistakes a month -- a 2% failure rate, 98% quality score," said Chris Gray, a former Facebook moderator who worked at the company for 11 months. "So if you come in, and it's Tuesday or Wednesday, and you've got five mistakes, you are fucked for the month, and all you can think about is how to get the point back."

profi writes: Chinese drone maker Ehang demonstrated its autonomous air taxi in the US for the first time. The all-electric two-seater took flight for five minutes above a test track south of Raleigh, North Carolina, on Tuesday afternoon, with approximately 100 people, including the state's governor, Roy Cooper, looking on. It represents the first time that Ehang has received permission to fly from the US Federal Aviation Administration, and it helped set the stage for it to receive approval for passenger demonstrations in the near future. The Ehang 216, powered by 16 electric rotors, flew along a pre-planned route at over 80 mph. The aircraft weighs about 600 pounds and can carry another 500 to 600 pounds of cargo or passengers, the company says. But it's still in its early stages of development and is primarily being used today for sightseeing trips.

Microsoft has developed an automated system to identify when sexual predators are trying to groom children within the chat features of video games and messaging apps, the company announced Wednesday. From a report: The tool, codenamed Project Artemis, is designed to look for patterns of communication used by predators to target children. If these patterns are detected, the system flags the conversation to a content reviewer who can determine whether to contact law enforcement. Courtney Gregoire, Microsoft's chief digital safety officer, who oversaw the project, said in a blog post that Artemis was a "significant step forward" but "by no means a panacea."

"Child sexual exploitation and abuse online and the detection of online child grooming are weighty problems," she said. "But we are not deterred by the complexity and intricacy of such issues." Microsoft has been testing Artemis on Xbox Live and the chat feature of Skype. Starting Jan. 10, it will be licensed for free to other companies through the nonprofit Thorn, which builds tools to prevent the sexual exploitation of children. The tool comes as technology companies are developing artificial intelligence programs to combat a variety of challenges posed by both the scale and the anonymity of the internet. Facebook has worked on AI to stop revenge porn, while Google has used it to find extremism on YouTube.

Yves Behar doesn't really need any introduction. The world-renowned Swiss designer is a frequent creative artist in the gadget realm. He's designed iconic devices like the OLPC, Jawbone Jambox, Herman Miller SAYL chair, and many more. From an interview, where he also talks about his smart lock company August: Input: What is your favorite gadget right now that's not the new August smart lock?
Yves: My funnest, latest gadget is my electric bicycle. It's kind of changed the way I think about mobility and getting around. I think that both scooters and electric bicycles really make you not hesitate to go somewhere. Instead of going in a car, you just are outside and you can go on a hike, you can go pick up something, and so those are my two latest acquisitions and fun things to use.
Input: What is the one piece of tech you're most excited for? Whether that's autonomous cars or like anything that's far-flung?
Yves: I live in San Francisco so solving city-level transportation is the most interesting opportunity. It's an opportunity to reshape the landscape of a city. To take back streets, to put more people, more housing, more density in cities, which I think is very important both from a human standpoint and environmental standpoint. So I'm really excited about both individual cars and public transportation being autonomous, being on-demand, and clearing the street of all that parking and all those cars.
Input: As a designer, what is your favorite material to work with? What material really challenges you or you love working with?
Yves: Over the span of my career, I'm not one of these designers who is known for making everything in white or black or having a singular material.
Input: Haha, mmm, that guy [Jony Ive] is no longer at that company [Apple].
Yves: [Laughs] What I've always been interested in is sustainability and I think, today, with what we see with plastics and packaging, and the environment -- we really need to move towards bioplastics. Materials that will not only be recycled, but that will be beneficial for the Earth when they decompose. So whether you're doing packaging or doing products, I think we need to move towards that and there aren't enough new materials. There's research being done, but at scale, currently, what we really need is some environmentally sound material that can be used and reused, and can help us move away from the sort of environmental disasters that we're experiencing.

Facebook said on Thursday that it would not make any major changes to its political advertising policies, which allow lies in ads, despite pressure from lawmakers who say the company is abdicating responsibility for what appears on its platform. The New York Times: The decision, which company executives had telegraphed in recent months, is likely to harden criticism of Facebook's political ad practices heading into this year's presidential election. The company also said it would not end so-called microtargeting for political ads, which lets campaigns home in on a sliver of Facebook's users -- a tactic that critics say is ideal for spreading divisive or misleading information. Political advertising cuts to the heart of Facebook's outsize role in society, and the company has found itself squeezed between liberal critics who want it to do a better job of policing its various social media platforms and conservatives who say their views are being unfairly muzzled.

The issue has raised important questions regarding how heavy a hand technology companies like Facebook -- which also owns Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp -- and Google should exert when deciding what types of political content they will and will not permit. By maintaining a status quo, Facebook executives are essentially saying they are doing the best they can without government guidance and see little benefit to the company or the public in changing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: SoftBank-backed Zume is laying off 360 employees, accounting for about 50 percent of its workforce, and shuttering its robotic pizza business to focus on food packaging. SoftBank invested $375 million in Zume in 2018, giving the start-up a $1 billion valuation. Previously, Zume was valued at just $218 million and had risen $71 million in total, according to Pitchbook. Like other SoftBank-backed startups, Zume used the capital to quickly scale and increase its workforce. But, over the last year, investors have shifted their focus from "growth at all costs" to a clearer path to profitability.

Zume CEO and founder Alex Garden tells CNBC that it's a difficult day for the startup, but the changes being made will focus the business on "the inventions that are showing strong commercial traction." Garden says the company is creating 100 open roles in the Source Packaging unit that employees can reapply for. Pizza Hut has been testing Zume's round boxes on a limited basis. Zume's packaging -- which the company says is covered by a number of patents -- is made of sustainably harvested plant fiber and is industrially compostable. The robot pizza company, which launched in 2015, consisted of an army of robot sauce-spreaders and trucks packed full of ovens. Garden's goal at the time was to become the "Amazon of food."

New submitter profi shares a report from Computing: Huawei has released the source code of openEuler, its distribution of Linux based on CentOS. The operating system was formally launched by Huawei in September 2019 in response to U.S. sanctions, which had briefly affected the company's access to Windows and Android operating systems. The source code has now been published on Gitee, the Chinese version of Github.

OpenEuler comprises two organizations on Gitee, one for source code and one for package sources. The openEuler organization was keen to highlight two particular packages, iSulad and A-Tune, among the openEuler source code. "iSulad is a lightweight gRPC service-based container runtime. Compared to runc, iSulad is written in C, but all interfaces are compatible with OCI. A-Tune is a system software to auto-optimize the system adaptively to multiple scenarios with embedded AI-engine." The announcement continues: "You will also see several infrastructure-supported projects that set up the community's operating systems... these systems are built on the Huawei Cloud through script automation."

Among the package sources, covered by the src-openeuler organization on Gitee, are around 1,000 packages with versions in both ARM64 and X86 architecture packages. Huawei claims its developers have made a number of enhancements to ARM64 openEuler code to improve multi-core efficiency. It is also working on a "green computing" ecosystem with Linaro and the Green Industry Alliance. At the moment, the organization claims, there are more than 50 contributors and just under 600 commits. The openEuler community has around 20 SIGs or project groups.

Warner Bros. is has made a pact with Cinelytic to use its AI-driven project management system that was launched last year. From The Hollywood Reporter: Under the new deal, Warners will leverage the system's comprehensive data and predictive analytics to guide decision-making at the greenlight stage. The integrated online platform can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams. Founded four years ago by Tobias Queisser, Cinelytic has been building and beta testing the platform for three years. In 2018, the company raised $2.25 million from T&B Media Global and signed deals with Ingenious Media (Wind River) and Productivity Media (The Little Hours). STX, which endured a number of flops in 2019, including Playmobil and Uglydolls, became a Cinelytic client in September.

While the platform won't necessarily predict what will be the next $1 billion surprise, like Warners' hit Joker, it will reduce the amount of time executives spend on low-value, repetitive tasks and instead give them better dollar-figure parameters for packaging, marketing and distribution decisions, including release dates. The platform is particularly helpful in the festival setting, where studios get caught in bidding wars and plunk down massive sums after only hours of assessment. "The system can calculate in seconds what used to take days to assess by a human when it comes to general film package evaluation or a star's worth," says Queisser. "Artificial intelligence sounds scary. But right now, an AI cannot make any creative decisions. What it is good at is crunching numbers and breaking down huge data sets and showing patterns that would not be visible to humans. But for creative decision-making, you still need experience and gut instinct."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Now that most smartphones don't have headphone jacks, there's no shortage of complaints about Bluetooth. This year at CES, the industry group in charge of defining the standard, the Bluetooth SIG, is introducing new features that should address some of them. Later this year, it will finalize new support for Bluetooth LE Audio, which is an umbrella term for a bunch of new features for Bluetooth devices. The new features include higher-quality audio, hearing aid support, broadcasting to many people, and working better with wireless earbuds. Unfortunately, as is the way with all industry specs, it will take some time for these features to make their way into consumer products. The old joke that "Bluetooth will be better next year" still holds true.

The feature that will likely affect the most people is the new "Low Complexity Communication Codec," or LC3. LC3 simultaneously reduces power consumption while increasing audio quality. Right now, the lowest common denominator for Bluetooth audio is the relatively old and relatively bad SBC codec, though many phones support Qualcomm's proprietary codec, AptX. In order to get SBC to sound good, you have to increase the bitrate, which increases power consumption. The Bluetooth SIG claims that, in its testing, users preferred the new LC3 codec, even at significantly lower bitrates. The group is also finally beefing up official support for Bluetooth hearing aids. It has worked in conjunction with a European hearing instrument association to ensure broad support in the coming years, including working with TVs and other devices. A new "broadcast" feature will theoretically allow an entire movie theater audience to use their Bluetooth headphones to tune in to the movie, although how exactly the pairing process would work is "TBD," the report says.

Bluetooth LE will natively support multistream audio, which "means wireless earbuds will be able to receive their own independent signal from a phone instead of having to communicate with each other," the report adds. "Multistream also will allow for easier sharing of Bluetooth audio among multiple users from the same source."

New submitter SysEngineer shares a report from HuffPost: A new protein made from air, water and renewable electricity could revolutionize our food system within the next decade. Developed by the Finnish company Solar Foods in a lab just outside Helsinki, the protein -- called Solein -- is made using living microbes that are then grown in a fermenter in a process similar to brewing beer. The microbes are fed with carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen all taken from the air. This fermentation process, which takes place in huge vats, produces a liquid that is removed and dried to give the final product -- a yellow flour-like powder with multiple food uses.

If the electricity comes totally from renewables -- the aim is to use solar and wind -- the production process could produce virtually zero greenhouse gas emissions, the company says. It would also require far less land and far less water than traditional agriculture. Solar Foods says just 10 liters (2.1 gallons) of water is needed for every 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of Solein. To produce 1 kilogram of soy requires 2,500 liters (550 gallons) of water, a figure that rises to more than 15,000 liters (3,300 gallons) for 1 kilogram of beef. The scientists say Solein has three applications: it can be used as a protein additive in existing foods; it could work as a way to help ingredients bind together; and it could also be used as an ingredient in plant-based meat alternatives.

Intel announced Thunderbolt 4 this week at CES, saying it will arrive in PCs later this year with Intel's new Tiger Lake processor. But, as CNET reports, "the all-purpose port won't be any faster at transferring data than the 4-year-old Thunderbolt 3." From the report: The chipmaker promised it would be four times faster than today's USB, then clarified it was talking about the USB 3.1 version at 10 gigabits per second. Thunderbolt 3, though, already can transfer data at 40Gbps. Still, you can expect other changes. "It standardizes PC platform requirements and adds the latest Thunderbolt innovations," Intel spokeswoman Sarah Kane said in a statement, adding that Intel plans to share more about Thunderbolt 4 later.

Thunderbolt, embraced first by Apple in 2011 and later by some Windows PC makers, has proved popular in high-end computing situations demanding a multipurpose connector. A single Thunderbolt port can link to external monitors, network adapters, storage systems and more. But Intel's years-long ambition to make Thunderbolt mainstream hasn't succeeded. Instead, USB remains the workhorse port.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a CleanTechnica report: Over the last couple of days, as Tesla continues on this monstrous run, the media seems to have been noting that Tesla is now more valuable than any U.S. automaker's market cap ever. (Tesla is currently almost exactly the market cap of Ford and GM combined, around $88 billion.) Even though I would now plant myself firmly in the "bull" camp, this is completely untrue, and I think it paints a problematic picture of Tesla. Let's get right to it -- Tesla is not the most valuable U.S. automaker ever because Tesla's market cap does not have just Tesla automobiles in it.

Currently, especially to outsiders, Tesla's automobiles are the most visible aspect of its business. The problem is Tesla's business is so much more diverse and will affect so many other major industries in the future that calling Tesla an automaker is akin to saying that Google is the most valuable phone company. Sure, Google makes phones, but taking just that aspect of its business into account while ignoring the rest and then claiming it's the most valuable phone company is a mistake at best, and deceitful at worst. I sort of get it. GM doesn't produce HDTVs and Ford doesn't have a wing that runs theme parks or something, so a lot of "analysts" think of Tesla in a similar, narrow-minded way and think Tesla should only be valued based on its automobile business. Tesla's valuation includes its energy (solar and battery) division, autonomy business, and Supercharger network, which is "currently the only capable, nationwide electric vehicle 'refueling' standard," the report says. After you deduct the valuations of those divisions, Tesla becomes "a $30 billion automaker," which makes it "currently the smallest U.S.-based automaker."

In conclusion, CleanTechnica's Frugal Moogal writes: "My point is simply this -- if you're out there parading around the fact that Tesla is the most valuable U.S. automaker ever, you're missing the bigger point. The market is starting to value the rest of Tesla's business, and what I think we're seeing is the beginning of the largest vertically integrated energy and transportation company."

Peter Kirstein, a British computer scientist who was widely recognized as the father of the European internet, died on Wednesday at the age of 86. According to his daughter Sara Lynn Black, the cause was a brain tumor. The New York Times reports: Professor Kirstein fashioned his pivotal role in computer networking the old-fashioned way: through human connections. In 1982, his collegial ties to American scientists working in the nascent field of computer networks led him to adopt their standards in his own London research lab. Those standards were called Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, which enable different computer networks to share information. Professor Kirstein embraced TCP/IP despite competing protocols being put forward at the time by international standards groups.

"Peter was the internet's great champion in Europe," said Vinton G. Cerf, an American internet pioneer who was a developer of TCP/IP and a colleague and friend of Professor Kirstein's. "With skill and finesse, he resisted enormous pressure to adopt alternatives." Professor Kirstein was so avid a fan of computer networking that he gave Queen Elizabeth II her own email address, HME2. In 1976, while christening a telecommunications research center in Malvern, England, the queen became one of the first heads of state to send an email.