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Submission + - The sweet sound of rough consensus

Submitted by jaria
jaria writes: The Register writes about the most recent RFC from the IETF: In the midst of working on topics such as the next-generation web protocols, or improving the security of the Internet against the NSA, it also finds time to ponder important questions, such as humming. Can you develop cutting-edge technology for the Internet by having hundreds of engineers hum together in a meeting room? Hummmmmmmmmm...

Comment Reaction from other Internet organisations (Score 1) 279

by jaria (#46490725) Attached to: U.S. Aims To Give Up Control Over Internet Administration

Note that this move is broader than just ICANN. IANA functions are actually run in close coordination with a number of organisations, for instance, regional internet registries (RIRs) and IETF who decide about address allocation policies and protocol number allocations.

Here are some initial reactions from all of these organisations:

http://www.iab.org/documents/c...

Submission + - Removing Insecurity: The IETF Hums 5 Times 1

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: The IETF, which defines and promotes Internet standards, is taking a stand against the activities of the NSA by agreeing to improve the security of Internet protocols.

Nearly 1,100 people attended the IETF meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia at the beginning of November, where the big topic was security. “The Internet has been turned into a giant surveillance machine,” said Bruce Schneier, who spoke at the meeting’s technical plenary. “This is not just about any particular country or individual action. We need to work broadly to fix the problems of today and tomorrow.”

Five votes were cast — they hum, isn't that cool? — with perhaps some long-lasting effects. “At the IETF technical plenary, participants agreed that the current situation of pervasive surveillance represents an attack on the Internet,” said Stephen Farrell, one of the IETF’s two Security Area Directors. “While there are challenges isolating the specific areas of attack that IETF protocols can mitigate, all of the working groups that considered the topic have started planning to address the threat using IETF tools that can mitigate aspects of the problem.”

Peter Salus pulls together more information and speculates what it all may mean.

Submission + - Reclaiming the Internet to the People (IETF 88 @ Vancouver) (darkreading.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Enginnering Task Force is having its 88th meeting in Vancouver, BC, and one of the most crowded sessions was the "Hardening the Internet". "There are a lot of technical things we can do. The goal is to make eavesdropping expensive," Bruce Schneier said in his presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=oV71hhEpQ20). "That's the way to think about this, is to force the NSA to abandon wholesale collection in favor of targeted collection of information." As things stand now, the NSA's surveillance efforts are aided and abetted by the information economy as it stands today".

Comment It works surprisingly well (Score 1) 2

by jaria (#38691136) Attached to: IPv6-only Is Becoming Viable

IPv6-only networking does work, surprisingly well. But there are a number of issues as well, and some hard work will be needed to resolve them.

For one, we were early transitioning to this mode and hit many of the bugs in various operating systems and applications. The situation has improved dramatically in the two years since we turned on our IPv6-networking mode, for instance Linux today works much better than it did back then. Still, some bugs remain. And I think the users need to push some of the application vendors to make the updates. For instance, while there now are recent versions of WoW that support IPv6, the same is not true of most other games. Similarly, Skype has known about their lack of support for IPv6-only networking for at least two years. When are they going to publish an update?
Android

Submission + - IPv6-only Is Becoming Viable (ietf.org) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the success of world IPv6 day in 2011, there is a lot of speculation about IPv6 in 2012. But simply turning on IPv6 does not make the problems of IPv4 exhaustion go away. It is only when services are usable with IPv6-only that the internet can clip the ties to the IPv4 boat anchor. That said, FreeBSD, Windows, and Android are working on IPv6-only capabilities. There are multiple accounts of IPv6-only network deployments. From those, we we now know that IPv6-only is viable in mobile, where over 80% (of a sampling of the top 200 apps) work well with IPv6-only. Mobile especially needs IPv6, since their are only 4 billion IPv4 address and approaching 50 billion mobile devices in the next 8 years. Ironically, the Android test data shows that the apps most likely to fail are peer-to-peer, like Skype. Traversing NAT and relying on broken IPv4 is built into their method of operating. P2P communications was supposed to be one of the key improvements in IPv6.
The Internet

6 Homeless People Saved By the Internet 94

Posted by samzenpus from the power-of-farmville dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With Ted Williams's story (the homeless man with the golden voice, saved by the internet) blowing up online, and in the traditional media, we figured it was time to tell the stories of 5 other homeless people who've found success, be it financial or personal, through the wonderful use of this series of tubes we call The Internet."
Image

Old People Enjoy Reading Negative Stories About Young 122

Posted by samzenpus from the stupid-kids dept.
A study by Dr. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick and co-author Matthias Hastall suggests that your grandma's self-esteem gets a boost when she hears about the stupid things young people do. "Living in a youth centered culture, they may appreciate a boost in self-esteem. That's why they prefer the negative stories about younger people, who are seen as having a higher status in our society," said Dr. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick. From the article: "All the adults in the study were shown what they were led to believe was a test version of a new online news magazine. They were also given a limited time to look over either a negative and positive version of 10 pre-selected articles. Each story was also paired with a photograph depicting someone of either the younger or the older age group. The researchers found that older people were more likely to choose to read negative articles about those younger than themselves. They also tended to show less interest in articles about older people, whether negative or positive."
Earth

Tsunami Hit New York City Region In 300 BC 147

Posted by timothy from the no-place-is-completely-safe dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists say that sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate a huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. Steven Goodbred, an Earth scientist at Vanderbilt University, says that size and distribution of material would require a high velocity wave and strong currents to move it, and it is unlikely that short bursts produced in a storm would suffice. 'If we're wrong, it was one heck of a storm,' says Goodbred. An Atlantic tsunami is rare but not inconceivable, says Neal Driscoll, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is not associated with the research. The 1929 Grand Banks tsunami in Newfoundland killed more than two dozen people and snapped many transatlantic cables, and was set in motion by a submarine landslide set off by an earthquake."
Communications

Al-Qaeda Used Basic Codes, Calling Cards, Hotmail 285

Posted by Soulskill from the if-only-the-nsa-watched-the-wire dept.
jd writes "In startling revelations, convicted terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri admitted that Al Qaeda used public telephones, pre-paid calling cards, search engines and Hotmail. Al-Marri 'used a '10-code' to protect the [phone] numbers — subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number.' The real story behind all this is that the terrorists weren't using sophisticated methods to avoid detection or monitoring — which tells us just how crappy SIGINT really is right now. If the NSA needs to wiretap the whole of the US because they can't break into a Hotmail account, you know they've got problems. FindLaw has a copy of al-Marri's plea agreement (the tech-related information begins on page 12), and the LA Times has further details on his case."
Supercomputing

Flu Models Predict Pandemic, But Flu Chips Ready 216

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the false-positives-incoming dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week, but flu chips capable of detecting the virus within four hours are already rolling off the assembly line. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has designated swine flu as the '2009 H1N1 flu virus,' is modeling the spread of the virus using modeling software designed by the Department of Defense back when avian flu was a perceived threat. Now those programs are being run on cluster supercomputers and predict that officials are not implementing enough social distancing--such as closing all schools--to prevent a pandemic. Companies that designed flu-detecting chips for avian flu, are quickly retrofitting them to detect swine flu, with the first flu chips being delivered to labs today." Relatedly, at least one bio-surveillance firm is claiming they detected and warned the CDC and the WHO about the swine flu problem in Mexico over two weeks before the alert was issued.
The Internet

ARIN Letter Says Two More Years of IPv4 266

Posted by timothy from the no-more-mister-nice-registry dept.
dew4au writes "A reader over at SANS Internet Storm Center pointed out a certified letter his organization received from ARIN. The letter notes that all IPv4 space will be depleted within two years and outlines new requirements for address applications. New submissions will require an attestation of accuracy from an organizational officer. It also advises organizations to start addressing publicly accessible assets with IPv6. Is ARIN hoping to scare companies into action with the specter of scarce resources? This may be what's needed to spur adoption since there appears to be no business case for IPv6 deployment."
Biotech

"Miraculous" Stem Cell Progress Reported In China 429

Posted by kdawson from the we-can-cure-it-for-you-wholesale dept.
destinyland writes "In China's Guangdong Province there's been 'almost miraculous' progress in actually using stem cells to treat diseases such as brain injury, cerebral palsy, ataxia and other optic nerve damage, lower limb ischemia, autism, spinal muscular atrophy, and multiple sclerosis. One Chinese biotech company, Beike, is now building a 21,500 square foot stem cell storage facility and hiring professors from American universities such as Stanford. Two California families even flew their children to China for a cerebral palsy treatment that isn't available in the US. The founder of Beike is so enthusiastic, he says his company is exploring the concept of using stem cells to extend longevity beyond 120 years."

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