Users can type an English phrase and receive its Klingon translation in the proper alphabet, and for those times when you need a Klingon translation, you can reverse the process and enter the alien phrases, in turn getting the English translation. The feature is available via the Web version of Bing, and via the Bing Translator app for Windows Phone 8 with the update Microsoft rolled out.

Microsoft went into detail on how the translation process project was performed over on MSDN, offering an explanation in both English and another in Klingon, for those fluent among us. The project was done in partnership with the Klingon Language Institute, and was particularly difficult because of the lack of substantial texts in the language, let alone transcribed texts.

That is where the fan community came in, providing feedback and corrections. The translation engine was trained with an initial bought of transcribed Klingon texts using the Microsoft Translator Hub. Over time, the combination of these two things resulted in more accurate results as the project progressed and was refined, and finally the finished project, which is now available.

You can get a translation in either Latin script or in its native plqaD script, but Microsoft advises that you must manually select the language rather than relying on Auto-Detect. If the translation option isn’t enough for you, there’s also a widget that can be added to websites, allowing visitors to translate the pages into the Star Trek language. And just for the record, this is how you say SlashGear in Klingon:

SOURCE: Bing

The app was created by the New Zealand Amnesty International, and takes place outside of Facebook on its own website. After a brief introduction detailing the freedoms many of us enjoy and the lack of said freedoms in many places across this world, the app then requests permission to access your Facebook. After granting it, your social account will be analyzed, with your friends being “interrogated” and the things you’ve said in statuses, have liked, participated in, and listed potentially being used against you.

Once the “investigation” is over, a list of your crimes begin to scroll across the screen, followed by a list of your punishment and the various countries where you would be guilty. This is done alongside eye-catching graphics and a slowly scrolling animation. At the end of it all, you’re presented with a map of your sentencing, which displays in graph form the different types of punishments you would have received and for which statuses.

For example, I was personally found guilty – based on my Facebook information – of 4 crimes totaling 85 convictions in 67 different countries. For my crimes, my punishment graph shows 44 beatings, 24 instances of imprisonment, one lashing, a couple dozen spats of torture, and being killed nine times over again by extremists.

The purpose of the app is to draw attention to human rights issues across the world and bring attention to the lack of freedom in many locations (let’s hope you didn’t pop up with a violation or two in your own country). It has the added effect of bringing the dose of perspective we all need at times about the things we take for granted, and perhaps a small reminder to be careful what we post for the world the see.

Note: The app fails partway through when using Google Chrome, but is tested as working with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

SOURCE: Trial by Timeline

The study looks at Internet users age 16 and older, and not surprisingly it is that youngest age group that has the highest rate of Internet usage, with 97.1-percent of the 16 to 24-year-olds age group having used the Web within the last three months. Jumping to the other end of the scale, however, only 34.3-percent of those aged 75 and older have used the Internet.

While it isn’t particularly surprising that the elderly are the least among Internet users, it is also not surprising that they are the demographic most quickly adopting an online presence, with the number of users having jumped 3.6-percent over the previous year to 30.7-percent at the end of 2012. Between the two age groups, we see a slight-but-steady drop in users moving from the youngest to the oldest age groups.

An area that shows an interesting trend is the fairly rapid decline of female Internet users compared to male users as one progresses through the age groups. While female users and male users are nearly identical (down to a tenth of a percent, in some cases) in the three youngest age groups – going up to 54-year-olds – the number of female users starts declining compared to male users in larger percentages from age 55 onward.

In the oldest age group, 43.7-percent of men use the Internet compared to only 27.3-percent of women. Also shown by the study was that out of the European Union, the United Kingdom has the highest rate of overall Internet users compared to other locations.

SOURCE: The Guardian

Strongbox was created by Kevin Poulsen and the late Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this year after intense legal pressure following his JSTOR hacking debacle. It is an extension of DeadDrop, the code of which will be made open source and released for other companies and individuals to use. Unlike traditional methods for submitting tips and information, Strongbox aims to keep the tipster anonymous, and makes it so the recipient won’t be able to determine from where the information comes.

The Strongbox system is both fairly simple and quite involved, with several steps happening between the sharing of the tip and access of the information on the receiving end. Tipsters have to access Tor in order to upload a file or message (which are encrypted using PGP), and will receive a randomly generated alias. The files are then shuttled off to a server that is isolated from the recipient’s network and checked regularly by those with access.

If information has been received, the recipient downloads it via a VPN-connected laptop onto a flash drive, then decrypts the files on a secondary laptop running a live CD that is wiped with every restart using a second thumb drive containing the decryption keys. From there, the recipient can then return a message if desired via Strongbox, and the tipster can receive it by accessing the system using the randomly-generated alias that was assigned.

Poulsen talks about the project in his own write up, detailing how it was initiated and the work that went into it, mixed it with a personal perspective on the man himself and the weeks leading up to his untimely passing days after a launch date for the project had been set.

SOURCE: The New Yorker

The email, says Marlinspike, appeared in his inbox one day with the alluring subject line: Solution for monitoring encrypted data on telecom. Though he wasn’t interested in helping, he did respond to the agent’s email, initiating a correspondence that the programmer says lasted for a week. The end result was revelation of telecommunication company Mobily’s current project for intercepting data from mobile applications, with particular emphasis on Line, Viber, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

Reportedly, Mobily’s Executive Manager of Network & Information Security Yasser D. Alruhaily is at the helm of the project, which was initiated by someone referred to as “the initiator.” Marlinspike believes “the initiator” to be the Saudi government, but it doesn’t sound like that information was ever explicitly provided.

In one of the emails from Mobily that were published, it is revealed the telecom company is looking for information on how to go about intercepting traffic from mobile apps, whether a workaround exists for accomplishing that task, and if there are any other places it could approach in regards to the project. Marlinspike goes on to specify that one document they provided indicates using SSL certificates for interception, as well as SSL exploits and vulnerabilities.

Word has it a WhatsApp interception prototype is up and working.

So, what is compelling such an action? Terrorism, according to a message Marlinspike posted from Mobily. The telecom company, after being informed that he wouldn’t help them, said that Saudi Arabia has a “big terrorist problem” with those responsible using the aforementioned mobile apps – and others – to transmit information. The telecom company then goes on to say that because of this its actions are not only necessary, but Marlinspike’s refusal to help is indirectly aiding terrorist activities.

SOURCE: Thought Crime

Google didn’t have much of anything else to say on the matter, simply repeating the same rhetoric it gives every time about the actual roll out in the city not coming for awhile while it plans, engineers, and establishes its network in the city. There’s no reason to believe the pricing or service will be different than other locations where it is available and is slated for availability in the future.

On May 8, Google made a similar announcement, revealing that Grandview, Missouri had been added to the list where its service was approved and would be added at a future date. The same goes for Swanee, Kansas, which was announced on May 3, adding it to the list that already included Mission Woods, Olathe, and Westwood/Westwood Hills.

Such announcements have been slightly smoother rolling than the revelation that Google Fiber was heading for Provo, Utah, revealed back in April. Unlike other areas set to get the service, Google will be using an established fiber network rather than installing its own. The deal was set to go through for an initial purchase price of $1, which eventually was okay’d alongside a variety of other requirements.

While Google’s service has been getting a lot of attention, it isn’t the only gigabit Internet offering out there. In Japan, for example, Sony is offering residents in Tokyo 2Gbps service for the equivalent of about $50 monthly. ISPs in the US have been ramping up their offerings as a response to Fiber, such as Vermont’s gigabit service priced at $35 monthly.

SOURCE: Google Fiber Blog

The game first came out in 1976, offering players a blue paddle and gray ball with which they would slowly destroy multiple brick layers. Such is the same in Google’s version of the game, with one small difference (playing it on a modern device aside) – the bricks are especially small thumbnail versions of the Google Image results that show up upon searching for “Atari Breakout,” the same search that pulls up the game. If it doesn’t show up for you immediately, be patient – it will.

Not surprisingly, you get a chance to pit your brick-shattering skills against other Google users, with a Google+ “Share Your Score” link being offered at the end of your game. There’s audio just like you’d find with the original game, as well as the ability to pause, which helps guarantee that your procrastination will hit a whole new score of its own.

This nicely augments the Pong game iOS users were blessed with back on November 29 via Atari, which released the free app as a way to celebrate its fourth decade. Of course, quite a few Pong games were already available for iOS users, but none had the honor of being titled “official.” That release was in addition to a contest for an Xbox 360 with an integrated LCD made to look like an Atari console.

This isn’t the first time Google has recreated a classic game online. Back in 2010, for example, the Internet giant celebrated the 30th anniversary of Pacman with an in-logo game complete with a two-player mode, audio, and all the little yellow dots you could eat. Even better, the game featured a “coin slot” via a transformation of the I’m Feeling Lucky button into an Insert Coin button.

SOURCE: Tech Radar

The project displays a global map, and updates in real-time when a change is made on Wikipedia, displaying it as a small circle that flashes on the editor’s location, as well as the name of the article that was revised and the editor’s IP address. Below the map is a scrolling text box containing more information, including a link to the article, the language of the article, and the city, state, and country where the edit was made.

So far, edits made on the English, Japanese, Russian, German, Spanish, Indonesian, and French Wikipedias are available, with users being able to select one or more to view. When watching the map under the English version of the website, it averaged about 500 edits per 33 seconds. While the edits shown are substantial, the project only tracks those made by unregistered users, which represent about 15-percent of the edits made to the online encyclopedia. The information is pulled via live feeds broadcast with Wikimon.

The programmers behind the project advise that, according to a survey done in 2007, edits made by unregistered users on Wikipedia are often of less value than ones made by registered users, advising that you can correct an issue if you happen to spot one while using their real-time visualization. The project was built using DataMaps, d3, and other services and libraries, and is open source for anyone to grab on github.

Watching the map provides an interesting passive sort of observation, giving us a peek into what articles are of interest to users and where those users are located. When observed long enough, shifts can be noticed, such as edits increasing and decreasing with the fluctuations of waking and working hours, topic trends, and more.

SOURCE: Hatnote

In 2010, Raza briefly reappeared in the public eye when it was revealed that after the incident he ended up depressed, eventually dropping out of high school and ending up in a children’s psychiatric ward, according to Vice. His family sued the families of the three students who posted the video online without Raza’s permission, seeking a quarter of a million dollars for the bullying he suffered as a result of it. Eventually the matter was settled, terms unspecified. While it took time to heal, he eventually overcame his unwanted fame and the overwhelming negativity that came with it, moving on to greater things.

Eight years after the incident, Raza held the title of president of the Patrimoine Trois-Rivieres conservation society, and revealed that he was seeking a law degree from McGill University, having since graduated. Although such information was provided, Raza still remained silent about what those years were like, leaving us to guess what he experienced in the unspoken phrases between such admissions of depression and stints in a psychiatric ward.

Now, a full decade later, that silence has finally been broken, with Raza talking about what he experienced and felt during those years in an interview with Canadian magazine Macleans. Why the change? According to Raza, he felt compelled to take a public stand against cyberbullying, not only because he understands it in a way most of us (thankfully) never will, but also because of the growing instances of Internet bullying that have, in some cases, resulted in suicide.

“No matter how hard I tried to ignore people telling me to commit suicide, I couldn’t help but feel worthless, like my life wasn’t worth living,” said Raza. He talked about such instances as fellow students climbing on top of tables to mock him. “In the common room, students climbed onto tabletops to insult me.” The friends he had before the incident, which he says had been very little, stopped associating with him after the video surfaced. He was finally forced to change schools before dropping out altogether.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however, and when asked what advice he has for those who are suffering cyberbullying, Raza said: “You’ll survive. You’ll get through it. And you’re not alone. You are surrounded by people who love you.”

SOURCE: Macleans

Image via Motherboard

In 2012, Humboldt did a similar project shortly after President Obama was re-elected, using certain words in geotagged tweets to determine which areas of the country sent out the most hate speech in response. While interesting, the project garnered a lot of criticism because of the way it associated the data it gather, which had an inherent flaw – there was no distinction between intention. So, for example, someone using a word typically associated with hate speech in an unrelated context would be lumped in as a piece of data indicating racism.

This obviously resulted in numbers that weren’t as accurate as they could be, and many were vocal about the issue. This time around, those involved in the latest project have tweaked the process a little so that the intention of tweets are factored in rather than simply categorizing tweets based on individual words taken out of context.

The tweets used in the project were sent between June 2012 and April 2013, and of them more than 150,000 were gathered containing homophobic and racial slurs. To avoid the aforementioned problem with lack of context, the students participating in the project then manually sorted through all of the tweets, categorizing them based on context as either “positive,” “neutral,” or “negative.” Such a method removes the errors introduced by algorithms that are incapable of determining whether the use of a word was in an acceptable way.

Once categorized, the tweets were then sorted to the “county” level and normalized based on the total number of tweets that came out of that location. By doing this, locations that had higher hateful speech in comparison with total tweets than other areas show up red on the map, while areas with lesser levels show up as blue. The team responsible advises that blue areas still represent areas with a lot of hate, but don’t show up as red because of their very large population, which reduces the overall hatefulness rating. Later on, the team hopes to test the instances of hate speech against its demographic, which can help look into the makeup of areas with high ratings.

You can check out the map for yourself here. Note that the farther you zoom in, the more refined and detailed the data becomes, while zooming out will result in more red and less detail.

SOURCE: Floating Sheep

The FCC is now reportedly looking at an alternative for providing Internet service on aircraft. What the FCC is considering is the repurposed of some satellite airwaves in a proposal that is expected to move forward today. QUALCOMM is trying to get the FCC to free up some the airwaves currently used by the satellite industry.

This plan is still in the very early stages and while the FCC is set to vote today, that vote will only be to open the possibility up to public comment. Any actual implementation would likely be years away. QUALCOMM has reportedly been trying to get the FCC to make this move since 2011.

Internet speeds provided by the satellite service is expected to rival that of the speed provided by current ground-based solutions. QUALCOMM has a vested interest in pushing the FCC to approve this plan because it is the main equipment maker for airborne Wi-Fi networks and other companies are expected to bid on the new satellite airwaves and purchase the required hardware from QUALCOMM. Pushback the satellite industry is expected to be strong as many companies in the satellite industry hope to provide hardware and services for airborne Internet themselves.

[via Wall Street Journal]

Since the changes made earlier this year, the Internet radio service experienced an increase in new subscribers to the tune of between 10 and 20-percent, with the numbers breaking down to between half and one-million. That’s not all, however, with the service also experiencing an increase in the amount of time its users – which tally in at 35 million, active users unknown – spend listening to music with the service.

Said Slacker Radio’s CEO Jim Cady: “Listening time since launch has also gone up by 25% largely because of the more approachable interface and new programming. We had expected it to go up. We didn’t expect it to go up that much.” In addition, the service has – much like Pandora – seen a big jump in the number of songs being streamed via a mobile device.

Out of the total number of hours spent listening to the service, 2/3rds of them are streamed via a mobile device, such as a smartphone or a tablet. In light of this, Slacker is looking into offering its service as a bundle option with a carrier or two (or three, etc.) It doesn’t plan to stop there, however, also saying that being offered via infotainment systems in cars is a big goal. The company is reportedly in talks with GM, Ford, Honda, and other big-name auto makers.

[via Billboard]

While most people are familiar with total solar eclipses, an annular eclipse is less well known, involving the moon’s position over the sun in such a way that it will briefly look like a bright-glowing ring – like the One Ring is glowing bright way up yonder. Such an effect is the result of the moon’s distance, with it being far enough away from our planet that it appears smaller in diameter than the sun, causing the ring effect.

If such a prospect excites you and you won’t happen to be located in the remote Pacific tomorrow, you can watch it from your preferred device here tomorrow starting at 5:30PM Eastern Time. If you’re in Western Australia, Queensland, or the Northern Territories, on May 10 at 6:32AM, the moon’s shadow will begin passing over, eventually tracking to Cape York Peninsula at 8:44AM, then to the eastern side of Papua New Guinea, eventually to the Solomon Islands by 10:15AM (all local times).

Said Williams College Field Memorial professor Jay Pasachoff: “It is always astonishing to see the moon apparently cut bites out of the sun. And it is a wonder of modern science and mathematics that you can travel halfway around the world, arriving on a normal day with blue sky, but then, on schedule, the lunar silhouette breaks up the sunlight.”

[via National Geographic]

Of course, the domains could be a mix between possible move titles and video game titles, but they give subtle clues as to what the title will be about. Some of the more notable domain names that were registered include Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars Wolf Pack, Star Wars Alliance, and our personal favorite: Wookiee Hunters.

Other domain names include Wolf Pack Adventures, Order 67, Bothan Spies, Gungan Frontier 2, Gungan Frontier 3, and Gungan Frontier 4. Of course, further details on these titles is far from unknown, but it at least tells us that Disney and EA are set to kick it into high gear with new Star Wars installments over these next few years.

Disney acquired Lucasfilm and LucasArts back in October, essentially getting full control over everything Star Wars. However, it came at a cost for the Mickey Mouse company, who paid just north of $4 billion for it all. It looks like that investment will come to good use, though, as Disney looks to milk the franchise for everything its worth.

[via Fusible]

In one case, in Houston, the US Attorney’s office apparently acquired “contents of stored communications” from an ISP, identity unspecified, without a warrant. The US Attorney’s office in Manhattan issued guidelines to staff that it could achieve the same results with a subpoena rather than a full warrant.

It’s not the first time this year that investigative methods followed by US governments have come in for criticism. Back in March, a California court criticized the FBI for violating First Amendment rights by using so-called “National Security Letters”; by citing national security considerations, the FBI could bypass getting warrants in the traditional manner, and the subject of investigations would not be informed that their data had been shared.

Here, it’s the Fourth Amendment which privacy advocates like the ACLU argue the DOJ and FBI are trampling over. Digital information held by cloud services like Gmail, Dropbox, Facebook, or Twitter should be just as protected as a hard-drive physically located in a suspect’s home, they claim.

One confusing factor is that in many cases email and non-email digital content is treated differently. A 2010 ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, US v. Warshak, left many of the big names in webmail – Gmail and Outlook among them – insisting full warrants for access to emails they store. However, while the Justice Department appears content to comply with that, it has proved less concerned with following full warrant procedures with files such as those stored in Dropbox or Google Drive, or direct messages and IM chat on Twitter and Facebook.

“We really can’t have this patchwork system anymore,” ACLU staff attorney Nathan Wessler concludes, “where agencies get to decide on an ad hoc basis how privacy-protective they’re going to be.” However, moves to pin down the exact legal expectations of the DoJ and FBI have met with opposition, and other proposals to heavily fine companies like Google who do not comply with wiretap orders are also underway.

In November of 2012, the entire country was off-line for three days. The cause for the November Internet outage was laid at the feet of “terrorists” by the Syrian government. However, some experts believe that the November outage was perpetrated by the Syrian government.

Some of these Internet experts believe that the Syrian government blocked access to the Internet in November as it fights a bloody internal conflict. There was some suggestion that the reason for the outage back in November could have been the Syrian government trying to disrupt communications of rebels in preparation for some sort of offensive. Jim Cowie, a spokesperson for a web company called Renesys says that there isn’t enough information available to determine the specific cause of the blackout that occurred last night.

However, he did note that the current Internet blackout seems to be very similar to the one that occurred November. The BBC reports that Syrian residents report that while the Internet is down, mobile phones and landline phones are functioning normally.

[via BBC]

The announcement followed approval from Grandview’s Board of Aldermen, which voted in the majority to allow Google to roll out its Fiber Internet service in its city. Like many of the other places, Grandview is close to Kansas City, the birthplace of Google Fiber. And, as with other places, the process is a slow one, with Google advising that things will take time.

Google advises that “it will still be awhile” before it starts construction on bringing the service to Grandview, with the board’s approval being the very first of many steps and a lot of planning that must take place. Says Google, now that the go-ahead was given, the Internet giant will start planning and engineering the network, updating the public when the next step is set to take place.

While Kansas City has been the lucky epicenter of Google’s service, Fiber hasn’t been contained there, with the company having gained approval to offer the service in Provo, Utah back on April 24. And lest one become too enthralled with Google lust, a couple of small time ISPs have trumped the service, including Vermont Telephone Company, which is offering residents the same speeds for $35 a month.

[via Google Fiber Blog]

The Internet sales tax bill was sponsored by Mike Enzi (R. Wyoming) and Richard J. Durbin (D. Illinois), but despite its bipartisan nature, the bill is expected to meet opposition as it moves to the House, where Republicans are less enthusiastic about the additional tax it imposes. Reports the Washington Times, 20 Republicans in the House are currently in favor of it.

Those in favor of the bill say that calling it an Internet tax is incorrect and misrepresents what is already law. When purchasing something online, it is already law that sales taxes must be paid by those making the purchase, something that is either ignored or unknown, resulting in – depending on which study you side with – over $20 billion in uncollected sales taxes.

This bill aims to solve that issue by having the retailer pulling the sales tax in the same way your local store does, with the company being responsible then for paying it to the state, something that will boost state revenue. Says one of the Republicans who support the bill, Lamar Alexander, “Some suggest this is a tax on the Internet. But every senator knows there’s a law against taxing the Internet. This is a tax that everybody owes that only some people pay.”

[via Washington Times]

Google already had an agreement in place, but it was dependent on approval from the city council, according to the Kansas City Star. That put Shawnee nearly on the same list as other nearby locations, including Mission Woods, Olathe, and Westwood/Westwood Hills, that have agreements with Google to get its Fiber service in the future. It didn’t take long for approval to be given.

Google flatters Shawnee in its announcement with proclamations and praise for the city’s “vision to keep their citizens informed and involved” via the Internet, pointing to its recent city website update as one example. Such a reality, says Google, strengthens communities and makes it a prime location for Google Fiber service.

Shawnee’s Mayor Jeff Meyers said during the city council: “The ultra-high speed Google fiber network will enhance the quality of life for people in Shawnee by providing faster access to essential digital resources. This will grow and strengthen Shawnee’s competitive advantage in the years to come.” For now, there’s no word on when the service will roll out, with Google saying that it’ll offer that update later on.

[via Engadget]

Says Astrid in the announcement, its team will be joining Yahoo’s mobile team. As a result of the acquisition, the company’s app is going to be shut down in 90 days, with the service effectively putting an end to new premium subscriptions starting today. In addition, it is aiming to make the transition for its users as gentle as possible.

Those who currently use the service will be contacted “shortly” with instructions on how to download their data, which needs to be done within the next three months, after which point it will be gone forever. Says Astrid, its app has been downloaded 4 million times, and that the company is grateful for all of its users, as well as its investors and mentors, which it specifies by name.

This follows Yahoo’s purchase of Summly back in March for the hefty sum of $30 million, one of many moves by the company to boost its mobile-centric goals. The purchase came in the form of 90-percent cash and 10-percent stocks. No financial data was provided on the Astrid acquisition, just a note that Yahoo will refund users who bought an annual subscription set to expire after the service goes down.

[via Astrid]

Over 100 different variations of Facebook.com were registered, and each of them were hit with a lawsuit from the social network giant. Although it is common practice, domain squatting is in violation of 1999′s U.S. Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, which makes it illegal for someone to piggyback off a successful trademark, which domains like Dacebook.com were doing.

Facebook was awarded $3 million in damages by the District Court for Northern California, a figure that will probably never be paid and that the social network, in all likelihood, won’t go after. Nonetheless, it is a victory for Facebook, and a quick look shows that many of the domains have already either pulled their content or such completely down.

The folks over at TechCrunch got a statement from the social network’s Associate General Counsel Craig Clark: “We are pleased with the court’s recommendation. We will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to enforce against those who attempt to take advantage of the people who use our service.” Facebook is not the only big-name company that has gone after domain squatters, with Google having taken the legal hammer to its myriad of trademark leeches, as well.

[via Business Week]

The company says that its faster fiber-optics internet service should begin rolling out to a select number of markets in Omaha next week, with availability to almost 50,000 of its customers to arrive by October of this year. This makes Omaha the fifth city in the US to receive gigabit internet, with Kansas City being the first.

The latest city to receive Google Fiber will be Provo, Utah, which was just announced last month, as was the announcement that Google’s gigabit internet would be coming to Austin, Texas. Even certain locations in Vermont will be getting fiber-based internet (not provided by Google Fiber, though). Based on this trend, we should see more cities crop up to challenge other cities for the fastest internet.

However, ISPs in these areas aren’t too happy about the deal that Google is getting with its Fiber service, and they’re fighting back with comparable services of their own. For example, AT&T announced that it would offer gigabit internet in Austin alongside Google Fiber. The war is officially on, and for once it’s not taking place in a court room.

Making the challenge even harder is the fact that the site itself was an evolving project, not a stable page, as Berners-Lee and his WWW team updated it as the user-friendly web developed. Since then, the URL has been used for more general information about Berners-Lee’s work.

“For a start we would like to restore the first URL – put back the files that were there at their earliest possible iterations. Then we will look at the first web servers at CERN and see what assets from them we can preserve and share. We will also sift through documentation and try to restore machine names and IP addresses to their original state” First Website Project, CERN

The first page of the new project to go live is info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, which has been restored using a 1992 copy of the original site. “This may be the earliest copy that we can find,” CERN says, “but we’re going to keep looking for earlier ones.”

CERN will also look to restoring the NeXT computers that first hosted Berners-Lee’s site, and is currently researching information from specialists familiar with the machines. Back in 1993, however, the route that the internet finally took was far from concrete: there was apparently fierce discussion around whether the technology should be released as an open standard, something eventually signed into being on April 30.

[via BBC; NeXT image via National Media Museum]

The information comes from sources who are said to be both former and current officials who are familiar with the push. The FBI is said to be at the helm of the request, motivated by what it calls the “going dark” problem of not being able to access online-based communications and missing vital evidence or information because of it. For this reason, a government task force is pushing to have companies penalized for failing to comply with a wiretap order, which is usually achieved by claiming that a means of intercepting the communications is not possible.

Under the proposal, a company such as Google would need to establish a means of intercepting communications, with the freedom to do it however it wishes. If the company receives an order to intercept communications, under the proposal, it will need to do so or will face stiff fines, which are said to start out in the tens of thousands and only go up from there. Failing to follow the order will then lead to a hearing, with the fines doubling daily after 90 days.

Says the FBI’s General Counsel Andrew Weissmann: “The importance to us is pretty clear. We don’t have the ability to go to court and say, We need a court order to effectuate the intercept.’ Other countries have that. Most people assume that’s what you’re getting when you go to a court.” Says the sources, the Obama administration has not signed off on the proposal, and all government agencies asked about the leak declined commenting on it.

[via Washington Post]

The free WiFi hotspot is available to Time Warner customers who have a standard internet subscription, or a Business Class subscription. Those who do not have either will be offered a free trial period to test out the hotspots, and will later be required to pay an access fee with packages starting at $2.95 an hour. The hotspots have become available starting today, and customers will be able to find their nearest hotspot using the TWC WiFi app available in both Google Play and the iOS App Store.

Google recently confirmed that it will be deploying its Google Fiber network in the city of Austin, Texas. Its internet service offers customers free internet with speeds of up to 5Mbps as long as the customer is willing to pay the installation fee. Customers can also opt for 1Gbps data speeds for $70 a month, or get both 1Gbps data speeds and the Google Fiber TV service for $120 a month.

TWC stated that due to Google’s announcement, the company has to be more aggressive in deploying its free WiFi networks. Not only that, but AT&T also plans on bringing its own 1Gbps fiber service to Austin, Texas as well. The competition is growing dangerously in the city, and in order to keep its subscribers, TWC knows that it needs to step up its game. But we know that its going to take more than free WiFi hotspots to keep customers from switching over to Google Fiber or AT&T, because contrary to what TWC’s CFO might think, customers do want 1Gbps data speeds.

[via Time Warner Cable]

Vermont Telephone Company is a rural business that serves about 17,500 homes, of which 600 so far have subscribed to the ISP’s gigabit Internet offering. The service went live this month, and has one very notable feature over other offerings: it only cost $35 per month. That is half the monthly fee charged by Google for its Google Fiber network.

How does a small company manage to afford the installation of a fiber network, especially in light of the svelte monthly charge? Primarily via federal stimulus awards to the tune of $94 million. The funds were used to set up 1,200 miles of fiber to multiple rural counties in the state, a process that took about a year. Those who aren’t currently in the locations being serviced by the fiber network should be by the end of this year.

Vermont Telephone Company’s CEO Michel Guite has given a nod to Google Fiber, saying that the stimulus money was denied until after Google had announced its project, after which point VTel was granted the funds. He says that the provider has been holding public educational meetings at libraries in the state to help educate consumers about gigabit Internet.

[via WSJ]

This represents a fairly drastic rise in numbers, with subscribers hitting a million a tad over a year ago. Of course, just because an individual subscribes to 3G in North Korea does not mean they have access to the Internet – quite the contrary. Subscribers are able to make voice calls and send text messages, and cannot access the world wide web and cannot communication internationally.

Long-term visitors have different access that is a bit more free, but still regulates international access. And both of these are different than the 3G regulations that visitors were briefly under earlier this year, which allowed for access to the Internet in addition to texting and voice calls. The network availability spurred a flood of photos from within the closed-off nation on Instagram, one of which is featured above.

Sadly, the Internet access wasn’t available for even a solid month before it was cut-off from visitors, leaving them with just voice connectivity and nothing else. No official reason was given for why the Internet access was pulled, with some speculating that the amount of content from within the nation being published online fueled the decision.

[via North Korea Tech]
Image via Joseph Ferris III

Pinterest users who were around in its early days will recognize the “new” features that have been added (aka, brought back) in the latest update, including the “See it now” feature that takes a user directly to their pin after pinning it. Another feature the company said users wanted back was “Pinned from”, which showed who a pin was from, making it particularly easy to find others with like-minded tastes. The feature has been brought back.

Simple mentions have been re-introduced in this new update, allowing users to mention friends in a pin description via an “@” tag, which pulls up a list of individuals from which the user can select. Speaking of friends, users can now also see who among their Twitter followers and Facebook friends are using the social network, making it easier to connect and share.

Lest the entire update center around old features, the update also features some improvements, including more notifications thanks to a Recent Activity upgrade. The feature has been moved to the top right corner, and shows notifications for repins, likes, comments, follows, and mentions, as well as access to older notifications. There’s also an improved search that suggests keywords while a query is typed.

[via Pinterest]

The information comes from CBS, which says the MTA tested WiFi support in 7 different subway stations late last year, and having experienced positive results will begin rolling out the project on a larger scale. By the end of 2016, it is expected that almost all of New York City’s 277 subway stations will have wireless Internet and cell phone coverage.

The wireless service will be provided via several carriers, including Boingo, Transit Wireless, and all four big wireless carriers, with reports that more will be added. While the project is ambitious, it is also slow going, with technical difficulties being presented. The subway system was constructed over 100 years ago, and certainly wasn’t made with eventual wireless service in mind.

Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, among other carriers, have all joined the project to offer cell phone coverage in the 36 planned subways. As might be expected, some concerns about terrorism and the expanded wireless abilities facilitating it have been posed, but word has it the MTA is working alongside New York City’s counter-terrorism task force with the project. Beyond that it is being tight-lipped, and has nothing else to say.

[via Android Community]

That number is up from the 1,811 takedown requests made regarding 18,070 pieces of content during the previous half of 2012, and it’s the highest number of takedown requests that Google has seen during a six-month period since the search giant began to offer transparency reports three years ago.

Google’s legal director, Susan Infantino, says that “it’s become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown,” and she notes that “in more places than ever, we’ve been asked by governments to remove political content that people post on” various Google services.

The most notable spike came from Brazil, which saw a sharp increase from the last transparency report. Google received 697 requests in Brazil, most of which were court orders. This is up from 191 during the first half of 2012. Google says that the reason for the steep increase was due to the municipal elections, which took place during the fall.

The letters were sent in secret to a variety of providers, among them being AT&T, giving the ISPs permission to interception communications that go through their network, a violation of the Wiretap Act. According to the documents, those who moved ahead with intercepting communications have been provided with legal immunity. These are called 2511 letters, and the exact amount that was sent out is not known.

Both the Defense Department and the National Security Agency participated in this event, with CNET reporting that some of the documents it received showing discussions by the NSA’s director Keith Alexander. Said the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s executive director Marc Rotenberg, “The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws. Alarm bells should be going off.”

Originally, this program was used to keep an eye on defense contractors, monitoring their Internet links. The Obama Administration has expanded the program so that it now involves “all critical intrastructure sectors,” which are said to include finance, healthcare, and energy. This change will go in effect on June 12. While the Department of Justice and NSA turned down requests for comments, Homeland Security responded with a statement that it is “committed to supporting the public’s privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties.”

[via CNET]

Says Nintendo, the mobile access for Miiverse does not offer all the features users enjoy on the Wii U, with the reason being that it is still in beta mode. According to Miiverse.Nintendo.net, where users can access it, PCs, smartphones, and other devices are supported, with those “other devices” not being detailed. As a condition of being in beta mode, Nintendo advises that some devices may not be able to access it.

All of this meaning, try to access it on your device of choice and see if it works. If you don’t have a Miiverse account, you can still check out the service via a sampler selection of popular posts. Users can be tagged in posts, which can also be liked. It works about the same way those who use Miiverse on their Wii U are familiar with, minus a few features.

This news follows shortly after Nintendo revealed its quarterly earnings, which show that the Wii U’s console sales have continued to struggle. According to the financial report, Wii U sales failed to meet Nintendo’s reduced sales expectations, hitting 3.45 million units sold rather than the 4 million expected, which was a downgrade of nearly 30-percent over the maker’s original expectations.

[via Twitter]

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the deal will go through for the purchase price of $1, addition to being sealed with Google’s agreement to a variety of conditions. For its part, Google agrees to upgrade the iProvo network and ensure that all the homes in the city have access to it. For the first seven years, Google also agrees to provide all iProvo homes with free 5-megabit service, and to provide 25 schools and other public institutions with free gigabit service. The network will also be leased to Provo by Google without charge for 15 years.

As such, the citizens of Provo will enjoy free Internet service, but will be paying off the $39 million price tag for the fiber network over the next 12 years in the form of tax dollars. Taking interest into account, that works out to a little over $3 million per year in payments towards the bond. On top of this, Provo is also going to shell out $722,000 towards equipment that allows for continued gigabit use of the network by government operations.

Another half a million will be spent by Provo city under the agreement, a requirement by Google that will go towards paying a firm to locate all the buried fiber optic cables. Reportedly, the company responsible for the network’s installation failed to properly maintain records on where all of the cables were laid. This marks the first time Google Fiber will be using an existing network.

[via Salt Lake Tribune]

The bill is backed by Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA), and it’s being called the Broadband Adoption Act of 2013, which would instruct the FCC to modify the Lifeline program in order to include broadband internet. Matsui says that the Lifeline program is fantastic, but it needs to be updated and modernized to fit within the 21st century.

Lifeline is funded by the “Universal Service” system, which helps low-income Americans pay for their landline phone, but this new bill would see Universal Services also helping pay for broadband internet access. In addition to subsidizing services, the Universal Service also helps pay for telephone service in rural areas around the country.

However, the discussion of whether or not to provide low-income households with cheaper broadband internet has been up and down in Washington for several years now, with a 2010 government report showing up that recommended the addition of broadband internet to the existing Lifeline program. Plus, Matsui introduced similar legislation in 2011, but it quickly faded away.

[via Ars Technica]

Still holding the top spot is South Korea, though Japan – with a year-on-year improvement of 19-percent – is closing the gap. Hong Kong takes third position. South Korea’s average rates are almost double those of the US, though the country actually saw a decline year-on-year.

The research also looks at mobile connections, with data on mobile devices – according to Ericsson – doubling year-on-year. Average connection speeds varied considerably, however, from highs of 8 Mbps down to 245 kbps. Most popular requests from cellular devices indicate Androids hold the lead, with 35.3-percent of requests coming from Android Webkit. Mobile Safari came in second, at 32.6-percent, though was most popular when non-cellular devices – such as WiFi-only iPads – were counted too.

Globally, Akamai says that broadband adoption grew at 2.1-percent, though was slightly outpaced by what’s referred to as “high broadband” – that is, services offering speeds of above 10 Mbps – which grew 2.7-percent in the same period. However, speed isn’t the only thing that increased: Akamai counted a more than 200-percent increase in DDoS attacks, predominantly targeting commerce customers, with enterprise in second.

[via TechCrunch]

While the original intent of those involved in this meeting was the exchange comments which would eventually be used in the book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future, it would appear that it wasn’t Schmidt or Assange that approved of the transcript of the meeting being published by WikiLeaks. The WikiLeaks team is part of the subject being spoken about, this youth which is becoming radicalized in our modern internet age.

Jared Cohen: I am just wondering, on the human side of this, you have such experience of the world you described earlier. …some combination of technical and altruistic people and what amounts to a kind of subculture that you’ve been in for some 15 years now.. So you know about how the subculture works. And that subculture needs to either I guess stay the same or expand in order to do the work that you are describing, and so since our book is about ten years away…

Julian Assange: It’s dramatically expanded…

JC: What are the patterns there in terms of the people part, rather than the…?

JA: That’s the most optimistic thing that is happening. The radicalization of internet educated youth. People who are receiving their values from the internet… and then as they find them to be compatible echoing them back. The echo back is now so strong that it drowns the original statements.

Completely.

The people I’ve dealt with from the 1960s radicals who helped liberate Greece and.. Salazar. They are saying that this moment in time is the most similar to what happened in this period of liberation movements in the 1960s, that they have seen.

Assange continued by expanding on the idea that young people are changing the way our society acts and thinks with the tools they’ve created for themselves with the internet. This age we’re in now, he says, is one in which the technical generation that created the internet – and those that are coming in with the web as a given – are becoming politically educated.

JA: This is the political education of apolitical technical people. It is extraordinary, in the same way that the young…

Lisa Shields: A-political? Do you mean one word?

JA: One word. People are going from… young people are going from apolitical to political. It is a very very interesting transition to see.

Lisa Shields is another of the very few people in the room during this conversation, she having been mentioned in our first short glimpse into this environment last week. This isn’t the last time we’ll be jumping in to this set of ideas being explored by Schmidt and Cohen – now that the book is out, we’ll be leaping in all week long!

The National Police Agency in Japan is now asking ISPs to begin blocking Tor for customers if the customers are found to have abused Tor online. The push by Japanese authorities is because they’re worried about an inability to tackle cyber crime enabled in part by anonymizing services such as Tor. Clearly, the indication from the NPA is that there is some guilt associated with people who heavily use Tor.

The push to curb the usage of Tor in Japan stems from a case last year where a number of death threats were posted online from compromised computers. Several arrests were made in the case, but those arrested turned out to have had nothing to do with the posted messages. Once police finally caught up with the real perpetrator of the crimes, it was discovered that he frequently used Tor to cover up his cyber crimes.

The NPA also claims that Tor makes it easier for criminals to conduct financial fraud, child abuse, and to leak confidential police information. Whether or not ISPs in Japan go along with a request to block Tor remains to be seen. Privacy advocates will likely fight the request.

[via Wired]

CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, was passed by the House on April 18th with a majority vote of 288 to 127. The bill will allow corporations to share their users’ personal information with the government without the government needing a warrant beforehand. The bill will kill any privacy contracts that companies have with their users, the same contracts that ensure users that they will not share their personal information with anyone.

Currently, the White House is concerned over CISPA, and may veto it because it invades the privacy of internet users. In a statement that it issued last Tuesday, it stated that even with its new amendments, CISPA,

“does not require private entities to take reasonable steps to remove irrelevant personal information when sending cybersecurity data to the government or other private sector entities. We have long said that information sharing improvements are essential to effective legislation, but they must include proper privacy and civil liberties protections, reinforce the appropriate roles of civilian and intelligence agencies, and include targeted liability protections.”

In order to encourage the White House to veto the bill, Anonymous, and the vast majority of the internet, will participate in the blackout to show their unified opposition against it. There were several petitions made that were signed by over 1.5 million users, however, it still wasn’t enough to get Congress to change their minds, or take the public’s opinion seriously. Senator Mike Rogers, Representative of Michigan, stated that many of those against CISPA were just “teenagers in their basements”, and that many powerful internet entities, like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, are in support of the bill. He says,

“The very companies that you say are uncomfortable with this support this bill. The people who are in the business of prosperity on the Internet think this is the right approach.”

With the blackout, Anonymous hopes that President Obama will see how strongly opposed the vast majority of the internet is against the bill, and hopes that he will be convinced to veto it. This internet blackout will be similar to the blackout that occurred last year in opposition of SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), which garnered support from over 7,000 sites. If you have a website, and you plan on participating in the event, Anonymous has provided instructions on how to do so.

[via Huffington Post]

This follows the same bonus that both Blast! and Extreme 50 Xfinity Internet subscribers were given. Last month, Comcast increased the download speeds for Blast! customers from 25Mbps to 50Mbps and their upload speeds from 4Mbps to 10Mbps. Extreme 50 customers had their download speeds increased from 50Mbps to 105Mbps, and their upload speeds increased from 15Mbps to 20Mbps, all for free.

These free increases in internet speeds should do well in keeping customers subscribed to Comcast’s internet speed plans. Comcast issued the same statement it made when it increased the data speeds for Blast! and Extreme 50 subscribers. It stated that as customer demands increase, it continues to increase its data speeds to allow users the best internet experience possible, no matter what they’re doing.

It’s easy to access your newly upgraded speeds. All you need to do is power down your modem by disconnecting it from its power source. You then wait 15 seconds before plugging it back in. After that, doing a simple speed test should show you an increase in your data speeds. Unlike the data speed upgrades for Blast! and Extreme 50 customers, you shouldn’t be required to upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.0 modem to access your speeds.

[via Business Wire]

This will be just the newest in a line of Google Fiber systems being set up, Kansas City, Missouri and Austin, Texas already coming up quick. Google is making a big effort to become the premiere brand for fiber-optic internet in the United States here in 2013 as the rest of the industry remains relatively silent. Just this past month AT&T Fiber Internet was announced for Austin, Texas as well.

With the network being purchased today by Google being nearly ready to rock before they arrive, they’ll be able to set up a final system well before they’ve got marketable sales ready for Austin. Residents of Provo have been paying a charge of $5.35 per household per month on their utilities for an all-inclusive internet, television, and phone service for approximately 12 years – this update should have some effect on how that charge is assessed.

“Provo City’s vision has long been one where our residents have access to reliable high-speed broadband Internet. We know that communities are better – and communities are stronger – when people are connected. With this agreement, we have an opportunity to do things that few communities in this country get to do.” – Mayor John Curtis

Residents have been paying said fee regardless of their use of said services, and would have had to pay a rather sizable fee to activate the internet service they’d already been paying for: $700 USD. With Google onboard, they’ll be grabbing internet service at no additional fee just so long as they pay a much more reasonable $30 hook-up charge.

Google will have five years to build out Provo’s current system in place if the deal is finalized. They will also have just 180 days to take over the network successfully after the deal is signed. At the moment it does not appear that Google has any deals signed for TV service.

[via Provo]