Internet - SlashGear

‘Internet’ Stories

ACTA signee Slovenia ambassador now calls for mass protest

Chris Burns, Feb 3rd 2012 Discuss [0]

One of the most recent leaders to sign the secretive and wide-spread internet censorship-minded Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has now apologized and called for mass demonstrations to protest what she's done. It's Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, miss Helena Drnovsek Zorko, who signed the ACTA and was immediately drown in emails and calls from Slovenians criticizing her for doing so. This bill was then read in full by the ambassador, she then deciding that the agrees fully with the critics who've mailed her, apologizing to her children and her country before calling for what's effectively a revolt against the agreement on the whole. Read The Full Story

Stripe looks to dethrone PayPal with backing from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk

Shane McGlaun, Feb 2nd 2012 Discuss [0]

PayPal has been around for many years now and is the standard for paying for things on eBay. PayPal is generating huge revenues and is the source of some significant ire for many online shoppers. I know many users of PayPal have been waiting for quality alternative for a long time. It looks like the quality alternative could possibly be a new startup called Stripe. Interestingly, some of the founders of PayPal are backing Stripe. Read The Full Story

FCC changes Lifeline home phone subsidy program to help fund low income broadband

Shane McGlaun, Feb 1st 2012 Discuss [0]

One of the things that the FCC has been pushing hard is for the expansion of broadband into rural America. Many rural Americans don't have access to broadband, and some in rural America can't afford broadband if they do have access. The FCC has announced changes to the Lifeline subsidy program, which was a subsidy to help pay for basic phone service in homes where families can't afford phone service otherwise. The changes are designed to save money from the program, and funnel those funds to pay for rural broadband. Read The Full Story

FCC Lifeline program for low-income telephone service overhauled

Chris Burns, Jan 31st 2012 Discuss [0]

While normally reporting on government programs that have to do with low-income families wouldn't be within the realm of news that we report, our environment containing gadgets, technology, and the like, this particular service fits right in: telephone service. It's never a bad time to remember that not everyone in our vast human community has the same ability to enjoy the technology a lot of us take for granted, the news of the day centering around this "mobile" world we live in while many across the United States have trouble affording even a landline. What the FCC is doing this week is reforming and modernizing a service by the name of Lifeline, one that aims to keep low-income families connected to jobs, family, and 911 emergency services. Read The Full Story

First official U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra steps down

Rue Liu, Jan 27th 2012 Discuss [0]

The first official Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Aneesh Chopra, has resigned from his post to pursue other political ambitions. Chopra was appointed the position back in May of 2009 shortly after President Obama took office and wanted to integrate modern technology to improve government operations. Read The Full Story

Wikipedia to be first Data Free mobile website on Earth

Chris Burns, Jan 24th 2012 Discuss [0]

When the term Data Free comes up on your news readers and in the newspapers in the coming months, you’ll know that it started here, and with Wikipedia and Orange, who together will be offering free – that is, without data charges – use of Wikipedia’s vast knowledge archive. What this means for the future of the mobile industry is this: the door has been opened to free data, or at least that’s what Wikipedia is aiming at through mobile users in Africa and the Middle East soon. Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation have announced in a press release today that they are aiming to make their store of information available for free to those who need it, those who otherwise would have no such simple access to the information you and I take for granted.

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Twitter, Facebook and MySpace team tells Google “Don’t Be Evil”

Chris Davies, Jan 24th 2012 Discuss [6]

Engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have joined the protests against Google's search integration of Google+ results, crafting a browser add-on called "Don't Be Evil" that adds a far broader range of social into search. The tool, distributed at a site called Focus on the User, argues that rather than just pull Google+ profiles and topics into the search engine, Google would better serve actual users by integrating far more social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr and more. Rather than see exactly what Google wants you to see through its forced Google+ promotion, you can be shown what the company's pure algorithm believes is relevant. Read The Full Story

Anonymous deploys trickster DDoS sites to fuel online attacks

Chris Davies, Jan 23rd 2012 Discuss [1]

A new Anonymous tool deployed in recent days can inadvertently turn casual browsers into participants in a distributed denial-of-service attack, and is believed to have been at least partially responsible for taking Universal Music and other sites offline in MegaUpload-related protests. Although until now Anonymous has focused on the so-called LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Canon) tool to carry out DDoS attacks, a freely downloaded app that helps bombard sites with hits until they are overwhelmed and unresponsive, a new browser-based strategy has surfaced, CNET reports, that creates a DDoS-fueling webpage. Read The Full Story

SOPA sponsor has another Internet bill that records you 24/7

Chris Burns, Jan 20th 2012 Discuss [485]

Senator Lamar Smith, lead sponsor of the currently dead SOPA bill you've heard so much about, has another bill in the works that uses Child Pornography as a screen to push through an amendment that'll have your internet service provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times. This bill is H.R. 1981 and will have more dire consequences than SOPA or PIPA ever had the potential to have. Read The Full Story

SOPA and PIPA delayed indefinitely, Internet Wins

Chris Burns, Jan 20th 2012 Discuss [2]

In what can only be described as seeming to be a Flawless Victory, not a few hours after Senator Harry Reid announced he’d be delaying the vote on PIPA, representative Lamar Smith, better known now as the sponsor of SOPA, has announced he would delay consideration on that bill as well. Both teams have been pressured by waves of not only internet-based groups during the blackout of major websites earlier this week, but by voters calling in from around the nation this week as a result of it. Both groups have noted their intent to “revisit” how to defeat “foreign thieves” in regards to piracy, but would be stopping votes on their legislature for now.

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PlayStation Network down for Scheduled Maintenance on January 19th

Chris Burns, Jan 19th 2012 Discuss [100]

For those of you wondering why the PlayStation Network is down today, they're currently letting the world know that they're going to be down until 9PM PST for maintenance. And just like a fleet of Vogons, they remind us all that it was posted yesterday in a place where everyone could very easily have seen it, the PlayStation Blog. This down time started at 8AM PST and will last until tonight for essentially all services, so you'll just have to play with yourself or a friend nearby until then. Read The Full Story