Senate Overturns Ajit Pai’s Net Neutrality Repeal

The US Senate today voted to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules, with all members of the Democratic caucus and three Republicans voting in favor of net neutrality.

The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would simply undo the FCC’s December 2017 vote to deregulate the broadband industry. If the CRA is approved by the House and signed by President Trump, Internet service providers would have to continue following rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has scheduled his repeal to take effect on June 11. If Congress doesn’t act, the net neutrality rules and the FCC’s classification of ISPs as common carriers would be eliminated on that date.

Google Plans To expan It’s Workforce In Chicago

SEE MORE GALLERIES

 

Google plans to expand its workforce in Chicago, as part of the company’s plan to add thousands of U.S. employees this year.

But it’s unclear exactly how many of those new jobs will be in Chicago. The company plans to invest in new or expanded offices in nine states, including Illinois. There will be jobs for thousands of people in a variety of roles — engineering, operations, sales and more. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google currently has more than 800 workers, mostly in sales, at its Midwest headquarters in Chicago’s Fulton Market district. The office is in 1KFulton, a 10-story former cold storage building at 1000 W. Fulton Market that Chicago developer Sterling Bay redeveloped into loft offices. 

Some Humor When The Haters Push Your Buttons

New York Attorney Will Challenge The Net Neuatrality Vote

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman,  has stepped forward with one of the first legal challenges to the commission’s controversial vote. In a open letter to the FCC  

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wrote that his office pursued an investigated the incident, but that the FCC basically ignored all of its requests for cooperation. Schneiderman declared his office’s intention to sue to “stop the FCC’s illegal rollback of net neutrality”.

The FCC Voted To Eliminate Net Neutrality

GettyImages: Chip Samodevilla

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to deregulate the broadband industry and eliminate net neutrality rules that prohibit Internet service providers from blocking and throttling Internet traffic.

The repeal of net neutrality rules came about a year ago when Donald Trump won the presidency and appointed Republican Ajit Pai to the FCC chairmanship. Pai and Republican Commissioners Michael O’Rielly and Brendan Carr provided the three votes necessary to overturn the net neutrality rules and the related “Title II” classification of broadband providers as common carriers.

Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel provided bitter dissents in today’s 3-2 vote. Despite the partisan divide in government, polls show that majorities of both Democratic and Republican voters supported the rules, and net neutrality supporters protested outside the FCC headquarters before the vote.

Home Internet providers and mobile carriers will not be held by strict net neutrality rules. ISPs will be allowed to block or throttle Internet traffic, or offer priority to websites and online services in exchange for payment.  The Federal Trade Commission could punish ISPs if they make promises and then break them, but there’s no requirement that the ISPs make the promises in the first place.

 / FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn addresses protesters outside the Federal Communication Commission building to rally against the end of net neutrality rules on December 14, 2017 in Washington, DC.

 

DNS Service That Protects You From Cybercrime

It’s called the Quad9 Domain Name System (DNS) service and it is designed to protect internet users from accessing sketchy websites that are known for spreading malware, stealing personal information and fraudulent activity.

Once set as your DNS service, every time you click on a web link, Quad9 will check the site against IBM-X-Force’s threat intelligence database of over 40 billion analyzed webpages and images.

HOW TO SET QUAD9 ON WINDOWS:

1. Pull up Network Connections by right-clicking on the Start menu.

2. Now click on “Change adapter options.” You’ll see your current network; right click and choose Properties.

3. Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click on Properties.

4. On the Preferred DNS server field, type in 9.9.9.9, then click OK.

 

Mac users, don’t despair. Here are the steps to change your DNS settings on a MacOS:

HOW TO SET QUAD9 ON A MAC:

1. Open Settings, then select Network. Click on the Advanced button.

2. Next, go to the DNS tab.

3. Click the plus (+) sign on this tab, then type in 9.9.9.9.

4. Press OK and you’re set!

Note: You’ll need administrator rights to make these changes.

YOUR ROUTER NEEDS THIS ONE THING MANUFACTURERS DON’T TELL YOU

Checking for updates is a critical step to your computer, gadgets and installed software and applications. The reason for this is two-fold. First, you can take advantage of all the new features and improvements to the new version.

 

Source: IBM

 

Net Neutrality & The Complicated Fuss

 

What is net neutrality?

Net neutrality is the concept that internet service providers (ISPs) treat everyone’s data equally – whether that’s an email from your family member, a bank transfer or a streamed movie. Meaning that ISPs, which control the delivery , don’t get to choose which data is sent more quickly, and which sites get blocked or throttled (for example, slowing the delivery of a TV show because it is streamed by a video company that competes with a subsidiary of the ISP) and who has to pay extra. For this reason, some have described net neutrality as the “first amendment of the internet”.

Why is net neutrality under threat?

In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to more strictly regulate ISPs and to enshrine in law the principles of net neutrality. The vote reclassified wireless and fixed-line broadband service providers as title II “common carriers”, a public utility-type designation that gives the FCC the ability to set rates, open up access to competitors and more closely regulate the industry. Two years later, Trump’s new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, has pushed to overturn the 2015 order arguing they overstep the FCC’s jurisdiction and hinder corporate innovation. On 18 May, the FCC voted to support a new proposal that would repeal the order and started a 90-day period in which members of the public could comment. A final vote is expected in December.

Read or Browse Here

 

 

 

Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency

White House homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert said “the best and the brightest are working on” tracking who was behind the ransomware cyberattack.

Security researchers have discovered digital clues in the malware used in last weekend’s global ransomware attack that might indicate North Korea is involved, although they caution the evidence is not conclusive.

An early version of the ‘‘WannaCry’’ ransomware that affected more than 150 countries and major businesses and organizations shares a portion of its code with a tool from a hacker group known as Lazarus, which researchers think is linked to the North Korean government.

John Bambenek, a research manager at Fidelis Cybersecurity says “This implies there is a common source for that code, which could mean that North Korean actors wrote ‘WannaCry’ or they both used the same third-party code,’’

White House homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert said Monday that investigators were still working to determine who was behind the attack. The best and the brightest are working on it.

Victims have paid $59k to hackers

As of Monday afternoon, 227 payments have been made to the three bitcoin accounts linked to the cyberattack.

Several security researchers studying ‘‘WannaCry’’ on Monday found evidence of possible connections to the crippling hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014 attributed by the US government to North Korea. That hack occurred in the weeks before Sony released a satiric movie about a plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

However, Bambenek cautioned that the links are circumstantial. ‘‘It could be a freak coincidence,’’ he said. ‘‘The code in question is not a large portion of the overall Wannacry malware so it’s plausible that the attackers got it from somewhere else.’’

The spread of the WannaCry virus has slowed as new cyberdefenses have been put in place and some eight to 10 U.S. entities, including a few in the health-care sector, reported possible “WannaCry” infections to the Department of Homeland Security, a US official said.

Factories, hospitals, and schools were disrupted in China by the attack, the spread of the virus appeared to be slowing. State media said 29,000 institutions had been hit, along with hundreds of thousands of devices.

South Korea reported that just five companies were affected, including the country’s largest movie chain.

Researchers discovered a ‘‘kill switch’’ on the virus that stopped its spread from computer to computer, potentially saving tens of thousands of machines from further infection.

The ransomware program, which is spread through e-mail, encrypts computer files and then demands the bitcoin equivalent $300 to unlock them.

The attack hobbled operations at Russia’s Interior Ministry, Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, and Britain’s National Health Service.

 

 

 

Google Has Launched In Cuba

Credit: Magdalena Petrova

Google servers are now in Cuba and the internet is up and running.

The computers are part of Google’s global network of caching servers, which store frequently requested content locally so it doesn’t have to be accessed over long distances.That speeds up access in any country but is particularly important in a nation like Cuba, which has relatively low connectivity to the rest of the world.Cuba is connected to the rest of the internet almost exclusively via the ALBA-1 submarine cable, which runs from the island to Venezuela. Currently surfing the internet is still very pricey in Cuba. Government-run internet cafes charge several euros for an hour or two of online time — a large amount in a country where the average wage is about 20 euros (US$22) per month.

 

Google Hire

Google Hire allows employers post job listings, then accept and manage applications, according to job listing links spotted by Axios reader Colin Heilbut. So far, several tech companies seem to be using (or testing) Google Hire, including Medisas, Poynt, DramaFever, SingleHop, and CoreOS. Google has assured, that “Only information that a candidate voluntarily provides would be passed to a prospective employer as part of their online application.”

 

 

Elimination Of Internet Privacy Rules

The United States Senate is planning to start the process Today to eliminate rules that would prevent broadband internet providers from collecting sensitive data from subscribers. A vote is expected to take place on Thursday.

The expected vote was confirmed to International Business Times by a spokesperson for Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, who will speak in opposition of the measure on Wednesday, and open internet advocacy group Public Knowledge.

FCC’s Privacy Rules

Internet Privacy & The Senate

In a party-line 50-48 vote Thursday, senators approved a resolution to undo sweeping privacy rules adopted by the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission. If it becomes law, it would also prevent the FCC from setting similar rules again.

The rules have not gone into effect, however ISPs must tell consumers what information is being collected and how it is being used or shared. The rules require ISPs in some cases to get users’ explicit consent, for example to sell information such as geo location or browsing history for advertising.

Republicans in Congress and at the FCC have objected to these rules, passed by the Democratic majority at the FCC in October. They have argued with major cable and telcom companies,that the rules put ISPs on unequal footing with other major data-collecting companies like Google or Facebook, which are overseen instead by the Federal Trade Commission.

Phishing Attacks Targeting Gmail Customers

A phishing technique targeting Gmail and other services has been gaining popularity during the past year among attackers. Over the past few weeks there have been reports of experienced technical users being hit by this.

This attack is currently being used to target Gmail customers and is also targeting other services.The attacker will send an email to your Gmail account. That email may come from someone you know who has had their account hacked using this technique. It may also include something that looks like an image of an attachment you recognize from the sender.You click on the image, expecting Gmail to give you a preview of the attachment. Instead, a new tab opens up and you are prompted by Gmail to sign in again. You glance at the location bar and you see accounts.google.com in there. It looks like this….

You go ahead and sign in on a fully functional sign-in page that looks like this:

Your account has been compromised once you complete sign-in.

FBI’s Crime Wanted APP

The free app allows the public to search, sort and view information issued by the FBI.  The app contains pictures and descriptions of wanted fugitives, missing persons, crime suspects, deceased victims, and others.

The app is free and works on Apple and Android devices, including smartphones, iPads, and iPods. Depending on your device, it can be downloaded from the Apple App store or Google Play.

This video shows you how the app works and its capabilities.  The new FBI Wanted App provides a range of search and filtering options to browse information and locate specific individuals or cases.

 

Austrian Hotel Shut down By hackers

One of Europe’s largest luxury hotels found itself on the end of an online hostage situation over an undiscovered vulnerability in its electronic key system.

According to the English language Austrian news site The Local, the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt located in the picturesque Alps was hit by a cyberattack that resulted in all its guests being locked out of their rooms.

Activating the door locking mechanism remotely, the hackers were able to put the hotel into achaotic state during the height of the ski season, while also shutting down the hotel’s entire computer system.

To give control back to the hotel, the hackers demanded a sum of €1,500 to be paid in bitcoin, or otherwise its guests were going to be sleeping in the hallways.

Given the circumstances, hotel management relented and paid the ransom, but unbeknownst to them the hackers had built in a backdoor to their fix resulting in two further hacks.

More here

Children’s Connected Toys May Breach Security

Many people don’t realize that buying a wearable, baby monitor or a WiFi connectable toy, that they are in fact, potentially exposing themselves to being hacked by e-criminals. Just last week, a complaint was lodged with the US Federal Trade Commission over internet-connected toys recording and transmitting kids’ conversations in violation of privacy rules. In the past few years, many baby monitors have also been reported for hacks, the latest one in the US with a hacker directly spying and talking to the toddler though the monitor.

The average Australian households now have nine internet-connected devices. With Christmas just around the corner many people are going out to buy the latest piece of technology for their friends and family members, while getting the person what they want, they are also potentially exposing them to security issues. Any device that can be connected to the internet, has a Bluetooth signal, or be controlled remotely has a risk of being hacked.

What can you do about it?

1.  You can lengthen passwords, changing letters to numbers, include a capital letter, not re-using the same password over and over
2. Before purchasing a new device for yourself or giving one to another person is searching the name of the device with the keywords ‘hack’, ‘glitch’ or ‘scam’ and seeing what results come up.
3. Ensure that before agreeing to any terms of service or allowing apps or programs access to data on your phone you should carefully read through what data they would need access to, and whether they agree to not give provide your data to a third party. This would at least ensure that your data goes no further.
4. When giving a new device to your children, make sure that you check what permissions the app wants access to as sometimes an app can request access to things such as your home address, phone number, bank account details and general information that about your private lives.

 

Android Users ,There’s A New Malware On The Loose

There’s a new type of malware on the loose—and over a million Android devices have already been infected. Although, most of the infected devices are in Asia, 19 percent of them are in America, and 13,000 more devices are hacked each day. It’s the largest breach of Google accounts ever, and it’s definitely cause for concern.

You can pick up the malware aka Gooligan, by downloading seemingly harmless apps from sources other than the Google Play store. Once downloaded, Gooligan gains access to all of your data, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Play and more.

Even though Gooligan has access to a lot of your personal data, it doesn’t appear to use it. Instead, Gooligan downloads apps from Google Play in a scam designed to collect advertising revenue. These apps may provide Gooligan’s creators with cash for each download or show ads to generate income. Compromised Google accounts may also leave reviews on these fraudulent apps to make them appear more legitimate to other users.

Here’s an easy way to check if you’re infected. Security firm Check Point has created a tool that shows if your email address is among the compromised accounts. If your device is compromised, you’ll want to do a clean installation of Android on your device

How to keep your device secure

• Install the latest version of Android, including the security patches. Your carrier should provide instructions when updates are available.
• Don’t download apps from anywhere other than the Google Play store. Newer versions of Android will warn you if you try to download apps from elsewhere. Pay attention when it does!
• Run a reputable anti-virus application. While anti-virus protection can sometimes be frustrating — anti-virus apps can accidentally identify non-malware as malware — it can help keep your phone secure. Try AVAST, AVG, Kaspersky, McAfee or Norton, all of which are free and known for their solid desktop anti-virus protection.

Turkish Internet Users Running To Tor

Turkish internet users are flocking to Tor, the anonymizing and censorship-circumvention tool, after Turkey’s government block Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Usage of Tor inside of Turkey went up from around 18,000 users to 25,000 users on Friday, when the government started blocking the popular social media networks, according to Tor’s official metrics.  The Turkish information technologies and communications authority, or BTK, ordered internet providers in the country to block Tor and several other censorship-circumvention Virtual Private Networks or VPNs, such as VPN Master, Hotspot Shield

Millenials Millionaires Earning Their Money Differently

 There are  less than half of the demographic affluent millennials completing post-graduate degrees compared to wealthy baby boomers.While millionaires are much more likely to have higher level education degrees compared to the average American, millionaire boomers and gen-xers are much more likely to obtain higher degrees than affluent millennials. The younger generation sees greater opportunity to create their own businesses and working full-time, with about 90 percent of millennial millionaires working full-time in their own business.

Young millionaires millennials are clearly different, many of them are taking another route to becoming wealthy and working in their own businesses.

Males still make up the largest percentage of millionaire individuals, with 67 percent of all millionaires being men and only 33 percent women. When looking at millennials the percentage only shifts slightly, with 66 percent men and 34 percent women.

Shullman Research

Notorious Hacker Claims He Has Yahoo Accounts For Sale

The notorious black hat says he has more than 200 million hacked Yahoo accounts for sale on the dark Web. Yahoo is refusing to comment on its veracity. Yahoo accounts are primarily used to log into the company’s webmail service, but also for other sites like Flickr. It is uncertain  at this point whether Yahoo has itself been breached, but the account data has been publicly available on a Tor-accessible marketplace called The Real Deal since Monday, and is apparently being sold by a hacker known as Peace, who has previously been linked to large-scale sales of MySpace and LinkedIn account details in 2012.

The entire dump, which apparently contains usernames, hashed passwords created with the md5 algorithm, dates of birth, and occasional backup email addresses, can be bought for three bitcoins (roughly £1,360 or $1,813).

Yahoo recommends creating stronger passwords

Google’s Sister Co. LookingTo Build A City

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is considering building an entire city from scratch.The CEO of Sidewalk Labs, the New York City firm described as an ‘urban innovation’ company mentioned the idea at a summit hosted by The firm has  already worked on LinkNYC, which replaces public pay phones with a network of 7,500 data and communication hubs throughout New York City.

Alphabet begins testing the concept of a city built from the “internet up.” The company is described as an “urban innovation” company with its sights set on creating the “city of the future.” It is noted that the future city could house hundreds of thousands of residents in a pre-planned community, with a focus on integrating technology into everyday living.

Sidewalk Labs notes that by creating a city with technology in mind, a community could be created that is more efficient in transportation and energy usage while maintaining a lower cost-of-living than a standard city of the same size.

 

Watch Out For “Ransomware”

 

A new malware called Ransomware is part of a phishing campaign and sending thousands of ominous-looking emails that contain the recipient’s home address.The email demands money for an arbitrary service, along with a link that purports to be an “overdue invoice.

When you click that link and open the file (which looks like a Word document), and you’ll become the latest victim of Ransomware — that is, malware that encrypts your files and locks you out of your computer until you pay a ransom.The longer you wait, the larger the ransom you must pay.

More Reading here

 

Today’s Libraries Changing Role

Makerspaces, incubators for small businesses, and programs support entrepreneurs and the new workforce which is now commonplace in libraries around the world.Libraries are also experimenting with new ways to organize and display collections.

Read More

Hacking Group Anonymous Declares War On Trump

The “hacktivist” group  Anonymous has declared “total war” against Donald Trump.

Here’s what they said. “Dear Donald Trump, we have been watching you for a long time and what we see is deeply disturbing,” a masked Anonymous member begins in the recording. “Your inconsistent and hateful campaign has not only shocked the United States of America, you have shocked the entire planet with your appalling actions and ideas.”

Anonymous says it has a detailed plan for taking down The Donald. On April 1, for example, the group plans to take down the website for Trump International Hotel & Tower. The collective also plans to destroy his brand by unearthing dirt that discredits his image. Already, the group has hacked Trump’s voicemail and leaked the messages

 

 

Government Losing Ability To Spy On Suspects Because Of Encryption – Is Largely Overblown

 

 

Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper made it clear that the internet of things – devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. Samsung sparked controversy last year after announcing a television that would listen to everything said in the room it’s in and in the fine print literally warned people not to talk about sensitive information in front of it.

Other Gadgets are spying as well.

Other television models, Xbox Kinect, Amazon Echo and GM’s OnStar program that tracks car owners’ driving patterns. Even a new Barbie has the ability to spy on you – it listens to Barbie owners to respond but also sends what it hears back to the mothership at Mattel. Researchers at Princeton University have found that, Google’s parent company, Alphabet popular Nest thermostat was leaking the zip codes of its users over the internet. This data was transmitted unencrypted, or in the clear, meaning that anyone sniffing traffic could have intercepted it, according to the researchers.  Sharx security camera transmits video feeds in the clear, allowing pretty much anyone with access to the owner’s network to intercept and watch them over the internet.

 

20 Years AgoThe World Wide Web Was Created

December 20th 1990 was the  twentieth anniversary of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s submission to CERN titled “Information Management: A proposal.” Over a year in a half later, he created  HTTP, HTML, WorldWideWeb (the first web browser), CERN httpd (the first server software), and the first web server (http://info.cern.ch), paving the way for an unprecedented era of human communication and interconnectivity.

In March 1989, CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal to develop a distributed information system for the laboratory. was the comment that“Vague, but exciting” , Mike Sendall his supervisor, wrote on the cover,“Vague, but exciting”, and with those words, gave the green light to an information revolution.

Read the proposal

Timeline:

The birth of the World Wide Web

Computing at CERN

The Future Of Tech

New ways of sending data are top of the agenda, and new technology is being developed to speed up the process. Advancements will include the transferring of data between a device and a light source, as well as via audio frequencies that cannot be heard by the human ear, but can be read by a smartphone speaker.Devices will soon be able to deliver data at a quicker rate, while more everyday items will be connected to the Internet. Investors are jumping all over the opportunities abound when it comes to the Internet of Things and Big Data.

Lawmakers proposing Privacy Legislation

 

Democratic Assemblyman Mike Gatto and Republican Senator Ted Gaines announced today they have a package of bills designed to protect the privacy of consumers. The bills address body cameras, drones and data collection, among other things.

One of the bills Gatto plans to introduce would ban the sale of some TV’s in California that record people’s conversations.

FCC Set To Pass Rules For The Internet

The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to approve strong net neutrality rules this week, setting up an awkward hurdle for court battles

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, is determined to preserve an open online information highway and wants  to govern utilities like phone companies. Wheeler’s proposal is opposed by AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp. and other providers, which want as little government involvement as possible. It’s supported by the likes of video streamer Netflix Inc., which fear that without federal intervention, Internet service providers could pick winners and losers by manipulating how traffic flows over their networks.

Wheeler, a Democrat, is expected to prevail on Feb. 26 at the agency, where his party is in the majority. The vote would move the issue from the political stage, with 4 million people writing to the FCC and President Barack Obama calling for strong rules, to the judicial arena.

Kevin Werbach, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a former FCC official says “Both sides will tell you it’s a legal slam dunk and “I don’t think it’s a slam dunk for either side.”

In 2002, during the administration of President George W. Bush, the FCC concluded that Internet service delivered by cable companies was an information service — a legal description allowing only light regulation. Wheeler wants to reverse that decision by deeming broadband a telecommunications service under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act, which establishes a set of rules for utility telecommunications services.

Wheeler says the FCC isn’t seeking to regulate the prices broadband providers charge, as it does with phone companies. He does want to keep the providers from charging some Web companies extra for so-called fast lanes and to forbid blocking or interfering with subscribers’ Internet traffic.

His strategy of reclassifying the service providers stems from a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington last year that voided FCC open-Internet rules. Judges said the agency improperly treated Verizon Communications Inc. as if it were a utility — something the FCC couldn’t do because of its 2002 ruling. By formally classifying Internet service as a utility now, Wheeler hopes to shore up the legal foundation that the court found to be lacking.

Harold Feld, vice president of the policy group Public Knowledge, which supports Wheeler’s proposal, said he’s optimistic the agency will prevail in court even though it is reversing itself.

The argument revolves around which of two legal terms best describes the Internet.Telecommunications service refers to transmitting data without changing its form or content. An information service has the ability to generate, store and change information. Apps and websites are examples of information services, according to the group Free Press, an advocate of strong net neutrality rules.

Broadband services fall squarely within the definition of information services, just as they did in 2002, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, a trade group, told the FCC in a filing. Broadband providers retrieve and process information, performing functions such as caching content and detecting malware, the group said.

According to Feld, broadband subscribers simply use the providers as conduits to reach independent information providers of their choice. Cable companies, which have sought higher fees from high-volume users such as Netflix, are expected to join a lawsuit seeking to overturn the rules.

“It’s just too dramatic” a change from earlier rules, said Michael Powell, who as Republican FCC chairman led the agency to its 2002 decision. Powell, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, spoke in an interview on C-SPAN television.

Werbach, the law professor, said the FCC’s expected action guarantees a strong legal challenge.

Another possible challenge to the FCC action: mobile carriers have said they would sue to overturn rules that subject wireless networks to the utility-style powers. They’ve argued Congress specifically exempted mobile from utility-style regulation. Wireless networks needs to be regulated in part because they carry 55 percent of Internet usage, Wheeler said in a Feb. 9 speech. The FCC takes comfort from a victory before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2005 upheld the agency’s decision on cable Internet service.The justices said the FCC has discretion to interpret the law, Gigi Sohn, the FCC’s special counsel for external affairs, said in an interview on the C-SPAN television network.

 

 

A Collection Of Archive Games

Internet Archive is making them free to play through a range of browsers, and on PC and Mac, via an emulator.

The games are available through one of the website’s massive archives, and at the last count there were 2,314 online.

These include Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, Super Street Fighter 2 and Bust-A-Move. They are playable, but this is a beta, so you have been advised that some problems may occur.

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_showcase

Get Ready To Play!

 

FCC Plans To Vote On Net Neutrality

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler plans to introduce proposed Net neutrality regulations in February.

On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission  said that federal regulators intend to place restrictions on how Internet providers manage their Web traffic. They plan to vote on new guidelines in February. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler intends to introduce the proposed regulations in February for a vote the same month, a spokeswoman for the commission confirmed, following an initial report from The Washington Post. The agency’s monthly meeting is scheduled for February 26.

The proposal is at the center of a debate around the concept of Net neutrality. That notion holds that all online traffic should be treated the same by Internet-access providers, with no sites or services being given preferential treatment.

North Korea Internet Restored

 

 

 

The North Korean network is routed through China, so while it isn’t yet clear how the outage happened.

Internet services were partially restored after nine hours and 31 minutes of disruption, cyber security firm Dyn Research says. While most mainstream North Korean websites are back online, the recovery initially appeared to be partial and potentially unstable with some websites still inaccessible. Analysts had said technical problems or a cyber-attack could be to blame.

The Presidents Say There Should Be Equal Access To The Net

 

 

The President said Monday, that the federal government should prevent broadband companies from dictating access to the Web by, for example, charging content-makers higher fees for faster delivery to customers.

“An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life,” Obama said in a video and statement issued by the White House. “We cannot allow Internet service providers to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.”

One of the main concerns of Net neutrality advocates is that Internet providers would  have fast and slow lanes that would favor traffic that pays for speedier delivery, which would result in higher costs for that content or slower viewing speeds for non-paying traffic. It so happened that Netflix struck deals to pay Comcast and Verizon to boost streaming speeds of its video content. The companies argued the deal would finance a more direct system to deliver videos to viewers. Netflix said it has not raised prices because of the deal.

Obama said the government should ban any arrangement, known as “paid prioritization,” that would result in consumers being “stuck in a slow lane.”

Net neutrality faces stiff opposition from Republicans, who will control both chambers of Congress in January and are expected to try to undo any new rules that the agency adopts.

On Monday, Republican congressional leaders hit back at Obama, with House Speaker John Boehner saying “Net neutrality is a textbook example of the kind of Washington regulations that destroy innovation and entrepreneurship” and Senate GOP chief Mitch McConnell labeling it “heavy-handed regulation that will stifle innovation and concentrate more power in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.”

Americans  are paying some of the highest broadband prices in the world for services that are pretty slow compared to other developed countries. The European Parliament recently gave preliminary approval to its own set of Net neutrality rules, which would mandate equal access to broadband service and cut mobile data fees.

Conglomerate tech companies like Google and Amazon argued that using regulations first drawn up in the 1930s would stifle one of the most dynamic technologies used by consumers around the world.

The Telecommunications Industry Association, says “declaring the Internet a public utility “would set the industry back decades and threaten the private sector investment that is critically needed to ensure that the network can meet surging demand”.

Internet Archive’s Free Classic Games

 

The Internet Archive has created an online arcade which lets you run over 900 classic games right there, in your browser.

Below are a suggested collection of games that run at proper speed in a powerful browser. (Firefox is currently the fastest environment, although other browsers should work as well.)

 

< Images of Marquees and Snapshots of in-game screens come from the Progetto Snaps collection,
who have spent years creating impeccable support materials for the world of emulation.

 

Researchers Able To Hack Gmail

 

 

Researchers from the University of California Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and the University of Michigan have identified a weakness they believe to exist across Android, Windows, and iOS operating systems that could allow malicious apps to obtain personal information.

Although it was tested only on an Android phone, the team believes that the method could be used across all three operating systems because all three share a similar feature: all apps can access a mobile device’s shared memory.

 

The Internet Of Things & Security

The Internet Of Things is getting bigger & bigger. Security must be address.  When power is first introduced to the device, the authenticity and integrity of the software on the device is verified using cryptographically generated digital signatures.In much the same way that a person signs a check or a legal document, a digital signature attached to the software image and verified by the device ensures that only the software that has been authorized to run on that device, and signed by the entity that authorized it, will be loaded. The device must have protection from various run-time threats and malicious intentions.

The device also needs a firewall or deep packet inspection capability to control traffic that is destined
to terminate at the device. Once the device is in operation, it will start receiving hot patches and software updates. Operators need to roll out patches, and devices need to authenticate them, in a way that does not consume bandwidth or impair the functional safety of the device. Security at both the device and network levels is critical to the
operation of IoT.  Fortunately, this does not require a revolutionary approach, but rather an evolution of measures that have proven successful in IT networks, adapted to the challenges of IoT and to the constraints of connected devices.

Hackers & Internet Appliances

Security start-up Norse has been gathering shocking evidence of hackers usurping control of Internet-connected appliances, everything from web cams to climate-control systems.

This latest expansion of cybercrime revolves around the IP address assigned to each computing device connected to the Internet. Hackers are using automated programs to scan ranges of IP addresses for signs of vulnerable appliances. It’s often a simple matter to take control by installing a few lines of malicious coding.

Norse has devised innovative technology for monitoring such cyberattacks in real time. A tiny sampling of its data, extracted exclusively for CyberTruth, revealed 724 infected appliances actively carrying out fraudulent tasks.

The corrupted appliances included firewalls, routers, modems, printers, DVRs, surveillance cams, web cams, IP cameras, VPN appliances, VOIP phone systems, FM radio transmitters, storage drives, video conferencing systems and climate-control modules. One of the big things these corrupted devices are being used for: payment card fraud.

Malicious software embedded on the web cam’s Linux operating system causes a live cam view of the homeowner’s living room to appear in the browser of anyone who clicks to the web cam’s IP address. A demo shows, a woman and then a man enter the room and sit on a couch.

The hacker embeds  malware on a baby monitor a probably doesn’t care much about snooping; the web cam’s computing power, instead, is being used to locate similar devices and help the attacker to control as many as 2,000 ABS MegaCams.This is happening at a large scale, and continues to grow every day. There’s clear logic behind methodically assembling digital appliances into niche networks, called botnets, under the control of a single operator.

Botnets have been the foundation of the cyber underground for more than a decade. Traditionally comprising infected personal and server computers, botnets are the engine that drives multibillion-dollar markets for spam, phishing, account hijacking, identity theft and denial-of-service attacks.Norse’s findings show how the advance guard of cybercriminals has started pulling digital appliances into botnet service because, its easy. Stiansen of Norse company, began thinking about a way to gain a bird’s-eye view of the teeming world of botnet activity. What he eventually came up with is IPViking, a globe-spanning network of millions of physical and virtual sensors — or honeypots — dispersed through 160 data centers in 40 countries. Each pot appears to be an Internet-connected web cam, router or other appliance — irresistible honey to hackers.

When an intruder tries to take control of a Norse honeypot, Norse grabs the attacker’s IP address and begins an intensive counterintelligence routine. The IP address is fed into automated programs, called web crawlers, that scour the bulletin boards and chat rooms where hackers congregate for snippets of discussions tied to that IP address.

Analysts also do manual research to construct a dossier on the attacking IP. Norse delivers this intelligence to its clients, which include large financial institutions. The companies are then able to cut off communications from suspicious IP addresses and be on the lookout for derivative attacks.

 

 

Wearable Technology & Workplace Trends

Organizations are monitoring their networks in increasing numbers  to comply with federal statutes, but also to reduce other employee risks.

Trust is not the issue—client information privacy and security are. Data security laws have effectively elevated the privacy and safety of client information above the privacy expectations of employees. Furthermore, legal experts advise that firms should remove all expectations of privacy in the workplace. They have to, or they risk being found noncompliant with security laws and exposed to other costly litigation. Managers are monitoring employees because of legal compliance and liability. (AMA) 2001 Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance reported that 82 percent of responding managers use some type of electronic monitoring in the workplace. As many as 14 million employees in the US (one-third of all employees) are under surveillance in the workplace (www.privacyfoundation.org). According to the American Management Association, monitoring Internet connections remains the predominant surveillance activity (63 percent), followed by storage and review of e-mail (47 percent) or computer files (36 percent), video recording job performance (15 percent), and the storage and review of voice-mail messages (8 percent). The top three reasons for employee monitoring are legal liability (68 percent), security concerns (60 percent) and legal compliance (50 percent). Although electronic monitoring is also implemented for employee productivity and performance reviews, this is a less important motivation. Managers realize that the need to protect the organization from employee activities over firm networks outweighs employee claims for privacy in the workplace. Findings reveal that company computers and Internet services are being used by employees to facilitate online shopping and to access pornography or other questionable sites. .

Is it legal?

No legislation specifically addresses e-mail privacy and electronic monitoring activities. The US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment’s guarantees of privacy focus on search and seizure issues that do not specifically relate to computer technology. Most recently, courts have not found a reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of employees, but have favored employer rights to protect their interests. Among the reasons given in the Defense Counsel Journal: (1) The work is done at the employer’s place of business; (2) The employer owns the equipment; (3) The employer has an interest in monitoring employee activity to ensure the quality of work; and (4)

The employer has the right to protect property from theft and fraud. In determining the extent of electronic monitoring to undertake, organizations must rely on existing federal and state provisions. In the US, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 and recent case law provide some guidance.

Los Angeles Resident Dial 911 Because of Facebook Outage

 

It seems that  a number of Los Angeles residents that believe local law enforcement agencies have some modicum of control over the Silicon Valley company.

WHATS NEXT!

Tech Summer Camps Booming In Popularity

 

Tech summer camps are growing in popularity particularly around the Pacific Northwest.

iD Tech Camp is holding several summer tech camps at the University of Washington.Video games are very popular. At iD Tech Camps, kids ages 7-to-17 are learning how to code, program, and develop video games and apps. They also get hands-on training in Photoshop, web design and popular robotics classes.

Camp counselors are trying to get young people trained in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programs. iD Tech Camp points says more than one million jobs in STEM fields are expected to go unfilled by 2020. Yet, 9-out-of-10 high schools don’t offer computer science classes. Computer Science is a field where the females are  outnumbered by males. Still at the tech camps there are more boys than girls.

Major tech companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn released their workforce diversity figures this week after much pressure. According to USA TODAY, males outnumbered female staff by an average of 70% to 30%. The majority of workers were white followed by Asian.

 

Twitter’s Figures & Stats

 

Twitter’s diversity figures, by ethnicity. Graphic via Twitter.

More Stats Here

Google’s Stats

Facebook

Pinterest

Yahoo

 

Keyloggers Are At The Hotel Business Centers

 

The Hospitality business that thieves are installing keyloggers on hotel PCs to steal guests’ data. In a recent Dallas area bust, authorities caught multiple people swiping account logins, banking info and other personal details from travelers typing away at compromised business center systems.

The Secret Service recommends that hotels  give guests limited PC accounts that prevent them from installing apps. the best solution is to BYOD

Samsung, Intel, Dell Unite For Internet of Things Connectivity Standards

 

The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) plans to deliver the specifications for free data flow between devices, regardless of the OS, device type or wireless communication technology. The new consortium, includes chipmakers Broadcom and Atmel. The consortium will rival the Qualcomm-supported AllSeen Alliance, which last week welcomed Microsoft as its 51st member, among Sharp and others. Apple and Google are also pursuing their own ways of interconnecting household devices. In June, Apple announced HomeKit, which will integrate control of devices like lights and thermostats.
Google’s Nest has also partnered with companies including Whirlpool Corp and light bulb maker LIFX to integrate their products with its thermostats and smoke detectors.

South Carolina’s Governor Vetos Bill For Public Library Disrupters

 

Read More

Long Gone Are The Days When Public Libraries Were Extremely Quiet

The Internet Of Things: A New & Upcoming Trend

According to industry research firm IDC, the IoT market is expected to hit $7.1 trillion by 2020,” said John Maddison, vice president of marketing at Fortinet.

Completed in June 2014, the survey asked 1,801 tech-savvy homeowners questions relating to the Internet of Things as it pertains to the connected home. These were the top findings:

The Connected Home is a reality – A majority (61 percent) of all respondents believe that the connected home (a home in which household appliances and home electronics are seamlessly connected to the Internet) is “extremely likely” to become a reality in the next five years. China led the world in this category with more than 84 percent affirming support.

• In the U.S., 61 percent said that the connected home is extremely likely to happen in the next five years.

Homeowners are concerned about data breaches – A majority of all respondents voiced their concern that a connected appliance could result in a data breach or exposure of sensitive, personal information. Globally, 69 percent said that they were either “extremely concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about this issue.

• Sixty-eight percent of U.S. respondents said that they were “extremely concerned” or “somewhat concerned.”

Privacy and trust are concerns – When asked about the privacy of collected data, a majority of global respondents stated, “privacy is important to me, and I do not trust how this type of data may be used.” India led the world with this response at 63 percent.

• Fifty-seven percent in the U.S. agreed with this statement.
• Data privacy is an extremely sensitive issue – Respondents were also asked how they would feel if a connected home device was secretly or anonymously collecting information about them and sharing it with others. Most (62 percent) answered “completely violated and extremely angry to the point where I would take action.” The strongest responses came from South Africa, Malaysia and the United States.

The Smart World In 2020

Big Data & Retail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAQX8W3D6Mg

The Giant Techs Fight Against Global Search Warrants

 

Microsoft, Google, Apple and other tech companies in the US have been fighting a battle against internet surveillance. Earlier this year, Microsoft was forced to comply with a search warrant for a user’s email account stored in Ireland. The Manhattan magistrate judge ruled that the government could obtain data stored in the cloud in servers outside the US. In that case, This despite the fact that the US courts have no jurisdiction over data stored in Ireland or indeed any other country. The government maintains that in Microsoft’s case the warrant served as a way for the company to search within its database and reveal the relevant results. This could allow US law enforcement  access to all cloud data stored anywhere in the world.

Tech companies, especially those banking heavily on cloud-based infrastructure have seen cause for alarm. Sharing of user data to the US law enforcement may not be in line with the local law where the server is located. So companies are wary of having to break the law, to help maintain the law. This puts them in a precarious position, in terms of the public opinion and in the eyes of the law too. The United States is  setting a precedent for other nations. They could legitimately obtain user data stored in US cloud servers by forcing companies to do the same for them. And that would be in conflicting to US law. Google has rolled out End-to-End an encryption tool that would act as a Chrome add-on to make sure your browsing session within G0ogle’s servers is not even accessible by the company, and outside eyes.

Google’s Balloon Project Moving Just Fine

 

Google’s  Project Loon — an ambitious experiment designed to provide rural areas balloon-powered Internet access. One year later, the company may have proven its point: this could work. Since the project was announced last June, the company has made huge strides in balloon flight time and connectivity. Google’s latest floating hotspots have been given LTE capabilities, freeing them from the range limitations the original WiFi-based designed burdened them with. These new radios offer better transfer speeds, too — as high as 22 MB/s to an antenna or 5 MB/s to a phone. More importantly, the balloons are staying aloft for much longer: earlier this year, one test circled the globe three times before dropping to the ground, and another has been floating for over 100 days . By next year, Google hopes to run multiple flights that last for more than 100 days, eventually launching a ring of 300 to 400 balloons that can circle the clone and provide continued service to specific areas.

Library of The Year

Edmonton Public Library (EPL) of Alberta, Canada has been chosen, the 2014 Library of the Year by Library Journal magazine and Gale, part of Cengage Learning. Each year, this prestigious recognition goes to a public library that most profoundly demonstrates service to community, creativity, leadership and innovation in developing community programs. EPL serves one of Canada’s fastest growing cities through its 17 branches operated by more than 600 employees who last year answered nearly 2.5 million questions and facilitated 5.2 million library visits (with another 4.7 million visits via their website). Every three seconds someone is borrowing from EPL. Their social media popularity – with 20,000 Twitter followers and 9,000 Facebook fans – leads almost all North American urban libraries.

 EPL lacks the stereotypical image of library as a book repository and serves as a center of civic engagement. Community librarians at each branch integrate deeply with local institutions such as school districts, health centers and outreach groups in order to understand needs, eliminate barriers, and inform services and policies. their  makerspace – is a location dedicated to creating with technology such as 3D printers, game development software, a sound and recording studio and more. New branches have been designed or redesigned to focus on open space, collaboration, and sustainability, and a focus on lifelong learning, including online learning, helps ensure the success of individuals as well as the community.

 Cengage Learning is a leading educational content, technology and services company, that empowers educators and driving learner engagement through personalized services and course-driven digital solutions that bridge from the library to the classroom. Gale, part of Cengage Learning, serves the world’s information and education needs through its vast and dynamic content pools, which are used by students and consumers in their libraries, schools and on the Internet.

Library Journal  was founded in 1876, Library Journal is one of the oldest and most respected publications covering the library field. Over 75,000 library directors, administrators, and staff in public, academic, and special libraries read LJ. Library Journal reviews over 8000 books, audiobooks, videos, databases, and web sites annually, and provides coverage of technology, management, policy, and other professional concerns.

View Here      

Amazon’s Mystery Event June 18

 

 

The word is Amazon’s Mystery is their new 3D Smartphone

The 3D Smartphone-Amazon’s phone is supposed to  sport a 4.7-inch, 720p display. That screen size would be approximately the same as competitors, though lower resolution than the 1920 x 1080 flagships out there. Sources state that the new Amazon phone includes a total of six cameras. Six cameras  will be used to track your eye position so that the phone can continuously alter the position of the elements on the screen to help achieve a 3D effect on the phone’s home screen wallpapers and in several apps. The main rear camera is thought to feature a resolution of 13 megapixels, and the phone also includes a standard front-facing camera for video chats as well as Amazon’s  customer service feature. The device has an additional four front-facing cameras that work with other sensors to facilitate the software’s 3D effects. One source tells us these four cameras, which are situated in each of the four corners on the face of the phone, are low-power infrared cameras.

American Libraries Vintage Posters

Take A Look At The American Library Association Archives Poster Collection@ The University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign. The vintage collection  includes printed posters, rotogravures and architectural drawings of ALA divisions, committees, projects and events. Subjects include the work of the ALA during World War I and II, the 50th Anniversary of the ALA in 1926, the Andrew Carnegie Centenary in 1935, librarianship recruitment, and general library and readership promotion.

 

Over 400 Million Accounts Hacked This Year

 

 

 

The exact number of hacked accounts is difficult to determine. Many companies have not released the majority of the information regarding their cyber breaches. Many think cyber invasion is harmless: however the damage is quite serious. Today hackers are downloading your personal information, including your name, debit or credit card, email, phone number, birthday, password, security questions and physical address.The increase of hacker attacks is most likely as a result of everyone moving putting information online and hackers becoming more educated and computer savvy. Hackers are cheaper and can go in and out of companies with ease and unnoticed. The teams of hackers  create malware to attack specific organizations still using outdated systems like Windows XP.