The associate director of research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a new warning in the Opinion section of the New York Times this week, calling Slack the only unicorn going public this year “that has admitted it is at risk for nation-state attacks” and saying there’s a simple way to minimize risk — that Slack has so far refused to…
Tag: frontier
Frontier Refuses To Waive Router Rental Fee For Customer Who Brought His Own
Ever since Frontier bought Verizon’s Texas network in 2016, the company has been charging some customers a $10-per-month router rental fee even if they’re using their own router. Rich Son of Texas purchased Verizon’s FiOS Quantum Gateway router for $200 in order to avoid monthly rental fees. He said: “[the router] worked well for me until the takeover happened with Frontier…
When asteroids photobomb galaxies
Want to spend your days looking at awesome photos of distant galaxy clusters, and possibly discovering an asteroid? Check out this new citizen-science project called Hubble Asteroid Hunter. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/hubble-asteroid-hunter-zooniverse-citizen-science…
Are Amazon’s ‘Ring’ Doorbells Creating A Massive Police Surveillance Network?
“Police departments are piggybacking on Ring’s network to build out their surveillance networks…” reports CNET, adding that Ring “helps police avoid roadblocks for surveillance technology, whether a lack of funding or the public’s concerns about privacy.” While residential neighborhoods aren’t usually lined with security cameras, the smart doorbell’s popularity has essentially created private surveillance networks powered by Amazon and promoted by…
YouTube’s Crackdown on Violent Extremism Mistakenly Whacks Channels Fighting Violent Extremism
AmiMoJo shares an article by Cory Doctorow: Wednesday, Youtube announced that it would shut down, demonetize and otherwise punish channels that promoted violent extremism, “supremacy” and other forms of hateful expression; predictably enough, this crackdown has caught some of the world’s leading human rights campaigners, who publish Youtube channels full of examples of human rights abuses in order to document them…
The Splinternet Is Growing
“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” said Internet pioneer John Gilmore in a 1993 Time magazine article about a then-ungoverned place called “cyberspace.” How times have changed. From a report: In April, Sri Lankan authorities blocked its citizens’ access to social media sites like Facebook and YouTube following a major terrorist attack. Such censorship, once considered all…
Redditor Allowed To Stay Anonymous, Court Rules
Online free speech has been given a victory, with a federal court ruling that a Redditor can remain anonymous in a copyright lawsuit. From a report: This means anyone from around the globe who posts on Reddit can still rely on First Amendment protections for anonymous free speech, because Reddit is a US platform with a US audience. The Electronic Frontier…
Hewlett Packard Enterprise To Acquire Supercomputer Maker Cray for $1.3 Billion
Hewlett Packard Enterprise will be buying the supercomputer maker Cray for roughly $1.3 billion, the companies said this morning. Intending to use Cray’s knowledge and technology to bolster their own supercomputing and high-performance computing technologies, when the deal closes, HPE will become the world leader for supercomputing technology. From a report: Cray of course needs no introduction. The current leader in…
Startup ‘ObEN’ Is Betting the Future On Personal AI Avatars
merbs shares an excerpt from a Gizmodo report: In January 2019, when China Central Television, the largest broadcast network in the most populous nation in the world, aired a special to celebrate the Lunar New Year, the hosts welcomed four life-sized “personal artificial intelligences” to share the stage with them. Called PAIs, they were three-dimensional holographic replicas of the presenters that…