Australian Law Could Make Internet ‘Unworkable’, Says World Wide Web Inventor Tim Berners-Lee

Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee has said Australia’s plan to make tech giants pay for journalism could render the internet as we know it “unworkable.” From a report: The inventor of the World Wide Web claimed that proposed laws could disrupt the established order of the internet. “Specifically, I am concerned that that code risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web…

Twitter’s Decentralized Social Network Project Takes a Baby Step Forward

Bluesky, Twitter’s decentralized social networking effort, has announced its first major update since 2019. The Verge reports: The Bluesky team released a review of the decentralized web ecosystem and said it’s hoping to find a team lead in the coming months. The review follows Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussing Bluesky earlier this month, when he called it a “standard for the…

How Tim Berners-Lee Will Fix the Internet

“Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who was knighted for inventing the internet navigation system known as the World Wide Web, wants to re-make cyberspace once again,” reports Reuters: With a new startup called Inrupt, Berners-Lee aims to fix some of the problems that have handicapped the so-called open web in an age of huge, closed platforms such as Facebook….

Pixar CG Pioneers Pat Hanrahan and Edwin Catmull Share $1M Turing Award

The 2019 Turing Award, one of the highest honors in computing, was today awarded to Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmull, founding members of Pixar who helped shape the future of computer graphics. From a report: The two will share a $1M prize and, of course, the satisfaction of receiving this prestigious award for doing something they clearly love. The award has…

The Great .ORG Heist

Sam Klein: Ethos Capital, a new commercial investment firm founded in the past few months in Boston, has 2 staff and only one major investment: a deal to acquire the 501c3 non-profit that currently runs the .org domain (valued at a few $B), for an undisclosed sum. This was initiated immediately after ICANN decided in May, over almost universal opposition, to…