Boing Boing » tech

The world's first website

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:13:37 +0000

Back up at its original URL courtesy of CERN: "Twenty years of a free, open web."

Siri, keeper of secrets

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:09:39 +0000

Robert McMillan writes: "Not everyone realizes this, but whenever you use Siri, Apple’s voice-controlled digital assistant, she remembers what you tell her. How long does she remember? Apple isn’t saying. And the American Civil Liberties Union is concerned." [Wired]

Falcon occupies cell tower

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:38:13 +0000

Mobile reception is spotty in parts of Southampton, England, due to a peregrine falcon nesting in a cellular tower. Vodafone, the operator, is forbidden by law from interfering with the nest until the falcon's chicks have fledged. [BBC]

Google plans sci-fi style supercomputer

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:00:43 +0000

Farhad Manjoo: "Google has a single towering obsession: It wants to build the Star Trek computer." [Slate]

Pong on the side of a skyscraper

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:12:28 +0000

Britt Faulstick reports on Drexel professor Frank Lee's 29-storey game of Pong:

On April 19 and April 24 Philadelphians young and old will have the chance to grab the arcade-style joystick one more time and engage in that timeless quest to spin the bouncing ball past the opponent’s paddle – writ large on the 401-foot north wall of one of the iconic buildings of Philadelphia’s skyline. More than 500 of the 1,514 LEDs affixed to Cira Centre’s shadowbox spandrels will recreate the game’s classic pixilation as competitors will go elbow-to-elbow from a vantage point across the Schuylkill River on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Apple's security problems

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:02:34 +0000

At The Verge, Tim Carmody reports on Apple's seeming inability to get to grips with account security.

"The conventional wisdom is that this was a run-of-the-mill software security issue. ... No. It isn’t. It’s a troubling symptom that suggests Apple’s self-admittedly bumpy transition from a maker of beautiful devices to a fully-fledged cloud services provider still isn’t going smoothly. Meanwhile, your Apple ID password has come a long way from the short string of characters you tap to update apps on your iPhone. It now offers access to Apple’s entire ecosystem of devices, stores, software, and services."

T-Mobile ditches cellphone contracts

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:51:53 +0000

Cyrus Farivar: "T-Mobile's offering, dubbed “Simple Choice,” makes the company the first of the big four US-based carriers to drop one-year or two-year contracts in favor of purely month-to-month-based arrangements. T-Mobile outlined the new plan on its website Monday."

Climate answers sought in supercomputers

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:59:36 +0000

Carl Franzen, for The Verge:

There's a dark cloud hanging over the science of climate change, quite literally. Scientists today have access to supercomputers capable of running advanced simulations of Earth's climate hundreds of years into the future, accounting for millions of tiny variables. But even with all that equipment and training, they still can't quite figure out how clouds work.

Tim Berners-Lee: The Web needs to stay open, but DRM is fine by me

Rob Pegoraro — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:57:39 +0000

AUSTIN—The knight who invented the World Wide Web came to SXSW to point out a few ways in which we're still doing it wrong.

Tim Berners-Lee's "Open Web Platform: Hopes & Fears" keynote hopscotched from the past of the Web to its present and future, with some of the same hectic confusion that his invention shows in practice. (The thought that probably went through attendees' heads: "Sir Tim is nervous at public speaking. Just like us!")

But his conclusion was clear enough: The Web is our work, and we shouldn't put our tools down.

The British scientist led off with some candy for the audience at the Austin Convention Center, in the form of stories about developing the Web on the "beautiful magnesium box" that was his NeXT workstation. Did you know that the Web's original default port was 2784 because low-numbered ports such as 80, today's default, needed root access?

"The Gopher people had 79, which was so much less cool," said Berners-Lee, drawing knowing laughter.

But the most important part of the Web's origins was its simple open-ness. Before writing a program that could connect to a program on another computer, he said, "I didn't have to ask anybody."

That paved a path to Berners-Lee's points on preserving the Web as a space where any compatible device works. As he put it: "The Web worked because HTML didn't say anything about the platform you were on."

Part of Berners-Lee's sermon involved encouraging people to see the Web as the ultimate app store.

Local apps can easily do things like access a phone's camera, but the mobile Web is catching up with standards to let HTML apps talk to components such as accelerometers, which let programs respond when we tilt or shake our devices.

HTML5 is also pulling in such media capabilities as video conferencing; Berners-Lee pointed the audience to WebPlatform.org, a hub for those efforts.

Web apps, in turn, comply with Berners-Lee's "principle of least power," a rule of simplicity, security and interoperability he defined as "If you're going to transmit something, you should use the least powerful language that you can."

He did not, however, present himself as an opponent of digital locks. During a post-talk Q&A, he defended proposals to add support for "digital rights management" usage restrictions to HTML5 as necessary to get more content on the open Web: "If we don't put the hooks for the use of DRM in, people will just go back to using Flash," he claimed.

Berners-Lee's biggest fear is not a mobile experience dominated by iOS or Play Store apps, but one in which the basic protocols of the Web are eaten away by ISP interference and state surveillance.

Deep packet inspection, for example, allows third parties to "look at all the stuff you're looking up on the Web, and store it, and use it." An Internet provider might employ that to sell ads or charge some sites and services extra; a government could exploit it to slow or disconnect sites it considers harmful.

In all of those warnings, exhortations and technical digressions (such as the virtue of coding in Objective-C, the declining cost of displays that may leave taxis "covered in pixels," the perils of "Turing-complete" languages), however, Berners-Lee didn't emphasize one of the most important features of his invention: the fact that it was also open-source. It fell to introducer John Perry Barlow to make that point.

"One of the more important things that Tim Berners-Lee did was what he didn't do," added the Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder. "He did not say World Wide Web^TM"

Acer Iconia tablet is UMPC-killer

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:56:04 +0000

Acer's $1,000 Iconia tablet runs Windows 8, weighs only 2 pounds, and packs in 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and a 1.7Ghz Core i5 CPU. Christopher Null put it through its paces:

The bigger challenge, though, is the lack of a mouse. Yes, tablets are designed to be touched directly in lieu of an external pointer, but as noted above, this is tough given the W700′s resolution. At arm’s length, when it’s placed in the cradle, tapping the right button is nearly impossible. The bottom line: Budget for an external mouse and make it a Bluetooth one as well, unless you want to give up your only USB port.

Watch out, Samsung XE700T1A-A02US! Your reign may be over.

Dumb tech CEO quotes

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 12:37:48 +0000

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance" — Steve Ballmer's 2007 spectacular earns him only ninth spot on Alex Bracetti's collection of the 25 craziest things that tech industry chiefs have told reporters. [Complex via Daring Fireball]

The phone booth as "last vestige of privacy"

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:43:47 +0000

Ariana Kelly: "Between 1997 and 2000, when Pacific Bell retired the number at the request of the Mojave Forest Service, the phone received thousands of calls, dozens each day. When asked why they called, most of the callers’ answers could be distilled to this: Because there was a chance someone would pick up." [LA Review of Books]

"Catacombo" coffin offers surround sound

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:09:06 +0000

Fredrik Hjelmquist, operator of a music store in Sweden, has invented a hi-fi coffin so that the dead may listen to their favorite tunes in the afterlife.

CNET rescinds positive review because parent company is suing manufacturer

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:38:04 +0000

Tech site CNET was about to give Dish Network's latest set-top box a best-of-show editorial award, but rescinded the plaudits because its parent company, CBS, is suing the manufacturer. Mathew Ingram points out how this compromises CNET's journalistic credibility, and Buzzfeed's John Hermann says it exposes a profound difference in product journalism and actual journalism at the site.

While it looks like clueless corporate spite, I bet it's really about lawyers wanting to lower CBS's exposure to uncertainty in its boring lawsuit over contracts and copyright. The product review could end up influencing the court, and that alone is reason enough for it to come down.

The misery of litigation (including a plaintiff's perceived need to pursue it) blinds us to other risks, expecially for a business as frequently exposed to it the media. For some, it seems inconceivable not to accept legal advice after it's been sought—even when the negative consequences of taking it are profoundly obvious. And it's easy to imagine that lawyers get to micromanage a huge, change-averse company like CBS.

When it defends itself by saying that the litigation blackout "applies only to reviews, not news", though, CNET shows its colors badly. Gadget reviews might be the journalistic outhouse, but it's still bad form to burn it down when your own hacks are on the pot.

Viewfraud is the new clickfraud

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:02:35 +0000

YouTube recently wiped billions of views from some record labels' videos. Here's how to follow in their footsteps and buy views, Facebook likes, and Twitter followers! [Dailydot via Waxy]

The long slow death of the landline

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:48:48 +0000

The CDC reports that more than one third of American homes are now landline-free, with six in ten adults aged under 30 living in households with only wireless phones.

In a study carried out as part of the National Health Interview Survey, 35.8 percent of all respondents reported having only cellular telephones. A further 15.9 percent reported that while they had landlines, they received all or almost all their calls on their mobiles.

While 34 percent of all adults now live in households with only cellular phones, the number jumps to 40.6 percent when limited to households with children. Fifty-eight percent of renters and 76 percent of adults living with roommates reported having only cellphones. The growth is slowing, though, with the 1.8 percent six-month increase in landline-less homes being the lowest jump since 2008.

Even the elderly are abandoning their landlines, albeit slowly: for the first time, more than 1 in 10 of those aged 65 or more reported living mobile-only.

Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2012 [PDF link]

Ayatollah online

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:45:20 +0000

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now on Facebook. No-one tell him they're gonna swipe his Instagrams. [Reuters]

Death Star petition reaches 25,000 votes

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:38:49 +0000

David Kravets: "A petition demanding the President Barack Obama administration build a Death Star like the one in Star Wars reached 25,000-plus signatures Thursday, a threshold requiring the government to respond whether it will build the fictional weapon capable of annihilating planets with its super laser." [Wired]

Years of computer use visualized

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:03:41 +0000

Marcin Ignac (twitter) recorded everything he did on his computer for 2½ years, then created a series of beautiful visualizations based upon the data: "Each line represents one day and each colorful block is the most foreground app running at the given moment. Black areas are periods when my computer is not turned on. Seeping patterns (or lack of them) and time of holidays and travel (longer gaps) can be therefore easily identified."

Social media gurus nailed in Onion parody

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:57:16 +0000

"Social media eliminates the need to provide value to your clients."

The last day

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:21:15 +0000

Francisco Dao's unusual flash fic about the last minutes of a failed startup. [Pando Daily]

He opened his wallet and took out his business card. It said “CEO.” He realized that was another lie, that he was never really the boss. Math was the boss, the math of a shrinking bank account. The math of expenses bigger than revenue. Math was always in charge. Whatever his business card said was meaningless. He picked up a pen and crossed out “CEO” scribbling over it “unemployed.”

Intel CEO to retire

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:53:05 +0000

Paul Otellini, "a generally well-liked San Francisco native with an M.B.A. from Berkeley", is to retire after 40 years at chipmaker Intel. [NYT]

The best airlines

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:40:51 +0000

The best international airlines are Singapore, Emirates, Air New Zealand and Virgin Atlantic. The best domestic airlines are Virgin America, JetBlue, Hawaiian, Alaska and Southwest. CNTraveler has the full lists.

Writer apologizes after comment backlash

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:26:59 +0000

Two weeks ago, Jon Fingas wrote an interesting opinion piece for Engadget about how Amazon and Google selling hardware at a loss--a classic anticompetitive strategy--reduces choice and hurts consumers. Spotless corporate idols thereby insulted, commenters were angry. So, ~~Engadget~~ he apologized to them.

MG Siegler:

As [he] tells it, the piece should have had more examples and “set a more neutral tone”. Um, why? To ensure that it’s yet another boring-as-fuck piece that no one would even get through let alone think about ever again? As a writer, I feel disgusted seeing such an update. As a reader, I feel even worse. It reads as if the Engadget editors think their readership to be morons who can’t think and/or reason for themselves beyond what they’re told.

Which would be a real problem, given that this situation arose because Engadget's contributor apparently believes, ~~or is made to accept~~ (see update below), that readers are his critical equals.

In this view, the writer sees his job as not to share insight or perform acts of journalism or entertainment, but more a kind of PR filtration duty for a specified "community". The process of turning industry news into blog posts has long worn its own quasi-formal language: engaging and sufficiently stripped of marketing to be readable--with a hint of snark to establish that all-important critical distance!--but punctilious in its servicing of reader expectations.

Update: Engadget EIC Tim Stevens writes to point out that I was wrong to attribute the apology to Engadget itself:

The editorial went up and of course riled up a heck of a sandstorm in comments and elsewhere, as many good editorials often do. The editor in question, who is relatively new to us and hasn't written such a high-profile opinion piece before, wasn't prepared for the sort of vitriol he was receiving on all fronts. Beaten down by the hate, he began to second-guess his argument and posted the update, which has caused the subsequent storm.
Now, we have a policy for updates that materially change the content of the post. (Basically, anything more than quick additional bits of info or something like "Oops, that's out of stock now.") Those updates need to go through a senior editor for approval and anything big, anything that boils down to us blowing the story, needs to go through me. That didn't happen here, as this editor wasn't aware of the process. Had that update been run by me I would have shot it down, as would have any other editor, and it would have never appeared on the site.

This is an excellent policy, and I apologize for assuming that Engadget itself was responsible for the apology--even if it was removed without much explanation.

Unfortunately, it also means that my remarks on editorial confidence would apply directly to a specific person--Fingas. And they seem rather mean-spirited in that context. When it comes to your own writing, however, the fix is easy: stop worrying about what other people think, especially vitriolic commenters.

Opera browser popular in Belarus

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:15:31 +0000

Why is a boutique web browser so popular in Europe's last dictactorship? Opera's maximalist, ultra-fast caching keeps bandwidth use down when using crappy, metered internet. [The Atlantic]

Google fiber offers 700 Mbps to homes

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:40:31 +0000

Internet users in Kansas City will never again need to leave the house. [Ars]

Exiting Microsoft exec was "ruthless corporate schemer"

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:33:09 +0000

The unexpected departure of Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, previously tipped as an eventual replacement for Steven Ballmer, has ignited even more tech-biz kremlinology than Scott Forstall's exit from Apple. Both men seem like similar corporate beasts—brilliant but abrasive—who saw off boardroom rivals but could not challenge two of the most immovable CEOs in the business. [Nick Wingfield at the NYT]

Ad-blocking box maker seeks funding

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:36:22 +0000

AdTrap is a planned $150 firewall box for consumers. Plugged in between your internet connection and router, it strips the web of advertising without requiring a moment's configuration. Unlike browser-based plugins, it covers the whole pipe rather than a single app: every device in the house managed from a single setup screen.

It's open-source and hackable, too, but the moral hazard with these concepts is always the same: the more successful they are in becoming a de facto middle-man between readers and publishers, the greater will be their incentive to research their way to concluding that you like some advertising after all.

HowTo figure out Windows 8

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:24:07 +0000

Windows 8's new UI is elegant, minimalist and, for those used to the older versions, utterly baffling. Sean Hollister's lengthy guide to the new OS will have you figuring it out in no time. tl;dr just hover the mouse in the corners.

Hacks that never happened

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:47:37 +0000

Yesterday, GoDaddy went down, taking with it countless hosted sites. A hacker claimed credit, gaining the attention of the entire tech press. But his story was soon debunked: a DNS configuration mistake was the real cause. At Threat Level, Robert McMillan recounts the greatest hacks that never were.