Discussion: China is the third most restrictive country in the world when it comes to Internet access. By using what is referred to as the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield, China controls what its citizens can see and access on the Internet. The Great Firewall limits access to foreign websites, and the Golden Shield… Read more »
Monthly Archives: April 2013
Google Fiber to launch in Provo, Utah
Discussion: The city of Provo, Utah, is going to be the next recipient of Google Fiber, which offers Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second (close to 100 times faster than the average American Internet user’s service). Google recently purchased iProvo, an existing fiber-optic network owned by the city, and plans to upgrade… Read more »
How to turn your phone into a biometric scanning machine
Discussion: A California tech company has designed an app for the iPhone 4 and 4S that can read a person’s biometric information. By adding the app, the AOptix Stratus, and a wrap-around device to an iPhone, the smartphone turns into a portable identification device. This technology could come in particularly handy for police, border agents, and airport… Read more »
Shodan: The scariest search engine on the Internet
Discussion: Google works by crawling the Web looking for websites; Shodan navigates the Internet’s back channels looking for things like servers, web cams, printers, and routers that are connected to make up the Internet. Simple searches on Shodan allow visibility to traffic lights and security cameras–devices that do not have any kind of security built into them. … Read more »
Think 3-D printing is cool? Try 4-D
Discussion: Skylar Tibbits, a senior fellow at MIT, explains 4-D printing as printing a 3-D object that has the capacity to change over time. Instead of being a static object with a fixed life, a 4-D object would be more adaptive and responsive to its environment. The application of such technology are mind-boggling, and span… Read more »
Radically rethinking the bus system
Discussion: Phillips, the giant electronics company, is designing a new bus system that will revolutionize public transportation. Commuting by bus hasn’t changed for decades, and Phillips believes the industry is ready for some drastic changes. One of the biggest changes will be an app that should reduce the occurrence of empty busses driving predetermined routes. Using the app, passengers will be able to… Read more »
Game of Thrones premiere sets piracy record
Discussion: The Sunday night season 3 premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones topped the modern-day piracy record when more than 1 million viewers downloaded the episone in the first day after it aired. TorrentFreak, a piracy tracker, said that at one time 163,000 people were simultaneously sharing a single torrent, which beat the previous record… Read more »
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