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Level 3 claims six ISPs dropping packets every day over money disputes

Network operator Level 3, which has asked the FCC to protect it from ” arbitrary access charges ” that ISPs want in exchange for accepting Internet traffic, today claimed that six consumer broadband providers have allowed a state of “permanent congestion” by refusing to upgrade peering connections for the past year. Level 3 and Cogent, another network operator, have been involved in disputes with ISPs over whether they should pay for the right to send them traffic. ISPs have demanded payment in exchange for accepting streaming video and other data that is passed from the network providers to ISPs and eventually to consumers. When the interconnections aren’t upgraded, it can lead to congestion and dropped packets, as we wrote previously regarding a dispute between Cogent and Verizon . In a blog post today , Level 3 VP Mark Taylor wrote: Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Level 3 claims six ISPs dropping packets every day over money disputes

Audience Choice Winner Roadie Automagically Tunes Your Guitar

Roadie is a nifty little robotic device. It’s a small box that you put on your guitar’s machine heads. You connect it to your phone and it automatically tunes your guitar, all by itself. Earlier today, the startup was selected as the audience choice in the Disrupt NY Battlefield. And it’s no surprise. Roadie is accurate, fast and easy — if you’re a musician, it will… Read More

Infecting DVRs with Bitcoin-mining malware even easier than you suspected

The dialog that appears when users want to manually change the default password on their EPCOM Hikvision S04 DVR. Sans Institute It took just one day for a low-end, Internet-connected digital video recorder to become infected with malware that surreptitiously mined Bitcoins on behalf of the quick-moving attackers. The feat, documented in a blog post published Monday by researchers at the security-training outfit Sans Institute, was all the more impressive because the DVR contained no interface for downloading software from the Internet. The lack of a Wget , ftp, or kermit application posed little challenge for the attackers. To work around the limitation, the miscreants used a series of Unix commands that effectively uploaded and executed a Wget package and then used it to retrieve the Bitcoin miner from an Internet-connected server. Monday’s observations from Sans CTO Johannes Ullrich are part of an ongoing series showing the increasing vulnerability of Internet-connected appliances to malware attacks. In this case, he bought an EPCOM Hikvision S04 DVR off eBay, put it into what he believes was its factory new condition, and connected it to a laboratory “honeypot” where it was susceptible to online attackers. In the first day, it was probed by 13 different IP addresses, six of which were able to log into it using the default username and password combination of “root” and “12345.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Infecting DVRs with Bitcoin-mining malware even easier than you suspected

Why Do Chinese URLs Use Numbers, Not Letters?

If, for whatever reason, you’ve ever spent much time on Chinese websites, you’ll know that they often use numbers over letters or other characters. So, 4399.com is a gaming site, 92.com deals with car trading, and 12306.cn sells train tickets. Why is that? Read more…

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Why Do Chinese URLs Use Numbers, Not Letters?

LED Tubes Will Make Fluorescent Seem Old Fashioned

Cree, front-runners in the scramble to replace traditional forms of illumination with greener LED sources, has just announced the release of a new type of tube light designed to tackle one of the biggest energy hogs in Corporate America: fluorescent overhead lights. Read more…

Drinkable Book: Have We Found a Solution to the World’s Clean Water Crisis?

Finding clean water for the entire world to enjoy has been an ideal that’s gone unsolved, but not for lack of trying. Scientists, chemists and designers have been on the challenge for years, coming up with solutions that technically work, but might not necessarily fit into the budgets of those really in need of a tall glass of the good stuff. Non-profit Water is Life teamed up with scientists and engineers from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia to come up with a solution that’s a little more wallet-friendly than a water generator: the Drinkable Book. The 20 corrugated pages in this booklet are actually filters that block harmful water-borne bacteria like cholera, E. coli and typhoid from getting into your water. Dr. Theresa Dankovich was able to create a paper coated with silver nanoparticles—tiny pieces of silver between 1 nm and 100 nm in size—which gets rid of more than 99.9% of dangerous bacteria. While the Drinkable Book’s primary intention is to provide safe drinking water, it also covers another very important link that’s been missing from the equation: education. Most people who catch water-related diseases have no idea that the drinking water is unsafe to consume. Each page of the book displays different water safety facts and tips for readers/drinkers. Check out Water is Life’s video for the project: (more…)

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Drinkable Book: Have We Found a Solution to the World’s Clean Water Crisis?

Google takes its same-day delivery service to New York and LA

Just over a year after it started offering same-day deliveries to San Franciscans, Google’s Shopping Express has finally made its way out of California. The service, which offers expedited shipping from major stores like Target, Staples and Walgreens but also local businesses, has expanded to parts of New York and Los Angeles. Residents living in Manhattan can now call upon Google to deliver groceries, gadgets and office supplies in super-fast time. Shoppers in Culver City, Inglewood, Marina Del Rey, Santa Monica, Venice, West Los Angeles and Westwood are now also eligible, extending the search giant’s California footprint in the process. To kickstart its expansion, Google is throwing in six months of unlimited free deliveries and says it’ll add other parts of Los Angeles in the coming months, undoubtedly giving Amazon and other brick-and-mortar stores something to think about. Filed under: Internet , Google Comments Via: The Verge Source: Google Commerce Blog

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Google takes its same-day delivery service to New York and LA

Scientists can trace your ancestors to within 30 miles using DNA

You might know where your forebears lived a few generations prior, but how about the exact village they came from — 1, 000 years ago? Thanks to DNA sequencing , it’s now possible to find that out in many cases according to researchers from the University of Sheffield in the UK. The aptly-named GPS or Geographic Population Structure tool was modeled using more than 100, 000 DNA signatures called AIMs (ancestry-informative markers). Since those are often typical to geographic regions, the researchers were able to pinpoint where subjects came from, even if they moved around later (see the video below). During a Sardinian study, for instance, a quarter of the test subject were located to their exact villages and the remainder to within 31 miles. You can even try it for yourself by getting a simple DNA test from 23andme or ancestry.com (for $100-200), then uploading the results to the GPS tool . Filed under: Misc , Alt Comments Via: Gizmag Source: The University of Sheffield , Nature , Prosapia Genetics

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Scientists can trace your ancestors to within 30 miles using DNA

Etihad’s A380 ‘Residence’ has a lounge, double bed and an en-suite shower

We’ve seen full-length beds, 32-inch TVs and even dedicated chefs on board the latest Airbus and Boeing planes, but Etihad’s setting the bar far, far higher by offering an entire section of its brand-new A380 to passengers with the cash to spare. “The Residence, ” as the airline’s calling its uber-lux three-room suite, includes 125 square feet of space spread between a living room, dining area, bedroom and private bathroom (yes, of course it has a shower). You can have the suite all to yourself, or you can share the double bed with a companion. As for the tech on board, there’s a 32-inch TV in the living room, a 27-inch screen near the bed, HDMI inputs (hello PS4 at 30, 000 feet), power outlets, USB ports and a top-of-the-line Panasonic entertainment system. Etihad’s not talking pricing at this point, but the A380 is expected to fly between Abu Dhabi and London, New York and Sydney beginning in 2015, giving you plenty of time to save up. Filed under: Transportation Comments Source: Etihad Airways

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Etihad’s A380 ‘Residence’ has a lounge, double bed and an en-suite shower

Finally, Hi-Def Streaming Video of the ISS’s View of Earth

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from ExtremeTech: “After being continuously inhabited for more than 13 years, it is finally possible to log into Ustream and watch the Earth spinning on its axis in glorious HD. This video feed [embedded at ExtremeTech] comes from from four high-definition cameras, delivered by last month’s SpaceX CRS-3 resupply mission, that are attached to the outside of the International Space Station. You can open up the Ustream page at any time, and as long as it isn’t night time aboard the ISS, you’ll be treated to a beautiful view of the Earth from around 250 miles (400 km) up.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Finally, Hi-Def Streaming Video of the ISS’s View of Earth

Ken May

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