Tag: privacy-rights

Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

Netflix We’ve written a lot about how Netflix takes up a gigantic share of Internet traffic. During peak viewing hours, Netflix accounts for about a third of all bits sent to Internet users in North America on “fixed” connections—that is, cable, DSL, fiber, or satellite, but not cellular. But Netflix users also send a ton of data upstream, so much so that Sandvine’s latest Internet Phenomena Report puts Netflix at 9.48 percent of all peak upstream traffic on North American fixed Internet services, second only to BitTorrent’s 25.49 percent. Sandvine, a maker of equipment that helps consumer broadband providers manage network congestion, defines “peak” hours as those when network usage is within 95 percent of its daily maximum, typically from 7 to 11 p.m. It isn’t new that Netflix is both an upload and download monster. But for some reason, its share of uploads went up substantially in the latest measurement while downloads remained level. The twice-annual report had Netflix accounting for 6.44 of peak upstream traffic and 34.21 percent of downstream traffic in the first half of this year , while the newest report has Netflix at 9.48 percent of upstream and 34.89 percent of downstream: Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

High-res Rosetta pics catch little Philae lander bouncing across comet

The European Space Agency’s decade-old Rosetta mission managed to do what no mission has done before—successfully rendezvous a probe with a comet and then land on it . Even if things didn’t go entirely as planned with the landing, the lion’s share of the mission’s science was always slated to be carried out by the Rosetta probe itself rather than by the Philae lander, so plenty of experiments will still be carried out over the next year. A mosaic assembled by ESA scientists showing Philae’s first bounce across Comet 67P. ESA In fact, one of the Rosetta probe’s instruments managed to capture some remarkable imagery last week during Philae’s landing. In a blog post that went live this morning, the  ESA posted pictures from the spacecraft’s OSIRIS imager (that’s Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System) showing Philae’s initial approach and first “bounce” off of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on November 12. Philae was supposed to have anchored itself to Comet 67P with a pair of harpoons, but those harpoons didn’t fire on touchdown. Philae actually rebounded away from the comet (67P has a small but appreciable amount of gravity, although its escape velocity is only 0.5 meters per second). It was during the first of two “bounces” that Rosetta’s OSIRIS imager captured a series of frames showing the lander’s parabolic journey across the comet’s face. The exact location of Philae’s final resting place remains as yet undetermined. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read More:
High-res Rosetta pics catch little Philae lander bouncing across comet

Lync rebranded as “Skype for Business” in 2015 release

Microsoft’s Lync communications server is to be rebranded. The next version, due to be released next year, will be named instead Skype for Business . It will retain Lync’s infrastructure—the ability to use on-premises servers, optional federation with external communications networks, and so on and so forth—but the branding and client design will closely match those of Microsoft’s consumer communication platform. The Skype and Lync development teams have been working together since shortly after Microsoft bought the popular Skype platform for $8.5 billion in 2011. Skype for Business will further improve interoperability with regular Skype. While voice and instant messaging are already interoperable between Lync and Skype, the next version will add video messaging and access to the Skype user directory. This will mean that, should administrators choose to enable it, the Skype for Business client software will serve as a fairly fully featured Skype client, too. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See original article:
Lync rebranded as “Skype for Business” in 2015 release

WTF, Russia’s domestic Internet traffic mysteriously passes through Chinese routers

Dyn Research Domestic Internet traffic traveling inside the borders of Russia has repeatedly been rerouted outside of the country under an unexplained series of events that degrades performance and could compromise the security of Russian communications. The finding, reported Thursday in a blog post published by Internet monitoring service Renesys , underscores the fragility of the border gateway protocol (BGP), which forms the underpinning of the Internet’s global routing system. In this case, domestic Russian traffic was repeatedly routed to routers operated by China Telecom, a firm with close ties to that county’s government. When huge amounts of traffic are diverted to far-away regions before ultimately reaching their final destination, it increases the chances hackers with the ability to monitor the connections have monitored or even altered some of the communications. A similar concern emerged last year, when Renesys found big chunks of traffic belonging to US banks, government agencies, and network service providers had been improperly routed through Belarusian or Icelandic service providers . The hijacking of Russian traffic is linked to last year’s peering agreement between Russian mobile provider Vimpelcom and China Telecom. The pact allowed the firms to save money by having some of their traffic carried over the other’s network rather than through a more expensive transit operator. On multiple occasions since then, according to Renesys, communications destined for Russia has followed extremely round-about routes that take the traffic into China before sending it on to its final stop. Doug Madory, director of internet analysis in Renesys research arm Dyn wrote: Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Follow this link:
WTF, Russia’s domestic Internet traffic mysteriously passes through Chinese routers

400 Tor-anonymized domains tracked down and seized in global crackdown

Thursday’s takedown of the Silk Road 2.0 drug website was part of a much bigger crackdown by police in a dozen countries that seized more than 400 darknet domains, it was widely reported Friday. Operation Onymous, as the coordinated international effort was dubbed, confiscated $1 million in bitcoins, $250,000 in cash, and a variety of drugs, gold, and silver, the Associated Press reported . In all, according to Wired , police seized 414 .onion domains, the Web addresses that use the Tor anonymity service to hide the physical location where they’re hosted. At least 17 people were arrested. Sites besides Silk Road 2.0 that were taken down included Hydra, Cloud Nine, Pandora, and Blue Sky. In all, some 55 different markets will be shut down once Operation Onymous is completed. Sites Agora and Evolution aren’t among them. The rise of underground bazaars selling illicit drugs and services has continued despite last year’s arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the alleged mastermind of the original Silk Road who has pleaded not guilty and continues to fight the criminal charges in court. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Link:
400 Tor-anonymized domains tracked down and seized in global crackdown

Yes, the 5K Retina iMac’s screen runs at 60Hz at 5K resolution

The Retina iMac on my desk, driving my pair of 27-inch Thunderbolt monitors. Lee Hutchinson I’m at the end of my time with the Retina iMac now that our Senior Applemeister Andrew Cunningham is back from his nuptials. He’ll be finishing up our coverage of the device, but I wanted to touch on a couple of final points with the big Mac before I send it on its way to the East Coast. We’ve received several variations of the same question submitted to our feedback form: does the Retina iMac operate at 60Hz in its native 5120×2880 resolution? And if so, how is that even possible, given that DisplayPort 1.2 doesn’t have the bandwidth to support that resolution and refresh rate? To answer the first question: yes, the iMac’s display runs at 60Hz, even when driving all 14.7 million pixels of its native 5k resolution. Apple directly verified this when I asked; the company also told Daring Fireball’s John Gruber the same. Further, it can be confirmed with apps that measure your refresh rate, like SwitchResX : The output from SwitchResX on the Retina iMac, showing the 60Hz refresh rate. For additional verification, a quick visit to a Web-based app that demonstrates 60Hz movement shows that the screen is operating at that refresh rate: Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the original:
Yes, the 5K Retina iMac’s screen runs at 60Hz at 5K resolution

Hearthstone bot maker closes shop after Blizzard crackdown

A status screen from the now defunct Hearthcrawler software. Blizzard seems to have scored a decisive win in the never-ending battle against automated “bot” programs that play games like Hearthstone without human intervention. Crawlerbots, maker of the popular Hearthcrawler bot,  announced this morning that it is closing up shop in the wake of a recent crackdown on users of the automated play tools. In what’s dubbed as its “last official announcement,” Crawlerbots writes that “the recent ban wave in Hearthstone hit a lot of users. After discussing this with Blizzard, it’s clear we have to take off our services/products now. Please note that we’re not going to be commenting further on this.” “Thank you all for being part of our community,” the message continues. “We are very sad about this but you also know botting is against the rules and we all knew that the day when our products doesn’t [sic] work anymore would come. With tears in our eyes we have to say bye.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Taken from:
Hearthstone bot maker closes shop after Blizzard crackdown

NTSB: SpaceShipTwo broke apart when “feathering” activated early

Ground imagery showing the destruction of SpaceShipTwo. Kenneth Brown/Reuters The Guardian has a good summary of how things are proceeding with the two-day-old National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the destruction of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo , which occurred at approximately 10:12am PDT on October 31. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing an explosion when the craft broke up, prompting speculation that the accident had something to do with SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket engine—an engine that was making its first flight with its new fuel. However, at a press conference Sunday afternoon, acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said that crash investigators had already located the cause of the accident that injured 43-year old pilot Peter Siebold and took the life of 39-year old co-pilot Michael Alsbury: the spacecraft’s “feathering” mode had been engaged early. This put SpaceShipTwo in a high-drag configuration unsuitable for powered flight, and the craft then broke apart. The feathering functionality is designed to be used in the later stage of SpaceShipTwo’s flight. It changes the shape of the craft, swinging its wings upward and allowing them to move to the optimum angle to slow the craft down on descent, like a shuttlecock falling to the ground in a game of badminton. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read this article:
NTSB: SpaceShipTwo broke apart when “feathering” activated early

Egypt jails 8 men for 3 years after same-sex wedding video goes viral

Eight men accused of participating in a same-sex wedding on a Nile riverboat in Egypt were handed a three-year prison term Saturday for committing “debauchery,” state run media said. Ahram Online reported  that the Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat viewed the one-minute video, said to be filmed in April, and concluded it was of two men getting married. Eight men who were aboard the riverboat were detained in September after the minute-long video went viral on YouTube and other sites, Ahram Online said. They were jailed for broadcasting footage that “violates public decency,” CNN said . Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue reading here:
Egypt jails 8 men for 3 years after same-sex wedding video goes viral

“The Devil had possessed his netbook”—and other tales of IT terror

Few things are scarier than 4Chan. But our readers told a few stories that spooked us. Paul van der Werf Earlier this week, we asked readers to share their most frightening tales of technology terror and support horror. And via both comments and Twitter (using the hashtag #ITTalesofTerror), in poured stories that raised goosebumps from those of us who have worked in IT at one point or another. After reading through them, we’ve picked out some reader favorites and a few of our own. Some of us at Ars were inspired to recount further tales of horror from our own IT careers—including one of mine that I’ve saved for last; it should cause a shudder of recognition from our more veteran readers and a bit of schadenfreude from those too young to remember five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks. The chamber of horrors Many readers had short tales of terror about mishaps in the closed spaces where we hide our network infrastructure. Eli Jacobowitz (@creepdr on Twitter) shared a short, shocking scenario by tweet : “Raccoons in the network closet (not kidding).” David Mohundro shared another story of a somewhat more smelly infrastructure invasion that brings new meaning to “data scrubbing”: “I saw our IT guys lugging shop vacs through the lower parking deck one day. There was a sewage backup into the server room.” Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Original post:
“The Devil had possessed his netbook”—and other tales of IT terror