According to the majority of the testimony at this month's "Spam Summit," held by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the state of the fight against spam is pretty much the same as it has been for the last several years. The two days of presentations can largely be boiled down to the following bullets: Spam volumes continue to increase, being driven by the growth of "botnets"... Oh, and the spam wars are a lot less exciting than they used to be. Case in point: unlike last time, there were no fist-fights at this year's shindig. more
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight which landed the first two humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module, Eagle, on July 20, 1969. Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours later, and Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. The two astronauts spent about two and a quarter hours outside the spacecraft, and they collected 47.5 pounds of lunar material to bring back. more
At the end of January, the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) specification was publicly announced and resulted in widespread media coverage, blog posts and discussion. Since that time various individuals and organizations have been working on writing code for DMARC validators and report parsers. The dmarc-discuss list has been fairly active as various questions and issues have been raised and clarified. Now it is time to see how well the various implementations play together in live testing. more
Elon Musk has announced plans for a space project to provide faster, cheaper Internet access around the globe. The $15 billion plan would use hundreds of satellites placed 750 miles above the Earth, far lower than existing communications satellites. Doing so would speed up the transfer of data and give better coverage to three billion people who do not have it. more
Starlink dominates the satellite internet race, echoing IBM's past supremacy in computing. But geopolitical divides, advancing rivals, and Elon Musk's controversies suggest its lead will narrow as competitors gain ground in a fragmented global market. more
From the Middle East to South Asia to Africa, shutdowns are becoming a norm of authoritarianism -- an accepted means of silencing criticism, stifling dissent, and controlling the population. Governments are increasingly using digital tools to surveil, censor, and manipulate information, as well as amplify their own propaganda. more
A few months ago, there was a lot of discussion that despite its claims, Zoom did not actually offer end-to-end encryption. They're in the process of fixing that, which is good, but that raises a deeper question: why trust their code? (To get ahead of myself, this blog post is not about Zoom.) If Zoom has the key but doesn't abuse it, there isn't a problem, right? Let's fast-forward to when they deploy true end-to-end encryption. Why do we trust their code not to leak the secret key? more
Public Interest Registry, the non-profit organization managing the .ORG top-level domain, says it will not be offering any further volume discounts to domain registrars when the current agreements expire. more
eco's topDNS initiative and AV-Test are publishing monthly reports to help ISPs detect and mitigate DNS abuse by analysing malware, phishing, and PUA trends, creating a long-term data foundation for industry-wide transparency. more
ICANN has rejected the application from dotgay LLC for a second time, saying the .gay string does not match the community that dotgay claims to represent. more
Leaving the Public Forum yesterday at the ICANN meeting in Costa Rica I had learned of a couple of decisions which to me goes against serving the global public interest. At an ICANN Board meeting a few months ago which I unfortunately missed the Board resolved matters related to how financial support and batching will take place in the new gTLD Program. I would like to put forward proposals for adjusting these... more
Nokia has developed a framework that will enable governments to implement smart cities. The framework is designed to aid regions to design and obtain services for smart city concepts. However, Nokia states that more emphasis needs to be put on developing an overarching strategy rather than small projects. The Australian government announced that they are interested in building smart cities, but there are still major gaps in figuring out how to do so. more
The 2022 edition of the DOTZON study Digital City Brands has just been published. After having introduced the study in early 2017, DOTZON has mapped for the sixth year in a row how successful cities are in using their Digital City Brands. The Digital City Brand is the digital dimension of the City Brand and mirrors the "Digitalness" of a city. The advent of the Internet was the reason why Digital City Brands came into being in the first place. more
Microsoft Corp. on Monday released an official announcement stating it has reached an agreement to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion, confirming rumors reported last week. more
RIPE NCC will be hosting the fifth hackathon event in Amsterdam, on 20 and 21 April, 2017. Operators, designers, researchers and developers are invited to take on the challenge and join in developing new tools and visualizations for DNS measurements. more