Do-It-Yourself Rural Fiber

I doubt that any elementary school in the US has fiber to the premises, but, in 2013, an elementary school in rural Bhutan was connected to the Internet using optical fiber in the "last mile." They were able to connect the school because the cabling they used, metal-packed armored cable (M-PAC), which is modeled on undersea cables, does not have to be in a protective duct. It is 4mm in diameter, light and flexible, so it can be installed by supervised volunteers or unskilled workers.
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Trump to Sign Cybersecurity Executive Order on Tuesday

President Donald Trump expected to sign an executive order on cyber security on Tuesday. more

US Senator Al Franken Urges FCC Chairman Pai to Protect Freedom of Speech, Enforce Net Neutrality

In open letter issued today, Senator Al Franken has urged the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai to join the fight to preserve net neutrality. more

Internet Society CEO: We are Deeply Troubled by Unprecedented U.S. Entry Bans

Internet Society President and CEO, Kathy Brown has released a public note today stating that the U.S. entry ban has places an unwarranted burden on people in the organization. more

Kill the Spreadsheets! Automate VPN IP Assignments and Tracking over MPLS/VRF and vLAN

Advancements in virtual private networking have extended system capabilities for service providers. Providers can divide LANs into multiple discrete segments using either Virtual Local Area Networks (vLANs), leverage Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) or Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) to host Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that support service operations over multiple instances. more

US Law-Enforcement Agencies Reported to be at Risk in Foreign-Owned Buildings

US law-enforcement agencies are at risk of being spied on and hacked because some of their field offices are located in foreign-owned buildings without even knowing it. more

Executive Order and the New Date Privacy Rights of Non-US Citizens

"Last week, President Trump signed an executive order affecting the privacy rights of non-US citizens with respect to data residing in the US," Bruce Schneier writes in his security blog. more

Nuking Silicon Valley

The new head of the U.S. Executive Branch took several actions this week that have profound collateral consequences for Silicon Valley as well as its scientific and technical communities. Presumably, he thought it was payback time for not supporting him. Perhaps he thought that producing automobiles domestically for non-Muslim U.S. citizens to drive around a walled nation is the way to future economic success. No matter, the effects of actions taken this week are the equivalent of nuking Silicon Valley. more

The Cuban Home-Connectivity Trial Ends This Week, Rollout to Begin Next Week

The free home-connectivity trial in Old Havana will end this week. Two thousand homes were eligible for the trial and I was told, off the record, that 700 people have signed contracts to pay for the service. I am not certain, but my guess is that those two thousand homes are served by a single central office that has been upgraded to offer Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connectivity. more

Critical Differences Of Public And Private Clouds

Private or public? Both cloud types offer benefits and both have enjoyed significant growth over the last few years. Yet, what's the best bet for your business: The virtually limitless resources of public cloud stacks, or the close-to-home control of private alternatives? Here's a look at some critical differences between public and private clouds... more

One-Click Unsubscription

Unsubscribing from mailing lists is hard. How many times have you seen a message "please remove me from this list," followed by two or three more pointing out that the instructions are in the footer of every message, followed by three or four more asking people to not send their replies to the whole list (all sent to the whole list, of course,) perhaps with a final message by the list manager saying she's dealt with it? For marketing broadcast lists, it's even worse because there's no list to write to. more

When to Consider ‘Both Sides of the Dot’ in a Domain Name Dispute

In the case, filed by Michelin, the panel found the domain name 'tyre.plus' confusingly similar to the trademark TYREPLUS. Specifically, the panel wrote: "If one ignores the 'dot' between the Second-Level Domain ('tyre') and the Top-Level Domain ('plus'), the mark and the Domain Name are identical..." It's an issue that's arising with increasing frequency -- just as I had predicted. more

Virtual Assistants Market on the Rise, Poised to Rule in 2017

In Spike Jonze's 2013 film "Her", the main character Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with a Siri-like virtual assistant. It is an intelligent computer operating system, a variance of AI envisioned by the high technology developers of today. We are still far away from creating AI capable of thinking and learning for themselves, not to mention living in symbiosis with them. However, Intelligent Virtual Assistants can be perceived as a step towards the fulfillment of the idea. more

Data Breaches Reported During 2016 Exposed Over 4.2 Billion Records

2016 broke the previous all-time high, set back in 2013, for the number of records exposed from reported data breaches. more

Characterizing the Friction and Incompatibility Between IoC and AI

Many organizations are struggling to overcome key conceptual differences between today's AI-powered threat detection systems and legacy signature detection systems. A key friction area -- in perception and delivery capability -- lies with the inertia of Indicator of Compromise (IoC) sharing; something that is increasingly incompatible with the machine learning approaches incorporated into the new breed of advanced detection products. more