Cuban requests for Google services are being routed to GCC servers in Cuba, and all Google services that are available in Cuba are being cached -- not just YouTube. That will cut latency significantly, but Cuban data rates remain painfully slow. My guess is that Cubans will notice the improved performance in interactive applications, but maybe not perceive much of a change when watching a streaming video. more
In an open letter to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced on Tuesday that it is resigning from World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in response to the organization publishing Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) as a standard. more
Too often, people consider themselves passive consumers of the Internet. The apps and websites we visit are made by people with technical expertise using languages we don't understand. It's hard to know how to plug in, even if you have a great idea to contribute. One solution for this problem is the hackathon. For the uninitiated, a hackathon is a place of hyper-productivity. A group of people converge for a set period of time, generally a weekend to build solutions to specific problems. more
The Los Angeles-based hosting company, DreamHost on Monday revealed that for the past several months it has been dealing with a search warrant from the Department of Justice pertaining to a website used to organize protests against President Trump. more
Modern Internet Standards provide for more reliability and further growth of the Internet. But are you using them? You can test this on the Dutch website www.internet.nl (also available in English and Polish). Recently the website was renewed. Not only the style has been adapted, but also the way the tests are performed and the test results are shown. A lot of additional information has been added, so that even the tech savvy internet users can find an explanation underpinning the test results. more
With websites and social media platforms moving from HTTP to secure HTTPs connections in recent years, a new degree of complication is affecting Internet censorship efforts around the world. more
Mozilla and the National Science Foundation have announced a $2 million prize for ideas that decentralize the web; prizes will be available for both early-stage design concepts and fully-working prototypes. more
Deema Tamimi had one plan for the 2016 California Apps for Ag hackathon: get in and get out. She thought the weekend-long event would be a good opportunity to meet people, but she didn't feel ready to launch a new app, and so she planned on stealing away soon after the hackathon began. This, despite the very impressive resume she'd accrued and the fully-formed idea for a gardening-based app that had been brimming for half a year. But something magical can happen when so many engineers, experts, change-makers, and creatives converge at a hackathon. more
One thing was clear from a recent presentation by the new leaders of the SF-Bay Internet Society (ISOC) Chapter Working Groups: inclusion and collaboration will be the key to these groups' success. As Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, the Internet Governance Working Group (WG) Chair said, "We haven't yet cracked the code on what 'multistakeholder' means." But that won't stop her and Dr. Jaclyn Kerr, the Data Protection, Privacy, and Security WG Chair, from trying. more
Report from a new study by Analysys Mason, commissioned by the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), says there is a potential USD $9.8 billion growth opportunity in online revenue through a routine update to Internet systems, including those for speakers of languages that do not use the English script. more
Twitter has filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court seeking to publish its full Transparency Report. In a blog post released this afternoon, Twitter's vice president, Ben Lee writes: "Our ability to speak has been restricted by laws that prohibit and even criminalize a service provider..." more
In early February, free hosting provider Freedom Hosting II, known as one of the largest hosting providers for anonymous websites, was compromised along with all the websites it hosted. The takedown was estimated to have impacted 15-20% of all websites on the Dark Web, however, the actual impact is now reported to have been much larger. more
When farms are connected to the Internet, we all benefit. Agriculture that gains real-time information about plants, soil, atmosphere, and irrigation, dubbed "precision agriculture", can save farmers 20-30% of their water consumption while increasing productivity by 20-70%, according to Valley Vision. The San Francisco-Bay Area Internet Society Chapter is pleased to announce that we have started phase one of our collaborative project, "Bridging California's Rural/Urban Digital Divide with Mobile Broadband"... more
I feel incredibly lucky to work every day with some of the biggest, most recognised and most innovative organisations from around the world on developing strategies for their .brand TLDs. In this capacity, I also have the privilege to meet some of the most knowledgeable and forward-thinking experts in branding, digital marketing, web development and technology, to name a few. One such person is the brilliantly talented Matt Dorville. more
Michael "Mick" Moran, who has helped rescue thousands of child abuse material victims since he started working in the field in 1997, challenged the internet industry to do more to protect innocent children as he received the 2017 M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award. more