Jun 102014
 
random-numbers

 

If someone tapped your Internet connection, what would they find out about you?

It’s been just over a year since Edward Snowden became a household name, and his disclosures about the reach and extent of the National Security Agency’s online monitoring programs led to headlines around the world.

But one big, basic question remains more or less unanswered: What exactly does the NSA’s surveillance reveal?

To try to answer that question, I had my home office bugged. This was an experiment NPR designed to learn what exactly the National Security Agency could see about a person if it cared to look.

Working with Sean Gallagher, a reporter at the technology site Ars Technica, and Dave Porcello, a computer security expert at Pwnie Express, I had the Internet traffic into and out of my home office in Menlo Park, Calif., tapped. We installed something called a Pwn Plug to monitor the data flowing to and from my computer and mobile phone.

The box is a little wireless router that basically captures and copies all the traffic into and out of any device that connects to it. That data were sifted and analyzed by software automatically.So for a little more than a week, Porcello and Gallagher stepped into the role of NSA analysts and spied on my work.

via Project Eavesdrop: An Experiment At Monitoring My Home Office : All Tech Considered : NPR.

 

 

Jun 032014
 
chrome-logo-2011-04-27

A browser is one of the most resource-intensive things you can run on a computer. Start a multi-tab workload and it’s not uncommon to quickly gobble up multiple gigabytes of RAM. To help deal with the Web’s ever-growing thirst for system resources, Google is catching up with the Internet Explorers and Safaris of the world by releasing a 64-bit version of Chrome.

The new version was announced on the Chromium blog, along with a list of benefits that the switch to 64-bit brings to the table. Thanks to compiler optimizations and a more advanced instruction set, Google says it is getting big speed boosts.

via 64-bit Chrome is faster, more stable, and more secure | Ars Technica.

 

 


 

Jun 022014
 
facebook

facebook

It’s becoming clear that brands looking to get their way into more fans’ and users’ News Feeds, there are two main options — advertising and getting a friend to share a message. Referral marketing is one way to get that important share.

Facebook announced recently that explicit shares from a third party app now hold more weight in its News Feed algorithm. But how can you get a Facebook user to willingly share your content with their friends? Offering some kind of reward or incentive works, according to Extole Vice President of Marketing Chris Duskin. He said that Extole’s clients have seen a lot of success with referral marketing, motivating fans and customers to share content and have the message spread across Facebook.

For Extole customers in Q1, 33 percent of acquisitions happened within an hour of a friend receiving a referral message from an existing customer. While referral marketing may be a little easier to do via email, Duskin talked with Inside Facebook about ways that brands can use this technique to get back into the News Feed.

via How can referral marketing counter Facebook’s organic reach problem? – Inside Facebook.

 


 

 

 

Jun 022014
 

Pixar announced last week that it will be releasing a free, noncommercial version of its Renderman package. All of the many elements that make up Renderman will be made available to download as part of Pixar and Disney’s initiative to set Renderman up as the 3D imaging industry standard.

Renderman comprises a large batch of software and an API, and it works with Autodesk products like Maya to expand on tools for modeling, lighting, texturing, shading, VFX, and animation. Renderman also includes tools for setting up a render farm across multiple computers and servers.

via Pixar will soon release a free version of Renderman | Ars Technica.

 


 

 

 

Jun 022014
 
youtube_logo

youtube_logo

Starting today, internet providers in the United States will finally be held to account for lackluster YouTube streaming speeds. Google has brought its Video Quality Report — first launched in Canada at the start of this year — to the US, and is now ranking ISPs like Cablevision and Verizon FiOS based on the fidelity of their YouTube streams. If you’ve been experiencing buffering issues or playback interruptions despite paying for a speedy internet connection, this monthly report could help answer the lingering question of why.

via YouTube reveals which US internet providers are best and worst at streaming | The Verge.