Internet & Websites - Page 25

Microsoft plans to phase out sales of the original Kinect for Windows sensor starting in 2015, after shipping the Kinect for Windows v2 sensor and 2.0 software development kit (SDK) in late 2014.

Kinect users spend $199 to invest in a hands-free motion sensor system that allows them to interact with games, productivity tools and apps, using gestures or voice. However, the Kinect SDK 2.0 allows developers to create Windows Store Kinect-enabled apps, and use the Kinect Adapter for Windows to use the Xbox One sensor and still develop Windows apps.

"The original Kinect for Windows sensor was a milestone achievement in the world of natural human computing," Microsoft wrote in the blog. "It allowed developers to create solutions that broke through the old barriers of mouse and keyboard interactions, opening up entirely new commercial experiences in multiple industries, including retail, education, healthcare, education, and manufacturing."

Google is apparently eyeing India, the second largest country in the world, as the next candidate for Google Fiber services. Google is planning to provide fiber broadband services as part of the Digital India program, with a small roll-out planned as a proof-of-concept project. Along with the blazing bandwidth, 100 times faster than normal connections, Google is offering unlimited uploads and downloads, and 1TB of free cloud storage.

There are several hurdles in the way. Google might have to acquire a telecom licence, which is apparently quite the feat in India, and several large native telecom companies are lining up to oppose the plan. The expansion to India would open a massive market of over 1.2 billion people up for Google, but there are numerous challenges and low internet penetration for the average citizen. The latest numbers from 2013 indicate only 15.1 citizens per 100 have internet access in India, which puts India at number 146 of 211 countries globally.

The lack of infrastructure would also present challenges, but Google has done significant experimentation with balloons and solar powered drones on their quest to provide internet service to every corner of the planet. Google is also working on expansion in the US in 34 more cities.

The Pirate Bay previously made its website open for hosting by anyone with "minimal web knowledge". After it was closed recently time and time again thanks to various lawsuits, GitHub has seen 372 copies of "The Open Bay" created, seeing The Pirate Bay hit the open source market.

Being starred over 2,282 times and forked 679 times over on GitHub, this source codes front-page reads "we, the team that brought you isoHunt and oldpiratebay.org bring you the next step in torrent evolution. The Pirate Bay source code."

Isohunt has called out to developers across the globe, asking them to band together to make oldpiratebay.org something of a nostalgic improvement to the long-standing and popular torrent website, them stating that "our current goal is not only make it open source, but eventually provide fully decentralized torrent database for the community." As The Pirate Bay still remains shut down, where will users go for their illegal downloads? The answer is basically everywhere - with us previously reporting on the fact that torrent traffic has not slowed down at all since this large-scale shutdown.

Facebook is in hot water over their recent addition of a "Year-in-Review" feature for all users, with some claiming that their algorithm for choosing what to display was poorly designed. Grieving father, Eric Meyer, wrote on his blog that the "algorithms are essentially thoughtless. They model certain decision flows, but once you run them, no more thought occurs."

Meyer's daughter passed away earlier this year at age six, due to a brain tumor with this tragic occurrence happening on her birthday, June 6th 2014. Thanks to Facebook's "Year-in-Review" feature, Meyer was reminded of this heartbreak as her portrait appeared on his news-feed, being boldly displayed surrounded by partying onlookers.

Adding to the pile of unsettled users, one man was kindly reminded that his friends house had caught ablaze thanks to increased interaction on this post.

In what must be a public relations nightmare for the government in Pyongyang, a growing number of North Koreans are not only aware of Sony Pictures' "The Interview" - but want to view the movie. The North Korean State Security Department and The Ministry of People's Security collaborated in a meeting to try to limit how the movie is able to enter the country.

There are reports of North Korean citizens interested in paying upwards of $50 for a copy of "The Interview," a significantly higher price than other movies available on the black market. North Korean officials have increased border security, and have instructed handlers of black market materials to avoid US material.

"Think of the movie as Chernobyl for the digital age," wrote Rich Klein, from the McLarty Associates advisory firm, in a Washington Post statement. "Just as the nuclear catastrophe in the Soviet Union and the dangerously clumsy efforts to hide it exposed the Kremlin's leadership as inept and morally bankrupt, overseeing a superpower rusting from the inside, so does 'The Interview' risk eroding the myths, fabrications and bluster that keep the Kim dynasty in power."

Apparently, the North Korean government isn't happy with the Obama Administration and Sony's decision to release "The Interview." The North Korean National Defense Commission (NDC) released a statement that accuses the US of crippling its Internet - which has happened twice in less than one week - while also lobbing a racial slur towards Obama.

"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," said someone from the North Korean Policy Department, in a statement published by the Korean Central News Agency.

Once Sony Pictures reversed its decision to release "The Interview," it seemed likely the North Korean government would issue public statements. Furthermore, this isn't the first time North Korea has issued racially-driven statements aimed towards Obama, though this appears to be nothing more than political posturing.

US Internet, a company that offers fiber-optic service to 30,000 households in Minneapolis, has announced that it will offer 10-gigabit per second internet speed to its customers. This equates to 10,000 Mbps, or an amazing download around 1.25 GB/s. Yes, 1.25 Gigabytes per second.

The cost isn't cheap though, a blazing fast connection will weigh in at $399.00 per month. US Internet describes the service as the fastest internet service the world has seen, and if they manage to deliver the service they will take the crown. US Internet has a relatively small user base, so we shouldn't expect this to expand much further than the Minneapolis area. It is good to see this type of service being deployed, it is very likely the larger ISP's are taking note of US Internet's advances.

"The fastest Internet in the world is going to be here in Minneapolis starting this afternoon," said Joe Caldwell, co-CEO of US Internet. "We're talking about a game-changing speed."

The North Korean internet failures have generated a massive amount of international press coverage. One would expect this to be the work of a sophisticated group of hackers, possibly even with the funding of the United States, or other governments wishing to stem the tide of North Korean hackers. Turns out, a 12 year old kid can likely do it. North Korea only has 1,024 IP addresses for the entire country, compared to the 1.5 Billion IP addresses in the United States.

There are potentially thousands of computers behind each IP address, but the odds of that are very unlikely. Sanctions and embargoes have severely limited access to computers. Researchers monitoring the North Korean internet have detected a few PlayStations and Xboxes on the network, and one solitary MacBook has been detected....in the entire country. The North Korean agency responsible for hacking is likely contained behind only a few IP addresses, so isolating and monitoring them shouldn't be too taxing for a heavyweight like the NSA. North Korean citizens have very limited access to the internet, which is reserved for government officials, foreign ambassadors, and relief agencies.

North Korean internet connections are routed through China and have the bandwidth equivalent of roughly 1,000 U.S. households with high-speed internet. There is access to a heavily censored and government controlled public internet called the Kwangmyong, but considering the economic malaise there can't be many accessing it, and censoring can't be a very big task. North Korea has one of the smallest internet presences in the world, and there are only roughly 5,500 websites with virtually no outside access for the general public. The recent blackouts could have even been the work of the North Korean government to block retaliatory attacks, but like just about anything that happens in the shadowy regime, we will never know.

Madonna was forced to release six songs from her new album because 13 pre-released recordings - her entire album - were posted online. Madonna and her manager, Guy Oseary, have taken to Twitter in an effort to identify how the music, along with other data, managed to find their way to the Internet.

"We don't put things up on servers anymore," Madonna recently said in an interview with Billboard. "Everything we work on, if we work on computers, we're not on Wi-Fi, we're not on the Internet, we don't work in a way where anybody can access the information."

Despite increased security protocols Madonna tried to put in place, that doesn't mean her music was safe - it would appear it was an outside attack, as unpublished photos of Madonna were also made available at the same time "Rebel Heart," one of the songs from her album, were leaked online.

Sony Pictures originally pulled "The Interview" from theaters, bowing to terrorist threats issued by the Guardians of Peace, but is looking for different online methods to distribute the controversial movie. It's possible Sony could release the movie on the Crackle online streaming video service, as a way for interested fans to watch the movie.

"Sony has been fighting to get this picture distributed," said David Boies, Sony attorney. "How it's going to be distributed, I don't think anybody knows quite yet. But it's going to be distributed."

The entire Sony Pictures drama has taken many peculiar turns, and CEO Michael Lynton admitted the company has struggled to find streaming or video-on-demand distribution partners. However, BitTorrent is willing to help Sony Pictures share The Interview, though sharing it on Crackle could also be extremely effective - as social media will certainly help drive viewers to the movie.

No. 1 social networking site Facebook must do something to appeal more towards teenagers, as the site again dropped in popularity among users 13 to 17 years old, according to a survey conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates. Facebook usage among teenagers dropped from 95 percent in 2012 down to 94 percent in 2013, and further declined in 2014 to 88 percent.

Although 88 percent is still quite impressive, there is growing concern that Facebook no longer is the "in" thing for teenage users. Ironically, Facebook-owned Instagram is cannibalizing its market share, as other social networking websites continue to pressure Facebook. However, Facebook still seems to be in an ideal position to remain the most popular choice among teenagers, even though some have argued that the website has lost its touch.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg noted that the "vast majority of US teens are on Facebook, and the majority of US teens use Facebook almost every day." - and Forrester Research numbers found Facebook is still the top social networking website among those aged between 12 and 17.

Facebook has quietly decided to stop showing Microsoft Bing search engine results on its social networking site, as the company continues to develop its own search engine. Facebook plans to roll out a new search tool on Monday so users are able to find past comments, posts and other data published by their friends.

It will be curious to see how Facebook develops its own search tool, as Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have continually revamped their own search offerings. Furthermore, Facebook has more than 1 billion users and a whopping 1 trillion posts - and despite initial difficulties - will be a crucial endeavor for the No. 1 social networking website.

"We're not currently showing Web search results in Facebook Search because we're focused on helping people find what's been shared with them on Facebook," a Facebook spokesperson told Reuters. "We continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft of lots of different areas."

During a Townhall Q&A session today at Facebook HQ, Zuckerberg teased the idea of a dislike button making its way into the heavyweight social media platform. This Q&A was a bid to connect with the Facebook community and media, with Zuckerberg updating his Facebook page to state "For today's Q&A, people flew in and submitted videos from around the world to ask questions ranging from our plans for improving search and why we update our privacy policy to how Facebook can help create stronger communities."

In this talk, one of the most interesting topics covered was that of the much-discussed 'dislike button' which many users want to see added to Facebook's services. In a short video linked on his Facebook page, 'Zuck' stated that "A lot of times, people share things that are sad, or tough cultural or social things", further opening the need for a dislike button to be implemented.

Those against his feature claim that the dislike button can be used by some for online forms of bullying and harassment - allowing them and their friends to band together against a victim and dislike all of their photos and updates. However, maybe they can make this feature turn on and off when needed.

Peter Sunde, citing the network's loss of vision over the years, apparently doesn't mind if The Pirate Bay never sees the light of day again. Commenting that it's now "ugly" and how the new owners haven't taken precautions to improve the experience for the community.

This news comes as we've reported multiple stories in recent months of the controversial site being the centerpiece of multiple arrests, closures and server shuffles.

Further commenting on his claims, Sunde stated "the site was ugly, full of bugs, old code and old design. It never changed except for one thing - the ads. More and more ads was filling the site, and somehow when it felt unimaginable to make these ads more distasteful they somehow ended up even worse." He also mentioned that the original spirit and direction of the site had completely disappeared from his time serving the torrent community - commenting that he would rather the website die a noble death rather than continue to live in on it's current (or former) state.

Artificial intelligence is reportedly being designed by Facebook engineers to ask users if they would 'really like to post this photo' when out drinking with their friends. This "deep learning" system will be implemented to analyze photos and other Facebook actions, identifying some later-embarrassing posts and urging you not to publish them for your own good.

Facebook's Chief of Artificial Intelligence Research Lab, Yann LeCun, explained this technology as somewhat of a second (sober) conscience, stating that you should "imagine that you had an intelligent digital assistant which would mediate your interaction with your friends and also with content on Facebook". He went on to explain that the warning message could read something similar to "uh, this is being posted publicly. Are you sure you want your boss and your mother to see this?".

Deep learning is said to be a focus of large-name companies in this day and age, boasting big names like Facebook and Google who are heavily researching into this realm of artificial intelligence. Google's purchase of AI start-up Deepmind was their first large foray into the field, of which spawned a computer science research partnership with the well-known Oxford University.

Social networking site Instagram has reached an impressive milestone, surpassing 300 million monthly active users. Those users post 70 million photos per day and help share 2.5 billion daily "likes" while interacting with the website. Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, and has been able to help the site grow even further - especially helping the service steadily grow outside the United States.

"We're seeing a lot of people coming in the fashion world, a lot of people coming in, in the youthful teens world, and a lot of people internationally as well," said Kevin Systrom, Instagram CEO, in a statement to CNBC.

Facebook has done a good job of bringing advertisers onboard, and Instagram should be able to utilize the experience to further monetize. Instagram first rolled out advertising about six months ago, and while Facebook keeps Instagram's revenue figures private, it would appear the sky is the limit.

Peter Sunde was one of the original The Pirate Bay founders, and his stint as the official spokesman for the popular torrent site earned him prison time. In comments on his blog Peter outlined his disdain with the current state of The Pirate Bay and expressed his feelings on the matter. "The Pirate Bay has been raided, again. That happened over 8 years ago last time. That time, a lot of people went out to protest and rally in the streets. Today few seem to care. And I'm one of them."

Much of Peter's angst stems from the fact that The Pirate Bay has devolved into a soulless entity hell-bent on running garish ads to receive as much money as possible, at least in his eyes. "The site was ugly, full of bugs, old code and old designs. It never changed except for one thing - the ads. More and more ads were filling the site, and somehow when it felt unimaginable to make these ads more distasteful, they somehow ended up even worse," Peter writes. The suggestive ads began when The Pirate Bay was sold to Reservella, a shadowy company based out of Seychelles. Reservella made several moves to monetize the site, but made very few improvements in actual function and design.

The Pirate Bay owns several other domains that can be used to bring the site back online, but so far there hasn't been a trace of the trusty old pirate ship. There are several scam sites popping up that are attempting to charge subscription fees, so readers are warned to steer clear of those particular bands of pirates. The Pirate Bay pioneered torrenting, and its widespread use has led to an entire constellation of other trackers on the web. This proliferation of alternatives may blunt the blow of The Pirate Bays untimely demise, but many expect the ship to pull back into port soon.

We've seen a trend of global technology companies come and go with their local branch Facebook pages, often opening them up in each region and then shutting them down later when they realize how much work and money is required to keep them properly functional.

We've just received information that Corsair are the latest company to do this, shutting down their Australia and New Zealand Facebook page - moving everything to the global page and all under one banner.

There are obviously a few positives to keeping it all under one roof, these being things such as: streamline of content delivery, much less work for staff, only one page to distribute advertisements through and the feeling of a larger community (as they're all-in-one place). But, if you've got the local staff there on the ground, I feel that the benefits quite outweigh this.

Some users have noticed that The Pirate Bay has been down for a much longer time than the normal sporadic downtime bursts. At 12 hours, and counting, many have suspected the worst. Google recently moved against apps made for Android devices that accessed the popular site, and many had speculated that Google may have had a hand in The Pirate Bay's disrupted service. It turns out Swedish police are the culprit. The Pirate Bay, deemed "The galaxy's most resilient BitTorrent site", had its apocalyptic safe haven in Sweden raided by the police.

The raid was conducted by Fredrick Ingblad, a specialized inspector in intellectual property crimes. A specialized forensics team and local police seized servers and computers, effectively bringing the popular torrent site to its knees. The Pirate Bay has been under fire for years and the original founders ended up in jail for their efforts. The scrappy site was spread out amongst the wind and managed to continue to thrive for several years, though eventually the website was changed from thepiratebay.org to thepiratebay.se.

The server room was found in a rock shelter in Nacka, Sweden. This is likely the secure Swedish Datacenter AB. This datacenter is housed inside a five-story building inside a gigantic rock cavern. The converted nuclear shelter has concrete walls and the requisite blast doors to hold back the worst of catastrophes, but it couldn't stop the Swedish police. It's hard to believe that one of the largest websites in the world, currently ranked 88 worldwide and 55 in the US, can be kept off-line for long. An employee was arrested during the raid, and there are apparently interrogations underway. We will keep an eye on the status of the site, and shout a joyful "Hallelujah!" if they manage to bring it back online.

We've spoken about it before and I'm sure we'll report on it again - Australia is extremely behind the 'eight ball' when it comes to provision of high-speed internet to its residents. It seems the government is too busy dodging wild crocodiles and drop bears to work on a viable internet solution together.

Just recently, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has finalized a new line technology, said to be able to provide broadband service speeds of up to one gigabit per second functional over Australia's old copper phone line network. One gigabit per second sounds really good, so what are we complaining about?

There's a few possible issues. The ITU explains that this new G.fast standard has begun shipping to vendors and will be available in the market by December 2015 - meaning we're going to have to put up with our 3 Mbs download and 0.85 Mpbs upload that most Aussie gamers have been living with for the past few years. This technology, said to "combine the best aspects of fibre and DSL" will only provide fibre-like speeds up to 400m away from a distribution point. Setup in a fibre-to-the-distribution-point type structure, this new advancement will see distribution points being laid around various cities, towns and streets. However, they haven't made it clear where or exactly how many of these distribution points will exist.