Internet & Websites - Page 38

GoDaddy is having more trouble with their DNS. After a major outage took down a large portion of the internet, they are again facing issues. This time, DNS records of websites hosted on GoDaddy are being modified. The modification adds subdomains that point to infected websites under the control of malicious users.

Once a computer is redirected to the malicious IP, the server attempts to exploit the system using the Cool Exploit kit. Because of the record being modified at the DNS level, the URL and site look to be legitimate. If a user becomes infected, the computer is locked down via ransomware and the user is made to pay to unlock it.

It's the typical ransomware setup--it uses local currency and information to make it look as if local law enforcement are the ones who locked it down. Affected webmasters should check their DNS records to make sure that they don't have these rogue subdomains and users who have been affected should contact a virus removal expert.

Facebook has a lot of data about you. They know what you like, you who know, and what you post and they use all of that information to allow advertisers to target you while you're surfing Facebook. But what if that information could be used to target you when you're running around the rest of the web?

Well, it looks as though we'll soon find out. Facebook is reportedly looking to start up an external advertising agency. This means that Facebook would allow advertisers to use Facebook information about you to target ads at you as you surf around the net. The whole reason Facebook would want to do this is because it would bring it lots of revenue.

One estimate says that they could double their current revenue by doing this. Increasing revenue is an important thing for Facebook as they are now a publicly traded company. The model would be similar to Google's AdSense, something that has proven popular and effective. Facebook, if they do this right, could possibly compete with Google's advertising, something that has previously been unobtainable by anyone.

Google is an unstoppable force. The company's search market share has practically continued to increase month-over-month and it saw its highest ever market share this past October. Coming in at 66.9 percent, it beat out its previous record of 66.8 percent, which it achieved in both June and July of this year.

Looking year-over-year, Google's search dominance has increased 1.5 percent. Bing, too, is increasing in market share, though it has a long road in front of it if they hope to reach anywhere near what Google has. Sitting at a mere 16 percent this October, they have grown only 1.2 percent year-over-year.

Yahoo managed to get 12.2 percent of search traffic, down from 15.2 percent year-over-year. Ask pulled in a mere 3.2 percent and AOL managed to get 1.8 percent, both absolutely tiny in comparison to Google's results. These numbers come from comScore, who measures desktop searches. This means searches executed by mobile devices aren't included.

Facebook has sent out an e-mail to all 1 billion users informing them of the proposal to modify governance of the site. The proposed changes look to take away the users' right to force a vote by getting more than 7,000 comments on the proposed changes. Instead, Facebook would like to make sure they get high-quality feedback on proposed changes.

To prevent Facebook from taking away this right, users will need to comment on the proposal and then vote, if the proposal comments number in excess of 7,000 after the 7 day period is up. In all likelihood, this change will probably go up for a vote and then not get enough votes to go anywhere.

Facebook requires a 30 percent vote, either yes or no, to make it binding. So even if vocal users get the 7,000 comments, the likeliness of 300 million users voting to block the changes is a pretty slim chance. Instead of voting, Facebook is offering up a way to ask the Chief Privacy Officer questions and they would also have the CPO hold livestreamed webcasts, during which questions would be asked and answered.

I've been using HTTPS to access Facebook ever since the social network offered it, but with over one billion users - having it by default is a much better way of keeping your users' data more secure.

Facebook has used HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) to protect users when they submit their username and password to login - which prevents someone from diving in and accessing your username or password when typing it. But, in January of 2011, the social network starting offering users to opt in for all of their Facebook browsing to fall under the more secure HTTPS umbrella, at the time warning "Encrypted pages take longer to load, so you may notice that Facebook is slower using HTTPS."

Facebook also said that "We hope to offer HTTPS as a default whenever you are using Facebook sometime in the future." We're finally here, and they're about to press the GO button on this more secure way of browsing. A few days ago, a Facebook Developer Blog post hinted that "this week, we're starting to roll out HTTPS for all North America users and will be soon rolling out to the rest of the world".

Earlier today we posted news that the Unity 4.0 engine had been released, but now there's a short CG animated film from Passion Pictures called "The Butterfly Effect", based on the engine.

The CG short is incredible, with the engine pushing out some seriously slick animation. The story is of a guy who drags himself out of bed to go to the corner store in San Francisco to buy some milk and from there, it gets incredibly destructive. A great video.

The engine looks incredibly powerful, and I would love to see a AAA game based on the title. Imagine a next-gen game powered by this engine, PC-exclusive. It would be incredible. What did you think of The Butterfly Effect? Leave a comment!

Google Fiber is an idea Google has been kicking around for the past couple of years as it aims to become an Internet Service Provider that will offer customers in the U.S. the speeds they deserve at a reasonable price. Earlier this year, they announced Kansas City would be one of the first to receive Google Fiber promising 1 gigabit download and upload speeds for only $70. Today, Google has announced its Google Fiber installation has officially kicked off in Kansas City.

If you live in Kansas City, specifically in Hanover Heights, and see a new box on the side of your home and a sticky note on your door indicating your home is ready for Google Fiber, Google will be contacting you by phone or email within the next couple of days to schedule an appointment with you.

Google Fiber customers will receive a Network Box, which is a gigabit router with Wi-Fi built into it. If you're a Google TV subscriber, you'll also be given a DVR called the Storage Box as well as a Google Fiber TV box for each TV you want connected. Best of all, the remote control Google will give you isn't one of those "universal remotes" that you'll just throw in a drawer somewhere. Instead, it's a Nexus 7 tablet, which I'm sure will cost a ton in rental fees, especially if you accidentally drop it.

In the land of the free, the United States, the department of Homeland Security has just approved a one-year contract which will see them investigate the effectiveness of using social networks to look for instances of bioterrorism, pandemics and other health and security risks.

The department of Homeland Security are paying Accenture Federal Services $3 million the scan the social networks for keywords in real-time, where they'll monitor if growing threats or health trends can be identified. An example would be if an individual talks of their nasty cough or cold on a Facebook status update, the software would be looking to see if key medical terminology is repeated in connected groups, or from other individuals from the same locale.

Managing director for Accenture's public safety department, John Matchette, has said that "this is big data analytics", and has admitted that the technique hasn't been proven yet, adding:

If you ever attend a convention like a Comic-Con, one thing that will definitely get you the ladies is cosplaying as different characters. After watching Stealth Cosplay's video of his War Machine costume, I can tell you if he didn't already have a girlfriend, women at Comic-Con would be throwing phone numbers at him as if he was the guest of honor at a ticket-tape parade.

The suit took approximately one month to complete from start to finish that features the ability to open & close its face mask, blinking lights on the inside of his arms to simulate War Machine's machine guns and his shoulder-mounted mini-gun that spins when in use.

Sure, Iron Man gets all of the love at Comic-Con, but you gotta respect a guy who takes the time to create a War Machine costume as a wingman is never a glamorous job, but one everyone appreciates. It also helps his costume is really, really cool.

Laina's "Overly Attached Girlfriend" character made its debut this summer, and it seems like she's already started to sell out the character to companies who are willing to pay her to look all crazy while adding her own lyrics to karaoke tunes. One of the first "commercials" I've seen for the character just hit YouTube today promoting Samsung's SSD 840.

The video starring Laina's "Overly Attached Girlfriend" character has her speaking on behalf of your computer. It's been a long time since you've layer your Doritos-covered mitts on your computer and it wants you back. Bad. And it's willing to do anything to get you back, like threatening to release all of those quarantined viruses onto your system or deleting all of your pirated music downloads.

After threatening you for over a minute, the Laina, speaking on behalf of your computer, then suggests you buy it the Samsung SSD 840 in order to keep it "perkier, more able" and to show your computer you love it.

Put your hand up if you're one of these people - throws hand in the air - yes, I admit it, I have the least patience when it comes to buffering a video. Well, a professor has now analyzed data from 6.7 million unique visitors, and has bashed his fingers on that calculator.

According to a paper published by professor Ramesh K. Sitarman of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, viewers begin to leave a video after a two second delay, with 6% leaving per second thereafter. The professor took into consideration videos under 30 minutes as "short", where I would consider a short video 1 minute, so your results may vary applies here.

But, his data does add up, with twice as many viewers leaving a "short" video, compared to long ones after a ten second startup delay. The report also finds, most obviously, that users' impatience with Internet speeds looks like an unwinnable battle. Viewers with higher-speed Internet connections had a much weaker tolerance for delays when compared to those with slower, or mobile data connections.

Twitter may have withstood the election wave of tweets successfully, but their security is apparently still pretty lax. Today, Twitter sent out an e-mail to a large number of users urging them to change their respective passwords. The root cause for this is that several (number undetermined) accounts had been compromised through a third-party site.

The hacked accounts were then used to send out spam, the one problem every website with user contributed content faces. Twitter acknowledged that the accounts had been compromised, changed the passwords on them so as to make them inaccessible, and sent out the following e-mail, which explains some background and provides instructions for getting your account back:

Twitter had an incredible day yesterday. While most of the country was out and about voting and watching the results come in, they were also tweeting about it--heavily. Twitter has come out today with a bunch of different stats for Election Day 2012, and some of them are extremely impressive.

Most impressive of the stats is that Twitter recorded a maximum of 327,452 tweets per minute (TPM). The number of tweets is incredible, and Twitter handled it all without a hitch. "These numbers reflect the largest election-related Twitter conversation during our 6 years of existence," VP of Infrastructure Mazen Rawashdeh wrote, "though they don't capture the total volume of all Tweets yesterday."

Even more impressive is that Twitter handled these loads for long periods. Previously, Twitter has had to deal with a high number of tweets per second, but only for a few seconds. An example of this is midnight on New Year's Eve or at the end of a sporting event, such as the Superbowl. For the election, Twitter averaged just under 10,000 tweets per second from 8:11 to 9:11 p.m. PT.

You read the title right, Facebook would like to offer users free internet access at some public places, but you'll have to check-in at the business in order to get access. Facebook has given some special routers to a few businesses that will provide internet once a user checks in to that location. The user is then forwarded to the business's Facebook page.

"When you access Facebook Wi-Fi by checking in, you are directed to your local business's Facebook Page. Some stores may also offer deals or specials when you check in," a Facebook spokesperson said.

Of course, not all users, including myself, will want to do this. Some like their privacy and some just avoid checking-in like the plague. Facebook has offered an alternative, if this is the case for you. Users can ask the business for a password, which will then allow them access to the internet.

NVIDIA have re-opened the GeForce Community Forums, after they "suspended operations" of the forums back in July due to a suspected breach of their systems.

NVIDIA have said that they've built a new and improved forum experience, which sports a new appearance. They've redesigned and re-hosted them in order to line up better with the overall GeForce.com experience, which completes a vision set more than three years ago when nZone and the SLI Zone forums merged.

There was no talk of the previous breach of their systems, which is quite strange considering that's what took them down in the first place. Hopefully these forums stand up better than the last ones did.

For several years now, Craigslist has been the go-to site for anyone looking for local classifieds with many people content with its overall use. A number of Craigslist-like websites have popped up recently such as Backpages, but none have been able to make any sort of dent in Craigslist's dominance in the classifieds world. Although, if today's report turns out to be true, Facebook could finally give Craigslist a run for its money.

According to a report by The Daily, Facebook is currently working on a tool that would allow for users of the social network to publish listings that would announce things like apartment rentals, furniture for sale and even job listings. The section, which is being called Marketplace for now, will also give the user the ability to share their listing that would show up in their friends' news feeds.

A good portion of the service will be completely free, but Facebook will be accepting payments to further promote your listing to your friends, similar to its "promoted posts" feature. Promoted listings will appear as ads in your friends' Facebook feeds instead of being shoved into regular Facebook updates. Promoted listings will cost less than $5 to promote.

I'm an avid user of the Gmail platform. I love it for many features that other services don't offer, such as the ability to download e-mail from other POP3 accounts. Google is constantly trying to make the service better, and they are now pushing out an update for how users compose and respond to e-mail.

Instead of going to an entire new window, Gmail will begin to pop-up a compose window in which you can type your e-mail as you normally would. It looks like an oversized chat window, if you've ever used the built-in Gmail chat feature. Google says that the new window is faster and better for multitasking as you can now easily go to other e-mails without closing the draft you're working on.

Google also says the new window is easier to use:

Google is taking another step towards world domination. They have just announced plans to take the Trekker into the Grand Canyon. For those not in the know, the Trekker is a backpack-sized version of the car-mounted Street View camera that is worn, big surprise, like a backpack. This will be the Trekker's first official outing.

The Trekker is a pretty cool piece of technology. They've packed loads of technology into a small, wearable version. The Grand Canyon trip will map the National Park's hiking trails and allow lazy people to take those hikes without having to lift a leg. All they will have to do is click through the tough spots.

It's a perfect place to debut the Trekker. "The canyon landscape is one of the most breathtaking places in the world, is only accessible on foot, and perfectly demonstrates why the Street View Trekker backpack was developed to maneuver narrow trails and rocky terrain," a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch.

If you're not an Apple fanboy or at least have a somewhat interest in Apple products, then today probably was not the day to be following the Internet as all everyone has been talking about all day have been sprinkled in Apple praise or disdain.

Regardless on what side of the fence you're on, it's always entertaining to see what Apple has up their sleeves and that's exactly what we saw today as a slew of new Apple products like the new Mac Mini, 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display and, of course, the 4th generation iPad and iPad Mini.

Sure, you could follow along with our news pieces to find out exactly what was announced, its specs and how much it will cost you. But for those of you who would prefer to watch Apple announce their new products in their typical fashion, then you'll be happy to hear they have made their video available for your viewing pleasure online.

Kickstarter is the new trend in crowdsourcing funding for all sorts of projects. Often times, the people behind the Kickstarter campaign will offer rewards in exchange for pledges. But what happens when the creator of a Kickstarter campaign doesn't come through with what was promised as the end result?

Well, that's something that we're all about to find out. Haunts: The Manse Macabre was a game that got funding through Kickstarter. They reached the original funding goal and surpassed it by $3,500. Now, however, the project creator has announced that the game has no developers or programmers to finish it out due to lack of funding.

It seems as though they ended up finding a lot of bugs. "The game as it stands has all the systems in place, but there are a lot of bugs," Rick Dakan, Mob Rules founder, writes in a Kickstarter update. "I am still determined to get the game out, but I no longer have any way of knowing when and how that will happen."