A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: internet

Jan 23 2013
Mark Twain, probably

‘Curious’ Cuban net cable has activated, researchers say

‘Curious’ Cuban net cable has activated, researchers say

BBC News:

A high-speed fibre-optic cable connecting Cuba to the global internet appears to have finally been activated, monitoring experts have said.

…

A joint project between the state-owned telecommunications companies of both Venezuela and Cuba, the Alternative Bolivariana para los Pueblos de nuestra America cable – known more succinctly as Alba-1 – had been hit by numerous delays before being completed in 2011.

But users were left in the dark as to why they were unable to get themselves hooked up to the connection, and were forced to make do with the high-latency connections provided by satellite.

But in the past week, much lower latencies – meaning faster connections – have been observed in the country, a strong indicator that the cable was now in use.

I love that we’re spying on Cuba by measuring request latencies.

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Jan 13 2013
Mark Twain, probably

Anonymous petitions U.S. to see DDoS attacks as legal protest

Anonymous petitions U.S. to see DDoS attacks as legal protest

Dara Kerr, CNET:

It’s hard to imagine a group that adheres to anarchic ideology would want its actions legalized under U.S. law. But that is exactly what Anonymous is doing.

The loose-knit group of hackers submitted a petition to President Obama this week asking that distributed denial-of-service attacks be recognized as a legal form of protest.

The petition, which is posted on the White House’s “We the People” Web site, claims that DDoS attacks are not illegal hacking but rather a way for people to carry out protests online.

If I had been drinking something when I read this, I probably would’ve started choking.

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Jan 07 2013
Mark Twain, probably

Girls Spike Parents’ Milkshakes To Avoid Internet Curfew

Girls Spike Parents’ Milkshakes To Avoid Internet Curfew

Ed Fletcher, Sacramento Bee:

Two Placer County teenage girls were arrested for allegedly using drugged milkshakes to knock out the parents of one of the girls so they could log on to the Internet, Rocklin police said.

Internet access at the Rocklin home was routinely shut off at 10 p.m., said Lt. Lon Milka, a department spokesman. […]

“The girls wanted to use the Internet, and they’d go to whatever means they had to,” Milka said.

Oh for crying out loud.

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Dec 15 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Kansas City Homes for Hackers renting room with Google Fiber access

Kansas City Homes for Hackers renting room with Google Fiber access

Klint Finley on Wired:

Google Fiber — the search giant’s brand-new, ultra-high-speed internet service — is only available in Kansas City, and even there, it only runs to homes, so there’s no trying the thing out during a Kansas City hotel stay. But if you really want a taste of those 800 Mbps speeds — that’s about 100 times faster than your average internet connection — there’s another option. You can rent a room at the hacker house.

The Homes for Hackers house is a four-bedroom Kansas City abode where a group of entrepreneurs have bedded down to incubate their tech startups on an honest-to-goodness Google Fiber connection. But only three of those bedrooms are taken. The fourth one is available for rent at a price of $49 via the online vacation rental site Airbnb.

Pretty silly, but in a way I’m kind of impressed by the idea.

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Nov 19 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Petition: Build a statue of Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan John-117 on the lawn of the White House

Petition: Build a statue of Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan John-117 on the lawn of the White House

I get political on this here tumblelog from time to time, but I try to keep it to commentary and not be overt, day in and day out, about it.

I am, however, going to have to break that rule today by putting out a call to action to sign this petition to build a statue of Master Chief on the White House lawn. I can’t think of a man more deserving of the honor than him.

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Nov 02 2012
Mark Twain, probably

RedDyeNumber4’s Cuil Theory, narrated by Roy Kelly.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Oct 20 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Amanda Todd, Michael Brutsch, and Free Speech Online

Amanda Todd, Michael Brutsch, and Free Speech Online

If you haven’t heard anything about the suicide of Amanda Todd yet, you may want to skim the Wikipedia article. It’s not necessary, as the piece I’m linking gives a short overview, but the piece isn’t strictly about her and so leaves out a lot of the details.

So, on to the piece. Michelle Dean wrote this fantastic post for The New Yorker’s Culture Desk blog that ties the awful death of Amanda Todd together with recent developments on reddit and the internet’s attitude toward anonymity and free speech. It’s hard to quote my favorite part of the Todd’s piece, as it depends on several of the themes she develops, but the sentence is so powerful that I’m going to try it anyway:

What you could call the Brutschean world view—which takes anonymity as the only meaningful form of privacy, and a key element of free speech—is nearly an article of faith in these lower levels of the Internet. …

But, as the scholar Mary Anne Franks has observed, women haven’t actually achieved this “bodiless” freedom online. They are embodied in distributed pictures and in sexual comments, whether they like it or not. The power to get away from yourself, like everything else, is unevenly distributed. Women have become, as Franks put it, “unwilling avatars,” unable to control their own images online, and then told to put up with it for the sake of “freedom,” for the good of the community.

Emphasis added by myself. It’s really harrowing when it’s put like that, and yet it’s also totally undeniable.

Read this.

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Sep 02 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Can Cindy Gallop’s Crowdsourced Porn Take Down Mainstream Pornography?

Can Cindy Gallop’s Crowdsourced Porn Take Down Mainstream Pornography?

Amanda Hess, Slate:

In a widely-circulated 2009 TED talk, Gallop told the crowd that she must routinely correct her young partners: “Actually, no, thank you very much, I would much rather you did not come on my face.” …

Gallop’s point isn’t that certain sex acts are inherently bad—just that talking about them makes everyone’s sex life better. To facilitate the conversation, in 2009 she created a real-talk sex-ed website called “Make Love Not Porn” to dispel some of the common “myths” perpetuated by porn’s monolithic presentation of human sexuality. …

Later, Gallop realized she could do more than just annotate the porn’s industry’s product—she could compete with it. This month, she launched a beta version of a crowdsourced online platform wherein amateurs and porn stars alike are invited to tape themselves engaging in “real world sex.”

I’ll just be honest and admit that I’m linking this almost entirely for its use of the phrase “crowdsourced porn.”

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Jun 18 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Angela Watercutter for Wired’s Underwire blog:

The premise of Safety Not Guaranteed, directed by Colin Trevorrow, comes from an internet meme: a wanted ad seeking a partner for time travel that found its way onto You’re the Man Now Dog. In the film, a group of magazine staffers try to track down the author of the classified ad, Kenneth (played by Mark Duplass). To get to him, they send their female colleague Darius ([Aubrey] Plaza), who ends up being charmed by Kenneth’s oddball ways.

‘Ili:
WHY IS THIS REAL
Colin:
Personally, I think this looks dope. Aubrey Plaza absolutely kills it on Parks & Recreation — I’ll go see anything with her in it.
‘Ili:
THAT DOESN’T EXPLAIN WHY THIS IS REAL
Colin:
I blame the Duplass Bros and mumblecore in general.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Jun 14 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Above is a short video uploaded by the Minneapolis Police Department showing an officer reciting instructions/a warning to OccupyMN protestors. Amy Forliti for the AP:

After a dozen Occupy Minnesota protesters were arrested at a downtown demonstration, the group quickly took to the Internet, posting video that activists said showed police treating them roughly and never warning them to leave.

But Minneapolis police knew warnings had been given. And they had their own video to prove it. So they posted the footage on YouTube, an example of how law enforcement agencies nationwide are embracing online video to cast doubt on false claims and offer their own perspective to the public.

I don’t believe I’ve heard of a police department uploading videos like this before, although Forliti goes on to mention that several departments across the country have done it for years. I like this. Transparency is great and all that. Plus, it’s nice that Milwaukee uses it for reasons besides rebutting critics:

Just last month, the department posted video of an officer punching a woman in the face while she was handcuffed in his squad car. Spokeswoman Anne Schwartz said the department wanted to share what had happened, while reiterating that the officer was fired for his conduct.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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