Cable’s bandwidth problem

Great article on why upload speed matters. While cable companies continue to advertise ever faster download speeds, upload speeds are not keeping pace, are seldom advertised and may be downright difficult to find listed in the fine print. It’s the two-way nature of the internet that is revolutionary, that we can be both content providers as well as content consumers, that keeps the internet from being just another TV/CD player/DVD player.

See the article at App Rising.

IPv6 switches on

The internet has been running out of addresses for some time now. Fortunately, IPv6 gives us 10 billion billion billion times as many as we had before. Yup, that’s about 5 X 10 to the 28th power addresses for each of the 6.5 billion people alive today. In practice they won’t all be used, the vast numbers allows more meaningful addresses, specialty address types (like multicast), and other refinements which allow more systematic and efficient routing of network traffic.

See the article at Computer Weekly.

bail out

“We’re going to need the rest of the world to bail us out.”

So says Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor.

See the article on Salon.

New battery type

flexible_batNow this is cool.
This is the kind of real innovation that will eventually help with renewable energy, global warming, waste disposal issues, etc., instead of the fake, political “solutions” being touted these days.
Scientists have succeeded in making a paper-thin, flexible and biodegradable battery. Wow! Not only is it environmentally friendly, but it offers huge improvements in portable electronic devices, from reduced weight to redesign unencumbered by today’s battery compartment limitations.
Here’s the article at Ars Technica.

e-mails are private

The 6th Circuit holds that e-mail users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in e-mails;
“emails held by an Internet Service Provider [are] roughly analogous to sealed letters”;
government must provide prior notice and opportunity to be heard.

Download the ruling here.

See the article at Broadband Reports.com.

the Decline of American Infrastructure

The original article I linked to (no longer available) claimed that the US infrastructure was at greater risk from our own government’s lack of foresight and neglect than from terrorists. And also mentioned the American Society of Civil Engineers Estimate that it would take $1.6 trillion just to bring America’s infrastructure up to a grade of B! That was over 14 years ago and still hasn’t been addressed. You may remember Trump pledged a $1 trillion national infrastructure program, but never delivered.

Here’s a new article, from the same source, of a similar nature: “Why new Infrastructure is a national imperative”.

How to foil wiretaps

Wired article about “How to foil wiretaps.”

Not quite sure how I feel about this. Is it a good idea to publish this?

On the other hand, can this information be trusted? If you are a conspiracy theorist, you might argue that this information was published at the government’s request. Maybe it’s really a way to tag calls that makes it easier for the government to know which ones they want to listen to? Or is our government really organized well enough to pull that off?

Hard to know – one way or another.

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