If recent crackdowns against file-sharing were meant as a warning shot to other site owners, it has indeed been heard loud and clear. First, sites like FileSonic and FileServe voluntarily scaled back their functionality, while others vocally defended their own practices in the wake of the Megaupload shutdown.
Today, popular BitTorrent index BTjunkie shut itself down to preempt legal action of the type experienced by the Pirate Bay, Megaupload and others. The seven-year-old site may not have been squashed directly by authorities, but it is nonetheless good news for the RIAA, MPPA and other opponents of online piracy.
Google breaks ground today on the super-fast fiber optic network it plans to build for the lucky residents of Kansas City, Kan. They'll get a 1 gigabit-per-second Internet connection, which will offer downloads 100 times faster than what most Americans get. Uploads will be a thousand times faster than average.
Kansas City won this privilege over 1,100 other cities in March 2011. Since then, Google and the city have been surveying, planning, and eating "way too much barbecue," says Google's manager, Kevin Lo. Today, they start laying cable. A few months behind the Kansas side, neighbors on the other side of the river in Kansas City, Mo. will get the hook-up as well.
iTunes Match, the cloud music-matching service that Apple launched last year, is a great way to sync one's music library across numerous devices. If your collection happens to contain songs with profane lyrics, however, you may be in for a surprise.
Apparently, iTunes Match has been inadvertently replacing certain tracks with the "clean" version of the same song, Cult of Mac reported.
"I'm not sure if we're the only two on right now or not," says a voice with an American accent. The voice belongs to a man who identifies himself as Bruce, likely an FBI agent, who had just joined a conference call with other law enforcement officials based in the UK.
The irony of hearing Bruce utter those words at the beginning of the call is that, no, they were not the only people listening in. Somehow, members of Anonymous managed to tap into the call, record it and then post it online for all to hear. The subject of the conversation? Tracking and arresting online activists and hackers, such as those who secretly associate with Anonymous.
When the iPad first launched in early 2010, the device was criticized by some for being geared toward content consumption, rather than creation. To be sure, the iPad turns out to be a very effective way to read and watch videos, but the tablet form factor is well on its way to maturing into a full-fledged content creation tool.
Its not the first video-editing app for the iPad, but Avid Studio, which was released earlier today, stands out as one of the more sophisticated offerings out there. Its interface will be familiar to anybody who uses Avid's desktop video-editing suite, or even products like iMovie or Final Cut Pro X.
Last December, an anti-child pornography bill co-authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R - Texas) and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D - Fla.) passed the markup phase and was referred to the House floor. Though the bill's chief provision is to enable law enforcement authorities to arrest and prosecute entities that knowingly provide financial transaction services to child pornographers, the bill would also require Internet service providers to maintain records of the IP addresses they lease to their customers, for no less than 12 months (18 as originally drafted).
In the wake of the historic failure in the House of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was co-authored by Rep. Smith and sponsored by Rep. Wasserman-Schultz, a newly empowered, and enlarged, wave of protesters aims to stop any bill that would leverage popular sentiment to force ISPs to retain customer data for use by government.
When StumbleUpon did its big rebranding, reorganizing and redesign late last year, we figured that the 20-million-plus discovering engine was done making big changes. At least, for a little while. Boy were we wrong.
The newest SU update removes all direct links. Previously, once you were inside StumbleUpon, you could "X" out the page and go straight to the original site. Now if you're logged in, you have to say in the iframed version of the site. There is one way to get out, but it's super clunky.
The first untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 dropped two weeks ago, much to the excitement of the hundreds of thousands of people who rushed to download it.
Despite its recent growth in popularity, jailbreaking is still not a mainstream activity among iPhone and iPad owners generally. It's more for the tinkering type and those who want to customize their device's functionality and UI design. Whether it's done to download unauthorized (yet often quite useful) apps from Cydia or customize the look and feel of the OS, there are a lot of reasons why people jailbreak their devices. For iPhone 4S owners, that list is made all the more compelling by one thing: hacking Siri.
It's been awhile since we've heard much from WikiLeaks. New leaked data continues to trickle out here and there and Julian Assange is even talking to the press, but major bombshells like the Iraq War Logs or Cablegate haven't been dropped since late 2010.
Part of the relative silence has to do with the fact that Assange is currently under house arrest in the U.K. and WikiLeaks still faces a financial blockade and an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. The future of the organization is anything but clear, but when it comes to the site's ability to continue operating, they're not taking any chances.
Not even 24 hours after Apple reported its jaw-dropping Q1 financial results, the company found itself the target of some relentless investigative journalism by the New York Times. In particular, as part of an ongoing series about Apple, the Times published a detailed investigation of some of the tech giant's biggest overseas suppliers, ugly labor abuses and all.
From deadly plant explosions and poisonous screen-cleaning chemicals to unsafe working conditions and long hours, the report was anything but forgiving. In response, there is a small but growing chorus of consumers asking Apple to do more about these issues. A petition demanding a more ethically-built iPhone 5 and other products is said to have amassed 40,000 signatories in its first 24 hours.
