Japan’s Fire Hydrant Sign Co., Ltd. has demonstrated an expansive Wi-Fi network that melds its established infrastructure of street signs with Starlink satellite broadband antennas. The big idea is that this network could provide important, if not essential, fallback connectivity in the event of a natural disaster knocking out fiber, mobile masts, and so on. Japan sits on the intersection of multiple tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions – as well as some extreme weather.

On Thursday, the Fire Hydrant Sign Co. completed a technical demonstration of a Starlink-supported Wi-Fi network in the vicinity of its Kanagawa Branch. Each sign, a common item of street furniture in residential neighborhoods, can become a dual-purpose emergency water supply sign and ‘communication hub.’ In the top image, you can see two example installations with the Starlink antenna atop a pole beside the traditional circular fire hydrant signage.

One of the key strengths of this initiative is that where the Fire Hydrant Sign Co. has a sign, no extra land or structures are required to set up the pole to host a Starlink antenna. Japan has 120,000 fire hydrant signs nationwide, with the trial taking place near Kanagawa province, near Tokyo.

Somewhat surprisingly, fire hydrant signs are largely maintained by private companies in Japan. They make some money via the advertising space on a sign directly below the one indicating the emergency water source location. Adding Starlink to them could provide the aforementioned disaster relief, as well as other monetization opportunities.

The Fire Hydrant Sign Co. behind this trial says that it will consider collaboration with local governments, regional companies, and related organizations to roll out this initiative, now proven to be useful. It isn’t only going to be useful in the event of a disaster; the company foresees demand during power cuts, local large-scale events, and other opportunities where more Wi-Fi connectivity options are desirable.

In some press release ‘small print,’ the firm says that its successful trial doesn’t mean that a Wi-Fi service will eventually be launched. It was a technical demo, and it also states that Starlink wasn’t a partner or collaborator in any official capacity.

If you were one of the people who went online during the mid-90s, you didn’t rely solely on Google to find things across the wild west of the internet. Instead, you may have visited a distinguished gentleman wearing a suit named Jeeves to guide you in the chaotic land that was known as the “information superhighway.” The page, Ask Jeeves, wasn’t just an early search engine — it was also a precursor to the AI chatbots we know today with its goal of answering users’ questions through natural language processing. Unfortunately, its parent company, IAC, has announced that it’s changing its focus and will retire Ask.com, the successor to AskJeeves.com, after 30 years of service.

When you visit Ask.com, you can read the company’s final statement: “As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com. After 25 years of answering the world's questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026,” Ask writes. “To the millions who asked... We are deeply grateful to the brilliant engineers, designers, and teams who built and supported Ask over the decades. And to you—the millions of users who turned to us for answers in a rapidly changing world—thank you for your endless curiosity, your loyalty, and your trust. Jeeves’ spirit endures.” The original AskJeeves.com page still appears to be online, and you can still get some results of a limited scope.

Despite being older than Google by a couple of years, Ask Jeeves wasn’t able to compete against it or Yahoo!, which soon became staples of internet search in the 2000s. Yahoo! itself is still surviving, although it has convincingly been left in the dust by its rival, which has since become an all-encompassing tech giant and a leader in the AI race. Ask Jeeves follows in the footsteps of Alta Vista, another '90s search engine that fell victim to Google’s groundbreaking PageRank algorithm.

Ask Jeeves stood out from the competition because it let users search using natural language queries — i.e., asking it questions like you’re talking to another person instead of using keywords and Boolean operators. This is how many AI-powered search engines run nowadays, and Ask Jeeves achieved that (to some extent) without using a large language model.

But it seems IAC is no longer interested in keeping Ask.com alive and is completely shutting it down. The company didn’t pivot towards AI, data centers, or semiconductors, something done by other companies ... even ones that aren’t even tech-related, like struggling shoemaker Allbirds and Japanese toilet-maker Toto. Nevertheless, this might be a fitting retirement for the search-engine valet — after 30 years of serving up answers online, it’s time Jeeves rested up and rode off into the sunset.

Utah's Online Age Verification Amendments, formally Senate Bill 73, take effect on May 6, making the state the first in the U.S. to explicitly target VPN use as part of age verification legislation.

Signed by Governor Spencer Cox on March 19, the controversial law establishes that a user is considered to be accessing a website from Utah if they are physically located there, regardless of whether they use a VPN or proxy to mask their IP address. It also prohibits covered websites from sharing instructions on how to use a VPN to bypass age checks.

NordVPN has called the law an "unresolvable compliance paradox" and a "liability trap," arguing that it holds websites responsible for identifying users whose tools are specifically designed to be unidentifiable. The EFF warned that the legal risk could push sites to either ban all known VPN IPs or mandate age verification for every visitor globally.

The law is also technically flawed, given that it assumes that a web provider can reliably detect VPN traffic and determine a user’s true physical location — they can’t. IP reputation databases such as MaxMind and IP2Proxy can flag traffic from known datacenter IP ranges, but commercial VPN providers rotate addresses constantly, and residential VPN endpoints are largely indistinguishable from standard home connections. Autonomous System Number analysis can catch traffic originating from datacenter networks, but can’t identify a personal WireGuard tunnel running on a cloud VPS, for example, which routes through the same infrastructure as ordinary web hosting.

The only detection method that reliably identifies VPN protocol signatures is deep packet inspection, which analyzes traffic at the network level, not system- or app-level. China's Great Firewall and Russia's TSPU system deploy DPI via ISPs, but a website operator can’t because it requires access to network infrastructure that sits between the user and the server, not on the server itself.

Meanwhile, setting up a personal WireGuard instance on any major cloud provider takes minutes, meaning the law will be more likely to negatively impact non-technical users who rely on commercial VPN services for legitimate privacy: journalists, people living under authoritarian regimes, political dissidents, and abuse survivors, among others.

Utah isn’t alone in trying to legislate the impossible into being. In the UK, the House of Lords — Parliament’s secondary chamber — voted 207-159 in January to ban VPN services for under 18s, with those amendments now due to be debated in the House of Commons. VPN use jumped by more than 1,400% on the first day of age verification enforcement in July last year. Meanwhile, France’s digital affairs minister, Anne Le Hénanff, has said that VPNs are “next on my list.” Wisconsin considered similar VPN provisions earlier this year but scrapped them due to heavy backlash.

To date, the only countries that have made progress in blocking VPN traffic with some success are authoritarian regimes with ISP-level surveillance.

A single tiny GIF, frequently used in chats by a site's community members, ended up adding 377GB to the website's backup quota, breaking its Linux filesystem and causing the backup process to fail. The Jennifer Aniston ‘happy dance’ reaction GIF weighs in at 1.6MB, and in the headlining case, it was duplicated 246,173 times in the backup, writes Discourse tech blogger Jake Goldsborough. This problem was precipitated by, dare we say, an overuse of the happy dance GIF, plus a file security policy implementation. Fixing it wasn’t entirely straightforward.

Discourse is a company and open‑source software project that builds one of the most widely used modern community‑discussion platforms, currently powering over 22,000 online communities. Its real-time chat platform allows users to insert emojis and GIFs in their discussions to liven up debates. But the platform’s ‘secure uploads’ feature means that “when a file moves between security contexts (say, from a private message to a public post), the system creates a new copy with a randomized SHA1,” explains Goldsborough. “The original content is identical, but Discourse treats it as a new file.” So, a popular image or reaction GIF will spread across posts, reposts, and PMs, and each context creates another file copy.

Discourse’s first attempt at a fix for the system being swamped by duplicates was to track original content by its hash. Then, during backup, group uploads by the hash and download only the first file in each group. Hardlinks were created for any duplicates.

No one told them life was gonna be this way

This seemed like an elegant solution until one of Discourse’s larger customers made everyone aware of the ext4 limit of roughly 65,000 hardlinks per inode. In the headlining case, the backup worked with this first fix, but “instead of one download for all 246,173 duplicates, we got one download plus ~181,000 fallback downloads after hitting the limit,” explains the firm’s blog. “Not the win I expected.”

The absurdly duplicated file that created 377GB of bloat was Rachel from Friends doing her happy dance. So, the problematic site was obviously quite a happy one, with the reaction GIF “used constantly in posts, PMs, everywhere,” noted Discourse.

Also happily, Discourse managed to fathom a fix for its earlier fix. In effect, this new fix begins like the old one, by creating hardlinks. But when the filesystem throws up an EMLINK error message (too many hardlinks), it will copy the file locally and treat the new file as ‘primary’ until it reaches the limit again. This new measure “works on any filesystem, no configuration needed,” says Discourse, with some satisfaction.

Discourse ends by highlighting the lessons learned from its confounding animated GIF duplication frenzy, wryly observing that “now I know Jennifer Aniston can stress-test infrastructure.”

Iran's nationwide Internet blackout has crossed the 1,000-hour mark and is now one of the longest nation-scale shutdowns ever measured, according to connectivity monitor NetBlocks. The site has tracked the disruption since it was intensified on February 28 alongside joint U.S. and Israeli military strikes on the country. Starlink isn't the solution, either, as Iran is actively seeking those who possess Starlink terminals, and if caught individuals are punishable by execution.

Starlink inside the country is reportedly being blocked by “military-grade jamming,” per one researcher who spoke to IranWire back in January. The possession or operation of a Starlink terminal in Iran now carries potential penalties of execution under legislation passed this year, according to the Business and Human Rights Centre. Iran has also made threats to attack infrastructure owned by hyperscalers, including OpenAI, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

NetBlocks marked the grim connectivity milestone on its official accounts on April 11, highlighting that the outage had exceeded 43 days and was still ongoing, with traffic remaining at around 1% of its pre-blackout volumes. According to them, the Iran shutdown has exceeded every comparable incident that it has cataloged. However, the Libya internet shutdown during the Arab Spring went on for six months (likely before NetBlocks started doing its thing).

Cloudflare Radar recorded a near-instant 98% collapse in Iranian HTTP traffic at around 07:00 UTC on February 28, across bytes transferred, HTTP bytes, and request counts simultaneously, with Tehran, Fars, Isfahan, Razavi Khorasan, and Alborz all going dark at the same moment.

Small volumes of web and DNS traffic have continued to move over specific IPv4 routes throughout the blackout, which Cloudflare attributed to a whitelisting system that keeps a limited set of approved users and domestic services online. State-affiliated media in Iran have said access is being routed through the National Information Network, the country's long-running domestic intranet project, with only pre-approved sites reachable.

This near-total Internet blackout follows on from earlier restrictions imposed on January 8 during widespread protests against the Iranian regime. Although the blackout had been relaxed by January 28, restrictions remained in place, and Internet traffic levels had been reduced by around 50% as of February 16. Iranian Minister of Communications Sattar Hashemi has previously acknowledged that the earlier January blackout cost the economy around $35.7 million per day, with online sales falling by as much as 80% during the cutoff.

Human Rights Watch has called the current shutdown a violation of fundamental rights and warned that it was obstructing access to emergency information during active military strikes, and Amnesty International marked the 1,000-hour threshold on April 10 with a public call for Iranian authorities to restore access.

Russia has at last begun to deliver on its plans to establish a domestic state-funded rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink, reports The Moscow Times. The launch of the first 16 satellites, said to form the foundation of a constellation of 900 by 2035, was supposed to have happened in Q4 last year. The so-called Rassvet system aims to expand to 250 LEO satellites next year, when it will become a domestic commercial alternative to Starlink.

A private aerospace outfit called Bureau 1440 appears to be the key tech partner of the government for this state venture. Scientists/engineers from this company are set to complete system checks on the newly launched 16 orbiters. When checks are finished, they will be moved into their target orbit positions.

So, 16 out of 900 might sound like a drop in the ocean of space, but this first step was probably one of the most difficult. Alexei Shelobkov, CEO of Bureau 1440’s parent company, ICS Holding, said that Rassvet’s deployment is going to see dozens more launches. A quick prod of the calculator suggests that just 15 more launches (with batches of 16 satellites) will be required to hit the 250 constellation target for sometime in 2027.

Did Starlink's new whitelist-only policy accelerate the rollout of Rassvet?

The Russian government has reportedly set aside the equivalent of $1.26b to help develop Rassvet. If you think it is good to see the Russian state investing in non-military infrastructure, remember that it coincidentally lost Starlink access only last month. That’s when SpaceX implemented its new whitelist-only policy to replace the previously ineffectual measures that were in place. Surely that would have put pressure on Rassvet development teams to get on with it.

Clearly, Rassvet, even at its fully fledged 900 satellite target, is going to be dwarfed by efforts from other countries, or groups of countries such as the EU. The U.S. is home to two of the biggest satellite internet firms: the aforementioned Starlink, with roughly 10,000 already in orbit, and a next-gen target beyond 30,000; plus Amazon Leo (the rebranded Project Kuiper) has over 200 satellites launched, but is targeting over 3,200.

Norway's Forbrukerrådet, the government-funded Norwegian Consumer Council, published an 80-page report on February 27, arguing that companies across the tech industry are systematically degrading hardware and software after the point of sale to extract additional revenue from locked-in consumers. The report, titled "Breaking Free: Pathways to a Fair Technological Future," singles out connected devices, printers, video games, and cars as categories where the practice is most acute.

The report refers to this practice as “enshittification,” a gradual, three-stage process in which a company initially attracts users with a genuinely useful service, then degrades that service to benefit business customers, and finally squeezes both groups to maximize returns for shareholders. According to the Forbrukerrådet, digital products are uniquely vulnerable to this cycle because manufacturers can alter them remotely after purchase through software updates. Below, you can see a video the group created about the issue as well.

“Companies can degrade the functionality of your car or effectively destroy your connected washing machine with a software update,” says the report, going on to call out printer ink cartridges, smart home devices that lose features or require subscriptions post-purchase, and connected vehicles where functionality is gated or removed over time, such as Tesla’s self-driving feature which has switched to a subscription-only service as of February 14. The report also describes how freemium games use forced ad breaks and in-game virtual currencies to convert what were once single-purchase titles into recurring revenue streams

On right to repair, the report notes that the EU Right to Repair Directive, entering into force on July 31, will require manufacturers to reduce parts pairing and allow third-party repairs. This is likely to be a huge thorn in the side of printer manufacturers and device ecosystems that have historically tied consumers to proprietary consumables and service networks.

Alongside the report, the Forbrukerrådet and 28 co-signers — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and Cory Doctorow — sent an open letter to EU policymakers on February 27, urging stronger enforcement of the Digital Markets Act and the GDPR, and pushing back against the European Commission's "Digital Omnibus" package, which the letter argued risks diluting existing consumer protections.

The collective is pushing toward the EU Digital Fairness Act, which the Commission included in its 2026 work program with a proposal expected in Q4 2026. The act is expected to target dark patterns, influencer marketing, addictive design, and unfair personalization across digital products and services.

A public consultation that closed in October 2025 drew roughly 3,000 responses in its first two weeks alone, many from gamers pushing for provisions that would prevent publishers from disabling titles consumers have already purchased — a campaign known as Stop Killing Games.

A few days ago, we covered an eyebrow-raising bit of news about the operator(s) of Archive Today leveraging their website to allegedly execute a denial-of-service attack against Jani Patokallio, a security blogger. At the time, Wikipedia considered dropping all links to Archive Today (AT), a decision argued for and against in open discussion. That decision has quickly been made final thanks to AT altering its own archived pages to fuel its feud.

Specifically, AT's maintainers reportedly tweaked snapshots of a third-party blog post that Patokallio referred to in his February 2026 article about the DDoS attack. AT changed the name of a "Nora" person in said post to Jani Patokallio, making it look as if he had written some comments there. Eagle-eyed Wikipedia editors spotted the alterations, which have since then been reverted, but the action made it easy for them reach a final decision.

Now that it's time for Wikipedia to replace all AT links, editors have three options: replace with the original source if it's still online, use a different archive site, or change the source to media that doesn't require an archive, like a print. It's not all roses, though, as besides the man-hours involved, an estimated 15% of links were irreplaceable.

The original reason for the attack was a 2023 post where Patokallio dug into how Archive Today operates, and in the process tried figuring out the identify of the site's operator(s). Said person or persons took umbrage to the post after nearly three years, and allegedly decided to add code to Archive Today and its aliases, opening Patokallio's site in the background in an attempt to overwhelm/DDOS the blog.

Since Wikipedia reportedly has 695,000 links to Archive Today spread across 400,000 pages, it meant that anyone clicking on the links would score one hit on Patokallio's website. For his part, in a statement to Ars Technica, he said "[he's] glad the Wikipedia community has come to a clear consensus, and [hopes] this inspires the Wikimedia Foundation to look into creating its own archival service."

This turn of events is ultimately a loss for everyone involved, as Archive Today is speedy, reliable, and has top-notch scraping quality. An archive has little use if its contents can't be 100% trusted, though.

When Sir Tim Berners-Lee first came up with the idea for the World Wide Web back in 1989, his vision for it could be likened to a digital Library of Alexandria, with all human knowledge centralized, a cooperative attitude, and most of all, free. Fast-forward about 37 years, and while the Web did indeed bring the world together, it's fair to say that it didn't do so quite in the manner that Berners-Lee hoped for.

In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee discusses where exactly things went wrong, and how they can perhaps be fixed in what he describes as "a battle for the soul of the web," noting that "it's not too late." The Web had a fairly peaceful early start without ads, heavy commercialization, and cleanly served the purposes of information and some entertainment, but started shifting around the late '90s with the dot-com boom and "charlatans", in Berners-Lee's view.

It wasn't until the polarization of the 2016 U.S. election that he had enough with the Web's toxicity, something that reportedly left him "devastated." He acknowledges that social media does not represent the entire web, but that "the problem is that people spend a lot of time on [social media websites] because they’re addictive," having later described them as "optimized for nastiness".

Interestingly, Berners-Lee notes that while early viewpoints on the internet were neutral and moral judgments were about how people used it, nowadays "the way you design a website, like Reddit or Pinterest or Snapchat, can be explicitly good," with the opposite, as now proven, equally possible.

He's since created and is promoting the Solid project, that can very broadly be described as a user-controlled, decentralized API for personal data sharing, accessed via standard web protocols. Users create their own "pods" where all their personal info lies, along with everything they publish online, and data collected about them. They can then choose to grant entities specific control over what data is accessed.

Berners-Lee believes this can bring sovereignty of personal data back in people's hands, and even went as far as raising $30 million for Inrupt, a company with a mission to "provide commercial energy and an ecosystem to help protect the integrity and quality of the new web built on Solid". Notably, though, there's nothing forcing the current web's gatekeepers like Google and Meta to use the Solid protocol — much less to copy any data they may be granted access to.

Still, he think that "the existing systems will fade to a certain extent, because people will get more excited in new systems." In this case, he's referring to developers engaging with the Solid project, who "they start coding just because of what they can imagine."

You can click through to the Guardian to read the entire interview and read Berners-Lee's thoughts on social media ban laws, the AI takeover, and other topics.

Wikipedia is 25. Founded in 2001, this community contributor-driven site has convincingly usurped what were once the default general reference works of choice, like Encyclopædia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. Since its launch, this free resource has risen to become the world’s 7th most popular website, with over 7 million English articles, and around 7 billion monthly visitors. Wikipedia is the most successful non‑commercial, non‑social, non‑search web destination.

The first entry on Wikipedia was a computer-ritually headed "Hello, World!" and began with the rather amateurishly optimistic line “This is the new Wikipedia!” Co-founder Jimmy Wales, a former financial trader and best known as the face of Wikipedia (better known than Larry Sanger, anyway), uploaded the first Wikipedia edit. As an aside, this first page was recreated as a non-fungible token (NFT) in 2021, making $750,000 at auction.

Since we are a hardware site, it is worth remembering that Wales used one of the bulbous, All-in-One Apple iMac computers of the era to type his first Wikipedia entry. That first iMac was notable for several milestones. The translucent, candy‑colored computer was the first major product under the renewed leadership of Steve Jobs, and would pioneer USB ports and put a sizable nail in the floppy disk coffin.

Early criticism to roaring success

We’ve already mentioned the amateurish first edit of Wikipedia. From its humble but creditable beginnings, it took quite some time to find its feet and earn a decent reputation.

Critics would initially highlight that ‘anyone could edit it’ as a major failing, regarding the reliability of Wikipedia encyclopedia entries. Even when much more fully grown, the community-driven knowledge base faced issues such as vandalism and edit wars.

Like any human-sourced knowledge repository, Wikipedia also suffered (suffers) from bias. Every contributor has their own opinions, world view, politics, and other flaws. In some encyclopedia topics, such personal lenses can cause conflicts. There were also sizable wrinkles caused by the platform possessing no editorial board, a formal fact-checking system, and so on.

The Wikipedia ship slowly turned round in the mid to late noughties, with slow structural changes being made to solidify the reputation and reference value of this now massive knowledge base. By this time, the site started to feel less like a free-for-all, and studies around this time began to show the accuracy of Wikipedia wasn’t that far removed from respected tomes like Britannica.

Into the 2010s and beyond, Wikipedia began to be widely regarded as a trustworthy resource. It has long been integrated into Google, for example, as a primary data source of the ‘knowledge graph.’ That’s earned its place, and it is worth repeating, as the world’s top non‑commercial, non‑social, non‑search web destination. It isn’t just English, either, as Wikipedia is now available in 342 languages.

Amid widespread anti-government protests, Iran has shut down all methods of internet access within its borders, reports IranWire. It has done the same previously, during earlier, milder episodes of revolt. However, this time the authorities seem to have also been successful in disrupting the tens of thousands of Starlink receivers thought to be inside the country. On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he would speak to Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX and Starlink, about restoring internet access to the Iranian public.

You're likely well aware of the severity of the clashes between protesters and the Iranian authorities. The general worldwide news media are filling the airwaves and front pages with reports about the uprising, and shocking numbers of casualties and arrests over the last four days.

During previous notable times of public unrest, Iran has cut public communications like internet services, mobile services, and even phone services. The commonly accepted reason for such blocks is to prevent easy communication and organizing by protesters. The same actions serve to limit the flow of images and videos to the outside world. Thus, the internet blockade helps the Iranian government shape the narrative, or at least gives it a better chance of doing so.

Starlink disruption likely relies on acquired Chinese or Russian tech

IW highlights something quite different during this latest spate of organized government dissent. On Friday, it noted that “even satellite internet services like Starlink sharply dropped.” Internet researcher Amir Rashidi told IranWire that, this time, “military-grade jamming signals were detected targeting Starlink satellites.” This directed action by the Iranian authorities meant that up to 80% of Starlink traffic was disrupted. Rashidi characterized this jamming effort as unprecedented yet highly sophisticated, and suspects Chinese or Russian tech has been acquired for this purpose, though doesn’t rule out something domestically developed.

Internal to Iran, government-aligned internet sites and channels reportedly started to come back online, thought to be through a progressive white-listing system. The first beneficiaries were “government-aligned Telegram channels, state media accounts, and some university networks,” notes IranWire. The last time there was a crackdown on the internet and digital communications it lasted 12 days. Perhaps this could be longer.

President Trump will talk to Elon Musk about Iran’s internet blockade

U.S. government officials have been quite vocal in condemning the reported killing of more than 500 protesters and the 10,000+ that have been imprisoned over the last four days.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters he has plans to talk with Elon Musk about restoring internet services in Iran. Trump was answering a question from a reporter about restoring internet services, like Starlink, for the Iranian public. “He's very good at that kind of thing, he's got a very good company,” the President assured concerned reporters.

The Federal Communications Commission has partially approved a significant expansion of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink constellation, authorizing 7,500 additional low Earth orbit satellites under a partial grant issued by the agency’s Space Bureau and clearing a major regulatory hurdle for SpaceX’s next phase of Starlink growth. The decision brings the total number of authorized Starlink Gen2 satellites to 15,000, while leaving the remainder of SpaceX’s broader proposal under continued review.

The order, released this week, responds to SpaceX’s request to deploy a much larger Gen2 constellation that would ultimately approach 30,000 satellites. Rather than approving the full plan, the FCC granted authority for roughly half of the requested spacecraft and explicitly deferred action on the remaining satellites. The Bureau framed the decision as a balance between expanding broadband capacity from space and managing growing concerns around orbital congestion and spectrum coordination.

Alongside the increased satellite count, the FCC approved substantial changes to Starlink’s orbital design. The order authorizes new orbital shells at lower altitudes, including ranges around 340km and 365km, as well as additional shells in the 475km to 485km range. Lower altitudes can reduce latency and shorten the time non-functional satellites remain in orbit, but they also require more frequent launches to maintain coverage.

The approval also addresses spectrum access, with the FCC authorizing Gen2 operations across Ku- and Ka-band frequencies, while also approving the use of higher-frequency V-band, E-band, and W-band, primarily for gateway and backhaul links. The order emphasizes that these authorizations remain subject to coordination requirements with other satellite systems and terrestrial services operating in the same bands.

Within the U.S., the FCC approved Supplemental Coverage from Space operations in the 1910-1915 MHz uplink and 1990-1995 MHz downlink bands. For deployments outside the U.S., the order authorizes mobile satellite service direct-to-cell operations across a wider set of cellular-adjacent frequencies, subject to national regulatory approval in each market.

To accompany the expansion, the FCC says SpaceX must have 50% of the newly authorized Gen2 satellites launched and operational by December 1, 2028, with the remainder required by December 1, 2031. The order also includes ongoing reporting obligations regarding collision avoidance and satellite disposal, and it grants the Bureau the authority to pause further deployments if debris risk thresholds are exceeded.

On January 1, 1983, ARPANET system architects initiated the cutover from the existing Network Control Program (NCP) with the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) on all hosts. The transition would be complete by June 1983. By 1984, over 100 universities and research facilities in the United States and Europe were connected using what is now regarded as the universal standard for global networking. TCP/IP became the foundation of the Internet as we know it.

Before this momentous decision, networks would use a mix of incompatible protocols and proprietary vendor stacks. NCP, which was displaced by TCP/IP, was designed to be ARPANET-only, and had no internetworking capabilities. With TCP/IP, an internetworking (and thus ‘Internet’) protocol was born, connecting these networks with those beyond their initial confines.

Beyond its internetworking power, TCP/IP was attractive across several other fronts. It was an open standard, which was vendor neutral, extensible, and free to implement. These features didn’t just make it a win for ARPANET, they provided the momentum that the entire world could get behind.

TCP/IP was designed by Dr. Vinton Cerf and Dr. Robert Kahn. It’s layered design also introduced innovations that would become essential to the evolution of the Internet. It boasted features like congestion control, end-to-end reliability, and would spawn future Internet-essential service protocols like HTTP, SMTP, DNS, and more.

If not TCP/IP, then what?

IBM famously described the era’s networking landscape as being like a Tower of Babel, with so many incompatible proprietary protocols clamoring for users. However, its own solution, dubbed SNA, was part of this proprietary problem. Similarly, Xerox would push forward the adoption of its XNS, and DEC its DECnet.

In contrast, the open, scalable, and hardware-agnostic TCP/IP managed to get a clear run at widespread adoption, and succeeded. One could say it won - not by being the best protocol designed to connect everything - but by being the only one. Additionally, its open and free nature, ability to run on everything from PCs to supercomputers, allowed it to become the common denominator among a throng of multiprotocol network routers. These all added fuel to TCP/IPs success.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has warned that several of its Internet Time Service servers could be providing inaccurate time following a failure of the primary atomic time scale, NIST-F4, at its Boulder, Colorado campus. The alert was posted to NIST’s public Internet Time Service mailing list after a prolonged utility power outage disrupted the facility on December 17, with engineers still working to fully restore normal operations several days later.

According to NIST, the Boulder campus lost utility power at approximately 22:23 UTC during a period of high winds that triggered line damage and preemptive shutdowns tied to wildfire risk in the region. While backup systems were expected to maintain continuity, NIST says a critical standby generator failure occurred downstream of the signal distribution chain that feeds its Boulder-based Internet Time Service infrastructure. As a result, the atomic ensemble time scale that underpins those services was interrupted.

The warning specifically names the affected hosts as time-a-b.nist.gov through time-e-b.nist.gov, along with ntp-b.nist.gov, which is used for authenticated NTP. NIST cautioned that while the servers may still respond to network requests, they may not be referencing a valid or accurate time source. The agency said it may take those hosts offline entirely to prevent the risk of distributing incorrect time to clients.

This incident does not appear to affect all of NIST’s time services. The commonly used time.nist.gov address, for example, relies on round-robin DNS across multiple geographically distributed servers, allowing clients to fail over automatically when one site experiences problems. Users who hard-code individual hostnames, however, may be more exposed to localized failures such as this one.

In a statement to local media, a NIST spokesperson said the disruption resulted in a brief lapse during generator switchover and that UTC(NIST) drifted by roughly four microseconds. For most consumer and enterprise systems, that level of error would not be noticeable, but high-precision users — such as those in science or finance — are typically expected to monitor multiple independent time sources and were alerted through established channels.

The NIST-F4 atomic clock at Boulder uses caesium atoms to measure the exact length of a second, which is just a little bit more sophisticated than one you might be able to build on Pi. It's an important point of reference used for many applications like GPS systems, data centers, telecommunications, and power generation — all of which require extremely precise timekeeping. According to NIST, it represents the "gold standard of accuracy" in timekepeing.

The Boulder incident follows another Internet Time Service disruption on December 10 at NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland site, where an atomic time source failure caused a time step of approximately minus 10 milliseconds on affected hosts. At the time of writing, NIST has not provided a firm estimate for when full service will be restored at the Boulder campus.

Pioneering search engine AltaVista opened its service to the public 30 years ago. The original fast and clean internet search destination launched on December 15, 1995, with an enormous (for the time) 16 million pages indexed. Within a year of its establishment, it scaled from a day-one workload of handling 300,000 user queries to tens of millions of requests every day. That’s impressive, given that the service went live ostensibly as a tech demo for DEC’s Alpha server hardware.

AltaVista rises - propelled by powerful hardware

A big part of the initial success story of AltaVista was indeed due to the hardware that powered it. As a showcase project created by Digital Equipment Corporation's Network Systems Laboratory and Western Research Laboratory, it isn’t surprising that this search engine’s performance was propped up by some of the most powerful servers of the era.

Specifically, AltaVista was launched as an Internet search service powered by a DEC Alpha 8400 Turbolaser system, say some sources. We think credit to that precise server model might be uncertain, due to upgrades over the years and exact specs being lost in the sands of time. The 8400 servers came with up to 14 CPUs running at up to 612 MHz, up to 28GB of RAM, and had 144 PCI slots.

We’ve already sketched out the explosive but almost accidental success that the youthful AltaVista would see. Its architecture, mixing a web crawler dubbed Scooter and a back-end index server called TurboVista, delivered fast and accurate results in the early days of the public adoption of the World Wide Web.

At its inception, AltaVista stood apart from the dominant Internet directories, which had become the default home pages of many. Instead of some kind of curated directory, surfers could tap into the quickly expanding full extent of the Internet thanks to Scooter and TurboVista tirelessly beavering away.

Illustrative of its rapid climb to being a top-tier Internet company, in 1996, AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo! That’s the year after it launched.

Google arrives with its PageRank algorithm

Describing the rise of Google is another topic in its own right. However, to cut a long story short, its origins are found in Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s BackRub Stanford research project. That’s a good project name, as it almost encapsulates an algorithm that became the jewel in Google’s crown – PageRank.

With PageRank at its heart, Google was founded in 1998 and enjoyed explosive early growth in 1999. People liked the AltaVista-like, simple, clean search UI Google offered, and generally warmed to its weighted, relevant results, served by the PageRank algorithm’s analysis of over 50 million pages in 1999.

In 2000, Google made its business breakthrough, becoming the default search engine for one of the earliest Internet icons, Yahoo!

AltaVista falls - Changes of ownership, and years of decline

If you’ve read all the above, you can see a crossover or collision occur, as AltaVista declines and Google rises. AltaVista sought to fend off Google in the early 2000s with interface and indexing relevance tweaks. However, between 1999 and 2001, Google stole the momentum, knocking the wind out of AltaVista’s sails. An oft-quoted stat puts AltaVista vs Google user share at 17% vs 7% in the year 2000, but the tables were turned very shortly after that.

Famously exerting further downward pressure on AltaVista were a string of acquisitions, where it changed hands from DEC, to Compaq, to CMGI, to Overture Services, and then by acquisition of Overture to Yahoo! Along the way, AltaVista moved away from the clean search results first UI into becoming an all-singing all-dancing portal, helping nail its coffin shut (Hi Google).

Though it was formally shut down by Yahoo! in 2013, nearly 18 years after it first made WWW waves, many of us remember AltaVista fondly. It pioneered the fast and uncluttered search results model users loved, before Google stole its clothes and its thunder. It also introduced genuinely helpful online extras like advanced search operators, translations, and free ISP-agnostic webmail for those who didn’t want Hotmail. All this, before it was killed by mismanagement and becoming bloated.

The Sega Dreamcast’s built-in web browser was killed by Google earlier this week. In less dramatic terms, Google closed a PlanetWeb browser compatibility window that had somehow remained ajar for a quarter-century. While a raft of Google services no longer respond properly to the Dreamcast’s ancient SSL/TLS stack, fan-made search engines and online gaming servers remain available, so internet-connected Dreamcast stalwarts aren’t entirely doomed.

As highlighted by Dreamcast Live, above, the pack-in browser supplied by Sega on a silvery CD is now useless for anything other than an ornament, memento, or Frisbee. The fan account confirmed that even the latest PlanetWeb 3.0 was affected by Google’s changes.

We note that PlanetWeb 3.0 is no spring chicken, though, as it was launched in 2001. But it is as modern as this browser family gets. PlanetWeb 1.0 was released in 1999, and version 2.0 followed a year later. Thus, the official Dreamcast browser lineage stretches back around 26 years.

Ultimately, PlanetWeb’s demise stems from its use of obsolete web standards. In some ways, it is surprising it endured so long with old SSL, an old JavaScript engine, and outdated ciphers.

What can a late 2025 Dreamcaster do?

For web search, devoted Dreamcast owners can turn to http://frogfind.de/, a search portal set up by retro computing and gaming YouTuber Action Retro. The results garnered via Frog Find are powered by Google, Brave, and DuckDuckGo, and the page/queries are pleasantly barren of distractions. However, some mirrors seem to be down, like the .com alternative.

Meanwhile, some of the most enduring Sega Dreamcast games with online communities continue to run, Google or not. Servers for titles like Phantasy Star Online and Quake III Arena will still tick along regardless.

Dreamcast homebrew community participants are also looking at alternatives and workarounds for any issues that might arise and disrupt their enjoyment of this old, underrated, but not unloved console.

I owned a Dreamcast in the early 2000s mainly for the wonderful light gun games library, which were fantastically responsive and great fun on an old CRT. With a PC and/or Mac also owned at the time, I felt little need to buy the required peripherals and connect the Dreamcast to the Internet.

Children in Russia have raised their voices, demanding to be heard, saying the government has gone too far. A state representative admitted that 63,000 complaint letters were received in a single week, with half of the irate youngsters threatening to leave Russia. What’s the fuss? Is it something to do with the ongoing war or sanctions? No, it is a backlash against the banning of the Roblox gaming platform, reports The Moscow Times.

The ban is "for their own protection"

Official Russian media say that the Roblox ban was put in place to prevent the platform from distributing extremist materials and promoting “LGBT propaganda.” The game from the California company is full of “inappropriate content that can negatively impact the spiritual and moral development of children,” asserted Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor, according to a statement viewed by The Moscow Times.

Probably more specific and worrying, for parents everywhere, were the assertions by the Russian watchdog that kids playing Roblox may be sexually harassed, tricked into intimate photos, or even be “coerced into committing depraved acts and violence.”

Indeed, this is a worry for the parents of all open online platforms frequented by youngsters. Thus, the Roblox corporation asserts it implements “moderators and automated systems to proactively identify behaviors that may violate our policies.”

Leaving Russia for the love of Roblox

Two figures pretty high up in the Russian administration have admitted that the children of the country have been vociferous in their complaints about the Roblox ban. Putin’s well known press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that the Kremlin received “many” letters from children about the ban imposed on December 3.

Pro-Kremlin censorship advocate Yekaterina Mizulina also told her Telegram followers that she had received 63,000 letters from kids aged between eight and 16 on this ban. Half of them said they wished to leave Russia due to the Roblox blockade, according to Mizulina.

Roblox was the most downloaded game in Russia as recently as 2023. It is extremely popular with kids, with 111.8 million daily users, according to the latest monthly metrics we have seen. Around 40% of Roblox gamers are 13 or under.

The blocked in Russia club

Perhaps it is no surprise that Roblox, the latest Western-owned platform with social media elements, is being blocked in Russia. You also can’t use Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, or LinkedIn there, for example.

Meanwhile, YouTube is throttled and disrupted in favor of the state-backed RuTube. (Is there going to be a RuBlox soon?) Russia’s domestic VK social network is most widely used there, and is heavily moderated, and features automatic content filtering according to Roskomnadzor’s blacklist.

Ukraine’s Defence Express news has highlighted the continuing issue of Russian drones with access to Starlink satellite internet guidance. Despite assurances from U.S. Pentagon officials from over a year ago, drones from the Russian aggressors are still flying into Ukrainian airspace to strike their targets – with Starlink hardware clearly strapped to them, claims the source (machine translation).

The new report, on what seems to be an ongoing issue, has been sparked by one of the first sightings of a crashed/disabled ‘Molniya’ (Lightning) strike drone. This is shown in pictures originally shared by Serhiy ‘Flash’ Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian electronic warfare and communications expert, who is active on Telegram social media.

In the images, a Starlink Mini is clearly perched atop the grounded drone. ‘Flash’ doesn’t insist this drone actually came from Russia, but the overall design and internal components (like the battery) suggest it was very likely a Russian device.

Perhaps even more serious than this latest spotting is the Ukraine Defense Express assertion that Starlink usage by Russian drones hasn’t been totally stopped since it was first documented in 2024.

Later that same year, the US Defense Department’s assistant secretary for space policy, John Plumb, told Bloomberg that the Russian military’s unauthorized use of SpaceX’s Starlink internet had been blunted. An IMI report says that Plumb wasn’t specific about the measures put in place to deny Russian access, but that it was a “good solution” for Starlink and Ukraine.

Russian Shahed-136 drones have previously been seen kitted out with Starlink gear. The Ukraine Defense Express says that Russia’s recently unveiled RD-8 mother drone is Starlink controllable, too. Evidence of this wasn’t reproduced within the source story.

If the Ukraine Defense Express is correct, though, it is unsettling to know that the incessant Russian drone onslaught hitting Ukraine’s military, civilians, and key infrastructure could be weakened with just a little more political will.

The Internet as we know it was born through a series of unexpected developments in networking technology. So it isn’t very surprising that, along its crooked growth trajectory, there were several rather fruitless branches. One such branch was the Internet Stream Protocol (ST), which is also sometimes referred to as IPv5, as tech tidbits Twitterer Laurie Wired recently highlighted. However, the industry has skipped IPv5, moving directly from IPv4 to IPv6, leaving it as a forgotten protocol.

IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4 was established as the first version of the Internet Protocol back in 1982/83. It used 32-bit addressing to provide about 4.3 billion unique IP addresses, but developers quickly realized that the explosive growth of the Internet meant the humongous number would be exhausted in due course.

IPv6 would ride in, like a knight on a white charger, in 1989 (adoption grew post 2000) with 128-bit addressing to provide approximately 340 undecillion addresses, which should be enough for anyone. It also introduced IPsec security, simpler headers, and better mobile device support. Nevertheless, for reasons such as easier configuration, reduced complexity, legacy support, and human readability, the dwindling IPv4 pool has remained a preferred choice.

Internet businesses have had decades to get on board the IPv6 train, but still resist and pay heavily to do so. Earlier this year, we reported on the increasing value of IPv4 addresses. In fact, companies are now accepting IPv4 addresses as collateral to borrow millions of dollars.

IPv5 wasn’t a Goldilocks solution

We’ve seen some organizations have a strong desire to hang onto IPv4 and a resistance to moving wholesale to IPv6. However, IPv5 wasn’t an idyllic middle ground, sharing some advantages of both these protocols. Rather, it was used solely as an experimental branch, almost contemporaneously with the introduction of IPv4.

IPv5’s special, flavour-dominating sauce was reliable data streaming using 32-bit addressing. Prototype equipment for Network Voice Protocol (NVP) over Internet Stream Protocol (ST) telephony was made, as shown above. So, its streaming abilities were tested to support an embryonic VOIP feature.

But IPv5 wasn’t a replacement for IPv4; more of an extension that ended up being pruned as an unnecessary limb. The superfluousness of its architecture became apparent when broadband technologies came along to solve the problems of bandwidth and latency. IPv5 was proposed to crack.

Though IPv5 wasn’t a general-purpose Internet Protocol, it took the v5 designation in development documents. It was never ratified as a global protocol, but to avoid confusion, we moved straight to IPv6 as IPv4’s genuine successor.

If you would like to rehome thousands of old VHS videotapes, there’s an incredible hoard of these nostalgic artifacts from the days of analog TV, stored carefully in McDonald's boxes, being given away for free. However, you’ll need a convincing story, as it already looks like a representative from the Internet Archive is a hot favorite to claim this truckload of tapes and digitize them. Redditor whatdoyouthinkisreal shared images of this gargantuan collection of tapes a few days ago.

Free: Thousands of tapes preserved. 2004~2009 CNN/MSNBC/FOX News recorded at home in Ann Arbor area from r/DataHoarder

The OP notes that the collection of tapes has already shrunk by around 18 boxes.

The general goal of whatdoyouthinkisreal’s giveaway is to “give them to someone who is going to save and digitize the tapes.” Bonus – the donor will get a lot of garage space back.

So, what TV and cinematic gems should the new owner expect to find in this massive collection, recorded at an Ann Arbor area home between 2004 and 2009? Apparently, it is wall-to-wall news coverage from that era, featuring channels like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.

That content might be of some interest to someone, we guess. The Redditor suggests that “I think the commercials might be even more valuable than the news, but there is Hurricane Katrina Coverage here too.”

Other notable round-the-clock news coverage events during that time may have included:

• Janet Jackson had a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ at the Super Bowl in 2004
• Two presidential elections, 2004 (Dubya won) and 2008 (Obama won)
• The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
• The 2005 London bombings (7/7)
• Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston divorced in 2005
• The Execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006
• Release of the first iPhone in 2007
• 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' premiered in 2007
• 2007 U.S. troop 'surge' in Iraq
• The 2008 Beijing Olympics
• The 2008 Financial crisis
• Russia–Georgia war in 2008 (they're still at it)
• Michael Jackson died, and Lady Gaga rose to fame in 2009
• The 2009 Colorado Balloon Boy hoax earned 24/7 coverage

In case anyone finds the McDonald's franchise cardboard carton packaging questionable, the OP explains, “They're in McDonald's food boxes because the woman who recorded these worked at McDonald's at one time.”

As we mentioned in the intro, any potential suitor for this titanic collection better have a good story. One of the first Redditors to throw their hat in the ring and claim this incredible prize was Jason Scott of the Internet Archive. Many other Redditors upvoted this suggestion, understandably. However, there were a few grumbles about the IA currently sitting on tons and tons of content without getting around to digitizing it and sharing it online.

This week in 1988, Cornell graduate student Robert Tappan Morris unleashed his eponymous worm upon the Internet. The wave of infections grew to 10% of the entire Internet within 24 hours, causing astronomically expensive damage for the time. However, the pioneering Morris worm malware wasn’t made with malice, says an FBI retrospective on the “programming error.” It was designed to gauge the size of the Internet, resulting in a classic case of unintended consequences.

Morris worm dissection

Known to be something of a prankster, Morris must have felt some foreboding about releasing his ‘innocent’ program into the wild. Evidence of this comes from his release method. “He released it by hacking into an MIT computer from his Cornell terminal in Ithaca, New York,” according to the FBI.

The Morris worm was written in C and targeted BSD UNIX systems, like VAX and Sun-3 machines. Specifically, the FBI writes, it “exploited a backdoor in the Internet’s electronic mail system and a bug in the ‘finger’ program that identified network users.” In contrast to computer viruses, the worm Morris had devised had no need of a host program, but could self-replicate and spread autonomously.

Thankfully, the Morris worm wasn’t written to cause damage to files. Due to those unintended consequences, though, it precipitated massive slowdowns, and messaging delays and system crashes were common symptoms. It became a computer news sensation in the worst possible way. Just to get rid of the worm in a timely fashion, some institutions ended up wiping complete systems and unplugging networks for as long as a week.

Among the Morris worm's casualties were prestigious institutions such as Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, NASA, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Whodunit?

Experts worked hard to find a fix, and while they did so, the question of who was behind the worm came to the fore. Understandably, whoever created and unleashed this worm needed to feel some consequences, and thus, the FBI was brought in.

Apparently, Morris sought to anonymously explain and apologize for the worm, but an inadvertent slip of his initials by a friend landed Morris in it.

FBI interviews and computer file analysis would subsequently confirm Morris was the culprit. He was indicted under the rather freshly inked Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. After a court appearance for his misdemeanors in 1989, Morris ended up not with jail time, but with a fine, probation, and 400 hours of community service to complete.

Computer worms have been around longer than the World Wide Web

Back in November 1988, the Internet bore little resemblance to what it is today. For example, the World Wide Web (WWW) wasn’t even a thing. Though the WWW would soon form the core experience for the first tide of surfers in the 90s.

At the time, the Internet’s backbone was the NSFNET, the recent successor to ARPANET. Its purpose was mostly to expand the prior backbone’s reach beyond military and defense institutions, and it more broadly embraced academia. While we are here, it is worth mentioning that NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, and succeeded by the commercial Internet, which emerged in the 1990s off the back of private ISPs and commercial backbones.

So, when we talk about 10% of the Internet being paralyzed by the Morris Worm, contemporary estimates are that about 6,000 of the approximately 60,000 connected systems were infected and impacted. Moreover, when we highlighted the potentially massive costs of this first worm propagating, estimates range from $100,000 to millions of dollars.

Computer worms have remained a scary phenomenon in recent times. For example, we reported on the first-generation AI worm, the Morris II generative AI worm, last year.

Images purportedly showing a newly opened public PC gaming space in North Korea have been shared on social media. Technology enthusiast Iniysa shared photographs of a “North Korean PC bang” on X. A ‘PC bang’ translates as basically a ‘PC room’ and the term comes from South Korea, where it is widely used to refer to an ‘internet café’ or ‘electronic café’ where gaming is the main activity. There are thousands of PC bangs in South Korea, and they form a major part of the youth culture below the 38^th parallel. However, they aren’t really a thing in the North, as you might expect.

Click 'See more' to see the photo gallery.

The contemporary commercial architecture of this new venue is typical of many higher-end developments I have seen in East Asia. If anything, it looks too premium for a place where gamers typically just want to go and sit in the dark, in front of an adequate eSports PC, for a low hourly rate.

A critical thinker might question whether this is a premium showcase venue designed to frame the idea that a modern, advanced gaming culture exists in North Korea. Actually, tech-Twitterer Iniysa reckons that the swish new PC bang is located in “a newly built city in Pyongyang, and only the top elites selected by the state, such as those recognized by Kim Jong-un and nuclear test scientists, are allowed to live there.”

Also, while one might expect North Korean PC gamers to live by Chinese tech hand-me-downs, Iniysa is openly surprised to see premium Asus ROG-branded gear at this Pyongyang PC bang.

Images of what appears to be the net café games UI are also somewhat eyebrow-raising. The machine translation of the grid-layout game launcher banner is ‘Mars Computer Arcade’, which we haven’t heard of before. However, it features many AAA and eSports titles that are popular on the other side of the DMZ.

Without much pixel peeping, we can see the iconic covers of games from franchises like FIFA, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six, Crysis, Far Cry, and others. Iniysa chirps up to suggest that, while these games may be accessible in the Pyongyang PC bang, they will most likely be restricted to local – probably internal – networks. Thus, the North Korean bamboo curtain persists, even in the gaming sphere.

The foundations of the internet were set 56 years ago. However, like many other great moments in history, the story of the first computer-to-computer message sent over a distributed packet-switched network, began with an underwhelming fizz, rather than a bang. Moreover, it involved a computer crash and a ‘typo’ – how thoroughly modern.

If you’ve read or watched anything about the history of the internet, you will have probably heard of ARPANET (the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). At around 10.30pm on October 29, 1969, two scientists set out to test communications between two of the four systems ARPANET systems, 350 miles apart.

Charley Kline from UCLA intended to send the first message across this embryonic distributed network. He’d settled on just five characters, typing out ‘LOGIN’ for the momentous occasion. However, Bill Duvall at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) only received ‘LO’ before his computer system crashed… Great start.

Kline didn’t realize the magnitude of this achievement at the time. Instead, he and Duvall, instantly went into troubleshooting mode to fix the issue that caused the crash.

Buffer overflow

It turned out that the Interface Message Processors used as a kind of ‘modem’ to connect the ARPANET machines were not ready for the throughput demanded. The IMPs were designed for data transfers of around 10 characters per second, but the ‘LOGIN’ message had been transmitted at 5,000 characters per second, Duvall noted in an interview with the BBC last year.

Ironing out this major issue took the scientists just an extra hour to complete. According to the first-hand testimony, after changing the communication buffer size and rebuilding the system, this distributed packet-switched network could send and receive messages without issues, as intended.

At the time, ARPANET was just a four system network. In addition to the UCLA and SRI nodes, noted above, there were systems at the UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah, forming this primordial internet.

Two decades before the WWW

Of course, ARPANET had its roots in military research, designed to sustain communications in the event of a nuclear attack. It would be decades before the internet would become a consumer-facing utility.

For example, between 1969 and the founding of the first consumer ISPs, we would see key innovations like Email (1971), the TCP/IP protocol development and standardization (1973-83), the DNS system (1983), the rollout of NSFNET in the mid to late 80s, and the invention of the World Wide Web (HTML, HTTP, URLs) around 1990.

In 2025, the internet feels like an economic and societal essential of modern business and life. And all this started with a stuttering ‘LO.’

The end of dial-up internet means future generations will no longer hear the iconic screech of the dial-up handshake. However, YouTube creator Nick Bild did not want this experience to be lost to history, so he used a Raspberry Pi 3 and a USB Wi-Fi adapter to gather network traffic and convert it into an analog signal that is blasted out of a small speaker. According to Bild’s Hackaday project, he had to add random amplitude and frequency adjustments to make the output sound more interesting, but all the data is sourced from the Wi-Fi network.

Back before the days of DSL and fiber-optic internet, all our data had to travel over phone lines. Since these weren’t designed for digital signals, internet companies had to use modems to convert them into analog signals (i.e., sound) that could be transmitted over the already existing telephone network. The nostalgic screeching sound many born in the ‘90s and earlier hear when connecting to the internet is just the handshake signal between two computers negotiating which protocol they’ll use to communicate. Once the connection has been established, the screeching just turns to static, which is what actual data sounds like.

This was a relatively easy build for Bild, who used a Raspberry Pi 3 with a secondary USB Wi-Fi adapter to collect network traffic from a target computer. These are then sent to an Adafruit QT Py microcontroller, which converts the data to a specific amplitude and outputs an analog signal via an onboard DAC. The output is then fed into a small amplifier so that the tiny 2-watt speaker can play it. Nick says that since the signal is random, you’re bound to hear nothing but static. Although he added random variations to the output to mimic the old sound a bit more, it’s still based on the actual data being transmitted and received by the target computer.

The sound this contraption makes isn’t the same as what we hear from the old modem. After all, dial-up internet made that sound so users could listen to whether the connection was working as expected. Advancements in networking technology meant we no longer needed to do that (and it would probably be annoying to hear that sound from all the devices connected to the internet around us). Still, it would be nice to hear this nostalgic sound, or something similar, to remind us how slow the internet used to be.

The German Koblenz Regional Court has banned 1&1 from referring to its fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) service as fiber-optic DSL, because it still uses copper cables for the final stage of its connections, sometimes for up to a mile. According to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations [machine translated], users who visited the ISP’s website and checked connection availability would get a ‘1&1 fiber optic DSL connection available’ check mark, even if the entire line isn’t composed entirely of fiber optic cables.

However, the reality is that the fiber optic cables end at the distribution box, which is usually installed in the street for residential neighborhoods or at the service room of a multi-unit structure building. From there, the company uses copper lines to run directly into the homes of its subscribers and pairs it with vectoring connection technology that reduces interference between multiple connections that terminate at the box. This boosts the DSL speed up to 100mbps, giving subscribers the impression that they’re paying for and getting fiber optic internet, which is not the case. "However, the plans listed directly below the check results with the label "1&1 Fiber Optic DSL" were not fiber optic plans. In fact, they offered conventional DSL plans," the body explains.

The monthly rates on these connections do reflect DSL pricing, not fiber optic connection costs. But the fact that its branding and presentation have ‘fiber optic’ all over, customers who aren’t familiar with terminology and pricing can be easily confused. Because of this, the German consumer group sued the company, with its chairperson, Ramona Pop, saying that “Anyone who apparently promises fiber optics but can only deliver DSL is deceiving customers.”

German courts have agreed with the consumer group, saying that the company’s use of ‘fiber optics’ was misleading. After all, when customers hear fiber optics, they often assume that they’re getting fiber optics all the way into their homes. And while the fine print reportedly contains information saying that part of the line uses a copper connection, the judiciary said that it wasn’t enough to avoid tricking customers into thinking that the offered connection is full fiber.

Unfortunately, while the consumer group may have won this round, the order isn’t enforceable yet. The company has appealed the ruling, so we will have to wait for the decision of a higher court before 1&1 will be forced to change its advertising.

China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) has taken to social media to boast about foiling a series of cyberattacks it says were directed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) (machine translation). Moreover, the MSS claims to have “irrefutable evidence” to back up its allegations.

According to the MSS WeChat post, the target of the NSA’s sustained series of attacks, dating back to 2022, was China’s National Time Service Center (NTSC).

A casual observer might wonder why a U.S. agency would be interested in causing “international time chaos” by hacking a center that is responsible for the safe and stable operation of Beijing time. But there are many important communications, infrastructure services, and others that rely on high-precision timing services.

The WeChat post from the MSS claims a diverse set of industries, including national communications, finance, electric power, transportation, surveying and mapping, national defense, and other industries, could be thrown into chaos due to NTSC disruption. Not only that, but it goes on to assert that actual harm and losses could occur due to malfunctions like transportation paralysis, aerospace launch failures, and others, caused by computer hacking.

42 cyber weapons

The central allegation made by China’s MSS was that the NSA used 42 different cyber weapons between 2022 and 2024 in order to disrupt the NTSC.

Specific tactics of the U.S. hackers supposedly included:

• Using SMS vulnerabilities to hack and control many of the ‘foreign’ smartphones used by NTSC staffers
• Using stolen logins to infiltrate the NTSC computer systems
• Deploying a new cyber warfare platform on the NTSC computers
• Using “42 special cyberattack weapons”
• Attacking NTSC network capabilities
• Attempting to disrupt China’s high-precision time systems

U.S. ally “springboards”

Elsewhere in the lengthy MSS post, we see it alleged that the U.S. craftily launched most of its attacks “from late night to early morning Beijing time.” The NSA would also use VPNs and countries like “the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan,” as well as places in Europe, as attack “springboards,” the post claims.

To conclude, the MSS laments China’s reputation for being a cyber-threat, while “the United States has pushed cyber hegemony and repeatedly trampled on international cyberspace rules.” However, the “ironclad facts” that “prove that the United States is the real ‘Matrix’ and the biggest source of chaos in cyberspace” were not shared. The two are no strangers to reports of cyber warfare. Earlier this year, Chinese hackers allegedly infiltrated the US Treasury Secretary's PC.

SpaceX revealed its new V3 Starlink satellites, which it says will provide gigabit connectivity to users and enable 60 Tera-bits-per-second downlink capacity on the Starlink network. The company says each launch will add 20 times the capacity of its current V2 mini offering.

The above animation was first shared by SpaceX on Monday, during a live stream of the 11^th flight test of SpaceX’s reusable Starship vehicle, notes PCMag. And now we can see why SpaceX has started to use its more powerful Starship vehicle, in preference over the existing Falcon 9 rocket, which was used for prior generation satellite deployments..

As well as their obviously significantly larger physical form, a V3 satellite is estimated to weigh in at as much as 2,000kg (4,409 pounds). Compare that to the existing V2 Mini satellites, which are less than 600kg, and the V1 satellites at around 300kg.

We’ve established that these V3 Starlink satellites are big and heavy, so what are the network performance gains? SpaceX’s latest social media bulletin regarding the performance of these units is quite brief. However, it highlights that V3 will “bring gigabit connectivity to users and are designed to add 60 Tera-bits-per-second of downlink capacity to the Starlink network.”

Thankfully, there were some prior news releases and filings, which flesh out V3 details. An important one, for example, is that for every upcoming Starship launch, it will be possible to put 60 V3 satellites into orbit. “That's more than 20 times the capacity added with every V2 Mini launch on Falcon 9,” says SpaceX. Moreover, each new V3 satellite boasts 1,000 Gbps of download and 200 Gbps of upload bandwidth, making them better than 10x faster than V2 models.

With the V3 satellites deploying, probably early next year, we might begin to see SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s original vision of a global broadband service materialize. The new satellites’ next-gen architecture should deliver the increased coverage and speed to iron out connectivity and capacity wrinkles some users are experiencing with the service, as it stands. However, it has previously been indicated that Starlink users will need new hardware to benefit from the best speeds V3 satellites will enable.

Hopefully, SpaceX is still designing even its latest, biggest, and heaviest satellites to completely burn up upon reentry, at the end of their working lives. With V3, there’s a lot more mass to be combusted on the way down to Earth, and as more satellites head into orbit, space debris — and that debris falling back to earth — remains a growing concern.

A recent episode of EarthSky highlights the growing risk of satellites, from the increasingly crowded skies, falling to Earth. Key points covered in the video, embedded below, are that there are now around 20,000 objects tracked orbiting the Earth. Of these, 12,000 are working satellites, including 8,000 that form SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. In 2025, we are seeing a “couple of satellite re-entries a day,” with things only going to get worse, while several companies/nations have plans for thousands more satellites.

Host Dave Adalian ruminated on the topic of overcrowded skies with Jonathan McDowell, currently staff scientist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Adalian put it to McDowell that a spate of social media posts showing Starlink satellites burning in the skies shows there is a growing risk from satellite debris. The storied astrophysicist didn’t brush off the host’s concerns as unfounded and agreed, “it's getting pretty busy up there.” He measuredly explained that the risks today, especially from Starlink satellites, are low. However, McDowell called for some kind of global regulation and coordination to keep us Earth dwellers safe.

How crowded is LEO?

As noted, there are currently have about 12,000 satellites up in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), around 8,000 of which are Starlink.

Other than these, there are a growing number of satellites from Western firms like Amazon. Jeff Bezos’ rockets have put ~100 into space, with thousands more planned. Another Western firm, ESpace, is reportedly yet to get its satellite roster into double figures, but has posted filings indicating it wants several hundred thousand satellites in LEO.

Then there are nations like China, which want an independent communications system in orbit. One Chinese company has already launched over 100 satellites. It is thought China is likely to contribute tens of thousands more to the skies in due course.

In the same or similar orbit, McDowell notes there are also about “a million centimeter-sized fragments” that are not tracked.

Why are satellites failing / falling?

According to the astrophysicist being interviewed, a commercial satellite will work as intended for a median of about five years. Then they are retired, and their orbits are lowered. Eventually, the atmosphere drags them in the rest of the way, before they re-enter “at an unpredictable location.” The bad thing is, they can and do sometimes drop debris over a populous area…

Kessler Syndrome

In the 70s, scientist Don Kessler warned that too many satellites in a similar orbit could cause a chain reaction of collisions and debris, causing further collisions. McDowell said that with all the mega constellations planned, and an unexpected big radiation event (for example), things “could get bad very quickly.” Moreover, there is a risk of this chain reaction being sparked by old space-age debris falling from higher orbits.

Starlink satellites are probably safer than some others

Afghanistan’s fiber networks are being disconnected by the governing Taliban. The reason for the ban on fast internet connectivity is to “prevent immorality,” according to a Taliban spokesman, as quoted by Sky News. As many as 10 out of 34 provinces in the country have already been affected, according to sources.

Taiwan has intensified patrols around the 24 undersea cables that connect it with the global internet. For the most efficient use of Taiwan’s limited coast guard resources, it is paying particular attention to “96 blacklisted China-linked boats,” reports Reuters. The strategy update is hoped to address what is seen as an increasingly popular gray-zone warfare tactic, namely the threat of sabotaging undersea connections.

For its exclusive report on the state of the subsea communications cable threat around the island, Reuters took a trip on the 100-ton Taiwan Coast Guard Ship PP-10079. We mentioned this exact vessel in our report on the severing of Chungwha Telecom’s TP3, by the Togo-registered (but Chinese-crewed) Hong Tai back in February.

PP-10079 monitored and eventually apprehended the Hong Tai after it became apparent its suspicious movements could be associated with the TP3 cable damage. The Chinese captain of Hong Tai was found guilty of deliberately severing TP3 in legal proceedings this summer.

On board the PP-10079, the Reuters reporter was told by the captain that suspected China-backed incursions “have severely undermined the peace and stability of Taiwanese society.” Of course, internet connectivity is also a key resource that is vital for government, businesses, and personal users, too.

24-hour patrols, detectors, radar

Surveillance has been ramped up to 24-hour patrols in reaction to the new gray-zone threat. Ships are aided by newly deployed technology. For example, the source notes that coast guard vessels are sent alerts when vessels come within a 1km range of TP3, travelling at a slow speed. Dozens of radar stations around the island are also scanning for suspicious ships.

Russian playbook

Crew members of the Eagle S oil tanker have been charged with “aggravated sabotage and aggravated interference with telecommunications” by Finnish authorities, reports The Guardian. Specifically, the captain, first, and second officers of the Eagle S are now in trouble with the long arm of Finnish law, over allegations they intentionally damaged five undersea cables by dragging their ship's anchor across the sea floor for over 50 miles.

Late last year, this oil tanker, thought to be operating as part of the Russian ‘shadow fleet,’ was suspected of being behind some high-profile internet cable sabotage that occurred in the Baltic Sea. There was a flurry of such damage in late 2024, with European politicians talking about Russia being engaged in ‘hybrid warfare.’ The 'shadow fleet' designation indicates the tanker, registered in the Cook Islands, is understood to be a Russian vessel sailing under a foreign flag to evade sanctions.

Concerning the case of this particular vessel, some of you will remember our report late last year, when Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) pointed the finger at the Eagle S. Its crew was suspected of being the culprit behind the severing of the Estlink 2 power cable, and several other internet and communications cables connecting Finland and Estonia, on Christmas Day 2024.

Investigators found evidence of “almost a hundred kilometers” of anchor dragging on a path followed by the Eagle S in the Baltic. The ship/crew was already facing legal trouble, under scrutiny for an aggravated arson charge and the aggravated regulation offense due to its (mis)handling of its oil cargo.

News that charges are now being filed by Finnish prosecutors suggests that sufficient evidence has been gathered to make such a legal maneuver worthwhile. Remember, Finnish border guards plus a police contingency boarded and seized the Eagle S on December 26.

The seized vessel was released from Finland's Svartbäck anchoring site in February 2025. However, the Guardian report says the three accused crew members have remained “under a travel ban in Finland.”

The jurisdiction question

A software engineer and developer, who previously accused Amazon Web Services (AWS) of a “digital execution,” has shared the good news that his data has now been restored. What made this impossible task possible was “one human being inside AWS [who] decided to give a damn,” according to data deficit disaster victim Abdelkader Boudih. The same insider source shared some interesting but worrisome insights about what went on behind the scenes during the days when robotic AWS reps insisted Boudih’s precious 10 years of data had been “terminated.”

‘Human’ contact made at AWS

In the earlier episode, we heard about an unnamed insider at AWS reaching out to Boudih. That character was never verified, though they apparently knew too much about this particular case to be a common prankster. Around the same time as we reported on the original debacle, an AWS employee had reached out via official channels to give hope that there would be some way to recover the precious data.

Tarus Balog was basically the first ‘human’ level contact from AWS, according to Boudih. Previous AWS-sourced responses were, in comparison, of a very scripted nature. However, Balog showed empathy and seemed to speak as someone with authority, telling the already long-suffering software engineer that leaders at AWS were aware of his data deletion blog, and were looking to make sure such cases were prevented, going forward.

Balog initially refrained from promising to recover the lost data, but cogs were definitely whirring at AWS at this point (August 5). The case was escalated to the top-level severity ticket available to ‘mortals’, and apparently the AWS CEO actually became aware of this particular incident at this time.

Account restored but tainted by 'deception'

The next morning (August 6), Boudih woke to the news – officially from Amazon – that his account had been restored. Though this was extremely welcome news, it was tainted with “AWS support’s incompetence - or deception,” according to the blog update.

What stuck in Boudih’s craw was the prior insistence of AWS staffers that all his data had been terminated. “The instances were stopped. Not terminated. Stopped.” Stressed the engineer, obviously angry about what he called “gaslighting” by previous AWS contacts. Moreover, his RDS instanced had been backed up as recently as July 19 – several days after support had insisted that everything was “terminated.”

Nevertheless, Boudih refrained from insisting AWS reps were outright lying. There was also the possibility that there was an “undocumented ability to restore ‘terminated’ instances - which would make sense as a safeguard against internal sabotage or mistakes.” There is also the excuse of AWS employee incompetence to consider, but Boudih seems to favor the theory that that prior support contacts “gaslit me about infrastructure.”

Story not unique – the shared payer problem

According to Reddit threads that spawned in the wake of Boudih’s dizzying initial post, this alarming case was far from unique. The shared payer model has inherent flaws, other social media users appeared to confirm, especially if one party defaults on payments due. This appears to be what caused the software engineer's AWS account and data to be suspended, then terminated.

Account suspension is "part of AWS’s standard security protocols for accounts that fail the required verification," AWS stated in an email to Tom's Hardware. But it didn't explain the apparent subsequent and rapid termination.

In the previous story, Boudih mused whether an account suspension could be escalated to termination, due to some billing issue with a previous shared payment party. That looks quite likely in retrospect.

'Terraforming, not destruction'

Taara, Google's quirky underdog project of the day, seeks to fire internet signals using light beams across long distances above ground, an innovation over fiber optics, radio signal, and satellite reception. Developed by X, Google's go-big-or-go-home research wing, the Taara project has announced that it has downsized its reception/output terminals from the size of a traffic light to a 13mm silicon chip.

X, the moonshot factory (a subtitle only slightly more humble than "X, the everything app"), has been developing Taara for the last seven years as a replacement for fiber optic internet cable. Mahesh Krishnaswamy, Taara's general manager, shared in yesterday's announcement, "Fiber is high-speed connectivity's gold standard, but it's often unsuitable because it's costly, impractical, or geographically impossible." For those unable to dig for fiber, or in dense population centers where Starlink is less effective, Taara hopes to step in.

Taara's Lightbridges, the project's first-generation release, can fire beams of non-visible light capable of sending data at up to 20 Gbps up to 20km away. The original bridges mount onto cell towers, measuring 2.5 ft tall. Much of this volume is filled with mirrors and sensors to self-calibrate against a bridge's matched pair. With the new Taara chip, which shrinks the bridge down to the size of a fingernail, the mechanical alignment process is replaced with software that has allowed researchers to transmit data at 10 Gbps over 1km outdoors.

"Our team imagines a future where connectivity isn’t bound by cables or constrained by cost," Krishnaswamy continues. "By dramatically reducing the size and complexity of our systems, our aim is to eventually drastically reduce the cost of connectivity, creating a network effect within the industry."

Not just content to steal Elon Musk's favorite letter, X researchers hope to compete against Starlink for use cases necessitating non-standard internet connections. Taara was originally born out of Google's Project Loon, a now-shuttered project based on creating a network of hundreds of weather balloons transmitting internet connections. Taara, as a more practical terrestrial solution, avoids some of the traps of satellite connections, such as lower speeds in urban centers, while still having some quirks of its own (anything from misty weather to passing birds could temporarily interrupt the light beam firing your internet).

To Taara's credit, the technology has proven quite successful in the real world. Taara's Lightbridges have already been successfully deployed across the planet, serving Caribbean islands whose undersea cables snapped, Indian urban centers waiting for 5G support, and a host of other scenarios.

Taara's next step is continuing to iterate on the new Taara chip design, planning "to extend both the chip’s range and capacity by creating an iteration with thousands of emitters." The future beyond that? Pushing above-ground light-based internet as the future of internet connectivity, supplanting radio wave-based connections entirely. After all, the 5G airwaves are getting crowded, but there is "near-infinite bandwidth" in the space between infrared and visible light.

With Google's track record of prematurely killing off promising projects, we can only hope Taara survives long enough to live up to these lofty aspirations. Still, for every Stadia that dies in a fiery inferno, there is a Waymo that survives to drive another day. If Taara can cut the mustard, we'll be excited to see how it shakes up internet connections. Maybe Google's research wing can redeem the letter "X" after all.

Starlink just launched an AU$15 (about US$9) monthly plan in Australia for existing users. This is a massive discount from the AU$139 (about US$86) monthly fee that users from the Land Down Under pay, but it comes with a stingy 5GB data cap. If you need more data, you could purchase Roam data at AU$3 (about US$1.86) per GB, which allows you to use your Starlink practically anywhere. According to PCMag, this news comes just days after the company started offering a US$50 monthly plan that comes with 50GB of Roam data.

Unfortunately, this plan isn’t available to new users, so you either must have an existing account or have previously subscribed to Starlink to take advantage. Starlink’s email to its customers requires you to log into your Starlink account and choose the “Backup” plan option under “Activate Service” for a preexisting Starlink dish. So, you won’t see this option listed under Starlink’s Service Plans when you’re applying for a new line.

Although affordable, many commenters have criticized the 5GB limit as too low, with some saying that almost all phone plans come with that amount of data, or more. Furthermore, the add-on rate for Roam data is just as expensive compared to other data plans. The average person might use, say, 30GB a month, which means if you’re a family of four, you’ll pay AU$360 (about US$225) for 120GB of data. But if you use a lot of data (like streaming a lot of 4K videos), then you’ll spend a lot more.

However, others say that this isn’t for the average user — instead, it’s only supposed to serve as a backup for areas that only have one or two wired service providers and no phone service at all. So, in case you lose internet connection for a short while, you could remain online. And if the outage lasts longer than expected, you could purchase additional data as needed.

Given that Starlink plans aren’t under contract, users could just purchase the needed hardware and then sign up for the service when they need to. This means there are potentially thousands (if not millions) of Starlink hardware in the wild gathering dust and not giving the company cash flow. By enticing users who do not have reliable backup internet to purchase a cheap monthly subscription, the company could earn money from these Starlink dishes that are otherwise unused.

Taiwanese telecommunications company Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard reported last Saturday, January 4, that the Trans-Pacific Express Cable System, which directly connects Taiwan to the U.S. East Coast, Japan, South Korea, and China, has been damaged by a Cameroon-flagged freighter named Shunxing39. However, although the ship is registered in the West African country, Taiwanese officials say that the cargo ship is owned by Jie Yang Trading Limited—a Hong Kong-registered company—and lists Guo Wenjie, a mainland Chinese citizen, as its sole director, according to a Financial Times report.

Shungxing39’s tracking data showed that it dragged its anchor at the site of damage to the cable and that it has also been operating close to Taiwan’s northern waters since December. “This is another case of a very worrying global trend of sabotage against subsea cables,” said a senior Taiwanese national security official. “The ships that are involved in these incidents are typically rundown vessels that have little above-the-board business. This one, too, is in very bad shape. It is similar to the ships that are part of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet.’” He also suggested that the track the suspected ship took means that this was a deliberate act and not an accident.

The Taiwanese Coast Guard has conducted an external inspection of the Shungxing39 and talked to its captain on the radio. However, rough weather made it impossible to board the ship during the incident, and the country has not yet had time to seize it for further investigation. Because of this, Taiwan is asking for assistance from South Korean authorities, as the ship’s next port of call is Busan.

This is the latest incident in several months where a ship with questionable registration or ownership is suspected of deliberately cutting an undersea communications cable. The first one was in November, when a Chinese bulk carrier, Yi Peng 3, reportedly cut two cables connecting Finland and Sweden to Central Europe. Another incident happened on December 25, when an oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet damaged an undersea power cable and communications cables between Finland and Estonia.

Undersea cables are marked on most shipping charts to ensure vessels do not accidentally damage them when deploying their anchors. However, it seems that it’s recently being used to deliberately target these vulnerable infrastructures, so NATO is planning to deploy sea drones to help monitor and protect these cables. Unfortunately, Taiwan is located on the other side of the globe, so it must create its own solution to this threat.

Defending its interests is far more crucial for the island nation as its bigger neighbor, the People’s Republic of China, claims sovereignty over the entire island. The latter has threatened to invade Taiwan to put it under its control forcibly, and one of the openings of any invasion is communication disruption.

Aside from this physical act of cutting a key communications cable, Reuters has also reported the Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwan’s government have averaged about 2.4 million times a day—double the daily average in 2023. Taipei is concerned with these moves; although they fall below the threshold of outright aggression and open attack, they still make it harder to defend the island if China mounts a full-scale invasion.

The Web Design Museum is playing its part in the Christmas festivities by highlighting the 34th anniversary of the release date of the first-ever web browser and web page editor, an application called WorldWideWeb, and the museum has created a nifty web app emulator to celebrate the occasion. You can try the emulator here.

The WorldWideWeb browser is a truly seminal piece of computer software, to say the least. Developed by the inventor of the Internet, it was the first application to allow Internet access and made creating and editing hypertext (HTML) from within the application super accessible. The WorldWideWeb browser would later be renamed to Nexus so the browser wouldn't be confused with the term for the "World Wide Web (Internet)" it's used to connect to.

The original WorldWideWeb application, released on Christmas of 1990, was developed by industry legend Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote the initial version of the application and finished it "some time before [we] closed for Christmas," per his own blog post on the topic. WorldWideWeb was also written on a PC running the NeXTSTEP operating system made by NeXT Computer, rather than Windows.

Savvy tech historians may recall that NeXT Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, like Apple, and was his primary stomping ground from 1983 to 1996, a 12-year stint after which Apple re-acquired NeXT and re-hired Steve Jobs as its CEO. NeXT is also known as the operating system used by id Software to develop both original Doom FPS games and the full 3D follow-up, Quake.

While WorldWideWeb certainly has no modern browsing utility (even if you could connect to modern web pages with it, the modern Internet is far more demanding than machines of the 90s could ever handle and reliant on standards those machines do not support), it's still a truly fascinating piece of computing history. The "emulator" developed by Web Design Museum, usable in your current browser, will allow you to experiment with the first-ever web browsing interface based on NeXT and browse some saved pages, but actually browsing the live web with it won't work.

For those among you who want an idea of just how primitive the technology behind the Internet used to be in its early stages— and how this primitive tech trailblazed the way for modern browsers and operating systems to take their present foothold— Web Design Museum's WorldWideWeb emulator is a fun way to waste some time and ponder the history of the computing space. Considering just how important it wound up being to NeXT Computer's success and Steve Jobs eventually taking back Apple, we'd almost certainly be in a completely different era of tech today without it, even if someone else had beat Berners-Lee to the punch of the first fully-functioning web browser.

Following a spate of undersea cable disruptions in the recent weeks, with the most recent happening in November, NATO is drawing up plans for a fleet of naval surveillance drones to monitor the major bodies of water surrounding Europe — specifically, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean.

French Admiral Pierre Vandier, the current Supreme Allied Commander in charge of evolving NATO forces and capabilities, told Defense News that doing this is similar to having CCTV cameras mounted on street lights to help monitor urban trouble spots and record evidence. “The technology is there to make this street lighting with USVs,” says Vandier. He also added that the deployment of this system would allow the alliance to “see and monitor daily its environment.”

USVs, or unmanned surface vessels, aren’t new technology. The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which operates in and around the Middle East, has been working on this technology since 2021. It even has its own unit—Task Force 59 (TF 59)—whose primary role is to integrate these drones and the AI behind them into the Fleet’s operations. More recently, the U.S. Navy established TF 59.1, a smaller group within the unit that’s tasked with testing and upgrading systems provided by defense contractors to ensure that they’re ready for operational deployment.

NATO officials believe they can use similar platforms that the Fifth Fleet uses, which will simplify and speed up USV deployment. However, the Admiral's office still needs to do a lot of things, especially as there are no specific details yet about the planned seaborne monitoring and reconnaissance system. “There is no name, just USV Fleet,” says Vandier. But because it will probably use an already existing system, it has set June 2025 as the launch date of the drone surveillance fleet—just in time for the next NATO Summit.

The surface fleet is just the beginning for NATO, though, as Vandier also plans to deploy underwater USVs. This is especially crucial as Russia, NATO’s current primary adversary, is reportedly planning strategies to disrupt the internet, GPS, and communications systems to gain an advantage if and when armed conflict erupts.

Cloudflare, the Connectivity Cloud colossus, reckons the recent undersea internet cable damage events in the Baltic Sea have had “little-to-no observable impact.” Despite the sneaky suspected cable-cutting antics of what are considered Chinese/Russian entities, European internet infrastructure has proved resilient due to significant redundancy, according to pre- and post-damage observations.

It is easy to say ‘This is fine’ but Cloudflare has backed up its assertions with a series of graphs charting internet traffic volume and quality metrics spanning the cable sabotage events. Both the BCS East-West Interlink, connecting Lithuania and Sweden, and the C-Lion1 cable, between Finland and Germany, have been damaged to varying degrees in recent days.

Above, we have embedded a couple of sample charts for Germany, which we think illustrate Cloudflare’s point beautifully. The ‘internet quality’ measures seem to be the best illustration of the resilience of European internet infrastructure.

Most pleasingly, for Europeans, the key performance characteristics of the internet quality in Sweden, Lithuania, Finland, and Germany - such as available/used bandwidth and latency - seem to suffer from no adverse effects.

Cloudflare highlights that countries like Sweden have over 20 submarine cables landing on their shores. The coasts of Finland and Germany are also well served by redundancy, with 10 or so undersea cables each.

In conclusion, the Baltic trawling ne'er-do-wells have truly inflicted barely a scratch on the European internet infrastructure. The probable hostile actions are still very unwelcome. However, the same kind of cable-cutting skulduggery has previously been seen to be very effective when targeted against “a concentrated point of vulnerability, whether for an individual network provider, city/state, or country.” Luckily that didn’t happen in the Baltic bordering nations of Europe, this time.

Of course, a hostile actor could continue to sneakily chip away at internet cables traversing open seaways. Thankfully, the recent report about the Danish Navy boarding and detaining the ‘Chinese ship’ shows that affected nations aren’t scared to show their teeth. The security of a nation's internet connectivity has been vital for decades now, and is probably not far behind supplies of civilization-essentials like food and energy.

A fiber-optic internet cable connecting Finland to Germany and another between Lithuania and Sweden, both running under the Baltic Sea, were cut within 24 hours of one another. While accidental damage on undersea cables happens, CNN says these are rare events. So the near-simultaneous disruption of two cables around 65 miles apart is a sign of sabotage, says German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

“Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed,” said Pistorius. “We have to know that, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a hybrid action, and we also have to assume that, without knowing by whom yet, that this is sabotage.” The Finnish and German foreign ministers issued a joint statement, saying “the fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times.” They also add, “Our European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors.”

These events came a few months after NATO warned that Russia was developing strategies to disrupt the global internet, with the latter mapping undersea fiber-optic cables as future reference. Right before the suspected sabotage occurred, the US government allowed Ukraine to use long-range US weapons to attack targets in the Kursk region inside Russia, enflaming tensions further and heightening suspicions of Russian involvement.

In recent history, this isn’t the first such act of internet sabotage in NATO: France suffered fiber-optic cable sabotage during the Olympic games in Paris. There are also other reports of acts of sabotage, like arson, cyberattacks, and even bombings, that happened within NATO’s borders during the past few years.

Despite these attacks, internet disruption remains limited. Telia Lithuania, the company that runs the Lithuania-Sweden cable, says the damaged cable handled about a third of Lithuania’s internet capacity. That traffic has already been restored, even though the cable is yet to be repaired. Cinia, the company behind the Finland-Germany fiber-optic cable, also confirmed that service through that line was down. It also said that its telecommunications network is run through multiple links, thus limiting disruption.

Still, Western nations plan to secure their undersea communications while cutting out companies with links to current adversaries like Russia and China. After all, keeping lines of communication is key for effective coordination, and one of the opening moves of any offensive is to disrupt it. Ensuring that the front lines and headquarters can communicate could mean the difference between holding an incursion back by routing reserves to where they’re needed or allowing a division to steamroll through an area because your troops aren’t where they need to be.

Earlier this week, news broke of a major hack on the Internet Archive, which leaked 31 million users' account info and temporarily took the service offline. The breach date later given seems to be September 28. Yesterday evening, October 13, an operator of the Internet Archive confirmed that the service was back online, albeit in a more limited read-only form.

The greater security breach also served as a climax to sustained cyber-attacks that have been ongoing since May of this year. Many speculate that these are the work of greedy publishers or other shady interests since no one else would be incentivized to attack the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine, which is essentially a digital library in function.

As of writing, Archive.org and its Wayback Machine are still functional as described in the original Tweet, which means they are in read-only mode and (unfortunately) do not offer a direct option for saving pages. They are also a bit slower than usual, which could be attributed to recovering servers, extra DDOS prevention measures, or perhaps both.

Unfortunately, there is no apparent motive for these attacks on Archive.org. The closest we have to a direct message from the attackers is simply a comment saying, "Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!" HIBP, or Have I Been Pwned, is a public database of security breaches for the uninitiated.

It was seemingly done for no other reason than pure, cruel kicks or a significant under-the-table payment from a party or parties who would have a financial incentive to bring down The Internet Archive however they can, inside or outside of court.

In any case, we can only hope that Archive.org continues to bounce back from these attacks and that the community at large does what it can to pitch in and help Internet Archive fight back against attackers in both the legal and cybersecurity spheres. Unfortunately, the very existence of this much free information and historical data is not only at stake but actively despised by several parties who wish to poison or destroy the public's spring of knowledge by any means necessary.

According to Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle and 'Have I been Pwned?' founder Troy Hunt via Bleeping Computer The Internet Archive was hacked. Resulting in a data breach of its user authentication database containing 31 million accounts.  Users found out when they saw the website displaying a JavaScript alert to let visitors know the site was breached. Along with the data breach, the website was defaced and DDoS'd (Distributed Denial of Service). 

The following was the message on the pop-up:

"Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!."

Data breach look-up website 'Have I been Pwned?' (HIBP) Creator Troy Hunt confirmed that the they received the user database as a 6.4 GB SQL file approximately nine days ago. It was further confirmed that it contained the email addresses, screen names Bcrypt-hashed passwords and the timestamps of password changes. Based on a timestamp in the last entry in the database, it is likely it was hacked on September 28, 2024. HIBP subscribers, just like one of our editors, received a notification after the hack was confirmed by the Internet Archive. 

Hunt confirmed that The Internet Archive has begun its disclosure process and The Internet Archive team confirmed that the data would be loaded into the service in 72 hours, he has not received any communication from the team, since. It is also not known how the hack was possible, resulting in such a large user data leak.

Jason Scott from the Internet Archive confirmed that they've disabled the JavaScript library, scrubbed the systems and upgraded security. At the time of writing, neither The Internet Archive nor The WayBack Machine is back online. He confirmed that no reasoning or demands were made to them. As of now, an account on X called SN_Blackmeta claims responsibility for this hack and also said they are planning another attack tomorrow. The target for the next website is not revealed at this time. Internet Archive has also not yet published any public statement.

The Internet Archive carries a wealth of information from internet resources to books, news, footage, videos, music and other information, accessible and available to the public. One will be able to reset their passwords once the website is up and perhaps receive an email from IA for a reset. It should also be noted that The Internet Archive confirmed in May this year that it is facing sustained attacks and a result has been struggling against such attacks. 

It is also best if users have random passwords for different websites to avoid any situation of a leaked password used by anyone to access accounts of other websites and services. For those who use the same password for multiple websites, it is best if those are also changed.

Update 9/23 07:34 PT

Elecrow has responded to our request for comment with this statement

"On the morning of September 23, our company received an email from Jeff messaged that our ESP series tutorial videos may infringed upon his voice cloning rights, along with the video content. First of all, We recognize that this is a very basic and serious issue, and have promptly launched an internal investigation. Through the investigation, we found out that the video was made by one of our employees." The employee was "not fully familiarized with our company culture or received enough training." The statement goes on to say that the employee did not consider the "copyright issue" and that the infringing videos were released without management approval.

Elecrow's CEO has responded directly to Geerling and offered compensation to Geerling for the issue. We have reached out to Jeff Geerling for his comment.

Elecrow has removed the videos, citing that it is a "direct response to the error in our work". Internal training with the marketing team will see an improved content review mechanism that will prevent future infringements.

Original Article

Renowned Raspberry Pi expert and YouTuber Jeff Geerling joins Scarlett Johansson on the list of people impersonated by AI. In his latest video, Geerling compares his own voice to an AI-generated voice used in a series of Elecrow tutorial videos.

In Geerling's video, entitled "They stole my voice with AI", Geerling talks about how he thinks his voice was cloned. There is no evidence, but Geerling believes that the AI voice was trained on his videos and then used to narrate a series of Elecrow tutorials for the Raspberry Pi Pico and the ESP32. Topics that Geerling also covers in his videos. Geerling has covered Elecrow's products on his channel, reviewing the CrowPi 2, and he states that he "didn't have a bad relationship with them [Elecrow] in the past."

As of checking on September 23, 2024, all of the Elecrow videos that Geerling links to, have been made unavailable, possibly due to the highlighted situation. Looking back through Elecrow's videos, we cannot find any videos that sound like Geerling. But, many AI-generated voiceovers are being used in its product videos.

Earlier this year, an "eerily similar" clone of Scarlett Johansson's voice was used as the basis of OpenAI's "Sky" AI voice. According to an NBC report, Johansson was approached by Sam Altman in September 2023, as he sought to hire her to voice the GPT-4o chatbot. Johansson ultimately declined but was then alerted to "Sky" and its vocal similarities. Geerling comments that because of this, he thought that companies were being "very careful with the AI voices that they use". According to Geerling, he is unaware of any legal precedent for the unauthorized use of AI voice cloning. There is precedent for "not using someone's voice in commercial work without their consent", covered under the US Supreme Court case between Bette Midler and Ford Motor Company. Middler versus Ford covers the user of a Bette Midler impersonator used in a series of Ford commercials in the 1980s.

Geerling was keen for Elecrow to take down the videos, and it seems with the video series now being unavailable that they have complied. We've reached out to Elecrow, offering a right to reply. We will update this story with a response.

The United States is preparing a “New York Joint Statement” that outlines its plans to help secure global submarine communications cables that network the globe. This draft, which is set for signing by the U.S., EU member states, and other American allies later this month, demands that undersea cable operators must have supply chain and data security measures on their networks and that they report security incidents for monitoring.  

The draft will push signees to work only with trusted suppliers from allied countries, potentially pushing out providers from unfriendly regimes like China, reports Politico. This was similar to the move that Washington made a few years back, when it pushed Chinese companies like Huawei out of its 5G infrastructure and encouraged its allies to do the same.

It seems that Washington fears that the Chinese government could order Chinese companies working on undersea cables to stop delivering at any moment, or that it could demand operators to disrupt the operations of the undersea networks they manage. While some may say that this is absurd, Russia has attempted to disrupt European networks on the eve of its invasion of Ukraine with varying degrees of success.

If Chinese companies install or run major submarine cables, they could potentially be commanded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to sabotage their operations and cut off global communications, especially during the crucial moments before a major event, like an invasion. So, the draft says that signatories must rely on “reliable and trusted cable components and services.”

Aside from the use of trusted suppliers, the draft also encourages “undersea cable network service providers and operations and maintenance providers to have transparent ownership, partnerships, and corporate governance structures” to ensure that the companies working on the undersea networks have a clear organizational and ownership structure. That way, the involved governments know who exactly they’re dealing with, preventing an unknown entity from taking control.

Although NATO is also working on an automated backup that will relay subsea internet traffic to satellites in case of an attack, the protection of undersea cables from disruption will always be preferable. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

Russia's Ministry of Digital Development plans to spend nearly 60 billion roubles ($660 million) over the next five years to enhance its Internet censorship system known as Technical Measures to Combat Threats (TSPU), reports Reuters citing Forbes Russia. The goal is seemingly to strengthen tools that block virtual private networks (VPNs) and restrict access to content deemed illegal or restricted by the Russian government.

TSPU blocks VPNs and websites

Russia's homegrown TSPU system uses deep packet inpsection (DPI) to monitor and block access to services and websites that the Russian government considers harmful. The TSPU can be activated by various types of traffic, including IP-based, SNI-based (Server Name Indication), and QUIC-based (Quick UDP Internet Connection), resulting in six distinct blocking mechanisms. The TSPU system, is controlled by Roskomnadzor, a government agency responsible for blocking services (such as the Telegram messenger) and websites.  

TSPU was formalized under a 2019 law requiring Internet service providers to install equipment supplied by the government to ensure 'stability and security of the Internet.' The system — which is a complex of hardware and software — has been in place for several years, with over 6,000 devices installed across Russia by 2022. 

In the next five years (2025-2030), there are plans to upgrade the existing TSPU systems and install new ones at communication nodes, taking into account network expansion and the yearly increase in traffic. As part of the TSPU modernization, new hardware and software will be acquired, and the system's capabilities will be enhanced by creating new signatures and updating current ones. Additionally, the development of the Automated Security System (ASBI), which is Roskomnadzor's official name of the system for blocking content and defending against DDoS attacks, will boost TSPU's bandwidth to 725.6 Tbps and increase its efficiency in blocking VPNs. 

In fact, blocking VPU is the main focus of this upgrade as VPNs are commonly used by Russian citizens to bypass government blocks on websites, including YouTube, and for access to independent media. While Roskomnadzor has already made significant strides in curbing VPN usage, this new funding will enhance its capacity to do so, aiming to block 96% of VPNs. 

However, experts point out that TSPU may still struggle to block all VPN protocols. While the system can identify and block common VPN protocols like OpenVPN and WireGuard, other protocols remain difficult to track. This indicates that the battle between VPN developers and government censors will likely continue, with each side adapting to the other’s strategies. 

Mazay Banzaev, who operates a popular Amnezia VPN service, expressed confidence in a Forbes interview that software developers will continue to innovate ways to bypass government restrictions, regardless of how much the Russian government invests in its censorship systems.

Russia's control over the Internet is increasing

Officially, this $660 million initiative is part of a broader government project aimed at digital transformation and the development of the data economy. Other activities include developing a unified platform to combat fraud and a system to block phishing websites. 

However, Russia's control over Internet content has increased since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The government has blacklisted opposition media websites and banned foreign social media platforms, portraying this as part of a larger information war with the West. This new wave of censorship reflects the countries intensigied efforts to manage online narratives and block access to opposition voices. 

The TSPU system has evidently been prioritized in the government's recent budget as the new 60 billion rouble allocation far exceeda Roskomnadzor's entire 2023 budget of 32.15 billion roubles ($354 million). This indicates the significance of Russia's plans on expanding its censorship infrastructure, especially in light of increased geopolitical tensions.

Researchers from the U.S., Iceland, Sweden, and Switzerland are working with NATO to build a system that will automatically reroute subsea internet and data traffic to satellites if communication is severed by hostile action, natural calamity, or an accident. According to Bloomberg’s report, most of NATO’s internet traffic uses undersea cables, and their disruption could result in a disaster, especially during the opening days of any attack.

NATO has already been investing in protecting its communications cables, setting up a center that focuses on this mission ever since the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was destroyed by a mysterious explosion in September 2022. NATO’s Science for Peace and Security Programme also allocated over $400,000 to the Hybrid Space and Submarine Architecture project to Ensure Information Security of Telecommunications, or HEIST. It will formally launch at Cornell University in New York in late July 2024.

This project comes at a time when global stability is affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s threat to Taiwan, and its provocative and violent actions in Southeast and East Asia. NATO leaders say that Russia is mapping critical US and EU assets, and they fear that undersea cables will be among the first targets during a military crisis.

HEIST’s primary focus is to detect disturbances in undersea cables and automate the rerouting of the data through them to other cables or via satellite if any issues are encountered. Currently, undersea cable companies can detect disturbances to their underwater infrastructure to the nearest kilometer, but the researchers want to narrow this down to the nearest meter.

This system will ensure that communications will not be disrupted even if any of Europe’s subsea communications cables are cut, damaged, or moved. HEIST is also not limited to military applications, as undersea cables could also be affected by natural and artificial events, like earthquakes or wayward ship anchors.

However, NATO’s primary concern is still the integrity of its internal communications. “You would need three or four bombs to just cut off Iceland and its communications,” said Professor Bjarni Már Magnússon, who teaches law at Iceland’s Bifröst University and is also a part of the HEIST project. We could also remember how thousands of Viasat modems were disabled across Europe when Russian state actors hacked them as part of its coordinated effort during its initial push into Ukraine in February 2022. HEIST will help ensure that even if one or another communications cable is compromised, NATO could still function and be able to coordinate its actions.

Aside from protecting the reliability of its communications, NATO should also be worried about the security and integrity of these undersea cables. After all, if the U.S. could tap into the U.S.S.R.’s underwater communication lines during the 1970s with Operation Ivy Bells, then the Russians could do the same today. Even though the messages sent through these cables are usually secured and encrypted, quantum computers could threaten even the most advanced encryption.

This week in people proving we don't deserve nice things, the nonprofit Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine are being hit by "tens of thousands of fake information requests per second", per an official Archive.org blog post explaining why stability and access have been suffering since the attack started on Sunday. Fortunately, all of the actual data seems to be safe, but the Internet Archive getting knocked offline and slowed down by DDoS attacks isn't good for...anybody, really, except maybe greedy publishers and other shady interests.

Make no mistake: the Internet Archive is a very important resource for the web and its users at large. Cached web pages come in clutch whenever the original host has gone offline, and is useful for posterity/accountability with revisions, edits, errors, and so on. Indeed, the Wayback Machine is so fundamental that when Google cut its own web page caching service, and told everyone to use Internet Archive instead!

Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive, made several comments on the matter in an official blog post. He clarified "We are hardening our defenses to provide more reliable access to our library. What is new is this attack has been sustained, impactful, targeted, adaptive, and importantly, mean."

He further elaborated, "If our patrons around the world think that this latest situation is upsetting, then they should be very worried about what the publishing and recording industries have in mind. I think they are trying to destroy this library entirely and hobble all libraries everywhere. But just as we're resisting the DDoS attack, we appreciate all the support in pushing back on this unjust litigation against our library and others."

In the alleged words of infamous hacker Stewart Brand, "Information wants to be free". Now make no mistake: finding ways to support your favorite publications, authors, and so on is still important — but that importance doesn't justify obfuscating potentially life-critical information out of sheer spite. The Internet Archive is a critical resource for every Internet user, viewer, or creator, and such malicious attacks on a shared spring of knowledge reveal a deep lack of character and foresight on the party or parties involved.

Here's an idea: if the perps behind this attack don't like the Internet Archive or how it may archive 'their' your content, why not provide better availability/service instead of resorting to legal and technical sabotage? God forbid a copyright holder or Internet troll be forced to innovate.

China is testing a new large language model (LLM) and conversational AI that will, among other things, allow the country’s citizens to ask President Xi Jinping how to be better socialists. The country’s Cyberspace Research Institute recently announced the chatbot is being tested internally.

The state agency organized a team of experts to develop the chatbot, which was trained using the data from its Cyberspace Research Database. But it’s not just a “What would President Xi do” model. The corpus of information used to train the model also includes “seven major Internet information professional knowledge bases.”

The LLM was built using a “registered domestic open source commercial pre-trained language model,” so it’s not OpenAI’s GPT, Google Gemini, or any of the other well-known AI chatbots. Even once it's released from internal testing, the LLM will be deployed via a dedicated server within the China Cyberspace Research Institute.

China’s Cyberspace Research Institute incorporated President Xi’s book, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, which is recognized as the president’s definitive political philosophy. Other listed works included in the LLM are the "Network Information General Knowledge Base," "Network Information Dynamic Knowledge Base," "Network Information Journal Knowledge Base," and "Network Information Report Knowledge Base."

China Cyberspace Research Institute says users can choose which knowledge base category to use, and can engage the chatbot in an intelligent question-and-answer session. The AI chatbot can also generate manuscripts, summarize bodies of text, and perform translation between Chinese and English, among other tasks.

The Register pointed out an interview with Dr. Simon Lee, global head of Nvidia’s AI Technology Center that the idea of deliberately incorporating a specific figure's ideas and philosophies isn't new. In that interview, Dr. Lee admitted that Nvidia hopes to one day collaborate with researchers to create generative AI-powered replicas of other important historical figures, such as Roman emperors or even Napoleon.

YouTuber Eric Parker demonstrated in a recent video how dangerous it is to connect classic Windows operating systems, such as Windows XP, to the internet in 2024 without any form of security (including firewalls or routers). The YouTuber set up a Windows XP virtual machine with an utterly unsecured internet connection to see how many viruses it would attract. Within minutes, the OS was already under attack from several viruses.

It might seem silly to hook a PC up to the internet purposefully without using any security. However, in the early 2000s, catching a PC directly to the internet without a router was normal. Granted, Windows XP has a built-in firewall, and most people used anti-virus software at the time. Still, running in a completely unprotected state (intentionally or accidentally) was much easier than newer operating systems. On top of this, running Windows XP unsecured in 2024 is even more dangerous since the operating system no longer receives security updates, making it very easy for hackers to get into the OS.

Two minutes after hooking up his Windows XP virtual machine to the internet, Eric Parker found a couple of viruses that randomly installed themselves on the machine, including a virus dubbed "conhoz.exe." Soon afterward, another virus automatically created a brand new Windows XP account dubbed "admina" that apparently was hosting an FTP file server on the machine.

It didn't take long for many other trojans, viruses, and malware to appear on the system. Eventually, Eric Parker installed Malwarebytes on the XP machine to see how many viruses it would catch. It caught eight viruses classified as trojans, backdoors, DNS changers, and adware. There were still more viruses on the machine, but the free version of Malwarebytes Eric Parker used was only able to catch eight of them.

Windows 2000 suffers a similar fate

Eric Parker also did the same experiment in Windows 2000 and discovered even worse effects on the older OS. Within minutes of exposing the OS to the internet (and ensuring all ports are open, including ports for SMB), a virus installed itself on the computer and automatically shut down the virtual machine. After restarting the VM, more viruses appeared, eventually causing the operating system to blue screen.

These two demonstrations represent a worst-case scenario for both operating systems. Without the most basic security measures, online hackers can use tools such as nmap to detect the specific operating system version a vulnerability system is running and able to freely download and run viruses and malware directly on the system once they know it is a system that is vulnerable.

This sort of severe security vulnerability does not exist in modern operating systems. Windows 10 and Windows 11, for example, have far more robust security measures that prevent malware from simply installing itself, even if the firewall is turned off. Eric Parker confirmed that Microsoft operating systems dating back to Windows 7 are unaffected by the previously demonstrated security vulnerabilities. He ran Windows 7 for hours without an anti-virus or firewall on another VM and did not detect any viruses on the system.

In January, two students from UC Santa Cruz discovered a way to make internet-connected washing machines, owned and operated by CSC ServiceWorks, give practically unlimited washing cycles for free. Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko ran a custom script through CSC's mobile app and bypassed the security checks on its servers.

Nowadays, everything connects to the Internet. Not so long ago, one user discovered that his LG washing machine was reportedly sending gigabytes of data daily. The CSC internet-connected washing machines require users to download the app, create an account, and add funds to enable laundry cycles for those users. The students discovered the security flaw in the app that would make the servers allow laundry cycles for the connected accounts, even if these accounts had no funds. The students could also add credits worth several million dollars into one of their accounts, which is reflected in their CSC Go mobile app.

CSC ServiceWorks is a large company that operates in the United States, Canada, and Europe. It caters to multiple multi-housing communities, gas stations, convenience stores, residents, hotels, resorts, laundromats, colleges, and universities. Despite having such an extensive network, CSC ServiceWorks did not have a page for reporting security flaws. Sherbrooke and Taranenko contacted the company via its online contact form in January and spoke to its customer service, but they did not receive any response.

The students eventually submitted their findings to the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University. After waiting over three months, the pair published their report to their cybersecurity club in May. According to the students, CSC eventually wiped out the credits in their accounts but has not patched this vulnerability.

While one may think the downside is free laundry cycles, which would contribute to millions in losses to the company, those with nefarious intents to bypass them can always find ways to do much worse. The students said the flawed API could bypass the safety restrictions, potentially creating a fire hazard. If left unpatched, it's just a matter of time before malicious actors decipher Sherbrooke and Taranenko's script to exploit the vulnerability.