On the one hand, there is a victory in the FCC's recent Net Neutrality proposal: the FCC is proposing that Internet Service Providers can't limit access to certain websites or limit speeds of downloads. Imagine if Comcast could throttle Netflix streaming speeds so that the quality never reaches HD, unless you pay them extra for that. That's what this tries to limit. Unfortunately, there is also a clause that the ISPs can conduct "reasonable network management." That could end up being a pretty big loophole for them. The other big issue: cell phone carriers can conduct a lot more "reasonable Read more…

And then there’s Twitter, which jealously guards access to its full stream of tweets (roughly 1,000 per second, these days). As of now, however, it’s signed a deal with Gnip whereby you can get a randomly-selected 50% of those tweets for $360,000 a year, which works out at $30,000 a month. You’re not allowed to republish them, but that’s OK—the people willing to spend that kind of money are likely to be high-frequency trading shops who want to keep the data as private as possible in any case. via blogs.reuters.com I had to look up what a high-frequency trading shop Read more…

Update on this from my brother-in-law, a security expert. No, because Russian hackers do not have access to your post-it notes, and they are the most likely potential thieves. However, changing your password regularly does nothing, because they are harvesting them via keyloggers. The most important thing you can do is run Firefox with the No-Script plugin, to prevent the keyloggers from being installed in the first place.

A few other cool touches: in the top center of the dashboard there’s a bright indicator that lights up green when the car is charging, and flashes when the charge is full. It’s placed there so you can peek out your window or garage door and know, just by glancing through the windshield, the status of the charge. This is cool, too: you can monitor the car’s charge on an iPhone app. You can even warm up the cabin using the app, by remote control, so that it’s toasty on winter days when you’re ready to drive. (A button on Read more…

Maybe it was two weeks without checking in anywhere, but I'm pretty ok letting Foursquare go for now. I had friends on it, and it was kind of fun getting mayorships and badges. But it just never really solidified the way other social networks have for me (twitter and facebook mainly). I was pretty religious about checking in for about the last 10 months, but the benefits weren't outweighing the downside. What downside? Always pulling out my phone whenever I went into a coffee shop or restaurant, for one. I'm consciously trying to reduce the number of times in a Read more…