Google asks judge to block Miss. attorney general’s inquiry

  JACKSON, MISS. An Internet giant was scheduled to face off with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood on Friday. Google will ask U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate to block an investigation by Hood into the company. Hood has been pushing Google since 2013 to prevent use of the company’s search engine to find illegal […]

Will the internet of things finally kill privacy?

Immense economic pressure could eventually coerce everyone into sharing their information with firms, since not disclosing your data will itself imply that you are undesirable.           In the internet of things, the Federal Trade Commission sees the possibility of flourishing new markets. But it also sees a prologue to Black Mirror: […]

Why Netflix is entering Cuba even though the internet barely works there

  Netflix just launched in the unlikeliest of locales: Cuba, where less than 5% of the population has internet access and the streaming media company’s subscription cost—$8 a month—is almost half of the average salary. The move was made possible by the recent deal to normalize relations with the United States, which included a promise […]

Smart TVs raise privacy concerns

  Reports that new Samsung TVs can capture personal information with their voice recognition feature has sparked concern about what critics perceive as digital spying by so-called smart devices. Nor is Samsung the only smart TV manufacturer collecting this type of data. In Samsung’s case, at least, users have the option to disable the collection. […]

Biggest test in U.S.-Cuba talks: the Internet

Contrary to what the headlines suggest, the biggest test of President Obama’s move to normalize relations with Cuba will not be whether the two countries agree to set up embassies in their respective capitals, nor whether there is an avalanche of U.S. tourists to Cuba, but whether Cuba will accept U.S. help to expand Internet […]

China Further Tightens Grip on the Internet

BEIJING — Jing Yuechen, the founder of an Internet start-up here in the Chinese capital, has no interest in overthrowing the Communist Party. But these days she finds herself cursing the nation’s smothering cyberpolice as she tries — and fails — to browse photo-sharing websites like Flickr and struggles to stay in touch with the […]

Congress should let cities provide their own Internet

PRESIDENT OBAMA made it a point to highlight the importance of providing high-speed Internet access to all Americans in his State of the Union address last week. No one disagrees with the sentiment. The method he proposed, however — removing legislative barriers that prevent some cities and towns from creating their own Internet networks — […]

Cuban youth build secret computer network despite Wi-Fi ban

Cut off from the Internet, young Cubans have quietly linked thousands of computers into a hidden network that stretches miles across Havana, letting them chat with friends, play games and download hit movies in a mini-replica of the online world that most can’t access. HAVANA — Home Internet connections are banned for all but a handful […]

Iran cuts off Internet access

Iran has cut off access to the Internet, leaving millions of people without access to e-mail and social networks. An individual inside the usa showed this morning that Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo electronic mail are not available. Ditto for facebook. up to now, the government has not made any declaration about the carrier interruption. But […]

The Internet’s Perilous New Year’s Resolution

Internet legislation that is scheduled for a vote in the U.S. Senate next month would aim to stop the unlicensed downloading of billions of dollars’ worth of movies and music—as well as the trade in counterfeit drugs and other goods—by blocking access to certain websites, many of them registered abroad. But its basic strategies could […]

Microsoft Reinvents Wi-Fi for White Spaces

Microsoft has developed a new kind of Wi-Fi network that performs at its top speed even in the face of interference. It takes advantage of a new Wi-Fi standard that uses more of the electromagnetic spectrum, but also hops between the narrow bands of unused spectrum within television broadcast frequencies. In 2008, the us Federal […]