Net Neutrality Political Cartoon

     This political cartoon portrays the effect that losing net neutrality will have on consumers. The oblivious couple walking along represents Internet consumers, and the giant hand portrays the leading cable companies trapping these oblivious consumers with their imposed limitations on internet usage. The net swooping in just as the consumers are wondering what will be of them also represents the suddenness in which this change will take place.

Sony's Playstation Now Service Will Offer Over 100 Streamable Games For 20$ A Month At Launch

     PlayStation now will offer PlayStation 4 only players the chance to play over 100 different PlayStation 3 games, which was previously not an option due to the system's lack of backwards compatibility. The service will not be exclusive to PlayStation 4 however, and will be available on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation TVs, Sony TVs, and the feature is also expected to be integrated into some 2015 Blue-Ray players. While the system will still offer its rental feature which allows users to pay a predetermined fee to temporarily make the games available in their PlayStation now library, upon launch Sony will also allow PlayStation now subscriptions. The subscription prices as they currently stand are 19.99$ for a month or 44.99$ for 3 months, Sony will also be offering an obligation free 7-day trial with full access to everything. The service streams the visual information from Sony managed servers and delivers the image to the player, thus all updates and downloadable content for the games are present. The streaming nature of the server however also places some limitations on it, as failure to meet the minimum 5 Mpbs all dedicated to PlayStation now will cause a reduction in image quality. The service is expected to launch officially on January 13 after nearly a year in beta phase.

Nissan and NASA Establish A Partnership To Advance Autonomous Car Technology

     Japanese automaker company Nissan announced a partnership with NASA on Thursday to improve the technology of autonomous vehicles. The partnership has been established to last 5 years with the purpose of eventually applying autonomous systems to commercial vehicles. NASA researchers will be working in Silicon Valley with Nissan's research unit. The team hopes to create vehicles that can brake themselves when they are about to crash with no need for the driver's intervention, self-parking vehicles, and in the most advanced phases cars without need for a driver all together, although many obstacles must be overcome before these vehicles will be found on public roads. According to Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn "The partnership brings together the best and brightest of NASA and Nissan and validates our investments in Silicon Valley." 

ShotSpotter Technology Could Help Denver Police Maintain Peace and Regulate Gun Usage In The City

     'ShotSpotter' is the name of new high-tech audio equipment which could help police officers detect gunfire in a city within 25 meters of the shooter's location and sometimes even closer. The technology could help dispatch officers to the area within 30 seconds of the detection of the gunfire. On the first night of the system's deployment, authorities were able to detect gunfire, apprehend three suspects on outstanding warrants, and seize a handgun. While the device's abilities seem promising, controversy has risen due to the possibility of the device listening in on public conversation and violating the privacy of the city's citizens. The company's website states the device does not have the ability to detect public speech or conversation on public streets, and the captain of the Denver police department Steven Carter states the device can not be used by police to monitor public conversations. The controversy arose due to the fact that the ShotSpotter company also said that 3 very rare edge cases have been noted in which the devices picked up a human voice loudly yelling on the scene of a gunfire incident for about 2 seconds. If the device proves to work solely as advertised it will be an invaluable tool for police officers, however whether this is true or not will only be determined upon further testing of the technology.

Sony and Microsoft Victims of Hacking of their PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Services

        On Christmas day many gamers faced an inability to play online on both Microsoft's Xbox live services and Sony's PlayStation Network. The attack was committed by hacker group known as Lizard Squad. While Microsoft had their service running again the very Friday after, Sony however was not able to have their servers up and running until the following Sunday. Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attack on the gaming networks, and their attacks only stopped on Christmas day after MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom gave the group 3,000 vouchers to his uploading service. An alleged member of the group was arrested. Vinnie Omari, 22, was arrested by the United Kingdom police after a raid of his home "on suspicion of fraud by false representation and Computer Misuse Act offences [sic]." All of Omari's possessions were confiscated including his Xbox One, phones, laptops,  and computer USBs. Omari was released on Tuesday and no charges have been passed since. Another member of Lizard Squad by the name "ryanc" or simply Ryan, is under investigation by the FBI who believe him to be a Finnish teenager. The group announced that the attacks were nothing more than a publicity stunt to promote their do-it-yourself DDoS tool called Lizard Stresser which the group is currently developing and selling on the online Black Market.

FCC Expected to Vote on New Internet Rules in February

     The Federal Communications Committee is set to vote on a new slate of net neutrality rules this February. The Committee's commissioner Tom Wheeler stated be would circulate a draft proposal of the rules in February on vote on it later during the month according to the Washington Post. Wheeler originally wished the vote to occur late 2014, however due to President Obama requesting the FCC take aggressive steps to ensure all internet traffic was secure, Wheeler was forced to delay action. It remains unclear what the FCC's new proposal will look like, Obama and Democrats in Congress call for a reclassification of broadband internet as a public utility as it would allow for stricter regulations but would lead to a battle in court. The proposal has been blasted by Prominent republicans who claim it would stifle innovation and place internet companies at the mercy of regulators.

Net Neutrality Satirical Cartoon

     This political cartoon portrays the commonly discussed issue of this blog net neutrality. We can see the big companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast destroying the wall of net neutrality by a cannon's force. And the speech bubble in the back summarizes the entire picture, the wall that the FCC had worked so hard to build coming down in one blow.

Satirical Cartoon

        This satirical cartoon portrays the shift of priorities in today's education system. The students are so immersed in their new laptops, they completely disregard the fact that their teacher has been laid off. The lack of a mouths on the students also gives them a robotic and puppet-like look reflective of that of real life students who disregard their lessons and what their teachers are lecturing about, immersed without missing any attention in what lies on their screens. The cartoon also mocks the priority shift of today's schools. The speech bubble holding an announcer's message congratulates the students for their new laptops, although it is safe to assume the money spent on these very machines caused their teacher to be laid off, which the announcer mentions as nothing more than "other news."

New Skype App Translates in Real Time

     Microsoft's Skype, the video and voice call service, is in the preview stage and is to be made open to the public later this year. The service offers real time text and voice translation, although currently the preview only allows voice translations between English and Spanish, over 40 languages are supported as text translations. Microsoft is marketing the product as a translator tool for schools, Skype is already used by teachers to hold class conferences with children from other countries, and Microsoft wishes to expand this practice to more countries and nationalities. The preview is currently compatible with Windows 8.1 and preview copies of Windows 10. The translator is of course not perfect, Darren Orf from Gizmodo.com tested out the program and noted that while the speech recognition was very accurate, as the words per minute number increases the recognition's quality can decrease. Orf also noted that the translations can be rather broken, and for someone who has no knowledge of the language in which they are being spoken, it can be difficult to decipher what the translator is attempting to say.

You can take a look at Darren Orf's before-mentioned article in which he covers many of the nooks and crannies of the preview program, You may check that out with this link: http://gizmodo.com/skype-translator-hands-on-close-but-no-babel-fish-1671457117

Google Unveiled the First Prototype of It's Self Driving Car

   

      Pictured above is Google's first fully functional prototype for it's self-driving car. The vehicle, unlike its original mock up, contains working head lights and manual controls making it fully functional. The addition of manual controls was due to the requirement of California law regarding driver-less cars which states that all vehicles need to have manual controls in order to be qualified for the road, and also maxes out at a speed of 25 miles per hour for safety reasons. While Google has installed self-driving technology in cars such as Lexus SUV's and Toyota Prius Models this vehicle is the first to be Google's own design. The car is designed to be fuel efficient and compact.

For more information you can read this small video and the accompanying post by Erin Marquis at auto-blog.com: http://www.autoblog.com/2014/12/23/google-unveils-first-real-prototype-of-its-self-driving-car/

Google Released an Unpatched Microsoft Bug to The Public

     Project Zero is the name of a team of security experts compiled by Google to make the internet safer. The team focuses on finding vulnerabilities in critical internet infrastructure. Thus far the team has found vulnerabilities in a variety of operating systems including Android, Linux, iOS, and Mac OS X. Microsoft has been the target of the team's latest endeavor, as a member of Project Zero recently made public a critical bug in Windows 8.1 (and possibly Windows 7) which Microsoft failed to fix in the 90-day period after the team privately disclosed the bug to them. The bug in question gives a user, or a Malware, administrator privileges to make changes to the system by clicking an .exe file. This auto-elevation of privileges means that unauthorized users or Malware could make changes to the system by bypassing all limitations of non-administrators. Microsoft has stated that users would still "need to have valid logon credentials and be able to log on locally to a targeted machine." However as pointed by Steve Dent in his engadget,com Google posts Windows 8.1 vulnerability before Microsoft can patch it, "while that should limit the damage, it doesn't mean the flaw is harmless -- a disgruntled mid-level employee with some programming skills could wreak serious harm." Microsoft was alerted of the bug on September 30, and were warned they had a 90 day period to fix the bug. While Microsoft has admitted to the bug's existence publicly, it has not stated why it has not yet been fixed, the next planned "patch Tuesday," in which Microsoft usually releases its updates, is planned for January 13, but it is unknown if the bug will be fixed then, earlier, or later.

For more information you may visit this article by Lucian Armsau which I ulitized when making this post: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-critical-windows-bug-unfixed,28294.html

Or you may visit the before-mentioned article by Steve Dent: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/02/google-posts-unpatched-microsoft-bug/