Verizon using recent Net Neutrality victory to wage war against Netflix – Dave’s Blog.
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Well… We knew it was going to happen. We just didn’t know it was going to happen that quickly following the ruling.
I wish I could say I was surprised by this. I’m not at all.
GoPro: Red Bull Stratos – The Full Story – YouTube.
If you haven’t watched this… You _REALLY_ Should. Just wow. When the horizon goes convex to concave.. It put it all into perspective.
How amazing is it… That for how tiny we are in the grand scheme of things… We can accomplish AMAZING things.
Things are going to be a little bit wonky for a little while folks. I apologize. Please let me know if you find anything that isn’t working properly.
The switch from talesofatech.com being the blog to blog.talesofatech.com to talesofatech.com/blog has been very messy and I’m 100% certain SOMETHING is broken I just don’t know what it is.
talesofatech.com will be the main page and this blog will be linked to it from there. I also enabled SSL thanks to StartSSL providing me a free certificate until I get a 100% legit one from Comodo through Namecheap when I transition away from GoDaddy next week.
So it’s been a day. It’s time for afternoon coffee.
Awwwwyis.
Tonight: more cleaning for this weekend as well as some last minute shopping. Very annoyed that my W2’s aren’t here yet and may not be here until mid-February thanks to the wonderfulness that is multiple payroll systems causing problems. Deeeeeeeep breaths.
In case you’re interested in leaving GoDaddy, as I am, following the great debacle of the @N Twitter fiasco, here’s some great information from NameCheap.
Join us for MoveYourDomain Day on February 5th!On our third annual MoveYourDomain Day, you can transfer your .com, .net, .biz, .org or .info domain for only $3.98*. Special hosting packages will be 75% off!Click here for details.
GoDaddy Statement RE: @N Issue – GoDaddy.
Above is the URL I was blanket emailed in response to my comments regarding the recent @N twitter / GoDaddy / PayPal fiasco.
They did not address a key comment for me: when the account owner information got changed, there was no notification to the original account owner.
I am leaving GoDaddy as soon as possible.
How I lost my $50,000 Twitter username – The Next Web.
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Today we bring you a story from the ‘holy-shit-this-is-terrifying’ department. Naoki Hiroshima is the creator of Cocoyon & is also a developer for Echofon. The original story appears here.
All I can say to this, as a GoDaddy customer, is WOW. Just WOW WOW WOW.
GoDaddy transferred the ownership details to a 3rd Party without confirming the changes with the original account owner, and then refused to transfer them back to the original owner, even after filing a dispute, because they were no longer the owner (because the now-owner/attacker denied the request apparently).
I also hold PayPal highly accountable for this, as that’s how the attacker apparently gained access to the personal information that started the whole chain reaction. I no longer maintain a Paypal account (at least not one linked to any cards or bank accounts) but I DO use GoDaddy and I am VERY worried about this now.
My domain isn’t worth squat, but the idea that someone could take it away from me is thoroughly depressing.
Good grief.
I entered a support ticket with GoDaddy asking for clarification and a response and I’ll let you know if I get one.
Good luck Naoki.
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Coming to us today from the “Let’s-Kill-Off-Our-Brand” department, we bring you horrible, sad news about what was once a killer product.
LogMeIn Free is being turned into a paid-for-only product. LogMeIn is a service that lets you remote access into machines from a central location.
I guess if you think you’re the only game in town, then this is a great idea.
But since you’re not due to these wonderful things (a short list of LogMeIn Alternatives):
So I guess the question is, why the hell would you do this to yourself?
I love the answers to the FAQ though, typical corporate speak.
1. Q: Why are you making this change?
A: In order to address the evolving needs of our customers, we will be unifying our portfolio of free and premium remote access products into a paid-only offering. We believe this offering to be the best premium desktop, cloud and mobile access experience available in the market today
The real answer: because we can. Some of you will pay, and some of you will go. We don’t care. The bottom line is now, as it always was: Money.
Good grief. $50 a year for 2 computers when it was free for as many computers as you wanted.
Guess I’m nuking my account.
Time to research the alternates.
Google bans Chrome extensions purchased to deliver adware | The Verge.
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This is some pretty good news overall. Google banning extensions that start generating ads and hijacking the browser. I hope they start doing extensive testing though, because there are other problems to be addressed too.
For example, Chrome Extensions automatically update to the latest version in the background. NORMALLY, this would be good, as it creates a seamless experience for the end user. However, this isn’t always the best thing.
A while back, I started using Window Resizer (which has since gone away following the scandal — more) for application and website development testing. About 3 weeks ago I noticed that my Google searches were redirecting to Ecosia.org and timing out. A cursory Bing search took me to the developer page saying that they had updated Window Resizer to automatically opt everyone into using EcoLinks. Ecosia couldn’t handle the load, and began timing out. This effectively broke Google searching for a LOT of people.
All because the developer thought they knew better than the end user (“Hey this is a great idea and helps everyone so I’m going to make it opt-out instead of opt-in!”).
Needless to say I quickly uninstalled that extension and found another one to use.
▶ January 16th’s Idiot Drivers of New Jersey – YouTube.
So, yeah, this was a fun way to start off my day.
Net neutrality court ruling: Net neutrality killed | BGR.
Coming to us from the “did-you-really-expect-a-different-outcome” department, we bring you the latest news regarding (and probably the last nail in the coffin for) net neutrality in the USA.
Why should you care? Very good question.
Right now, you want to use Netflix. You pay Netflix for the service. You pay your ISP for the internet connection to get you access to Netflix. Netflix doesn’t pay your ISP anything, because they pay their own provider for access to the internet (peering connections aside). Now, your ISP can come out with a competing video service (which is a good thing) and prioritize the traffic over Netflix (this is BAD) unless Netflix chalks up money to your ISP (this is VERY bad). That means unless Netflix is willing to pay more for the access they used to have then their services can be treated like 3rd-class traffic. Like your HD movie streaming? Good luck when it’s set to bulk and given the lowest priority on the internet.
Why is it also bad? Do you do ANY torrenting? Guess what. Your ISP can say all torrent traffic is de-prioritized and controlled to be slower than molasses. Why is this bad? Do you play an MMO like World of Warcraft? Do you know how you get your patches? Guess what. It’s a torrent. Do you download Linux distributions? Guess what, you’re probably using a torrent. Do you pirate shit (please don’t)? Guess what? Good bye to that traffic.
Doing protesting? Trying to get a grass roots campaign together? The provider doesn’t like your opinion? Your traffic can disappear off the internet.
I cannot overstate this: this is very bad news for the Internet. Very, very bad.
But really, we all knew it was coming. The telecommunications lobby is incredibly powerful. Their lobbyists have incredibly deep pockets and they have the attention of those judges.
Good grief.
