Lifeboat Foundation

Up until that moment, Tokelau, formally a territory of New Zealand, didn’t even know it had been assigned a ccTLD. “We discovered the.tk,” remembered Aukusitino Vitale, who at the time was general manager of Teletok, Tokelau’s sole telecom operator.

Zuurbier said “that he would pay Tokelau a certain amount of money and that Tokelau would allow the domain for his use,” remembers Vitale. It was all a bit of a surprise—but striking a deal with Zuurbier felt like a win-win for Tokelau, which lacked the resources to run its own domain. In the model pioneered by Zuurbier and his company, now named Freenom, users could register a free domain name for a year, in exchange for having advertisements hosted on their websites. If they wanted to get rid of ads, or to keep their website active in the long term, they could pay a fee.

In the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau became an unlikely internet giant—but not in the way it may have hoped. Until recently, its.tk domain had more users than any other country’s: a staggering 25 million. But there has been and still is only one website actually from Tokelau that is registered with the domain: the page for Teletok. Nearly all the others that have used.tk have been spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.

And finally figured out that I was using Starlink and they block port 25. So my bots now use port 2,525 since other ISPs also block port 25 and I don’t want to have to deal with this again.

The interesting thing is that I had a problem with my fiber provider so I switched to Starlink and then forgot to switch back. So Starlink isn’t terrible…

High-speed internet. Available almost anywhere on Earth.

🚨 Urgent: Thousands of internet-accessible ActiveMQ instances are at risk.

HelloKitty ransomware group is actively exploiting a critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw, CVE-2023–46604, in Apache ActiveMQ.

Find details here ➡️.

Continue reading “HelloKitty Ransomware Group Exploiting Apache ActiveMQ Vulnerability” »

Google has taken a significant step towards enhancing Chrome internet security by automatically upgrading insecure HTTP requests to HTTPS requests for 100% of users.

This feature is called HTTPS-Upgrades and will secure old links that utilize the http:// by automatically attempting to first connect to the URL over the encrypted https:// protocol.

A limited rollout of this feature in Google Chrome began in July, but as of October 16th, Google has now rolled it out to all users on the Stable channel.

🌐🧠🚨

In a recent study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, researchers describe the relationship between problematic internet use (PIU) and the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Study: The relationship between problematic internet use and attention deficit, hyperactivity and impulsivity: A meta-analysis. Image Credit: Alexxndr / Shutterstock.com

Continue reading “Surfing the web too much? Study links problematic internet use to heightened ADHD symptoms” »

Anthropic, the AI startup known for its chatbot Claude, has been trying to land Google as a major investor after winning over Amazon. Now it seems they have succeeded.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal with Google is now in the bag: Two billion dollars will flow from Google to Anthropic over an unspecified period of time. Google will pay $500 million in cash immediately. This second investment follows Google’s initial investment of approximately $300 million in February 2023.

Anthropic is currently rolling out its Claude 2 chatbot on the web and as a programming interface through its own services and partners such as Amazon AWS and Google’s cloud AI service Vertex AI. Claude 2 is currently available in 95 countries, but is not currently available in the EU, presumably for privacy reasons.

‘About this image’ is designed to show where on the web an image appeared in the past and how it was described to help you find the truth about its origins.

Google is starting to roll out its new “About this image” tool, which aims to provide essential background information and context about images in Google Search. The feature was first announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in May, and now it’s rolling out to English users globally. You can access the feature from the three-dot menu that appears in Search and Google Images results. The search giant is also announcing updates to its Fact Check Explorer initiative and AI-powered Search Generative Experience.

The “About this image”… More.

Continue reading “Google Search can now help verify an image’s origins” »

The week of Oct. 23 through Oct 30 is a big one for low-Earth orbit (LEO) with all but one flight headed to already existing constellations. This includes two Falcon 9 launches on opposite sides of the country, one Russian Soyuz 2.1b launch, and two different launches planned out of China, one involving humans.

Two Chinese launches start the week, with the first being a Chang Zheng 2D preparing for its flight from LC-3 at Xichang Satellite Launch Center. Then, a Chang Zheng 2F/G will launch out of LC-90 at the China Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, before a Soyuz 2.1b launches out of Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Then the first Falcon 9 launches more Starlink satellites on the other side of the world out of SLC-4E at Vandenberg Spaceforce Base (VSFB). Then, on the other side of America, Falcon 9 Starlink launches out of SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).

Chang Zheng 2D – Yaogan 39 Group 04

Scientists manipulated light to behave as if influenced by gravity using distorted photonic crystals, opening avenues for optics advancements and 6G communication.

Manipulating Light’s Behavior With Pseudogravity

A collaborative group of researchers has manipulated the behavior of light as if it were under the influence of gravity. The findings, which were published in the journal Physical Review A on September 28, 2023, have far-reaching implications for the world of optics and materials science, and bear significance for the development of 6G communications.