Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

Adios BlogLines

For years now, I have been using BlogLines to keep track of hundreds of RSS feeds: posts on tech and climate blogs, comments on my own sites, updates on the sites of friends who update very rarely, etc.

Unfortunately, BlogLines is being shut down on Monday. This is one of the few times when a genuinely valuable internet service has faded away. There are plenty I have outgrown (Hotmail comes to mind) or that were never very useful (Google Wave). Napster was a tragic loss, and now this.

So, thanks a bunch BlogLines. I will be shipping all my subscriptions over to the clunkier interface of Google Reader.

The ‘Firesheep’ attack against Facebook

Facebook uses browser cookies to identify who you are. These are transmitted unencrypted across wireless networks. As such, it is easy for someone to listen in, copy the cookies, and then use them to impersonate you. Firesheep is a Firefox plugin that automates this process.

Sharing a wireless connection with a bunch of flatmates? Any of them can easily access all your Facebook information or impersonate you. Same goes for people in coffee shops, libraries, on vehicles with WiFi, and so on.

Bruce Schneier brought the attack to my attention and also suggests a good countermeasure: forcing Facebook to use encrypted HTTPS connections using other plugins.

Of course, HTTPS is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, but that is probably beyond the scope of what some random Facebook hacker would attempt. That being said, what I said before about Facebook and privacy holds true – you are best off only putting things on the site that you are happy for everybody in the world to see. That applies as much to private messages between users and ‘private’ photo albums as it does to status updates broadcase to one and all.

Science and politics in Canada

I think it’s fair to say that political conservatives have long had a rocky relationship with science. While they approve of the chain from basic science to technology to economic growth, science has also repeatedly brought to light facts that undermine conservative ideologies and religious perspectives. With that in mind, this is an interesting development:

Today, the union that represents federal government scientists launches a campaign to put the spotlight on science for the public good.

“Federal government scientists work hard to protect Canadians, preserve their environment and ensure our country’s prosperity but they face dwindling resources and confusing policy decisions,” says Gary Corbett, president of the Institute.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada is a national union. Among its 59,000 federal and provincial members are 23,000 professionals who deliver, among other knowledge products, scientific research, testing and advice for sound policy-making.

The recent decision to end the mandatory long form census is the latest step in a worrying trend away from evidence-based policy making. Restrictive rules are curtailing media and public access to scientists, while cutbacks to research and monitoring limit Canada’s ability to deal with serious threats and potential opportunities.

This follows an editorial in Nature criticizing the Canadian government:

Concerns can only be enhanced by the government’s manifest disregard for science. Since prime minister Stephen Harper came to power, his government has been sceptical of the science on climate change and has backed away from Canada’s Kyoto commitment. In January, it muzzled Environment Canada’s scientists, ordering them to route all media enquires through Ottawa to control the agency’s media message. Last week, the prime minister and members of the cabinet failed to attend a ceremony to honour the Canadian scientists who contributed to the international climate-change report that won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

While factual claims about the nature of the universe do have political ramifications – think of the reality of climate change, or evolution – that doesn’t mean that the expression of factual information is a political act. Further, society has an enormous interest in the dissemination of accurate information, and the formulation of policy on the basis of such information. As such, it is encouraging to see scientists asserting their right to express their expert opinions, even when doing so is politically challenging for the government.

The IPv6 transition

Internet protocol is the principle communication protocol used to transmit packets of information across the internet. All devices that are connected to the internet are assigned internet protocol addresses (IP addresses) which consists of a 32-bit number. That may have been adequate when the most widely used version of internet protocol was deployed in 1981 (IPv4), but it only allows 4,294,967,296 possible IP addresses. As an increasing number of phones, computers, appliances, vehicles, and more get connected to the internet, the number of addresses available through IPv4 is rapidly dwindling. The Number Resources Organization expects them to be used up in a few months.

IPv6 is the successor to IPv4, and it has been in the works for over a decade. It supports addresses of 128 bits: providing enormously more than IPv4. Unfortunately, there are major barriers to making the transition. Every single device between the endpoints of any IPv6 communication needs to be IPv6 compatible. As a result, the transition will be ugly and difficult.

What’s going to happen? One possible bridging approach, while we are waiting for IPv6 to be fully implemented, is Network Address Translation (NAT). This is what your router at home does. From the perspective of your internet service provider (ISP), your whole house has one IP address. The router splits up that address between all the devices you use, making sure the connections from each to outside devices are properly managed. Faced with a shortage of IP addresses, it is likely that some organizations will move this process ‘upstream’ and create situations where groups of households share single IP addresses.

It’s hard to anticipate what consequences will arise from all of this, but it’s something worth keeping an eye on, at least for the geekier and more internet-dependent members of the populace.

Articles v. blog posts

Over on Slate, Farhad Manjoo has an article up on the convergent trends between blogs and magazines online: magazines are sometimes adopting the reverse-chronological format once definitively linked with blogs, while some blogs are aiming to look more like magazines.

While the distinction between ‘articles’ and ‘blog posts’ can probably never be expressed in a definitive way, there is something to the distinction drawn by Anna Holmes, founding editor of Jezebel:

Pieces that are primarily “reactions to something that already existed in the media or on the Internet”—the bulk of Jezebel content in its early days—are “blog posts.” But Jezebel also publishes many essays that are not riffs on outside material. These weightier, original pieces aren’t set off in any special graphical way on the site, but Holmes still thinks of them as articles, not blog posts.

It’s definitely easier to post a brief reaction to something interesting on another site (as this post does…) than it is to generate something substantive and original.

Testing BuryCoal

As discussed recently, there seem to be a few key ideas about climate change that aren’t yet widely recognized or discussed, much less accepted. The major purpose of BuryCoal.com is to help spread these: arguing that we don’t need to burn all the world’s fossil fuels;that doing so would be extremely dangerous; and that we can choose to leave the carbon embedded in these reserves safely underground forever.

I have personally spent much of the past five years reading and writing about climate change issues. As such, there are a lot of ideas (and a lot of terminology) which is already very familiar to me, where it might not be to most educated people.

If readers are willing, I would really appreciate if they would have a look at BuryCoal.com and the ‘Why bury coal?’ page and identify elements that are confusing, too technical, or otherwise problematic. It doesn’t have much value if is simply serves as a forum for those who agree with the message. It needs to be able to speak to those who have different views, as well.

As always, the site is also looking for contributors.

I hate hovercards

You know the deal: some website decides that it would be super slick to show a preview of linked pages when you hover your mouse over a link, or a preview of someone’s profile when you hover over their Gravatar.

The trouble is, it is obtrusive and distracting. Moving a mouse over a website shouldn’t cause dramatic new things to happen. When they do, they break concentration and cause frustration.

It is acceptable to have menus that enlarge when you hover a mouse over them. Mouseover text for images is also perfectly fine, since it takes a moment to appear and is thus effectively requested rather than imposed. By contrast, website elements that pop out of nowhere just because a cursor crossed something are bad form in the same way as universally despised pop-up ads.

Thankfully, many such unwanted features are killed by AdBlock and NoScript.

WordPress.com offsite redirects

There are too many pieces of software and web services that rely on a deliberate lack of interoperability to lock in users and boost profits. While it may be better for companies when people are forced to use operating X, software Y, and website Z, it is usually better for users if they can use any combination that suits their purposes. Apple is particularly notorious, when it comes to locking things down and sabotaging their own products.

One welcome exception is the new link forwarding service on WordPress.com. One early choice faced by bloggers is whether to use free hosting on a site like WordPress.com or whether to get their own hosting account. The former is cheaper and easier, while the latter allows many more possibilities. Now, users on WordPress.com who decide that they want the added power that comes with private hosting can move in a way that preserves all their old URLs and avoids exposing visitors to error 404 pages.

The service costs $15 per year and uses 301 permanent redirects. That means Google and company will figure out the new addresses for your content, avoiding the need to keep paying WordPress indefinitely.

BuryCoal update

After months in limbo, Google has assigned a PageRank to BuryCoal.com, significantly increasing the amount of traffic going there.

In order to help drive that site’s evolution, I am planning to put most of my climate-related writing over there now. That should also be helpful for those who are only interested in following that topic of discussion, as opposed to the miscellaneous ones that crop up here. I encourage anyone with an interest in climate change to subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up to get updates by email.

BuryCoal is also looking for contributors, including those who wish to post anonymously.

The Stuxnet worm

There has been a recent flurry of discussion online about a piece of malware that targets the control systems of industrial facilities – specifically, one that seems designed to sabotage one particular facility. The speculation is that the target is either the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran or Iran’s uranium enriching centrifuge cascades at Natanz. If so, the idea would presumably be to slow down the development of Iranian nuclear weapons.

The sophistication of the worm has led many security researchers to speculate that only a nation state would have the resources to assemble it. That said, there are a great many unknown factors in play. The entire situation could be someone’s attempt at misdirection, or making a threat. Assuming the basic elements of speculation are correct, this would be an interesting development in unconventional military tactics. It probably wouldn’t be entirely unprecedented, however. There have already been three generations of Suter: a computer program developed by a British defence corporation, designed to interfere with communications and communications systems in a military context. Suter or similar software may have been used in Israel’s 2007 airstrike on a suspected nuclear facility in Syria.