The Brooks Review

Month: December 2013

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  • ‘BitTorrent Sync Hits 2 Million User Mark’

    Eric Klinker on the BitTorrent Sync blog: > Today, Sync is moving over 20 gigabytes per person. And that’s a pretty powerful thing. Dropbox’s cloud-based platform stores less than 0.42 gigabytes per user. Wow. It really is a fantastic service. I’d love to see more iOS developer support though.

  • ‘The Value of Content’

    Simply fantastic post from Andy Beaumont: > The web has seemingly evolved into something that actively antagonises people — why would anyone in their right mind hide the content that visitors are there to see? (via DF)

  • ‘Fascinating Historical Events That Happened Around The Same Time’

    Lives up to the title.

  • ‘NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show’

    Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani: > The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have…

  • ‘FCC Chair: ISPs Should Be Able to Charge Netflix for Internet Fast Lane’

    Jon Brodkin: > Newly anointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said this week that it would be OK for Internet service providers to charge Netflix and other companies for a faster lane to consumers. [If only we could have seen that coming](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/new-fcc-chairman-is-former-lobbyist-for-cable-and-wireless-industries/).

  • ‘Tablets at Restaurants: Applebee’s, Chili’s Race to Eliminate Human Interaction’

    [Rather sensationalist headline on this post from Will Oremus][1]: > Score one for the machines. On Tuesday, Applebee’s announced plans to install a tablet at every table in its 1,860 restaurants across the United States. Customers will be able to use the devices to order food, pay the bill, and ignore their dining companions by…

  • The Information Launches

    $39 a month, or $399 a year. *Good luck with that.*

  • GORUCK GR1 Field Pocket

    This handy add on makes a great camera pouch inside your GR1.

  • Quote of the Day: Alex King

    “Borrowing from “the best camera is the one you have with you”, we wanted to make sure that the best device for reading Rands in Repose was the one you had with you.” — Alex King

  • ‘Touch ID’

    Dr. Drang: > So am I fooling myself, or is it possible that Touch ID’s recognition gets worse with time? I’ve noticed that here too, there’s a substantial improvement to be had by re-adding your finger prints. My guess was that it was due to weather changes effecting the moisture in my fingers that shift…

  • Jumping Air Gaps

    Dan Goodin: > The proof-of-concept software—or malicious trojans that adopt the same high-frequency communication methods—could prove especially adept in penetrating highly sensitive environments that routinely place an “air gap” between computers and the outside world. Using nothing more than the built-in microphones and speakers of standard computers, the researchers were able to transmit passwords and…

  • Quote of the Day: Shane Cole

    “Microsoft and Google’s solutions seem to exist solely to quell the heartburn brought on corporate IT departments by anxious executives who use iOS devices but need a way to make simple changes to documents on the fly.” – Shane Cole

  • ‘Australian Spy Agency Offered to Share Data About Ordinary Citizens’

    Ewen MacAskill, James Ball and Katharine Murphy: > Australia’s surveillance agency offered to share information collected about ordinary Australian citizens with its major intelligence partners, according to a secret 2008 document leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden. > The document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share “medical, legal or religious information”, and increases concern that the…

  • ‘That Viral “Poverty Thoughts” Essay Is Totally Ridiculous’

    Angelica Leicht: > What Linda is doing here is infuriating. There are people donating to her that don’t realize she’s full of shit. People who have good intentions and big hearts and are attempting to make a difference in the life of a person who, by the sound of it, is living in some pretty…

  • ‘Encryption Arms Race Escalates’

    Martha Mendoza: > Encryption isn’t meant to keep hackers out, but when it’s designed and implemented correctly, it alters the way messages look. Intruders who don’t have a decryption key see only gobbledygook. Good overview of the often misunderstood encryption arms race.

  • Goruck SK26, Travelling, and the Bag for Me

    It turns out that stripping all military styling from a GORUCK bag strips all character from it too.

  • ‘The default settings on your device are probably not the best for you’

    Charles Arthur: > But many geeks who do change defaults forget that the majority of people don’t. Those people assume – reasonably – that the device they bought for umpty hundred pounds should already have the ideal setup. Changing defaults isn’t unreasonable. But nor should it be necessary.

  • Looking At Why Privacy Matters

    With all the NSA revelations that are coming out, and that likely will continue to come out, one of the most important debates is surrounding what privacy we are due. The easiest, and laziest, argument is that privacy only matters to those with things to hide. That’s not only false, but incredibly short-sighted — It…

  • ‘Apple’s iOS brings developers 5x more revenue per download than Android’

    Shane Cole: > For every $1.00 in app download revenue earned by iOS developers, their Android counterparts earn just $0.19, according to data compiled by Business Insider. The gap for up-front and in-app purchases is slightly narrower, with Android bringing in $0.43 for every $1.00 on iOS, while advertising revenue is the closest at $0.77…