Tech News

Regular web users can now access anonymously-published websites that are masked by Tor's hidden services thanks to a new tool called tor2web.com .

The tool, created by former Reddit developer Aaron Swartz and WikiScanner creator Virgil Griffith, enables people to view these hidden websites (designated by the .onion domain suffix) without diving into Tor, which can be a pain for casual surfers.

The creators hope that the existence of tor2web will encourage more organizations to publish content anonymously through Tor, now that such a heavy access restriction has been lifted.

The Tor project is most famous as a tool that allows Internet surfers to access websites privately and anonymously from within the onion router. Put simply, it works by passing your requests to another node that acts as a middleman between you and a website, which in turn passes the request onto other nodes, and so on. Every step is encrypted except for the final exit node to the content server connection, and the network is run almost entirely by volunteers.

Tor's hidden services allow web publishers to publish content anonymously so that law enforcement (and general snoopers) can't detect where the information is coming from. The only problem with publishing websites under Tor is that they can only be accessed from within Tor, meaning that the available audience at any given time is infinitesimally small compared to the overall Internet-using population. This is the problem that Swartz and Griffith hope to address with tor2web.

Consumers will have to pay at least £46 ($70) a month for Virgin Media's new super-fast broadband service, which offers more than double the speed of its closest rivals.

Today, about 1.5m Virgin Media customers can upgrade to 50 megabits-per-second broadband, which allows hour-long TV shows to be downloaded in a minute.

By the end of the year, it plans to have 40% of its network online with the new service, with the rest completed by summer 2009.

But the UK still lags behind South Korea, France and Italy, where speeds of 100MBps are becoming available.

Virgin hopes the extra capacity will appeal to households where several family members are online at once, which strains slower connections. Other potential uses include high-definition television streamed over the internet or a home-security network. Virgin says its customers have doubled their data consumption in the past 18 months.

A friend tried to send a email from a Wanadoo account (Now Orange I think) that mentioned 'cunt' [just a typical email, nothing that could be mistaken as spam]. He couldn't send
it without putting 'c*nt' in the header.

I just tried to send him an email also using the word 'cunt' and it was returned by Wanadoo unreceived....

As Youtomb discovered There is a tag available through the YouTube API the indicates the country (or countries in some cases) to which YouTube will restrict access to the video. These videos are not (necessarily) blocked by the country itself, but by Youtube.

Here’s what I’ve found blocked so far

(TH Thailand, FR France, CN China, GB Britain)

TH,www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1USDXkaJFM
TH,www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4RX2cIDa4E
PL TH DE FR,www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU9iT3vEdWo
TH,www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVbUx4TPkVs
TH,www.youtube.com/watch?v=70m1ncXQjXA
TH,www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dFjO4ZJNDE
PF TF YT GP DE RE FR GF MQ PM PL,www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt2Zsr9bwlE
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Roy0BFaUtc
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffw4-OMmchY
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzz9rZwFENA
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1oBcPtH5aU
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=liwgfyc1Im4
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeXZY4eVLlo
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnIuu73X8es
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmlDqPtHV-E
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPg1yvj7thA
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0D_oGgAGmI”
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=53QwPeImmAA”
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=XThGzqBYrh0
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FnwTj0OuFE
CN,www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdEULgZYxK8

I wondered if Youtube might start tagging videos of the protests in Tibet in order to have Youtube unblocked with the specific videos being blocked for users in China. But after running a few (definitely not comprehensive) Tibet related search terms all I found so far was that it appears that BBC videos are blocked for users in Great Britain:

GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEkyrDdepBc
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4637Ez3-as
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg8AYs56RAY
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GzyfTOACDs
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ew8oLFVVcc
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7R3J0NvfgE
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLg4aMDadYo
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4E1Rsaq3yc
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS_jvYTEhkQ
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLy6DkrjyHg
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUcIxq4hBuc
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1CTaq9sQM0
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=dviGSn5Wq0s
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T3LwA2mA4I
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8-eBuGsh-4
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS1FOSQCA3k
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR_NNGpWku4
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEQmJBINYj4
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=geJ9lRhSRdQ
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwRIzNyArRY
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIKkf5w9TY
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NB91D-Da50
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUaX3Mw8qvg
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaJQip6bt7w
GB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7lDTuBhb2Y

Online shoppers in the UK will be able to pay direct from their online bank account rather than via a credit or debit card, thanks to a new service.

The POLi online bank payment platform aims to increase payment choice while reducing card-not-present fraud.

The technology behind POLi was developed by Australian firm Centricom Pty. According to merchants in Australia using POLi, the service now accounts for an average of 23% of their total online payment transactions.

Centricom teamed up with UK-based online payment firm Neteller last August to launch a joint venture to roll out POLi in Europe, starting with its launch in the UK last week. The service, distributed through Neteller’s payment processing arm Netbanx, supports transfers from all major UK high street banks. Netbanx is in the process of recruiting merchants to POLi.

Merchants would offer a "pay-by-POLi" option. Clicking on the link prompts users to select and then log into their online banking accounts where payments are made and authorised. Once users log-in they will see the merchant's details and the amount of the purchase. Merchants need only store transaction ID numbers and dispatch details, without a requirement to store information on a customer's online bank account.

POLi pricing is based on volume of transactions, rather than a percentage of sales charged to merchants by credit card firms. As a result, costs to merchants and consumers alike ought to be lower.

YouTomb, a project of the MIT Free Culture group that studies takedown notices by the video-sharing website YouTube, has identified a mechanism used by Google to restrict video content in specific countries. This appears to be the method YouTube is using to filter videos on behalf of governments and private actors that request it.

A growing number of countries have instituted mostly short-lived blocks against YouTube for containing culturally or politically sensitive content, including Brazil, China, Morocco, Syria, Thailand and Turkey. On February 22, 2008, Pakistani ISPs were ordered to partially block YouTube reportedly in reaction to a video making fun of the Prophet Muhammad, and ended up disrupting access to the entire site for users around the world for up to a few hours. In some cases, YouTube has blocked the identified offending video(s) in that country in order to have the block lifted.

...Read full article

If you happened to be searching for a video at YouTube.com Sunday afternoon, there's a good chance your browser told you it was unable to locate the entire Web site. Turns out, much of the world was blocked from getting to YouTube for part of the weekend due to a censorship order passed by the government of Pakistan, which was apparently upset that YouTube refused to remove digital images many consider blasphemous to Islam.

According to wire reports, Pakistan ordered all in-country Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to YouTube.com, complaining that the site contained controversial sketches of the Prophet Mohammed which were republished by Danish newspapers earlier this month. The people running the country's ISPs obliged, but evidently someone at Pakistan Telecom - the primary upstream provider for most of the ISPs in Pakistan - forgot to flip the switch that prevented those blocking instructions from propagating out to the rest of the Internet.

So, what happened? From everything I've read and heard, the YouTube situation appears to have been due to an innocent, if inept, mix-up, which allowed Pakistan's ISPs to effectively announce to the world that its Internet addresses were the authoritative home of YouTube.com, and for about an hour or so, most of the rest of the world's ISPs incorporated those updated directions as gospel.

In a country where the government more or less can tell resident ISPs what to do, blocking citizens from visiting certain sites is simple: The ISPs simply tell their customers that if they're looking for a censored site, they either receive an empty page or are redirected to wherever the ISP or government deems as an appropriate substitute destination.

Some experts are crying foul, saying this was an deliberate act of defiance or assertiveness by the nascent Pakistani government. But most seem to agree this was little more than a screw-up. Still, a nation state or other adversary could stir up diplomatic trouble by toying with this sort of trust built into the Internet. What would our government make of it, say, if all of a sudden all traffic destined for .gov domains wound up in China or North Korea?

Marc Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center said for now the checks and balances in the system today are that the same trust that allows network providers to abuse the system can be revoked. In this latest case with Youtube, network operators affected by the bogus update simply discarded the errant directions from Pakistan and in all likelihood told their own routers to ignore any further updates from Pakistan, at least for the time being, Sachs said.

Citing recent major changes in the marketplace, Toshiba has ended its development, manufacturing and marketing of HD DVD players and recorders.

It's official; the Sony-championed Blu-ray format has won the war as the market choice for hi-definition content delivery.

Adult content producers have struggled over hi-def deployment issues plagued by speculation over which of the rival next-generation DVD replacement formats would become the dominant player in the marketplace.

While Blu-ray has its advantages, questions over licensing and duplication have helped HD DVD become popular within adult circles.

According to a current XBIZ poll, 47% of hi-def releases are in the HD DVD format, while Blu-ray distribution accounts for 39%. 14% are available in both formats.

We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop, Atsutoshi Nishida, president and CEO of Toshiba Corporation, said. While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.

According to a company statement, Toshiba will continue to provide full product support and service for its HD DVD products.

HD DVD player and recorder shipments to retail outlets are scheduled to end in March, with volume production of HD DVD disk drives dwindling within the same timeframe – although limited production of PC drives may continue to meet customer requirements.

Psiphon, an Internet censorship evading software project developed by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab has been deemed the world's most original, significant and exemplary Net and Digital Initiative by a panel of French and international government, media and business experts. P

siphon was chosen first among 100 technology projects from around the world that were nominated for the Netxplorateur of the Year Grand Prix award.

Psiphon aims to restore the original promise the Internet once held out as a forum for free expression and access to information, said Professor Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab and the psiphon project. We are honoured to receive such a prestigious award. Internet censorship has become a major global problem, with dozens of governments blocking access to news, human rights, and political opposition websites as well as new media of self expression, such as blogs and streaming video.

Psiphon works by leveraging the Internet and social networks of trust that span censored and uncensored jurisdictions. Those with friends, family or colleagues in censored countries download the small psiphon application on their home computers and then give the unique connection information to their psiphon node to those living behind firewalled jurisdictions. Instead of attempting to access banned content directly, users of psiphon connect to the psiphon nodes over an encrypted channel and use them to surf the Web instead. As each psiphon node is private, encrypted, and separate from each other, the system as a whole is virtually impossible for authorities to discover and block.

While the psiphon software is free and open source, the Citizen Lab's developers have recently launched a start-up company, called Psiphon Inc., to provide professional services for businesses, media, and organizations that face increasingly difficult challenges operating in a carved up Internet environment.

The Indian Supreme Court will hear on February 15 an application seeking directions to the Union of India for blocking access to a website promoting pre-natal gender identification kits from abroad.

The Voluntary Health Association of Punjab is petitioning to seek strict implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition on Sex Selection) Act, 1994.

The application said that a website promoting sale of gender identification kits was reported in the media.

The website, according to the applicant, says the test seeks to identify the presence of male or female foetal genetic materials in the mother's blood. The website provided the methods by which the test was conducted, the process of ordering the test kit, safeguards to be taken, etc.

Since the website was accessible anywhere in the country, a blanket blocking of this website was essential to prevent the misuse of technology and violation of the law, the application said and sought a direction in this regard.

It's easy to restrict access to mature games on the Nintendo Wii and Xbox select a passcode, and then enter the rating of the games you want kids to be able to play.

Unfortunately, if you have a PlayStation 3, you're going to have a much more awkward time. The PS3 uses a mysterious and seemingly arbitrary system of parental control "levels." You can set the PS3's parental controls from level 1 to 11, and neither the menu nor Sony's support site offer much context for what the levels mean. The lower the level, the PlayStation 3 site says, the greater the restrictions on games. Unfortunately, actually figuring out which games will be blocked by which level will require a bit of trial and error. 

The PS3 obfuscates DVD parental controls, too; while the Xbox 360 lets you choose the MPAA ratings of the DVDs you want to play, the PS3 again offers an inexplicable gradient of levels. Blu-ray discs aren't quite as awkward, but they could certainly be better; instead of levels or MPAA ratings, you can enter the age of the user to restrict Blu-ray playback.

According to GamerDad, level 5 under game parental controls should limit the system to T-rated titles, and level 3 under DVD parental controls should limit it to PG-13 movies. It's not the most certain system and you might have to nudge the levels up or down an increment or two to make sure the right titles get blocked and the right titles play, but it's at least a start.