It plans to operate the tethered wings in small groups of six with each one anchored at the points of a hexagon. The wings operate between 250m (820ft)and 600m above ground.
Tag Archives: google
How Twitter Rebuilt Google’s Secret Weapon
Borg is a way of efficiently parceling work across Google’s vast fleet of computer servers, and according to Wilkes, the system is so effective, it has probably saved Google the cost of building an extra data center. Yes, an entire data center. That may seem like something from another world — and in a way, it is — but the new-age hardware and software that Google builds to run its enormous online empire usually trickles down to the rest of the web. And Borg is no exception.
via Return of the Borg: How Twitter Rebuilt Google’s Secret Weapon | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com.
At Twitter, a small team of engineers has built a similar system using a software platform originally developed by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. Known as Mesos, this software platform is open source — meaning it’s freely available to anyone — and it’s gradually spreading to other operations as well.
Google BigQuery is now even bigger
BigQuery is a cloud service that lets users analyze terabyte-sized data sets using SQL-like queries. It’s based on Google’s Dremel querying system, which can analyze data where it’s located (i.e., in the Google File System or BigTable) and which Google uses internally to analyze a variety of different data sets.
via Google BigQuery is now even bigger — Tech News and Analysis.
Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication
TL;DR – An attacker can bypass Google’s two-step login verification, reset a user’s master password, and otherwise gain full account control, simply by capturing a user’s application-specific password (ASP).
via Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication – Blog · Duo Security.
Also From: Google Security Vulnerability Allowed Two-Step Verification Bypass – Dark Reading.
A successful attack would require first stealing a user’s ASP, which could theoretically be accomplished via malware or a phishing attack.
Google Images New Layout How This Impacts Photographers And Webmasters
This updated functionality completely removes the source website from the display, encouraging the user to download the image directly from the search results. To add fuel to the fire, a prominent button “Show original image” (read as “Download now”) is also being displayed alongside the enhanced preview. The percentage of visits to the website that actually has the rights to display and offer the subject images drops at a staggering rate as people are able to and, in fact, are implicitly encouraged to begin downloading the image directly from Google Images rather than visiting the subject site.
via Google Images New Layout How This Impacts Photographers And Webmasters – Stock Photography Blog.
I still don’t see how simply downloading an image which mean possibly seeing once and then into the bit bucket really matters. The photo is not being used in a commercial manner except for perhaps by google. There has to be some kind of compromise that doesn’t impact usability.
Microsoft says Google trying to undermine Windows Phone
According to Heiner, Google has denied Microsoft’s YouTube app access to metadata that would allow it to deliver all of YouTube’s functionality, including such features as user ratings and the ability to search for videos by categories.
Because of this limitation, he says, Microsoft has been forced to deliver an app that’s really nothing more than a repackaged version of the YouTube website running in a browser – unlike the apps for other platforms, which offer richer experiences.
via Microsoft says Google trying to undermine Windows Phone • The Register.
Google Apps Moving Onto Microsoft’s Business Turf
One big reason is price. Google charges $50 a year for each person using its product, a price that has not changed since it made its commercial debut, even though Google has added features. In 2012, for example, Google added the ability to work on a computer not connected to the Internet, as well as security and data management that comply with more stringent European standards. That made it much easier to sell the product to multinationals and companies in Europe.
via Google Apps Moving Onto Microsoft’s Business Turf – NYTimes.com.
Google Accidentally Transmits Self-Destruct Code to Army of Chrome Browsers
This may be a first. Bad webpage coding can often cause a browser to crash, but yesterday’s crash looks like something different: widespread crashing kicked off by a web service designed to help drive your browser.
Google Must Pay For Libelous Search Result, Says Court
The jury at the Supreme Court of Victoria agreed with Google up to a point. The company wasn’t responsible for the results until Trkulja asked it to take them down, it said. (Read the decision in full here.) Because it stuck to its guns, Google must pay $200,000 in damages..
Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works
Unfortunately, if a network starts to send out an announcement of a particular IP address or network behind it, when in fact it is not, if that network is trusted by its upstreams and peers then packets can end up misrouted. That is what was happening here.
I looked at the BGP Routes for a Google IP Address. The route traversed Moratel (23947), an Indonesian ISP. Given that I’m looking at the routing from California and Google is operating Data Centre’s not far from our office, packets should never be routed via Indonesia. The most likely cause was that Moratel was announcing a network that wasn’t actually behind them.
via Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works – CloudFlare blog.
When I figured out the problem, I contacted a colleague at Moratel to let him know what was going on. He was able to fix the problem at around 2:50 UTC / 6:50pm PST. Around 3 minutes later, routing returned to normal and Google’s services came back online.