HTTP is obsolete. It’s time for the distributed, permanent web

IPFS is still in the alpha stages of development, so we’re calling this an experiment for now. It hasn’t replaced our existing site storage (yet). Like with any complex new technology, there’s a lot of improvements to make. But IPFS isn’t vaporware, it works right now. You can try it out on your own computer, and already can use it to help us serve and persist Neocities sites.

Source: HTTP is obsolete. It’s time for the distributed, permanent web

Google Wants To Speed Up The Web With Its QUIC Protocol

On a typical secure TCP connection, it typically takes two or three round-trips before the browser can actually start receiving data. Using QUIC, a browser can immediately start talking to a server it has talked to before. QUIC also introduces a couple of new features like congestion control and automatic re-transmission, making it more reliable that pure UDP.

via Google Wants To Speed Up The Web With Its QUIC Protocol | TechCrunch.

Users who connect to YouTube over QUIC report about 30 percent fewer rebuffers when watching videos and because of QUIC’s improved congestion control and loss recover over UDP, users on some of the slowest connection also see improved page load times with QUIC.

Google says it plans to propose HTTP2-over-QUIC to the IETF as a new Internet standard in the future.

US Report Claims In-Flight Entertainment Leaves Planes Open to Cyberattacks; Others Disagree

A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns that in-flight W-Fi, including wireless entertainment and internet-based cockpit communications, may allow hackers to gain remote access to avionics systems and compromise them. However, other experts disagree and call the report “deceiving.”

via US Report Claims In-Flight Entertainment Leaves Planes Open to Cyberattacks; Others Disagree.

From:  Cyberhijacking Airplanes: Truth or Fiction? – DEFCON-22-Phil-Polstra-Cyber-hijacking-Airplanes-Truth-or-Fiction-Updated.pdf.

Closing Thoughts
● Nearly every protocol used in aviation is
unsecured
● There is certainly the potential to annoy
ATC and/or small aircraft
● Increasing automation while continuing
with unsecured protocols is problematic
● Airliners are relatively safe (for now)

The above pdf is a good read.

HTTP/2.0 – The IETF is Phoning It In

The reason HTTP/2.0 does not improve privacy is that the big corporate backers have built their business model on top of the lack of privacy. They are very upset about NSA spying on just about everybody in the entire world, but they do not want to do anything that prevents them from doing the same thing. The proponents of HTTP/2.0 are also trying to use it as a lever for the “SSL anywhere” agenda, despite the fact that many HTTP applications have no need for, no desire for, or may even be legally banned from using encryption.

via HTTP/2.0 – The IETF is Phoning It In – ACM Queue.

History has shown overwhelmingly that if you want to change the world for the better, you should deliver good tools for making it better, not policies for making it better. I recommend that anybody with a voice in this matter turn their thumbs down on the HTTP/2.0 draft standard: It is not a good protocol and it is not even good politics.

Multipath TCP Introduces Security Blind Spot

MPTCP is an extension to the Internet’s primary communication protocol. It allows a TCP session to move over multiple connections and network providers to the same destination. Should one drop, the session seamlessly moves to its second, backup connection, keeping phone calls or Internet sessions alive.

via Black Hat 2014: Multipath TCP Introduces Security Blind Spot | Threatpost | The first stop for security news.

“Technology like MPTCP makes it much harder for surveillance states,” Pearce said. “If I split traffic across my cell provider and an ISP I may not trust, in order for a surveillance state to snoop they have to collaborate with all these parties. It’s a much harder proposition.”

Microsoft backs open source for the Internet of Things

The AllSeen Alliance is an effort to standardize device communications. The code that it champions, called AllJoyn, was initially developed by Qualcomm but was subsequently made open source. Big vendors have been recruited to support it, and the AllSeen Alliance now includes LG, Panasonic, Sharp and Haier, among others.

via Microsoft backs open source for the Internet of Things – Computerworld.

How MIT and Caltech’s coding breakthrough could accelerate mobile network speeds

An RLNC transmission can recover from errors with neither sender nor receiver retaining and updating transmission-state information and requesting lost packets to be retransmitted. This is because RLNC can recreate any packet lost on the receiving side from a later sequenced packet. In over-simplified terms, each RLNC encoded packet sent is encoded using the immediately earlier sequenced packet and randomly generated coefficients, using a linear algebra function. The combined packet length is no longer than either of the two packets from which it is composed. When a packet is lost, the missing packet can be mathematically derived from a later-sequenced packet that includes earlier-sequenced packets and the coefficients used to encode the packet.

Since the RLNC encoding sender doesn’t need to listen for acknowledgements of successful transmission and perhaps retransmit, the sender can continuously transmit at near-wire speed optimized for latency and network throughput.

via How MIT and Caltech’s coding breakthrough could accelerate mobile network speeds.

Update:  After posting this I remembered I had read about an algorithm recreating earlier lost packets from future packets.  So I clicked on the mit tag and on 10/25/2012 I posted this blurb:  A Bandwidth Breakthrough

… The technology transforms the way packets of data are sent. Instead of sending packets, it sends algebraic equations that describe series of packets. So if a packet goes missing, instead of asking the network to resend it, the receiving device can solve for the missing one itself. …

That must mean they’re still working on it.

What are colored coins?

What exactly are colored coins? I’ve tried understanding, but I don’t quite get it yet . . . Do any examples exist?

via alternatives – What are colored coins? – Bitcoin Stack Exchange.

Colored coins are a method to track the origin of bitcoins, so that a certain set of coins can be set aside and conserved, allowing a party to acknowledge them in various ways. Such coins can be used to represent arbitrary digital tokens, such as stocks, bonds, smart property and so on.

The colored coins protocol is decentralized just like Bitcoin, but the current effort to develop an implementation is done under the BitcoinX project (tentative name), which also aims to provide some related services.

As this is still under development, you will not find any existing examples.

You can read more about it in Overview of colored coins (work in progress).

TR-069: Still Sexy After All These Years

Today, a quarter of all broadband lines on the planet are managed by TR-069 and its management of devices has been expanded in line with changes in the type of devices needing to be managed (many devices can be managed from gateways to VoIP devices to set-top boxes). And the complexity you now see in the connected home environment in terms of technology (and the protocols used) is just not an issue for the continually evolving TR-069, as non-TR-069 devices can be proxy managed.

via TR-069: Still Sexy After All These Years | Light Reading.

Google making the Web faster with protocol that reduces round trips

An FAQ and an in-depth design document provide more information than most people would want to know about QUIC. Besides running multiplexed connections over UDP, QUIC was “designed to provide security protection equivalent to TLS/SSL, along with reduced connection and transport latency,” the FAQ states.

via Google making the Web faster with protocol that reduces round trips | Ars Technica.