What was your summer like? Mine was as changeable as the weather! First, I gained some wonderful memories during my vacation in Ireland (What an island!). Then, I lost a gall bladder in the hospital. That was less wonderful. And when you waste away on a sofa, slightly battered and at loose ends, you start to read even more. Thus, a headline caught my eye that I would have likely missed under normal circumstances: My old video rental store, to which I was once a loyal and regular customer, was about to close forever—the last of its kind in my area. Time for a swansong to a dear old friend!
Recently, the IT landscape was shuck at its core when Bloomberg Businessweek reported that mainboards from market leader Supermicro came with tiny spy chips no bigger than the size of a grain of rice. If this turned out to be true, most data centers would be at risk of data theft or computer sabotage. The main potential victims were said to be US cloud service providers with their gigantic databases. And while fierce debate rages on, there's also a political side. So who's deceiving whom?
2010 was a special year: Google voluntarily gave up money. After Chinese censorship authorities had tightened the thumbscrews, the US company faced the consequences and withdrew from the Chinese market, leaving the field to their competitors. This also meant services like Gmail, Google Drive or Playstore were no longer welcome in the Middle Kingdom. This move earned Google a lot of respect, further underpinning their "Don't be evil" mentality and their quest for freedom of information. Eight years later, both their noble mindset and scruples have seemingly gone up in smoke. Enter Dragonfly
The term "VPN" frequently shows up on the Internet. This technology is old hat for some and a mystery to others. Read on to learn what VPN means and what it looks like in practice.
You can't escape them. They're in the news, on entertainment programs or show up in Internet ads. Cryptocurrencies are ubiquitous. But how do they work and how can a single individual, that might not even exist, invent a new currency along with the technical foundation? Though there are now quite a number of cryptocurrencies available, I'll focus on the darling of the digital currency movement: Bitcoin.
