Google has blurred the face of a bullock pictured on its Street View mapping service. It’s since confirmed it was a blunder rather than some form of bovine witness protection. As a standard policy, Google blurs out any human faces its cameras catch, simply because the law of averages means they are sure to picture […]
The Chrome browser will soon start flagging sites with password or card number fields that don’t use encryption. The change in January will be the first of a multi-step process. Until now Chrome has worked like most browsers by putting the emphasis on positively identifying secure sites with the familiar padlock icon in the address […]
The European Union has published strict guidelines to enforce net neutrality. However, the rules do have exceptions that mean they fall short of a ‘pure’ interpretation of the principle. While the net neutrality debate in the US has been bogged down in arguments about legal authority in the rulemaking process, the EU had already agreed […]
A woman’s 27-year-hunt for her missing father has ended happily thanks to a combination of Instagram and Facebook. The remarkable story was revealed by the BBC World Service this week. It involves a woman named Farhiya who was born in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) to a local woman and a visiting army officer named Siid from […]
The US government will give up control of the internet’s domain name system on October 1. It’s a largely symbolic move at this point though has provoked some political criticism. Since 1988, DNS – translating web addresses to IP addresses – has been overseen by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. That’s a department of the […]
Facebook is polling users on how informative they find stories linked to on the site. It’s another attempt to cut back on clickbait. The move follows several recent changes to the algorithm for the News Feed, the default view on Facebook by which status updates, links and other content appears in a perceived order of […]
The ALS Association says the money raised by the ‘ice bucket challenge’ craze has helped researchers identify a gene that contributes to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. That could provide a new route for providing therapy for the incurable disease. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. […]
One of the key elements of US copyright law in the digital age may be challenged in the Supreme Court. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claims the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) breaches the first amendment. The DMCA, introduced in 1998, includes a controversial measure that reads “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that […]
Did you know that just like everyone and their mother these days, we here at [GAS] have an account on almost all major social media sites on the Web? So if you’re not already following us via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram, here are the links to our profiles on each of these sites: Geeks […]
Mozilla has become the latest browser maker to start phasing out support for Flash. It will start blocking some elements next month before a total block next year. The developer says it has already tweaked Firefox to reduce the reliance on plugins for features such as video streaming and microphone access. But it says its […]