Category: News and Views

How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer | Mother Jones

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JOSEPH BONICIOLI mostly uses the same internet you and I do. He pays a service provider a monthly fee to get him online. But to talk to his friends and neighbors in Athens, Greece, he’s also got something much weirder and more interesting: a private, parallel internet.

He and his fellow Athenians built it. They did so by linking up a set of rooftop wifi antennas to create a “mesh,” a sort of bucket brigade that can pass along data and signals. It’s actually faster than the Net we pay for: Data travels through the mesh at no less than 14 megabits a second, and up to 150 Mbs a second, about 30 times faster than the commercial pipeline I get at home. Bonicioli and the others can send messages, video chat, and trade huge files without ever appearing on the regular internet. And it’s a pretty big group of people: Their Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network has more than 1,000 members, from Athens proper to nearby islands. Anyone can join for free by installing some equipment. “It’s like a whole other web,” Bonicioli told me recently. “It’s our network, but it’s also a playground.”

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Tesla Is Beginning To Put The Hurt On The Competition | Forbes

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Upstart automaker Tesla Motors TSLA +3.05% won’t sell as many cars this year as Chevrolet sells in 3 days, but its early success with the all-electric Model S sedan is already keeping the competition up at night. An examination of sales data from across the U.S. and in California for the first half of 2013 paints a picture of just why that is. While Tesla delivered right around 10,000 cars through two quarters, those sales appear to be coming at the expense of BMW, Mercedes, Lexus  and Porsche. And Tesla’s sales are remarkably — though perhaps not surprisingly — concentrated in California thus far, with nearly half winding up in the Golden State. As the automaker continues to open new sales and service locations across the country while simultaneously growing its network of high-speed Supercharger stations, things are likely to get a bit worse for the imports.

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Have a Rocket to Launch? NASA’s Massive Launch Platforms Are Now on Sale | Wired.com

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Saturn V SA-506, the space vehicle for the first lunar landing mission, is rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building and down the 3.5-mile crawlerway to Launch Complex 39-A. Photo: NASA

Space pioneers, super villains, and delusional architects, get your checkbooks ready. NASA is putting its Mobile Launcher Platforms up for sale, and if you’ve got the cash and a business case, you can snag one of three 4,115-ton space shuttle platforms. But you won’t be able to drive it home.

Built in 1967, the trio of MLPs were designed for the Apollo and Saturn programs, and then modified in the ’70s to support the Space Shuttle. The platforms stand 25 feet tall and measure 160 by 135 feet, with an unladen weight of 8,230,000 pounds. Add on an unfueled Shuttle, and it tops 11 million pounds.

But there’s a problem.

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Mysterious Pentagram on Google Maps Explained | LiveScience

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Conspiracy theorists, start your engines: On the wind-blown steppes of central Asia, in an isolated corner of Kazakhstan, there’s a large pentagram etched into the Earth’s surface. And now an archaeologist has revealed the source of the mysterious structure.

The five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, located on the southern shore of the Upper Tobol Reservoir, shows up vividly on Google Maps. There are almost no other signs of human habitation in the area; the closest settlement is the city of Lisakovsk, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the east.

The region surrounding Lisakovsk is riddled with ancient archaeological ruins. Bronze Age settlements, cemeteries and burial grounds — many of which have yet to be explored — dot the windswept landscape.

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Technology leaders launch partnership to make internet access available to all – WSJ.com

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Facebook“Everything Facebook has done has been about giving all people around the world the power to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it.”

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Californians willing to pay for infrastructure improvements | California Economy, California Economic Summit

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A whopping 80 percent of survey respondents expressed a willingness to pay at least something to better maintain and improve California’s infrastructure, including paying increased gas and property taxes. Where respondents varied was on how much and by what method everyone should pay. 21 percent of survey takers felt tying who pays to who uses the infrastructure would be the most fair.

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Life After Kickstarter | Ypulse

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Kickstarter has become an entrepreneurial epicenter, helping innovators earn the money to make their dreams become reality. But what happens after the kick start winds down? The crowdfunding industry raised $2.7 billion in 2011 and is expected to have doubled by the end of this year. For the new products and brands that raise funds on the platforms, expectations are sky high for delivering on crowdfunding promises and raising the bar for innovation with each new project. What is life like for the little brands suddenly launched into the world with the funds they asked for, and an audience of expectant consumers?

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BofA Intern Death and Wall Street’s Culture | Daily Intelligencer

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There’s a game played among young Wall Street analysts, usually late at night after everyone but the janitors have gone home. It goes by various names, but the one I’ve heard most often is “Misery Poker.” The rules are simple: If your workload is worse than your colleagues’, you win. So “I’m staffed on two deals, and I haven’t left before midnight in a week” might prompt a raise of “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m staffed on three deals, and I stayed past 2 a.m. six nights out of the last eight.”

Usually Misery Poker is played with a wink to its ridiculousness. These are 22-year-old investment bankers, after all, not battlefield medics or single moms working three jobs. All of them are being well compensated for the pain they endure. But last weekend, when a London-based Bank of America intern dropped dead, reportedly after pulling three all-nighters in a row, we learned what happens when a game of Misery Poker goes high-stakes.

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Million-Dollar Startup Secrets | AllBusiness.com

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Most small businesses never reach $1 million in annual sales. Instead, they struggle just to survive. Of businesses started in 2004, barely more than half — 56 percent — were still around in 2009, a study from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found.

In fact, cracking the $1 million barrier at any point in a company’s lifetime is a major achievement. U.S. Census data from 2007 shows that more than three-quarters of the country’s 6 million firms with employees made less than $1 million in revenue. And most solopreneur businesses don’t earn anywhere near that much: According to IRS data for 2008, the average solo business brought in less than $60,000.

Given these sobering numbers, reaching seven figures in a business’s very first year — and with a startup’s often-scarce resources — is nothing short of extraordinary.

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