Cloud

The EastWest Institute’s Global Cooperation in Cyberspace Initiative has released its Action Agenda for 2014-2015. The Agenda highlights the initiative’s objectives—to reduce conflict, crime and other disruptions in cyberspace and to promote stability, innovation and inclusion. It marks the initiative’s accomplishments during 2014 and presents a road map for 2015.

“We are here to help make the Internet a vehicle for a safer, more peaceful, more secure, more open world—where the creative human spirit can thrive,”EWI Senior Vice President Bruce McConnell said. 

The Action Agenda summarizes the work of the initiative’s seven breakthrough groups essential to achieving its objectives. The report also features coverage of the initiative’s working roundtable held last June in San Francisco and its Global Cyberspace Cooperation Summit V held in Berlin last December. Global Cyberspace Cooperation Summit VI will be held in New York on September 9-10, 2015.

Click here for the full report.

During my visit to General Electric’s Global Research Centers in San Ramon, California, and Niskayuna, New York, last month, I got what amounts to an end-to-end tour of what GE calls the “Industrial Internet.” The phrase refers to the technologies of cloud computing and the “Internet of Things” applied across a broad swath of GE’s businesses in an effort to squeeze better performance and efficiency from the operations of everything from computer-controlled manufacturing equipment to gas turbine engines and power plants. It’s an ambitious effort that GE is hoping to eventually sell to other companies as a cloud service—branded as Predix.

GE is not alone in trying to harness cloud computing and apply it to the rapidly growing universe of networked systems in energy, manufacturing, health care, and aviation. IBM has its own Internet of Things cloud strategy, and other companies—including SAP, Siemens, and startups such as MachineShop—are hoping to tie their business analytic capabilities to the vast volumes of data generated by machines and sensors. That data could fuel what some have called the next industrial revolution: manufacturing that isn’t just automated, but is driven by data in a way that fundamentally changes how factories work.

Eventually, analytical systems could make decisions about logistics, plant configuration, and other operational details with little human intervention other than creativity, intuition, and fine motor skills. And even in industries where there is no production plant, analytics could make people more efficient by getting them where they need to be at the right time with the right tools.

Google’s plan to deliver Internet service from balloons in the stratosphere has come a long way since being unveiled in June 2013.

A single “Project Loon” balloon can now remain in the air for more than six months and provide 4G LTE cellular service to an area the size of Rhode Island, according to Google. Company officials have taken to calling Loon balloons “cell towers in the sky.”

While there’s no announced date for a widespread service launch, Google has provided Internet to a school in Brazil and is partnering with cellular operators Vodafone New Zealand, Telstra in Australia, and Telefónica in Latin America.

RapidShare, one of the longest-running file-sharing websites, has finally decided to close its doors.

On Tuesday, the Switzerland-based site abruptly announced that it will “stop the active service” on March 31. Neither the site nor its Germany-based lawyer, Daniel Raimer, immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment.

The site, which was founded in 2002, faced scrutiny from German courts, attempted to combat piracy, and even hired a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm in 2010. Back in 2008, a German deep packet inspection firm found that RapidShare “generates half of the [direct download link] traffic and therefore up to 5 percent of all Web traffic in some regions.”

Netflix announced today that it will begin offering its streaming services in Cuba to anyone with an Internet connection and “access to international payment methods” like debit or credit cards. Streaming starts at $7.99.

Shows and movies that are available on Netflix can vary from country to country, and in its press release, the company said that it will offer a “curated selection” of “films, series, and kids programming, as it does throughout Latin America” in addition to Netflix’s original programming like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings also suggested eventually incorporating some Cuban media for streaming on the service. “Cuba has great filmmakers and a robust arts culture and one day we hope to be able to bring their work to our global audience of over 57 million members,” he said in Netflix’s press release.

In the world of online piracy, it seems like it’s one in, one out at the moment. While The Pirate Bay returned last week, Kickass Torrents has now been taken down via a domain name seizure.

The site, which was already blocked from direct UK access as a result of high court blocking orders, now turns up an error message when users attempt to access its Somali .so domain. A look at its Whois record shows the site listed as banned.

The Somali registry was seen as a safe haven for the site, away from copyright holders and their lawyers, but it appears the takedown was a result of a claim. Several other sites with a .so domain, including the unaffiliated scam site kickasstorrents.so, have also been taken down, which indicates a far-reaching block on any URL with “kickass” in it that is based in the country.