Maxim Bange

The Dutch government plans to roll out a nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations within the next two years, as part of a push to facilitate more environmentally-friendly transport. ABB, a Switzerland-based power and automation company, announced this week that it is teaming up with Dutch startup Fastned to install EV chargers at more than 200 stations across the Netherlands, with at least one station every 50 kilometers (31 miles). With more than 16 million inhabitants, the Netherlands is, to date, the most populous country to implement a nationwide EV charging network.

According to ABB, its 50 kilowatt Terra fast chargers are capable of charging an electric car within 15 to 30 minutes. The first chargers will be...

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Google has reportedly paid the makers of Adblock Plus, the single most popular browser extension on Chrome and Firefox, to look the other way when it comes to its web advertisements. According to the German news site Horizont, Google and other unnamed companies are paying to be included on a "whitelist" that prevents their pop-ups, banners, and display ads from being blocked by the free service.

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Part of plant under lockdown

New reports from The Guardian show that a discontinued NSA program which collected vast amounts of foreign and domestic internet data has been replaced by more expansive programs under the Obama administration. The new surveillance capabilities, implemented by the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) directorate, have "doubled" the agency's data intake since being installed, according to a top secret memo obtained by The Guardian.

The newest program, code name "EvilOlive," was introduced in December of 2012 and is aimed at "broadening the scope" of what the NSA can collect under its authority granted by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Like the program it replaced, EvilOlive and a second program called "ShellTrumpet" capture sensitive...

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Veel mobiele games en andere kinderapps vergaren allerlei privacygevoelige data zonder toestemming. Veel data wordt doorverkocht.

Hollywood movie studio Paramount has commissioned three new Terminator movies as part of a new stand-alone trilogy. After Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed his return to the franchise in the upcoming Terminator movie — which begins shooting in January 2014 — Deadline reports that Skydance Productions, Annapurna Pictures, and Paramount Pictures will release the first instalment on June 26th, 2015.

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Microsoft is making use of its Skype acquisition for Windows 8.1, opting to bundle it into a final version of the OS. Existing preview versions of Windows 8.1 do not include the traditional built-in Messaging app. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed to The Verge that the final version of Windows 8.1 will kill off the Messaging app in favor of Skype integration.

Skype is more tightly integrated in Windows 8.1, with improvements to answer voice and video calls from the lock screen. The decision to drop the existing Messaging app is all part of the Messenger service retirement. Microsoft started to force Messenger desktop users over to Skype in April, but the Windows 8 Messaging app was left untouched. The built-in...

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This post is part of a regular series of privacy and security tips to help you and your family stay safe and secure online. Privacy and security are important topics—they matter to us, and they matter to you. Building on our Good to Know site with advice for safe and savvy Internet use, we hope this information helps you understand the choices and control that you have over your online information. -Ed.

More than a quarter of Internet users worldwide use WiFi at home to connect to the web, but many aren't sure how to protect their home network, or why it is important to do so. The best way to think of your home WiFi network is to think of it like your front door: you want a strong lock on both to ensure your safety and security.

When data is in transit over an unsecured WiFi network, the information you’re sending or receiving could be intercepted by someone nearby. Your neighbors might also be able to use the network for their own Internet activities, which might slow down your connection. Securing your network can help keep your information safe when you’re connecting wirelessly, and can also help protect the devices that are connected to your network.

If you’re interested in improving your home WiFi security, the steps below can help make your home network safer.

1. Check to see what kind of home WiFi security you already have.
Do your friends need to enter a password to get on your network when they visit your house for the first time and ask to use your WiFi? If they don’t, your network isn’t as secure as it could be. Even if they do need to enter a password, there are a few different methods of securing your network, and some are better than others. Check what kind of security you have for your network at home by looking at your WiFi settings. Your network will likely either be unsecured, or secured with WEP, WPA or WPA2. WEP is the oldest wireless security protocol, and it’s pretty weak. WPA is better than WEP, but WPA2 is best.

2. Change your network security settings to WPA2.
Your wireless router is the machine that creates the WiFi network. If you don’t have your home network secured with WPA2, you’ll need to access your router’s settings page to make the change. You can check your router’s user manual to figure out how to access this page, or look for instructions online for your specific router. Any device with a WiFi trademark sold since 2006 is required to support WPA2. If you have a router that was made before then, we suggest upgrading to a new router that does offer WPA2. It’s safer and can be much faster.

3. Create a strong password for your WiFi network.
To secure your network with WPA2, you’ll need to create a password. It’s important that you choose a unique password, with a long mix of numbers, letters and symbols so others can’t easily guess it. If you’re in a private space such as your home, it’s OK to write this password down so you can remember it, and keep it somewhere safe so you don’t lose it. You might also need it handy in case your friends come to visit and want to connect to the Internet via your network. Just like you wouldn’t give a stranger a key to your house, you should only give your WiFi password to people you trust.

4. Secure your router too, so nobody can change your settings.
Your router needs its own password, separate from the password you use to secure your network. Routers come without a password, or if they do have one, it’s a simple default password that many online criminals may already know. If you don’t reset your router password, criminals anywhere in the world have an easy way to launch an attack on your network, the data shared on it and the computers connected to your network. For many routers, you can reset the password from the router settings page. Keep this password to yourself, and make it different from the one you use to connect to the WiFi network (as described in step 3). If you make these passwords the same, then anyone who has the password to connect to your network will also be able to change your wireless router settings.

5. If you need help, look up the instructions.
If you’ve misplaced your router’s manual, type the model number of your base station or router into a search engine—in many cases the info is available online. Otherwise, contact the company that manufactured the router or your Internet Service Provider for assistance.

Please check out the video below to learn more about the simple but important steps you can take to improve the security of your Internet browsing.



For more advice on how to protect yourself and your family online, visit our Good to Know site, and stay tuned for more posts in our security series.

Posted by John Munoz, Technical Program Manager

Another new year is almost upon us. Or at least that's what the distributors of Rogue:Win32/Winwebsec would have us believe - releasing a new branding System Doctor 2014 just prior to the middle of 2013.

Figure 1: System Doctor 2014 user interface

For some time, Winwebsec has had only one branding active at a time. While there have been a number of name changes, the interface and behavior have otherwise remained mostly unchanged.

System Doctor 2014 represents a departure from this, with the previous incarnation System Care Antivirus remaining the most active and prevalent version of Winwebsec. Indeed, System Doctor 2014 even checks for signs of a System Care Antivirus installation and will stop running if it finds any.

Figure 2: System Care Antivirus user interface

The appearance and behavior of System Doctor 2014 is also somewhat different to other Winwebsec variants. In the past, most rogues have asked for payment before "removing" the fake threats they report. System Doctor 2014 successfully "cleans" some of the threats before asking for payment, but not all of them. It recommends activation in order to remove the rest of the threats for which cleaning "failed".

Figure 3: System Doctor 2014 reporting cleaning failure

Figure 4: System Doctor 2014 reporting cleaning failure

Regular readers of this blog and our encyclopedia may also notice that the names of the threats falsely reported by System Doctor 2014 have a certain resemblance to the names of threats reported by Microsoft's antimalware products. The brief descriptions of the threats also appear to be lifted directly from our encyclopedia.

For example, in Figure 3 the threat name displayed in the rogue’s detections lists Win32/Sality.XX but is referred to as Win32/Sality.AT in the description below it. Our description for Virus:Win32/Sality.AT also begins with the same sentence: "Virus:Win32/Sality.AT is a detection for a virus that spreads by infecting Windows executable files and by copying itself to removable and remote drives."

While there are differences between the two Winwebsec variants, they also have a number of behaviors in common: both have used the same custom obfuscation in an attempt to avoid detection by antimalware products, both use a similar request format when sending details of their installation to the distributors' server, and both attempt to prevent all other programs from running apart from a few that appear on a specified whitelist.

Interestingly, both variants also use exactly the same activation code.

When someone pays to register rogue software, they receive an activation code that they need to convert the rogue to the full version. Once activated, the rogue will report that it has cleaned all of the fake threats it detected earlier. It will also stop trying to block other programs from running. This can help make it easier to remove the rogue from an infected computer. Figure 4 shows the System Doctor 2014 user interface after cleaning the remaining fake threats.

Figure 5: System Doctor 2014 after its activation code has been entered

In the case of Winwebsec, all variants appear to use the same activation code. Of course, we strongly recommend that you do not ever pay to obtain an activation code.

Another approach is to use Windows Explorer to copy the file you want to run to the desktop, rename the new copy to explorer.exe or other filename on the whitelist, and run the new copy. You can find the whitelists for System Care Antivirus and System Doctor 2014 in their respective descriptions. For example, you could use this approach with Task Manager (taskmgr.exe) to end the Winwebsec process. After doing this, you should be able to perform any cleanup activities you need without further hindrance from Winwebsec.

However, the simplest method of removing Winwebsec - or any other malware that prevents you from downloading updates or running other software - is Windows Defender Offline.

The way Windows Defender Offline works is by allowing you to:

1. Download a copy of the tool from a computer that has access to the internet
2. Save a copy of the recovery tool to a removable drive, in order to create bootable media
3. Run the recovery tool on a compromised computer

This allows you to boot from the removable media, and scan the affected computer with the latest antimalware definitions before any malware has a chance to start running.

There are more instruction on how to use this tool on the Windows Defender Offline download page.

David Wood
MMPC Melbourne

Turbo mode helps it keep the clock speed crown

Messagingdienst WhatsApp blijkt meer gebruiker te hebben dan Twitter. Voor het eerst in de vierjarige geschiedenis van WhatsApp heeft het bedrijf cijfers gecommuniceerd over het aantal gebruikers.

Over the past month the PRISM scandal has dominated the news, with many people calling for stronger privacy protections as a result.

While it may not come as a complete surprise that nearly all communication on the Internet is monitored and stored, the revelations have brought talks about encrypted communication to the mainstream.

One new startup that hopes to lead the way in the next generation of encrypted communication tools comes from Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde. The former Pirate Bay spokesman is no newcomer when it comes to encrypting traffic as he is also connected to the privacy-focused VPN service iPredator. However, with his latest project he hopes to take things to the next level.

Sunde and two friends are currently working hard on Heml.is (“secret” in Swedish), a spy-proof messaging App for both iOS and Android. Aside from its pretty looks, all messages will be encrypted so no one except the sender and recipient will be able to read their contents.

TorrentFreak caught up with Sunde who told us that a secure and private messaging system is needed for people to talk freely.

“People act differently if they think someone is listening in to their conversation. That’s what Stasi taught us for instance. It’s one of many reasons why privacy is so vital,” Sunde says.

While encrypted messaging is not a new phenomenon, Heml.is hopes to beat the competition by building apps that look pretty, but perhaps more importantly are completely open about the people running them.

“The big difference with heml.is compared to other solutions is that we’re not just focusing on tech. So many people talk about open source, floss and so on, but that’s only a small part. There are more important questions,” Sunde tells us.

“Who runs the infrastructure? How do you know the intentions of those people? Which jurisdiction has which rules? “We know these things just as well as the technology. Today’s internet is more and more politicized so it needs to be dealt with that way as well.”

Heml.is

Helm.is is currently working on messenger apps for the iOS and Android platforms and is raising money to complete the development. In the future the startup is looking to expand to other platforms as well as other forms of communication.

“In today’s day and age we can’t do without encryption. We need to have it for all sorts of communication, something we from The Pirate Bay have said for almost a decade now,” Sunde tells us.

“But it’s not just encryption, it’s everything surrounding it. The cloud services are the big problem. Doesn’t matter if you communicate encrypted, if the end result is stored with a master-key or otherwise accessible by an unwanted party,” he adds.

Sunde is best known for his role as Pirate Bay founder, and notes that aside from messaging Heml.is may also add file-sharing capabilities in the future.

“We’re of course looking at possibilities of doing any type of communication private,” Sunde says.

People who are interested can help out by funding the project in return for unlock codes. No release date has yet been promised – Sunde says that they’re not going to release anything until they’re completely happy with it.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder to Launch NSA-proof Messenger App

Google heeft aangegeven opnieuw een dienst te zullen afsluiten. Ditmaal gaat het om Latitude. De locatiedienst is vanaf 9 augustus niet meer bruikbaar. Het sluiten van de dienst lijkt samen te hangen met de integratie van locatiediensten in het sociale netwerk Google+.

Following the military raid on the Bin Laden compound in 2011, the Pakistani government set up a commission of inquiry to find out exactly what happened, if there were any lapses in leadership, and what follow on actions should be taken.

Today, Al Jazeera published the exclusive report from the "Abottobad Commission," which performed the investigation.

Inside their report was many interesting details, but we've managed to get it down to just five.

Bin Laden was once stopped by a cop for speeding in 2002, but nothing happened.

From the report:

"Maryam, of course had no occasion to speak to the tall Arab [bin Laden]. Once they were all (including the tall Arab) on a visit to the bazaar they were stopped for speeding by a policeman. But her husband very quickly settled the matter with the policeman and they drove on."

Bin Laden was a devoted dad.

From the report:

"The children of the OBL family led extremely regimented and secluded lives. OBL personally saw to the religious education of his grandchildren and supervised their play time, which included cultivating vegetable plots with simple prizes for best performances ... "

" ... [Navy SEALs] also took a purse that contained the will of OBL. Kairriyyeh had previously read the will but did not wish to divulge the details. She said it was not political and pertained only to personal and family related matters. Other reports suggested that the will said his children should not seek leadership of Al Qaeda ... "

Osama bin Laden loved wearing a cowboy hat.

Previous reports on Bin Laden never indicated that he was observed wearing a cowboy hat. Reports have mentioned that intelligence officials had dubbed him "the pacer," since he paced outside on his balcony quote a bit.

 But there was never talk of a cowboy hat until now.

 From the report:

"When OBL moved about the compound, he wore a cowboy hat to avoid detection from above."

"Poor Uncle" and how Ibrahim al Kuwaiti's wife found out she was living with Bin Laden.

From the report:

Maryam had four children. The eldest was her 9 year old daughter, Rahma. One day she asked her father why "the uncle who lives upstairs" in the main house never went to the bazzaar. Ibrahim invented a story that he was too poor to go out and buy anything. From that day Rahma referred to him as "miskeen kaka, ie poor uncle."

 "The womenfolk in Abbottabad initially had access to TV. However, one day while watching Al Jazeera a picture of Osama came on the screen and Rahma immediately recognized him as her "miskeen kaka" who lived upstairs in the main house. Ibrahim panicked and was very upset with Maryam. He immediately stopped the ladies access to TV.

CIA Ground Assets: 

It was no secret that the CIA had this house under surveillance, but the degree with which they had "ground assets" was never full disclosed.

Here, the commission reports that CIA presence in the area may have been a lot heavier than previously publicized:

The Pakistan Army Board of Inquiry Informed the Commission that the stealth helicopters were probably guided by ground operators who were already in place around the OBL compound. In this regard, there were reports of "suspicious activities" indicating CIA ground support for the planning and implementation of the raid. These included the cutting of trees to clear the approach of the helicopters, the hiring of a house in the vicinity of the OBL compound by supposed USAID employees, and the movement of four fo five Predo/land Druisers from the the US embassy in Islamabad toward Peshewar/Abbotabad. The US Embassy personnel coming from Islamabad and seen headed toward Abbottabad maybe have been CIA agents to assist the helicopters.

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The world's oceans are exploding with dead zones, regions where the water is so depleted of oxygen that fish and other sea life that live near the bottom cannot survive.

Dead zones are human-caused. They occur when crop fertilizer and cow poop, containing high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, get washed into streams and rivers and out to the ocean.

The nutrient-rich farm runoff triggers huge algae blooms. When the algae dies, it sinks down to the bottom of the water. Bacteria living in the water decompose the dead algae, and use up the oxygen. Without enough oxygen in the water, fish and shellfish suffocate and die.

The number and size of marine dead zones has doubled each decade since the 1960s, mostly due to agricultural pollution, according to study published in the journal Science. They are concentrated on the East coast of the U.S. and Europe.

Declines in oxygen are associated with an expanded use of industrial nitrogen fertilizer, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. The impacts of these fertilizers, however, were not observed until at least a decade later.

In 2008, dead zones affected more than 245,000 square kilometers of the planet's ocean, an area approximately the size of the United Kingdom.

This summer, researchers predict that the the Gulf of Mexico will be strangled by one of the largest dead zones on record.

The oxygen-deprived area could cover an area roughly the size of New Jersey, according to a statement from Michigan University.

Spring floods across the Midwest are blamed for this year's record-breaking dead zone, which shoots nitrogen-rich freshwater from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. The amount of nitrogen entering the Mississippi has jumped 300% since the 1960s, regardless of an especially wet spring.

Dead are zones are not visible — you can't see a decrease in oxygen — but their existence endangers all marine life on the seabed, and therefore, the commercial fisheries that depend on creatures like fish, clams, and shrimp to stay in business.

SEE ALSO: This Rare, Clear View Of Alaska Is A Sign Of Bad Things

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Sales of devices based on Apple's Mac OS and iOS will overtake those of products running all flavors of Windows in 2015, a Gartner analyst predicted Monday.

Apple is cutting its iPhone orders for the rest of the year, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek says in a new note, citing supply chain checks. 

He says iPhone build plans for the July-September period are now 25-30 million units, down from 40-45 million. For the holiday quarter, he says Apple is planning to build 50-55 million iPhone units, down from an original build plan of 60-55 million units. 

If this report is accurate, Apple's iPhone business will only grow 4.6% on a year-over-year basis during this year's holiday quarter. Continued sluggish growth will weigh on Apple's stock unless it has new products to get people excited. 

Misek is cutting his price target to $405, down from $420 on these new iPhone build plans. 

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Sony and Microsoft will be duking out the next console war for years to come, but there's one company that wins no matter what: chipmaker AMD, which managed to put processors in every new console, including the Nintendo Wii U, the PlayStation 4, and the Xbox One. If you buy any new game console this holiday, you'll be helping to fill AMD's depleted coffers — but AMD's sweep could have far more significance than that. The company's dominance in next-gen consoles could actually make PC gaming more relevant than it's been in ages.

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MakerBot, one of the companies at the fore of making 3D printing available to consumers, has just been acquired by professional-grade 3D printing company Stratasys. MakerBot will continue to operate as a separate company and under its own name, and no immediate plans for the two companies to integrate products or services have been announced. Stratasys is set to pay $604 million for MakerBot, and it should close the deal sometime this fall if it receives regulatory approval. Of that $604 million, two-thirds will be delivered immediately as stock, while the remaining third is subject to MakerBot's performance over the next two years.

While both companies work in 3D printing, they've been distinctly focused on different ends of the...

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Het gebruik van DuckDuckGo, de zoekmachine die geen gebruikersdata verzamelt, is de afgelopen week fors toegenomen.

The results of a recent survey by Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance and The Conference Board should come as no surprise to brand marketers who have to fight executives every day for budget dollars to invest in social media marketing activities.

According to the survey of 180 senior executives and corporate directors from public and private companies in all major industries in Canada and the United States, senior business leaders do not understand the importance of social media to their companies. The report authors explain that there is “a disconnect between companies’ understanding of social media and the actions they are taking to apply it to their businesses.

Some of the most unsettling statistics found in the “What Do Corporate Directors and Senior Managers Know about Social Media?” include:

• 90% of respondents report that they understand the effects social media can have on their companies but only 32% monitor social media to identify risks to their companies and only 14% use social media metrics to measure company performance.
• Only 8% of directors and 24% of senior managers receive social media reports.
• 50% of companies do not collect social media information and metrics.
• 65% of respondents use social media for personal purposes.
• The majority of respondents do not have formal social media policies at their companies.
• The majority of respondents have never had a social media expert consult with their companies.

Lead author of the study, Professor David F. Larcker of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, explains that senior business leaders’ lack of understanding of the importance of social media to their companies poses a high level of risk. The study authors recommend that companies identify key performance metrics and risk indicators and monitor those metrics and threats using a listening system. Futhermore, the study authors recommend that companies develop formal social media policies and guidelines for all employees in order to minimize risks.

The challenge for brand marketers has always been trying to convince senior executives that social media should be a priority for both increasing brand awareness and sales as well as protecting the brand and company. The report found that more than two out of three business leaders use social media for personal reasons (primarily LinkedIn), so it’s clear that the majority understand social media and are not averse to it. However, the importance of social media in their personal lives doesn’t transition to the importance of social media for their companies.

Twenty years ago, those business leaders would have done anything to have such open access to consumers, competitors, and their conversations and actions. They have it today, but for some reason, it’s not a priority, and it’s given few budget dollars. It’s time for the disconnect to end, don’t you think?

Image: Sigurd Decroos

 Research Reveals Senior Business Leaders Do Not Understand Social Media

The human face might look very different in the future.

Graphic designer Nickolay Lamm from UK discount site MyVoucherCodes.co.uk collaborated with a genomics expert to create pictures that show the evolution of the human face 20,000, 60,000, and 100,000 years from now.

In one possible future scenario, humans will have full control of human genome engineering. That is, they will be able to eliminate hereditary genetic disorders, or select desirable genetic traits like straight teeth and natural blonde hair.

Natural human evolution is still at work — the head will get bigger to make room for a larger brain — but most facial features will be molded to reflect what the majority of us perceive as attractive: big eyes, a straight nose, and facial symmetry.

TODAY: Here is a photo of a normal-looking man and woman today.

20,000 YEARS FROM NOW: Humans will have a larger head to accommodate a bigger brain. The human face will not have changed much from today, except that the forehead will be noticeably too large. A yellow ring around the subjects' eyes represents a lens from the Google Glass of the future.

60,000 YEARS FROM NOW: The human head will be even larger. The eyes will also be bigger, which may be preferable to exploring the dimmer environments of space. Humans will elect to have darker skin and thicker eyelids to protect them from more harmful UV radiation outside of Earth's ozone layer.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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A mystery is unfolding in the laboratories and grain fields of Oregon. Stalks of wheat that hadn't been planted and wouldn't die were found growing among a farmer's crops. Tests have revealed that the peculiar wheat included an illegal gene modification that made it resistant to a certain herbicide — something that shouldn't have existed within a commercial US grain field. Now the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is trying to figure out how it got there and who it came from.

Early lab results show that the grain is a match for a strain that Monsanto tested between 1998 and 2005, but how it got there remains unclear. Both Monsanto and the USDA say that the wheat is safe for growth and consumption, despite its ban in...

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Ensures users can find the true profiles of celebrities, brands and businesses

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Nvidia scores in mobile devices while AMD's APUs pay off

A new study suggests that people who regularly smoke weed are skinnier than the general population.

The study analyzed data from more than 4,500 adult Americans — 579 of whom were current marijuana smokers, meaning they had smoked in the last month. About 2,000 had used marijuana in the past, while another 2,000 had never used the drug.

They studied their body's response to eating sugars: their levels of the hormone insulin and their blood sugar levels while they hadn't eaten in nine hours, and after eating sugar.

Not only are pot users skinnier, but their body has a healthier response to sugar.

When we eat sugar, our bodies respond by releasing the hormone insulin. Insulin primes our cells to absorb the sugar and turn it into storable starches, so it can be used at a later time.

When we take in too many simple sugars over a lifetime this system can go haywire, and our cells stop reacting to insulin, a syndrome called insulin resistance, a precursor to type-two diabetes.

The study, published May 15 in The American Journal Of Medicine, shows that people who had smoke marijuana in the past month have a healthier response to insulin than the average person.

Their insulin levels of recent pot-smokers were lower during fasting and they had a lower insulin resistance score. They also had more "good" cholesterol and smaller waists.

This could mean they are less likely to be obese, at a lower risk for heart disease, less likely to develop insulin resistance, and less likely to develop diabetes.

This sounds a little backwards, since potheads are known to get the "munchies" and eat nonstop. Studies have found that when people smoke marijuana, they take in an average of 600 calories more.

The link between increased appetite and food intake, but healthier metabolic reaction to sugars, is still a mystery.

We also can't say for sure that pot smoking leads to better health outcomes, only that the traits the researchers saw in pot smokers — lower insulin resistance scores and smaller waist circumference — are associated with lower health risks.

"The mechanisms underlying this paradox have not been determined and the impact of regular marijuana use on insulin resistance and cardiometabolic risk factors remains unknown," says coauthor Hannah Buettner.

Similar results have been seen in lab animals given the active ingredient in marijuana, Tetrahydrocannabinol. A study from March 2012, published in the journal Phytomedicine, suggests that even already obese rats, when given cannabis, have lost weight in lab studies.

SEE ALSO: What Marijuana Does To Your Brain And Body

SEE ALSO: Marijuana Has Won The War On Drugs

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Mark Wunsch, software engineer for Gilt Groupe, has beef with Google.

He points out many specific problems he has with the company, but in general they seem to boil down to this: Google is so deeply ingrained into the current state of the Web that you're forced to acknowledge it and tailor your digital creations to its standards, or else you become anonymous and un-findable.

Wunsch writes that "a Google Search has become as meaningful, if not more, than the URL — a fundamental building block in the web." Fewer people actually type in URLs for sites they want to visit, instead opting to search Google for the content they're after. So developers like Wunsch are "enticed, encouraged, and incentivized to build for the web using tools created by Google."

Like Wunsch, any developer worth his or her salt cares a lot about choice and freedom when it comes to the internet. In a perfect world, you should be able to build whatever you want using any tools you like before putting the finished product online to be found as easily as anything else. A site loaded with cool, relevant content should win out over a bland one that meets a list of Google-pleasing requirements, but this simply isn't the case anymore.

If you want to dig deeper, head over to Wunsch's post for much more detail.

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

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The contractor that manages computers for the International Space Station (ISS) has announced that the orbiting project is now running Debian Linux on its laptop fleet having successfully jettisoned Windows XP.