The Internet - The first Worldwide Tool of Unification ("The End of History")

" ... Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.... "

" ... I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy. For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history?... " Read More …. "The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

"Recalibration of Free Choice"– Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth, 4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical) 8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…5 - Integrity That May Surprise…

Have you seen innovation and invention in the past decade that required thinking out of the box of an old reality? Indeed, you have. I can't tell you what's coming, because you haven't thought of it yet! But the potentials of it are looming large. Let me give you an example, Let us say that 20 years ago, you predicted that there would be something called the Internet on a device you don't really have yet using technology that you can't imagine. You will have full libraries, buildings filled with books, in your hand - a worldwide encyclopedia of everything knowable, with the ability to look it up instantly! Not only that, but that look-up service isn't going to cost a penny! You can call friends and see them on a video screen, and it won't cost a penny! No matter how long you use this service and to what depth you use it, the service itself will be free.

Now, anyone listening to you back then would perhaps have said, "Even if we can believe the technological part, which we think is impossible, everything costs something. There has to be a charge for it! Otherwise, how would they stay in business?" The answer is this: With new invention comes new paradigms of business. You don't know what you don't know, so don't decide in advance what you think is coming based on an old energy world. ..."
(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)


German anti-hate speech group counters Facebook trolls

German anti-hate speech group counters Facebook trolls
Logo No Hate Speech Movement

Bundestag passes law to fine social media companies for not deleting hate speech

Honouring computing’s 1843 visionary, Lady Ada Lovelace. (Design of doodle by Kevin Laughlin)

Friday, June 24, 2022

Google agrees to pay for beefed-up Wikipedia service

Yahoo – AFP, June 22, 2022 


Google has agreed to pay for ramped-up Wikipedia services, part of a growing trend for the US tech giant to strike commercial deals with other web companies. 

The Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that oversees the online encyclopedia, said Google was the first paying customer for its commercial venture Wikimedia Enterprise, which it launched last year. 

The Internet Archive, a non-profit that runs a site called the Wayback Machine that saves snapshots of websites and is used to fix Wikipedia links, will be offered the commercial services for free. 

"We're thrilled to be working with them both as our longtime partners," said Wikimedia's Lane Becker in a statement on Tuesday. 

Wikipedia, one of the world's most visited websites, is free to use, updated by volunteers and relies on donations to keep afloat.

The new commercial venture will not change that arrangement for individual users, the foundation said. 

Google uses material from the site for its "knowledge panel" -- a sidebar that accompanies the main search results. 

The source of the information is not always shown, a practice that had sparked complaints from Wikimedia. 

The foundation said its new product gave customers a "feed of real-time content updates on Wikimedia projects" beyond what is available to the public. 

The product was "designed to make it easier for these entities to package and share Wikimedia content", it said in a statement. 

Google has previously given money to Wikipedia through donations and grants but the new deal puts their relationship on a more formal commercial footing. 

"We have long supported the Wikimedia Foundation in pursuit of our shared goals of expanding knowledge and information access for people everywhere," said Google's Tim Palmer. 

The foundation's statement did not reveal the value of the Google contract. 

Google has long had a troubled relationship with other websites -- it even attempted to create a rival to Wikipedia called Knol, though the venture failed. 

But the company has changed tack in recent years and is increasingly making deals, particularly with media companies. 

French regulators and Google ended a years-long dispute on Tuesday by agreeing a framework for the US firm to pay news outlets for content. 

Google said it had already made deals with hundreds of news outlets across Europe, Agence France-Presse among them.

Saturday, June 18, 2022

RIP Internet Explorer: South Korean engineer's browser 'grave' goes viral

Rfi.fr – AFP, 17 June 2022 

South Korea, which has some of the world's fastest average internet speeds,
remained bizarrely wedded to Microsoft's Internet Explorer Kiyoung Jung
Courtesy of Kiyoung Jung/AFP

Seoul (AFP) – A South Korean engineer who built a grave for Internet Explorer -- photos of which quickly went viral -- told AFP Friday that the now-defunct web browser had made his life a misery. 

South Korea, which has some of the world's fastest average internet speeds, remained bizarrely wedded to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which was retired by the company earlier this week after 27 years. 

In honour of the browser's "death", a gravestone marked with its signature "e" logo was set up on the rooftop of a cafe in South Korea's southern city of Gyeongju by engineer Kiyoung Jung, 38. 

"He was a good tool to use to download other browsers," the gravestone's inscription reads. 

Images of Jung's joke tombstone quickly spread online, with users of social media site Reddit upvoting it tens of thousands of times. 

Once dominant globally, Internet Explorer was widely reviled in recent years due to its slowness and glitches. 

But in South Korea, it was mandatory for online banking and shopping until about 2014, as all such online activities required sites to use ActiveX -- a plugin created by Microsoft. 

It remained the default browser for many Seoul government sites until very recently, local reports said. 

The websites of the Korea Water Resources Corporation and the Korea Expressway Corporation only functioned properly in IE until at least June 10, according to a report by the Maeil Economic Daily. 

'Suffering' for IE

As a software engineer and web developer, Jung told AFP he constantly "suffered" at work because of compatibility issues involving the now-defunct browser. 

"In South Korea, when you are doing web development work, the expectation was always that it should look good in Internet Explorer, rather than Chrome," he said. 

Websites that look good in other browsers, such as Safari or Chrome, can look very wrong in IE, which often forced him to spend many extra hours working to ensure compatibility. 

Jung said that he was "overjoyed" by IE's retirement. 

But he also said he felt genuinely nostalgic and emotional about the browser's demise, as he remembers its heyday -- one of the reasons he was inspired to erect the grave stone. 

He quoted Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki: "People are often relieved that machines don't have souls, but we as human beings actually give our hearts to them," Jung told AFP, explaining his feelings for IE. 

He said he was pleased by the response to his joke grave and that he and his brother -- who owns the cafe -- plan to leave the monument on the rooftop in Gyeongju indefinitely. 

"It's been very exciting to make others laugh," he said.

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Apple allows other payment methods in dating apps: ACM

DutchNews, June 13, 2022 

Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Dutch consumer and markets association ACM says Apple has now changed its unfair conditions, and will allow different methods of payment in Dutch dating apps, thereby meeting official requirements. 

Apple earlier failed to meet the agency’s requirement that it accept alternative payment systems by the March deadline and has been ordered to pay a € 50 million fine. 

The ACM told Apple last August it had to adjust its conditions for inclusion in the Dutch App Store so that dating app providers can use payment systems other than Apple’s own. 

Apple then came up with alternativeconditions stating that dating app providers must develop a completely new app if they want to be able to use an alternative payment system. This too was inadequate, the ACM said, in February. 

‘We want everyone to be able to reap the benefits of the digital economy,’ ACM chairman Martijn Snoep said on Monday. ‘In the digital economy, powerful companies have a special responsibility to keep the market fair and open. Apple avoided that responsibility, and abused its dominant position vis-à-vis dating-app providers.’ The dispute about the fine is still ongoing.

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

EU agrees single charger standard, in blow to Apple

Yahoo – AFP, Alex PIGMAN, June 7, 2022

 

European officials on Tuesday agreed the text of a proposed EU law imposing a standard charger for smartphones, tablets and laptops sold in the bloc, in a blow to Apple. 

EU member states and MEPs believe a standard cable for all devices will cut back on electronic waste, but iPhone juggernaut Apple argues a one-size-fits-all charger would slow innovation and create more pollution. 

For most portable devices the requirement for charging via a USB Type-C port will come into effect from late 2024, negotiators said, while laptops will be given more time. 

The USB-C rule will also stretch to digital cameras, headphones, headsets, portable speakers and E-readers, they said. 

Lawmakers agreed on the common charger based on a proposal that was made by the EU executive -- the European Commission -- in September, but came more than a decade after the European Parliament first pushed for it. 

The decision will be formally ratified by European Parliament and among EU member states later this year before entering into effect. 

"We have been able to do it in nine months, that means that we can ... move fast when there is a political will," the EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said. 

"We are able to say to the lobbies, 'sorry, but here it is Europe and we're working for our people'," he said. 

The 27-nation union is home to 450 million people, some of the world's richest consumers, and the imposition of the USB-C as standard could affect the entire global market. 

"This is a rule which will apply to everyone," said MEP Alex Agius Saliba, who led the negotiations for the European Parliament. 

"If Apple ... or anyone wants to market their product, sell their products within our internal market, they have to abide by our rules and their device has to be USB-C," he said. 

The rules will also give shoppers the option to opt out of receiving a new charging cable when purchasing an electronic device. 

'Planning ahead'

And in order to prepare for the future, the law has provisions to set a standard on wireless charging. 

This was "not to end up ... legislating for a technology which is basically dying out, so we are also planning ahead," Saliba said. 

Apple, which already uses USB-C connectors on some of its iPads and laptop computers, has insisted any legislation to force a universal charger for all mobiles in the European Union is unwarranted. 

"The proposal is vastly disproportionate to any perceived problem," the company said in its response to the commission when the law was being drafted. 

Imposing a charger standard, it argued, would stifle innovation and "reduce European consumer choice by removing more affordable older models from the market". 

Consumers currently have to decide between phones served by three main chargers: "Lightning" for Apple handsets, the micro-USB widely used on most other mobile phones and the newer USB-C that is increasingly coming into use. 

That range is already greatly simplified from 2009, when dozens of different types of chargers were bundled with mobile phones, creating piles of electronic garbage when users changed brands.

In making its proposal last year, the EU said the current situation remained wasteful and that European consumers spent approximately 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) annually on standalone chargers they bought separately. 

The European Commission had long defended a voluntary agreement it made with the device industry that was set in place in 2009 and saw a big reduction in cables, but Apple refused to abide by it.