Watching the nightly news on television was a recipe for unhappiness. It’s just one lesson from two years on the road in Europe, even though the depressing headlines will follow you through other channels.
Tag: internet
Countries like Argentina, Chile and Mexico have begun charging a value added tax (VAT) on digital purchases. But that may just be the tip of iceberg, especially if governments can reach a regional consensus.
For a number of weeks now, Beijing has been trying to regain control of its internet heroes, who are considered too dominant. E-commerce giants and their standard-bearer, Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma, are directly in the line of fire.
Though it may undermine free speech, Ethiopians seem accepting of government-ordered Internet shutdowns to curb rioting fomented online.
Authorities have decided to start cracking down on popular web programs featuring pretty vloggers with seemingly limitless stomachs. But are they really such a bad influence?
From long-distance pleasuring to hands-on stimulators, the 21st century adult toys market offers plenty of exciting options. Just don’t get hacked.
He’s the mastermind behind has most famous deepfakes of the web. Donald Trump, Bruce Lee or even Elon Musk have been integrated into his videos, which are as fascinating and problematic as they are funny.
Squabbling online isn’t the only way to connect with the world.
Dubbed ‘the International,’ a young Egyptian computer programmer had built a program to scrape user data from Facebook. But the same practice is routinely done by the government and large corporations.
Social media and dating apps have revolutionized the way young people live, and given women the right to seduce.
Uber still has plenty of critics in Argentina, but its clearing key legal hurdles is a sign that there’s no turning back the clock on a digitally-driven marketplace.
Amazon is upending the commercial status quo. And yet, as much as people like to complain about it, the temptation to use it can be irresistible.
News used to be a cherished staple for writer and conflict-resolution expert Aldo Civico. But when Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential elections, he had to take a break — for sanity’s sake.
BEIJING — The exhibition was called “Secret,” and opened in the Wuhan Art Museum in April. And what was in the show? The personal information of the 346,000 citizens of the central Chinese city of Wuhan that the artist Deng Yufeng had bought on the black market. Previously treated with a special chemical, certain parts […]
MOSCOW — On April 13, a Russian court decreed an immediate blocking of the app Telegram across the country. The decision came after the refusal of Telegram to provide Russian security services with access to users’ private messages. The authorities said it was a necessity in the fight against terrorist threats. However, Pavel Durov, founder […]
The digital revolution is shifting how societies are structured, and may lead to greater public oversight of government. But it could also have the opposite effect.
LAUSANNE — Margaux and her partner, Séverine, have spent more than a year traveling in a van from the United States to Patagonia. It makes sense then that they’ve come across #Vanlife, an Instagram hashtag van users like themselves use for posting pictures of their lives on the open road. The couple, from Lausanne, enjoy […]
TURIN — From vacuum-cleaner robots that clean your house all by themselves to virtual assistants that can keep track of every appointment in your work agenda to self-driving cars that will soon be circulating on the streets of our cities: One of the most important applications of Artificial Intelligence is the ability to make our […]
CHENNAI — In Murugavel Janakiraman’s office, his daughter’s drawings are pinned up next to family photographs. He proudly points out his children, Arjun and Anisha, his mother, who lives with them, and his wife, Deepa. They met on India’s most popular matrimonial website, Matrimony.com. And as the old saying goes, if you want something done, […]
The evidence so far is that corporations won’t be much affected and consumers could even benefit.
-Analysis- MADRID — Virtually everyone now uses the Internet before, during and after they travel, whether its downloading an app to become familiar with a particular destination or sharing your holiday photos on Facebook or Instagram. The information revolution has indeed revolutionized both the way we prepare trips, and how we experience them. As such, […]
CAIRO — The Egyptian government has blocked access to a total of 21 news and information websites since last Wednesday, including the original publisher of this article, Cairo-based Mada Masr. A security source cited by MENA, the country’s official state news agency, said that the blocked websites were disseminating “content that supports terrorism and extremism […]
NEW YORK CITY — The 19th-century French sociologist Gabriel Tarde defined the marketplace as a war between buyers and sellers. He called price “a truce” obtained by haggling. It was because of that “war” mentality, he explained in his Selected Papers, that authorities in Europe began fixing prices on goods and services. The goal was […]
-Analysis- MUNICH — The recent attacks on the Internet would be great material for a movie. But it would be more a horror film than action flick — and it could be a low-budget production since the victims could just be you and me. No need to pay high-priced movie stars. The screenplay would go […]
Nearly all of the data sent between continents goes through fiber optic cables that reside at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a delicate and costly, but essential, network for our daily lives and work.
Family pictures, porn, German armed forces’ internal data – openly accessible on the internet. One mistake is enough and your privacy is destroyed.
PARIS — How can we surf the web without using Google, Amazon or Facebook? French group Framasoft, which promotes the use of open-source software, offers a way. Under the “De-google-ify internet” initiative, the group uses decentralized software solutions to design tools that allow consumers to retake control of their data. Members of Framasoft are strong […]
The great paradox of our time is that we’ve never had access to so much information, and yet have never been so badly informed.
Investigators assume that ISIS instructors are looking for new candidates for becoming potential terrorists on the Internet. Chat protocols reveal how they proceed.
Israeli researchers recently showed how data can be stolen from an offline computer. But computers aren’t the only devices that can be compromised.
HAVANA — Cuba“s belated embrace of the Internet has people packing into places like the Plaza de la Revolución and the colonial fort Castillito, two of the island’s just 114 public WiFi hotspots. Overall, the number of Cubans who regularly access the Web is still relatively small. But things are changing, and quickly. The Internet […]
Is simulation turning people into escapists, wonders this Argentinian philosopher and science-fiction expert.
No, it’s mostly not about censorship …
Criminals of the 21st century do not have to go to clubs to sell their drugs or drive across the border to buy their weapons. They only have to smuggle malware onto someone’s computer or sell their goods at the black market of the digital underground.
PARIS — For more than three years now, the French startup Qwant has been trying to prove that a search engine can be efficient and profitable while respecting the privacy and anonymity of users. After a slow and difficult start, Qwant is finally taking off. Six months ago the search engine had 8 million visitors. […]
Le Canard enchaîné first ever and latest front pages France’s legendary satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné is celebrating its century-long existence, and the Internet is not about to write its obituary. “The Chained Duck” — canard is both French for “duck” and the slang for “newspaper,” — was first published on July 5, 1916. On […]
A video of Chinese bank employees being spanked with a kind of bat or paddle for poor job performance has gone viral, setting off outrage online in China. The video, apparently recorded during a training session at a rural bank in the poor western province of Shanxi, shows eight staff members — both men and […]
Kazakhstan-born computer engineer Alexandra Elbakyan is now an international copyright outlaw. Her Sci-Hub website offers free access to millions of academic publications, a direct challenge to the entire publishing and academic establishment.
HARBIN — Fang Binxing, the architect of China’s internet censorship system, known as the Great Firewall, has run head-on into his own freedom-curbing creation. On a visit to his alma mater, the Harbin Institute of Technology, Fang gave a speech this week entitled “Defining Internet Sphere Security.” But as he began to lay out his […]