Crises have a way of shaping our lives in ways we can barely fathom. Around this time last year, people were rushing around in the normal hustle-and-bustle of daily life. Then came a virus that stopped the world in its tracks. Suddenly, the life depicted in sci-fi movies showing the…

Here are our best tips for how to use the Internet for seniors, including tips on Zoom, Facebook, Amazon, online doctors, and more!

Cliff Johnson, a Northwestern University astronomer, was surveying the Magellanic Clouds – two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way – in the predawn hours of November 18, 2019, when 19 streaks of bright lights crossed into the telescope’s view. Johnson was to later learn that the shining objects were part…

Computer scientists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Oregon have determined that the United States’ Internet infrastructure is at serious risk of being flooded owing to the rising sea levels. According to Paul Barford (UW) and Ramakrishnan Durairajan (UO), this is because much of the land-based underground fiber optic cabling through which the Internet is carried is in shallow underground trenches along the coasts.

Online computer extortion and blackmail is nothing new. You may have heard about big companies being extorted for hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even more, in order to keep their companies from being blackmailed over something, and being brought down by a DDOS, or having some scandal (either real or fabricated) made public. Some such activity comes in the form of ransomware (where your files get locked or wiped and then you have to pay to be able to access them and get them back), and some comes in the form of plain old blackmail, such as the example below.

We here at the Internet Patrol are thrilled to have been voted a “top security blog” by Credit Donkey, which, while focusing primarily on making personal finance “donkey-proof” (by which they mean fun and easy to understand), also covers the online security sector.

If you run in certain circles, you may be hearing people swooning over the Starry Wireless Internet appliance and service. “Starry is a radical new Internet service!” “The Starry router requires no cable, no contract, no technician.” Starry “will revolutionize how we connect to the internet.” “When you move, you just take it with you!” Not so much, at least not yet.

Everybody knows that video is king on the Internet – or is it? If you’re an Internet publisher, which is better: text or video? A survey that was commissioned by the Internet Patrol, and done by the excellent technology research firm, Osterman Research, has found that, for some things, people prefer text (in fact, vastly prefer text) to having to watch a video to get the same information.

BenQ’s WiT Internet reading light claims to be the first intelligent reading lamp, specifically designed for Internet screen reading, meaning that the BenQ light bulb is specifically designed for lighting while you read a screen, whether you are surfing the Internet, or sitting reading an eReader such as a Kindle, Nook, or other electronic book reader.

The United States is worrying about something that they consider a new Russian threat: increased Russan submarine activity around the undersea fiber optic cables that carry Internet communications, and the potential that those submarine cables could be severed, crippling U.S. Internet operations. Whether you see this as promoting Russia as a bogeyman, or a real possibility, the reality is that history has demonstrated that undersea Internet cables can be cut, and that it wreaks havoc.

This week cable television provider Dish Networks announced the launch of its online Internet television service, Sling TV. For $20.00, you can stream live television programming, including ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Boomerang, Baby TV, Duck TV, ABC Family and CNN, to any Internet-connected device.

With the Obama administration’s plan to ease trade restrictions between the United States and Cuba, Cubanos may finally have easier access to an unrestricted Internet. At present, only 5% of Cubans have unfiltered access to the Internet, but if technology and electronics start flowing into Cuba as predicted, the Internet floodgates will open, opening up whole new avenues of communication and trade.

HBO CEO Richard Plepler announced last week that HBO will begin offering online streaming on the Internet in 2015. This will be a separate stand-alone HBO Internet streaming service, unlike HBO Go which still requires a subscription through your cable company.

Scientists in India and France have successfully transmitted a brain-to-brain thought, or communication, over the Internet. Using a non-invasive procedure, scientists in India wired a man’s head to capture and decode his brain impulses, had the man think the words “Hola” and “Ciao”, and then transmitted the impulses over the Internet to recipients that colleagues in France had wired similarly, who received the transmission as flashes of light, from which they were able to interpret the “Hola” and “Ciao”. The scientsts involved were Carles Grau, Romuald Ginhoux, Alejandro Riera, Thanh Lam Nguyen, Hubert Chauvat, Michel Berg, Julià L. Amengual, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Giulio Ruffini.

The FBI glossary of Internet slang acronyms reads like a leet speak (l337 5p3@k) primer, albeit a massively over-inclusive one. Indeed, in the time it would take an FBI agent to skim through the Internet slang glossary looking for a particular term, one would hope they could have just inferred it from context. Put together by the FBI Intelligence Research Support Unit (IRSU) and starting with ADN (Any Day Now) and ending with ZOMG (“emphasized OMG”) and ZUP (“what’s up?”), and everything in between, the FBI primer on ‘net slang is a whopping 83 pages containing nearly 3000 terms, many of them, if not most of them, not even really a thing. Although we are fond of BOGSAT (bunch of guys sitting around talking) and are now using it every chance we get.