Tag Archives: Internet & Networking Technology

Google mobile search results get ‘continuous scrolling’ treatment

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You’ll soon have an easier time scrolling through search results on your phone. In the US, Google is rolling out a tweak that does away with the “See more” prompt you’ve had to tap on previously to load additional search results on mobile devices. Now, when you get to the bottom of a set of results, the company’s search engine will instead automatically load the next page for you, allowing you to continuously scroll until you find a website you want to visit.

You should see the change on both your mobile web browser and the Google app for iOS and Android. Per TechCrunch, the company is staggering out the rollout of the feature, so you won’t be able to scroll through every set of results, at least not initially. The change follows a redesign of mobile search Google released at the start of 2021.

While most usually find what they’re looking for quickly, Google notes some people view as many as four pages of search results before they click through to a website. The company suggests the move to continuous scrolling should be particularly helpful to those who tend to ask more open-ended questions of its search engine. It’s also a tweak that brings the platform more in line with modern feed-style apps like Instagram and TikTok.

Google mobile search results get ‘continuous scrolling’ treatment

Posted on by

You’ll soon have an easier time scrolling through search results on your phone. In the US, Google is rolling out a tweak that does away with the “See more” prompt you’ve had to tap on previously to load additional search results on mobile devices. Now, when you get to the bottom of a set of results, the company’s search engine will instead automatically load the next page for you, allowing you to continuously scroll until you find a website you want to visit.

You should see the change on both your mobile web browser and the Google app for iOS and Android. Per TechCrunch, the company is staggering out the rollout of the feature, so you won’t be able to scroll through every set of results, at least not initially. The change follows a redesign of mobile search Google released at the start of 2021.

While most usually find what they’re looking for quickly, Google notes some people view as many as four pages of search results before they click through to a website. The company suggests the move to continuous scrolling should be particularly helpful to those who tend to ask more open-ended questions of its search engine. It’s also a tweak that brings the platform more in line with modern feed-style apps like Instagram and TikTok.

Google Cloud will show users their gross carbon emissions

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Google Cloud has added tools to help users gain a better understanding of their environmental impact as part of the company's broader efforts to combat climate change. The Carbon Footprint feature shows the gross carbon emissions linked to the electricity consumption of someone's Cloud Platform use. It displays emissions over time and can break down the data by project, product and region.

Companies will be able to roll this information into their own emissions data for internal audits and making carbon disclosures (they can export the data to Salesforce Sustainability Cloud, for instance). Google stressed that the figures relate to a user's gross carbon emissions, since the company has been carbon neutral for over a decade. It plans to run entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030.

Google Cloud will also flag applications that are not in use, as well as their carbon emissions. Google suggests that deleting apps identified by the Unattended Project Recommender will help companies mitigate security risks, lower costs and reduce their carbon footprint.

In addition, Google is bringing Earth Engine to the Cloud Platform for select users. Using satellite imagery, data sets and other tools, companies can harness Earth Engine to "track, monitor and predict changes in the Earth’s surface" caused by extreme weather events or human activity. That, Google says, will enable businesses to reduce and mitigate risks, "become more resilient to climate change threats" and save money. Companies can apply for access to Earth Engine through Google Cloud.

Last week, Google unveiled a string of features that highlight the environmental impact of consumer choices. Shopping results can promote greener options, while Google Flights started showing carbon emission estimates for almost all trips. The Nest Renew program, meanwhile, can switch your thermostat on or off depending on the availability of clean energy. In addition, Google is hoping to use AI to improve the efficiency of traffic lights and reduce pollution from idle cars.

The Internet Archive’s ‘Wayforward Machine’ paints a grim future for the web

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The Internet Archive is marking its 25th anniversary by peering into the future to predict what the web might look like a quarter of a century from now. The non-profit took the opportunity to rail against internet regulation by offering a grim vision of what lies ahead.

Punch a URL into the Wayforward Machine and you'll see a version of that page covered in pop-ups. The messages include one reading "Classified content. The website you are trying to access features information that the owner(s) have opted to restrict to users that have not shared their personal information." Another reads "This site contains information that is currently classified as Thought Crime in your region."

The way things are going, the Internet Archive suggests, free and open access to knowledge on the web may become far more limited. A Wayforward subsite includes a timeline of things that might go awry in the coming years, starting with the repeal of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites and internet platforms from being liable for things that users post. A repeal could have enormous consequences for the web, though some, such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have proposed that the provision should be reformed.

The timeline includes some other wild-but-not-inconceivable suggestions, such as a law allowing corporations to copyright facts, forcing Wikipedia to move to the Dark Web, and more countries introducing their own versions of China's Great Firewall. The Internet Archive teamed up with several digital rights organizations for this project, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future and the Wikimedia Foundation. The subsite includes resources on how to help protect freely available information.

The Wayforward Machine is, of course, a satirical version of the Wayback Machine, which has archived hundreds of billions of web pages over the last two and a half decades. It's an important resource for helping preserve the history of the internet, including things like Flash games and animations, so it's probably worth paying attention to the Internet Archive's vision of the future.

Facebook explains how its October 4th outage started

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Following Monday’s massive service outage that took out all of its services, Facebook has published a blog post detailing what happened yesterday. According to Santosh Janardhan, the company's vice president of infrastructure, the outage started with what should have been routine maintenance. At some point yesterday, a command was issued that was supposed to assess the availability of the backbone network that connects all of Facebook’s disparate computing facilities. Instead, the order unintentionally took those connections down. Janardhan says a bug in the company’s internal audit system did not properly prevent the command from executing.

That issue caused a secondary problem that ultimately made yesterday’s outage into the international incident that it became. When Facebook’s DNS servers couldn’t connect to the company’s primary data centers, they stopped advertising the border gateway protocol (BGP) routing information that every device on the internet needs to connect to a server.

“The end result was that our DNS servers became unreachable even though they were still operational,” said Janardhan. “This made it impossible for the rest of the internet to find our servers.”

As we learned partway yesterday, what made an already difficult situation worse was that the outage made it impossible for Facebook engineers to connect to the servers they needed to fix. Moreover, the loss of DNS functionality meant they couldn’t use many of the internal tools they depend on to investigate and resolve networking issues in normal circumstances. That meant the company had to physically send personnel to its data centers, a task that was complicated by the physical safeguards it had in place at those locations.

“They’re hard to get into, and once you’re inside, the hardware and routers are designed to be difficult to modify even when you have physical access to them,” according to Janardhan. Once it could restore its backbone network, Facebook was cautious not to turn everything back on all at once since the surging power and computing demands may have led to more crashes.

“Every failure like this is an opportunity to learn and get better, and there’s plenty for us to learn from this one,” said Janardhan. “After every issue, small and large, we do an extensive review process to understand how we can make our systems more resilient. That process is already underway.”

Facebook explains how its October 4th outage started

Posted on by

Following Monday’s massive service outage that took out all of its services, Facebook has published a blog post detailing what happened yesterday. According to Santosh Janardhan, the company's vice president of infrastructure, the outage started with what should have been routine maintenance. At some point yesterday, a command was issued that was supposed to assess the availability of the backbone network that connects all of Facebook’s disparate computing facilities. Instead, the order unintentionally took those connections down. Janardhan says a bug in the company’s internal audit system did not properly prevent the command from executing.

That issue caused a secondary problem that ultimately made yesterday’s outage into the international incident that it became. When Facebook’s DNS servers couldn’t connect to the company’s primary data centers, they stopped advertising the border gateway protocol (BGP) routing information that every device on the internet needs to connect to a server.

“The end result was that our DNS servers became unreachable even though they were still operational,” said Janardhan. “This made it impossible for the rest of the internet to find our servers.”

As we learned partway yesterday, what made an already difficult situation worse was that the outage made it impossible for Facebook engineers to connect to the servers they needed to fix. Moreover, the loss of DNS functionality meant they couldn’t use many of the internal tools they depend on to investigate and resolve networking issues in normal circumstances. That meant the company had to physically send personnel to its data centers, a task that was complicated by the physical safeguards it had in place at those locations.

“They’re hard to get into, and once you’re inside, the hardware and routers are designed to be difficult to modify even when you have physical access to them,” according to Janardhan. Once it could restore its backbone network, Facebook was cautious not to turn everything back on all at once since the surging power and computing demands may have led to more crashes.

“Every failure like this is an opportunity to learn and get better, and there’s plenty for us to learn from this one,” said Janardhan. “After every issue, small and large, we do an extensive review process to understand how we can make our systems more resilient. That process is already underway.”

Comcast makes its affordable broadband available to low-income undergrads

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Comcast has expanded Internet Essentials' coverage to include Federal Pell Grant recipients within areas where it's available. By doing so, it's giving undergraduates from low-income households access to low-cost internet connection at a time when they may have a huge need for it and in time for Internet Essentials' 10th anniversary. "These additional initiatives arrive as the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated far-reaching effects that disproportionately impact those who have traditionally lacked access to the tools, resources, and skills needed to get online," the company wrote in its announcement.

The Internet Essentials program launched in 2011 and has expanded its coverage several times since then until, according to the company, it has connected "a cumulative total of more than 10 million people to the internet." Earlier this year, the company doubled the package's speed, giving subscribers access to download speeds of up to 50 Mbps and uploads of up to 5 Mbps.

In addition to giving Pell Grant financial aid recipients access to Internet Essentials, Comcast has also pledged $15 million worth of internet service and equipment. Its pledge includes over 25,000 laptops that will be donated to low-income students, seniors and vets. The move is part of the company's Project UP, which is an initiative aiming to "advance digital equity." The laptops will be distributed in cities nationwide, including Houston, TX; Sacramento, CA; Seattle, WA; Philadelphia, PA; Hartford, CT; Baltimore, MD; Memphis, TN; Atlanta, GA; Detroit, MI; Chicago, IL; Jacksonville, FL; Minneapolis, MN; Oakland, CA; Boston, MA; Pittsburgh, PA; and Grand Rapids, MI.

Comcast makes its affordable broadband available to low-income undergrads

Posted on by

Comcast has expanded Internet Essentials' coverage to include Federal Pell Grant recipients within areas where it's available. By doing so, it's giving undergraduates from low-income households access to low-cost internet connection at a time when they may have a huge need for it and in time for Internet Essentials' 10th anniversary. "These additional initiatives arrive as the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated far-reaching effects that disproportionately impact those who have traditionally lacked access to the tools, resources, and skills needed to get online," the company wrote in its announcement.

The Internet Essentials program launched in 2011 and has expanded its coverage several times since then until, according to the company, it has connected "a cumulative total of more than 10 million people to the internet." Earlier this year, the company doubled the package's speed, giving subscribers access to download speeds of up to 50 Mbps and uploads of up to 5 Mbps.

In addition to giving Pell Grant financial aid recipients access to Internet Essentials, Comcast has also pledged $15 million worth of internet service and equipment. Its pledge includes over 25,000 laptops that will be donated to low-income students, seniors and vets. The move is part of the company's Project UP, which is an initiative aiming to "advance digital equity." The laptops will be distributed in cities nationwide, including Houston, TX; Sacramento, CA; Seattle, WA; Philadelphia, PA; Hartford, CT; Baltimore, MD; Memphis, TN; Atlanta, GA; Detroit, MI; Chicago, IL; Jacksonville, FL; Minneapolis, MN; Oakland, CA; Boston, MA; Pittsburgh, PA; and Grand Rapids, MI.

Google and Microsoft will invest $30 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years

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Following a meeting with President Joe Biden today, Google and Microsoft promised to invest a total of $30 billion in cybersecurity advancements over the next five years. Google pledged $10 billion, while Microsoft pledged $20 billion. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on Twitter that $150 million of that money will be used to expand Microsoft's training network and help US government agencies upgrade their digital security systems. The White House described that particular investment as follows: "Microsoft ... will immediately make available $150 million in technical services to help federal, state, and local governments with upgrading security protection, and will expand partnerships with community colleges and non-profits for cybersecurity training."

Google, meanwhile, will focus on extending the zero-trust security model, securing the software supply chain, building out open-source security, and offering more training opportunities to Americans. Specifically, Google said it will help 100,000 Americans over the next three years earn Google Career Certificates in cybersecurity fields.

Today, President Biden met with technology companies and cybersecurity thought leaders to discuss threats like the recent SolarWinds attack and how the US can better defend its digital systems. In addition to Google and Microsoft's financial infusion, Apple will establish new, widespread supply-chain protocols in the name of tighter security, and Amazon will offer its internal cybersecurity training to the public at no charge. Other organizations, including IBM, Girls Who Code and Code.org, made plans to expand cybersecurity defenses across government, society and industry.

It was unclear what would actually shake out of today's White House cybersecurity meeting, and $30 billion (and then some) certainly isn't a bad place to start.

Google and Microsoft will invest $30 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years

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Following a meeting with President Joe Biden today, Google and Microsoft promised to invest a total of $30 billion in cybersecurity advancements over the next five years. Google pledged $10 billion, while Microsoft pledged $20 billion. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on Twitter that $150 million of that money will be used to expand Microsoft's training network and help US government agencies upgrade their digital security systems. The White House described that particular investment as follows: "Microsoft ... will immediately make available $150 million in technical services to help federal, state, and local governments with upgrading security protection, and will expand partnerships with community colleges and non-profits for cybersecurity training."

Google, meanwhile, will focus on extending the zero-trust security model, securing the software supply chain, building out open-source security, and offering more training opportunities to Americans. Specifically, Google said it will help 100,000 Americans over the next three years earn Google Career Certificates in cybersecurity fields.

Today, President Biden met with technology companies and cybersecurity thought leaders to discuss threats like the recent SolarWinds attack and how the US can better defend its digital systems. In addition to Google and Microsoft's financial infusion, Apple will establish new, widespread supply-chain protocols in the name of tighter security, and Amazon will offer its internal cybersecurity training to the public at no charge. Other organizations, including IBM, Girls Who Code and Code.org, made plans to expand cybersecurity defenses across government, society and industry.

It was unclear what would actually shake out of today's White House cybersecurity meeting, and $30 billion (and then some) certainly isn't a bad place to start.