Tag Archive for: Strange

“How can they be so good?”: The strange story of Skype

Article intro image

From a company powerpoint, here’s an artist’s impression of the moment when Skype’s idea was fostered. (Zennström on the left, next to Friis.) (credit: Malthe Sigurdsson)

Fifteen years ago this week—on August 29, 2003—Skype went live for the first time. In the time since, of course, the service has undergone a number of big changes. This origin story of the service originally ran on September 2, 2013, when Skype’s partnership with Microsoft was still new and before the Redmond company closed its London office. But given Skype’s recent anniversary (and Labor Day weekend for Ars staff), we’re resurfacing it. The story appears unchanged below.

“I don’t care about Skype!” millionaire Jaan Tallinn tells me, taking off his blue sunglasses and finding a seat at a cozy open-air restaurant in the old town of Tallinn, Estonia. “The technology is 10 years old—that’s an eternity when it comes to the Internet Age. Besides, I have more important things going on now.”

Tallinn has five children, and he calls Skype his sixth. So why does he no longer care about his creation?

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Biz & IT – Ars Technica

Is Kremlin cyber warfare behind Moscow GPS quirk sending Uber cars and Pokemon Go players to strange destinations? – Telegraph.co.uk


Telegraph.co.uk

Is Kremlin cyber warfare behind Moscow GPS quirk sending Uber cars and Pokemon Go players to strange destinations?
Telegraph.co.uk
Try ordering an Uber, chasing a Pokemon, or simply checking your map while out for a stroll in central Moscow, and you may run into problems. Since this summer, Muscovites driving or walking in the centre of the city have complained about the GPS on

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cyber warfare – read more

To avoid NSA, Cisco gear gets delivered to strange addresses

One of the most successful U.S. National Security Agency spying programs involved intercepting IT equipment en route to customers and modifying it.

At secret workshops, backdoor surveillance tools were inserted into routers, servers and networking equipment before the equipment was repackaged and sent to customers outside the U.S.

The program, run by the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group, was revealed by documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and reported by Der Spiegel and Glenn Greenwald.

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Network World Security