DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

 Illustration by Edel Rodriguez via Wired.

Have you ever heard about the Darknet? A network of secretive websites that can’t be viewed on the “regular” Internet. Mostly used for illicit purposes from drugs, arms sales or pedophilia. Darknet sites are hosted on regular servers, but to access them you need special software, usually something that encrypts all users’ traffic and allows them relative anonymity. Read all about it in this article by Clive Thompson in Wired. E.T.P.: 3'45''

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Earlier this week Leo Miriani wrote in Quartz: Forget Big Data: the future is Small Data, and Facebook just bought it. Onavo, an Israeli start-up, whose flagship product is a data compressor. When you browse a web page or use an app on your phone, Onavo routes the traffic through its servers, where it compresses and optimizes the data before sending it on to the phone. Call it “small data.” The result is you see exactly the same web page but less data comes out of your plan. Sounds good, right? Well, Facebook thought so too. Read full article here. E.T.P.: 1'20''

Photo: Reuters via The Atlantic.


Interesting article in The Atlantic: Netflix was supposed to kill cable, so why is it beggining to join cable? "Netflix is in serious talks with Comcast and other pay-TV providers to hop onto the cable bundle as a stand-alone channel. Add it to the list of tech companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel—who have internally debated trying to "disrupt" the cable TV business, but have wound up working with the cable companies (e.g.: Apple, Xbox) or simply built their own cable equivalent (Google Fiber TV)." Read full article here.