Pirate Bay Announces IPREDATOR Global Anonymity Service

As the online battle against file-sharers heats up with governments and ISPs forced into the arena, those opposed to being monitored are investigating counter-measures. Soon the Pirate Bay team will introduce IPREDATOR, a service that promises to make global Internet users more anonymous than with existing VPN services. As the entertainment industries turn their lobbying power towards ISPs and governments in their on-going battle against file-sharers, more and more people are looking at neutralizing the effects of monitoring and new legislation. Many file-sharers already pay a few dollars each month for a VPN service. This type of facility allows the user to protect his Internet connection with encryption while “tunneling’ data in privacy through the servers of a VPN provider, usually located in another country. The user’s ISP-designated IP address remains hidden, revealing only a second IP address provided by his VPN company. Timed to coincide with the introduction of IPRED on April 1st 2009, a brand new service designed to neutralize the effects of the law will be launched. Dubbed ‘IPREDATOR’, this brand new anonymity service from The Pirate Bay promises to make subscribers “more anonymous” than when using traditional VPN services. Peter Sunde, aka brokep told TorrentFreak that the service is currently in beta and will be slowly opened to around 500 users. When those users are experiencing the service bug-free, it will be opened up to everyone. Fortunately the service won’t be limited to just Swedish users. Brokep confirmed that anonymity will be available globally for a modest fee of around 5 euros ($6.77) per month. The weak link in any VPN/anonymity service is always their willingness (or otherwise) to hand over your customer data when pressured under the law. However, with IPREDATOR this should not be an issue since the service is promising to keep no logs of user activity whatsoever.

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-announces-ipredator-global-anonymity-service-090323/

Google designer quits over performance obsession

Google’s visual design leader quit the company on Friday because he was irked by the web giant’s obsession with performance data. Douglas Bowman said in a blog post on 20 March that he had “grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions” after a team at Google couldn’t choose between two blues. Instead they decided to test them against 41 shades to see which colour performed best. “I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that,” grumbled Bowman, who joined the firm in 2006. He added that Google wasn’t to blame for its reliance on data. “The company has millions of users around the world to please. That’s no easy task,” he wrote. “Google has momentum, and its leadership found a path that works very well. When I joined, I thought there was potential to help the company change course in its design direction. But I learned that Google had set its course long before I arrived.” Bowman’s parting shot was a little more to the point, however. “I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data,” he said.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/23/douglas_bowman_quits_google/