WirelessPhreak.com

I like to travel, f*ck with technology, and partake in the occasional tropical drink.
I am also a co-host on The NBD Show podcast.
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Interesting post on gigaom.com today. Netflix and Comcast have come to a peering agreement and Netflix is paying for the privilege. First lets understand what this means, according to wikipedia:
In computer networking a peering agreement is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the users of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free, "bill-and-keep," or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other in association with the exchange of traffic; instead, each derives and retains revenue from its own customers.
So why is this significant? These types of agreements have been between the big internet players, the Level 3's, and AT&T's of the world. What makes this more insidious are the reports that Comcast and Verizon have targeted Netflix traffic. Here is a post on Arstechnica.com discussing there discoveries. Also Comcast and Verizon have refused to install Netflix's free bandwidth solution Open Box on their networks.

What does this mean? This mans that Comcast and Verizon may be altering Netflix traffic to force them into a payed peering agreement. The fact that they do not want to work with Netflix is appalling. For the short term Netflix has agreed to pay Comcast, so Comcast should allow Netflix to work.  In the long term this agreement sets a precedent for ISP's to discriminate or targeted traffic. And at the end of the day threatens Net Neutrality.



The new season of House of Cards reminds me how good TV can be, and this speech given by Kevin Spacey is inspirational and exciting. I know it's been around the internet, but the message is important and we need to keep it in our social feeds.


Touch ID is an awesome feature and has been the best implementation of consumer biometrics I have used. But for some it is troubling. For those who suffer the ability to train your Touch ID, in essance give it more data about your finger print would be benificial. Well Steve Gibson of  the Security Now podcast has stumbled across just that, an undocumented way to train your Apples Touch ID. I will embed part of the security now podcast showing Steve training his iPhone 5s, as well as a nice guide imore.com put together.

Security Now Episode 440

  1. Launch the Settings app and tap on General.
  2. Tap on Touch ID & Passcode and enter your numerical passcode when prompted.
  3. Now tap on Touch ID.
  4. Here you see a list of all your registered fingerprints. Place one of yourregistered fingers on the Touch ID sensor. The registered print will pulse grey. Continue placing and lifting each registered finger as many times as you'd like to train Touch ID further.