China’s Great Cannon

It is an astonishing story about how China is playing a villainous role in the non-Chinese Internet.  The writers point to a new tool called the Great Cannon and how it helped “channeling the flow of data out of China” and “selectively insert malicious JavaScript code into search queries and advertisements served by Baidu, a popular Chinese search engine.”  It is an excerpt from James Griffiths’s new book The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet

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What do YouTube, Instagram & GitHub have in common?

I have had a few days to think about Microsoft’s decision to buy GitHub for $7.5 billion and I am increasingly convinced that this is a good deal for Microsoft, as long as they don’t pull the same shenanigans they did with Skype. The acquisition makes a lot of sense, especially when you see it from the lens of two of the most successful “buys” of recent years. Continue reading “What do YouTube, Instagram & GitHub have in common?”