Month: November 2018

Enlarge

Today, Google announced a new feature for its Project Fi cellular service: an always-on VPN. Project Fi's VPN previously was used to encrypt traffic while connecting to a network of free public Wi-Fi hotspots, but now Google will enable the VPN for all your traffic, be it over the LTE service or a Wi-Fi connection.

For now, the always-on VPN will need to be turned on in the Project Fi settings, where the feature is called "Enhanced Network" and labeled a "beta."

"When you enable our enhanced network, all of your mobile and Wi-Fi traffic will be encrypted and securely sent through our virtual private network (VPN) on every network you connect to, so you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that others can’t see your online activity," Google's blog post says. "That includes Google—our VPN is designed so that your traffic isn’t tied to your Google account or phone number."

Enlarge / AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson yesterday urged Congress to pass net neutrality and consumer data privacy laws that would prevent states from issuing their own stricter laws.

"There are a number of states that are now passing their own legislation around privacy and, by the way, net neutrality," Stephenson said in an interview at a Wall Street Journal tech conference (see video). "What would be a total disaster for the technology and innovation you see happening in Silicon Valley and elsewhere is to pick our head up and have 50 different sets of rules for companies trying to operate in the United States."

There was a single US standard for net neutrality passed by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015. But AT&T and other ISPs opposed it and sued the FCC in a failed effort to get the regulation thrown out by a court.

Enlarge / Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, meets with company leaders at RSC Energia. (credit: RSC Energia/YouTube)

During a meeting this weekend at RSC Energia, the prime contractor for Russia's crewed spaceflight program, the discussion turned toward development of the Federation spacecraft. This is the oft-delayed program to develop a new generation of crewed spacecraft for the Russian space industry.

Dmitry Rogozin, the leader of Russia's space program, Roscosmos, was apparently not pleased with ongoing delays to the program. First initiated more than a decade ago, the Federation spacecraft now is unlikely to fly humans before 2023.

Rogozin made the following comments after one of the Federation engineers suggested that, perhaps, time could be saved in the spacecraft's development by reducing the number of tests of its emergency escape system.