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Andrus Nõmm is the only Megaupload criminal copyright defendant to have gone to prison. (credit: Toivo Tänavsuu )

Soon after the domain was registered in Hong Kong, the now-defunct Megaupload.com grew into one of the world's most popular file-sharing sites. At its peak, the site engaged nearly 50 million users a day and took up around four percent of the world's Internet traffic. Users uploaded nearly 12 billion files overall.

But the infamy of the site's rise is only matched by the infamy of its fall. In January 2012, US authorities closed down Megaupload.com and the network related to it. The feds arrested seven people and froze $50 million in assets. The FBI claims that the site not only failed to take down illegal material, Megaupload also helped to spread it. Perhaps it was simply a case of brazen arrogance. When the authorities finally raided founder Kim Dotcom's large villa in New Zealand, they found a number of luxury cars (Lamborghini, Maserati, Rolls Royce) with the license plates "God," "Mafia," "Hacker," "Evil," and "Police."

In total, seven men associated with the site were arrested and indicted on 13 charges (including copyright infringement and money laundering). Dotcom remains notably free and has been continually fighting in New Zealand against his extradition to the USA. Others were not as lucky.

(credit: Rosyna Keller)

Grey Group has continued to defend its widely-criticized smartphone app, "I Sea," after it was pulled from the Apple App Store earlier this week when two security researchers exposed it as a fraud.

The app purported to be a crowdsourced way for people to help migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea by spotting satellite images in "real-time." It won third place prize at a major global advertising industry competition held in Cannes, France.

On Thursday, a Grey Group spokesman, Owen Dougherty, insisted to Ars that "the app is real…the attack on us by [an] unnamed ‘tech blogger’ is the fraud in all of this. [It's] not worthy of comment let alone coverage."

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference starts with a keynote, but the rest of the week is about sessions that go into much more depth with Apple's software. During a session named Networking for the Modern Internet (video requires Safari, or you can look it up in the iOS WWDC app), Apple Distinguished Engineer, Scientist, and Technologist Stuart Cheshire took the stage to explain new networking features in iOS 10 and macOS Sierra. Soon the engineer revealed what developers can do to take full advantage of ECN, IPv6, international text in networking, cellular versus Wi-Fi, and network quality of service.

IPv6

Last year, Apple told iOS developers that IPv6-only cell service is coming soon, get your apps ready. As of June 2015, iOS applications were required to support IPv6. Apparently iOS developers are taking Apple's advice to heart: use higher level APIs, because those automatically use either IPv4 or IPv6 depending on what's appropriate.

Apple says that as many as 70 percent of connections to www.apple.com from certain ISPs (like Verizon Wireless) come in over IPv6. About 40 percent of connections from Belgium, the world leader in IPv6 deployment, come in over IPv6. More and more big websites are finding that page load times over IPv6 are faster than over IPv4. For instance, Facebook is seeing 45 percent IPv6 HTTP requests, which complete 15 to 30 percent faster than IPv4 requests.