Cody Taylor

visible.frylock writes “Cnet is reporting that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PDF), currently in the House Appropriations Committee, contains Net Neutrality provisions: ‘The so-called stimulus package hands out billions of dollars in grants for broadband and wireless development, primarily in what are called “unserved” and “underserved” areas. … The catch is that the federal largesse comes with Net neutrality strings attached. … recipients must operate broadband and high-speed wireless networks on an “open access basis.” The FCC, soon to be under Democratic control, is charged with deciding what that means. Congress didn’t see fit to include a definition.’ The broadband grants appear to begin in SEC. 3101 (pg. 49) of the PDF.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a company has demonstrated a new form of wireless communication that uses light instead of radio waves. “Its inventor, St. Cloud resident John Pederson, says visible-light embedded wireless data communication is the next step in the evolution of wireless communications, one that will expand the possibilities in phone and computer use. The connection provides Web access with almost no wiring, better security and with speeds more than eight times faster than cable.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russian-based ElcomSoft has just released ElcomSoft Wireless Security Auditor 1.0, which can take advantage of both Nvidia and ATI GPUs. ElcomSoft claims that the software uses a “proprietary GPU acceleration technology,” which implies that neither CUDA, Stream, nor OpenCL are being utilized in this instance.

MojoKid writes “Russian-based ElcomSoft has just released ElcomSoft Wireless Security Auditor 1.0, which can take advantage of both Nvidia and ATI GPUs. ElcomSoft claims that the software uses a ‘proprietary GPU acceleration technology,’ which implies that neither CUDA, Stream, nor OpenCL are being utilized in this instance. At its heart, what ElcomSoft Wireless Security Auditor does is perform brute-force dictionary attacks of WPA and WPA2 passwords. If an access point is set up using a fairly insecure password that is based on dictionary words, there is a higher likelihood that a password can be guessed. ElcomSoft positions the software as a way to ‘audit’ wireless network security.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United Arab Emirates gets all the attention for crazy urban schemes—from zero-carbon cities to kinetic, swirling skyscrapers. South Korea is lesser known, but it’s also got grand ambitions and tech-crazed urban planners: For example, New Songdo City, currently being developed on reclaimed land 40 miles outside of Seoul, will have a wireless net

We already ran through Powermat’s new wireless charging lineup, but in case you wanted to see it in action — you skeptic, you — there’s video.

jehovajerieh writes to us in the time-honored tradition of rampant Apple speculation, pointing to an article over on IBTimes suggesting that while the iPhone Nano may be on the way, the US might not be the first to experience this gadget bliss. “Despite limited information in the supplier channels and typical secrecy with new Apple products, insiders have confirmed that the iPhone nano is not yet in the testing labs at AT&T, Marshal says, leading him to believe that the launch will most likely be with a non-US carrier. ‘Obviously, the best-case scenario here would be a China launch (~600mil+ wireless subscribers total in the country), but we have no definitive knowledge of this and are working on identifying the [locale] of launch and other pertinent details,’ he said.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.