Articles (German language / Deutsche Sprache)

Telekom will für Breitband-Aufbau Kabelanbieter kaufen | Gizmodo.de

Breitband-Ausbau wird zweistelligen Milliardenbetrag kosten | Der Spiegel

My Comments

Deutsche Telekom has been raising concern about assuring that the whole of Germany has access to decent-standard broadband Internet and have been interested in buying in to smaller cable-broadband services in that country to achieve that goal.

But are they the entity who has to carry the burden for rural broadband service, which requires huge investments? This is although they have been previously the government-run monopoly telecommunications operator for Germany.

Here, they were having to need EUR€10 billion to get a broadband service of at least 50Mbps over 90% of Germany with them needing to cover the remote areas which represents 10% for another EUR€15 billion. They also raised the issue of competing services needing federal money to achieve this same goal.

I see a reality where no other government or public-private entity is putting their hand up to provide rural broadband in that country. Germany’s political layout with the individual States (Bundesländer), especially the “Area States” (Flächeländer) could put themselves in a better position if the States (Baden-Württenburg, Bavaria, Lower Saxony, North-Rhine-Westphalia and co) or subordinate government divisions could underpin the works needed to be done.

This is something that has taken place in some other European countries like the UK and France where local or regional governments put their hand in their pocket for broadband enrichment projects in their territories. This is with a view to seeing investment take place for their areas with a view to attracting major employers like research, education or technology to their areas or to see their local economy on a level or better playing field with other areas.

Similarly, allowing for a truly competitive environment for Internet service where there isn’t favouritism for existing carriers may also be a chance for the other carriers to invest more in to Germany and see all of the nation covered with real broadband.

Article (French language / Langue Française)

RKube : le cloud français | Ere Numerique

From the horse’s mouth

RKube

Product Page

My Comments

The increased discontent in Europe about the NSA  spying on European citizens’ Internet activity has seen less trust in Internet services that are either hosted on American soil or chartered in the USA. This has also been augmented by recent activities where the German government “battened down the hatches” and even gave a CIA station chief located there the “royal order of the boot”.

As well, the French and Swiss worked on their own volume-wide disk encryption software such as VeraCrypt.

Similarly, the European Union recently won a European court case to assure EU citizens the “right to be forgotten” by major US-based search engines while an Austrian-based class action was launched against Facebook on privacy grounds.

Now the French have launched their own “cloud-driven” online storage as a competitor to the US-based online storage services like Dropbox, Box.com, OneDrive and Google Drive. Here, this operator have their servers on French soil and are totally subject to the rule of law in France. They also focus their offers around user privacy according to European norms. They even have the ability for you to create your own security key and implement secure anonymous file transfers.

Like most of the online storage services, they offer client-side software for Windows, Macintosh OS X, iOS and Android while offering a simplified Web user experience for those of us who come in from Web browsers.

RKube will offer users a free 5Gb account or access to up to 500Gb for up to €49.90 / month.

But I also wonder who else in Continental Europe will run with online file storage or similar services in response to the loss of faith in American services by Europeans. It also extends to other services like search engines or social networks. Similarly, it could be interesting to know whether people who live outside Europe but are concerned about the privacy or confidentiality of their data could end up purchasing space on these services rather than the American services.

Article

Beware of Risky Ads on Tumblr | MalwareBytes Unpacked

My Comments

Most of us who use the Web are making increased use of ad-sponsored Web sites for news, blogs, social media and the like.

In most cases, the banner advertising that appears on these Websites or on advertising-funded mobile-platform apps and is delivered in a tasteful manner provide a similar experience to the display advertising we see, accept and take for granted in newspapers, magazines and other printed media. That is where pop-up or pop-under advertising isn’t used or you don’t hear noisy video commercials playing through. It could be enough to see an animated or slide-show ad appear within the confines of the banner. Here, the advertising doesn’t interrupt the reading experience unlike with TV advertising or online-video advertising where it interrupts the viewing experience.

Such advertising, like the Google AdSense ads you see on this site, is sold on a contract that is based on cost-per-click which the advertiser pays when you click on the ad to follow through with it, or cost-per-impression which is based on simply on the ad being loaded and appearing on the site.

The malvertisement threat

But there is a security problem cropping up here in the form of “malvertisements”. These are online advertisements that are delivered to lead users to Websites that host malware. Typically they use enticing copy and graphics in the advertisements to attract users to view content on these sites and download software of questionable provenance.

Security vendors run a rhetoric that encourages us Web users to use ad-blocking software to keep our computer secure by masking all online advertising. But this can get in the way of honest advertisers and the publications that depend on them for revenue because the software works on an “all or nothing” approach.

But what can the online advertising industry do about this?

If a Website author has control over all of the advertising they admit, they can easily “fence out” malvertisements and distasteful advertising by examining what their potential advertiser is tendering at the start of and through the life of their advertising contract.

But this is not the case for most Websites where they will rely on one or more ad networks like Google AdSense to supply all or the remainder of their ad inventory. These ad networks typically source the advertising themselves and pay publishers a cut for each advertisement that appears or when someone clicks on an advertisement.

Ad networks

Malware sites advertise through these networks on a “pay-per-click-only” contract because it is a “low-risk high-return” option. But the networks could make life harder for them by, for example, vetting the creatives (advertising text, graphics, scripts and links) offered for an ad campaign before accepting them for display and through the life of the campaign. Similarly, they could make it harder to establish or sustain advertising contracts for “fly-by-night” operations like distributing malware such as implementing the ability to break-off ad contracts if the advertiser engages in deceptive conduct or not offering “very-low-risk” advertising options such as “pay-per-click-only” text ads. One way would be to require all ad contracts to be based on the requirement to pay for a particular time length or minimum number of impressions.

Ad networks can also exchange details about advertisers that engage in deceptive business practices so that the advertisers don’t go “shopping around” different ad networks to hawk their wares at the lowest risk. This is similar to a lot of proper business practices where companies are able to exchange details about known credit risks for example.

This could be part of an online advertising code of conduct to protect the validity and legitimacy of the online display advertisement as part of an advertiser’s campaign mix and as a way for Web publishers to raise some income.

Webmasters

Webmasters can work with the ad network’s control panel to reduce the kind of advertising that gets through to their ad spaces. For example, they could opt to keep the advertising that appears to tightly reflect the content and tone of their Website. The Webmaster can also exercise a tight level of control over any advertising they directly sell for their Website such as offering contracts with a minimum level of risk to the advertiser or vetting the creative material tendered by the advertisers.

As well, they can take out security measures over the Website to stop undesireable activity from occurring with their Website. This could include implementing hardened login procedures such as brute-force lockout or two-factor authentication on the critical admin and editor accounts.

Conclusion

Like most online-security issues like Wi-Fi security, it isn’t just up to end-users to do the “heavy-lifting” to keep their Web experience secure. Other stakeholders like advertising networks need to join in the game to keep a secure Web with respected online advertising and avoid exposure to liability.

Article

QR Code And NFC Talking Statues | 2D Code

My Comments

London is using QR codes and NFC tags that head to Web-based links as a way of enhancing the visitors’ experience with the well-known characters’ statues. Here, the links provide experiences like Sherlock Holmes talking to you or where you can experience the Bow Bells call associated with the Dick Whittington legend.

But this could be used for various goals like having interpretation boards that “read out” the text to you, show the text in another language or provide extra detail on the attraction. Sometimes you may be able to engage in multimedia content or have the device’s GPS navigate you to another point in a pre-defined tour as part of a tour app.

It just requires the use of QR codes which work with all mobile platforms or NFC “touch-and-go” tags that work with Android and Windows 8 / Windows Phone 8 platforms linking to micro-sites that “take the attraction” further. These would them make the smartphone or tablet become more relevant when you tour an area rather than just as toys.

Article

PM David Cameron Switches On Gigaclear’s 1Gbps Broadband in Northmoor | ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Northmoor community page

My Comments

Another rural neighbourhood in West Oxfordshire has been enabled for Gigabit fibre broadhand courtesy of Gigaclear. This time, it is Northmoor where the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, officially switched on the new fibre-to-the-premises service which covers 500 premises in Northmoor, Moreton and Bablockhythe.

This is a non-BT scheme that is funded by DEFRA as part of a GBP£20m Rural Community Broadband Fund where there is financial assistance from the EU. This public-private project underwent a proper procurement procedure with Gigaclear being the winner of the contract.

Here, it was proven that the fibre-to-the-premises deal had a higher throughput and was more stable than the 80Mbps fibre-to-the-cabinet deal offered by BT.

But Gigaclear offers this service at GBP£37 per month for a 50Mbps to GBP£69 per month for a Gigabit connection, both with “clean feed” parental controls and a Gigabit hub. They also charge GBP£100 for installation. The users benefit form the connection being symmetric for both uploads and downloads along with not needing to pay for BT phone-line rental to have the Internet service.

The Gigaclear PR ran with a comment about a person who was working from home in the neighbourhood but having to go to London to transfer large multimedia files due to the woefully slow connection that existed before. But he is able to stay working in that area and transfer the multimedia very quickly. I also see this benefitting others who think of the country as a place to live or work because of the increase in online services that is taking place.

This is something that shows up that villages in some of the Home Counties could be appealing as places to move to for working from home or for that proverbial “tree-change” as they become wired up for real broadband, especially next-generation broadband.

Article

Bluetooth-powered Noke brings the padlock into the 21st century | Android Authority

This Bluetooth padlock will open for you and whomever you deem worthy | Engadget

This Bluetooth Padlock Doesn’t Need A Key | Tom’s Hardware

From the horse’s mouth

Fuz Designs – Noke Padlock

Kickstarter Page

My Comments

The smart-lock now arrives in another form-factor. This time, it is the padlock which is seen typically as a secondary or auxiliary locking device that ends up on the gate, cupboard door or to tether a bike to a lamp post.

Here, Fuz Designs have put forward an operational prototype of the Noke padlock that works in a similar vein to the Kwikset Kevo deadbolt. This is where the lock interacts with a digital “key-ring” that is kept on your smartphone to verify that it’s the correct person who is using the device. Both these devices achieve this interaction using the Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth LE technology but they also require you to directly interact with the device before they will open.

In the case of the Noke, which looks like most of the dial-type combination padlocks or some high-end key-driven padlocks, you squeeze on the shackle to release the device once it is verified using your “digital key-ring” in your smartphone. This is similar to touching the bezel on the Kwikset Kevo to unlock the door.

The Noke has the typical smart-lock expectations like the ability to create extra keyholders and share these keys to other peoples’ smartphones, including creating “one-shot” keys which are only used once. This also has logging abilities so you can know who opened the lock when.

The app for this lock has been ported to both the iOS and Android operating systems but would work with devices that have integrated Bluetooth 4.0 abilities and run iOS 7.0, Android 4.3 Jelly Bean or newer iterations of these operating systems.

The lock can run for a year on a single watch battery and has a “phone absent” failover where you press down on the shackle in a particular Morse-code sequence that you determine. As well, it can work with most hasps, padbolts and other padlock-based locking devices but Fuz Designs have also supplied a padlock-storage attachment so you can clip this to your bike when you are on your way.

The Noke Bluetooth padlock can open up a product-development path for solving problems that users may run in to when dealing with padlock-based locking systems such as a lock that was intended for a particular application ending up being used on another application. It can also allow for the much-maligned locking-device class to be integrated in to the Internet Of Everything and tie in with building-automation goals.

Fuz Designs are raising the capital to get this product in to mass production by using the Kickstarter crowdfunding method but who knows whether many will pick up on it at a price that is more expensive than the typical padlock. Here, you would have to stump up at least USD$59 to hook this unit on your shed’s hasp and staple or padbolt and effectively link it to Bluetooth..

What I see of this is that it is a highly adventurous design for bringing the smart-lock concept to another form-factor which is totally driven by price. It can also open up these devices towards an innovation pathway,

Article

Chrome update to raise alarms over deceptive download bundles | The Register

From the horse’s mouth

Google

That’s not the download you’re looking for …. – Blog post

My Comments

I have helped a few people out with removing browser toolbars and other software from their computers that they didn’t necessarily invite in the first place. What typically happens is that a person looks for software to do a particular task such as a lightweight game, native front-end for an online service, video-codec pack, an “essential” CD-burning tool or an open-source Web browser, but they work through a very confusing install procedure that has them invite software like TubeDimmer to their computers if they aren’t careful.

A lot of this unwanted software ruins the browsing experience by “cluttering” the screen with extra advertisements and data or redirects genuine links to advertising sites hawking questionable products. As well, they are more likely to “bog” the computer down by stealing processor time and RAM memory space.

Mozilla has become aware of the problem with Firefox courtesy of their bug-reporting mechanism and found that it wasn’t about proper software bugs but improper bundling practices. They had found that these bundles were infringing their copyrights and trademarks that they had with the software, especially the open-source concept.

Google has answered this problem at the search phase of the operation by identifying whether a download site is paying to advertise courtesy of its Adwords keyword-driven advertising service and provided a way to highlight that the software is not the official software site. This is typically because a download site may bundle multiple programs in to the install package rather than just having the program you are after.

They are even going to “expose” the detection software to Mozilla and others to allow them to integrate the detection functionality in their “regular-computer” browsers or desktop-security software by virtue of their Safe Browsing application-programming interface.

This may be a step in the right direction towards dealing with “loaded downloads” but desktop security programs could work further by identifying installation packages that have more than what is bargained for.