Computing

The Chinese government sponsored hackers are back in business:

Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks  using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials.

The Obama administration had bet that “naming and shaming” the groups, first in industry reports and then in the Pentagon’s own detailed survey of Chinese military capabilities, might prompt China’s new leadership to crack down on the military’s highly organized team of hackers — or at least urge them to become more subtle.  Read more »

This is all getting rather pathetic… from those in glass houses…

The NZ SIS has just sent out an email an error. No database attached

— Patrick Gower (@patrickgowernz) April 2, 2013

Read more »

Google is rolling out their fibre plans in locations in the US. It sounds totally awesome.

There are of course people who think there is no need for such speed.

In March of 2010, Google announced its intention to build super-fast fibre-optic internet service in “a small number of trial locations across the United States.” A year later, after receiving more than 1000 applications from cities and towns across the country, Google chose Kansas City as its first location. Last November, Google began installing service in people’s homes. For $US70 a month, the company offers Kansas City residents a 1-gigabit internet line – the fastest home internet service available anywhere in the world, about 150 times faster than the average American broadband speed of 6.7 Mbps. (You also get 1 terabyte of online storage as part of the deal, something Google normally sells for $50 a month.) For $120 a month, you get the 1-GB line plus cable-like TV service, as well as a Nexus 7 tablet that you can use as your remote. There’s also a “free” plan: After you pay a $300 construction fee – which you can split into 12 payments of $25 – Google will provide your home with a 5-Mbps internet line for “at least seven years,” and probably indefinitely. (Legally, the company needed to provide an end date for service.)

These are amazing services at unbelievable prices. For about the same fee that many Americans currently pay for cable, Google is offering internet speeds that, until now, were available only to big companies for thousands of dollars a month.

Therein lies the mystery. Google’s gigabit initiative, called Google Fibre, has sparked a round of questions across the tech industry. Is Google looking to become an internet service provider? Does it simply want to spur other ISPs into providing faster service? And, finally, why gigabit internet – what does Google expect people to do with the world’s fastest broadband service?  Read more »

I use Disqus for my blog comments management. It continues to improve and adds significant additional functionality to the site without a massive overhead of extra plugins.

Disqus has conducted some research that shows that commenters using pseudonyms are “the most important contributors to online communities.”

The service gives each user the option of commenting with a Disqus account, a social media identity or anonymously. It says 61 percent of commenters use pseudonyms, 35 percent choose to be anonymous and 4 percent use their “real identity” verified by Facebook. It also says those with pseudonyms post the best comments, while anonymous comments are lower quality. One theory: People don’t mind being accountable online, but they don’t want it to blow back on their work or personal lives by using a real identity. A pseudonym protects them while providing a measure of accountability.

Once people settle on a pseudonym I think they do take more ownership of their comments. The anonymous cowards tend to junk up the comments and their flame attempts become frustrating to those who are trying to engage properly.

TechCrunch rolled out Facebook Comments in a bid to rid themselves of trolls and abuse. Facebook Comments of course works on publishing, in most instances, the real credentials of a commenter. hOw did that work out for them…turns out not so well:  Read more »

Russell Brown has explained in sensible words why Kim DotCon is a fat thieving German fraud. I am much more base that Russell as you can see.

So it’s okay, because he’s not going to steal advertising inventory from small publishers, only large ones. Except that Google and Yahoo aren’t only publishers: they also operate advertising networks that place ads on third party sites – ads that produce revenue that many small publishers rely on.

I’ve written here before about the punishing trends in online advertising. When you read a story hailing 20% growth in digital advertising, you need to bear in mind that most of that is going to the big players – Google and Facebook – and a lesser portion to the larger established media players, such as Fairfax.  Read more »

With the advent of cloud technologies and iCloud in particular  sometimes it can become useful in crime detection…especially if people are stupid and steal iPhones and don’t disconnect iCloud or use their own account.

Police are looking for these munters:

 

Police want the public to help identify the alleged thief of an iPhone in Auckland.

The phone was taken in one of two burglaries in Avondale recently and has an app installed which emails any new photos taken back to its owner.

As a result, police would like to know the identity of a man and a woman in a ‘selfie’ taken on the phone after the burglary was committed.

Auckland Police would like anyone who recognises either of the people in the photograph to contact them on (09) 302 6400, quoting file number 121205/1351.

An idiot school that handed out 1200 iPad2 to students can’t account for nearly half of them.

A school which gave out iPads to every pupil in hope of improving their education has admitted that just a year later half the costly devices have been broken.

Honywood Community Science School dished out iPad2 tablets to its 1,200 pupils a year ago, at vast cost to the taxpayer.

Despite warnings that children would not be able to look after the fragile computer tablet, the school in Coggeshall, Essex, allowed children to take the device outside the classroom, playground and street and home at evenings and weekends.

If you giving something of value to people that they haven;t had to pay for themselves then they do not value it the same as you would…and they break and munt things.

Read more »

Ben Gracewood writes in NBR about bug bounties and in general about exposing security flaws.

At least he admits to being “a wet pinko liberal socialist“, which probably explains why NBR and others didn’t castigate Scoop for their security breach.

In some cases, companies provide a “bug bounty” for users that discover security flaws. This is for a couple of reasons: firstly because there is value in having these flaws discovered and resolved before they are made public; and secondly it acts as an incentive for “black hat” hackers to move from step one to step two above. Hackers can opt for a quick, legitimate pay-off, rather than exploiting the flaw for possible dubious gain.

In my opinion, it’s totally kosher to ask a private company for a bug bounty. It’s in their interest to close the hole, and most responsible companies should have a public bounty policy, because even the best operational security is not going to keep up with every single exploit.

But a government department? I’m not sure about this one. On the one hand I think it’s our social responsibility to help these guys out as much as we can. Maybe I’m a wet pinko liberal socialist, but we’re all in this s*itfight called the internet together, and I think it’s a bit much to ask for a bug bounty on an issue that affects the most vulnerable  in our society.

But then I read about $50,000 for a two-week Delloite review and think that maybe a $2000 reward per bug would go a long way to making that review irrelevant.

I am all confused.  Should I print an email or save it?

Sam Judd writes

Up until today, I have had a cheesy message at the bottom of my email signature, that said “Please think about the materials you use – do you need to print this email?”

That was until I found out the materials used in making components for data storage could be worse for the environment than sustainably-sourced paper.

See, all of those attachments that we send, download, upload and share around cyberspace are actually stored somewhere, far away, on electronic equipment. These machines – which are rapidly proliferating in giant new datacentres- create as much CO2 as the airline industry worldwide. As people flock to Facebook to upload photos for all to see and share, the footprint of meeting our storage demands increases: a team of scholars has found that this is likely to double by 2020.

If you take a look at what the storage machines and other IT equipment is made of, you could be forgiven for wanting to go back to trusty paper, pens and tapes to store your information.

Oh for heaven’s sake would the hippies make up their mind?

I shall dutifully ignore all environmental experts and “thought leaders” and do whatever the hell I like. Worrying about it is making me ill.

A tribute video to Steve Jobs made entirely from sounds from Apple products and Steve Jobs own voice from his 2005 Stanford commencement speech. Every instrument, including drums, has been sampled from a Mac product, tuned by ear, and replayed in the context of the song.