Networking

Now that Amazon Web Services has shut down Parler, will the social network rebuild elsewhere? Parler CEO John Matze says Parler will be back with “many competing for our business.”

Don’t bet on it. There appears to be no major public cloud or hosting company willing to give Parler a home. But, even if there were, Parler would find it almost impossible to return anytime soon. Parler will need to build its own infrastructure.
Also: Capitol attack’s cybersecurity fallout: Stolen laptops, lost data and possible espionage 
Indeed, Matze afterward admitted on Fox News that no one wants to work with Parler after Amazon dropped the company. Bringing Parler back up is “basically impossible,” Matze concluded. 
Even if they did, as Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group and who covers AWS like paint, explained in a series of tweets that it can’t be done: 

Getting booted off of AWS is virtually unheard of; when people leave intentionally the planning takes months; execution can take years. It’s a lot harder than you think for a few reasons.
It takes time to move all of that data (there’s a reason downloads take a while), but that’s just the beginning. AWS doesn’t just sell “big empty computers.” They offer higher-level services. Preconfigured databases, automatic video streaming, etc.
Parler claims they didn’t use these higher-level services. Taking that as true, there are still problems. The way AWS’s services work–how you create them, how long that creation process takes, how you get data onto them? They behave differently in AWS’s world than elsewhere.
A lot of assumptions about how the servers behave are “baked in” to how Parler (and any AWS hosted application) are built. A lot of companies don’t realize that those assumptions are there until they try to move. 
That’s why migrations take months/years. Parler has 30 hours.

Had 30 hours. The site is now down. 
Setting up a social network itself is easy. Many web-hosting companies offer easy-to-setup open-source networks such as Elgg, diaspora*, and Okuna. With these, you can set up a small social network in an afternoon. Setting up a social network that can handle more than 8 million Parler users is another matter entirely.  

It’s not just a matter of money. Multi-millionaire conservative Parler backer Rebekah Mercer, daughter of hedge-fund investor and Cambridge Analytica co-founder Robert Mercer, has ample funds. By the time it closed, Parler was costing about $300,000 a month to AWS alone to run.
The question is: Will Mercer even want to continue to invest in a business that has no real business plan? CEO Matze has admitted, “Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day.” 

Parler doesn’t have the in-house expertise to make the migration. Parler founder and lead engineer Jared Thomson has two years of full-time tech experience outside of the social network and none of that is with cloud computing. Alexander Blair, Parler CTO, is a self-described Linux system administrator with five years of system deployment and management work experience. In total, Parler has 35 employees, who were already stressed dealing with the network’s growth after the election. This job would push the limits of far larger and more cloud-savvy staff than Parler can boast.
Some companies, such as VanwaTech — aka OrcaTech, a Vancouver, Washington hosting company — might host a new Parler. Previously, VanwaTech provided a home for the neo-Nazi The Daily Stormer; 8kun, previously 8chan; and numerous QAnon conspiracy sites. VanwaTech, however, also does not have the technical expertise to migrate Parler. 
Simply moving data is only the start of the answer. The Parler server program must be transferred to other cloud-based servers. Parler runs on proprietary closed-source software running on Linux. As a closed-source program, it will be far harder to port to another platform. 
Parler’s data was kept on Amazon S3 servers. S3 is a popular and well-documented object storage service. Simply moving data from it is easy. Using that data on an updated proprietary program on a new cloud is another matter entirely. 
To deliver its content to users will also prove troublesome. For its front-end, Parler used Amazon Cloudfront. This is AWS’s content delivery network (CDN). Without a CDN, a revived Parler would have a difficult time delivering its content to users in a timely fashion.  
A new Parler would also have to deal with setting up Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection. Major DDoS companies such as Cloudflare have no interest in protecting Parler. Still, DDoS protection for controversial sites is essential. Cloudflare dumping 8chan was a major reason why the site almost went under. Today, VanwaTech-based sites rely on DDoS-Guard, a Russian DDoS protection company.

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Put it all together and I doubt very much we’ll see a revival of the old Parler. I expect that a new right-wing social network will emerge. 
This is not just a problem for Parler. Any company that wants to build a site or social network and relies on AWS or any of the other major public clouds potentially faces the same problems. Generally speaking, AWS wants your business, but at the end of the day, as Parler discovered, AWS’s terms of service make it possible for them to shut down any site.
If you really want to make sure your site or service stays up, you must still run them on your own hardware in your own datacenter. Other controversial sites, such as Pornhub, have successfully used this model. To be certain your website or social network stays up no matter what, the private cloud model is still the best one.
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Netgear have unveiled two high-performance network hardware — a new Nighthawk Tri-band Wi-Fi router and mobile 4G LTE modem. 
One is perfect for those looking to make the most of their existing fixed-line internet connection, and one for those who need a better, or more bibile alternative to a fixed broadband connection.
Must read: iOS 14 pro tip: One setting change for better photos

This is the world’s first all-purpose WiFi 6E router, running alongside existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The new 6GHz band will dramatically increase the capacity of networks to support more devices and providing speeds up to 10.8Gbps.
Tech specs:
New 6GHz Band— offering up to 200% more available spectrum than 5GHz and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi
Ultra-Low Latency
More High-Bandwidth WiFi Channels

12-Streams Tri-Band WiFi— Four streams of 6GHz, four streams of 5GHz, and four streams of 2.4GHz.
WiFi 6E Optimized Powerful Processor— A 64-bit 1.8GHz quad-core processor ensures smooth 4K/8K UHD streaming and gaming.
Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Port 2.5G— 2.5X the wired speed of a typical Gigabit port.
Five Gigabit Ethernet Ports— You can also aggregate two Gigabit LAN ports and two Gigabit WAN ports concurrently.
Pre-optimized Antennas— Unfold and set antennas on the router and you are ready to go! No further adjustment required. 
NETGEAR Armor Cybersecurity for your Home— Advanced cyberthreat protection for your home network and an unlimited number of connected devices. 
Automatic firmware updates— Latest security patches delivered to the router automatically.
Price: $599.99
View Now at Amazon Netgear

The perfect solution for those who don’t have — or want — fixed-line broadband and want instead to make use of 4G LTE.
The Netgear LM1200 offers speeds up to 150Mbps.
Band support: 
LTE CAT 4 (Up to 150Mbps DL and 50Mbps UL): B2/B4/B5/B12/B13/B14/ B66/B71
UMTS DC-HSPA+ (Up to 42Mbps): B2/B4/B5
Ports:
One USB Type-C for power
Two Gigabit Ethernet ports
One Nano SIM slot
Two TS9 RF ports
Price: $149.99
Release date: February 2021
View Now at Amazon Netgear More

Major bus terminals in São Paulo will be equipped with free Wi-Fi provision as part of a wider project to refresh the physical infrastructure of the sites.
Approximately 1.5 million daily users of the 13 terminals included in the connectivity project are expected to benefit from the new service. Passengers will be able to use the service for 60 minutes daily, at an average speed of 10MB.
The roll-out of the gigabit network will be carried out by telecommunications services firm Linktel on behalf of Unitah, the company managing the bus terminals. The implementation is expected to complete in early 2021.
The project marks the first time Internet connectivity is offered in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest urban center. Wi-Fi is already available in some underground and train stations across the city.
More than 7.500 buses in Sao Paulo (about 60% of the fleet) have been equipped with Wi-Fi just before the municipal elections in November 2020.
However, the contract for the Internet connectivity across the city’s bus fleet also included the implementation of a computer in each vehicle. This would in turn enable the roll-out of a monitoring and operational management system with features including the ability to provide real-time updates on bus stops and arrival times to passengers.
According to Brazilian news website UOL, the technology companies competing for the tender to provide the combined service have been caught off-guard with the decision to anticipate the Internet connectivity component of the project, since they had invested about 400,000 reais (US$ 74,000) each to secure the certificates required to roll-out the computers and the system.

São Paulo’s Court of Auditors is currently investigating the implementation of Wi-Fi across the bus fleet separately to the system. More

I spend so much of my day driving a web browser that I’ve made it a bit of a mission in life to find things that make my browser experience better and smoother. I’ve tested all sorts of productivity extensions, from tab managers to password managers to note-taking apps.
They really help to make my browsing experience better and smoother.

But there’s a new scourge plaguing the internet — cookie banners and popups.
I hate these things. I doubly hate them when they force me to have to click an option rather than just ignore them. Sure, I know that they are in response to EU regulations, and that website owners had little choice but to implement something like this, but everything about “cookie banners” is terrible.
But we have to make the most of what we have.
Right now, I sort of randomly jab at the banners and popups. I’m not really all that concerned about cookies, and just want to get on with my day.
Dealing with these cookie notifications has become a tax I pay to use the internet.

Until now.
Must read: Here’s why your iPhone Lightning charging cable only works one way (and how to fix it)

Enter Ninja Cookie, a browser extension that that automatically removes cookie banners by rejecting non-essential cookies.
Yup, it’s that simple.
I hadn’t realized how much time and effort I spent dealing with these popups. It’s a bit like how I felt after subscribing to YouTube Premium. I just hadn’t comprehended how much effort I was putting into skipping ads (and yes, I know I could have used an ad blocker, but I’m choosing to support content creators).
I’ve tried a lot of productivity extensions, but I’m convinced that this is the best. It takes an annoying speed bump and removes it. 
If it messes up a site in a bad way — I’ve not seen that happen, but it might — there’s the ability to disable it for a tab. Alternatively, there’s also the ability to create custom rules, although I’ve not investigated that feature yet.
In general use, it seems great. I’ve not seen a cookie banner or popup since installing it. However, when I tried to simulate cookie banners by seeking out examples, I noticed that it allowed some. I’m assuming that this is based on the block list. So, don’t be surprised to see it allowing banners on some sites.
For me, Ninja Cookie has been one of those “fire and forget” extensions. It just works. If it reduced cookie annoyances by 50 percent, I’d be happy with that. But so far, it’s been great.
The Ninja Cookie extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and there’s even one for Safari, but that extension is still in beta.
All my testing was done in Chrome, so I can’t speak for the performance on other browsers, but I’m very pleased with it.
Try it and see for yourself. If it doesn’t work for you, it’s no problem to uninstall it. More

The UK government has been criticized for a “litany” of failures that could leave countless residents with slow Internet services for “many years to come.”

The UK’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), responsible for monitoring and investigating government spending, said on Friday that a pledge made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019 to “turbo-charge” the nation through a “broadband revolution” has been dogged by a “litany of failures” which makes such a prospect unlikely. 
Johnson promised that by 2025, UK residents would have access to full-fiber broadband services, many of which would offer gigabit speeds. To achieve this goal, £5 billion ($6.8bn) would be allocated and invested. 
In October 2020, the accounts committee called the goal “ludicrously unrealistic,” and now, it seems, the pledge has been shown to be unachievable. 
The UK is back under lockdown and both children and teachers are relying on connectivity in remote learning programs. Our increased reliance on Internet services has also highlighted issues surrounding the ‘digital divide’ and there is a worry that children in underserved areas — as well as those without a reliable connection at home — may not have access to education through no fault of their own. 
On Friday, the committee released a report blaming the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) for failures in making any substantial progress toward the broadband pledge. 
The report claims that the DCMS has failed to make “meaningful progress” in tackling issues faced by operators in rolling out gigabit connectivity, and also slammed the government for making only 25% of the £5 billion fund readily available.

According to PAC, the original pledge has proven to be “unachievable,” and while the government has revised its target to “at least 85%” coverage by 2025, more needs to be done to come anywhere close to this goal. 
In addition, the committee says that there is no clear plan for subsidizing broadband installations in the hardest to reach, rural and remote areas — potentially leaving 20% of UK premises out of the plan. 
The committee recommends that the government creates and publishes a clear timeline for achievable milestones in rolling out improved broadband coverage, adding that barriers to implementation — such as changes in planning regulations and business rates — need to be identified and solutions found as a matter of urgency. 
In addition, MPs say that potential shortages of talent and skilled workers need to be addressed; suppliers for gigabit services need to be worked with more closely, and the government must set out its plan to improve targeting — especially within rural areas. 
“The department is yet again failing to prioritize consumers in rural areas,” the report says. “The DCMS says that it intends to take an ‘outside-in’ approach to the roll-out of gigabit-capable broadband, focussing on those areas that currently do not have access to superfast [broadband] so that they do not remain left behind. But the most difficult-to-reach premises are not neatly grouped together, and the department is not yet clear on how it will prioritize its interventions to ensure that they are served.” 
Finally, the committee has urged the DCMS to tackle the potential problem of monopolies in underserved areas, and to explain how it will reduce the risk of consumers being overcharged. 
“For the foreseeable future, ever more of our lives is moving online, whether we like it or not,” commented Meg Hillier MP, Chair of PAC. “[The] government cannot allow digital inequality to continue to compound and exacerbate the economic inequality that has been so harshly exposed in the COVID-19 pandemic. It needs to be clear about timelines in each area so that businesses and individuals can plan for their digital future.”
Speaking to ZDNet, Catherine Colloms, MD for Corporate Affairs at Openreach said it was always going to be an “ambitious” target, but given how critical broadband now is during the COVID-19 pandemic — and likely beyond — barriers to the rollout need to be addressed. 
“At Openreach, we’ve consistently championed the need for faster action on rural broadband upgrades, because we don’t want communities left behind and we know it will underpin the UK’s economic, social and environmental recovery,” Colloms commented. “We’re very keen to lean in and do our bit but, as the PAC report notes, there remain barriers preventing the industry from going faster — like business rates and access to property and land — so it’s vital that these are addressed by government as a priority.”
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Yesterday — Jan. 6, 2021 — was a day that will live in infamy for the US. Rioters, urged on by President Donald Trump, successfully attacked the US Capitol. 
For weeks, President Trump had been spreading false claims that the election had somehow been stolen from him. Then, President Trump tweeted: “I hope the Democrats … are looking at the thousands of people pouring into DC. They won’t stand for a landslide election victory to be stolen.” And, underlining what he expected these protestors to do, he called for Republicans to “FIGHT!”

Social Networking

The first social media coup — complete with terrorists taking selfies in the Senate chambers — was underway. 
Enough. Stop him. Stop him now. 
For years, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites have let President Trump repeat lie after lie. They’ve enabled him to attack his enemies, including Vice President Mike Pence, when Pence disagrees with him. 
Over a century ago, in the 1919 Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) case Schenck v. US, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote that “free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”  
That SCOTUS decision was later modified in 1969’s Brandenburg v. Ohio. In that case, the Court ruled that the government could not punish inflammatory speech unless it was “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Imminent lawless action? That would include breaking into the Capitol Building.

Thanks to the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230, online services may moderate sites without legal liability. In short, they don’t have to give President Trump a bully pulpit — an especially apt metaphor — to say whatever lies he wants when he wants. 
President Trump is now de facto guilty of sedition — the incitement of insurrection against lawful authority. Sedition is a crime in which people conspire to overthrow the US government, or “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution” of US law by force. It’s punishable by a fine and up to 20 years in prison. But that’s a story for another day. 
We’ve been arguing in social network management circles for years over how much moderation should be exerted over any social network user and, in particular, President Trump. Now, though, as Casey Newton said in The Verge: 

Americans voted Trump out of office, but instead of accepting that result, he has sought to overturn it. By inciting the violent occupation of the US Capitol, Trump has given up any legitimate claim to power. In 14 days, barring catastrophe, he will be out of office. The only question is how much damage he will do in the meantime — and we know, based on long experience, that his Twitter and Facebook accounts will be among his primary weapons.

Exactly. 
Twitter, Facebook, et. al., must stop allowing President Trump to use them this way. After the violence in Washington DC, Twitter — followed by Facebook and Instagram — temporarily blocked President Trump’s accounts. More recently, Facebook and Instagram blocked his accounts for the next two weeks. YouTube has just instituted a strike policy that blocks false claims about the election. With this move, President Trump’s been blocked from posting to YouTube.
That’s a good start, but more needs to be done. 
Despite the right-wing fantasies about Facebook, Twitter, and others muzzling them for years, President Trump and his right-wing advocates have been free to say whatever they wanted, no matter how fictitious. With over 80 million Twitter followers, President Trump has said whatever he wanted to one of the largest social network audiences on the planet. 
And he has fed that huge audience a steady stream of lies, conspiracy theories, and self-aggrandizing fantasies. Locked in their social-network echo-chambers, his followers believe in a reality that has only a marginal relationship with the real world. 
For example,  I have an otherwise intelligent friend who insists that the evidence for massive voter fraud has never been fairly examined. In fact, President Trump and his legal allies are zero for 42 in their court cases trying to prove election fraud. Local, state, and federal courts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania have all rejected his attempts to overturn the election. And that, I might add, includes rulings against him by numerous Trump-appointed judges. 
There is no “there” there. There’s no evidence to support election fraud. There’s only the constant repeating of lies by President Trump and his followers.
If these lies were harmless — like those fools who believe the Earth is flat — it wouldn’t matter. These are not harmless lies. President Trump’s lies led to the deaths of at least four people during the Capitol riots. These are lies that strike at the very roots of American democracy. 
For the good of the country, President Trump and others who spread lies designed to incite violence against others and the country must be stopped. He and his ilk must be banned from the major social networks. 
That won’t stop them. As Jane Lytvynenko and Molly Hensley-Clancy reported at BuzzFeed, the Jan. 6 attack had been planned on niche web forums and right-wing social network Parler for weeks. 
How these niche sites and networks should be dealt with is a problem for another day. President Trump and those like him can always find their audience in right-wing news media sites such as One America News and Newsmax, Parler, or his own websites. But it’s well past time to bar him from the major, public spaces of the internet.
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Application security pioneer F5 this afternoon said it will spend half a billion dollars to acquire privately held, Volterra of Santa Clara, California, a maker of distributed multi-cloud application security and load-balancing software.
The company also pre-announced revenue for the December quarter, its fiscal first quarter, in a range higher than analysts have been expecting and higher than the company’s own forecast for revenue offered back in October. 
Shares of F5 rose by 3% in late trading to $186.02.
F5’s CEO, François Locoh-Donou, said in prepared remarks that the current cloud infrastructure is inadequate for application security.
“Current edge solutions are simply inadequate for today’s enterprise customers. It’s time to break out of closed edge systems that only perpetuate the pain of building, running, and securing apps,” said Locoh-Donou. He added, “the success of F5’s software transformation has put us in a position to deliver on the potential of Edge 2.0 and redefine our competitive position.”
Volterra’s VoltMesh service promises to make it quick to transition between cloud providers by abstracting APIs across different providers.

More details are available in a blog post from F5 and a blog post from Volterra.

Volterra’s CEO and founder, Ankur Singla, will stay at F5 in “key management roles,” the company said.
F5 said it will spend “approximately $440 million in cash” plus “approximately $60 million in deferred consideration and assumed unvested incentive compensation to founders and employees.” 
F5 raised its outlook for the December quarter’s revenue to a range of $623 million to $626 million, which is higher than the outlook it offered in October for $595 million to $615 million, and also higher than Wall Street’s current outlook for $605 million. 
The company said its earnings per share will come in above its forecast previously offered for $2.26 to $2.38 per share, which is on a non-GAAP basis, so it excludes certain costs. The Street has been modeling $2.34 pe share.
F5 also raised its outlook for 2021 and 2022 fiscal year growth, what it refers to as “Horizon 2.” It now sees 2021 and 2022 growth, on a compounded annual basis, of 7% to 8%, versus a prior forecast for 6% to 7%.
CEO Locoh-Donou said of the new outlook, “We are on track to deliver our best quarterly results since we embarked on our transformation, with approximately 10% revenue growth fueled by continued strong software demand along with resilience in our systems business.” 
F5 also reiterated a commitment to make a total of a billion dollars worth of share repurchases over the next two years. That would be almost ten percent of the company’s market capitalization. 
F5 management will host a conference call to discuss the deal this evening at 2:15 pm Pacific/5:15 Eastern, and you can tune in via the company’s investor relations Web site.

Tech Earnings More

Australian-based not-for-profit organisation Northcott Disability Services may have been “paying good money” for its on-premise environment but according to the organisation’s CIO Paul Herbert, it was not doing its 184 worksites across Australia any favours.
“The sites were unloved; a lot of them were still running on 4G. Our head office had only 30Mbps. At that stage, we probably had 1,100 staff struggling to work that way. So, it was not a great environment,” he told ZDNet.
Herbert said the end-user network experience was so poor that staff “weren’t even bothering to tell [the IT team] about it” even though it “caused a lot of frustration”.
“It wasn’t just our infrastructure, it was across the whole environment,” he said.
In acknowledging that something needed to change, Northcott has adopted an Equinix hybrid cloud environment, which now allows the not-for-profit to consume its on-prem, private network alongside Amazon Cloud services.
Read also: Digital transformation: A cheat sheet (TechRepublic)
The organisation has also been investing in Citrix virtual apps and desktops to support a remote working environment, enabling the organisation to introduce a range of applications such as Skype for Business, as well as different devices to its environment that can now be managed remotely. 

“Most of those devices are zero-touch. It goes straight from the manufacturer to the end users. They unbox it and they can just use it. This wasn’t possible beforehand,” Herbert said.
At the same time, Northcott worked with Bright Tech to develop and install a network-in-a-box (NiaB) solution across its sites over the past 18 months.
“We’ve now successfully upgraded or commissioned 170 sites — over 100 completed this year. Our staff now have a great network, giving them great tools to support our customers,” Herbert said.
Herbert said this has not only standardised the network at each of its sites, but the organisation now runs a fleet of 530 Dell Wyse thin clients.
“Previously, laptops existed in isolation and connecting to Northcott meant logging in via a public network which created a security risk and a poor end user experience. Staff were stuck behind a computer when they could have been supporting our customers,” he said.
The shift to hybrid cloud has enabled Northcott to save 60% on previous costs, Herbert added. 
“We’ve saved but we’re delivering so much more. Our wide area network capacity is now over 8Gbps whereas it wasn’t much more than 100Mbps two or three years ago.”
Looking ahead, Northcott is looking to shift away from its current on-prem version of Microsoft Office 2016 and adopt Office 365 over the next 18-24 months, as well as introduce Salesforce into its environment.
Additionally, Northcott plans to roll out Apple TV to all its group homes so that digital content can be delivered remotely to individuals residing in those homes.
“During COVID where people couldn’t meet, Northcott developed a program to deliver relevant content to our customers but found it was really hard to share that information because our group homes didn’t have a smart TV and they’d often have to watch the content on a DVD or on a small laptop screen,” Herbert said.
“What we’ve done is received a large donation so we can deploy 135 Apple TVs across our networks. We’ve made every TV smart so that it can be commonly managed through a unified platform … not only does it mean we can deliver new content, but it can be used by our therapists and we can offer a range of entertainment opportunities that may have not been there previously.”
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