On Thursday May 3, three Canadian startups will vie for a coveted $100K USD prize at the first ever ‘Dreampitch: Toronto’. The pitch competition, hosted by Salesforce with prizing funded by its capital venture arm Salesforce Ventures, celebrates innovative startups from across the country. Finalists hail from Toronto and the Kitchener-Waterloo corridor, recently celebrated as one of the top tech clusters worldwide by The Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2018.
In celebration of the inaugural event, a notable group of Canadian tech personalities will sit on the judging panel including tech powerhouse Kirstine Stewart, President and CRO of TribalScale and Michael Litt, Co-Founder of Vidyard, one of Canada’s fastest growing tech firms, among others.
Where: Beanfield Centre, 105 Princes’ Blvd, Toronto, ON M6K 3C3
When: Thursday, May 3, 2018 4:00-5:00 PM – Dreampitch:Toronto takes place
Posted in Commentary with tags Roku on May 2, 2018 by itnerd
Roku is rolling out a new beautiful and dynamic screensaver to Roku devices. Imagine a city as dense in population as New York and as bright as Tokyo. The new “City Stroll: Movie Magic” screensaver feels like you’re driving by a cityscape with dozens and dozens of popular movie and TV references. Take a cruise under the glowing lights and explore a city filled with movie magic.
If you’ve set a personalized screensaver, Roku will not override it and you can find “City Stroll: Movie Magic” in the Roku Channel Store. If you have a Roku Ultra, where the Aquatic Life screensaver is the default screensaver, you can find “City Stroll: Movie Magic” in the Roku Channel Store. If you miss the old screensaver, Big City Stroll, now called, City Stroll: Skyline, you can find it in the Roku Channel Store.
Posted in Commentary with tags Bell on May 2, 2018 by itnerd
If you’re Rogers you have to scared right now. I say that because Bell is stepping up its rollout of their Fiber To The Premises offering. First there was Toronto. Then in late April, Oshawa which is just east of Toronto got some Fibre love from Bell. Today, Clarington which is east of Oshawa is apparently the next on the list to get Fiber To The Premise.
It’s clear that Bell is being hyper aggressive here, and frankly I don’t blame them. They have a superior offering versus what Rogers can serve up. So why not take that advantage and run with it as hard as they can? As long as they don’t screw up, and to be clear, that could happen with Bell given their multiple faux pas over the last few months, they could run up a massive lead against Rogers. This activity from Bell as of late says to me that when it comes to residential Internet access, Bell has Rogers in its sighs and is going for the killshot.
I’ve written numerous times about the #EpicFail that is the PC Optimum rewards program which has been pwned repeatedly and led to levels of frustration that I rarely see in a customer base. Here’s recent, as in the last two days, examples of this:
We're sorry to hear this, Elizabeth! Please send us a PM with the email address registered with your account and details of your issue so we can look into it for you. Thanks for reaching out to us.
Another customer service #fail. That really illustrates that Loblaws isn’t on the ball when it comes to taking care of their customers. This one is really bad:
Let me put it this way, If I had the equivalent of $200 stolen, which is what the value of 200,000 points is, I’d be a wee bit ticked too.
What is clear here is that Loblaws who is the company that runs this rewards program can’t get their act together. They clearly can’t deal with the number of people who have been affected by whomever is stealing points from their customers. And it is highly likely that this problem is far worse than Loblaws cares to admit. None of this is good for Loblaws. And I suspect that we’re now reaching the point that these issues are beyond the ability for Loblaws to rescue its reputation from. Because right now it looks like Loblaws is really circling the drain.
A Twitter post by Dan Levy got my attention a few minutes ago.
Well, things are clearly developing on the Facebook data harvesting front. Wonder why #CambridgeAnalytica only closed US offices, I know the UK office/offices were raided already but are there any more out there? https://t.co/n1HQjMdDIs
After some digging, I found that multiple media outlets are reporting that Cambridge Analytica, the company at the center of the Facebook privacy scandal is shutting down. It seems to be all of the operations of the company and its parent company SCL Group are closing. But details are kind of scarce at the moment.
I’ll update this post as I get more information.
UPDATE: Gizmodo seems to have the most complete coverage that is constantly being updated.
Well, this war between the Trump administration and Chinese telcom companies got ratcheted up a couple of notches today with news that the Pentagon has banned saless of ZTE and Huawei phones:
The ban is based on the potential security threat the Pentagon believes the phones from the China-based companies may pose. It’s the latest move in an ongoing crackdown on the two companies by the US government, which is suspicious that they could hack into their phones and use them to spy for the Chinese government.
“Huawei and ZTE devices may pose an unacceptable risk to Department’s personnel, information and mission,” said Pentagon spokesman Major Dave Eastburn. “In light of this information, it was not prudent for the Department’s exchanges to continue selling them to DoD personnel.”
US military personnel are still allowed to buy ZTE and Huawei phones for personal use from elsewhere, although the Pentagon is currently deciding whether to issue a wider advisory about the purchase of phones by the two brands, said Eastburn. He said security reasons prevented him from going into the technical aspects of the potential threats.
One has to wonder what’s next? There’s really not much else that the Trump administration can do to these companies. But I am sure they’ll find something.
Well, it seems that the parent company of Tinder is threatened by the announcement that Facebook is getting into the dating app game. The fact that their stock dropped significantly when it was announced is likely salt in the would as well. But it seems that they’re so bothered by this that they’ve taken to dissing Facebook:
Joey Levin, chief executive at Match Group’s parent company IAC, extended a barbed invitation that referenced Zuckerberg’s recent trip to Washington D.C.: “Come on in,” Levin said. “The water’s warm. Their product could be great for US/Russia relationships.”
Ouch. That hurts. But to be fair, they also said this:
Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Match Group, which own Plenty of Fish, Tinder, OkCupid, and Match.com, said in a statement that she was “surprised at the timing given the amount of personal and sensitive data that comes with this territory.”
“We understand this category better than anyone,” the statement continued. “Facebook’s entry will only be invigorating to all of us.”
It will be interesting to see how they defend themselves against Facebook’s entry into this market. But I am not sure that dropping disses like a gangster rapper should be in the playbook.
Remember the Jeep hack were a security researcher pwned a Jeep remotely to the point they could control it, which in turn led to a recall to allow Chrysler to address the issue? Or the GM OnStar hack that allowed a security research to remote open the doors and start the engines of GM cars equipped with OnStar? Well, those were examples of the car industry not being on top of security of what are basically rolling computer systems. The thing is that those incidents happened years ago. Thus things should be better now. Right?
Actually, no they’re not based on this example brought to light by a Dutch research team looking into VW and Audi infotainment systems:
Researchers at Dutch firm Computest have disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in the infotainment system of some Volkswagen and Audi models, allowing them to remotely access the system and commandeer the microphone, navigation system, and speakers.
Whitehat hackers Daan Keuper and Thijs Alkemade found the flaws in early 2017 after probing Harman-made infotainment systems in a 2015 model VW Golf GTE and an Audi A3 Sportback e-tron. Both vehicles are made by Volkswagen Group.
And:
The researchers found a flaw in the VW’s in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system that can be remotely exploited if the vehicle connects to an attacker’s Wi-Fi network.
Keuper told ZDNet that they subsequently found the vulnerability could be exploited over cellular networks too, allowing for a longer-range attack.
And:
Using the vulnerability, they were able to gain root access to the IVI system’s main processor, which runs Blackberry’s QNX operating system, and is responsible for navigation and multimedia decoding.
From there they were able to control the RCC or radio and car-control unit, which also runs on QNX, and is a potential avenue for sending malicious messages to the CAN (Controller Area Network) bus to manipulate vehicle controls such as the braking and steering system, as demonstrated in the Jeep hack.
This sounds insanely similar to the Jeep hack. The researchers stopped their work and informed VW who apparently confirmed the issues. Here’s where it gets murky. In the case of vehicles made after mid-2016, VW has implied that they have addressed these issues. But in vehicles made before that, it isn’t clear what has been done. Thus they may still be pwnable.
The full report is available [Warning: PDF]. But this does illustrate several fundamental flaws in how car companies approach security in their cars:
Depending on the manufacturer, software upgrades may or may not be available for you. If they are available, they may cost you money as the number one reason for these updates is to install updated maps for the navigation system. And it isn’t clear if security issues are addressed in those updates.
If you can get updates for your car, some are done “over the air” and some require you or your dealer to physically update the infotainment system. The latter is something that people who actually care about this sort of thing outsource to their dealer, or someone like me. Which means that it is possible for you to be rolling around with a pwnable car if you don’t do these updates.
Car companies for the most part don’t really invest the time and effort to look for security issues and proactively address them. Nor do they have bug bounty programs like the Microsoft’s and Google’s of the world to encourage hackers to report security issues. And if they did, the mechanisms to report these issues may not exist. The only exceptions to this that I am aware of are GM and Tesla.
In short, all car companies need to step up their game when it comes to the security of their in car infotainment systems. Because it is clear that we are now approaching a place where something like this scene from the movie The Fate Of The Furious isn’t just fiction anymore:
Canada has some of the highest cell phone costs in the world. And pretty much everyone in Canada with the exception of those who work for Bell, Rogers, and Telus would agree with that. The CRTC saw that as well and asked for submissions for lower cost data only wireless plans back in March. The “big three” telcos responded with the following:
Both Bell and Telus came up with a monthly plan offering 500 megabytes of data for $30.
Telus also came up with a prepaid plan offering 600 megabytes for $30 a month
Rogers came up with 400 megabytes for $25 a month
The CRTC then posted the proposals online and got more than 230 comments which all said that same thing. These plans are a total joke. Let me give you a couple of examples as to why these plans are a total joke by illustrating my experience with wireless plans in other parts of the world:
During a business trip to India I used a Vodafone SIM for the week that I was where. It gave me unlimited voice and texting along with 1.4GB of data for 675 Indian Rupees which works out to about $13 Canadian. And that was considered expensive as I was apparently paying the “tourist rate”.
On a business trip to Australia, I used a SIM from Optus which gave me unlimited voice and text. But it limited me to 500 MB a day. Total cost was $2 AUD a day which in Canadian funds is about $2 CDN a day. Keep in mind that things are insanely expensive down under with cheap beer being about $9 CDN a bottle. But somehow this doesn’t seem to apply to the cost of their wireless services which are pretty reasonable by Canadian standards.
The first time I went to the UK on business, I paid one pound for a T-Mobile SIM card and ten pounds for 100 minutes of talk time, 400 texts, and 1GB of data. That’s $18 CDN. And the UK is an expensive place with burgers costing about $17 CDN.
The fact is that the “big three” telcos have zero interest in providing Canadians wireless plans that are a good value for Canadians hard earned money. Largely because they don’t see the need to. I’ve argued for a very long time that the only way to solve this is to have the Canadian government let in a very large foreign telco such as Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, or Orange, and have them set up shop in Canada. Now to be clear, I am not advocating that the government should bankroll these companies. What I am advocating is that they simply have to open the door and let them walk in and set up shop. If they did that, the cost of your cell phone bill will plummet almost instantly because the “big three” would then have to seriously complete to keep you as a customer. And if you don’t believe that this would happen, look at the panic that Verizon caused the “big three” when they were rumored to be expanding into Canada a few years ago.
The bottom line is that these low cost proposals by the “big three” are a joke. In fact, I’ll also say that they’re insulting to hard working Canadians who only want cell phone service at a reasonable price that is in line with what the rest of the planet gets. These three telcos need to understand how out of step with reality they are and adjust accordingly. Alternately, the CRTC or the Canadian government need to take action so that Canadians get the service that they deserve at a price point that is within the bounds of reality.
Secure messaging Signal clearly doesn’t want to be in the same boat as Telegram which is currently banned in Iran and Russia. They they apparently have been been using servers on Amazon Web Services to disguise their traffic. That’s called “domain fronting” because what they’re doing is making it look like that their traffic is coming from Amazon Web Services under the logic that a country can’t stop every IP address that Amazon owns. And if a country did try, it would be a game of whack a mole. Not to mention that they would anger a lot of people in the process because there would be a lot of collateral damage in the process of trying to block whatever it is that annoys the county in question.
But it turns out that the company that is currently angry is Amazon who has told Signal to cut it out. Now Signal thinks they’re being screwed and are looking for alternatives to AWS, but you have to wonder if there is one. I personally don’t see it. But maybe Signal knows something that I don’t.
This is one situation that will be interesting to watch in the near term. Get your popcorn ready.
Salesforce Ventures brings ‘Dreampitch: Toronto’ Competition to Beanfield Centre
Posted in Commentary with tags Salesforce on May 2, 2018 by itnerdOn Thursday May 3, three Canadian startups will vie for a coveted $100K USD prize at the first ever ‘Dreampitch: Toronto’. The pitch competition, hosted by Salesforce with prizing funded by its capital venture arm Salesforce Ventures, celebrates innovative startups from across the country. Finalists hail from Toronto and the Kitchener-Waterloo corridor, recently celebrated as one of the top tech clusters worldwide by The Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2018.
In celebration of the inaugural event, a notable group of Canadian tech personalities will sit on the judging panel including tech powerhouse Kirstine Stewart, President and CRO of TribalScale and Michael Litt, Co-Founder of Vidyard, one of Canada’s fastest growing tech firms, among others.
Where: Beanfield Centre, 105 Princes’ Blvd, Toronto, ON M6K 3C3
When: Thursday, May 3, 2018 4:00-5:00 PM – Dreampitch:Toronto takes place
Judges:
Candice Faktor, Founder, Faktory Ventures
Kirstine Stewart President and CRO, TribalScale
Kristina Shen, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
Michael Litt Co-Founder and CEO, Vidyard
Startup Finalists:
Marko Savic, CEO, Funnel Cake
Andrew Sinclair, Co-Founder, Lane Four
Mike Orr, Co-Founder, Grapvine6
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