Here are some web trends for 2020:
Responsive web design in 2020 should be a given because every serious project that you create should look good and be completely usable on all devices. But there’s no need to over-complicate things.
Web Development in 2020: What Coding Tools You Should Learn article gives an overview of recommendations what you learn to become a web developer in 2020.
You might have seen Web 3.0 on some slides. What is the definition of web 3 we are talking about here?
There seems to be many different to choose from… Some claim that you need to blockchain the cloud IOT otherwise you’ll just get a stack overflow in the mainframe but I don’t agree on that.
Information on the web address bar will be reduced on some web browsers. With the release of Chrome 79, Google completes its goal of erasing www from the browser by no longer allowing Chrome users to automatically show the www trivial subdomain in the address bar.
You still should target to build quality web site and avoid the signs of a low-quality web site. Get good inspiration for your web site design.
Still a clear and logical structure is the first thing that needs to be turned over in mind before the work on the website gears up. The website structure for search robots is its internal links. The more links go to a page, the higher its priority within the website, and the more times the search engine crawls it.
You should upgrade your web site, but you need to do it sensibly and well. Remember that a site upgrade can ruin your search engine visibility if you do it badly. The biggest risk to your site getting free search engine visibility is site redesign. Bad technology selection can ruin the visibility of a new site months before launch. Many new sites built on JavaScript application frameworks do not benefit in any way from the new technologies. Before you go into this bandwagon, you should think critically about whether your site will benefit from the dynamic capabilities of these technologies more than they can damage your search engine visibility. Well built redirects can help you keep the most outbound links after site changes.
If you go to the JavaScript framework route on your web site, keep in mind that there are many to choose, and you need to choose carefully to find one that fits for your needs and is actively developed also in the future.
JavaScript survey: Devs love a bit of React, but Angular and Cordova declining. And you’re not alone… a chunk of pros also feel JS is ‘overly complex’
Keep in mind the recent changes on the video players and Google analytics. And for animated content keep in mind that GIF animations exists still as a potential tool to use.
Keep in mind the the security. There is a skill gap in security for many. I’m not going to say anything that anyone who runs a public-facing web server doesn’t already know: the majority of these automated blind requests are for WordPress directories and files. PHP exploits are a distant second. And there are many other things that are automatically attacked. Test your site with security scanners.
APIs now account for 40% of the attack surface for all web-enabled apps. OWASP has identified 10 areas where enterprises can lower that risk. There are many vulnerability scanning tools available. Check also How to prepare and use Docker for web pentest . Mozilla has a nice on-line tool for web site security scanning.
The slow death of Flash continues. If you still use Flash, say goodbye to it. Google says goodbye to Flash, will stop indexing Flash content in search.
Use HTTPS on your site because without it your site rating will drop on search engines visibility. It is nowadays easy to get HTTPS certificates.
Write good content and avoid publishing fake news on your site. Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy,
Think to who you are aiming to your business web site to. Analyze who is your “true visitor” or “power user”. A true visitor is a visitor to a website who shows a genuine interest in the content of the site. True visitors are the people who should get more of your site and have the potential to increase the sales and impact of your business. The content that your business offers is intended to attract visitors who are interested in it. When they show their interest, they are also very likely to be the target group of the company.
Should you think of your content management system (CMS) choice? Flexibility, efficiency, better content creation: these are just some of the promised benefits of a new CMS. Here is How to convince your developers to change CMS.
Here are some fun for the end:
Did you know that if a spider creates a web at a place?
The place is called a website
Confession: How JavaScript was made.
2,361 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nour Haydar / ABC:
Australia orders the creation of a mandatory code of conduct requiring platforms like Google and Facebook to pay media businesses for news content — The Federal Government has ordered the competition watchdog to develop a mandatory code of conduct to govern commercial dealings between tech giants and news media companies.
Facebook and Google to face mandatory code of conduct to ‘level playing field’ with traditional news media
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-20/facebook-and-google-to-face-mandatory-code-of-conduct/12163300
The Federal Government has ordered the competition watchdog to develop a mandatory code of conduct to govern commercial dealings between tech giants and news media companies.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said a mandatory code would help “level the playing field” by requiring digital platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay news media businesses for the content they produce.
“It’s only fair that those that generate content get paid for it,” Mr Frydenberg said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
The idea that the pandemic has made the internet better is tempting but premature, as major platforms struggle to adapt to a surge in activity and new use cases — The weekend before bars and restaurants closed in New York, I sat on the ground in the park with three friends in a creepy circle …
No, the Internet Is Not Good Again
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/zoom-facebook-moderation-ai-coronavirus-internet/610099/
After a few weeks of faith in the possibility of online utopia, the cracks are starting to show.
Everybody loves the internet now. As traditional public life has shut down for much of the population, we’re moving online to stay connected to people we miss, and to raise money for people who need it, and to coordinate all kinds of collective action that can no longer happen in physical places. Since stay-at-home orders began in the United States, use of online platforms has ballooned to the point of absurdity: In a recent blog post, the Zoom CEO, Eric Yuan, said that the service’s number of daily meeting participants had gone from 10 million in December to 200 million in March. Daily usage of Google’s videoconferencing platform is 25 times higher now than it was in January. According to Facebook, messaging across its services was up 50 percent at the end of March in the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, and video calling had more than doubled on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp in areas with major COVID-19 outbreaks.
The early promise of the web—that it would be a place for ingenuity and shared knowledge—has been glimmering for everyone to notice. Though just months ago we were a couple of solid years into a big-tech backlash, each day bringing new questions about the surreal powers of companies such as Facebook and Google and Apple, today we feel grateful to have them, and blessed to use their products for most of our waking hours.
“The coronavirus crisis is showing us how to live online,” The New York Times’ Kevin Roose argued, as states directed residents not to leave their home. “After spending years using technologies that mostly seemed to push us apart, the coronavirus crisis is showing us that the internet is still capable of pulling us together,” he wrote. “Has coronavirus made the internet better?” The New York Times’ Jenna Wortham asked a couple of weeks later, concluding that it had.
t’s a tempting thought, but a premature one. Major platforms are struggling to adapt to enormous amounts of additional activity and strange new use cases. Moderation decisions that were difficult under the best of circumstances, with people responsible for them, are now being made by artificial intelligence. Platforms that had big user bases now have huge user bases, making the exploitation of security flaws far more worthwhile.
As stay-at-home orders rolled out across the country, Facebook announced that it would send workers home, including content moderators, explaining that many of them would be unable to do their jobs at home for various reasons
AI content moderation has a lot of limitations. It’s a blunt instrument solving a problem that has endless permutations, and it can produce both false negatives and false positives.
“What it’s not doing is looking, and itself making a decision,” says Sarah T. Roberts, an internet-governance researcher at UCLA. “That’s what a human can do.” As a result, moderation algorithms are likely to “over-police in some contexts, over-moderate in some contexts, and leave some other areas virtually uncovered,”
Nothing has gone horribly wrong on Facebook yet. But some cracks are showing: Though the company promised that for the average person, the site experience wouldn’t be different, the dialog box that pops up when a user tries to report content reads, “Please note we have fewer reviewers available right now.”
even a “small number” of mistakes, for a platform with 2.5 billion users, is going to be a lot of mistakes. Potentially millions of mistakes!
With the switch to more AI moderation, Facebook has chosen to de-prioritize some things. The biggest is spam. And though extremism is one of the site’s biggest concerns right now, there is a new triage within that.
The screeching track-switch to predominantly automated moderation is possible for only the biggest tech companies, which have the best engineering resources and have been developing these tools internally for years. Smaller and newer platforms, which are currently drowning in new sign-ups and seeing their sites used for things they never had been before, will have a harder time.
“I think we’re getting a similar scaling up in terms of the dissemination of public-health information,” Grimmelmann said. “Some platforms are familiar with these challenges; some of them are learning.”
There’s plenty to love about the internet right now, for all its flaws. Important information is circulating. Resources are being pooled and redistributed by networks of individuals, while the government is lagging behind. Digital projections of people we can’t see in person are available at any time.
The worst events in internet history have also tended to lead to the biggest changes: Gamergate was social media’s first big existential crisis. Some signs indicate that the coronavirus could be another. “The pandemic has helped to foreground how contestable—and, we argue, utterly frail—platform governance is,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Florida’s Unemployment Website Down For Weekend; DeSantis Calls It “Designed to Fail”
https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2020/04/25/florida-s-unemployment-website-down-for-weekend?fbclid=IwAR3G2ZZFwgrhLrgB8EUOltkSMhRtRyvfKp6XoPXbxMciRmB7cT9ygq35rxg
Florida’s broken unemployment website has been taken down for the weekend, as Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Friday that he believes the $77 million system was “designed to fail.”
DeSantis noted the state’s CONNECT website was built more than five years ago, before he became Governor, and that taxpayer money was not spent well.
The number of Floridians who have filed for unemployment since the pandemic outbreak has reached 1.16 million, with only 6.5 percent of the claims paid.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.kooders.fi/blogi/markkinointi-valilla-hymyilyttaa
Tomi Engdahl says:
WATCH: YouTube CEO: We’ll Remove Any Content That Goes Against WHO Recommendations
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-youtube-ceo-well-remove-any-content-that-goes-against-who-recommendations/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Älä pilaa Google Analytics -dataasi väärillä utm-parametreilla
https://www.hopkins.fi/artikkelit/google-analytics-utm-parametrit/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Protect Your Website: 10 Security Holes You Need to Care About
https://pentestmag.com/how-to-protect-your-website-10-security-holes-you-need-to-care-about/
How to protect the website? Various web security tools can prevent hacking and malicious software. In this article, we’ll discuss ten tips on how to protect your website or web app.
Let’s face it — website security is crucial for your success.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MAKING DIGITAL PRODUCTS ACCESSIBLE – WHY AND HOW
https://blog.taiste.fi/en/making-digital-products-accessible-why-and-how
Many of us have disabilities that greatly affect everyday life. Accessibility means creating digital services that take this into account, making them usable for a larger number of people.
Historically, accessibility has been a blind spot for both designers and their clients. Too often, it is seen as not worth the trouble or simply not given any thought at all. We have been guilty of this numerous times as well. But now, the times are slowly but inevitably changing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pentestmag.com/how-to-protect-your-website-10-security-holes-you-need-to-care-about/
Tomi Engdahl says:
When your CMS is choking your innovation
https://enonic.com/blog/when-your-cms-is-choking-your-innovation?utm_campaign=Blog%20posts&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_content=When%20your%20CMS%20is%20choking%20your%20innovation&hsa_acc=1248533131943904&hsa_cam=23844536449750181&hsa_grp=23844666754550181&hsa_ad=23844666754570181&hsa_src=fb&hsa_net=facebook&hsa_ver=3
A good content management system should support new ideas and be a catalyst for innovation. Here’s how you can make sure of that.
A CMS is supposed to help supercharge your creativity, not stifle it. Ensuring your content reaches as many of the right people as possible, a good content management system will also support new ideas and approaches. At its best, a CMS is a catalyst for innovation.
So what happens when it’s doing the opposite? How can you fix a CMS that’s choking innovation and keeping your digital experiences from reaching their full potential?
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.oph.fi/fi/tilastot-ja-julkaisut/julkaisut/media-ja-viestintaalan-osaamistarpeet
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Ethics of Predictive Journalism
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/predictive-journalism-artificial-intelligence-ethics.php
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Facebook Journalism Project and European Journalism Centre Launch Fund to Support Local News Industry During Coronavirus Crisis
https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/grants/coronavirus-european-news-support-fund
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Europe is about to overhaul its 20-year-old e-Commerce Directive and it is a once-in-a-decade chance to correct the power imbalance between platforms and users. As part of this update, the Digital Services Act (DSA) must address the issue of political microtargeting (PMT)”
https://edri.org/whoreallytargetsyou-political-microtargeting-cant-be-ignored-by-the-dsa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC was biggest news website globally in early April as new figures suggest interest in Covid-19 has peaked
https://pressgazette.co.uk/biggest-news-websites-april-2020/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amanda Meade / The Guardian:
Google responds to Australia’s plan to force online platforms pay for news content, arguing search results are like publishers’ posters in a newsagent’s window
Google is like a poster in the newsagent’s window for publishers, tech giant says
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/04/google-poster-newsagents-window-publishers-tech-giant-says
Google Australia responds to government’s move to force it to pay for content by arguing it provides publishers with free advertising
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Facebook’s Oversight Board announces its first 20 members, out of a total of 40, who will oversee challenging content issues — The company’s independent oversight body will focus on challenging content issues, such as hate speech and harassment. — The authors are co-chairs of Facebook’s oversight board.
We Are a New Board at Facebook. Here’s What We’ll Decide.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/facebook-oversight-board.html
The company’s independent oversight body will focus on challenging content issues, such as hate speech and harassment
Social media affects people’s lives in many ways, good and bad. Right now, as the world endures a health crisis, social media has become a lifeline for many people, providing valuable information and helping families and communities stay connected.
At the same time, we know that social media can spread speech that is hateful, harmful and deceitful. In recent years, the question of what content should stay up or come down on platforms like Facebook, and who should decide this, has become increasingly urgent.
So in November 2018, recognizing that no company should settle these issues alone, Facebook committed to creating an independent oversight body that will review Facebook’s decisions about what content to take down or leave up. Over the past 18 months, more than 2,000 experts and other relevant parties from 88 countries have contributed feedback that has shaped the development of this oversight board, which will have 20 members (ultimately growing to 40) and is scheduled to become operational this year.
The oversight board will focus on the most challenging content issues for Facebook, including in areas such as hate speech, harassment, and protecting people’s safety and privacy. It will make final and binding decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram (which Facebook owns).
The board members come from different professional, cultural and religious backgrounds and have various political viewpoints.
Our independent judgment is guaranteed by our structure. The oversight board’s operations are funded by a $130 million trust fund that is completely independent of Facebook and cannot be revoked. Board members will serve fixed terms of three years, up to a maximum of three terms; they contract directly with the oversight board. We cannot be removed by Facebook. Through the founding bylaws of the oversight board, Facebook has committed to carrying out our decisions even though it may at times disagree, unless doing so would violate the law. Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has also personally committed to this arrangement.
The entire process is designed with transparency in mind. All of the oversight board’s decisions and recommendations will be made public, and Facebook must respond publicly to them.
Users will be able to appeal to the oversight board if they disagree with Facebook’s initial decision about whether to take down or leave up a given piece of content, and Facebook can also refer cases to the board.
https://www.oversightboard.com/?_fb_noscript=1
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Kaye / Just Security:
Facebook’s efforts are laudable, but the Oversight Board does not end debates over online speech or legitimize content moderation choices by other platforms — With the Naming of Oversight Board Members, What Kind of Institution Will This Become? — With Facebook’s unveiling of the first 20 …
The Republic of Facebook
https://www.justsecurity.org/70035/the-republic-of-facebook/
With the Naming of Oversight Board Members, What Kind of Institution Will This Become?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
European Data Protection Board publishes updated guidelines arguing that scrolling and “cookie walls”, which block users from content, don’t constitute consent — You can’t make access to your website’s content dependant on a visitor agreeing that you can process their data — aka a ‘consent cookie wall’.
No cookie consent walls — and no, scrolling isn’t consent, says EU data protection body
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/06/no-cookie-consent-walls-and-no-scrolling-isnt-consent-says-eu-data-protection-body/
You can’t make access to your website’s content dependent on a visitor agreeing that you can process their data — aka a ‘consent cookie wall’. Not if you need to be compliant with European data protection law.
That’s the unambiguous message from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which has published updated guidelines on the rules around online consent to process people’s data.
Under pan-EU law, consent is one of six lawful bases that data controllers can use when processing people’s personal data.
But in order for consent to be legally valid under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there are specific standards to meet: It must be clear and informed, specific and freely given.
Hence cookie walls that demand ‘consent’ as the price for getting inside the club are not only an oxymoron but run into a legal brick wall.
No consent behind a cookie wall
The regional cookie wall has been crumbling for some time, as we reported last year — when the Dutch DPA clarified its guidance to ban cookie walls.
The updated guidelines from the EDPB look intended to hammer the point home.
As we noted in our report on the Dutch clarification last year, the Internet Advertising Bureau Europe was operating a full cookie wall — instructing visitors to ‘agree’ to its data processing terms if they wished to view the content.
The problem that we pointed out is that that wasn’t a free choice. Yet EU law requires a free choice for consent to be legally valid. So it’s interesting to note the IAB Europe has, at some point since, updated its cookie consent implementation — removing the cookie wall and offering a fairly clear (if nudged) choice to visitors to either accept or deny cookies for “aggregated statistics”…
consent cookie walls do not “constitute valid consent, as the provision of the service relies on the data subject clicking the ‘Accept cookies’ button. It is not presented with a genuine choice.”
Scrolling never means ‘take my data’
A second area to get attention in the updated guidance, as a result of the EDPB deciding there was a need for additional clarification, is the issue of scrolling and consent.
Simply put: Scrolling on a website or digital service can not — in any way — be interpreted as consent.
Or, as the EDPB puts it, “actions such as scrolling or swiping through a webpage or similar user activity will not under any circumstances satisfy the requirement of a clear and affirmative action” [emphasis ours].
Logical reason being such signals are not unambiguous. (Additionally, the EDPB example raises the point of how would a user withdraw consent if such a signal were valid? By scrolling back up the same web page? Obviously that would be ridiculous and confusing.)
So any websites still trying to drop tracking cookies the moment a site visitor scrolls the page are risking regulatory enforcement. (Reminder: GDPR fines can scale as high as €20M or 4% of global annual turnover.)
Nonetheless, recent research suggests cookie consent theatre remains rife in the EU — albeit, not only limited to the ‘scroll and you’ve been tracked’ flavor of the practice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This page explains how to use Apache’s official mod_md module to obtain a free TLS/SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt for Apache running on Ubuntu 20.04 and set up your certificate to renew automatically using mod_watchdog.
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-secure-apache-with-mod_md-lets-encrypt-on-ubuntu-20-04-lts/
#OpenSource #Sysadmin
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Facebook’s oversight board could rewrite the rules of the entire internet
https://www.protocol.com/facebook-oversight-board-rules-of-the-internet
The new content moderation board is built so other companies could get in on the action. That could be a mixed blessing.
Facebook’s audacious experiment in corporate governance inched closer to reality Wednesday with the announcement of the first 20 members of its oversight board. But while much attention has been paid to how the board stands to rewrite Facebook’s own rules, an equally important question is how it stands to rewrite the rules for every other tech platform, too.
The board’s founding members include a former prime minister of Denmark, a Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and a former federal judge nominated by President George W. Bush. If all goes according to plan, this Supreme Court-style body will be up and running by the fall, hearing cases and issuing decisions
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Smith / New York Times:
As Australian and French regulators plan to make tech companies pay publishers for news content, leaders from Ireland to Malaysia say they are paying attention — News organizations have long hoped that tech platforms would pay them for news. Now regulators abroad are moving to make that happen.
Big Tech Has Crushed the News Business. That’s About to Change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/business/media/big-tech-has-crushed-the-news-business-thats-about-to-change.html
News organizations have long hoped that tech platforms would pay them for news. Now regulators abroad are moving to make that happen.
It reads like a coroner’s report on the news business, 623 pages filled with charts and graphs detailing the devastating decline in local news and public policy reporting of the past decade. It landed on the Australian prime minister’s desk last summer, unnoticed by most news consumers in America and around the world.
But the report by Australian regulators left little doubt about what they see as the cause of local journalism’s demise — the near monopolistic power of Google and Facebook. And it has set off a chain of events that could shift the balance of power between big tech and the news at a dire moment for journalism.
“Global tech companies are not beyond national laws, especially when there is so much at stake,” Rod Sims, the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and author of the report,
In France, where regulators are demanding that Google cut a deal to pay publishers, the pandemic crisis has added “all the more urgency,” said Ms. de Silva, the president of the French Competition Authority, which is enforcing a European Commission change to copyright law that will soon take effect across the continent.
Players on all sides predict the Australian and French decisions will set global precedents. Leaders from Ireland to Malaysia have indicated they’re paying attention. And in the United States, where antitrust laws are weaker and regulators have been more laissez-faire, starving publishers are licking their chops.
“It’s kind of neat watching the dominoes fall,” said Danielle Coffey, the general counsel for the News Media Alliance, which largely represents U.S. newspapers.
The battle between platforms and publishers is at once a matter of economic principle and an old-fashioned political brawl between powerful industries. For a decade, tech’s transformative power, glamour and enormous lobbying spending allowed it to dominate, resulting in a system in which the platforms could feature and profit off the content news publishers create without paying them directly for it.
But the power of the press, even nowadays, makes it a formidable political force.
While much of the American media rejects the idea that it is crusading in its pages to support its publishers’ business agenda, most news executives in this country share a viewpoint on the platforms, having seen them pull advertising dollars from the news business and spread misinformation at the expense of professional journalism. And even as the platforms employ armies of powerful lobbyists, politicians remain eager to please the press that covers them.
“All governments are responsive to media in some way or another, because in all countries media is the filter through which things are seen,” Mr. Sims said.
Facebook and Google have approached new regulatory aggressiveness differently. Facebook, after taking a huge public beating for its role amplifying misinformation and disseminating user data in the 2016 election, has moved to give publishers what they want: money, mostly. The company began its news tab last October writing checks in the seven figures to publishers in exchange for three-year licensing deals.
Google has played the politics differently and, so far, much less deftly. The company has taken a patronizing approach to publishers, fronted by a gray-bearded former Salon executive, Richard Gingras, who has for years delivered the same set of talking points to increasingly irate news executives about the nature of truth and the true value of the internet — as though the year was still 2003. And while Facebook is paying publishers directly, Google has mainly handed out grants for experimental journalism projects built around Google’s technology.
Google maintains that it delivers value to publishers by driving them traffic.
“I do want to debunk a meme that I’ve heard that we don’t pay or provide real value,” the company’s vice president of news product, Brad Bender, told me in a phone interview, adding that “topical news” of the sort Google often aggregates “isn’t a significant source of revenue for news publishers” because they sell advertising against things like cars and fashion.
But the politics have changed drastically in the last few years, and Google’s proud defiance and lectures about technology now come across as a blend of arrogance and naïveté. And, perhaps showing the virtues of Facebook’s more conciliatory approach, the social media giant has also succeeded in France, for now: Facebook is arguing that voluntary posts by its users to social media are intrinsically different from the way a search engine scrapes the web, and negotiating to pay publishers, so far avoiding Ms. de Silva’s heavy hand.
“We found the argument by Google that they would never pay any form of payment for any content inconsistent with the law,”
Google executives thought they’d found a way to dodge European regulation when, in Spain in 2014, they simply removed Google News from search results there rather than respond to regulators’ demands for compensation. But, in a sign of how things are shifting, when they tried a similar maneuver in response to France’s new regulation requiring payment for copyrighted “snippets” of news
“We looked at what happened in Spain,” she said. “This is not really an avenue that is open to them because in our decision we asked them to maintain the content is as it is today.”
Now Facebook is negotiating with French publishers to introduce a version of the program it rolled out in the United States
There are some signs that Google’s strategy is shifting. The company is in discussions with some publishers in the United States and France to pay directly to “feature full articles” on Google itself, without having to click a link
The European copyright negotiations were a long time coming, and are proceeding reliably through the continent’s legal systems. Ms. de Silva says Google has until August “to negotiate in good faith” with publishers to pay for content, and Germany is expected to move in a similar direction at the end of this year. The situation in Australia appears to be moving faster
Mr. Sims and Ms. de Silva can’t, alone, save a news industry that is still struggling to meet consumers where they are on the internet. Some publications have an enduring reliance on print, and others have styles of telling and thinking about news and revenue alike that hark back to the newspaper era. At worst, forced payments from platforms could merely prop up fading newspapers at the expense of new ways of telling stories and doing business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stratechery:
Forcing Facebook and Google to pay for news could lead to uncritical reporting on tech; better approaches would tackle roots of media woes, including ad markets — Exponent — as promised! — will be back tomorrow, talking about podcasting, Spotify, and working from home. —
Media, Regulators, and Big Tech; Indulgences and Injunctions; Better Approaches
https://stratechery.com/2020/media-regulators-and-big-tech-indulgences-and-injunctions-better-approaches/
Tomi Engdahl says:
France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech content within 24 hours
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/france-passes-law-forcing-online-platforms-to-delete-hate-speech-content-within-24-hours/
France’s lower chamber of the parliament has voted in favor of a controversial law against hate speech on social networks and online platforms. As I described last year, online platforms will have to remove within 24 hours illicit content that has been flagged. Otherwise, companies will have to pay hefty fines every time they infringe the law.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Perinteinen pyöräliike toteutti digiloikan juuri ennen kuin korona sulki Suomen – Nyt verkkokauppa tukee kivijalkaa
https://y-studio.fi/yritys-muutoksessa/muutosten-hallinta/pyorapalvelu-berggren-toteutti-digiloikan-juuri-ennen-kuin-korona-sulki-suomen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Now Chrome Can Block Ads That Leach Power From Your CPU
https://www.wired.com/story/now-chrome-can-block-ads-that-leach-power-from-your-cpu/
Google developers have built a feature to help you avoid abusive ads. Here’s how to turn it on now.
The move comes in response to a swarm of sites and ads first noticed in 2017 that surreptitiously use visitors’ computers to mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As the sites or ads display content, embedded code performs the resource-intensive calculations and deposits the mined currency in a developer-designated wallet. To conceal the scam, the code is often heavily obfuscated. The only signs something is amiss are whirring fans, drained batteries, and for those who pay close attention, increased consumption of network resources.
In a post published on Thursday, Chrome Project Manager Marshall Vale said that while the percentage of abusive ads is extremely low—somewhere around 0.3 percent—they account for 28 percent of CPU usage and 27 percent of network
To curtail the practice, Chrome is limiting the resources a display ad can consume before a user interacts with it. If the limit is reached, the ad frame will navigate to an error page that informs the user the ad has consumed too many resources.
Ads that use more CPU resources or network data than 99.9 percent of overall ads will be blocked. That translates to 4 megabytes of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30-second period or 60 seconds of total CPU usage.
Firefox last year added a mechanism for blocking cryptojacking. It works by blocking known cryptojacking domains. The protection is useful, but the whack-a-mole approach
Protecting against resource-heavy ads in Chrome
Thursday, May 14, 2020
https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html?m=1
Tomi Engdahl says:
Knocking the door to Server-side Template Injection. Part 1
https://pentestmag.com/knocking-the-door-to-server-side-template-injection-part-1/
Templating engines are broadly used by modern applications to serve dynamic content to users, over the web or even in email compaigns. Nevertheless, like most technologies/ features out there, it is prone to being the target of abuse as its fuzzing is the eventual outcome of the outgrowning numbers of testers not to mention script kiddies.
Incontrovertible is the criticality of the impact, when it comes to unwise integration as accepting user input in templates can lead to Server Side Template Injection, mostly mistaken for XSS
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Secure Apache with mod_md Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/tag/lets-encrypt-certificate/
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube CEO: Users don’t like “authoritative” mainstream media channels but we boost them anyway
https://reclaimthenet.org/susan-wojcicki-unpopular-mainstream/
Susan Wojcicki confirms your suspicions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unpatched Open Source Libraries Leave 71% of Apps Vulnerable
https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/unpatched-open-source-libraries-leave-71–of-apps-vulnerable-/d/d-id/1337856
PHP and JavaScript developers need to pay close attention because
different languages and frameworks have different rates of
vulnerability, research finds. The management of open source libraries
poses a major challenge for secure development. That’s because seven
in 10 applications use at least one flawed open source library,
inheriting vulnerabilities that could potentially be exploited,
according to a new study of more than 81, 000 applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadband: the most expensive solution ever devised to deal with inelegant coding of web pages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.karhuhelsinki.fi/blogi/http-early-hints-ja-phoenix
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Psychology Behind Why People Dislike Ads (And How to Make Better Ones)
https://wistia.com/learn/marketing/the-psychology-behind-why-people-dislike-ads
Tomi Engdahl says:
Varustelekan Valtteri Lindholm suosisi tätä maksutapaa verkkokaupassa, yksi toimija kokonaan mustalla listalla: “Köyhille rahaa kalliilla!”
https://www.helsinginuutiset.fi/paikalliset/1657099
Verkkokauppa: Pitkän linjan yrittäjä suosii helppoja ja nopeita tapoja maksaa netissä.
Koronakriisin myötä verkossa asioiminen ja verkkokauppa ovat kasvattaneet suosiotaan entisestään. Verkko-ostosten maksamisessakin riittää jo vaihtoehtoja.
Suomalaiset suosivat yhä oman nettipankin kautta tehtävää verkkopankkimaksua, koska moni pitää sitä nopeana ja yksinkertaisena maksutapana.
Liki kaksikymmentä vuotta verkkokauppaa tehnyt Varustelekan yrittäjä Valtteri Lindholm on tästä kuitenkin aivan toista mieltä.
– Suomalaiset ovat vaan tottuneet käyttämään verkkopankkia, jopa vanhat patut osaavat maksaa sillä. Verkkopankissa pitää kuitenkin muistaa monenlaisia numeroyhdistelmiä, mikä sekä hidastaa että vaikeuttaa maksamista, Lindholm perustelee.
LINDHOLM itse suosisi mielellään kansainvälistä maksupalvelu PayPalia, sillä asiakkaan näkökulmasta se on äärettömän helppokäyttöinen.
– Ei tarvita vaihtuvia, numerosarjoihin perustuvia tunnuksia, vaan voi keksiä itselleen sopivan salasanan. Verkkokaupassa aktiivinen asiakas voi maksaa oikeastaan vain yhtä ok-painiketta täppäämällä.
Tomi Engdahl says:
U.S. Copyright Office Says It’s Time to Update the DMCA—Mostly in Favor of Rightsholders
https://gizmodo.com/u-s-copyright-office-says-its-time-to-update-the-dmca-1843608938
The U.S. Copyright Office has released a long-awaited, 192-page report that could give the music and movie industry an opening to fight for stricter enforcement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CISA, DOE, and UK’s NCSC Issue Guidance on Protecting Industrial
Control Systems
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current-activity/2020/05/22/cisa-doe-and-uks-ncsc-issue-guidance-protecting-industrial-control
Read also:
https://www.cisa.gov/publication/cybersecurity-best-practices-for-industrial-control-systems
and
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Cybersecurity_Best_Practices_for_Industrial_Control_Systems.pdf.
As well as recommended practices from:
https://www.us-cert.gov/ics/Recommended-Practices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Studies in secure system design
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/studies-in-secure-system-design
Worked examples for Operational Technology and Virtualised systems,
using the NCSC’s secure design principles. Our Secure design
principles carefully divide up the work of creating and evaluating
secure systems of all kinds. To be widely applicable like this, the
principles themselves remain at a fairly high level. This leaves you
to fill in the blanks for your particular scenario.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Summary of Tradecraft Trends for 2019-20: Tactics, Techniques and
Procedures Used to Target Australian Networks
https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/summary-of-tradecraft-trends-for-2019-20-tactics-techniques-and-procedures-used-to-target-australian-networks
The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) investigated and responded
to numerous cyber security incidents during 2019 and 2020 so far. This
advisory provides a summary of notable tactics, techniques and
procedures (TTPs) exploited by Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) and
cybercriminals identified during the ACSC’s investigations. These TTPs
are summarised practically in the framework of tactics and techniques
provided by MITRE ATT&CK. This technical guidance is provided for IT
security professionals at public and private sector organisations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
COVID-19 Remote Access to Operational Technology Environments
https://www.cyber.gov.au/advice/covid-19-remote-access-to-operational-technology-environments
This cyber security advice is for critical infrastructure providers
who are deploying business continuity plans for Operational Technology
Environments (OTE)/Industrial Control Systems (ICS) during the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Drive takes down user’s personal copy of Judy Mikovits’ Plandemic after it was flagged by The Washington Post
https://reclaimthenet.org/google-drive-takes-down-user-file-plandemic/
Google is now applying its controversial coronavirus misinformation policies to users’ personal files.
According to Google Drive’s policies, distributing what Google deems to be “misleading content related to civic and democratic processes,” “misleading content related to harmful health practices,” “manipulated media” is prohibited with possible exceptions when the content is used in an “educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-forcefully-renew-lets-encrypt-certificate/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apulaistietosuojavaltuutettu puuttui evästelupalappuihin ja teki ensimmäisen päätöksen. Kuulemma useita kymmeniä käsittelyssä odottamassa vuoroaan. Linjaukset tulevat muuttamaan todella paljon kotimaisten verkkokauppojen ja -sivustojen tapaa käsitellä mainonta- ja analytiikkatrackkereita. Pienremonttia on siis edessä isolle joukolle sivustoja.
On erittäin hyvä asia, että tietosuojavaltuutetun toimisto vihdoin puuttui tähän.
Parran pärinää varmasti riittää tästä aiheesta, mutta oikeasti on kysymys vain siitä, että typerät pop-upit laitetaan oikeasti toimimaan niinkuin niiden olisi pitänyt toimia jo vuosien ajan. Nyt ehkä myös kaikkein idiooteimmat pop-upit karsiutuvat ja lupia ryhdytään pyytämään siihen mihin niitä oikeasti tarvitaan, eli mainonta- ja markkinointityökalujen jäljittimien asennukseen.
https://vierityspalkki.fi/2020/05/22/apulaistietosuojavaltuutettu-puuttui-evastelupalappuihin/
https://tietosuoja.fi/artikkeli/-/asset_publisher/apulaistietosuojavaltuutettu-maarasi-yrityksen-muuttamaan-tapaa-jolla-se-pyytaa-suostumusta-evasteiden-kayttoon
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trump threatens to close down social media platforms which ‘silence conservative voices’ after Twitter posts warning under his tweet
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-twitter-close-accounts-social-media-misinformation-policy-tweet-a9534681.html
Donald Trump has threatened to close down social media platforms, a day after Twitter posted an advisory fact-checking notice on one of his tweets.
Social media firms suppressed conservative points of view, the president claimed – without any evidence – before saying his administration would “strongly regulate [the companies] or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen”.
Mr Trump advised the companies to “Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”.
His outburst also followed Twitter’s refusal to delete a number of posts in which he accused a television presenter of murder, again without any evidence.
It is unclear whether the president’s professed goal would be compatible with the first amendment to the US constitution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
There are massive problems with this order, not least that the president is using the power of his office and the laws of the land to settle a clearly personal beef.
Trump’s Executive Order Could Ruin the Internet Over a Twitter Beef
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/935yz3/donald-trump-executive-order-twitter-social-media?utm_source=vicenewsfacebook
Trump’s ongoing tantrum about Twitter fact checking has led to an executive order that seeks to clarify section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Over the past week, the president of the United States has been in a protracted meltdown after Twitter appended one of his outrageously false missives with a meekly-worded notification to “get the facts.”
Section 230 is a bedrock piece of internet legislation that allows service providers to engage in “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of content that it deems to be lewd, harassing, or just distasteful in some way, even if it is constitutionally protected speech. As far as legislation goes, the first subsection of 230 is concise and powerful: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
In the order, Trump also makes the argument that social media companies’ actions should not “infringe on protected speech,” which would be a massive change from Section 230 as it’s currently worded, which makes an explicit carve-out for restricting protected speech. This will, unequivocally, change the internet as a whole and make it worse. Straight-up neo-Nazi propaganda might be constitutionally protected speech, for example, but social media companies currently regularly remove such content. Right now, those people simply congregate on the platforms that do choose to leave such content up, and they do exist. If all protected speech was allowed on all platforms, it would get very ugly very quickly.
There are massive problems with this order, not least that the president is using the power of his office and the laws of the land to settle a clearly personal beef. The underlying research cited by the order is also a highly informal, unscientific, and politically targeted poll that the White House ran in May 2019. Cries of social media “censorship” targeting conservatives have been a popular talking point of Trump
Content moderation experts immediately pilloried the order.
“Trump simply wants to intimidate twitter into not fact checking him. The rest is fog,”
Keller notes that much of the order is, in her mind, legally dubious, outright posturing, or politically motivated. Other parts could drastically change how the internet works.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It looks like Trump’s draft executive order targeting Facebook and Twitter got leaked online
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-leaked-executive-order-social-media-facebook-twitter-2020-5?fbclid=IwAR0zDrdhcNmERIJJP3bgOGjzyyov4oZuo2_-aUj-pJsBOFarLejNK8YTLi0
It looks like the executive order that President Donald Trump has threatened against social-media companies has leaked online.
Kate Klonick, a law professor, published what she said was a draft of the order late on Wednesday.
The document targets a section of US law under which big tech platforms such as Facebook and Twitter largely aren’t liable for what their users post.
Trump, who’s been in a dispute with Twitter over fact-checking his tweets, is expected to formally sign such an order on Thursday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/
In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see.
Online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse. Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors, online platforms “flagging” content as inappropriate, even though it does not violate any stated terms of service; making unannounced and unexplained changes to company policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints; and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse.
Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets
At the same time online platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise restrict Americans’ speech here at home, several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China.
Section 230(c) was designed to address early court decisions holding that, if an online platform restricted access to some content posted by others, it would thereby become a “publisher” of all the content posted on its site for purposes of torts such as defamation. As the title of section 230(c) makes clear, the provision provides limited liability “protection” to a provider of an interactive computer service (such as an online platform) that engages in “‘Good Samaritan’ blocking” of harmful content.
In particular, subparagraph (c)(2) expressly addresses protections from “civil liability” and specifies that an interactive computer service provider may not be made liable “on account of” its decision in “good faith” to restrict access to content that it considers to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable.
In addition, within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary), in consultation with the Attorney General, and acting through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), shall file a petition for rulemaking with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting that the FCC expeditiously propose regulations to clarify
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
https://web.dev/cls/
Have you ever been reading an article online when something suddenly changes on the page? Without warning, the text moves, and you’ve lost your place. Or even worse: you’re about to tap a link or a button, but in the instant before your finger lands—BOOM—the link moves, and you end up clicking something else!
Most of the time these kinds of experiences are just annoying, but in some cases, they can cause real damage.
Unexpected movement of page content usually happens because resources are loaded asynchronously or DOM elements get dynamically added to the page above existing content.
The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric helps you address this problem by measuring how often it’s occurring for real users.
CLS measures the sum total of all individual layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of the page.
A layout shift occurs any time a visible element changes its position from one frame to the next.
What is a good CLS score? #
To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1. To ensure you’re hitting this target for most of your users, a good threshold to measure is the 75th percentile of page loads, segmented across mobile and desktop devices.
Explainer: Layout Instability Metric
https://github.com/WICG/layout-instability
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sopivan verkkokauppajärjestelmän valinnasta varsin kattava kirjoitus blogissa. Yksinkertaisiin tuotekauppoihin kannattaa yleensä valita Shopify, etenkin jos haaveilee kansainvälisestä markkinasta. Kotimainen MyCashflow on tosin varsin hyvä haastaja Shopifylle.
WordPressin WooCommerceen kannattaa yleensä mennä vasta kun on vähän enemmän budjettia ja vaatimuksena esimerkiksi integraatioita taustajärjestelmiin.
Jos omat vaatimukset ovat jotain sellaista mitä ei tavallisella tuotteisiin keskittyneellä valmiskaupalla saa tehtyä, kuten vuokrausta, ajanvarausta tai palveluiden myyntiä, voi ratkaisu löytyä myös erikoistuneista palveluntarjoajista. Joskus myös oikein räätälöity WordPress WooCommerce -toteutus voi olla näissä tilanteissa järkevin, mutta tällöin tietysti budjettia tarvitaan useampi kymppitonni.
Isompien yritysten verkkokauppahankkeissa puhutaan yleensä Magentosta tai räätälöidyistä ratkaisuista. Isommille yrityksille verkkokauppahankkeet ovatkin yleensä paljon isompia harjoituksia, kun kysymys on myös taustajärjestelmien uudenlaisesta toimintamallista.
Source: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157497940383590&id=152072273589
Sopivan verkkokauppajärjestelmän valinta – lyhyt oppimäärä
https://vierityspalkki.fi/2020/05/25/sopivan-verkkokauppajarjestelman-valinta-lyhyt-oppimaara/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suurilta suomalaisilta verkkokaupoilta vedetään matto alta -
korttiyhtiöt varoittavat tietoturvariskistä
https://www.tivi.fi/uutiset/tv/0c6098c6-961d-4198-a503-d4f45d3fe04d
Maailmassa on kymmeniä erilaisia verkkokauppa-alustoja. Yksi
suosituimmista on Magento. Magento 1 -alustan tuki loppuu kesäkuussa,
mikä koskettaa myös monia suomalaisia verkkokauppoja.
Luottokorttiyhtiöt ovat varoittaneet, ettei vanhentunut alusta täytä
vaadittuja maksukorttistandardeja. Magento 1 on käytössä muun muassa
Stockmannin, Ruohonjuuren, Netraudan ja Pentikin verkkokaupoissa.
Roihan mielestä kymmenen prosenttia on uskomattoman suuri osuus
alustalle, jonka tuki on päättymässä. Myös kansainvälisesti osuus on
samaa luokkaa.
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube sells subscriptions with just one word — here’s how you can emulate it
https://thenextweb.com/growth-quarters/2020/06/03/youtube-sells-subscriptions-with-just-one-word-syndication/
YouTube subtly used loss aversion as a marketing tool. Marketers didn’t ask me if I preferred to skip the ad, but to skip the trial. The former translates into merely ignoring a commercial, while the latter meant that I was giving up on something.
When I saw the message box, I hesitated. “Does this mean that I’ll never get this offer again?” I thought. “Frankly, I hate being interrupted by ads — I should probably consider subscribing. Besides, my battery will thank me for it.”
All it took was one word to seduce my attention and make me consider subscribing
If you are a content creator
Instead of focusing on what your prospects will gain by joining your mailing list, focus on what they will miss out on if they don’t sign up. You can articulate your message as follows:
“Don’t want to miss the latest articles/videos? Sign up here”