Three strikes and you’re out: justice ministry gets tough on webshops

DutchNews, October 30, 2017

The Dutch justice ministry is planning to give more powers to banks and payment systems to block webshops which rip off customers, the AD said on Monday. 

Once three police complaints have been made about an online retailer, banks and payment processing companies will be alerted so they can halt payments to the webshop, the newspaper said. 

The new approach will allow the payment processors to block suspect webshop payments without a formal police investigation. So far, 12 payment processors, including Ideal, have signed up for the alerts. 

Some 50% of online purchases in the Netherlands are made by Ideal and some 45,000 webshops offer its services as a payment option. 

Webshopping lobby group Thuiswinkel.org said it welcomed the news. ‘We have called for a plan to tackle suspect webshops for some time,’ spokesman Wijnand Jongen told the paper. 

‘Until now, no-one would make the link if police reports were made in Limburg, Groningen and Zeeland.’ However, officials must be sure that webshops are not being targeted unfairly or are victims of a hate campaign, he said. 

Dutch online auction site Marktplaats.nl said at the weekend it is launching a new service for customers who are worried that they are being ripped off. For 2% of the purchase price, Marktplaats will keep payments made via Ideal until customers confirm that the delivery has been made. 

Dutch bike builder Van Moof raises €2.5m through crowdfunding

DutchNews, October 25, 2017

Photo: Brbbl via Wikimedia Commons

Dutch city bike builder Van Moof has raised €2.5m through crowdfunding, on top of a €4m capital injection from venture capital group Slingshot. 

More than one thousand people put money into the company, which had been looking to raise at least €1m.

‘The faith shown in us by Slingshot and all the fans who have invested in us means we can take the next stop in our international growth,’ founder Taco Carlier said in a website statement. The cash will be used to increase production, research new technology and open bigger stores. 

The company was set up in 2009 by two brothers and now has shops in Amsterdam, Tokyo, Berlin, Taipei and New York. Its bikes are known for their sleek, simple designs and use of technology, including touch locks and anti-theft devices.

Trump touts Twitter use as key to White House win

Yahoo – AFP, October 22, 2017

US President Donald Trump, seen here speaking during a White House
meeting with senators, says he might not be president if it weren't for Twitter
(AFP Photo/MANDEL NGAN)

Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump, known for his prolific and sometimes incendiary tweeting, defended his use of the social media platform in an interview aired Sunday, saying without it he might not be president.

"I have friends that say 'Oh, don't use social media," the Republican leader -- who boasts 40.9 million Twitter followers and tweets everything from policy announcements to personal attacks to threats against foreign nations -- told the Fox News program Sunday Morning Futures.

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"But I doubt I would be here if it weren't for social media, to be honest with you."

"Tweeting is like a typewriter," he said. "When I put it out, you put it immediately on your show."

"I mean, the other day I put something out. Two seconds later I'm watching your show -- it is up."

Leaders from across the political spectrum have repeatedly urged Trump to rein in his frequent and controversial tweeting, which sometimes contains factual inaccuracies and has provoked ire among adversaries and allies on both the domestic and international levels.

On Thursday, former secretary of state John Kerry slammed the president's Twitter use for creating a destructive atmosphere of "chaos politics."

But Trump emphasized that by using Twitter, as well as the platforms Facebook and Instagram, he can bypass media outlets that he says treat him "unfairly."

"When somebody says something about me, I'm able to take care of it," he said. "The other way I wouldn't be able to get the word out."

The president also gave himself a pat on the back for the art of his posts, which often contain grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and misused punctuation.

"They're well-crafted," he said of his tweets. "I was always a good student."

G7, tech giants agree on plan to block jihadist content online

Yahoo – AFP, Ella IDE, October 20, 2017

The G7 interior ministers are meeting at a seafront hotel on the island of
Ischia off the coast of Naples. (AFP Photo/Andreas SOLARO)

Ischia (Italy) (AFP) - G7 countries and tech giants including Google, Facebook and Twitter on Friday agreed to work together to block the dissemination of Islamist extremism over the internet.

"These are the first steps towards a great alliance in the name of freedom," Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said after a two-day meeting with his Group of Seven counterparts, stressing the role of the internet in extremist "recruitment, training and radicalisation."

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the goal was to ensure pro-jihadist content "is taken down within two hours of it going online".

"Our enemies are moving at the speed of a tweet and we need to counter them just as quickly," acting US Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said.

While acknowledging progress had been made, Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd insisted "companies need to go further and faster to not only take down extremist content but also stop it being uploaded in the first place".

Senior executives from the internet giants and Microsoft attended the ministerial session devoted to the issue but did not offer any explanation on how they might go about clamping down on web extremists.

Jihadists fleeing Syria

The meeting on the Italian island of Ischia off Naples also focused on ways to tackle one of the West's biggest security threats: jihadist fighters fleeing Syria. The European Union has promised to help close a migration route considered a potential back door for terrorists.

Tens of thousands of citizens from Western countries travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State group between 2014 and 2016. Some then returned home and staged attacks that claimed dozens of lives.

Minniti warned last week that fighters planning revenge attacks following the recent collapse of the IS stronghold in Raqa could hitch lifts back to Europe on migrant boats from Libya.

The US and Italy signed an agreement on the sidelines of the G7 meeting to share their fingerprint databases in a bid to root out potential extremists posing as asylum seekers.

The group also said international police agency Interpol -- which currently holds details of nearly 40,000 foreign fighters -- would play a bigger role in information sharing.

Interpol's secretary general Juergen Stock said the agency's global databases could "act as an 'early warning system' against terrorists and crime threats and help close potential loopholes for terrorists".

'De-radicalisation'

Earlier, EU President Donald Tusk promised the bloc would fork out more funds to help shut down the perilous crossing from Libya to Italy -- a popular path for migrants who hope to journey on to Europe.

The EU would offer "stronger support for Italy's work with the Libyan authorities", and there was "a real chance of closing the central Mediterranean route", he said.

Italy has played a major role in training Libya's coastguard to stop human trafficking in its territorial waters, as well as making controversial deals with Libyan militias to stop migrants from setting off.

Minniti said the G7 ministers had discussed how to go about "de-radicalising" citizens returning from the IS frontline, to prevent them becoming security risks in jails.

UK's hard approach

The Group of Seven --- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US -- said it had also called on the web giants to work with their smaller partners to bolster the anti-extremism shield.

Rudd said the UK government would do its part by changing the law so that those accessing and viewing extremist material on the web could face up to 15 years behind bars.

But Julian Richards, security specialist at BUCSIS (Buckingham University Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies), said the rest of the G7 was unlikely to get behind her on that front.

"The UK's fairly hard approach of introducing legislative measures to try to force companies to cooperate... and suggestions that people radicalising online should have longer sentences, are often considered rather unpalatable and too politically sensitive in many other advanced countries," he told AFP. 

#G7InteriorMinisters, tech giants agree on plan to block jihadist content online https://t.co/OoHdWTvKQk by @ellaafp pic.twitter.com/fUk0SJD4Xc

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 20, 2017

‘World’s first’ 3D printed bike bridge opens in Brabant

DutchNews, October 17, 2017

Open for business. Photo: Paulien van de Loo /HH

What is being claimed as the world’s first 3D printed bike bridge opened in Gemert, a small town in Noord-Brabant province on Tuesday morning, the AD reported. 

Work began on printing the eight-metre long concrete bridge in June and the construction was lowered into position in September. 

The bridge, printed in 1cm layers of concrete, is a joint production between students at Eindhoven University of Technology and construction group BAM Infra. 

‘With 3D printing, you have more flexibility regarding the shape of the product,’ BAM director Marinus Schimmel said at the start of the project. ‘In addition, 3D printing a bridge is also incredibly efficient.. you need less concrete and there are no CO2 emissions’ 

The bike bridge is part of a new road project linking the N605 with the N272. 

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Buurtzorg: the Dutch model of neighbourhood care that is going global

Innovative nursing model cuts bureaucracy and gives nurses more freedom and time with clients

The Guardian, David Brindle, 9 May 2017

New Dutch homecare model insists nurses spend more than half of their time
in direct contact with the people they support. Photograph: Fred Froese/Getty

The Dutch may be renowned for tulips and Edam cheese, but these days it’s their innovative district nursing and homecare model that is exciting global interest. Buurtzorg, which translates as “neighbourhood care”, is seen by its many enthusiasts as a key part of the solution to challenges facing healthcare systems across the world.

From Aberdeen to Shanghai, the Buurtzorg approach is being seized on by policy-makers as a means of enabling people with care needs to live independently with much less formal support. Potential cost savings of up to 40% have been calculated.

At the same time, the model is said to be hugely popular with the nursing teams who run it because it frees them from management control and unleashes their entrepreneurial creativity. And it is very simple.

Buurtzorg was founded 10 years ago by a 56-year-old nurse, Jos de Blok, and started with an initial team of four. The system that evolved deploys teams of up to 12 nurses, who are responsible for between 40 and 60 people within a particular area. There are now around 900 teams in the Netherlands, supported by no more than 50 administrators and 20 trainers.

The principle underpinning the model is that the nurse acts as a “health coach” for the individual and their family, emphasising preventive health measures but also delivering necessary care themselves or calling on others to do so. The golden rule is that nurses must spend 61% of their time in direct contact with the people they support.

An evaluation by consultancy KPMG in 2012 found that although the care might be costlier per hour than under a traditional approach, it was of higher quality and better appreciated by those in receipt. Crucially, only half as much care was typically required.

“What I see in a lot of countries is that systems are increasingly complicated and frustrations are becoming worse and worse,” says de Blok. “I want to show that it’s easy to change.”

De Blok will be talking change at the 25th annual European Social Services Conference in Malta at the end of June, organised by the European Social Network. In some cases, he will be preaching to the converted: Buurtzorg is being trialled in the UK and Sweden, with Germany and Austria soon to follow, as well as in the US, Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea.

But others at the conference will need convincing that the model can be transplanted into other health systems and nursing cultures as easily as he suggests.

One issue is funding: the Dutch model is tailored to payments by health insurance companies, not a state healthcare system like the NHS or means-tested social care. Another is the scrapping of hierarchies and specialisms within the nursing teams: a Buurtzorg nurse might administer wound care, but may also help someone to wash or get dressed.

A third challenge is that the model requires management to back off and allow their teams considerable latitude, with much less performance monitoring than has become the norm in, for instance, the UK. Bureaucracy is reduced to a minimum.

 “We have tried to prevent it becoming a meetings structure,” says de Blok, describing how his teams are encouraged to think freely in finding answers to people’s care needs, drawing on other professionals and volunteers. “The autonomy is better when [the teams] build their own networks to solve problems.”

The Buurtzorg approach has even been extended to what in the UK would be recognised as home help, after the organisation stepped in to rescue a failing Dutch provider two years ago. By cutting its overheads dramatically, the provider has not only been saved but has expanded by more than 60% to 4,000 employees.

It is significant, therefore, that one of the most advanced UK Buurtzorg pilots is being run by Cornerstone, a Scottish homecare charity, while others closer to the original nursing concept are developing at sites including Aberdeen, Angus, Dumfries and Galloway, and Borders.

In England, the model has been taken up by the Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS foundation trust in south London as well as integrated health and care services in Tower Hamlets, east London, and in west Suffolk. Active interest has come from Kent and Cheshire West, among others, and 300 people recently attended the first presentation in Wales by Public World, a consultancy working with Buurtzorg.

De Blok insists he is relaxed about the model being adapted to suit local circumstances. Buurtzorg is a non-profit organisation – though it makes a surplus for reinvestment – and it does not seek to franchise the model under licence.

“I’m not interested in money,” de Blok says. “I see so many people searching for a new way of doing things in all the places I visit. It’s all about creating something different from the bottom up.”

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Global firms join rush to bet on Indonesia as next start-up frontier

Yahoo – AFP, Harry PEARL, October 8, 2017

Indonesia has seen a surge of cash into its technology sector over the past two years,
helping support dozens of homegrown start-ups ranging from ride hailing apps to
e-commerce firms. (AFP Photo/GOH Chai Hin)

Jakarta (AFP) - Big-name investors including Expedia and Alibaba are pumping billions of dollars into Indonesian tech start-ups in a bid to capitalise on the country’s burgeoning digital economy and potential as Southeast Asia’s largest online market.

Indonesia has seen a surge of cash into its technology sector over the past two years, helping support dozens of homegrown start-ups ranging from ride hailing apps to e-commerce firms.

And with a population of more than 250 million, a swelling middle class and growing availability of cheap mobile devices, firms from across the world are piling in.

"We believe that Indonesia is poised for a huge leap forward for its digital economy, following China's growth and becoming the leading tech destination in the Southeast Asia region," Adrian Li, a partner in Jakarta-based Convergence Ventures, told AFP.

Last year $631 million in disclosed venture capital was ploughed into the country, according to research firm CB Insights, up from $31 million in 2015.

But that figure has already been shattered in 2017, with $3 billion worth of deals clinched as of September 2017, said Meghna Rao, a tech industry analyst at the firm.

Tokopedia -- a marketplace that allows users to set up online shops and handles transactions -- won $1.1 billion in capital from China’s Alibaba in August.

Motorbike on-demand service Go-Jek secured $1.2 billion from Chinese tech giants JD.com and Tencent Holdings in May, according to data from Crunchbase.

In another sign of confidence, Koison became Indonesia's first e-commerce service to go public in October.

"While it's too soon to say that this investment is indicative of a larger pattern of Indonesian startups pulling in many big ticket investors, it is part of a growing clutch of mega-rounds," Rao said.

Motorbike on-demand service Go-Jek secured $1.2 billion from Chinese tech 

giants JD.com and Tencent Holdings in May, according to data from Crunchbase.

(AFP Photo/GOH Chai Hin)

A golden opportunity

Internet use is growing faster in Southeast Asia than any other region in the world, with 124,000 users coming online every day over the next five years, according to a 2016 report from Google and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.

By 2020 an estimated 480 million people are expected to be connected to the internet, up from 260 million in the region last year.

Indonesia's mobile-first market will comprise more than half of Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market by 2025, with an estimated value of $46 billion, the Google report said.

"When you do startup business in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, the cost, effort and time that you spend is almost even. But when you go to Indonesia (growth) is unlimited -- the market is so big," said Willson Cuaca, whose venture capital firm East Ventures specialises in early-stage investments.

As a result, big names like US venture capitalist Sequoia Capital, Japan's Rakuten Ventures and travel company Expedia -- as well as Chinese tech giants -- have all made investments in the country.

Navigating challenges

Indonesian president Joko Widodo has been a vocal supporter of digital innovation, most notably in his plan to create 1,000 local tech start-ups worth $10 billion by 2020. But the sector still faces a number of challenges.

Internet use is growing faster in Southeast Asia than any other region in the world, 

with 124,000 users coming online everyday over the next five years, according to a 

2016 report from Google and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings. (AFP Photo/GOH Chai Hin)

A limited pool of engineering talent to draw from, low rates of internet penetration outside densely populated Java, bureaucratic delays, and poor quality infrastructure are all obstacles to growth.

For e-commerce companies, the large number of "unbanked" Indonesians limits the scope of online transactions, and logistics problems make it hard to move goods.

While young entrepreneurs and small businesses are flocking to co-working spaces springing up in major centres, it is a decidedly different scene in most parts of the country.

Farid Naufal Aslam, the chief executive of Aruna, an e-commerce company that links fishermen to buyers, said navigating Indonesia's disparate communities is a challenge too.

"One of the biggest challenges faced is on social approach," Aslam, 23, said. "Indonesia is a unique country with diverse communities and different customs in each region."

Yet many venture capitalists and entrepreneurs remain optimistic.

"The window of opportunity is there," Cuaca said. "As long as you can innovate and solve real problems using technology, you can be successful."

North Korea gets second web connection via Russian firm

Yahoo – AFP, October 5, 2017

The new internet connection to North Korea supplements the existing link
provided by China Unicom (AFP Photo/Ed JONES)

A state-owned Russian company has opened up a second internet connection for North Korea which could strengthen Pyongyang's cyber capabilities and undermine US efforts to isolate the regime, security experts said.

The activation of the new line from TransTeleCom was first detected Sunday by analysts at Dyn Research, which monitors global internet connectivity.

The new connection supplements the existing link provided by China Unicom, which has almost exclusively routed North Korean internet traffic since 2010.

The additional line gives Pyongyang "significantly more resilience against attacks on their network infrastructure," said Bryce Boland, the chief technology officer in the Asia-Pacific for cybersecurity firm FireEye.

The Washington Post reported earlier that the US Cyber Command had carried out attacks against hackers in North Korea aimed at cutting off their access to the Internet.

The operation ended Saturday, the report said.

North Korea has a 6,800-strong unit of trained cyberwarfare specialists, according to Seoul's defence ministry, and has been accused of launching high-profile cyberattacks including the 2014 hacking of Sony Pictures.

But with only one internet provider to rely on, the regime has often found itself vulnerable to external cyberattacks against its own network infrastructure.

North Korea suffered several internet connection failures -- some which lasted for hours -- shortly after the Sony attack, which many suspected to be a US retaliation.

With the alternate route from Russia, "the possibility of disconnecting North Korea from the Internet just became much more difficult," Boland said.

Equifax warned about vulnerability, didn't patch it: ex-CEO

Yahoo – AFP, October 2, 2017

The first congressional hearing on the massive hack at credit agency Equifax
is set for this week (AFP Photo/PHILIPPE HUGUEN)

Washington (AFP) - The security team at Equifax failed to patch a vulnerability in March after getting a warning about the flaw, opening up the credit agency to a breach affecting 143 million people, the former chief executive said Monday.

Former CEO Richard Smith, in a statement to a congressional committee released Monday, offered a timeline of the cyber attack which is believed to be the worst in terms of damaging information leaked -- including social security numbers and other sensitive data.

Smith said in prepared remarks to a House panel that the company on March 9 disseminated an internal memo warning about a software flaw identified by the government's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).

He added that Equifax policy would have required a patch to be applied within 48 hours and that this was not done -- but he could not explain why.

Equifax's information security department ran scans that should have identified any systems that were vulnerable but failed to identify any flaws in the software known as Apache Struts.

"I understand that Equifax's investigation into these issues is ongoing," he said in the statement.

"The company knows, however, that it was this unpatched vulnerability that allowed hackers to access personal identifying information."

Smith said he was notified of the breach on July 31, but was not aware "of the scope of this attack." He informed the company's lead director three weeks later, on August 22, and board meetings were held on the matter August 24 and 25.

Equifax, one of three major agencies which gathers data used in credit ratings for banks, has come under fire for waiting until September 7 to publicly disclose the breach, and investigators are looking into stock sales by two senior executives in August.

Smith stepped down last week amid the investigation, while indicating he would remain in a consulting capacity during the investigation, which includes a congressional hearing Tuesday.

Smith offered a fresh apology for the attack, saying in his statement: "As CEO I was ultimately responsible for what happened on my watch. Equifax was entrusted with Americans' private data and we let them down.

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