Bristol Wireless | Community IT services, help & training in your aerial since 2002

Farewell Linda

Steve Woods Bristol Wireless News, Volunteering February 18, 2018 Comments Off

Linda Bell on the mic It is with great sadness that we have to pass on the news that Linda Bell, former Chair of Bristol Wireless, passed away in her sleep on 25th January 2018 at the nursing home where she had been since Christmas 2017.

Linda had a long association with Bristol’s community and voluntary section, being perhaps best remembered for her long service as the director of the St Werburghs Community Centre, where Bristol Wireless were once tenants for 3 very happy years; 3 years which made even more enjoyable by Linda’s presence.

Besides Bristol Wireless and St Werburghs Community Association, Linda was also on the board of Khaas, an organisation which supports BME families with children with disabilities.

Linda’s funeral took place at the Memorial Woodlands near Thornbury on Thursday 15th February 2018, followed by a reception at St Werburghs, both of which were well attended by Bristol Wireless members. In line with Linda’s wishes there was no religious content to her funeral and any fuss – as she would have seen it – was kept to a minimum.

She will be greatly missed by all of us at Bristol Wireless and the wider community and voluntary sector in the Bristol area.

RIP Linda.

Thanks UWE!

Steve Woods Bristol Wireless News, Local IT News, Open Source News, Open Standards, Volunteering February 16, 2018 Comments Off

Bristol Wireless is pleased to announce that funding has been secured for 2 years to keep the network running courtesy of the University of the West of England (UWE) and High Tech Bristol & Bath CIC.

The funding will be used to ensure the Bristol Wireless volunteers can continue to operate the network – including maintenance, licensing and the like – and provide a tesbed for IoT devices using the LoraWAN media access protocol.

Two of our network nodes already feature LoraWAN gateways and Bristol also plan to purchase some LoraWAN devices of our own (just so we’re not left behind in this new branch of communications technology. Ed.)

We’d especially like to express our thanks to Ben Glaster of UWE and John Bradford of High Tech Bristol & Bath CIC for their generosity, as well as to Tarim from Bristol Hackspace for all his help is securing these monies and a further two years of Bristol Wireless.

Protect security online with quantum mechanics

Steve Woods International IT News, Local IT News, Training March 7, 2017 Comments Off

Cryptography is vital today to protect information online and keep it secure, whether that’s for ordinary folks doing online banking and shopping or for commercial organisations and governments wishing to keep commercial and state secrets confidential.

However, the advent of powerful quantum computers might leave such information vulnerable to attack.

To counter such a threat researchers at Bristol University’s Quantum Engineering Technology Labs (QETLabs) have developed tiny microchip circuits which exploit the strange world of quantum mechanics and provide a level of security enhanced by the laws of quantum physics.

These circuits distribute cryptographic keys using the quantum properties of entanglement, superposition and the absolute randomness provided by quantum behaviour, which is reproducible by no other means.

Principal investigator Professor Mark Thompson said: “The system we have developed allows information to be exchanged using single photons of light in a quantum state.

“If an eavesdropper hacks your transmission, they will collapse the fragile quantum states and the system will immediately alert you to their presence and terminate the transmission.”

This work, published in the February issue of Nature Communications, has demonstrated the world’s first chip-to-chip quantum secured communication system, using microchip circuits just a few millimetres in size.

This international collaboration, including researchers from Bristol, Glasgow and Japan’s NiCT in Japan, used commercial semiconductor chip manufacturers to make their devices – in much the same way as Intel pattern silicon to make the latest CPUs.

However, instead of using electricity these miniaturised devices used light to encode information at the single photon level, providing encryption keys with an unlimited lifetime.

The Bristol team has continued developing this technology, demonstrating an innovative design that allows the same functionality in a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible process, with the work being published in the February issue of Optica, the journal of the Optical Society.

Whereas the initial devices used a more expensive and complex manufacturing approach, these next generation devices are fabricated in standard silicon, paving the way for direct integration with microelectronic circuits.

This will ultimately lead to integration in everyday electrical devices, including laptops and mobile phones.

Marches “broadband” round-up

Steve Woods Local IT News, National Events, National IT News February 22, 2017 Comments Off

Welsh Assembly member Russell George, who is chair of the Assembly’s Economy, Infrastructure &Skills Committee, is hosting a Broadband Summit to be held Monday 20th March 2017.

Mr George has been a long-term campaigner for improved broadband coverage in North Powys and at the summit community leaders and representatives from across the area will be able to question the Welsh Government’s Minister for Skills & Science, Julie James AM, who has overall responsibility for the Superfast Cymru fibre broadband scheme.

The Summit follows a recent inquiry into broadband and mobile coverage, held by the National Assembly’s Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee.

Commenting on local broadband in his own and other areas, Mr George said: “It remains a significant concern to me that many rural communities across Montgomeryshire appear to be excluded from the fibre broadband upgrade or, at the very least, are at the back of the queue when it comes to receiving superfast speeds.”

“While the Superfast Cymru project has undoubtedly improved the availability of fibre broadband across Wales benefitting both residents and businesses, there are many areas of Montgomeryshire which still find themselves with inadequate broadband with only two thirds of premises able to receive superfast speeds.”

These remarks were also noticed on the eastern side of Offa’s Dyke in the Shropshire Star, which added additional information of recent developments in rural Shropshire, reporting that BT Openreach’s CEO Clive Selley visited areas of north Shropshire to see for himself the problems faced by rural communities, discussing problems in towns such as Market Drayton, Whitchurch and Oswestry.

A further comment on the terrible internet connection speeds in the Marches comes from newly-arrived Shropshire resident and broadcaster/actor Keith “Cheggers” Chegwin, who is quoted by the Shropshire Star as saying, “The mobile signal is fine, I can get 4G here, but the broadband – well, I could run faster than that, it’s so slow,” and, “One minute its 0.25 Mbps, the next its 0.26.”

Malmesbury – fast broadband takes the slow route

Steve Woods Local IT News, National IT News February 17, 2017 Comments Off

Whenever your correspondent visits Malmesbury in Wiltshire, it has an unhurried air. This is in spite of some past events that happened very quickly but added to its history, such as Eilmer, the local 11th century monk at the local abbey who made an early yet unsuccessful attempt at a gliding flight using wings, or the slightly later (18th century) Hannah Twynnoy, reputedly the first person killed in Britain by a tiger.

However, life in the slow lane is not always appreciated by Malmesbury residents. This is borne out by the Wilts & Gloucestershire Standard which has reported that members of Malmesbury Town Council are less than impressed with BT’s deployment of ‘superfast’ broadband in the town.

BT initially announced that Malmesbury would be getting ‘superfast’ broadband by 2015. However, its deployment has been subject to a number of false starts which deferred the deadline to spring 2017.

Deeming the good burgers of Malmesbury had not suffered enough, the deadline has now been postponed again to autumn this year, i.e. nearly 2 years after the town was promised it would have acceptable connection speeds.

On hearing this latest news, Malmesbury Town Council passed a resolution to write BT to express its unhappiness with the continued delays and and seek assurances that BT would now actually stick to its revised timetable.

The latest council minutes reveal the deliberations as follows:

Councillor Grant explained that there had been numerous delays by Open Reach [sic] in providing fast broadband to the centre of Malmesbury, the latest date now being given as autumn 2017. Councillors Gundry and Budgen explained that fast broadband was available within some areas of the town but not in the central commercial area. It was proposed by Councillor Grant, seconded and RESOLVED that the Town Mayor write to the operational manager and managing director seeking a firm deadline and expressing concern at the numerous delays.

The Wilts & Gloucestershire Standard’s report quotes Councillor Gavin Grant, who describes the situation as “unacceptable” and goes on to say: “This has an implication, not only for people’s enjoyment, but also the businesses that are trying to operate in the internet age. Fast broadband is fundamental. It puts the centre of Malmesbury as a commercial destination at a disadvantage.”

A unnamed BT spokesperson is reported as saying that the company “remains committed to making superfast broadband available in Malmesbury”, but offers no explanation for the series of delays.

German Federal Government drafts open data law

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Data January 25, 2017 Comments Off

Germany’s Federal Government wants to make administrative data accessible as the “raw material of the future” and has published a draft for an open data law. Unprocessed electronically stored data from federal authorities should be made available to the public free of charge, transparently and in a machine-readable format. The Federal Cabinet also wants to include metadata such as information about the origin, structure and content of the data. It should be made available via the existing GovData portal, heise reports.

The new paragraph 12a of the planned reform of the E-government Law states that: “A requirement for this data to be made available is not hereby established”. However, there is a difference in comparison with the Federal Information Freedom Law in that citizens will not necessarily be able to achieve access to the data being sought via the courts.

Moreover, the open data “by design” specification is only applicable to data which is officially “stored electronically and is available in structured sets, in particular in spreadsheets or lists”. These may contain only facts “relating to circumstances outside the authority”. Data for research purposes is also not included, ostensibly not to impede further open access initiatives.

There shall also be obstacles to publishing data as there are in the comprehensive exceptions in the Information Freedom Law. These refer to the protection of industrial and commercial secrets, creative rights or privacy. There shall also not be a right of access due to IT security reasons or statistical confidentiality, national or public security or “the need to protect the interests” of the security services and police.

World Technology Award finalists include 2 Bristol dons

Steve Woods Local IT News, National IT News, Training November 12, 2015 Comments Off

The University of Bristol reports today that two of its staff have been named as finalists for the World Technology Award by the World Technology Network (WTN).

The WTN is a global community comprising the most innovative people and organisations at the forefront of science and technology and related fields.

photo of Dimitra Simeonidou The first of the Bristol academics named as finalists is Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, Director of the Smart Internet Lab and Head of the High Performance Networks (HPN) Group.

The High Performance Networks Group (HPN) specialises in the application of advanced hardware and software technologies. The group addresses the demands of the future optical networks and high-performance network-based services in both fundamental academic research and industrial applications. The group has world-class facilities, including state of the art optical transmission testbeds and software-defined network experimental platforms.

The group has a strong tradition in co-operating with industry, as well as being an international leader in the following fields:

Next generation optical transmission networks;
Optical packet and burst switching
Optical data centre solutions and architecture;
Grid and cloud networking;
Software-defined optical networking (SDN) and network virtualisation;
Hybrid network domains orchestration and service management.

In recent years the group has made significant breakthroughs and now focuses on the application of Software Defined Networking and programmable optical networks.

The group is currently addressing topics such as the Bristol smart city ICT solutions, the Internet of Things (IoT), ultra-high performance media, distributed optical data centre architecture and technologies. This researches will support the development of the future internet and the impending big data era.

The HPN lab also forms part of the UK National Dark Fibre Infrastructure Service (NDFIS). This network infrastructure has enabled close collaboration with leading research institutions and industry in the UK, USA, Brazil, Japan and across Europe.

The other academic named as a finalist is Professor Mark Thompson, Director of the Quantum Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training and Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics.

Both have been nominated for the award in the Communications Technology category.

Award winners will be announced at the WTN’s 14th annual World Technology Summit & Awards event to be held next week [19th-20th November] in New York, USA.

The World Technology Summit & Awards is a global gathering bringing together many of the world’s leading technologists, scientists, futurists, policy-makers, entrepreneurs and forward-thinkers for two days of talks, panel discussions and demonstrations that explore what’s ground-breaking, imminent, possible and could change society in emerging technologies.

Bristol open networking solutions company receives major investment

Steve Woods International IT News, Local IT News, National IT News January 27, 2016 Comments Off

Zeetta Networks, a spin-out company from Bristol University’s High Performance Networks group (HPN), is an internationally renowned team for their expertise in software-defined networking and network virtualisation, which has now received £1.25 mn. to commercialise the University’s software-defined networking technology to smart enterprises and Internet of Things (IoT), the University reports.

Zeetta breaks vendor-lock-ins using a unique open networking platform based on industry-standard hardware and powerful orchestration software – named NetOS^®– which manages, automates and monitors the whole network while significantly reducing its costs. Zeetta markets NetOS^® to service providers and enterprises to help them reduce their network costs while improving network scalability and flexibility.

NetOS^® offers a “USB-like”, plug-n-play management of different types of connected network devices and enables the construction of virtual “network slices”, for example separate logically-isolated sub-networks for the deployment of business-to-business or business-to-consumer services, such as Ultra HD wireless video distribution, city-wide Wi-Fi, IoT and other applications.

The funding, which is being provided by existing investor IP Group plc and new investor, Breed Reply, means that Zeetta can accelerate its growth plans significantly, enabling the company to expand its commercial and technical teams and to target new markets.

Kaspersky launches its own secure OS

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News November 29, 2016 Comments Off

Russian security software company Kaspersky has announced the development of a secure operating system. Installed on a network switch, this K-OS has been designed from scratch without borrowing from Linux, yesterday’s Le Monde Informatique reports

In security as doubtless elsewhere we are never better looked after than by ourselves. That’s what Kaspersky must be thinking when raising the curtain on its own secure operating system. Announced by company founder Eugene Kaspersky, this secure operating system has been loaded for the time being onto a layer 3 switch and it will also be used to secure IoT environments. “This OS just so happens to be ideal for applications where a small, optimized and secure platform is required,” Kaspersky remarked.

Few technical details have so far been released. One of the these is that the Kaspersky OS is based on a microkernel architecture enabling various changes to the operating system to be assembled according to specific customer requirements. In addition, a security system controls the behaviour of the OS’ applications and modules. “In order to hack this platform a cyber-baddie would need to break the digital signature, which – any time before the introduction of quantum computers – would be exorbitantly expensive”, Eugene Kaspersky warned.

Finally the software publisher pointed out that the Kaspersky OS is not based on any Linux component, thinking it was simpler and more secure to start from nothing when designing it, a process which started no less than 14 years ago.

Feeling Insecure at the Engine Shed

Steve Woods Bristol Wireless News, Local Events, Local IT News, Open Source News, Open Standards November 24, 2016 Comments Off

Bristol Wireless member Nigel Legg writes:

The focus of the fourth Bristol & Bath IoT meetup on Monday 21st November was security – making your things secure. There have been some DDoS attacks that used insecure internet-connected consumer goods to create botnets, and Carl Shaw from Cerberus Security Labs talked us through a process to ensure that our deployments would not succumb. He highlighted the recent example of Philips Hue lightbulbs all having the same encryption keys for connection as a failing.

Jon Hatton-Brown from Dyson used Carpy, a wall-mounted, WiFi-connected talking fish which uses the Amazon Alexa system, as an example of security failings in consumer IoT: in order to use Carpy, you have to send passwords through an unencrypted connection, which I insecure. He explained the more complex system for getting started with the Dyson autonomous vacuum cleaner, and agreed that a system that could “just work” would be best from the consumer point of view, but probably not secure enough.

It’s important to remember that Internet of Things security is not just about stopping someone from doing your cleaning or playing with your lights; once a hacker has control of your device they can use it to attack other sites on the internet. As security between nodes and the Gateway is embedded in the LoRaWAN protocol, and between gateway and back-end is covered by the https connection, we should not have too many issues with this, though it is always important to consider.

Mike Bartley, founder of Test and Verification Solutions, gave a lightning talk, outlining their services, and I (Nigel Legg) gave a rapid covering the content on the Bristol LoRaWAN slide I’d been asked to prepare. There was a lot of interest afterwards over beer and pizza (kindly provided by Dyson), I was able to answer most of the questions put to me. I think we will have a good turn out for the second LoRaWAN Bristol meetup (sign up here), where hopefully more questions will be answered.

Bristol bids to become UK’s IoT capital

Steve Woods International IT News, Local IT News October 8, 2015 Comments Off

As part of a consortium with San Sebastián and Florence, Bristol was recently awarded € 25 million to create integrated smart city solutions for tackling such urban problems as traffic congestion, poor air quality and unsustainable energy use, Bristol University reports. The project will focus primarily on East Bristol and will look at how technology can be developed further to create efficient, integrated and interactive urban environment which put citizens in control.

This award forms part of the EU’s Smart Cities and Communities funding, which comes under the Horizon 2020 innovation programme. That programme was seeking 2-3 three high impact cities, so-called ‘lighthouses’, through which key findings and successful ways of working can be replicated by ‘Follower Cities’ in order to find solutions to urban problems. The consortium, which is named REPLICATE (REnaissance of PLaces with Innovative Citizenship And TEchnologies), achieved highest score of all the entries for its innovative proposal to integrate energy, transport and ICT at scale.

Academics from both Bristol University and UWE will be involved in the project research and evaluation work, co-operating with local and international companies and small business, as well as the community and voluntary sector.

Dr Mike Yearworth, Reader in Engineering Systems at the Faculty of Engineering is leading Bristol University’s collaboration and the strategic planning and business modelling work for the REPLICATE project. Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, Head of the High Performance Networks (HPN) Group in the University’s Faculty of Engineering and Bristol Is Open’s Chief Technology Officer, is developing the Smart City Platform concept. Dr Helen Manchester from the University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Law will be working with Knowle West Media Centre on involving residents. UWE’s involvement in the project will include Professor Graham Parkhurst, Professor of Sustainable Mobility and Director of the Centre for Transport and Society and Professor Eddie Wilson, Chair in Intelligent Transport Systems and Head of Engineering Maths at Bristol, who have contributed their transport modelling expertise.

News of the successful grant award comes after Bristol City Council submitted a bid last week to become the UK’s first Internet of Things (IoT) Demonstrator city region. If successful, this will generate an investment of nearly £17 million.

internet of things illustration — Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Demonstrator city competition comes under the aegis of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which will invest £10 million for a single collaborative research and development project.

The purpose of the demonstrator city is to show how the IoT can be implemented on a large scale by using everyday objects connected to a network. The data captured by the network can benefit citizens by helping to improve the environment and services such as transport.

Bristol is Open (BIO), Bristol University’s joint venture with Bristol City Council, is already pioneering the introduction of smart city technology where data can be collected from city-centre sensors linked to a high performance computer. Bristol is therefore well placed in terms of having the experience, resources and expertise to take this project forward.

In particular, the IoT Demonstrator bid will propose new ways of meeting the challenges to air pollution faced by all large urban areas, particularly as the cost of air pollution in the UK is nearly £54 billion per year and 29,000 premature deaths per annum.

Linux Foundation to build real-time OS for IoT

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News February 18, 2016 Comments Off

The Linux Foundation yesterday announced the Zephyr™ Project, an open source collaborative effort to build a real-time operating system (RTOS) for the Internet of Things (IoT).

Early supporters for the Zephyr Project include Intel Corporation (including its acquired business groups Altera Corporation and Wind River), NXP Semiconductors N.V. (including its recent merger with Freescale), Synopsys, Inc. and UbiquiOS Technology Limited.

The Zephyr Project is also inviting others interested in this technology to participate.

Industrial and consumer IoT devices require software that is scalable, secure and enables seamless connectivity. Developers also need the ability to innovate on top of a highly modular platform that easily integrates with embedded devices regardless of architecture. While Linux has proved to be a highly successful operating system for embedded development, some IoT devices require a real-time OS that addresses the very smallest memory footprints.

“Developers today have many choices when it comes to platforms. The Zephyr Project will offer a modular, connected operating system to support the smallest footprint for IoT devices,” said Jim Zemlin, The Linux Foundation’s executive director. “We invite developers to contribute to the Zephyr Project and to help advance a customizable embedded open source RTOS to advance IoT. By hosting this at The Linux Foundation, we look forward to the cross-project collaboration among Linux and this community.”

Modularity and security are key considerations when building systems for embedded IoT devices. The Zephyr Project prioritizes these features by providing the freedom to use the RTOS as is or to tailor a solution. The project’s focus on security includes plans for a dedicated security working group and a delegated security maintainer. Broad communications and networking support is also addressed and will initially include Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy and IEEE 802.15.4, with plans to expand communications and networking support over time.

The Zephyr Project aims to incorporate input from the open source and embedded developer communities and to encourage collaboration on the RTOS. The project will also include powerful developer tools to help advance the Zephyr RTOS as a best-in-breed embedded technology for IoT. The Zephyr Project will include broad architecture support over time with the following platforms initially supported:

Arduino 101 (Intel® Curie™ Module containing x86 and Synopsys® ARC® EM cores);
Arduino Due (Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU);
Intel® Galileo™ Gen 2; and
NXP FRDM-K64F Freedom board (Kinetis K64F ARM® Cortex®-M4 MCU).

The Zephyr Project will also be having a booth at Embedded World 2016 in Nuremberg, Germany, to showcase the technology.

Samsung is designing an IoT operating system

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News March 25, 2016 Comments Off

Le Monde Informatique reports that Samsung is currently developing an open source operating system tailored for the Internet of Things (IoT). Details of it will be given next month at the South Korean company’s developers’ conference.

In order to gain a larger place in the world of domestic appliances, clothing, accessories and other connected items, Samsung has initiated the development of a new operating system for the internet of things. This OS, which will be open source and has not yet been named, will assist terminals in carrying out simple tasks quickly and without human intervention. The software could for example unlock a locked door and turn on the lighting of a house when one of its residents is approaching home.

More details will be provided next month during a technical session to be held at Samsung’s developers’ conference in San Francisco. In addition, this OS has also been announced as being real-time enabling it to process data more quickly and with no latency.

An all-out IoT strategy

Samsung’s new OS could be a stripped down version of Tizen, which is already used in the company’s smart watches and television sets. This new arrival will form part of the huge connected equipment programme foreseen by the Korean company, which includes cookers, refrigerators, washing machines and even light bulbs.

Furthermore, Samsung is suggesting the Artik card to act as the basis for the design of connected terminals. The company’s new OS could enable developers to connect their products with its SAMI cloud platform for analytics, security and other services. For example, a cloud service cloud could turn the air conditioning on or off according to the information supplied by a telemetric sensor. It could also analyse health information received in the course of time.

Samsung’s IoT OS could also be compatible with other IoT development platforms such as AMD’s mbed or Google’s Brillo. The latter is already supported by development cards, including Intel Edison.

Open source microcontroller for IoT

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News April 4, 2016 Comments Off

Pulpino logo The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and Italy’s Bologna University have jointly developed a microcontroller called PULPino (for “parallel ultra-low power”) and are making it available as open source hardware, Switzerland’s ICT Journal reports. According to ETH’s Professor Luca Benini, who managed the project: “It will henceforth be possible to build open source hardware starting from nothing.” He added: “In several recent examples of open source equipment, use is limited by exclusive marketing rights and non-competition clauses. Our system is not linked to any condition in licensing terms.”

This new microcontroller has been designed for battery-powered equipment with a very low power consumption, meaning it could be used for Internet of Things devices, smart watches, medical sensors or for home automation. Luca Benini gives the example of a smart watch developed in his laboratory which could be capable of determining the user’s location by analysing the visual data from the watch’s camera.

Thanks to personal contacts, Prof. Benini has been able to ensure that the microcontroller has already been used in other research projects in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. However, each time he has needed to negotiate licensing agreements. He is optimistic for Pulpino’s future and reckons that the processor will increase its distribution still further now it has been released as open source hardware: “Pulpino is now very easily available. We hope there will be more collaborative projects in the future and that these are likewise easier.”

Bristol IoT developments

Steve Woods Bristol Wireless News, Comment, Local IT News, Open Data, Open Source News, Open Standards August 24, 2016 1 Comment »

headshot of Nigel Legg There’s a fair bit going on in Bristol at the moment as regards the Internet of Things (IoT) and these were reported on earlier this week by Nigel Legg, under the headline “Smart City done Smarter?“. Nigel’s post is reproduced in full below with his kind permission (with a couple of links added. Ed.).

My home town, Bristol in the South West of England, has been making a lot of noise over the last couple of years about being a leading Smart City, and about building an Open Programmable City. But this house of cards is starting to fall apart.

Videos are still appearing on YouTube featuring Paul Wilson talking about the Internet of Things Mesh Network that was planned by Bristol is Open (BiO), a joint venture company set up by the University of Bristol and the City Council, as though it exists, as though it has been installed already. But Paul has left Bristol is Open, and the mesh network remains an idea at best [if someone can give me a launch date for the network, I’d be grateful and I’ll delete this story], and it doesn’t seem as though it is going to happen anytime soon.

So the much heralded sensor network that was going to provide the data required for the Programmable City won’t happen — or will it?

The BiO mesh network plan was based around the SigFox system. This is a proprietary technology, and a top-down technology: users would have had to apply to BiO, and pay license fees, in order to deploy sensors on the network. Essentially, the City Council would have controlled all the components of the internet of things network.

The Citizen Sensing project run by Knowle West Media Centre has shown (me at least) that Smart Cities can be built another way. They do not have to be top-down, with the municipality telling us what we can do with the network and the technology. The Citizen Sensing project used workshops with techies, artists, and the public to design the work and the sensors to be used. Can we build our networks in the same collaborative, bottom up, and cost effective way?

LoRaWAN and the Things Network offer a solution, and with the delays in the roll out of the SigFox network in Bristol, alongside the Council having to make drastic cuts, now appears to be the right time for Citizen Networking to be developed in order to take Citizen Sensing to the next level — and maybe provide the infrastructure for the Programmable City we all want to live in.

With the departure of Paul Wilson from Bristol is Open, it would appear that the top-down approach is running out of steam. This situation is probably not helped by the recent announcement by Stephen Hilton that he is leaving Bristol City Council to become an independent consultant (news passim). The Bristol is Open project came under Stephen’s remit.

However, there are more woes in the pipeline down the Counts Louse. Earlier this week the council announced it was seeking voluntary redundancies as it would have to find savings of £29 mn. this year as the local authority’s finances were in a more parlous state than had previously been imagined. In addition, Bristol City Council is facing overall cuts of £60 mn. in its budget by 2020 and an expensive IoT project based on proprietary technology looks a prime candidate for the chop, especially when there are cheaper alternatives available from the community that are committed to open data, open source and open standards.

Building IoT London: Call for Papers ends in fortnight

Steve Woods National Events, National IT News, Open Source News, Open Standards September 26, 2016 Comments Off

German IT news website heise and our old friends The Register are joint sponsors of the Building IoT London event to be held in March 2017.

The former reported at the end of last week that software developers doing professional work on the Internet of Things have until 7th October to suggest proposals for presentations and workshops.

The inaugural Building IoT London conference is taking place from 27th to 29th March 2017 in London. The conference, which is being organised by El Reg and heise Developer is devoted to the implementation of the fundamentals required for IoT projects, security concerns and other technical matters. Furthermore, experts from the field of networked projects will have the opportunity to share their experiences with others and gain new incentives for their own work from interacting with like-minded people.

Software developers and project managers working on products on the context of the IoT are therefore invited to send proposals for presentations (either 45 or 75 minutes) and whole-day workshops (7 hours) by 7th October. Possible topics would include protocols and standards, the connection between Big Data and IoT, architecture and tests for complex IoT systems, connectivity and prototyping, as well as the potential vulnerabilities of IoT products. In addition, reports of experiences are being sought from current projects, on the use of IoT cloud platforms, the interaction of tools in the various processes or the conversion of conventional products into networked devices.

People who are interested in the progress of the conference’s organisation can following the organisers on Twitter or sign up to their newsletter.

Update arms Raspbian against IoT attacks

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News December 7, 2016 Comments Off

Raspberry Pi + Debian = raspbian Because the Internet of Things (IoT) has excelled in recent months as a risk not only for users’ own IT, but also as a botnet, Raspbian developers have now responded and given their operating system an update verpasst, German IT news site heise reports. This Debian-based Linux distribution is a popular base upon which to run a Raspberry Pi.

Steps to secure the Pi

In practice the developers have deactivated the SSH port and service which were previously activated as standard. According to the accompanying blog post, the developers had previously assumed that users would deactivate this port and service themselves when using a public network. To make matters worse, when first set up Raspbian pre-configures a default user account and password. This combination with the likewise pre-configured sudo could not have made it very difficult at all for attackers.

Users can activate SSH as usual via raspi-config. If anyone who wants to enable SSH, all they need to do is to put a file called ssh in the /boot/ directory. The contents of the file don’t matter: it can contain any text users like, or even nothing at all. It simply acts as a marker. When the Pi boots, it looks for this file; if it finds it, it enables SSH and then deletes the file. SSH can still be turned on or off from the Raspberry Pi Configuration application or raspi-config. However, as regards the problem of the pre-configured user account, the developers are providing a warning after the Pi has booted… if SSH is running.

Sadiq Khan unveils £7 mn. fund to help young Londoners access tech jobs

Steve Woods National IT News, Training December 2, 2016 Comments Off

Yesterday the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced a £7 mn. programme to arm young Londoners with the skills needed to get jobs in the city’s thriving digital, technology and creative sectors.

Called the Digital Talent Programme, the scheme will have a particular focus on boosting the proportion of women in the industry (currently just 17%), as well as working to raise the numbers of black, Asian and minority ethnic Londoners and those from disadvantaged communities employed in those sectors.

Furthermore, it will help Londoners access tech jobs by offering work placements, creating tailored learning opportunities, assisting university students and helping businesses to access the skills they need.

The Digital Talent Programme will boost the number of young Londoners finding tech sector employment by:

Increasing the number of high-quality learning opportunities for young people aged 15-24 years to study industry-designed courses in technology, digital and digital-creative disciplines that will lead to employment;
Supporting 1,000 young Londoners to access new, industry approved learning opportunities;
Assisting 500 university students to gain new skills and work experience through small business placements;
Helping 400 start-ups and small businesses to access higher level skills that will support business growth;
Supporting 400 school and Further Education teachers in providing industry-relevant digital skills learning and qualifications;
Assisting 2,000 young Londoners to access better information, sign-posting, careers guidance and events for digital, technology and digital-creative roles;
Working with organisations to organise events, careers advice, role models and more to change perceptions of tech being just for boys.

There are now around 40,000 tech businesses in London, employing almost 200,000 people, 3.5% of the capital’s total workforce.

However, there is a growing gap between the skills of young Londoners and those that the capital’s digital and technology businesses need if they are to continue to thrive.

Overall, the Digital Talent Programme will invest £5 mn. from the London Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and £2 mn. from the European Social Fund.

Any Londoners reading this who are keen to register their interest for the Digital Talent programme can do so at www.london.gov.uk/DigitalTalent.