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Tag: Belgium

  • Hackers Blackmail Domino’s Pizza

    Hackers Blackmail Domino’s Pizza

    Domino’s Pizza recently found itself threatened with the release of hundreds of thousands of stolen accounts to the internet.

    According to ITNews, a hacker group known as Rex Mundi had attempted to blackmail the Domino’s Pizza operations in France and Belgium with the release the account information of hundreds of thousands of customers.

    Allegedly they had the account information from 592,000 French customers and 68,000 Belgian customers.

    The customer information being held for ransom by the group includes the person’s name and address along with their telephone number, email address, and account password.

    The group was demanding €30,000 or $40,600 USD.


    Domino’s French Twitter account admitted that it was likely the hackers had the information and that a breach had occurred.

    The group was referred to as “seasoned professionals”. Even though the information was encrypted, Domino’s believes Rex Mundi probably had the ability to decode the information, passwords included.

    Rex Mundi’s own Twitter account has since been suspended.

    A spokesman for Domino’s tried to allay their customers’ fears by confirming that no banking or financial information was accessed by the hackers. That is because Domino’s does not hold on to payment information. Due to the way customer data is stored, names, phone numbers, and email addresses are the most vulnerable to hackers.

    Despite the ensuing headache, Domino’s Pizza have opted not to give into the blackmail attempt. Instead the company alerted the French authorities.

    Domino’s Pizza is the latest company targeted by Rex Mundi. The group previously released thousands of customer loan records after Americash Advance refused to pay them $15,000. They also attempted to blackmail a Belgian hosting firm named Alfanet.

    Though Domino’s has confirmed that it’s likely these individuals were able to get the information they hold, it’s not known how many customer account details Rex Mundi will release since they are unlikely to get their money.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Netflix To Launch In Six New Countries

    Netflix announced on Wednesday that it is readying launches in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. We’ve heard about Netflix’s efforts to secure the further expansion of its European operations, and now it’s coming to fruition.

    Netflix is already available in the UK and Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

    The company did not give actual launch dates for any of the new countries, but is letting people sign up for email alerts to let them know when service becomes available. People can simply go to Netflix.com, and sign up.

    “Upon launch, broadband users in these countries can subscribe to Netflix and instantly watch a curated selection of Hollywood, local and global TV series and movies, including critically-acclaimed Netflix original series, whenever and wherever they like on TVs, tablets, phones, game consoles and computers,” the company said.

    Details on pricing, programming, and supported devices will be available at a later date. It remains to be seen if the service will be different than in other regions like the U.S.

    Ahead of the launch in these new countries, Netflix is already claiming 48 million members in over 40 countries. Many of these are in North and Latin America.

    It will be interesting to see if they get the service in the new set of countries ahead of Orange is the New Black’s second season debut on June 6th. Orange CEO Stephane Richard commented a while back that he expected Netflix to launch in France in the fall, but that was well before any announcements were made.

    Image via YouTube

  • Trappist Beer Brewed in America for the First Time

    Five years ago, St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts sent two monks on a fact finding mission. They weren’t seeking relics or theological insight. They wanted to know more about beer.

    For years, St. Joseph’s, a monastery in Spencer, Mass., about an hour west of Boston, has supported its community by producing and selling a line of jams and jellies labelled “Trappist Preserves.” But spurred by the dual forces of expensive building maintenance and the American craft brewing renaissance, the monks decided to venture into what the Cistercian order is perhaps best known for (other than vows of silence): Trappist ale.

    And so one of the world’s most venerable brewing traditions finally comes to America. Prior to St. Joseph’s, only eight breweries in the world have been authorized by the International Trappist Association to make authentic Trappist beer: six in Belgium, one in Holland, and one in Austria. Accordingly, the European monks who authorized St. Joseph’s were skeptical at first. Father Isaac Keeley, the monastery’s brewmaster, notes that the original skepticism wasn’t just because they were seeking to brew outside Europe, but specifically because they were American; their European counterparts feared that the New Englanders “would go too big too fast.”

    After securing a bank loan to finance the venture, the monks perfected their recipe over the course of more than twenty trial batches. The final recipe, to be marketed as “Spencer Trappist Ale,” weighs in at 6.5% alcohol content and is reported boast a cloudy, golden color and sweet, yeasty notes of flavor. (No word on how the monks disposed of the twenty trial batches.)

    To get the International Trappist Association’s blessing, Father Keeley packed beer samples in his suitcase and flew to Belgium where he made a PowerPoint presentation outlining St. Joseph’s brewing operations. Then he poured the beer. “They approved it unanimously,” he said, “and after the vote there was applause.”

    With the Europeans signing off on the venture, the Massachusetts monks inked a domestic distribution deal. At the outset, Spencer Trappist Ale will only be available in-state, but the brewers have plans to expand nationally and—someday—internationally.

    This past New Year’s Day, the monks tapped a keg for their community, giving many of the monk’s their first taste of the brew. “The keg was pouring beautifully. We had this great head on the beer,” Keeley said, tears in his eyes. “The monks were coming back for seconds at least. And it just struck me . . . in a certain sense we have made it.”

    Amen.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Higgs Boson Team Wins Nobel Prize for Physics

    LiveScience and Reuters both report that Peter Higgs of Britain and Francois Englert of Belgium have been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for physics yesterday. Their prediction of the Higgs boson’s existence helps to explain how the stars and planets formed from elementary matter.

    LiveScience managing editor Jeanna Bryner said that early Nobel forecasts were predicting the win for Higgs and Englert, who were among the original team to propose the theory in 1964. The prize was jointly awarded to both scientists. Higgs’ and Englerts’ predictions were fulfilled in the summer of 2012 when CERN’s super-sized underground particle smasher detected the presence of the theorized particle.

    Higgs, who is known to avoid the spotlight where possible, said in a statement from the University of Edinburgh, “I am overwhelmed to receive this award. I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research.” Englert, meanwhile, told reporters excitedly by phone from Stockholm, “You may imagine that this is not very unpleasant, of course. I am very, very happy to have the recognition of this extraordinary award.”

    The official reason for the award cites “the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider” on the Nobel website.

    The Higgs boson has been popularly called the “God particle” because of its place as a fundamental building block in the universe’s construction, although scientists avoid that title and Higgs himself does not favor it.

    By studying the debris from particle collisions in the L.H.C., Higgs and Englert proved that the particles inside atoms gain mass by interacting with an invisible field that pervades all space; as they interact further, so they gain more mass. That field’s existence is made possible by the Higgs boson.

    Attempting to understand the concept of the Higgs boson particle may seem like a daunting task; thankfully, artist Nigel Holmes with the New York Times created a fascinating series of drawings illustrating the more nuanced aspects of the discovery; they can be viewed here.

    [Image via Nigel Holmes/The New York Times]

  • Pro Cyclist, Amy Dombrowski, Fatally Hit By a Truck in Belgium

    American professional cyclo-cross racer, Amy Dombrowski, was killed on Thursday when she was fatally struck by a truck while training in the Belgian municipality, Sint-Katelijne-Waver. Dombrowski’s cycling team, the Young Telenet-Fidea Squad, was the first to publicly share the breaking news via Twitter. Then, another report confirming the fatal accident began circulating on the Belgian news’ site, Vandaag.be.

    Dombrowski’s Belgium-based cycling team also released an online statement providing the details that attributed to the accident. According to the statement, she was actually doing a motor-pacing exercise on the road at the time of the accident. “Amy was doing a workout behind a scooter when around 4:00 pm, a collision occurred with a truck in Sint-Katelijne-Waver. The driver of the motorcycle miraculously escaped the accident but, for Amy, the consequences of the impact were so great that she succumbed.” She had just arrived in Belgium two days prior to the accident.

    While Dombrowski’s life was ultimately curtailed, she achieved a pivotal level of success, marked by a number of laudable accomplishments. Dombrowski was declared a “three-time under-23 National Cyclo-Cross Champion.” She was also considered a female pioneer for cyclo-cross, breaking competitive barriers in a sport where women have not yet been internationally embraced.

    In 2012 when she joined the Young Telenet-Fidea squad, she was actually one of the first females to be added to a major Belgian cycling squad. VeloNews also reported that Dombrowski was on the path to changing the way female cyclists are accepted in Belgium. Fans where quite fond of her, and considered her races some of the most exhilarating to watch.

    “Any time anyone falls victim of that sort of dangerous training environment, it’s tough for all of us,” remarked
    Garmin-Sharp Professional Cycling Team CEO, Jonathon Vaughters. “We know the risks and live with that and hope nothing happens, but sometimes it does,” admitted Vaughters. He also took to Twitter to offer his condolences.

    VeloNews, the official journal of competitive cycling, also chimed in on Twitter in wake of Dombrowski’s untimely death. The Boulder, Colorado-based publication company has also announced that friends of Dombrowski have collaborated and established a memorial fund to aid the family in this time of bereavement.


    Image via Twitter | Amy Dombrowski

  • Google Play Music Hits Five New Countries

    Google Play Music Hits Five New Countries

    Google announced this morning that Google Play Music is launching in five new European countries: Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal.

    “Music first launched on Google Play in Europe in November 2012, and the fast rollout to more countries today is due to the multi-territorial licensing process, as recommended by the European Commission last year,” explains Google Play head of international music partnerships, Sami Valkonen. “We have 14 multi-territorial licenses for composition rights covering Europe and representing the vast majority of the world’s music, and have recently welcomed the members of AKM/AUME in Austria, SABAM in Belgium, SPA in Portugal, and IMRO in Ireland into our growing list of author’s society partners.”

    Google is also launching Artist Hub in these countries. This is a platform for independent musicians to sell their music directly to fans. This is discussed a bit more here.

    In addition to the five new countries, Google Play Music is available in the following European countries: the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

  • Report: Actually, Google May Be Paying About $6M To Publishers

    As previously reported, Google announced this week that it has reached an agreement with publishers in Belgium, ending six years of litigation. Publishers had sued Google claiming they violated copyright by displaying snippets in Google News and linking to cached copies of their pages in Google search. It’s essentially the same argument many publishers have been making for years all over the world.

    Now, however, Google has made an agreement which could have ramifications for how publishers in other countries proceed.

    Google put out a blog post about the agreement, painting the whole thing as a win win situation, but it may not be that simple. While it may not have been as bad as it could have been for Google, it’s likely a bigger win for publishers. Jeff John Roberts at PaidContent points to some other reports, raising a pretty interesting point. He writes:

    Google’s announcement says the parties are “collaborating” to make money but also takes pains to note that “we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services”. Oh, really?

    US press outlets have noted Google is paying all the legal fees but have generally framed the deal as a tie or a win for Google. The Europeans, however, have been less gracious. Le Monde‘s triumphant account begins by explaining that the Belgian papers “forced Google to bend” and that Google will “compensate” papers and journalists to the tune of “2 to 3 percent of sales” — or “around 5 million euros” ($6.5 million).

    As he notes, it seems very likely that publishers in other countries who have been fighting similar battles (albeit not always in the same fashion) will pursue similar payoffs. Google, as it mentioned in its blog post, will also be advertising heavily on publishers’ sites, giving them who knows how much more in revenue, though the company says publishers will also be using Google’s ad products.

    In the post, Google Belgium Managing Director Thierry Geerts said, “Many win-win ways exist for Google and publishers to join forces in the new digital universe. We drive traffic to publishers – four billion clicks a month around the globe, offering publishers 100,000 business opportunities per minute. Our AdSense program pays out $7 billion a year to web publishers worldwide. Publishers remain free, with the addition of just a few lines of code, to pull out of Google web search and Google News. Publishers also remain free to determine whether to put their articles discovered through Google search behind a paywall.”

    “Instead of continuing to argue over legal interpretations, we have agreed on the need to set aside past grievances in favour of collaboration,” he added. “This is the same message we would like to send to other publishers around the world – its much more beneficial for us to work together than to fight.” (Emphasis ours)

    Google just may be sending a message to publishers indeed. It just might not be quite as rosy as the one painted in Google’s announcement.

  • Google And Publishers Are Getting Along…In Belgium

    Google has reached an agreement with news publishers in Belgium after six years of litigation. Publishers sued Google claiming they violated their copyright by displaying snippets in Google News and linking to cached copies of their pages in Google search.

    This, as you may know, is a pretty standard fight for Google from country to country, as publishers seek more money for their content throughout the world. Some countries in Europe have proposed laws that would require Google to pay publishers to license content for this purpose, something Google is obviously completely against. In Brazil, publishers have pulled out of Google News on their own.

    In Belgium, they’ve worked things out.

    “We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation and represents great news for both us and the newspapers,” said Thierry Geerts, Managing Director, Google Belgium. “We continue to believe that our services respect newspaper copyrights and it is important to note that we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services.”

    Google will advertise its services on the publishers’ media, and publishers will optimize their use of AdWords, Google says, adding that it will work with Belgian French-language publishers to help increase publishers’ revenue, collaborating on way to make money with Paywalls and subscriptions, and with AdSense and the AdExchange. Google says it will also work with publishers to implement Google+ social tools, including Hangouts on news sites, and launching YouTube channels. Finally, Google and publishers will collaborate on the distribution of original content on tablets and smartphones.

    “This agreement comes at an important moment, in the midst of a debate how best the newspaper industry should adapt to the new digital age,” says Geerts. “As the Economist recently reported under the enticing headline, Letting the Baby Dance, many governments including Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia, UK and Canada are considering or have gone ahead with Internet-friendly copyright reforms. At the same time, some European countries including Germany and France are considering an extension of copyright protection to excerpts of newspaper articles appearing in search engines’ results. The European Journalism Centre recently outlined why both Google and newspapers would be best off cooperating and The Reach Group published independent research reaching a similar conclusion.”

    “We agree,” he adds. “Many win-win ways exist for Google and publishers to join forces in the new digital universe. We drive traffic to publishers – four billion clicks a month around the globe, offering publishers 100,000 business opportunities per minute. Our AdSense program pays out $7 billion a year to web publishers worldwide. Publishers remain free, with the addition of just a few lines of code, to pull out of Google web search and Google News. Publishers also remain free to determine whether to put their articles discovered through Google search behind a paywall.”

    Google has indicated it would like to come to similar terms with publishers around the world.

  • Google Hosts EUhackathon 2012 in Belgium

    Google Hosts EUhackathon 2012 in Belgium

    It’s a good day to be a tech-savvy child. The Reading Rainbow iPad app has finally launched, and hackers from all over the world are currently coding day and night to build a better internet for kids.

    The 2012 EUhackathon has brought some of the best coders in the world together in Brussels, Belgium. This year’s goal is to increase children’s safety online, while also increasing their online creativity. Corporate sponsors of the event include Google, Facebook, Orange, and Vodafone, all of which have sent engineers to the hackathon. The event is part of the European Commission’s Better Internet for Kids initiative. European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes, who is known for her pro-internet stances on web openness and net neutrality, prepared a short statement of encouragement for the hackathon participants:

    Marco Pancini, senior policy manager at Google Brussels, announced in a post on the European Public Policy Blog that Google will be hosting the event at its offices in Brussels. This will be the second EUhackathon Google has hosted. Last year’s hackathon was centered around bringing more transparency to the internet. Pancini stated that, since children are the focus of this year’s hackathon, it is only appropriate that children are participants. From the blog post:

    Children are central to this latest EUhackathon and are being given the opportunity to participate in the competition. Our youngest hacker is 13 years old! A total of 25 teenagers from the European schools in Brussels, aged between 12 and 15, will assist, participate and get first hand experience of computer coding.

    A Jury made up of representatives from the corporate sponsors, figures from European agencies, children, and a teacher will be judging the work at the hackathon. Kroes will be awarding two winning teams, one for the safety track and one for the creativity track, on June 21. The winning teams will receive €5,000 each.

  • Facebook, Twitter Aren’t Required To Have Anti-Piracy Software, Court Says

    Europe’s top court dealt a blow to anti-piracy crusaders and tallied a win for proponents of Internet freedom today by ruling that social networking sites cannot be required to set up an anti-piracy filtering system.

    The ruling involves a case brought against Netlog, an online social network based in Belgium, by a music royalties firm claiming that the site, in addition to other social networks, should be scouring the content posted by users in order to “ensure it does not infringe copyright.” Sabam, the aforementioned royalties firm, dragged in the dead horse argument that “some” of Netlog’s users had been sharing copyright protected music and videos on the website.

    The European Court of Justice, however, wasn’t shopping for worn out excuses today. While acknowledging that the requested anti-privacy measure would remedy Sabam’s problem, the action “would not be respecting the requirement that a fair balance be struck between the right to intellectual property, on the one hand, and the freedom to conduct business, the right to protection of personal data and the freedom to receive or impart information, on the other.” Moreso, the court recognized that requiring sites to implement an anti-piracy filter “could potentially undermine freedom of information” as well as act as a “serious infringement of the freedom” of Netlog.

    Smell that? Sounds like somebody just got served a hot plate of justice.

    Of course, would the court to have ruled in the other direction, the reverberations would assuredly been felt on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Because that’s the direction this slippery slope falls and thankfully the court saw the danger of persecuting the ostensible pirates sharing music and movies on, god forbid, a social media site built for sharing things.