Author: 4GHadmin

November 23, 2020

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Reading Time: 5 minutes

Many of you who work at a desktop in an office will probably have been in a situation where the lights flicker, and your co-workers then quickly urge everyone in the vicinity to ‘save’. It’s nice if you could know in advance of power outage coming, and sometimes you do get little warnings like these ones. But if you don’t and you’ve done a bunch of work without saving any time recently, well that’s going to be a problem. Or at least it’s a problem for now, as there’s a new type of computer chip that’s been developed that has the potential to save you from the frustration of having to do work over or anything of the sort. This is something that most of us can relate to if you spend the majority of your day working in front of a screen, and of course here at 4GoodHosting we’re like that in the same way that most Canadian web hosting providers would be too. Truth is the new technological advances in computing are coming fast and furious these days, and that’s a darn good thing. Spintronic devices are appealing alternatives to conventional computer chips, providing digital information storage that is extremely energy efficient plus relatively easy to manufacture on a large scale. The only current drawback for these devices, which depend on magnetic memory, is that they’re impeded by their relatively slow speeds in comparison to conventional electronic chips. Superior Speeds Magnetization switching is the term used for writing information into magnetic memory, and that’s what happens when data is saved to computer chips. What’s happened now is that there is a new technique for it where the speeds are nearly 100 times faster than state-of-the-art spintronic devices. This creates the potential for ultrafast magnetic memory in computer chips, and so fast in fact that data would be retained even if there was no power. This is achieved using very short, 6-picosecond electrical pulses to switch the magnetization of a thin film in a magnetic device. And the key is that being done with great energy efficiency. A picosecond is one-trillionth of a second. Whereas with conventional computer chips,...

November 16, 2020

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There’s been a whole lot of hubbub about the iPhone 12 and other new smartphone offerings from the big manufacturers, but there’s no other factor that’s playing into all the hype quite like 5G network connectivity. If you’re the type to be reading this then you’re also probably one who’s had plenty of news and info thrust upon you regarding the coming of 5G, and in truth there is a lot to be enthused about. You can look at that from the individual perspective, but if you ask us the real promise here is in the collective benefit and what this means for the IoT and things like advanced remote healthcare and the like. It’s going to be fairly revolutionary and that’s likely not an exaggeration. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other Canadian web hosting provider in that we know it’s likely going to have big time ramifications for how we do things in the long term too, and as you’ve likely seen it’s a topic we seemingly can’t get enough of. There’s been a lot made of how 5G infrastructure is going to go in Canada, and how the widespread consensus is that Huawei can’t be allowed to be a part of that. But let’s leave any all references to national security out of this and instead focus on what’s the current status of 5G in Canada. For starters, there’s no ‘ultra wideband’ in Canada. What’s happened here is carriers in Canada have installed 5G on channels that previously were intended for 4G. Rogers channels are very similar to T-Mobile's ‘nationwide’ and mid-band 5G down south, but as of now Bell and Telus are using a 5G channel very similar to a popular 4G band. The long and short of it is that Bell, Telus, and Rogers all view 5G as an add-on to 4G now, so that means even if you’re using a 5G enabled smartphone you’re probably still going to be connected with 4G. The good news response to that is that the 5G experience should get broader and somewhat better over the next year as the carriers extend coverage beyond their current limited areas. Think...

November 9, 2020

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Many people will immediately attribute a noticeable slowdown with their computer to an aging and failing hard drive, but that’s not always the case. Even desktops and notebooks that aren’t particularly old can start to have performance shortcomings, and it’s not like most of us have the means to simply replace our devices every time this occurs. Adding to this issue is the fact that modern life is demanding that we demand more for those devices too, and this makes it so that our personal and work computers are often overloaded in ways. This trend isn’t lost on anyone we imagine, and here at 4GoodHosting one of the things we’re very aware of as a Canadian web hosting provider is that anyone who has a website is going to be wary of a high bounce rate. If you don’t know what that is, it’s the rate at which visitors to your site leave within a certain time period of their arrival. Would-be visitors to your site who perceive some sort of problem with it opening and displaying may put that on you, when in fact it has much more to do with the shortcoming of their browser device of-choice. The good news is that there are ways to optimize CPI usage and performance, and a good many of them aren’t going to ask much in the way of your time, effort, or expense. So let’s have a look at those with our blog post for this week. All About Throughput The way it works for most applications is that performance is centered around throughput. The definition for that term is how much work the server can process in a certain timeframe. Nowadays most high-end servers on the market are designed with throughput in mind. Finding just one server that’s ideally optimized for running all types of workloads out-of-the-box hasn’t happened yet, however. So getting the most out of your server’s available resources is best done by the CPU’s physical limitations relative to your performance requirements. Understanding that all CPU optimization efforts are essentially software-based is a good place to start. So rather than upgrading hardware, it’s better to focus on...

November 2, 2020

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Some people will say you can never be too frugal or thrifty, and in honesty even if you can afford to spend more there’s really no good reason you should if there’s an alternative. This is something a lot of people can relate to. If you’re the webmaster or similarly titled individual who’s at the helm of a company or organization and needing to find savings in your web operations then the Google Cloud Free Tier offers just that if you are taking advantage of what cloud storage offers these days. The appeal of cloud storage of course needs no explanation. Physical storage is just that – physical – and that’s means space demands and as we become increasingly more digital in lives and business every day it’s more and more impractical to be housing data in physical data centers. Cloud storage has been a godsend in this regard, and we’re very fortunate to have it now. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like every other Canadian web hosting provider in that our data centers are usually working at near capacity, and we also take very opportunity to utilize cloud storage for internal storage needs related to our business and day-to-day operations. Google has had its Free Tier for Google Cloud for a while now, and while it’s great for the individual or smaller-scale operations there’s just not enough capacity of the likes of us. For the average individual or smaller business, however, it’s a great resource to have at your disposal. Successful businesses grow, and you wouldn’t want it any other way. But that may mean stretching your storage needs beyond what the Google Cloud Free Tier maximum. But it also many not, and particularly if you find ways to maximize your use of the Google Cloud Free Tier. Here’s how you can do that. Store Only What’s Needed Free databases included like Firestore and Cloud Storage are completely flexible tools that let you nest away key-value documents and objects respectively. Google Cloud’s always-free tier allows no-cost storage of your first 1GB (Firestore) and 10GB (Cloud Storage). For apps that keep more details, however, it’s common to go through those free...

October 26, 2020

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Reading Time: 9 minutes

If there’s one thing those of us who do content and communications exclusively will know like the back our hands, it’s a CMS of one sort or another. If you don’t know what that abbreviation stands for, it’s Content Management System. Even if you’ve never used WordPress, you’ll almost certainly still have heard of it and it’s pretty much the original CMS and is the one most used by people all over the world. And that’s not just for blogs like this one. Here at 4GoodHosting, our expertise is in web hosting in the same way it will be for any good Canadian web hosting provider, but any and all of us will also know how integral content is to SERPs and the like. That’s why the KashmirBlack botnet is such a newsmaker in the digital world today, and for good reason. Now at this point you’re probably saying ‘what?’, and that’s to be expected given the exotic name given to this malicious little critter. Name aside, you may even be asking what exactly is a botnet? We can answer that. A botnet is a type of malicious attack where a series of connected computers are utilized to attack or promote failure of a network, network device, website or IT environment, and usually done with the intention to disrupt normal working operations or degrade the system’s service capacities. Now with this new KashmirBlack botnet, we shouldn’t assume that it has originated in India, or that those who created it are huge fans of the classic Led Zeppelin song. Really it’s just a name. What is worth talking about, though, is what this and why it’s showing itself to be so problematic. Mining, Malicious Redirects, and Defacing So let’s get into what you might need to know about this if you’re the person behind a website, any website and one being utilized for whatever aims. Imperva is a web security research organization that’s fairly reputable and held in high regard in the digital community worldwide, and they’re the ones who have discovered and tracked the KashmirBlack botnet. Their research has indicated that this botnet is responsible for infecting hundreds of thousands...

October 19, 2020

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Reading Time: 7 minutes

If you’ve never heard of Elasticsearch, you can certainly be excused. Here at 4GoodHosting we’ve got some pretty smart cookies around, but as a whole we’re a Canadian web hosting provider who’ll never claim to be entirely full of digital wherewithal. Truth be told I hadn’t heard of it either until recently, but no one had ever suggested to me that I should give a second thought to whether or not I’ll trust it as base for searching online. Right then, get right to the definition you say. Elasticsearch is an open source search and analytics engine and data store developed by Elastic. The appeal of it has always been in the way it allows for searching through huge amounts of data with reasonable timeframes, and running calculations with resultant data in the blink of an eye. However, recent news indicates that there’s a potential downside to using Elasticsearch, and sharing what we know about that is going to be the subject of this week’s entry here. Legit Associations Elasticsearch has been all over the headlines – well, industry headlines at least – recently, and not in a good way. It seems like each new week brings along a new story about a breached Elasticsearch server resulting in troves of data being exposed. But why is this happening with Elasticsearch buckets as predominantly as it has been, and is it legit to associate Elasticsearch with an ever-present risk of this happening? The question then further becomes can businesses leveraging this otherwise very-helpful technology do so to the full extent while still avoid data leaks? Organizations have been using this platform en masse to store information in depositories (aka ‘buckets’), the contents of which then become emails, spreadsheets, social media posts, files and any and all matter of raw data in the form of text, numbers, or geospatial data. The problem for Elastic is that now it’s beyond debate that their storage option is leaving massive amounts of date unprotected and potentially exposed online. Sometimes this leak is disastrous, and the number of high-profile breaches attributed to use of Elasticsearch continues to grow. nvenient as this sounds, it can be disastrous...

October 12, 2020

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Soft consonant constructions are devilishly hard for people who are new to English to understand, and the colloquial form of fishing as ‘phishing’ to describe underhanded and fraudulent information requests on the web is a good example. But if we are to expand on that, many people of any first language will be confused as to why anyone would go to the trouble of ‘phishing’ in the first place. There’s always going to be people with bad intentions in any walk of life, and yes it does require a significant input of time and effort to set up, test, and then roll out a series of phishing emails or something similar. The reason they go to all of these efforts is - quite plainly - that’s there’s money to be made illicitly when they do find someone who’s gullible enough to click through or do whatever else it is that the phishing email requests of them. Most younger people who are increasingly more web savvy will be aware enough to avoid falling into the trap, but for others who aren’t that way and have still - like everyone - been forced to exist in an increasingly digital world it is actually a real risk. As a rule, anything that looks amiss with any type of web communication should be a red flag and reason to discard it. The same goes for any communication that seems ‘odd’ as to why the sender would be sending to you, whether it’s an unsolicited communication or one where it simply seems strange that they would be sending it to you. Here at 4GoodHosting, we can assure you that like any quality Canadian web hosting provider we’ve gone ‘fishing’ many times, but the interest was only ever in catching dinner and enjoying a quiet day on the lake. Obtaining info for fraudulent aims was never part of the equation! But in all seriousness, this is an ever-bigger issue and in response to it Google is introducing a wrinkle for it’s nearly-ubiquitous Chrome web browser that’s going to make it more difficult for ‘phishers’ to get anyone on the hook. October’s Here The Internet giant announced...

October 5, 2020

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

If you’re one of the many people who enjoy twitter feeds or even the comments section at your favourite news websites, then you may already be well aware that some of the contributors aren’t exactly sitting or standing somewhere with a mobile device or notebook in front of them like you are. What we’re talking about here is ‘Bots’ and by that’s what means is an fabricated identity created in the digital space and armed with AI to be able to participate in convos and the like to further the interests of whatever interest group might be behind them. ‘Russian’ bots are the flavour of the years these days, and it’s believed that many of these non-animate opinion swayers come from Russia. Truth is, however, bots come from all over the place and these days they are all too commonplace. And they’re likely not going away anytime soon, so it’s good to know what these bots are, what they get up to, and – perhaps most importantly – how you can identify bots and put a whole lot less significance on what they have to say. Now it needs to be said that here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other reputable Canadian web hosting provider in that we’ve never created a bot, and in truth despite our familiarity with all things web hosting we wouldn’t even know how to even if we tried. We imagine that’s there are at least a few of out web hosting customers in Canada who have these malevolent means, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s spend today talking about what everyday, average individuals like you can actually do to distinguish between a bot and a legit, human contributor. Looks and Sounds Legit, But… Sophisticated bots look and act like human users, and it’s true that most bot activity indistinguishable from human activity to the naked eye. Even the majority of bot detection software struggles with being able to identify the entirety of them. This is a problem, and here’s why – with the ability to look like a million different humans at any time you could do a lot that wouldn’t be possible if...

September 28, 2020

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2020 has been a roaring disappointment for all of us, but that’s coming at it from more socio-cultural and global perspective. A lot of the world has been hampered by the Global pandemic, but on the plus side (if there is one) the tech world hasn’t slowed down much if at all when it has come to advancing what the digital world is capable of offering us. The just-around-the-corner advent of 5G is getting the bulk of the hype, but major advances in AI (artificial intelligence) really need to be receiving some fanfare too. It’s fairly natural that 5G is going to be trumpeted most loudly by those of us who are a quality Canadian web hosting provider, and here at 4GoodHosting we fit the bill pretty nicely in that regard. When nearly everything you do is related to the workings of the Information Superhighway, it’s nearly impossible not to be wholly excited about what 5G has the potential to do for all of us. That’s likely why 5G has been a recurring theme in our content here, but today we can’t help but choose to go in an entirely different direction when it comes to be excited about something. It’s always been interesting to us that a bad dream is known as a ‘nightmare’, but there’s no exact term used for a good dream. Thankfully, most of us have good dreams more often than we have bad dreams, but most of the time our dreams are of the ordinary, unexceptional, forgotten by the time we wake up type. Sometimes, however, the dream we just had is something where we can’t get our minds off of it. Now imagine if there were a technological means of understanding what you can read into the dream you just had? It may be a reality before long, and that’s because of Dreamcatcher What’s All This? Just a few months back researchers from Nokia Bell Labs in Cambridge, U.K. made the announcement that they’ve created a tool called ‘Dreamcatcher’ that is able to use the latest NLP (Natural Language Processing) algorithms to identify themes from dreams as they are reported by the people who’ve...