Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, May 12

• Netmarble Soars as Korea’s Biggest IPO in Seven Years Takes Wing: Netmarble Games Corp. jumped as investors pursuing a high-growth alternative to traditional industry piled into South Korea’s biggest coming-out party in seven years. Shares in the mobile game developer and publisher climbed as high as 171,500 won in early Seoul trade, 9.2 percent above their initial public offering price, to give the company a market value of more than 14 trillion won ($12.5 billion), surpassing LG Electronics Inc. Founded in 2000 by high-school dropout Bang Jun-hyuk, Netmarble is a rare entrepreneurial success in a nation dominated by politically connected manufacturing conglomerates. Betting smartphones would drive gaming, Bang built the company into one of Asia’s largest publishers of mobile titles such as Lineage 2 Revolution, and won backing from China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. A successful debut could inspire a generation of talent in a country whose conglomerates have been accused of stifling innovation.  Investors bought in despite the stock trading at valuations well above its rivals: Netmarble was priced at more than 70 times 2016 earnings, surpassing NCSoft Corp.’s roughly 29 times and Nexon Co.’s 45 times as of Thursday’s close. It also faces stiffening competition, with NCSoft releasing a role-playing series this year to directly challenge Lineage 2 Revolution.

• How Australia Bungled Its $36 Billion High-Speed Internet Rollout: Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: its internet speed. Eight years after the country began an unprecedented broadband modernization effort that will cost at least 49 billion Australian dollars, or $36 billion, its average internet speed lags that of the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the most recent ranking of internet speeds by Akamai, a networking company, Australia came in at an embarrassing No. 51, trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya.“Australia was the first country where a totally national plan to cover every house or business was considered,” said Rod Tucker, a University of Melbourne professor and a member of the expert panel that advised on the effort. “The fact it was a government plan didn’t necessarily make it doomed. In Australia, we have changes of governments every three years, which really works against the ability to undertake long-term planning, and the long-term rollouts of networks like this.” Australia poses natural connectivity challenges. It lies oceans away from other countries, and any network would have to connect far-flung cities separated by its sparsely populated interior.Still, Australia had high hopes for its ambitious internet project. Started in 2009, the initiative, known as the National Broadband Network, was intended to bring advanced fiber-optic technology to the doorstep of just about every home and business. It was initially estimated to cost 43 billion Australian dollars, shared by the government and the private sector. But the government share of those costs quickly climbed until taxpayers were responsible for all of it. The technology was slow to roll out, in part because of negotiations with Telstra, Australia’s big telecommunications provider, over installing the fiber. (A Telstra spokesman said the company did not believe the talks added to delays.) The government-funded effort drew fire from the Liberal Party, the opposition at the time, which said the job should have been left to the private sector. After a Liberal-led coalition was elected in 2013, that party looked for ways to contain costs and speed up the rollout. They focused on what in the telecommunications industry is called “the last mile” — the wires that connect a home or business with the broader network. While the National Broadband Network initially envisioned high-speed fiber connecting homes and businesses directly to the network, the Liberal-led effort compromised by connecting them with existing copper wire — basically, the same technology used in the earliest days of the telephone. The result, critics say, was slow speeds that still did not stop rising costs.

• The Risk in Using a Public Phone Charger: Can a phone really get hacked by plugging it into a public USB charging station? A. If you have ever backed up your phone’s contents by plugging into the computer, you have seen how the USB port can transfer data as well as charge the device’s battery. The concept of “juice-jacking” has been proved at hacker conventions and seen in the wild, and it is definitely possible to transfer malicious software with a phone through a USB connection — perhaps from a computer or device concealed within a public charging station, like those found in airports or malls. If you are traveling and are concerned about keeping your phone’s battery charged, bring your own USB cable and AC adapter so you can plug right into a regular power outlet. The Wirecutter, a product-recommendation site owned by The Times, has suggestions for USB battery packs to bring along when you expect to be away from an outlet for long periods of time. Other solutions for protecting your phone include taking (or making) a power-only USB cable that lacks the internal wiring needed to transfer data. If you do not have one of those cables, power off the device before you plug it into a public charging port (although this is not a foolproof solution for every phone model out there). Last year, the Federal Trade Commission warned consumers against connecting a personal smartphone to the entertainment system through a USB port or Bluetooth wireless link in a rental car. This is because the dashboard software can import and store data from your phone, like your call logs, messages, contacts and locations you requested from the GPS software.

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