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worldwideanalysis · 7 months

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Why Is Demand for Cyber Security Solutions in South America Rising?

From 4.528% in 2001, the percentage of the Brazilian population with access to the internet rose sharply to 67.471% in 2017, as per the World Bank. Similarly, the numbers for Argentina stood at 9.781% in 2001 and 74.295% in 2017. The increasing penetration of the internet in South America has been followed by rapid digital transformation and the internet of things (IoT) revolution. An increasing number of companies are migrating their data to computer servers, while internet-connected sensors are being used in the region for smoother traffic and more-efficient industrial operations.

Sadly, all this technological advancement has also introduced the region to the world of cybercrime, which is why P&S Intelligence expects the South American cyber security market to display a 22.7% CAGR during the forecast period (2018–2023), to reach $22,184.1 million in 2023 from $6,582.7 million in 2017. As more data goes online, the avenues for hackers, identity thieves, and other types of cybercriminals widen. Similarly, the rising usage of IoT is giving rise to the menace of IoT botnets, which are networks of computers and connected devices infected with malicious software.

To deal with such cyber threats, numerous technology companies are entering the region with an array of cybersecurity solutions and services. Of these, solutions currently witness the higher demand on account of the rising adoption of comprehensive packages to thwart any intrusion attempt at networks and servers. The wide range of cybersecurity solutions available include identity and access management (IAM), risk and compliance management, security and vulnerability management, firewall, intrusion detection system (IDS)/intrusion prevention system (IPS), encryption, disaster recovery, unified threat management (UTM), distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, web filtering, data loss prevention, and antivirus/antimalware.

The key trend in the South American cyber security market is the integration of such solutions with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Along with encryption models, AI helps detect potential attacks and take action to prevent them. Further, by learning from such encounters, the AI component automatically scans the IoT environment and encrypted internet traffic for unusual patterns, thus improving the network security infrastructure. Similarly, in an age when the amount of data consumed is rising massively, ML is being leveraged to process and study the data to predict and identify anomalies, for better cyberattack analysis.

Due to such technological advancements, cybersecurity solutions are becoming popular in the region’s government, aerospace and defense, IT and telecom, banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), retail, healthcare, education, manufacturing, and hospitality sectors. Among these, aerospace and defense companies generate the highest demand for cybersecurity solutions and services owing to the rising investments in the field of cyber defense. Additionally, BFSI firms also require a robust cybersecurity infrastructure, as their servers hold massive amounts of consumers’ financial data, which is the first thing cybercriminals look for.

Brazil held the largest share in the South American cyber security market during the historical period (2013–2017), and it will maintain its dominance till 2023. In 2017, almost 50% of the cyberattacks in the region were targeted at Brazil, while during 2015–2016, attacks on the websites of Brazilian companies and government agencies skyrocketed by 270%! During the forecast period, the highest CAGR in the market is projected to be witnessed in Peru owing to the increasing number of internet users and adoption of advanced technology in its public sector.

Thus, as digital transformation in the region attracts cybercriminals, the demand for effective cybersecurity solutions and services will rise here.

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thesheel · 1 year

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Climate change has emerged as the most pressing issue of the 21st century, as the pursuit of profit by global corporations has heavily undermined the pro-climate efforts. While every segment of society is affected by this menace in one form or another, the global children are battling the crisis like no one else. The shocking report of UNICEF has warned global leaders about the rising threat being faced by children in almost 33 countries, is putting nearly one billion children on the verge of disaster. The United States is the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and the biggest economy in the world has a massive responsibility to bring the endangered children back from the crisis before it's too late. With the release of this new report, UNICEF has also revived its plan of action to fight the emerging threat of climate change and to save future generations. The United States is also one of those countries that come under the threat of climate change, and therefore, the policymakers must look at solutions to counter the biggest challenge faced by humanity. As the report highlights the need for taking immediate actions, the global leaders must join heads by setting their difference apart or else see the world burning. [caption id="attachment_8662" align="aligncenter" width="765"] 1 billion vulnerable children mostly belong to the third world countries that are not even contributing to the deteriorating environment.[/caption] UNICEF Report: A Warning for Global Leaders to Save Upcoming Generations from Climate Change The UNICEF report sends alarms that nearly half of the child population in 33 countries is vulnerable to climate change. The report, named The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children's Climate Risk Index, is a comprehensive analysis of climate and environmental hazards, which should act as an eye-opener for global leaders. The most worrying aspect of all of this fuss is that it will not be related to health only. In fact, the changing climate can trigger various types of disasters, including curbing education, abandoned children, river flooding, vector-borne diseases, lead pollution, water scarcity, heatwaves, hunger crisis, and much more, which is an all-inclusive recipe detailing the threat to destroy the upcoming generation. The report also proves, once again, that climate change is not a myth as portrayed by the erstwhile President Donald Trump, whose ignorance toward the environment contributed to the climate-related disasters. [caption id="attachment_8664" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Climate Change can cause drastic consequences for children globally including water issues and food crisis.[/caption] The Curse of Climate Change: Innocent Countries are Facing the Brunt This is not the problem of any one country, and the whole of the world is in it together. In fact, most of the time, countries that are not throwing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere too much are at the receiving end. The rich countries are mostly the industrialized nations that are emitting the most carbon dioxide into the air. However, these countries are privileged enough to rescue their citizens in the hour of need. But, due to their emissions, the poorer countries are suffering without contributing any greenhouse gas to the air. For instance, the US and China are in the rat race of enacting more and more industries for the pursuit of profit. The trade war has intensified the efforts of the top two economies, as they ignore the inevitable disasters. However, the consequences of this tug of war to attract industrial manufacturers are impacting the poor countries, which is highlighted by the UNICEF report as well. As noted in the report, the 33 most prone countries for danger to children only emit nine percent of the global carbon dioxide combined. On the other hand, the US and China contribute more than forty percent of C02

combined. The vulnerable countries include many African nations, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Somalia, and Nigeria. Similarly, the South Asian countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh are also vulnerable to health issues for their children. Final Thoughts The Biden administration has often advocated for human rights. Pure air is one such right that every citizen is entitled to use, without any manual contamination of it. However, the cold-headed ignorance of the incumbent administration by walking the former President Trump's path tells another story. In Latin America and the Caribbean, approximately 169 million children live in areas with a high risk of climate and environmental hazards. The inclusion of some areas of the US and Latin America in the list suggests that the danger is coming home if left unattended. So, the report should be a fair sign of worry for the US administration to course-correct itself or be ready to face the consequences. The Democrats may have done all the paperwork to heal the deteriorating climate; however, as far as real action being taken, all of it is nothing but a waste. Because, at the end of the day, action speaks louder than words. There is no doubt that Democrats are facing anti-climate change opposition in both the House and Senate, which is likely to halt any legislative advancement in Congress. However, they can take incremental steps, as they did in the landmark infrastructure bill and $3.5 trillion budgetary plan, and start healing the things one by one. At the end of the day, making a little progress is better than sitting idle and waiting for a miracle.

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encyclopika · 4 years

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Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #32

Brought to you by a marine biologist trying her best...

Fish I’ve Covered: Click Here

Sorry for the slightly late entry! It’s hard to settle on which of these freshwater fish I want to cover since I’m going in blind. I don’t know what makes these fish interesting until I do the research. And, boy is today’s fish seemingly boring af at first! It’s the Carp!

Had to cover this one at some point! Here’s the Holding Pond’s version of the Sea Bass and Black Bass, available all year round, all day and night under a pretty big glow, so you’ll think it’s a Koi or Catfish, when in reality, it’s just another f*?#ing carp. At least in my experience. And it’s kinda funny digging a little deeper into this fish and finding out why it’s so common. Here we go...another freshwater invasive!

The carp is yet another fish in Family Cyprinidae, just like yesterday’s Dace, and the goldfish, and the koi we’ve covered. In fact, if you put the koi and carp together, this guy kinda just looks like a drap koi, and at first I thought that was the point. I thought this could be the Amur Carp (Cyprinus rubrofuscus), the wild ancestor of the koi and ultimately what they turn back into once released into the wild after a few generations. It would have been very clever of ACNH to make this the Amur Carp, as if the wild, invasive koi population on your island were in the process of reverting back to their roots, explaining why the koi is rarer than this carp. But then...I should have put the two of them in the same entry. And there’s nothing really stopping this from being the Amur, except that it may make more sense, with how insanely common this fish is in the game, that it’s actually the Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio):

And honestly, up until recently, the amur carp was considered a subspecies of the common carp, so, for all intents and purposes, this ID could go either way, but I’m no authority in freshwater population shenanigans, so it’s up to you if you like my Amur Carp or Common Carp theory better.

Above, I mentioned that we have another invasive on our hands and we certainly do. The common carp is one of the most common fish in freshwater existence, being widespread throughout Eurasia naturally and having been in aquaculture since at least the ancient Romans were farming them. They are a very popular food fish around the world, growing big very fast and breeding so easily, you probably could get them to breed in a big enough puddle (jk, but also, not really). And wouldn’t you know it, just like all other animals we humans rely on, the common carp has been introduced and become an invasive species literally everywhere but the poles. And just like other domestic invasives, like goats and house cats, they’re a menace.

Sometimes it’s not enough for an alien species to become invasive, they need to do it THE BEST and get on the list of 100 Most Invasive Species. Common carp are the third most frequently introduced species in the world, getting subplanted into lakes for sport-fishing and consumption the world over. And it’d be one thing if they were just all over the place, but they also really destroy the habitats they are put into. They are large and fast-growing fish, feeding on anything that fits into their mouths and chasing native fish out of prime habitat. They also have a habit of digging up and uprooting aquatic plants, disturbing the sediment and destroying habitat for native fish and even waterfowl. This is the difference between alien and invasive species, because not every non-native is detrimental to the habitat they find themselves in. For the common carp, though, they are a textbook example of an invasion.

And there you have it. Fascinating stuff, no?

#animal crossing #ac: new horizons #fish #animal crossing fish #carp #common carp #invasive species #science in video games #animal crossing fish explained

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Dr. Royal S. Copeland, the field marshal in New York City’s battle against the 1918 influenza epidemic, knew his enemy was more than just a virus. As health commissioner, he oversaw a medical crisis that would eventually kill some 30,000 New Yorkers over three waves of the disease. In Copeland’s estimation, the problem was not only influenza but also the city’s crowded tenements and endemic poverty.

To modern eyes, the measures he took to stymie the spread might seem strange. In an extensive interview with The New York Times after the first wave of influenza had passed, Copeland touted the decision not to close New York’s public schools. It was, he reasoned, best to keep them open to give the city’s children respite from crowded apartments and, if need be, a point of access to the medical system. “We have practically 1,000,000 children in the public schools, about 750,000 of them from tenement homes. These homes are frequently unsanitary and crowded,” he said. “The children’s parents are occupied with the manifold duties involved in keeping the wolf from the door. No matter how loving they may be — and, of course, they are just as loving as any parents anywhere — they simply have not the time to give the necessary attention to the initial symptoms of disease.”

Even under normal circumstances, living in New York City requires a certain surrender of personal space: Subways are packed, apartments are small and bodegas get cramped with after-work shoppers. But not all New Yorkers have to live in a stressful crowd all the time, a fact the COVID-19 pandemic has laid all too bare. The city’s wealth inequality has always been apparent: financial safety nets, Whole Foods delivery and routine access to health care. But the pandemic has added a new layer to what affluence can afford some New Yorkers, including routine access to personal space and the flexibility that white-collar work allows. While over 100 years have gone by since the 1918 pandemic, some of Copeland’s worries about the difficult nature of city life — and the inequities of who lives the most comfortably — remain chillingly relevant.

We know already that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people of color more than white Americans. While the virus stalks the rich and poor — leading some to call it “the great equalizer” — those with lesser means have fewer places to hide from it. Dr. Andrew Goodman, a professor of public health at New York University who used to work for the city’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention unit, pointed to the pandemic as “a more dramatic example of the health-inequity side of income inequality and racial inequality in the U.S.” Deaths from diseases that disproportionately affect minority communities, like diabetes and hypertension, “usually get spread out over time, and it doesn’t seem as dramatic,” Goodman said. “This is a more accelerated version.”

While there is a lot of uncertainty about the actual numbers of those infected — only a fraction of people who show symptoms are tested, so the rate of infection is almost certainly higher than what’s being reported — life in two New York City ZIP codes, one working class and one wealthy, gives us a glimpse into different ways of city living that might mean life or death in today’s New York.

Densely populated and working-class, East Elmhurst, Queens, has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in New York City.

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES

According to a running ProPublica tally of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, the ZIP codes with the highest rate of infection are in a certain corner of Queens: East Elmhurst. One East Elmhurst ZIP code, 11370, is home to the notorious Rikers Island correctional facility, and has the highest recorded positive test rate in New York City — 127 percent worse than the city’s average. Jails like Rikers have become hotbeds for spreading the disease given their space constraints — well over 600 inmates and workers are infected with the virus at Rikers. East Elmhurst’s other, non-Rikers ZIP code, 11369, is a residential neighborhood and has the second worst positive test rate in the city, 121 percent greater than the average.

East Elmhurst has seen a high rate of individuals tested, and that might be in part because Elmhurst Hospital in neighboring Elmhurst, Queens — “the epicenter within the epicenter,” in the words of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — has set up a testing tent outside the hospital. According to 2018 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 34,118 people live in the 1.1 square miles of East Elmhurst’s 11369 ZIP code. Sixty-four percent of its residents are Latino, and the median household income is $54,121, three-quarters of the median income in New York’s greater metro area. On the neighborhood’s northern border is LaGuardia Airport, and south of that are mosques and diners, a baseball field and blocks and blocks of houses cramped together. On those cramped blocks, the average household size is 3.2 people, 20 percent above the city average.

Nearly 11 percent of all households in ZIP code 11369 are also multigenerational, with three or more generations living under the same roof. It’s possible that the grouping of young and old together in one house could have something to do with higher infection rates. Researchers are still unclear about how many others a person infects when they have the virus, but early estimates were around 2 to 2.5 people. The elderly are more susceptible, and in Italy, doctors believe that the country’s culture of intergenerational living and familial closeness has had disastrous effects during the pandemic; Italy’s rate of death from COVID-19 is among the highest in the world.

Underlying conditions like asthma tend to be more prevalent in crowded environments, according to Dr. Y. Claire Wang, who specializes in public health and chronic disease prevention at the New York Academy of Medicine. The respiratory condition puts individuals at greater risk for COVID-19 complications, and households in city apartments with pests or mold, common problems in public housing units, often have higher rates of asthma, she said.

Things look different on the other side of the positive test rate list. ZIP code 11215 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has among the city’s lowest rates of COVID-19, at 56 percent below average.1 Park Slope is a different New York from East Elmhurst in many ways. Two-thirds of its population is white, and at $123,583, the median household income is one and a half times greater than that of the average in New York’s greater metropolitan area. The neighborhood is named for its proximity to one of the city’s largest green spaces, Prospect Park, and it’s known for its gracious brownstones and tree-lined streets. The average household size in Park Slope is 2.4 people, and only 1.8 percent of households are multigenerational.

Residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn, tend to be affluent, with white-collar jobs easily adaptable to working from home.

ROY ROCHLIN / GETTY IMAGES

The racial and ethnic differences between Park Slope and East Elmhurst might prove particularly important as both neighborhoods weather the pandemic. Early statistical reports on the disease are already painting a picture of racial inequity. Earlier this week New York State released preliminary numbers that showed Latinos have the highest rate of COVID-19 fatality in New York City.

A Kaiser Family Foundation report on initial pandemic data reveals that minorities are bearing the brunt of infection and death from the virus in many places. Higher rates of chronic conditions in minorities put them at greater risk for serious complications from COVID-19. In Washington, D.C., where black residents make up 45 percent of the total population, they account for 29 percent of confirmed cases and 59 percent of deaths. In Michigan, black residents are 14 percent of the population, but represent 33 percent of confirmed cases and 41 percent of deaths.

“We say something as simple as ‘your ZIP code should not define your health’ — [but] in New York City, that’s often the story,” said Dr. Torian Easterling, the deputy commissioner of the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, a city agency that addresses racial and social inequities in health. He pointed to high rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension and a lack of access to healthy foods in minority communities as long-standing public health problems that have only been exacerbated by the onset of COVID-19.

During the 1918 pandemic, the white population had a higher rate of infection, according to a 2007 study of the outbreak by Thomas A. Garrett, then an economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve. But that, Garrett surmised, had to do with the fact that the black population in the U.S. was still largely rural; the pandemic was a particular menace to cities. “[T]he nonwhite population in the United States has become much more urban. … A modern-day pandemic may result in greater nonwhite mortality rates because a greater percentage of the nonwhite population in the United States lives in urban areas,” he wrote. Census estimates from 2019 show that the majority of New York City residents are people of color.

Across New York, communities of color have long been more subject to chronic ailments like diabetes and hypertension. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these trends.

JOHN NACION / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES / ANGELA WEISS / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Park Slope and the East Elmhurst ZIP code of 11369 are similarly dense, with roughly 32,000 and 31,000 people per square mile, respectively. But life in the neighborhoods is different in other ways that might contribute to their divergent rates of apparent COVID-19 infection. According to the latest Census Bureau count, the most prevalent jobs in East Elmhurst are clerical work, food service and construction. In Park Slope, management, entertainment, education and business are the most common professions. The typical East Elmhurst worker is required to leave home to perform their job, while the lines of work most common in Park Slope are adaptable to teleworking. And Latinos — East Elmhurst’s dominant ethnic group — are more likely than all other Americans to consider COVID-19 a threat to their financial stability, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

We’ve already seen how socioeconomic circumstances can correlate with Americans’ ability to stay at home. A recent New York Times analysis of anonymized cellphone data tracked the movements of Americans and found that those in the top 10 percent income bracket have limited their movements more than those in the bottom 10 percent. What Copeland said in 1918 could very likely still hold true: “I have no doubt that the most dangerous means of transmitting disease was the subway. … Many a man who was sick must have felt that he had to go to work.”

Copeland’s struggle against the currents of poverty and influenza would continue into 1920. Updating the public on the state of the epidemic, which had reemerged, Copeland told The New York Times that the health department was working to stop the eviction of tenants during the outbreak and described the struggle to attract nurses to the city’s hospitals, since wealthy individuals were offering them higher pay to work in private homes. He pleaded for better ventilation on subways and buses and criticized coffin-makers who were price-gouging the city’s residents. Even in death, New York was unrelenting.

And so it remains today. Early this week, the city announced that hospital morgues around New York were overflowing with the dead. An Associated Press report painted a grim picture of one Brooklyn hospital. Even with an infection rate much lower than those in Queens, “mounds of corpses” had become so difficult to navigate that hospital staff were stepping over them.

The great equalizer isn’t COVID-19 — it’s death. But in New York’s epidemic, death attends to the haves and have-nots differently: For the city’s poor, it hovers closely, and when it comes, it leaves them as crowded as ever.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

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per-ineptia-ad-astra · 5 years

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starhearth: episode two

First Month of Spring, Days 5-7

With a new morning dawning it’s time to really start getting this colony underway. Our motley little crew are still flush with the spirit of pioneering (very Star Trek of them) and have supplies to last a while, but they won’t be satisfied with sleeping on the ground and eating plates of berries around a campfire forever. They’ll be needing beds, and a roof over their heads, and more food, preferably before all those plates of berries run out.

[ID: A screenshot showing a small patch of trees by a lake with a square boundary marked, within which are a few cages.]

First off, Uhura is assigned a little patch of territory near the stockpile to do her trapping in. This will at least supply us with a considerable amount of dried jerky, which will keep the crew from starving if all else fails. Then it’s time to consider our first building.

Stonehearth comes with a few pre-made building templates, but by and large you’re expected to design your own; once designed and placed in the world, your hearthlings will construct them from your stockpiled materials. I’m not exactly what you might call good at designing buildings, but fortunately hearthlings aren’t too picky about architecture and even I can manage to stick a few walls and a roof together. This first building is basically just one big room with a couple of smaller rooms attached, which is meant to eventually serve as a kind of tavern/dining hall, but more immediately will give everyone a place to sleep and eat inside until we can build some individual houses.

The finished schematic (such as it is) calls for a bit more wood than we currently have, but there are some trees in the way of where I want to put it anyway so that works out alright. A few people are sent to cut down those trees; in the meantime, Kirk studiously patrols around the camp, while McCoy crafts himself a Herbalist’s Workbench, which he’ll need to craft other things.

Once the trees are down, the building is placed in a spot close to the lake, next to a young chestnut tree. The chestnut tree isn’t strictly necessary. It just seemed nice.

Time to start building! It’s going to take rather a while, though, because Trappers, Herbalists and Footmen can’t build, so it’s just Scotty and Sulu working on it for now. And with Scotty initially busy making the doors and windows, it’s left to Sulu alone to begin laying the flooring. Unfortunately, he’s chosen to do this while drunk.

[ID: A screenshot showing a close-up on Sulu’s character bar, with a small icon on the side showing a mug of beer, with an accompanying description window which reads: “Light-headed: Having a merry time! Maybe a bit too much...Oh, well. Courage is increased. Diligence, Willpower, Speed and Stamina are slightly decreased. Crafting takes longer and has less chances of producing high quality items. This hearthling is less menacing to enemies. This hearthling will want to engage in conversations and sleep a lot more than usual.”]

Kids! Don’t try this at home. Combining carpentry and alcohol rarely ends well.

Then he falls asleep on the spot. Oh well, that might be for the best. At least now he won’t wind up nailing his own hand to the floor.

[ID: A screenshot showing Sulu, laying fast asleep on a partly finished floor with a couple of Z’s coming from him.]

Having finished his workbench, McCoy goes to gather some herbs and edible mushrooms, starting a makeshift garden next to the stockpile. Meanwhile, Scotty has finished building all the furniture for the tavern, which has raised him up to Level 2. With that done he can start helping Sulu build the actual structure.

The next day brings us a couple pieces of welcome news. The first is that a passing explorer has happened by and they’ve got an offer for us.

[ID: A screenshot of a message box titled ‘An Explorer Approaches Your Town.’ Below that, the text reads, “Hello Enterprise! I am an explorer from far to the east who deals in various amounts of trade and collection. Recently I found 2 Autonomous Cricket Golem just sitting next to the road. I’m not sure who left them there, but they’re quite helpful at cleaning up! I don’t have much use for them myself, but a nearby village said they are in need of 5 Wooden Window Frame. I will be relaxing nearby for 5 days...would you be interested in a trade at that time?”]

This is a stroke of luck, especially so early on. Cricket golems will haul items, meaning hearthlings have to spend less time doing it, which is especially helpful given that hearthlings kind of suck at cleaning up after themselves and tend to drop things all over the place. Also, they’re super cute. We definitely want these, and Scotty can easily crank out those window frames in time, so the offer is quickly accepted.

The other good news is our Daily Update. The Daily Update checks your town’s total net worth and your total amount of provisions, and if both are high enough, a new villager will come to stay. And today, we’ve got enough!

[ID: A screenshot showing a message box titled ‘Daily Update.’ The box reads “Immigration Report: Day 7 of Bittermun, 1000. Enterprise population: 5. Next hearthling requirements...” Below this are two icons, both with a green checkmark on them, one a basket containing a pumpkin and one a chest containing some gold. The icon is labeled ‘Food 117/50’ and the second is labeled ‘Net Worth 545/275’. Below that the text reads, “A new settler would like to join your town!”]

New villagers will have randomly generated names, appearances, stats and traits, and while you can freely change their names at any time, the only way to get new stats and traits is to save immediately beforehand and then reload until you get one you want. Which I...may have done. A few times.

In the end (I’m gonna decline to comment on exactly how long this took) we’ve got a newcomer with 4 mind, 6 body, and 3 spirit, with two traits: Animal Companion (this time, the animal is a fox) and Storm Chaser (which...I’m not actually sure what that one does, but my best guess is that it gives them a happiness boost in stormy weather).

By default in Stonehearth you’re not able to change the appearance of any hearthlings aside from your starting five. In the interests of having everyone look somewhat remotely recognizable as themselves, I employed a mod that lets you change the appearance of new villagers. The downside to this is that the town quickly wound up becoming remarkably homogeneous, but, well, that’s TOS for you.

At any rate, our new villager has the stats to be a good combat unit, and we’ll need an archer eventually, so I decided to make this one Chekov. Because...firing phasers is kind of like firing arrows...look, just go with me on this.

[ID: A screenshot showing a hearthling with brown hair and brown eyes standing next to a fox. Below him the description box reads “Pavel Chekov—Worker.”]

For the moment, however, we need more hands to build the tavern more than we need an archer, so Chekov won’t be taking up his job for a while yet. While he gets to work helping Scotty and Sulu, McCoy harvests some nearby berry bushes and makes some healing potions—more because he needs the experience than because we need healing potions, but hey, they might come in handy.

With the additional help the floor of the tavern is soon finished, and work begins on putting the walls up. But it’ll still be a while before it’s done and in the meantime, sleeping on the ground is making everyone grumpy, so Scotty’s made some extremely basic beds, which are put out near the fire. Before all the beds are even placed, Sulu and McCoy have passed out in a couple of them.

[ID: A screenshot near the campfire, showing two beds placed in a row, with the outlines of three beds still to be placed. McCoy and Sulu are each sleeping in a bed while Scotty sits nearby eating some berries.]

Apparently it’s been a tiring day.

#starhearth

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

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The Long, Long Shadow Of Harrison Ford

I tried watching Blade Runner 2049, but I fell asleep twice during it.

I know a lot of people like it, and it certainly is a technically proficient and well acted film, and it most certainly isn’t a dumb film but carefully and thoughtfully laid out…

…but I just couldn’t connect.

It’s really superior fan fic*, nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s still fan fic.

The relationship between Blade Runner 2049 and the original Blade Runner is like the relationship between 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact: In and of itself each of the latter films is a decent standalone movie.

As a sequel, however…

Here’s the thing about the original Blade Runner (and 2001, for that matter): It’s a much better movie than it is a story.

Or, to swipe a line from Jim Steinman’s soundtrack for Streets Of Fire, “You’ll never know what it means but you’ll know how it feels.”

The original Blade Runner really doesn’t hold together logically as a story (2001 doesn’t, either; the whole “HAL goes nuts” sub-plot is ridiculous) but it works beautifully as a vision.

And Ridley Scott is certainly a visionary (as was Stanley Kubrick).

The problem I had connecting with Blade Runner 2049 is that it lacked the dream-like quality that made the original film work.

The original was illogical, contradictory, and messy but, hey, guess what: Reality is like that.

The sequel does a really good job of nailing down all the loose corners, but in doing so they kill the original vision.

They were hamstrung by their intent to make sense of somebody else’s dream rather than explore their own. To me it felt more like a collection of shout outs than a standalone story.

(I said something similar re 2001 and 2010, that the original was a butterfly and the sequel was a perfect replica of a butterfly in cast iron.)

It’s interesting to compare Blade Runner 2049 with Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. Both films are extended builds to a key character’s appearance, in Blade Runner 2049 it’s Harrison Ford returning as Rick Deckard, while in The Force Awakens it’s Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker.

(Sidebar: Hamill may be the single most hated actor in all of Hollywood. Who else ever got a two hour and fifteen minute big budget build to his #%@&ing close-up?)

Ford as Deckard has aged well for the part. One of Blade Runner 2049’s better choices is to show him as the beaten and tired survivor he would be, not the still lively indestructible semi-superman of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or the still lively romantic young scoundrel with only a few token gray hairs in his last Star Wars appearance.

Another crucial difference in my eyes was the lack of consistency in what Blade Runner 2049 showed on the screen.

The original all felt part and parcel of the same world, even towards the end where one notices the budget literally shrinking before one’s eyes.

But the different scenes and locales of Blade Runner 2049 never seemed part of the same reality.

The non-SPFX / CGI live action sequences seemed…well…not cheap but certainly economic.

And there’s nothing wrong with that…

…but by comparison the effects sequences looked too rich, too opulent.

Something a little less grandiose, a little less visionary would have served the film better.

Something a little more consistent in look and texture, too.

By contrast, Solo: A Star Wars Story (or as I prefer to call it, Star Wars: Episode 0 -- Solo) gets it right.

Solo is the best Star Wars since the original.

It’s also the most political of the series (and the series is very political): Families torn apart, ID's constantly being checked, "we're the hostiles", the marauders being the proto-rebellion, gangsters corrupting imperial governors, Landro's female robot L3-37 fighting for droid rights and spawning a cybernetic rebellion, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Despite behind the scenes controversy over the directing and the reshoots and the loss of a character due to an actor’s unavailability, Solo hangs together both as its own story and as a subset of the Star Wars universe: Good story, good writing, good pacing, good cast (Woody Harrelson channeling Dennis Hopper is pretty awesome).

Unlike Blade Runner 2049, its live action and its special effects sequences all seem to belong to the same story.

Granted, except for the opening all the scenes took place out among the frontier of the empire, with sparsely populated grand vistas.

The call back to classic Westerns is quite deliberate and conscious, making Solo the most horse opera space opera of the series.

A knowledgeable viewer will recognize certain economic shortcuts taken in several key scenes, particularly in the beginning with its vast intergalactic shipyards and crowds of passengers, but they aren’t as jarring as the economies of Blade Runner 2049.

After all the tiresome talk about trade alliances in other films, Solo gave me for the first time a sense of what the galactic economy was like and how it worked.

Solo also shows Han is a more heroic and almost as tragic a figure as Luke. Episodes II thru VIII show that basically this whole mess is just one huge prolonged hissy fit by members of the Skywalker family. For all their lecturing about balance and light and dark, the Jedi / Sith in general and the Skywalkers in particular are just a bunch of childish demigod Star Trek villains who treat the rest of the universe as expendable pawns in their multi-generational family feud.

Han, on the other hand, knows right from wrong. He is brutally pragmatic, he will shoot first, and he will walk / run / hyper-jump away from trouble in order to save his own neck, but he also knows the strong are not justified in exploiting the weak.

An outlaw and a scoundrel, to be sure, but not a villain, never a villain. He is the true moral core of the Star Wars universe.

So what caused all the negative reactions to Solo?

Bad trailers and ad campaign. Audiences never got an adequate feel of what the movie would be like.

Bad advance word of mouth based on the behind the scenes controversy.

Audience burn out. Star Wars as a franchise has been around for 40 years now, entering its third generation of fans. It’s not new and fresh and releasing too much material in too short a span makes the movies seem less special.

Not just political, but specifically draws parallels to US today -- and not positive ones. The incel alt-right fan boys are all a’twitter over this.

Many of the visuals and set pieces were derivative of other movies. This is not an uncommon or unfair criticism of any Star Wars movie, but this time the…uh…homages seemed a little more obvious.

However, I think the number one problem facing Solo (and this problem even haunts Blade Runner 2049, though not as badly) is Harrison Ford casts a long, long shadow and many people were unwilling to give Alden Ehrenreich a chance.

Which is a pity, because it only took a few minutes for me to totally accept him as Young Han Solo and become thoroughly engrossed in his earliest adventures.

As stated above, Solo occurs before the events of The Phantom Menace because [REDACTED] gets killed in that film but is seen alive and well and fully functioning in this one. The film has an open ending in which [REDACTED] and Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) loom large as potential problems for Solo but ya know what? There’s no point in doing a direct sequel, at least not a theatrical one (live action or animated TV series, or novels or comics or video games, maybe). We know [REDACTED] is going to be dead long before Han meets Luke, and there’s been no hint of Qi’ra anywhere else in the films, and each member of the audience can probably imagine a resolution to that sub-plot that would be more satisfying to them than anything Lucasfilm could come up with so why bother?

* And who am I to criticize fan fic? Go buy The Most Dangerous Man In The World while you’ve still got the chance!

#Star Wars #Blade Runner #Blade Runner 2049 #The Phantom Menace #The Force Awakens #Solo #sci-fi #science fiction #Stanley Kubrick #George Lucas #Ridley Scott #Harrison Ford

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hallowmace · 4 years

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A bill for an Act to prohibit/ban the importation of generating sets to curb the menace of environmental pollution and to facilitate the development of the power sector. This bill is sponsored by Senator Bima Enagi from Niger state. This bill seeks to ban the importation and use of all kinds of generator. The bill also states that anybody who imports generating sets shall be sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. It also added that "all persons are hereby directed to stop the use of generating sets with immediate effect" In a country where a lot of Nigerians solely depend on generators due to irregular power supply. Nigeria currently generates approximately 4000 mega watts of electricity but distributes only about 3000 for a population of close to 200 million people. This shall be our focus tomorrow (Thursday) on HallowMace on Radio. Pls join us. *Expected Guest:* *Sowunmi Olabode III Power Consultant.* Time: 10am Station: Armed Forces 107.7 FM You can join the conversation from any part of the world by Downloading the Android app from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.armedforcesradioapp or via Telephone on: 0802-600-7418. Thank you. Sunny Anderson Osiebe Producer. https://www.instagram.com/p/B9nDPUanoap/?igshid=d9je7o0mnuma

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terragreenico · 5 years

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PRESSING ISSUE OF BIOMASS WASTE CONVERSION AND ITS PLAUSIBLE SOLUTION

Rapid population growth and increase in living standards have been a persisting issue for environmentalists and the population alike. Adding to the recurring menace is the open burning by the farmers to clear the agricultural land which generates CO2 and other pollutants.

Incorrect and low scale management of agricultural biomass waste is heavy contributors to climate change, water and soil pollution and also local air pollution. Subsequently, it causes problems like rotting biomass waste which emits methane, - a lethal and devastating greenhouse gas.

Every year an enormous waste amount of waste approximately 2.12 Billion tons is wasted. A whopping 100 billion metric tons per year of biomass is generated every year. However, if properly managed, global waste can be of high value in terms of renewable energy production. However, the scenario is fast changing.

Interestingly, renewable energy is being accepted as a commercial alternative to fossil-fuel based energy production. This transition to clean, renewable energy is well advancing with a tremendous range of developments.

One such project is TerraGreen. It aims to create a global, decentralized biomass waste management, majorly in the agricultural & plantation sector. The creation of such a network will, in turn, enable the deployment of extensive renewable energy infrastructure. Subsequently, it will provide the necessary equipment for proper biomass waste management.

The TerraGreen envisions to change the perception of waste by industries. More importantly, they see it as a highly untapped resource to mankind. The project strives to implement a monetary incentive mechanism. With the implementation of this mechanism, people will be awarded for supporting conversion of biomass waste into renewable energy products.

Thought Process behind the Vision

TerraGreen aims to solve the current problems of lacking access to state-of-the-art technology and capital for the biomass-based renewable energy producers, and to provide access to profitable projects directly to the consumers. This is done with the utilization of blockchain technology and renewable energy backed coins.

Terragreen’s token module comprises of IDE using the Graphical user interface (GUI). Here drag & drop feature will be a major attraction for users. The drag & drop features the device gestures, through which the user can select a virtual object by "grab it” and “drag it” to a particular location or onto another virtual object inside IDE.

The token module of Terra green has enhanced GUI features which are more convenient to the users to create their own tokens. The tokens modules are being actively built on the formation of the blockchains.

TerraGreen’s state-of-the-art technology and process are based on technically optimized and cost-effective solutions to convert biomass waste into high-value energy products.

This is achieved by using the latest biomass gasification technology and individual optimized gas conditioning systems, whereby the base for the production of several CO2-neutral synthetic fuels are laid.

With its unique ideology and one of kind technological prowess, TerraGreen is also set to disrupt biomass waste conversion.

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theterragreen · 5 years

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PRESSING ISSUE OF BIOMASS WASTE CONVERSION AND ITS PLAUSIBLE SOLUTION

Thought Process behind the Vision

TerraGreen’s state-of-the-art technology and process are based on technically optimized and cost-effective solutions to convert biomass waste into high-value energy products.

With its unique ideology and one of kind technological prowess, TerraGreen is also set to disrupt biomass waste conversion.

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terragreencoin-blog · 5 years

Photo

PRESSING ISSUE OF BIOMASS WASTE CONVERSION AND ITS PLAUSIBLE SOLUTION

Thought Process behind the Vision

TerraGreen’s state-of-the-art technology and process are based on technically optimized and cost-effective solutions to convert biomass waste into high-value energy products.

With its unique ideology and one of kind technological prowess, TerraGreen is also set to disrupt biomass waste conversion.

#business #blockchain conference #ico investment #crytpocurrency #crytpo

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crimethinc · 7 years

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War is Already Here: It's Just Not Very Evenly Distributed

"The future is already here," Cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson once said; "it's just not very evenly distributed." Over the intervening decades, many people have repurposed that quote to suit their needs. Today, in that tradition, we might refine it thus: War is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed.

Never again will the battlefield be just state versus state; it hasn't been for some time. Nor are we seeing simple conflicts that pit a state versus a unitary insurgent that aspires to statehood. Today's wars feature belligerents of all shapes and sizes: states (allied and non-allied), religious zealots (with or without a state), local and expatriate insurgents, loyalists to former or failing or neighboring regimes, individuals with a political mission or personal agenda, and agents of chaos who benefit from the instability of war itself. Anyone or any group of any size can go to war.

The increased accessibility of the technology of disruption and war1 means the barrier to entry is getting lower all the time. The structure of future wars will sometimes feel familiar, as men with guns murder children and bombs level entire neighborhoods—but it will take new forms, too. Combatants will manipulate markets and devalue currencies. Websites will be subject to DDoS attacks and disabling—both by adversaries and by ruling governments. Infrastructure and services like hospitals, banks, transit systems, and HVAC systems will all be vulnerable to attacks and interruptions.

In this chaotic world, in which new and increasing threats ceaselessly menace our freedom, technology has become an essential battlefield. Here at the CrimethInc. technology desk, we will intervene in the discourse and distribution of technological know-how in hopes of enabling readers like you to defend and expand your autonomy. Let's take a glance at the terrain.

Privacy

The NSA listens to, reads, and records everything that happens on the internet.

Amazon, Google, and Apple are always listening2 and sending some amount3 of what they hear back to their corporate data centers4. Cops want that data. Uber, Lyft, Waze, Tesla, Apple, Google, and Facebook know your whereabouts and your movements all of the time. Employees spy on users.

Police5 want access to the contents of your phone, computer, and social media accounts—whether you're a suspected criminal, a dissident on a watch list, or an ex-wife.

The business model of most tech companies is surveillance capitalism. Companies learn everything possible about you when you use their free app or website, then sell your data to governments, police, and advertisers. There's even a company named Palantir, after the crystal ball in The Lord of the Rings that the wizard Saruman used to gaze upon Mordor—through which Mordor gazed into Saruman and corrupted him.6 Nietzsche's famous quote, "When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you," now sounds like a double transcription error: surely he didn't mean abyss, but app.

Security

Heat map of a massive DDoS attack on a DNS provider that disabled several major websites

Self-replicating malware spreads across Internet of Things (IoT) devices like "smart" light bulbs and nanny cams, conscripting them into massive botnets. The people who remotely control the malware then use these light bulbs and security cameras to launch debilitating DDoS7 attacks against DNS providers, reporters, and entire countries.

Hackers use ransomware to hold colleges, hospitals, and transit systems hostage. Everything leaks, from nude photos on celebrities' phones to the emails of US political parties.

Capital

21st century robber barons at Trump's tech summit, December 14, 2017

Eight billionaires combined own as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the world's population. Four of those eight billionaires are tech company founders.8 Recently, the President of the United States gathered a group of executives to increase collaboration between the tech industry and the government.9

The tech industry in general, and the Silicon Valley in particular, has a disproportionately large cultural influence. The tech industry is fundamentally tied to liberalism and therefore to capitalism. Even the most left-leaning technologists aren't interested in addressing the drawbacks of the social order that has concentrated so much power in their hands.10

War

Programming: war by other means.

Nation states are already engaging in cyber warfare. Someone somewhere11 has been learning how to take down the internet.

Tech companies are best positioned to create a registry of Muslims and other targeted groups. Even if George W. Bush and Barack Obama hadn't already created such lists and deported millions of people, if Donald Trump (or any president) wanted to create a registry for roundups and deportations, all he'd have to do is go to Facebook. Facebook knows everything about you.

The Obama administration built the largest surveillance infrastructure ever—Donald Trump's administration just inherited it. Liberal democracies and fascist autocracies share the same love affair with surveillance. As liberalism collapses, the rise of autocracy coincides with the greatest technical capacity for spying in history, with the least cost or effort. It's a perfect storm.

This brief overview doesn't even mention artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), robots, the venture capital system, or tech billionaires who think they can live forever with transfusions of the blood of young people.

Here at the tech desk, we'll examine technology and its effects from an anarchist perspective. We'll publish accessible guides and overviews on topics like encryption, operational security, and how to strengthen your defenses for everyday life and street battles. We'll zoom out to explore the relation between technology, the state, and capitalism—and a whole lot more. Stay tuned.

If you have a story to tell or a skill to teach, get in touch.

Welcome.

A surplus of AK-47s. Tanks left behind by U.S. military. Malware infected networked computer transformed into DDoS botnets. Off the shelf ready to execute scripts to attack servers. ↩︎

Amazon Echo / Alexa. Google with Google Home. Apple with Siri. Hey Siri, start playing music. ↩︎

What, how much, stored for how long, and accessible by whom are all unknown to the people using those services. ↩︎

Unless you are a very large company, "data center" means someone else's computer sitting in someone else's building. ↩︎

Local beat cops and police chiefs, TSA, Border Patrol, FBI… all the fuckers. ↩︎

Expect to read more about Palantir and others in a forthcoming article about surveillance capitalism. ↩︎

Distributed Denial of Service. More on this in a later article, as well. ↩︎

Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison. In fact, if you count Michael Bloomberg as a technology company, that makes five. ↩︎

In attendance: Eric Trump. Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer. Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. Larry Page, Google founder and Alphabet CEO. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO. Mike Pence. Donald Trump. Peter Thiel, venture capitalist. Tim Cook, Apple CEO. Safra Catz, Oracle CEO. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO. Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs president and Trump's chief economic adviser. Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary pick. Stephen Miller, senior policy adviser. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO. Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO. Chuck Robbins, Cisco CEO. Jared Kushner, investor and Trump's son-in-law. Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee and White House chief of staff. Steve Bannon, chief strategist to Trump. Eric Schmidt, Alphabet president. Alex Karp, Palantir CEO. Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. ↩︎

We'll explore this more in a later article about "The California Ideology." ↩︎

Probably a state-level actor such as Russia or China. ↩︎

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dailykhaleej · 4 years

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Choosing 2FA authenticator apps can be laborious. Ars did it so you don’t have to

Aurich & Hannah Lawson

Final 12 months, Sergio Caltagirone discovered himself in a tricky spot. Whereas touring, his cellphone broke and stopped working fully. With no entry to his Google and Microsoft authenticator apps, he misplaced entry to two-factor authentication when he wanted it most—when he was logging in from IP addresses not acknowledged by the 30 to 40 websites he had enrolled.

“I had a whole bunch of sites [that] I had to go through a massively long account restoration process because I lost my 2FA,” mentioned Caltagirone, who’s senior VP of menace intelligence at safety agency Dragos. “Every time, I had to contact customer service. I had different levels of requirements I had to go through for them to effectively disable 2FA on my account. Some required address verification. [For others,] I had to send a last bill. The number of those I went through was just insane.”

Skinny blades

The expertise exhibits the double-edged sword of multi-factor authentication. Requiring customers to enter a password that’s pseudorandomly generated each 30 seconds makes account takeovers considerably more durable, even when an attacker has phished or in any other case obtained the password. However within the occasion that second issue (on this case, the “something you have,” that’s, the cellphone) isn’t accessible, that very same safety can block professional customers from logging in for unacceptably lengthy durations of time.

When Caltagirone relayed his expertise final September, a fast survey of the accessible shopper and small-business authenticators left a lot to be desired. Just a few of them made it doable to again up the distinctive cryptographic seeds that every cellphone makes use of to generate a time-based one-time password, or TOTP. Web sites—together with Google, Github, Fb, and lots of of others that implement the Time-Based mostly One-Time Password Algorithm customary—require the momentary password to log in customers who choose in to 2FA.

The consequence? When your system was stolen, misplaced, or stopped working, you had to undergo the identical painful and time-consuming account recoveries Caltagirone did. The dearth of a backup and restoration mechanism meant the one viable means to hedge in opposition to a tool loss or malfunction was to print, scan, or {photograph} every QR code or the underlying Internet hyperlink (as an illustration, http://[email protected]/?secret=LZZIKRWX736EH2IQ&issuer=Slack) it represented. That was time consuming. Even worse, it was cumbersome and insecure to retailer them, significantly when touring.

Sadly, there’s a double-edged TOTP sword that’s equally vexing. By storing them on another person’s server, typically with solely a password and SMS-verification required to restore them, they’re weak to theft, at the very least within the extra rigorous menace mannequin situations. I examined Authy, Duo Cellular,LastPass Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, and Google Authenticator and located that each one apart from Google Authenticator provided a viable means for backing up TOTP seeds and recovering them within the occasion the cellphone or different system was misplaced.

The safety was satisfactory for all 4 of the authenticators that provided restoration, however each additionally has weaknesses that in excessive instances make them weak to (relying on the app) hackers, malicious insiders, or regulation enforcement companies with a court docket order. I believed by such situations and the risk-benefit evaluation of every authenticator with invaluable assist from Mark Gamache, a Seattle-area safety skilled centered on utilized cryptography and authentication.

Assessing the safety, modeling the menace

Nothing on this publish ought to be construed to say individuals shouldn’t use 2FA. Even with backups turned on, utilizing TOTP-based 2FA is surely higher than not utilizing 2FA. And it’s vital to bear in mind right here, as with every safety evaluation, that there’s nobody measurement matches all. What’s most safe for one individual isn’t essentially true for one more. This round-up is much less about telling readers which authenticator backup is essentially the most safe and extra about serving to readers assume by all the varied concerns.

One of many menace fashions Gamache and I assumed is a hacker (1) efficiently acquiring a password by phishing or different means (in any case, that’s the situation that 2FA, by definition, anticipates) and (2) taking management of a person’s cellphone quantity by a SIM swap or different means. Whereas these necessities are steep, they’re not unprecedented, significantly in opposition to targets with massive quantities of Bitcoin saved in on-line wallets.

Extra threats embody a malicious insider at one of many authenticator providers or a authorities company who both steals confidential knowledge or compels that it be turned over. Once more, these are excessive situations, however not unprecedented.

In the end, I settled on three authenticators—Authy, Duo and LastPass—as a result of they gave me confidence that, absent unknown software program bugs or cryptographical oversites, their backup and restoration processes labored utilizing zero information. The precept signifies that secret TOTP seeds are by no means accessible to anybody aside from the top person. The reassurance requires that each one encryption and decryption is carried out on the shopper’s native system, and the info is encrypted each in-transit and at relaxation on the supplier’s servers.

The 2 authenticators that stood out have been Duo and Authy. Each made backups simple, and gave me an inexpensive stage of confidence that they might maintain the key seeds safe and confidential below my menace fashions. Each authenticators focus totally on enterprise clients, who pay to use them to log massive numbers of workers into company portals and personal networks.

Makers of each authenticators present a collection of further safety providers that go effectively past 2FA, equivalent to serving to directors monitor which of their hundreds of workers’ gadgets haven’t put in safety updates. Duo Safety and the corporate behind Authy (referred to as Authy) additionally provide a free authenticator model that works with any third-party web site that makes use of the TOTP customary, and that’s the main target of this roundup.

The great

Authy was my best choice as a result of the backup pushes encrypted seeds to a number of gadgets, together with Macs, PCs, tablets, spare telephones, or Linux machines. The seeds are then synced amongst all of the gadgets such {that a} change or addition on one system will mechanically be populated to all of the others. Within the occasion a person loses one system, her different gadgets will proceed to produce TOTPs. The seeds can then be added to the substitute system.

Apart from offering the reassurance of a sturdy means to backup and restore, this technique supplies the comfort of getting a number of working authenticators and of utilizing them from a a lot wider vary of gadgets than is feasible with the opposite authenticators on this roundup. (Duo allowed me to use a number of telephones, however all of them had to run both Android or iOS. Additionally, modifications or additions made on one system didn’t sync with the others.)

Authy customers arrange a password throughout the backup course of that encrypts seeds on the system earlier than sending them to Authy servers. With out the password, seeds can not be decrypted and are misplaced perpetually. With out going by a rigorous restoration course of (extra about that later), customers can’t obtain the encrypted seed knowledge from Twilio with out demonstrating management of the unique system or cellphone quantity used when organising the authenticator.

One other plus: Authy goes to better lengths than all however one different authenticator in documenting how seeds are encrypted on a tool. The Authy mechanism provides a randomized cryptographic salt to the user-chosen passcode after which passes it by at the very least 1,000 rounds of PBKDF2, an algorithm that’s among the many finest at thwarting password cracking assaults that use both phrase lists or brute forcing to guess the password.

The ensuing hash is used to generate a key that makes use of the time-tested Superior Encryption Customary to encrypt the seeds. The method additionally provides an initialization vector for every enrolled account. Solely after this course of is carried out domestically, that means on the person system, are the encrypted seed, salt, and IV despatched to Twilio.

The consequence: Twilio has no capability to retailer and even see the backup password and therefore has no capability to decrypt the seed knowledge. After receiving the salt, IV, and encrypted, the Twilio server will ship the info to approved backup gadgets. The person then enters the backup password on every system because the final lacking piece to decrypt the seed. (The worth of the salt/IV is to present one other layer of safety within the occasion an attacker manages to steal the encrypted seed from Twilio, however not the salt/IV.)

Within the occasion a person loses all of their gadgets however nonetheless has management of the cellphone quantity, the person should undergo an account restoration course of that features a necessary ready interval to recuperate the encrypted seed knowledge. Within the occasion the person loses each the cellphone and the cellphone quantity first used to arrange Authy, the restoration course of will be extra concerned and will require producing a government-issued ID, amongst different issues. As soon as once more, although, none of it will assist in the occasion the restoration password is misplaced.

The factor I favored least about Authy is its use of SMS or voice calls to confirm a brand new system is allowed to obtain encrypted seeds. Because of this information of the backup password and a SIM swap are all that’s wanted to recuperate and decrypt the info. To be clear, that is an excessive menace mannequin, and different authenticators equally enable SMS or an electronic mail handle for verification.

Authy has extra particulars on the backup and restore processes right here. This is the circulate when utilizing a Pixel XL as the first system and backing up and syncing to a Home windows laptop computer:

A number of seeds on the first system.

Select settings after which the Accounts tab. Activate the Backups button.

Click on on the Gadgets tab and activate Enable multi system. Click on the okay button.

In Authy on the PC, enter the cellphone quantity used to register the Pixel XL

Select a means for to confirm the backup and sync. I am not snug with the usage of SMS or voice, however I am positive there are legitimate usability causes for this alternative.

The Pixel XL will obtain an SMS, voice name with a quantity or a push requiring a response.

All enrolled accounts will present on the PC, however notice the padlock to the proper. Meaning the seeds aren’t but accessible.

On the PC, enter the password set when backing up the Pixel XL.

Voila! The all seeds can be found. From right here on, any additions or modifications made on one system will sync to the opposite system.

The Pixel XL exhibiting all linked gadgets.

The identical factor on the PC

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claremal-one · 4 years

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Wealth And Race Have Always Divided New York. COVID-19 Has Only Made Things Worse.

Densely populated and working-class, East Elmhurst, Queens, has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in New York City.

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES

Residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn, tend to be affluent, with white-collar jobs easily adaptable to working from home.

ROY ROCHLIN / GETTY IMAGES

Across New York, communities of color have long been more subject to chronic ailments like diabetes and hypertension. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these trends.

JOHN NACION / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES / ANGELA WEISS / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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#clare malone #clarethings

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neptunecreek · 4 years

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Announcing Who Has Your Face

The government and law enforcement should not be scanning your photos with face recognition technology. But right now, at least half of Americans are likely in government face recognition databases—often thanks to secretive agreements between state and federal government agencies—without any of us having opted in. Although the majority of Americans are in these databases, it’s nearly impossible to know whether or not your photo has been included. Today, EFF is launching a new project to help fight back: Who Has Your Face.

Who Has Your Face includes a short quiz that you can use to learn which U.S. government agencies may have access to your photo for facial recognition purposes, as well as a longer resource page describing in detail the photo sharing we discovered. This project is a collaboration between the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, and aims to shine a light on the photo sharing that has allowed the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, dozens of Departments of Motor Vehicles, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, law enforcement, and many other agencies to use face surveillance on millions of people without their knowledge.

Data-sharing agreements made between agencies with little or no room for input from those they affect violate the privacy of thousands of people every day

This work builds on the work that was done in The Perpetual Lineup, a project of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, and EFF’s research on the growth of government databases like this. To bring this project to you, we reviewed thousands of pages of public records to determine as clearly as possible what government photos of U.S. citizens, residents, and travelers are shared with which agencies for facial recognition purposes.

After answering a few short questions, Who Has Your Face will list agencies that likely have access to your image

Individuals Don’t Know They’re In Facial Recognition Databases and Can’t Opt Out

As U.S. government agencies have increased the type of information they collect on individuals, expanding from fingerprints to faceprints, and adding voice data, DNA, scars and tattoos, they’ve also hoovered up more and more information from individuals without their knowledge. Much of this is collected during fairly common practices like applying for a driver’s license.

The number of people affected by face recognition is staggering: We count at least 27 states where the FBI can search or request data from driver’s license and ID databases. In June of last year, the Government Accountability Office reported only 21. The total number of DMVs with facial recognition is now at least 43, with only four of those limiting data sharing entirely. That puts two-thirds of the population of the U.S. at risk of misidentification, with no choice to opt out. That number is unconscionable. These data-sharing agreements—made between agencies and with little or no room for input from those they affect—violate the privacy of thousands of people every day.

Data sharing is especially dangerous for vulnerable individuals and populations, and is especially egregious in some states: in Maryland, for example, undocumented individuals are allowed driver’s licenses and IDs, but data sharing agreements also allow ICE to use face recognition on those DMV databases. This turns the legal protection of a driver’s license into a way for ICE to target undocumented individuals for deportation. Florida—the third most populous state in the nation—has the longest-running facial recognition database in the country, and offers over 250 agencies access to DMV photos for facial recognition purposes.

Lack of Transparency Thwarts Attempts to Learn Who’s At Risk

Despite hundreds of hours of research, it’s still not possible to know precisely which agencies are sharing which photos, and with whom. Each agency across the U.S., from state DMV’s to the State Department, shares access to their photos differently, depending on agreements with local police, other states, and federal agencies. We were continuously thwarted in our research by non-responsive government agencies, conflicting information and agreements, and the generally covert nature of these policies. This is a huge problem: it should be easy to learn who has the personal data that you’ve been required to hand over in exchange for a driver’s license, or for re-entry into the country after visiting family in a foreign nation.

But agencies all responded differently to requests for transparency: when sent the same public records request, some DMV’s gave the precise number of facial recognition requests that they had received from outside agencies but not which agencies sent them—for example, Wisconsin’s DMV received 238 requests in 2016; Nevada received 788 requests between June 14, 2015, and March 8, 2018. Other DMVs responded with who had made requests and how many: a list of agency requests to Utah’s Department of Public Safety included Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, various state Fusion Centers, state Secret Service agencies, and the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy. Utah also responded with data about how successful the requests had been.

A spreadsheet of facial recognition requests to the Utah Statewide Information & Analysis Center

Still others did not respond or regarded the questions as overbroad, or claimed to have no responsive records. Alabama’s DMV, for example, essentially ignored the request until sent an example of the Memorandum of Understanding we believed they had signed.

Reports also contradict one another: American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), a tax-exempt, non-profit organization that serves as an “information clearinghouse” for Departments of Motor Vehicles across the United States and allows members to interactively request and verify license and ID applicant’s images, reported just three months ago that Idaho’s Transportation Department and Oklahoma’s Department of Public Safety have facial recognition, yet both of those states responded to our requests by saying they did not.

Another area of confusion: three of the states that were confirmed to take part in AAMVA’s National Digital Exchange Program but do not have facial recognition systems. Whether they comply with those agreements is unclear. The Real-ID Act, which requires state licenses to adhere to certain uniform standards if they are to be accepted for some federal purposes, also complicates matters. Many states interpret it as requiring them to provide electronic access to all other states to information contained in their motor vehicle database, and to offer some access to federal agencies such as the DHS or ICE. But in some states, sharing this data with the federal government is explicitly forbidden by law. In Utah, for example, the state DMV granted federal access to its database despite the state legislature rejecting the federal info-sharing required under REAL ID.

This level of confusion and obfuscation is, frankly, unacceptable. It should be simple for anyone to learn who has their private, biometric data, and we must work to make it easier.

It’s Time to Ban Government Use of Face Surveillance

Lack of transparency is, of course, only part of the problem. Face surveillance is a growing menace to our privacy even when the agencies with access to the technology are clear about it. Police worn body cameras with facial surveillance can record the words, deeds, and locations of much of the population at a given time. The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol can use face surveillance to track individuals throughout their travels. Government use of face recognition data collected from private companies, like Clearview AI, poses additional threats. Government must not be allowed to implement this always-on panopticon.

Thankfully, more and more laws that ban government use of this technology are passing around the country. In addition to the several states that currently don’t allow or don’t have face recognition at DMVs (California, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wyoming), cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland in California, and Somerville in Massachusetts have also passed bans on its use by city governments. California has even passed a moratorium on government use of face recognition with mobile cameras. As more cities pass these bans, we hope more states join in protecting their residents, and in being transparent about who has access to every technology that could endanger civil liberties. It’s time to ban government use of face surveillance.

Learn more about who has your face by visiting Who Has Your Face. To help ban government use of face recognition in your city, visit our About Face campaign.

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dangkynhanhieusanphamcom · 5 years

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How to Teach Children about Climate Change – Law & Liberty

According to a National Public Radio/Ipsos poll, 80 percent of parents wish that teachers “taught climate change” in school. The article announcing this finding goes on to lament that relatively few teachers actually do, in part out of fear of “denier” backlash. Since the issue is taking form as this generation’s version of the Scopes Trial, let’s take a moment to assess what “teaching climate change” means, and what it should mean.

In theory, teaching climate change would entail a sober, fact-based, perspective-heavy dissemination of competing scientific viewpoints. In practice, what advocates mean by “teaching climate change” is to teach climate catastrophism—that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide present a clear and present threat to life on Earth as we know it. The inevitable corollary is that massive, usually coercive, political measures must be taken to exact a steep economic and lifestyle sacrifice from individuals (usually poor people) to atone for the sins of a wayward, capitalism-blinded humanity.

This version of “teaching climate change” needs review. Let me start, since we live in an era in which you are either a believer or a skeptic, by presenting my bona-fides as a decent, earth-loving human with an actual soul.

First, our family has for decades been actively managing 10,000 acres in Arizona for biodiversity, water conservation, and carbon sequestration. The ranch headquarters runs on solar panels and has been “off-grid” for at least 30 years. I like wildlife. Also grass-fed beef. I believe in composting. The ranch just won a sustainability prize from a prestigious university. In short, my perspective isn’t that of an oil executive antichrist.

Second, some of the broadest elements of current climate science make sense to me. I accept that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen from under 300 parts per million to over 400 parts per million in the last decades, most probably as a result of human behaviors. It’s true that global temperatures have risen since the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, and there is indeed some kind of acceleration that might be due in part to human behaviors.

Where I begin to go off the standard United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change script is in taking a larger and less anthropocentric view of the subject. History gives us many an example of mankind’s propensity to overemphasize himself and his centrality to his constructed universe. This should be avoided.

For instance, in the grand scheme of factors influencing global temperature regimes, some of the most significant forcing mechanisms are utterly out of our control. Sun-spot activity, tectonic volcanism, and orbital “wobble” are just a few of the salient elements that factor into climate conditions. Water vapor is significantly more instrumental than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (albeit in a complex feedback function). Mount Pinatubo reduced global temperature by .5 degrees Celsius in a little over 30 days. The earth has experienced atmospheric carbon concentrations well over 2500 parts per million—the 400 parts per million of today is not “unprecedented.”

Moreover the much-vaunted “superstorm” narrative is a sensationalized fiction. The Environmental Protection Agency’s own data show that many types of destructive weather events have either remained steady, or have actually decreased in frequency and severity. (Increases in property damage are largely attributable to increases in population and wealth in vulnerable areas.)

One could go on, but you get the gist. Climate change, and humanity’s role in it, is a vastly complicated, often counterintuitive field. This is one of the primary arguments in favor of teaching it. Complexity requires systematic, careful pedagogy. If that were the impulse behind “teaching climate science” to young schoolchildren, this “skeptic” would be more on board.

Instead, what is really going on is a social frenzy masquerading as “settled science.” And we have seen this movie before. The current climate-change fetish is reminiscent of the millenarian fevers of the last 2,000 years, the dire Malthusian scenarios of the 1800s, and the “Population Bomb” frights of the 1970s. Today’s hand-wringing is really no different; in every instance of societal panic, it is “the children” who “must be taught” about the impending catastrophe.

The above-mentioned NPR article comes with an illustration that’s revealing. It shows a female teacher calmly gesturing to an orange, hot-looking globe with a hurricane menacing its way over jumbled continents. A wide-eyed, gape-mouthed child grips the table in an apparent combination of agitation and revelation.

NPR goes on to document why parents are so supportive of “teaching climate change.” Laine Fabijanic, a mother of three in Colorado, is “feeling the effects of climate change, from an unusually snowless winter last year to scary fires.” Though she lives a virtuous life of recycling and “eating organic,” Laine (and her children) could probably stand to have some honest education on the topic of the environment. For instance, it might be useful for them to know that California received record snowpack this year, and Colorado’s average snowpack has actually remained relatively steady for generations. Regarding fires, data from the National Interagency Fire Center indicate that since the turn of the century, the number and extent of fires are actually down.

Laine’s “feeling the effects of climate change” as “unusual” and “scary” are emotional and layman responses to immediate conditions that lack any sort of long-term perspective. Maybe, if they were educated, Laine’s children could help her feel less afraid.

In addition, “teaching climate change” ought to include a deep dive into some of the more counterintuitive of humanity’s customs and practices. For instance, it would no doubt surprise many to be shown that curbside recycling programs actually increase carbon emissions. It would likewise be surprising, but true, to point out that despite pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, the United States is one of the only developed nations to meet carbon reductions goals, mostly because of fracking and the conversion of powerplants to natural gas.

It also flies in the face of the standard understanding to realize that diesel-powered cars have a smaller carbon footprint than do electric vehicles. If global temperatures indeed prove to be a significant and detrimental phenomenon, it is simple (theoretically) to induce managed global cooling with a small, controlled injection of Sulphur dioxide at the poles.

One suspects, though, that such facts are not what “believers” have in mind when it comes to teaching climate change. It’s not actually about the temperature, it’s about the control—the ever-so-delicious shared frisson of seeking to avert Armageddon. A clear-eyed, reasoned, non-coercive approach to helping us live in harmony with our planet isn’t on the syllabus.

But it should be. Climate science education would indeed be a fine idea—it’s just not likely to happen.

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