Friday, December 29, 2017

Any election in any country (if connected to the Internet at any point) is hackable.
Why the 2018 Midterms Are So Vulnerable to Hackers
The first primary of the 2018 midterm elections, in Texas, is barely eight weeks away. It’s time to ask: Will the Russian government deploy “active measures” of the kind it used in 2016? Is it possible that a wave of disinformation on Facebook and Twitter could nudge the results of a tight congressional race in, say, Virginia or Nevada? Will hackers infiltrate low-budget campaigns in Pennsylvania and Nebraska, and leak their e-mails to the public? Will the news media and voters take the bait?
By most accounts, the answer is likely to be yes—and, for several reasons, the election may prove to be as vulnerable, or more so, than the 2016 race that brought Donald Trump to the White House.




The future, for my Computer Security students.
Key trends shaping technology in 2017




Oil just got a bit more expensive. Interesting that the Treasury released the satellite images. Didn’t know they had spy satellites. It was South Korean oil, which must have made the South even madder!
South Korea seizes ship it claims transferred oil to North Korea
South Korea has seized a Hong Kong-registered ship that allegedly transferred oil to a North Korean vessel in violation of United Nations sanctions.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry said the Lighthouse Winmore left the port of Yeosu in South Korea carrying refined oil which was then transferred to a North Korean ship in international waters on October 19.
The US Treasury Department released satellite imagery in November of two ships allegedly performing an illegal ship-to-ship transfer in international waters on the same day.




A good summary of the Statistical tools in Excel.




Global Warming! Global Warming! Perhaps it is not ‘settled science.’
Earth Might Go Through a Mini Ice Age During the Next Decades (Study)
At the moment, the main worry of the environmentalists is the constantly increasing temperatures. However, a team of researchers from Northumbria University discovered that a wave of coldness might soon hit our planet. This means it’s possible that Earth might pass through a mini ice age period, when main rivers could get frozen.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers have performed a simulation of how the magnetic waves of the Sun will evolve for the next decades. Judging from the results, it seems the global temperatures on our planet might start going down in 2021. It’s not the first time when something like this would happen, so researchers know what to expect.
The sudden drop of temperatures would lead to a mini ice age, also called the Maunder minimum. This is a reference to a previous cold period which occurred between 1646 and 1715, when famous rivers, like Thames flowing through London, ended up frozen.


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