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The second largest data breaches reported in November that Marriott’s Starwood reservation system has been breached since 2014, affecting up to 500 million guests.
A few days later, another major breach was reported – Quora users’ account info and private chats were exposed, affecting around 100 million people.
While the largest hack in history involved around 3 billion accounts of Yahoo in 2013, Marriott’s will probably have the most “impact” as it not only involves usernames, emails, passwords, etc. (as in the case of Yahoo/Quora), but also includes passport info and date of birth among others. The latter two kinds are more personal and sensitive and could be combined to get access to many other things.
This is just another reason why companies should move (at least part of) their info system to cloud services providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Technically, those companies have much better security expertise and do provide an edge in protecting users from those breaches.
And for corporate executives, the data security and related issues are outsourced and liabilities are kinda transferred. Media and users might focus more on why tech companies could be breached. (so how did FB data get hacked?)
It seems that most advices on breaches include change password, double-check card transactions and credit reports, freeze your cards… All about what customers should put extra efforts on themselves.
But I thought users should be reimbursed for their trust being failed. Corporates should take more responsibilities and be forced to provide appropriate remedies; otherwise every company could just save money and let those breaches happen again, when
prob(breach) * loss on breach(including remedies, future loss business, etc.) < cost of good data protection
While financial institutions would take some financial damage in those breaches for users, the identity damage might be hard to recover.
Much more efforts should be beforehand in protecting data. Or it’s not only a full network of tracing, but also a future fake network of people.
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Companies’ plans announced
See who is joining and their IPO targets –
Other tech companies include – Pinterest ~$15-20 bn, Robinhood ~$10 bn
A CB Insights report, a good summary.
A video of a very interesting experience that involves VR settings and an live actor (motion captured and built in VR simultaneously)!
This might be the new start of VR enthusiasm. With 5G launching as soon as 19H1, its use in VR should not be far away. By that time, VR theater should be feasible and even in a interactive way (for front rows maybe); interactive VR party will come to reality (think of VR halloween party and maybe people don’t even need to actually wear costumes). The consumer level applications may focus on entertainment, but enterprise/government uses will also play an important part, perhaps in a way that most people won’t know.
If we go further.. and make robots instead of live human actors, things will be wild. When a connection is built, tactile internet + VR = do anything with anybody anywhere.
Recently I saw the state flag a few times with the bear and the name of “California Republic”. While the name may have new meanings now, it also represents its history.
Originally part of Mexico, the 1846 revolt declared independence of California Republic with its capital in Sonoma. Only lasted for 25 days, the republic later became part of the United States.
Despite the republic origin, California has been a strong democratic state since 1992.
It appears to me tho, that the “republic” or “democratic” name itself won’t convey much meaning going forward. Sure a party will start with a name that is closely related a specific opinion. After decades or hundreds of years, most of the founding ideas will fade away; it might be okay to just call them “party A” and “party B”.
Ultimately, most ordinary voters only care about if their feel good or not. And most of that feeling is correlated with economic status. So the flipping of the economy will change the control between parties.
California has been booming for years with the help from semiconductors, PCs, internet, etc. As long as tech industry remains strong, so does California and it will continue be won by the current party.
There are two aspects of the impact – 1) in terms of deserts itself including creatures that originally live deserts 2) in terms of deserts’ expansion to external environments
Although desert species are thought to be live in the hottest and driest places around the world, they can only thrive under limited conditions. It takes thousands and millions of years for creatures to adapt to new environments, but climate change is happening dramatically within 100-200 years.
According to a study on sensitivity to climate change for two reptiles, a moderate climate change of +2 °C and -50 mm precipitation, desert tortoises’ suitable habitat was reduced by nearly 88% in the Sonoran Desert and nearly 66% in the Mojave Desert regions.
The distinctive Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) in Joshua Tree National Park could lose up to 90 percent of its distribution if we increase temperature by +3 °C.
What is more, as creatures need to move to cooler and higher-elevations areas, another problem arises – mismatch and imbalance. Joshua trees are hard to move with in 10 years, where animals are more free to find new inhabitants. Even within critters, movement speeds are different, e.g. tortoises are slow-moving while side-blotched lizards are faster. But ecosystem is constituting of species depending on each other. The difference in moving speeds alone will cause lots of chaos.
Desertification has been talked up for years. In a 2018 study, Sahara Desert has expanded 10% since 1920. And the newest desert on earth is Aralkum Desert, which appeared since 1960 on the seabed once occupied by the Aral Sea.
As deserts are mostly measured by rainfall, it would be more interesting to look at land degradation. The World Atlas of Desertification claimed that “Over 75% of the Earth’s land area is already degraded, and over 90% could become degraded by 2050; Globally, a total area half of the size of the European Union (4.18 million km²) is degraded annually, with Africa and Asia being the most affected.” In a 1991 study, 35% of the world’s land surface is currently at risk and more than 20 million hectares are reduced annually to near or complete uselessness.
The measures are different, but the trend is certain.
延续上一篇的话题，AWS 在 Amazon 财报里有单独的数据，Azure 被放在 Intelligent Cloud Division 下一并汇报；同时，Azure 有单独汇报收入增速。
顺带用一下 Excel Online 的嵌入分享功能。
