Transparency International says poor performance due largely to failure to establish federal anti-corruption commission
Hungarian neighbour Slovakia certifies flying car as airworthy DW . Um, so now Slovakia is to air safety what the Isle of Man is to bank transparency? Don’t tell Boeing
“Today, the Identity Theft Resource Center®(ITRC), a nationally recognized nonprofit organization established to support victims of identity crime, will release its 16th Annual Data Breach Report, supported by Sontiq, a TransUnion company, at the Identity, Authentication, and the Road Ahead Policy Forum hosted by the Better Identity Coalition (BIC), FIDO Alliance and the ITRC. According to the 2021 Annual Data Breach Report, the overall number of data compromises (1,862) is up more than 68 percent compared to 2020.
The new record number of data compromises is 23 percent over the previous all-time high (1,506) set in 2017. The number of data events that involved sensitive information (Ex: Social Security numbers) increased slightly compared to 2020 (83 percent vs. 80 percent).
However, it remained well below the previous high of 95 percent set in 2017. The number of victims continues to decrease (down five (5) percent in 2021 compared to the previous year) as identity criminals focus more on specific data types rather than mass data acquisition. However, the number of consumers whose data was compromised multiple times per year remains alarmingly high. Other findings in the 2021 Annual Data Breach Report include:
- Ransomware-related data breaches have doubled in each of the past two years. At the current rate, ransomware attacks will surpass phishing as the number one root cause of data compromises in 2022.
- There were more cyberattack-related data compromises (1,603) in 2021 than all data compromises in 2020 (1,108).
- Compromises increased year-over-year (YoY) in every primary sector but one – Military – where there were no data breaches publicly disclosed. The Manufacturing & Utilities sector saw the largest percentage increase in data compromises at 217 percent over 2020.
- The number of data breach notices that do not reveal the root cause of a compromise (607) has grown by more than 190 percent since 2020.”
Download the ITRC’s 2021 Annual Data Breach Report
Suburban Chicago McMansions Follow a Dark Logic Even I Do Not Understand McMansion Hell.
Science Blogs: “Google Labs just released a new “experiment” – Body Browser. You have to upgrade to Google Chrome beta if you don’t already have it, but when you do, you can play with a 3-D, rotatable reconstruction of a (female) human body. Sliders let you fade the circulatory, skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems in and out over the body organs; you can toggle labels on and off, and you can zoom, spin, and rotate in a way that would only be cooler if it were on a touchscreen iPad…But by far the coolest function is the search box (It’s Google – of course it has one!) As you type in the box, it guesses what you mean and zooms all over the body from structure to structure, which can be quite amusing. When you finish, it will have zoomed you in on your structure of choice, while fading everything else out. Coolest anatomy learning tool ever? Well, maybe not, but I still wish I had this back when I was teaching anatomy! Sadly, it doesn’t go down to cellular resolution – typing in “islets of langerhans” will get you nowhere, and it doesn’t handle brain anatomy very well. There are a few structures missing – sesamoid bones, for example – as well as anything male. I assume they’ll add a male version later – and who knows, maybe they’ll let you zoom down to cells eventually. Until they do, it’s not truly a “Google Earth for the human body”. But it’s still pretty darn cool…”
WSJ: “To say that Big Tech controls the internet might seem like an exaggeration. Increasingly, in at least one sense, it’s literally true. The internet can seem intangible, a post-physical environment where things like viral posts, virtual goods and metaverse concerts just sort of happen.
But creating that illusion requires a truly gargantuan—and quickly-growing—web of physical connections. Fiber-optic cable, which carries 95% of the world’s international internet traffic, links up pretty much all of the world’s data centers, those vast server warehouses where the computing happens that transforms all those 1s and 0s into our experience of the internet. Where those fiber-optic connections link up countries across the oceans, they consist almost entirely of cables running underwater—some 1.3 million kilometers (or more than 800,000 miles) of bundled glass threads that make up the actual, physical international internet.
And until recently, the overwhelming majority of the undersea fiber-optic cable being installed was controlled and used by telecommunications companies and governments. Today, that’s no longer the case. In less than a decade, four tech giants—Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Amazon—have become by far the dominant users of undersea-cable capacity. Before 2012, the share of the world’s undersea fiber-optic capacity being used by those companies was less than 10%. Today, that figure is about 66%…”
I walked right out of the machinery
The marvellous The Mario Rivoli Lifetime Collection of Bakelite / a couple of MeFi things: Favorite Maps of 2021; remastered Thingu / create an Endless Acid Banger in a browser (via Synthanatomy) / try recreating Manuel Göttsching’s amazing E2-E4, from 1984. You can’t / also related, the 40 greatest synth sounds of all time / Wikipedia’s list of ‘unusual articles’ / retro-futures: Where Are They Now: Flying Car Concepts From Just The Last Decade / Zillow Gone Wild, real estate drama / An Exclusive Interview with The Marble Arch Mound: ‘But in reality, I am part of history, merely one chapter of an ancient story. Marble Arch has a long legacy of scaffolds erected for the public good.’ You could always sign the petition / Master of the Universe, architect Mike Davies and his interest in astronomy / trickier times / simpler times.
The sound(s) of confusion
Electronicos Fantasticos, which ‘reincarnate[s] old electronics to elektromagnetik native instruments and create the orchestra’. E.g. Barcode Boarding / Axel Hartmann designs synthesizers / a Kubrick-esque collection of Onlooker Postcards, at SwellMap’sfantastic Flickr page (via Meanwhile) / Watergate Living, old school advertising imagery. Taste the aspic / Picture the City, at the Bank of England Museum (via BBC News) / paintings by Claudia Rilling / paintings and photographs by Peggy Kuiper / photographs of discarded objects by Daria Piskareva (and the occasionally probably nsfw nude) / some words about Wordle. Overwhelming for its creator, quickly and controversially ripped off. Try this version for unlimited plays in a low-key way. Or try Letterle to experience the music of chance / the Sony CHORDMACHINE, one of those quirky combo creations from the 80s / concept art by Gus Mendonca / quirky one-off Ferrari by Michelotti / music by Es.
