Alongside the evolving ‘metaverse’ is a new ‘darkverse’ of hidden criminal activity which could quickly evolve to fuel a new industry of metaverse-related cybercrime, according to Trend Micro.
In a new report, the security company predicted that the metaverse will be targeted with a range of new and evolving threats, with the darkverse soon becoming the go-to place for conducting illegal activities away from the eyes of law enforcement.
Grid – Why are U.S. workers so bad at taking time off? – The United States still has no federal paid vacation policy, making it one of only a handful of countries withoutguaranteed paid annual leave. Canada and Japan are also among the countries with the least paid annual leave, the report said, at 10 days each. Both countries, however, require employers to offer more vacation based on seniority. The U.S. is also the only country within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development — an intergovernmental organization composed of 38 member countries promoting global trade — without a paid annual leave policy, according to “No Vacation Nation,” a 2019 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research…
Are Americans even using the (comparatively) little vacation time they have? The answer appears to be no. In 2018, a study from the U.S. Travel Association, Oxford Economics and Ipsos found that 55 percent of employees said they didn’t use all their paid time off…”
The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score
The New York Times:”…Architects, academic administrators, doctors, nursing home workers and lawyers described growing electronic surveillance over every minute of their workday.
They echoed complaints that employees in many lower-paid positions have voiced for years: that their jobs are relentless, that they don’t have control — and in some cases, that they don’t even have enough time to use the bathroom. In interviews and in hundreds of written submissions to The Times, white-collar workers described being tracked as “demoralizing,” “humiliating” and “toxic.” Micromanagement is becoming standard, they said. UnitedHealth Group Megan Polney Therapist. Ms. Polney’s keyboard activity was closely monitored when she worked for a division of UnitedHealth Group.
She sometimes accrued “idle time” while discussing cases with colleagues, affecting her chances of getting bonuses and promotions. But the most urgent complaint, spanning industries and incomes, is that the working world’s new clocks are just wrong: inept at capturing offline activity, unreliable at assessing hard-to-quantify tasks and prone to undermining the work itself…”
Scientific American: “Extreme heat has been a constant in the news this past summer: In July a punishing heat wave in Europe pushed temperatures across parts of the U.K. above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) for the first time in history. That same month was viciously hot across China, including in Shanghai—home to 26 million people—which tied its highest-ever July reading of 105.6 degrees F (40.9 degrees C).
And even before the summer officially began, searing heat settled over the U.S. South in May. Amarillo, Tex., recorded its earliest day with temperatures topping 100 degrees F (37.8 degrees C), and Abilene, Tex., endured 14 straight days of 100 degrees F or higher, doubling its previous streak. Those were just a few of the events that contributed to the Northern Hemisphere’s land areas experiencing their second-warmest June and third-warmest July on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But temperatures that make big news today may seem ho-hum—even relatively cool—within a couple of decades, as the continued burning of fossil fuels pushes baseline temperatures ever higher. Heat waves are also becoming longer and more frequent.
Not every summer will be hotter than the one just before it, of course, but global warming means that the heat records set today will eventually fall down the charts. As U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said during the July launch of Heat.gov, a government website for heat information, “The reality is, given the scientific predictions, this summer—with its oppressive and widespread heat waves—is likely to be one of the coolest summers of the rest of our lives.”
Chokepoint Capitalism Strangles Us All
Capitalism works in insidiuous ways.
