It's safe to say the entire world is happy to see 2020 go! It has been an awful, terrible, no-good, miserable year of pandemic viral threats, never-ending news stories about them , ratcheted up creation of new vaccines bypassying the usual clinical trails over years of time, and nightly news reviews of body bags, hospitals putting patients in conference rooms because no beds available, health care and first responders'comments etc etc etc. I feel overwhelmed at times and I am a so-called "health care professional"for many years.
I think 2021 has to be a better year! I am cautiously optimistic about it that we the people of the United States will survive as a people and thrive over time. So keep your chin up, get on your knees and pray when you feel afraid, wash your hands frequently, avoid crowds, wear your masks everywhere to protect yourself and others [covid is airborne vector] . Do your part to stay healthy.
On a lighter note, today as I was reading my email, I learned there is a bulldog, a horse, a water fall, 2 streets [one in S.C. and one in California] and a charity, and a hotel all named Gloria; ! And don't forget Laura Branigan's "Gloria" song that the St Louis baseball played at their games in 2020. So it seems the name Gloria is in the radar of Google and thank goodness! That is my name too!
I put my first name in title of this blog just so readers know it's me. There has been massive identity theft of my created content in which about 10,000 photos I photographed with my big digital camera were stolen off my Apple imac computer as I was uploading them it seems. I had 9,000 + photos to upload and it said only about 4000 uploaded then at my next login those 4000 photos had vanished--stolen off computer! It seems impossible to secure the internet!
On the topic of the internet here are some of the news stories this final day of 2020 that all should probably read:
1) FBI needs to read this :"Though some researchers say that the scale and severity of ransomware attacks crossed a bright line in 2020, others describe this year as simply the next step in a gradual and, unfortunately, predictable devolution. After years spent honing their techniques, attackers are growing bolder. They've begun to incorporate other types of extortion like blackmail into their arsenals, by exfiltrating an organization's data and then threatening to release it if the victim doesn't pay an additional fee. Most significantly, ransomware attackers have transitioned from a model in which they hit lots of individuals and accumulated many small ransom payments to one where they carefully plan attacks against a smaller group of large targets from which they can demand massive ransoms. The antivirus firm Emsisoft found that the average requested fee has increased from about $5,000 in 2018 to about $200,000 this year."...
Researchers and incident responders are wholly focused on trying to change ransomware's threatening course. On Monday, the Institute for Security and Technology launched a Ransomware Task Force with partners like Microsoft, the Shadowserver Foundation, Citrix, and McAfee. ...
Mandiant's Carmakal also notes that some major law enforcement actions related to ransomware will become public in 2021. “We’ll see the fruits of that in the coming months," he says. “Law enforcement is particularly interested in arrests and indictments that can have a real impact on threat actors." International cooperation to apprehend and prosecute individuals is crucial to making a dent in the problem. There may also need to be other strong policy efforts from countries like the US, such as sanctions against countries that harbor ransomware actors."
https://www.wired.com/story/ransomware-2020-headed-down-dire-path/
On web 31dec2020;9:05am
2) Article about medical illustrators reveals interesting lucrative field for artists:
https://www.wired.com/story/in-a-pandemic-medical-illustrators-made-science-accessible/
31Dec2020;9:12am
3) Tech that ceased in 2020:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3601872/tech-that-died-in-2020.html
31dec2020;9:16am
4) SpaceX and Elon Musk advancing space travel in 2021:
"Flying humans on its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft is only part of what’s on tap for SpaceX. The company continues to test its Starship spacecraft, a next-generation vehicle that looks like a flying grain silo but, Musk hopes, will one day fly people to Mars."
31Dec2020;9:19am
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/30/2021-space-events-plan/
5) Google sings a happy song for 2021 and it is great:
.
https://9to5google.com/2020/12/29/google-assistant-new-year-song/
30Dec2020;7:10am
6) Apple Computers loses copyright infringement case against small company making virtual iOS copy for debugging Apple devices:
reuters.com/article/us-apple-corellium/apple-loses-copyright-claims-in-lawsuit-against-u-s-security-bug-startup-idUSKBN29320J
30Dec2020;7:05am
7) Google bans 600 apps from its play store for putting ads that prevent consumers from using their devices:
https://security.googleblog.com/2020/02/disruptive-ads-enforcement-and-our-new.html
30Dec2020;7:15am
& also https://www.androidauthority.com/google-play-store-app-ban-cheetah-1085601/
8) Google cloud print ends Jan 1st,2021:
https://www.engadget.com/google-cloud-print-shutdown-reminder-192956824.html
9) Man arrested and cryptocurrency seized by police for fraud:
Quote from article written by
Liam Barnes of
BBC News:
"A man has been arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering as part of a police probe into an international operation of fraudulent offers of drone light shows.
Nottinghamshire Police said the force made its first-ever seizure of cryptocurrency - a digital form of money traded online and exchanged in a similar way to traditional units of currency - worth about £78,000 after executing a warrant on 7 December"."
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology
30Dec2020
And of course today 31st December 2020 is the final day that the United Kingdom is a part of the European Union.
The Brexit deal is signed by Boris Johnson Prime Minister of UK and Ursula vonder Leyden of European Union yesterday. Some of its terms are:
"
* Businesses offering services, such as banking, architecture and accounting, will lose their automatic right of access to EU markets and will face some restrictions.
* There will no longer be automatic recognition of professional qualifications for people such as doctors, chefs and architects."
BBC.co.uk news 30Dec2020;7:57am
Summing up: goodbye to ransomware thieves, good bye to UK:EU "partnership"; good bye to coronavirus; HELLO 2021 from Gloria Poole, Registered Nurse, ands artist, cartoonist, writer, author in Springfield Missouri. Posted by me Gloria today 31December 2021 at 11am from my own apartment on my own equipment.
Update at 11:16am by me Gloria: I tried to use Google drive to create a new document and it said it is published to the web at:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/e/2PACX-1vRlnBssKxdicxWXraZl4oni31MVjFRQB_XVBwqNWNI2_cK3y_frhGD6RHRGxt0kmVyBwVEE3GTzjIgG/pub?w=960&h=720
The more Google ïmproves"their service the more difficult it gets to actually use some of their services. I think that is because of multiple anti-trust actions against them which is causing their algorithyms and proprietary code to be put into legal databases available to competitors on the web. So the antitrust actions are another 2020 event that is catastrophic for consumers.
