Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

9-year-old girl’s lemonade stand raises $3,400 for Lytton, B.C. wildfire victims | Globalnews.ca

When Emily Loewen learned Lytton had been virtually wiped off the map by a devastating wildfire last month, she got to work with her friend Gracie to do something about it.

Source: 9-year-old girl’s lemonade stand raises $3,400 for Lytton, B.C. wildfire victims | Globalnews.ca

Password of three random words better than complex variation, experts say | Data and computer security | The Guardian

In a blogpost, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – which is part of Government Communications Headquarters – said a three-word system creates passwords that are easy to remember. In addition, it creates unusual combinations of letters, which means the system is strong enough to keep online accounts secure from cybercriminals. By contrast, more complex passwords can be ineffective as their makeup can often be guessed by criminals using specialist software. The agency said cybercriminals targeted predictable strategies meant to make passwords more complex. Examples include substituting the letter O with a zero, or the number one with an exclamation mark. Criminals allow for such patterns in their hacking software, negating any added security from such passwords. “Counterintuitively, the enforcement of these complexity requirements results in the creation of more predictable passwords,” the agency said. By contrast, passwords constructed from three random words tended to be longer and harder to predict, and used letter combinations that were more difficult for hacking algorithms to detect, it said.

Source: Password of three random words better than complex variation, experts say | Data and computer security | The Guardian

The Latest: COVID-19 hospitalizations increase in Arizona – San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Arizona on Saturday reported more than 2,000 additional COVID-19 cases for the fourth straight day as the number of virus-related hospitalizations continued to rise.

The U.S. state’s coronavirus dashboard reported 2,653 additional cases and 34 deaths, increasing the pandemic totals to 943,415 cases and 18,376 deaths.

There were 1,358 COVID-19 patients occupying inpatient beds as of Friday, up from 866 two weeks earlier on July 23, according to the dashboard.

Source: The Latest: COVID-19 hospitalizations increase in Arizona – San Gabriel Valley Tribune

From Mexico to Australia, Indigenous youth reimagine the internet for their languages · Global Voices

There are some 7,000 languages in the world, but only 10 dominate the internet. English leads, with 25.9 percent of online content, followed by Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, Japanese, Russian, and German. Facing this reality, Indigenous youth from Mexico to Australia are carving out spaces for their languages on the web.

Forty percent of all languages are at “some level of endangerment,” according to UNESCO, and Indigenous languages are particularly at risk, as hegemonic languages permeate education, governments, and media worldwide.

On July 13, Indigenous language activists from Mexico and Australia shared strategies during an online talk co-organized by Global Voices and First Languages Australia, with the support of the Embassy of Australia in Mexico.

Source: From Mexico to Australia, Indigenous youth reimagine the internet for their languages · Global Voices