Spotify breidt zijn aanbod uit met videocontent van Cineverse. Video podcasts, muziekvideo's, clips en videocursussen vormen al een behoorlijk logische uitbreiding van het aanbod. Het vergroot de lock-in en rechtvaardigt hogere tarieven. Het toevoegen van series gaat een stap verder en is te...

Het streven naar klantloyaliteit kent in de telecom vele verschijningsvormen. Centraal staat het verschijnsel 'lock-in', wat niet de klant maar de eigen onderneming centraal stelt. Het opzetten van een goed loyaliteitsprogramma blijkt een harde noot om te kraken...

(Telecompaper) Tele2 Latvia has implemented a protective system that automatically blocks calls from alternate mobile numbers from foreign networks, providing customers with safer voice communication...

This EMF Radiation Blocking Hoodie from Bon Charge looks like it’s just the ticket for these warm winter nights. And when we say warm, you know we’re not just referring to the temperature, right? According to some very sensible people, over exposure to high levels of electromagnetic radiation can be a very not good thing. Now before we all head off and find a deep bunker somewhere, it’s not just the levels, but also the type of radiation that matters....

The post EMF Radiation Blocking Hoodie Keeps You Safe. Maybe. appeared first on The Red Ferret Journal.

Learn how YouTube's ban on ad blockers will affect advertisers. Users aren't happy, but smart advertisers can use the change to their advantage.

The post How YouTube’s Crack Down on Ad Blockers Impacts Advertisers appeared first on Portent.

Picture this: The leaves are starting to change, the days are getting shorter and school is back in full swing. These telltale signs can only mean one thing. Fall has arrived.  

On this Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers, Fr. Andrew describes how death and other major life transitions present the opportunity to remake our lives, with the loosening up of previously locked relationships and ways of thinking.

In this episode, Fr. Anthony reads the sixth and final chapter of St. John Chrysostom's On the Priesthood. The translation is by Rev. W. R. W. Stephens, M.A., (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church Volume IX, edited by Philip Schaffer, D.D., LL.D.), lightly edited to take out some of the archaicisms. Enjoy the show!

Fr. Apostolos shares about the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes with the five loaves and two fish, and encourages us to offer our best unto the Lord.

Jesus Christ understood that both the disciples and us would be puzzled about how to react to Him after the crucifixion. What did Jesus do? He told the apostle St Thomas and us: “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here with your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” And the apostle St Thomas was empowered by this remarkable encounter with Jesus Christ to overcome unbelief and to say to Jesus: “My Lord and my God.”

Fr. Emmanuel Kahn preaches from the 19th chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew about a rich young man who did not wish to give away his wealth to the poor and to then follow Jesus.

The latest volume in Fr. Lawrence Farley’s Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series, Shepherding the Flock: The Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle to Timothy and to Titus, combines a fresh, literal translation of the pastoral epistles with verse-by-verse commentary written"for the average layman, for the non-professional who feels a bit intimidated by the presence of copious footnotes, long bibliographies, and all those other things which so enrich the lives of academics" (from the series introduction).

Bobby Maddex interviews Justina Uram, an Orthodox public interest attorney with degrees from Penn State Dickinson School of Law and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She is also the author of a brand new novel titled The Cerulean Locket, which is published by Tilden Terrence Press.

In this homily from Palm Sunday, Fr. Pat fortifies us on our journey with three points about the Cross: two negative and one positive.

Do we sometimes focus on what's wrong with people, instead of what's right about them?

If you’re getting unwanted calls from people and numbers you don’t recognize or wish to hear from, call blocking is the answer you’ve been waiting for. Whether it’s relentless spam, overzealous agents, persistent recruiters, or someone from your personal life, call blocking can put a stop to all of it—and […]

The post Call Blocking Done Right (The First Time) appeared first on .

Head coach Rhian Wilkinson says Wales are monitoring Jess Fishlock's fitness in conjunction with her club side Seattle Reign.

Former Wales lock Jake Ball announces he will retire from professional rugby at the end of the season.

One of the UK's largest Sikh temples has reinvented itself as an emergency food operation.

From an excited pub manager's overloaded booking site, to a downbeat barber on universal credit in Brixton.

St Pauls residents say the garden helps them to "slow down" during the pandemic.

Many young people returned to live with their parents during the pandemic. How's it going, a year on?

Bear Scotland says it is aware of complaints about congestion around improvements to a cycleway.

As people across the UK roll their clocks back to GMT on Sunday morning, there's one clock that will always show the wrong time.

Businesses in a high rise in Brighton fear their Christmas trading could be ruined.

Brighton & Hove City Council says immediate action was taken because of fire safety risks.

Its hands haven't moved for several months.

The owners of a coffee shop in Stockton say they have seen footfall drop significantly.

Bath lock Ewan Richards is growing "everything" about his game, says coach Andy Robinson after their second Premiership Rugby Cup win.

Douglas Council's 1930s development on Lord Street remains boarded after tenants were moved in 2022.

Twitter is one of the closest things we have today to a de facto "public space" on the internet.

When this whole horrible COVID19 experience started—back when we thought maybe we’d be in lockdown for a few weeks, not a few months to a year—I thought to myself that at least it might be something worthy of documenting with my camera. I considered the world so changed and strange in this moment in time […]

I recently accepted a large proofreading job to be completed in SDL Trados Studio 2014. All seemed to be fine until I tried to open some of the project files. This article describes how to deal with “Corrupt file: Missing … Continue reading →

In the echoing halls of the Tower of Babel, myriad languages tangled, creating a confusion of tongues and leaving humans estranged.  Fast forward to the present day, professional translators stand as the modern-day heroes, bridging linguistic divides and fostering global connections.  Yet, these linguists often grapple with the technical juggernaut of AutoHotkey scripting. AutoHotkey, an … Continue reading Linguistic Alchemy to unlock AutoHotkey

There has been a set of discussions about lock-in around Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Joe McKendrick and Lori MacVittie in particular bring out some of the real challenges here.

Lori brings out the difference between portability and mobility. While I'm not in 100% agreement with Lori's definitions, there is a key point here: its not just code, its the services that the code relies on that buy lock-in into a cloud.

So for example, if you use Amazon SQS, Force.com Chatter Collaboration, Google App Engine's bigtable data store, all of these tie you into the cloud you are deployed onto. Amazon isn't really a PaaS yet, so the tie-in is minimal, but Google App Engine (GAE) is based on Authentication, Logging, Data, Cache and other core services. Its almost impossible to imagine building an app without these, and they all tie you into GAE. Similarly, VMForce relies on a set of services from force.com.

But its not just about mobility between force.com and Google: between two PaaSes. The typical enterprise needs a private cloud as much as public cloud. So there is a bigger question:

Can you move your application from a private PaaS to a public Paas and back again?

In other words, even if Google and Force got together and defined a mobility layer, can I then take an app I built and run it internally? Neither Google nor Force is offering a private PaaS.

The second key question is this:

How can I leverage standard Enterprise Architecture in a PaaS?

What I'm getting at here is that as the world starts to implement PaaS, does this fit with existing models? Force.com and Google App Engine have effectively designed their own world view. VMForce and the recent Spring/Google App Engine announcement address one aspect of that - what Lori calls portability. By using Spring as an application model, there is at least a passing similarity to current programming models in Enterprises. But Enterprise Architectures are not just about Java code: what about an ESB? What about a Business Process engine (BPMS)? What about a standard XACML-based entitlement engine? So far PaaS has generally only addressed the most basic requirements of Enterprise core services: databases and a identity model.

So my contention is this: you need a PaaS that supports the same core services that a modern Enterprise architecture has: ESB, BPMS, Authentication/Authorization, Portal, Data, Cache, etc. And you need a PaaS that works inside your organization as well as in a public Cloud. And if you really don't want any lock-in.... hadn't that PaaS better be Open Source as well? And yes, this is a hint of things coming very soon!

1. B.C. ports lockout update: Union says it will challenge Ottawa’s intervention in work stoppages  Vancouver Sun
2. Union says it will challenge Ottawa's intervention in B.C. port work stoppages  CTV News
3. Labour minister forcing end of negotiations at Quebec ports marks 'dark day for workers' rights,' union says  CBC.ca
4. Canada orders ports to restart as labour disputes choke trade  Financial Post
5. Opinion: Stuck in the middle, and risking union support  The Globe and Mail

File transfer is always handled by a separate service, sometimes it is a third-party service in videoconferencing. When sending files during a video session, file data flow and video stream are independent of each other. Encryption is a mature method to ensure file security. However, it still has the chance to leave footprints on the intermediate forwarding machines. These footprints can indicate that a file once passed through, some protocol-related logs give clues to the hackers' later investigation. This work proposes a file-sending scheme through the video stream using blockchain and steganography. Blockchain is used as a file slicing and linkage mechanism. Steganography is applied to embed file pieces into video frames that are continuously generated during the session. The scheme merges files into the video stream with no file transfer protocol use and no extra bandwidth consumed by the file to provide trackless file transmission during the video communication.

At present, there is a need for an authentic and fast approach to certificate verification. Which verifies and authenticates the certificates to reduce the extent of duplicity and time. An academic certificate is significant for students, the government, universities, and employers. Academic credentials play a vital role in the career of students. A few people manipulate academic documents for their benefit. There are cases identified where people produced fake academic certificates for jobs or higher education admission. Various research works are developing a secure model to verify genuine academic credentials. This research article proposed a new security model which contains several security algorithms such as timestamps, hash function, digital signature, steganography, and blockchain. The proposed model issues secure digital academic certificates. It enhanced security measures and automated educational certificate verification using blockchain technology. The advantages of the proposed model are automated, cost-effective, secured, traceable, accurate, and time-saving.

Supply chain management practices are vital for success and survival in today's competitive Indian retail market. The advent of COVID-19 pandemic necessitates a digital disruption in retail supply chain management centred on efficient technology like blockchain in order to enhance supply chain performance. The present research aims to decipher the nature of associations between supply chain management practices, blockchain technology adoption and supply chain performance in retail firms. The research is based on primary survey of specific food and grocery retailers operating on a supermarket format stores in two Indian cities. The findings pointed towards the presence of significant and positive association of all the constructs with each other. Moreover, the mediating role of blockchain technology adoption was also revealed, i.e., it partially mediates the effects of supply chain management practices on supply chain performance.

In the era of big data, enterprises have accumulated a large amount of research and development data. Effective management of their precipitated data and safe sharing of data can improve the collaboration efficiency of research and development personnel, which has become the top priority of enterprise development. This paper proposes to use blockchain technology to assist the collaboration efficiency of enterprise R&D personnel. Firstly, the multi-chain blockchain platform is used to realise the data sharing of internal data of enterprise R&D data department, project internal data and enterprise data centre, and then the process of construction of multi-chain structure and data sharing is analysed. Finally, searchable encryption was introduced to achieve data retrieval and secure sharing, improving the collaboration efficiency of enterprise research and development personnel and maximising the value of data assets. Through the experimental verification, the multi-chain structure improves the collaboration efficiency of researchers and data security sharing.

Elections hold immense significance in shaping the leadership of a nation or organisation, serving as a pivotal moment that influences the trajectory of the entity involved. Despite their centrality to modern democratic systems, elections face a significant hurdle: widespread mistrust in the electoral process. This pervasive lack of confidence poses a substantial threat to the democratic framework, even in the case of prominent democracies such as India and US, where inherent flaws persist in the electoral system. Issues such as vote rigging, electronic voting machine (EVM) hacking, election manipulation, and polling booth capturing remain prominent concerns within the current voting paradigm. Leveraging blockchain for electronic voting systems offers an effective solution to alleviate the prevailing apprehensions associated with e-voting. By incorporating blockchain into the electoral process, the integrity and security of the system could be significantly strengthened, addressing the current vulnerabilities and fostering trust in democratic elections.

Under the current framework of police online teaching, in order to effectively solve the lack of high-quality resources of the traditional platform, backward sharing technology, poor performance of the digital platform and the privacy problems faced by each subject in sharing. This paper designs and implements the online teaching platform based on blockchain and interplanetary file system (IPFS). Based on the architecture of a 'decentralised' police online teaching platform, the platform uses blockchain to store hashes of encrypted private information and user-set access control policies, while the real private information is stored in IPFS after encryption. In the realisation of privacy information security storage at the same time to ensure the effective control of the user's own information. In order to achieve flexible rights management, the system classifies private information. In addition, the difficulties of police online teaching and training reform in the era of big data are solved one by one from the aspects of communication mode, storage facilities, incentive mechanism and confidentiality system, which effectively improves the stability and security of police online teaching.

In view of the low evaluation accuracy of the effectiveness of cross-border e-commerce supply chain innovation model and the low correlation coefficient of innovation model influencing factors, the evaluation method of cross-border e-commerce supply chain innovation model based on blockchain technology is studied. First, analyse the operation mode of cross-border e-commerce supply chain, and determine the key factors affecting the innovation mode; Then, the comprehensive integration weighting method is used to analyse the factors affecting innovation and calculate the weight value; Finally, the blockchain technology is introduced to build an evaluation model for the supply chain innovation model and realise the evaluation of the cross-border e-commerce supply chain innovation model. The experimental results show that the evaluation accuracy of the proposed method is high, and the highest correlation coefficient of the influencing factors of innovation mode is about 0.99, which is feasible.

Aim/Purpose: The aim of this paper is to propose a new information security controls framework for blockchain technology, which is currently absent from the National and International Information Security Standards. Background: Blockchain technology is a secure and relatively new technology of distributed digital ledgers, which is based on inter-linked blocks of transactions, providing great benefits such as decentralization, transparency, immutability, and automation. There is a rapid growth in the adoption of blockchain technology in different solutions and applications and within different industries throughout the world, such as finance, supply chain, digital identity, energy, healthcare, real estate, and the government sector. Methodology: Risk assessment and treatments were performed on five blockchain use cases to determine their associated risks with respect to security controls. Contribution: The significance of the proposed security controls is manifested in complementing the frameworks that were already established by the International and National Information Security Standards in order to keep pace with the emerging blockchain technology and prevent/reduce its associated information security risks. Findings: The analysis results showed that the proposed security controls herein can mitigate relevant information security risks in blockchain-based solutions and applications and, consequently, protect information and assets from unauthorized disclosure, modification, and destruction. Recommendations for Practitioners: The performed risk assessment on the blockchain use cases herein demonstrates that blockchain can involve security risks that require the establishment of certain measures in order to avoid them. As such, practitioners should not blindly assume that through the use of blockchain all security threats are mitigated. Recommendation for Researchers: The results from our study show that some security risks not covered by existing Standards can be mitigated and reduced when applying our proposed security controls. In addition, researchers should further justify the need for such additional controls and encourage the standardization bodies to incorporate them in their future editions. Impact on Society: Similar to any other emerging technology, blockchain has several drawbacks that, in turn, could have negative impacts on society (e.g., individuals, entities and/or countries). This is mainly due to the lack of a solid national and international standards for managing and mitigating risks associated with such technology. Future Research: The majority of the blockchain use cases in this study are publicly published papers. Therefore, one limitation of this study is the lack of technical details about these respective solutions, resulting in the inability to perform a comprehensive risk identification properly. Hence, this area will be expanded upon in our future work. In addition, covering other standardization bodies in the area of distributed ledger in blockchain technology would also prove fruitful, along with respective future design of relevant security architectures.