Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: internet

The City of New Orleans has suffered a cybersecurity attack serious enough for Mayor LaToya Cantrell to declare a state of emergency.

The attack started at 5 a.m. CST on Friday, December 13, according to the City of New Orleans’ emergency preparedness campaign, NOLA Ready, managed by the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. NOLA Ready tweeted that “suspicious activity was detected on the City’s network,” and as investigations progressed, “activity indicating a cybersecurity incident was detected around 11 am.” As a precautionary measure, the NOLA tweet confirmed, the City’s IT department gave the order for all employees to power down computers and disconnect from Wi-Fi. All City servers were also powered down, and employees told to unplug any of their devices.

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The power shift continues.

Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the world has developed complex supply chains, from designers to manufacturers, from distributors to importers, wholesalers and retailers, it’s what allowed billions of products to be made, shipped, bought and enjoyed in all corners of the world. In recent times the power of the Internet, especially the mobile phone, has unleashed a movement that’s rapidly destroying these layers and moving power to new places.

The Internet is the most powerful mechanism we can imagine to match perfectly individuals that need something, and people with something to offer. The moment started slowly by reducing complexity and removing the middle layer in the late 1990s. From insurance to early PC makers like Dell to travel agents, this time seemed to be an age where “direct” became a desirable moniker. This time seemed to favor scale and efficiency over service or brand, for commodities like insurance cover or processing power, the overheads of sales, marketing and retail footprint were stripped away.

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While these “moonshots” are still some years away, there are viable applications of 5G in the near term. South Korea launched the world’s first commercial 5G network in April and has seen data transfer rates rise from 50 megabits per second to over 700 Mbps. This enables the delivery of augmented reality, virtual reality and AI-enhanced real-time sports content.

With the arrival of next-generation mobile networks, new services like remote surgery will be suddenly feasible. More immediately, expect a boom in video traffic and augmented reality content.

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BOSTON, MA — Xfinity Comcast cable television and Internet customers were without service Wednesday morning, thanks to the company’s sixth major outage in the past five days. A spokesperson for Comcast was not immediately available for comment. In addition to the outage in Massachusetts, there were reports of service interruptions in other parts of the country.

Businesses and residential customers on the North Shore were particularly hard hit by the outage. In Salem, the recreational marijuana retailer Insa said it would be closed until further notice because of the outage. At least 15 North Shore communities are affected by the outage.

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The blockchain technology that appeared in 2008 with the introduction of Bitcoin is developing approximately five times as quickly as the Internet did. It even went through its boom and bust periods more rapidly than the dotcom mania did.

Today, the ICO hype is over, and, just like with the dotcom bubble, we have seen many companies fail. Many hope to see revolutionary Google-like and Amazon-like blockchain-based solutions appear from the surviving startups. Some of the venture capitalists who have influenced the Internet boom, such as Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz and Timothy Draper from Draper Associates, share this hope for the blockchain industry.

Enterprise software is estimated to be a $457 billion market in 2019, and blockchain solutions will eat part of it. Given the blockchain market fatigue that we are noticing, where do we stand with the significant “technological revolution” that the true blockchain enthusiasts have promised?

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SpaceX has said it is taking measures to tackle some of the concerns raised by astronomers about its Starlink constellation, as it gears up to launch more than a thousand satellites in the next 12 months.

The company’s Starlink mega constellation, which will add up to 42,000 satellites to orbit (only 2,000 active satellites in total orbit Earth today) to beam high-speed internet around the globe, has been taking shape in 2019. The company launched its first 60 satellites in May, followed by a second launch in November.

A third launch is planned in late December, and a fourth in January – with 24 in total planned by the end of 2020. The company hopes to launch 60 Starlink satellites roughly once every two weeks, adding more than 1,500 satellites to orbit by the end of next year alone.

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Europe’s police agency is worried that the 5G will interfere with law enforcement’s ability to track people.

Catherine De Bolle, head of Europol is asking European Union leaders to allow their agency to be more engaged in policy conversations involving the adoption of 5G technology, Reuters reports.

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The case for creating a United States Space Force is compelling. The United States military’s ability to wage war has become increasingly reliant on satellites. Navigation, reconnaissance, and communications are all handled by space assets. The world economy has become dependent on space satellites. The Internet consists of servers throughout the world linked by satellite constellations. Knock out those satellites and commercial companies’ ability to do business becomes seriously compromised. The space version of Pearl Harbor could reduce the United States to developing-world status in a single blow.

China and Russia, the main enemies of the United States in a potential conflict, are busily developing weapons systems to destroy America’s space infrastructure. Indeed, remote jamming may well do the job without resorting to a direct strike. The potential for jamming is a reason why Pence mentioned the development of jam-proof satellites in his speech. In all, Pence proposed an investment of $8 billion in new space systems during the next five years. The money is likely to be just a down payment for creating a new military branch that would achieve President Trump’s dream of achieving American space dominance.

The idea of a United States Space Force brings science fiction visions of American military personnel doing battle against an enemy in space. Indeed, the joke that has become common on social media is that President Trump is proposing to create nothing less than Star Fleet, the organization made famous in the Star Trek franchise of movies and TV shows.

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