Happy New Year! Welcome to 2023!

 

A Prayer for Blessings in the Year Ahead: Father, Thank you for your great love and blessing over our lives. Thank you that your favor has no end, but it lasts for our entire lifetime. Forgive us for sometimes forgetting that you are intimately acquainted with all of our ways, that you know what concerns us, and you cover us as with a shield. We ask that we would walk in your blessing and goodness today. That your face would shine on us. That you would open the right doors for our lives and for our loved ones, that you would close the wrong doors and protect us from those we need to walk away from. Establish the work of our hands and bring to fulfilment all that you have given us to do in these days. We pray that you would make our way purposeful and our footsteps firm out of your goodness and love. Give us a heart of wisdom to hear your voice, and make us strong by your huge favour and grace. In Jesus' name, Amen.

May your year be filled with peace, prosperity and love. May God's Blessings shower upon you and bestow upon each of you a bright, healthy and peaceful new year.

Don Kim & Calli - Donline

What sort of New Year’s resolution should a Christian make?

www.gotquestions.org

Netgear warns users to patch recently fixed WiFi router bug

Netgear has fixed a high-severity vulnerability affecting multiple WiFi router models and advised customers to update their devices to the latest available firmware as soon as possible.

The flaw impacts multiple Wireless AC Nighthawk, Wireless AX Nighthawk (WiFi 6), and Wireless AC router models.

Although Netgear did not disclose any information about the component affected by this bug or its impact, it did say that it is a pre-authentication buffer overflow vulnerability.

The impact of a successful buffer overflow exploitation can range from crashes following denial of service to arbitrary code execution, if code execution is achieved during the attack.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

A Christmas Blessing from Donline

 

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

Wishing you and your loved ones health, peace, happiness and prosperity; 
over this Christmas, the New Year and throughout 2023.

With Blessings,
Don, Kim & Calli

Christmas is a time to give. Please consider these good causes.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests

 

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests.” — Luke 2:13-14

On Christmas of 1914 something happened that nobody could have ever predicted. British and German troops were bogged down in the muddy cold trenches in Flanders Field which was their only protection from machine gun fire. Between them was “No Man’s Land,” an area the width of a football field, strewn with decaying bodies and barbed wire. The First World War was in a quagmire. Bodies were stacked like cordwood. But as Christmas approached, something in the soldiers warmed. On December 23 the German soldiers withdrew to a monastery ruin where they held Christmas worship. They put up Christmas trees - Tannenbaums - with lights that were so different from the grayness all around. British soldiers on the other side of the line couldn’t help but risk raising their heads to peek at the Tannenbaums - now hundreds of them, and they began to sing Christmas carols familiar to them.

Two British officers, defying orders, ventured out of the trenches to propose a Christmas truce to their enemies, but by now rank and file soldiers had already begun talking to, and meeting up with, groups of their opponents. The British sang everything from Christmas carols to Tipperary, and the Germans responded with a Christmas concert of their own. A German violinist stood atop his parapet and played on his violin. A French soldier, a member of the Paris Opera, sang out O Holy Night. A German officer named Thomas gave a gift to a British officer–a Victoria cross and letter from a fallen British soldier, and Lt. Hulse, from the British side, responded by giving Thomas a silk scarf. Each side buried their dead. They bared their heads and recited the 23rd Psalm. As Christmas day 1914 drew to a close and darkness fell, the soldiers gradually returned to their trenches. For two whole days they had ceased being enemies, and the world was at peace. In the darkness a voice started singing one of the most familiar Christmas carols: Silent Night.

Peace is always a noble aspiration; in times of war or in times of harmony. When you find yourself at odds with someone or when you’re feeling pretty good about your relationships. When you feel in harmony with God or when you feel a discord. It’s always important to pursue peace.

www.biblegateway.com

The Great British Switch Off: Your questions answered

If you didn’t know already, in 2023 the UK telephone network will be changing profoundly. This is the year that new sales of analogue (PSTN and ISDN) telephone services will end, and by 2025 they’ll be switched off altogether.

Why is the switch off happening? The old copper telephone network that has provided the backbone to our communications (and more recently internet connections) for many, many years is finally being withdrawn from service.

It’s a network that’s existed in some form or another for more than a hundred years and compared to some of the modern technology that’s around today, it is beginning to show its age - and there are now better alternatives.

Full fibre (FTTP) broadband, for example, has the benefit of being much faster, more reliable and less prone to interference. As our reliance on not only high-quality connectivity but also more feature rich voice communications increases, it provides a much better platform than old fashioned copper can.

The new technology that is currently rolling out should see us through the next few decades, while the old copper network would be unable to cope with our changing demands.

Click here to find answers to frequently asked questions about the GBSO.

www.zen.co.uk

Christmas is coming and you're invited!

You’re very welcome at a church near you this Advent and Christmas. From beautiful candlelit moments to joyful nativity and Christingle services for all ages, come and be encouraged by the hope of the Christmas story. Search your location to find your nearest services and events.

Are you thinking of coming to church for the first time, or the first time in a long time, this Christmas? You will be very welcome! Find out the answers to common questions you may have.

Why not invite a friend or family member to come with you to church this December? Read our blog for ideas about inviting others.

If you can’t make it to church in person this Advent and Christmas, join in online. Search for services live streamed from a church near you. We also stream national online services via YouTube and Facebook.

www.achurchnearyou.com

Child of Hope Uganda - Nativity play for 2022!

 

Welcome to this year's Child of Hope fun Nativity play, starring a bunch of CoH pupils and shot in one take... well, almost.

Huge thanks to everyone who has donated to our Christmas appeal. This year, we would love to provide Christmas food parcels for all our pupils and their families from the Namatala slum, as well as food parcels and a Christmas party (Ebola restrictions allowing) for the pupils at our new nursery in Namalu, Karamoja. Over 650 families would benefit from your kind donations.

Please click here for details if you'd like to donate (which would be great!).

www.childofhopeuganda.org

Ultra-desirable Brough Superior Lawrence Dagger cuts a dash

Brough Superior has expanded its ultra-exclusive, high-end Lawrence range with a new, sportier variant: the Brough Superior Lawrence Dagger.

Purveyors of luxury, high-end motorcycles, Brough Superior - founded in Britain but resurrected in France in 2014 - launched the exquisitely finished Lawrence in 2021 as the latest addition to a steadily growing range of retro-inspired, lavishly appointed motorcycles to join the SS100, Pendine and Anniversary.

Now for 2023, Brough Superior has revealed the ‘Dagger’, a more contemporary, sporting-themed version of its range-topper.

At the front, the Dagger gains new bodywork with a funnelled nose cone section leading down to a porthole headlight, a fork crown, rear fender and seat cowl made of carbon-fibre. It also receives a more discreet exhaust form compared with the standard Lawrence for a leaner side-profile appearance.

An off-gold finish to the 17-inch rims, engine cover and decals completes the moody new look, while retaining all of the beautifully-styled attention to detail.

Under the skin, the Lawrence Dagger retains the same 997cc V-Twin engine, which - at 102bhp - has been tuned to provide more thumping low down grunt than high-end performance.

Beautiful, but as a wise man once said, "if you need to ask, you can't afford it"!

www.bennetts.co.uk

An early Christmas prezzie - from the good folks at the Telegraph!

Yuletide celebrations are just around the corner. So, before you get caught up in the festive revelries, make sure you don’t miss your special Christmas offer.

Claim a digital subscription to The Telegraph! Fuel a mutual interest, spark a conversation, or discuss and debate the issues of the day with the help of our award-winning journalists.

This offer is only available until December 31. Unwrap your exclusive bundle in just a few short steps via the link below.

Merry Christmas, from all of us at The Telegraph.

www.telegraph.co.uk

The Church of England's Christmas video for 2022 is now live!

This year’s Church of England Christmas video tells the story of a life supported by the local church. It follows one woman through many Christmases throughout her life, from her first starring role as the baby Jesus in the village nativity play, to childhood and teenage years; joining church youth groups; later getting married; parenthood and then facing bereavement.  

Despite life's ups and downs, she finds joy and support in the church, faith and friendship, not only during Christmas but throughout the year. And it echoes a simple message: we are here for you through life’s journey. For worship and community.

Our thanks to the churches and the communities who helped tell our Christmas story: Melbourne Parish Church (Diocese of Hereford), St George’s Church (Diocese of Leeds), and St Giles Cripplegate (Diocese of London).

www.churchofengland.org

Intruders gain access to user data in LastPass incident

Intruders broke into a third-party cloud storage service LastPass shares with affiliate company GoTo and gained access to "certain elements" of customers' information, the pair have confirmed.

LastPass did not define what it meant by "certain elements," saying it was unsure what data was looked at: "We are working diligently to understand the scope of the incident and identify what specific information has been accessed this morning."

It did maintain, however, that services were unaffected and that customers' passwords remained "safely encrypted" – without ruling out that some of the data was stolen. The company is known to use a one-way salted hash for master passwords, with a fuller description in this technical whitepaper. The master passwords are used to lock users' password vaults, where their logins for various websites etc. can be stored, with the passphrase only ever entered by the user on their browser or app and not sent to or stored by LastPass.

www.theregister.com

Influencers were paid by Google to promote a Pixel phone they never used

Google and iHeartMedia - the US's biggest radio station operator - are being hit with a false advertising lawsuit for ads they ran about the Pixel 4. The FTC and four states say the companies aired "nearly 29,000 deceptive endorsements by radio personalities" during 2019 and 2020, with Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine saying that “Google and iHeartMedia paid influencers to promote products they never used, showing a blatant disrespect for truth-in-advertising rules.” The two companies have settled the lawsuit and will be required to pay $9.4 million in penalties.

Google's ads had on-air personalities give first-hand accounts of how much they liked the Pixel 4, but, to quote the FTC's press release, "the on-air personalities were not provided with Pixel 4s before recording and airing the majority of the ads and therefore did not own or regularly use the phones." Therefore the first-person claims made in the ads, like, “It’s my favourite phone camera out there, especially in low light, thanks to Night Sight Mode,” “I’ve been taking studio-like photos of everything,” and “It’s also great at helping me get stuff done, thanks to the new voice-activated Google Assistant that can handle multiple tasks at once,” can't be true.

www.arstechnica.com

An audience with Henry Crew @ Ducati Alton

I was very pleased to attend a great evening @ W M Snell's (Ducati Alton) on Monday 28th Nov. I love to hear from my motorcycling & adventure travel heroes, including Ted Simon, Steph Jeavons, Austin Vince, Elspeth Beard, Henry Cole, Claire Elsdon, and many others. I find their tales of travel so inspiring! Kim & I love to tour by bike, our most significant was the Camino in 2016. However what these guys & gals do knocks our efforts into a cocked hat!

The evening was hosted by Ben Bowers from Movember and concluded with a delicious hog roast. Donations for the tickets went to support Movember (an excellent men's health charity).

In 2018 Henry Crew became the youngest person to circumnavigate the world on a motorcycle at 22 years old. Hear about his story on his Ducati Desert Sled, his fundraising for Movember, his continuing worldwide adventures and his guided offroad tours across Hampshire and Surrey. 

www.facebook.com

Child of Hope Uganda - Christmas appeal 2022 to feed hungry families

 

This year, we would love to provide Christmas food parcels for all our pupils and their families from the Namatala slum, as well as food parcels and a Christmas party (Ebola restrictions allowing) for the pupils at our new nursery in Namalu, Karamoja. Over 650 families would benefit from your kind donations.

Most children attending the Karamoja nursery school will never have had a Christmas, so we want to give them one they won't forget!

All our pupils’ families are desperately poor, but those in Karamoja are in the poorest and most marginalised tribal group in Uganda, with living standards significantly lower than in other areas of the country. The poverty rate in Karamoja is 66%, more than three times the national poverty rate. Desperation has even forced some of them to eat leaves from the trees to stave their hunger. Our Christmas food parcels will make a massive difference to families facing a worsening malnutrition situation.

Please donate as much or as little as possible; help us make this a special Christmas for the Child of Hope children and their families. All donations are welcome; whatever you can give will be appreciated and will go a long way in helping us make this a special 

Christmas.

Click below to donate on our JustGiving page, but if you would prefer to donate by PayPal via our website, by cheque or by online banking, please click here. Thank you for being so supportive - and please remember to help us by sharing our appeal!

www.childofhopeuganda.org

Reading for today: on the efficacy of prayer

 

The question then arises, “What sort of evidence would prove the efficacy of prayer?” The thing we pray for may happen, but how can you ever know it was not going to happen anyway? Even if the thing were indisputably miraculous it would not follow that the miracle had occurred because of your prayers. The answer surely is that a compulsive empirical proof such as we have in the sciences can never be attained.

Some things are proved by the unbroken uniformity of our experienced. The law of gravitation is established by the fact that, in our experience, all bodies without exception obey it. Now even if all the things that people prayed for happened, which they do not, this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is a request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable “success” in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic - a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.

By C. S. Lewis

From The World's Last Night

Motorcycle Live 2022 NEC Birmingham - back on form again!

Organisers of the annual Motorcycle Live show are celebrating a highly successful 2022 event following nine busy days at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre (NEC).

Showcasing 52 motorcycle manufacturers across three halls, plus opportunities to take test rides both on the surrounding roads and a dedicated indoor off-road Adventure Experience, just under 90,000 visitors attended from November 19-27.

Speaking to MCN on the Monday of the event, Managing Director, Finlay McAllan said: “We have to consider 2022 to be our new Year One because last year was an anomaly because we had a bump in the road with Omicron and temporary face masks. The motorcycle industry we saw in 2019 doesn’t exist anymore.”

He continued: “On the first Saturday I tried to go down to the back of hall four and had to give up in the end because the aisles were so busy.”

MikeG & I went up on Sunday 20th, stayed @ a Premier Inn, dined @ TGIF, breakfasted @ McDonalds & attended the show on Monday 21st. We got there before opening, & left at kicking out time! A long, exhausting but fantastic day! The 2021 show was a bit lacklustre (just after lockdown) less halls, less / smaller stands, fewer visitors. This year was a corker - as good a MCL as I've ever attended :0). My favourite stand was Norton - brilliant to see the effort that TVS are putting into this wonderful marque - classic beauty in the Commando 961, and state of the art in V4CR. Mike was particularly stricken by the Triumph stand, and their modern classics range. Click here to see some photos from our visit.

www.motorcyclenews.com

Advent in Two Minutes!

 

What is Advent all about? How is Advent different than Christmas? 

In an updated version of our classic video, Busted Halo explains the significance of this special season in the Church and why the experience of waiting, hope, and preparation is still so important in our lives today.

www.bustedhalo.com

12 Songs for Christmas & Advent by Graham Kendrick

It's the first Sunday of Advent - you may well be looking for appropriate songs for the season! Graham Kendrick has written and recorded many songs suitable for the Christmas and Advent season including 3 Christmas albums.

Below is a playlist of the 12 most popular songs and Graham has made a short video about each song, the story behind them and how they can be used. There is also a lyric video for each song that can be downloaded or streamed.

The 12 Songs of Christmas Playlist is available on:

Spotify

YouTube

Cloud Backup: Backblaze’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale - 20% off!

 

WHAT IS BACKUP? A backup is a second copy of all your important files - for example, your family photos, home videos, documents and emails. Instead of storing it all in one place (like your computer), you keep another copy of everything somewhere safe. You can store your backup on USB storage, or using a Cloud provider like Backblaze.

Backblaze: Back up an unlimited amount of data. No limits to file sizes or bandwidth speeds. We wanted to create a worry free experience so Backblaze constantly scans for new or changed files and automatically backs them up. There is nothing extra you need to do.

We hope one of the things that comes across is that Backblaze is an environment where everyone is focused on providing actual value to our customers. With over 750 Petabytes of data from customers in more than 150 countries, restoring over 40 Billion files, we’ve been able to build a self-sustaining business. We’re proud of our bootstrapped history which means we get to make decisions based on what we think is the right thing to do. 

Over the past decade we’ve built a culture where people actually like coming in to work. We love having a workplace that rewards open, honest communication. We like to have fun,but we also take tremendous pride in being an innovator in the cloud storage industry. It takes our entire team to be able to offer the most affordable cloud storage on the planet.

What makes us different? When filming this video, we had multiple team members say “I’m going to stay here until I retire.” We only included one of those quotes in this video above. The people here matter.

www.backblaze.com

Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you

NordPass has released its list of the most common passwords of 2022. Topping the list of the most common passwords was, sadly, "password," followed by "123456" and its more secure relative "123456789," "guest," "qwerty" and lots more you can definitely figure out without needing the help of a cracking tool.

Seriously, few of the passwords in this list are even words: Most are just repetitions of a single character, sequences of easy-to-guess numbers, a straight run down a row of keys, or basic combinations like "pass@123." 

Along with a depressingly basic list of common passwords and the speed it takes to crack them (most are listed as < 1 second), NordPass shared some statistics about what's trending in the password world, like the word "Oscars," which pops up especially around award season, as well as "batman," "euphoria" and "encanto" after the eponymous films and TV series that have been popular this year.

FYI: here are five things to know to pick a good password.

www.theregister.com

Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year

Amazon is going through the biggest layoffs in the company's history right now, with a plan to eliminate some 10,000 jobs. One of the areas hit hardest is the Amazon Alexa voice assistant unit, which is apparently falling out of favour at the e-commerce giant. That's according to a report from Business Insider, which details "the swift downfall of the voice assistant and Amazon's larger hardware division."

Alexa has been around for 10 years and has been a trailblazing voice assistant that was copied quite a bit by Google and Apple. Alexa never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream, though, so Alexa doesn't really make any money. The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year. It sounds like Amazon is tired of burning through all that cash.

www.arstechnica.com

Met Police smash huge phone scam network

Police will text 70,000 people to warn them they have been victims of a banking scam in the UK's biggest anti-fraud operation. The Metropolitan Police have arrested an east London man accused of running an international service enabling fake phone calls to victims. Victims lost thousands of pounds, and in one case £3m.

Detectives only have their phone numbers and are asking people to act if they receive the message.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley described the investigation as the biggest proactive counter-fraud investigation ever in the UK. He said the criminals involved were responsible for the "industrialisation of fraud".

Detectives revealed that there could be 200,000 UK victims of the scams, which usually involved fraudsters calling, pretending to be a bank, warning a customer of alleged suspicious activity on their account.

An address in east London is alleged to have been at the centre of the service which police believe enabled fraud on a global scale.

www.bbc.co.uk

Even the Vikings knew: ATGATT - All The Gear, All The Time!

 

You must wear a safety helmet that meets British safety standards when riding a motorcycle or moped on the road.

The Safety Helmet Assessment and Rating Programme (SHARP) shows you approved helmets and how much protection they offer.

There’s no law about wearing other protective clothing, but specialised motorcycle gear is highly recommended - it could save your life.

Watch this great video by the Danish Road Safety Council.

www.youtube.com

20mph speed limits have little effect on road safety

Reducing speed limits to 20mph has little effect on road safety, according to a new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Researchers analysed 76 roads in central Belfast before and after 20mph speed limits were introduced, comparing them to other roads in Northern Ireland where 30mph or 40mph speed limits had been retained.

The findings were that there were “no statistically significant differences” in the long-term rate of crashes and casualties, or the average speed of traffic. Roads with 20mph limits did, however, experience less traffic, according to the research.

The study concluded that policymakers considering implementing 20mph speed limit interventions should consider the fidelity, context and scale of implementation.

www.autoexpress.co.uk

Virgin Wines: a fantastic selection of great wines, zero risk!

Virgin Wines PLC was founded in 2000 and today is one of the UK's largest direct to consumer wine retailers, selling more than 100 million bottles of wine and winning multiple independent awards.

Virgin Wines' unique wine buying model puts our customers at the heart of what we do. Every year we collect over 100,000 customer wine reviews, and our buying team constantly reviews and analyses this feedback in order to decide what styles of wines we should be creating.

We then work with an extensive network of trusted winemakers to blend a range of over 700 wines. The result is a wine range featuring exclusive and estate sourced wines, crafted exactly to our customer's tastes, with an average wine rating of 4.2 out of 5.

Specialist Online Drinks Retailer of the Year 2022.

Buy wine with zero risk:

If you find that any of our wines are corked or tainted in any way then let us know and we will credit your account with the full amount you paid for that bottle. Please try to give us as much information about the wine as possible, especially the name!

If you buy any of our wines and you don't like a bottle, then just let us know and we will credit your account with the full amount you paid for that bottle.

www.virginwines.co.uk

Beware of Crypto - it's the Wild West out there!

John Ray III, CEO of FTX Trading Ltd, who succeeded disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried following the collapse of the once notionally valued $32 billion cryptocurrency exchange, told a Delaware bankruptcy court on Thursday that the company is a disaster unlike anything he has ever seen.

And Ray oversaw the 2001 dissolution of Enron, the largest corporate bankruptcy in US history at the time.

Enron has since been eclipsed in dollar terms by the fall of Lehman Brothers, with assets of $691 billion when the financial giant declared bankruptcy in 2008, but Ray still considers FTX – which sought bankruptcy protection last week – exceptional.

"Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here," Ray wrote in a court filing.

"From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented."

www.theregister.com

Online security experts discuss why the future of passwords is no passwords.

 

Watch a short video featuring online security experts from CISA, FIDO Alliance, Google, and Microsoft. These experts highlight why the future of passwords is no passwords – with FIDO.

FIDO Authentication: The FIDO Alliance is involved in three areas to work towards achieving its mission to reduce the world’s reliance on passwords to better secure the web: user authentication; identity verification and binding; and the Internet of Things (IoT). The work areas address essential aspects of the digital identity lifecycle management including identity verification for initial account onboarding and account recovery, and user and device authentication.

FIDO Authentication: Passwords endure despite the growing consensus their use needs to be reduced, if not replaced. But even though effective PKI and strong authentication solutions have existed for years, barriers to widespread adoption persist. Consumers don’t like the user experience, and online service providers don’t want the cost and complexity of developing and provisioning their own dedicated solutions.

The industry’s answer to the password problem: The FIDO Alliance developed FIDO Authentication standards based on public key cryptography for authentication that is more secure than passwords and SMS OTPs, simpler for consumers to use, and easier for service providers to deploy and manage. FIDO Authentication enables password-only logins to be replaced with secure and fast login experiences across websites and apps.

www.fidoalliance.org

Lenovo laptop flaws could help malware survive a hard disk wipe

PC manufacturer Lenovo has been forced to push out a security update to more than two dozen of its laptop models, following the discovery of high severity vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious hackers.

Security researchers at ESET discovered flaws in 25 of its laptop models - including IdeaPads, Slims, and ThinkBooks - that could be used to disable the UEFI Secure Boot process. That matters because Secure Boot, as its name suggests, is a feature that allows a PC's firmware to be "locked down" as a defence against rootkits, ensuring that only trusted cryptographically-signed code can be run at bootup.

A vulnerability in the laptops' Secure Boot process could open opportunities for cybercriminals to install malicious firmware onto a device that would survive a hard drive being wiped or an operating system being reinstalled.

According to ESET, the vulnerabilities are present because Lenovo mistakenly shipped to the public drivers that were only supposed to have been used during the manufacturing process.

www.tripwire.com

Three quarters of retail Bitcoin investors are in the red

Somewhere between 73 and 81 percent of retail Bitcoin buyers are likely to be into the negative on their investment, according to research published Monday by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).

In other words: the Bitcoin they bought is now worth less. Bitcoin is down 73 percent in the past year, and up 155 percent in the past five years. Losses are only realized upon sale.

The Switzerland-based bank for other central banks wanted to understand why retail investors continue to participate in cryptocurrency exchanges to trade tokens like Bitcoin. It's a mystery, given that people don't generally use cryptocurrencies to make payments, to measure value, or to finance real-world investments.

www.theregister.com

Ofcom rules to fight fake number fraud

Phone users will be better protected against scammers using fake phone numbers, under new rules announced today by Ofcom.

Scams are a widespread problem – 41 million people have received a suspicious call or text in the last three months. A common tactic used by criminals to defraud victims is to imitate – or ‘spoof’ – the phone numbers of legitimate organisations, like banks and Government departments.

To help combat this problem, we are strengthening our rules and guidance to require all telephone networks involved in transmitting calls – either to mobiles or landlines – to identify and block spoofed calls, where technically feasible. This will make it harder for scammers to use spoofed numbers.

We have also today issued new guidance to phone companies on how they can prevent scammers from accessing valid phone numbers. This sets out clear expectations for providers to make sure they run ‘know your customer’ checks on business customers.

www.ofcom.org.uk

Southsea Ride of Remembrance 2022

 

Mike & I were pleased to attend the Royal British Legion Riders Branch - ride of remembrance on Sunday 13th Nov 2022. I've attended this ride out over many years but the sheer number of motorcycles & scooters this year was huge, really quite impressive.

Although many groups assemble at Southsea, our one formed up at the old IBM site @ North Harbour, then rode out South through Portsmouth. It was lovely that many people stood on the route and waved as we rode by. Mike & I ended up parking by the Landing Craft Tank LCT 7074, and walked across to the Portsmouth Naval Memorial for a beautiful & moving service.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Photos & videos here on Google Photos

Reading for today: On how we can make space for God's word in our daily lives

 

The voice of God indeed daily calls to us; calls to the world to abandon sins and seek the Kingdom of God wholeheartedly. 

O that we may all hear the call of the Father and, sometime, at last be converted to the Lord.

In silence and in meditation on the eternal truths, I hear the voice of God which excites our hearts to greater love.

By C.S. Lewis

Compiled in Words to Live By

LG 14mm Self-adhesive Transparent Colour LED Film - screens as you've never seen them before!

 

The LG Transparent film, which utilizes micro thin nano wires laminated between silicon based film, allows for high transparency while maintaining the ability to see objects behind it.  This offers a wide-open view while blending into existing interior design smoothly all the while delivering messaging in a dynamic and effective manner.

The LG Transparent LED film supports curvatures up to 1,100R convex and concave for curved glass or window applications, and offers even surface by applying the Optically Clear Resin (OCR) bonding method. This allows a wide range of venues to be redesigned with the LAT series.

The LG Transparent LED film is self-adhesive, so it can be easily attached to the surfaces of existing window glass without the need for any complicated construction.

www.lg.com

Beware the sneaky Windows 11 upgrade!

I've been asked by a number of Donline clients whether or not to upgrade to Microsoft's latest Operating System - Windows 11. Here is my answer: don't bother (at the moment), wait till they iron out some annoyances (or at best damned by faint praise!).

That said, a number of my clients have accidentally upgraded to Windows 11 - much to their disappointment! Please be careful when installing updates - not to inadvertently agree to the Win 11 "upgrade"!

The numbers don't lie: 13 months since launch:

The last time Microsoft released an OS like Win11 - was Windows 8, before that Vista, before that WinME. Remember them? Microsoft would prefer it if you didn't!

gs.statcounter.com

How dogs see the world

Yumove: As any dog owner knows, our canine companions can be remarkably empathic, intuitive, and – in many ways – similar to us. Let’s be honest, who hasn’t been able to relate to their dog excitedly running to the door to greet a special visitor? Or jumping for joy at dinner time?

But even though our four-legged friends are so warm and relatable, there are a few key differences in how we, and they, view the world.

Let’s take a glance at how things look from a dog’s-eye perspective.

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Amazon Music: when a "free upgrade" is actually a downgrade!

 

There are, generally speaking, two types of streaming music services. The first kind - the type you play for - usually allows you to do things like create playlists, select the songs you want to listen to, download tracks to listen to offline, and not be bothered by advertisements.

Apple Music and Spotify's paid tier fall into this category. Until recently, so did Amazon Music, which you did not have to pay extra for. It was a benefit of Amazon Prime.

The second type of streaming music service is usually free and has restrictions. You can't download anything, for example. Maybe you can create playlists, but when you listen to them, they play on shuffle. This type of music service is mostly for people who just want to have music they like playing in the background, but who don't care what music is playing.

Some free services don't even allow you to choose the song you want to listen to. You can tell it what song you want, and it will pick other songs that are like the one you want, and play those. At some point, the algorithm will probably surface the song you asked for, but the reason the service is free is that music contracts are weird and they make it so that it's expensive to let users pick the song they want to listen to.

Amazon Music used to be sort of the best of both. It was free, but gave you access to a modestly-sized catalogue with all the benefits usually reserved for paid services. Now, that has all changed. It's still free, but now you can only play songs on shuffle. 

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