Month: January 2017

One of Europe’s top hotels has admitted they had to pay thousands in Bitcoin ransom to cybercriminals who managed to…

One of Europe’s top hotels has admitted they had to pay thousands in Bitcoin ransom to cybercriminals who managed to hack their electronic key system, locking hundreds of guests in or out of their rooms until the money was paid.

http://www.thelocal.at/20170128/hotel-ransomed-by-hackers-as-guests-locked-in-rooms

Markov models and n-grams show Indus script in Iraq was different from Indus script in Pakistan and India.

Originally shared by Wayne Radinsky

Markov models and n-grams show Indus script in Iraq was different from Indus script in Pakistan and India. The article describes more research that is planned, including machine learning and what essentially amounts to an OCR system for Indus script. Research efforts on the Indus script are plagued with political controversy, as different political groups within India want to claim to be descendants of the Indus Valley Civilization.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14371450/indus-valley-civilization-ancient-seals-symbols-language-algorithms-ai

It’s an interesting thing about all this “free trade” that we’ve been enjoying is tighter and tighter intellectual…

It’s an interesting thing about all this “free trade” that we’ve been enjoying is tighter and tighter intellectual property law enforcement. Maybe some disruption to that would have some benefits. 

via James Salsman​​​​​​

Originally shared by Russ Abbott

In response to Trump trade policies that target them, Mexico could announce that it would no longer enforce U.S. patents and copyrights on its soil. This would be a yuuge deal, as Trump would say.

To take one prominent example, suppose that Mexico allowed for the free importation of generic drugs from India and elsewhere. The Hepatitis C drug Solvaldi has a list price in the United States of $84,000. A high quality generic is available in India for $200. There are also low cost generic versions available of many other drugs that carry exorbitant prices in the United States, with savings often more than 95 percent.

Suppose that people suffering from Hepatitis C, cancer, and other devastating and life-threatening diseases could get drugs in Mexico for a few hundred dollars rather than tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in the United States? That would likely lead to lots of business for Mexico’s retail drug industry, although it would be pretty bad news for Pfizer and Merck.

The same would apply to other areas. Medical equipment, like high-end scanning and diagnostic devices, would be very cheap in Mexico if they could be produced without patent protections. This should be great for a medical travel industry in Mexico.

There would be a similar story on copyright protection. People could get the latest version of Windows and other software for free in Mexico with their new computers. This is bad news for Bill Gates and Microsoft, but good news for U.S. consumers interested in visiting Mexico, along with Mexico’s retail sector. Mexico could also make a vast amount of recorded music and video material available without copyright protection. That’s great news for consumers everywhere but very bad news for Disney, Time-Warner, and other Hollywood giants.

Baker says, Go for it. This would be a blueprint for a trade war in which everyone, except a few corporate giants, could be big winners.

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/a-trade-war-everyone-can-win

I’ve been using this editor for the past few weeks.

I’ve been using this editor for the past few weeks. I like it. It’s good. Built on top of Chrome so it’s available on Linux, Windows and Mac.

The only thing I didn’t like was its name but really it has nothing much to do with Microsoft’s more traditional programming tools. This is more like Atom or Sublime Edit and it’s free.

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/visual-studio-code-my-new-favorite-code-editor–cms-28012