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An Even Higher Mountain

“It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.” 

― Confucius

4 Ways Hackers Steal Your Passwords

12 AUGUST 2013       MAKE TECH EASIER       

You’ve probably experienced it before: You’re going about your day and you read an email saying that your password has been changed on one account, but you never requested that change. Or even worse, you’re probably the victim of a total compromise in which you cannot access any of your accounts, and while all that’s happening, someone else is using your identity and PayPal account to talk and send your money across the Web!

This kind of event could be life-changing, and not in the positive sense of the word. This is why we need to discuss how hackers steal your passwords and the methods they use. We will also show you ways to help prevent this from happening to you. 

... 2: Wi-Fi Sniffing

When you’re on your phone, tablet, or laptop, the added convenience of connecting to networks outside your home is a trade-off. You’re trading your security for convenience (as in most things in life). While you browse through unprotected WiFi, you’re basically broadcasting your data to everyone. Since your data is sent via radio waves to the router, it will simultaneously reach every connected device. Normally, they ignore the data you send, but someone could be using a WiFi sniffer which picks up any data you’re broadcasting. This will include URLs, passwords, and other private data. 

To protect yourself from this, you should use a VPN service. Many VPN services provide encryption in the connection and are compatible with virtually every device. 

... Other Methods

If you know any other way hackers steal your passwords to get into your accounts, feel free to leave a comment below and let other readers know!

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Work-obstructing kitty instigates adorable game of cat and mouse in Japanese office 【Video】

9 SEPTEMBER 2016       ROCKETNEWS24       CASEY BASEEL

In looking for ways to boost employee productivity, some studies have shown that there can be benefits to having pets in the workplace. While your animal companion obviously isn’t going to run copies, brainstorm ideas, or schedule meetings for you, some workers get a noticeable boost in morale by having their cat or dog nearby throughout their shift.

It makes sense, because who doesn’t feel more energetic and dynamic when in close proximity to a loved one? However, all those advantages go right out the window if your pet loves you back a little too much, as shown in this video from Japanese Twitter user @ny0ru. Read More

Plain View Doctrine

9 SEPTEMBER 2016       POLICE LINK       JACK RYAN

The plain view doctrine is an exception to the warrant requirement which allows officers to seize items which they observe and immediately recognize as evidence or contraband while they are lawfully present in an area protected by the 4th Amendment. The foundation case providing the elements of a plain view seizure as related to the plain view doctrine is Horton v. California. In Horton, a police officer had probable cause to believe that evidence of a robbery existed at a house. While the officer had probable cause to believe the proceeds of the robbery as well as the weapons used in the robbery would be found in the house to be searched, the magistrate issued a search warrant for only the proceeds. Upon executing the search warrant, the officers discovered the weapons in “plain view” and immediately recognized the weapons as evidence of the robbery.

Horton, argued that since the police knew about the weapons prior to the search, the weapons should not be admitted under plain view because their discovery was not “inadvertent.” The Supreme Court used the Horton case to eliminate any requirement that the discovery be inadvertent. The Court pointed out that one must distinguish a plain observation (which may provide probable cause) from a plain view doctrine seizure as an exception to the warrant requirement. In its conclusion the Court held that a plain view doctrine seizure has three elements. First, the officer must already be lawfully present in an area protected by the 4th Amendment, second, the item must be out in plain view, and third, the officer must immediately recognize the item as evidence or contraband without making a further intrusion. Read More

"... Old or young, they are quarrelsome, ugly, and boastful, and they love to trick princesses and children. To defeat them, children must rely on the strengths of their humanity-persistence, kindness, pluck, and willingness to heed good advice." ["Hungry Like The Troll" -- groteskology.blogspot.com/2011/12/hungry-like-troll.html]

Proxy Lift

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”

― Charles Dickens

Sneaky September in Japan brings storms, sadness and ‘shukudai’

5 SEPTEMBER 2016       JAPAN TIMES       KAORI SHOJI

In Japan, the month of 9月 (kugatsu, September) may herald a welcome respite from the summer heat, or it may bring on the loneliness and depression that invariably accompanies the summer’s end.

In Japan’s 旧暦 (kyūreki, old calendar), September, or 長月 (nagatsuki) as it was called, meant cooling temperatures combined with long rains and lingering humidity. The first day of September was known as 二百十日 (nihyakutōka, the 210th day of the year), and signaled that either a 台風 (taifū, typhoon) or a rainstorm was likely to sweep away the fun, lazy memories of summer in one fell swoop. It’s probably no coincidence that the 関東大震災 (Kantō Daishinsai, the Great Kanto Earthquake) happened two minutes before noon on Sept. 1, 1923. 

Then as now, this is the month when カビ (kabi, mold) is likely to appear around 水周り (mizumawari, plumbing areas) like baths and kitchen sinks. Traditionally it’s the woman’s job to wipe everything down and do some deep cleaning, or the 細菌 (saikin, bacteria) will trigger the first symptoms of autumn colds and digestive troubles. (Though I know one woman who requested the gift of a major 風呂掃除 [furosōji, bathroom cleaning] for her 15th wedding anniversary one September. She was so happy with the result, her husband now chips in on a regular basis. Miracles do happen.) 

This is the time of year when the Japanese are apt to become 感傷的 (kanshōteki, sentimental). セプテンバー、そしてあなたは秋に変わった (Seputenbā, soshite anata wa aki ni kawatta, “September, with the arrival of fall, you changed on me”) is the refrain to an old Mariya Takeuchi song. The lyrics are all about how the boyfriend went distant and cold as soon as September rolled around. One of the enduring myths (or truths?) behind a Japanese relationship is that if it can survive the month of September — i.e., the precarious and turbulent shift from summer to fall — it will likely survive anything. Yes, it’s that serious. 

Novelist Osamu Dazai was extra sensitive about autumn — even resentful about it. 秋は夏と同時にやってくる (Aki wa natsu to dōji ni yattekuru, “Autumn arrives at the same time as summer”), he wrote, implying that nuggets of sadness and rains are concealed right in the hot, joyous months filled with sunshine. Also, 秋はずるい悪魔だ (Aki wa zurui akuma da, “Autumn is a sneaky devil”) he claimed, explaining that autumn secretly makes preparations during the summer months when people are enjoying themselves, all the while smirking with contempt at their ignorant bliss. That’s Osamu Dazai for you — apt to complain and darkly paranoid. 

Despite all of the above and more, the Japanese government has declared Sept. 1 to be 防災の日 (Bōsai no Hi, Disaster Preparedness Day), and if you’ve been through the Japanese school system, you’ll know this is the day when you have to get in line with everyone else and stand in the schoolyard (or gymnasium, depending on the weather) and listen for what seems like an eternity to the principal droning on and on about the importance of 用心 (yōjin, being carefully prepared). A local 消防士 (shōbōshi, firefighter) would have likely visited your school and given some lessons on emergency procedures, before overseeing the 避難訓練 (hinankunren, emergency drill). You probably went home with a bag of free 非常食 (hijōshoku, emergency food) consisting of the time-honored 乾パン (kanpan, canned dried bread pellets) and アルファ米 (arufa-mai, “alpha rice,” or quick-cooking rice), which your mom then stashed inside a cupboard and promptly forgot about until the following September. 

And if you’ve gone to school on the archipelago, you will know that the end of summer comes hand in hand with sheer misery. Every year until he or she graduates from high school, the Japanese child is plagued by 夏休みの宿題 (natsuyasumi no shukudai, summer homework). Every generation claims its workload gets heavier by the year. 

Sept. 1 is the deadline for this homework, and we’re talking hefty bagfuls of to-dos in every subject. Any kid who has been foolhardy enough (read: almost everyone) to spend the summer weeks engaged in pastimes like camping, swimming and visiting their grandparents during お盆 (o-Bon, the Bon holiday period that marks the returning of ancestors and loved ones who passed away) will spend the days between Aug. 26 or so until the dawn of Sept. 1 glued to their desks and sobbing their eyes out. Read More

Doom Va-va Voom

"Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state." 

-- George Eliot

The Best Plays and Musicals to See This Fall

4 SEPTEMBER 2016       VOGUE       ADAM GREEN

... Aubergine 

Playwrights Horizons is first out of the gate—previews began August 20—with this new play by Julia Cho (BFE), a meditation on food, cooking, and the ties that bind. 

The Cherry Orchard 

I’m always happy to leave the theater both exhilarated and depressed by Chekhov’s singular vision of life’s comedy and tragedy, but I’m particularly keen about this production for two reasons: The new translation by Stephen Karam, who won a 2016 Tony for his luminous family drama The Humans; and the return to Broadway of the sublime Diane Lane as the imperious, deluded Madame Ranevskaya, a part played by Meryl Streep in a 1977 production that also featured a 12-year-old Lane. 

The Public Theater’s Fall Season 

In recent years, pretty much everything the Public has put on has been worth seeing, and its fall slate is no exception. It kicks off with What Did You Expect?, the second in Richard Nelson’s trilogy The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family. And it goes on to include the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lynn Nottage’s (Ruined) new play, Sweat; a revival of David Hare’s Plenty, directed by David Leveaux and starring Rachel Weisz; and Tiny Beautiful Things, based on Cheryl Strayed’s beloved “Dear Sugar” columns, adapted by and starring Nia Vardalos and directed by Hamilton’s Thomas Kail. 

The Front Page 

Stop the press! Print journalism may be going the way of all ink, but Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s fast, furious, and funny 1928 love letter to the tabloid newspaper game remains a surefire crowd-pleaser, especially with an all-star cast that includes Nathan Lane, John Slattery, John Goodman, Jefferson Mays, Holland Taylor, and Robert Morse. 

Verso 

In high school, I hung around Tannen’s magic shop and earned money by performing tricks at kids’ birthday parties. Once a magic nerd, always a magic nerd, so it’s no surprise that I’m excited for this new show by card wizard Helder Guimarães, whose 2014 collaboration with Derek DelGaudio, Nothing to Hide, was nothing short of mind-blowing. 

The Encounter 

Also mind-blowing, I hear, is this solo show directed by and starring Simon McBurney, the genius behind the English theater company Complicite, which uses cutting-edge audio technology—and individual headsets for each audience member—to tell the story of National Geographic photojournalist Loren McIntyre’s time among a tribe in the Amazon. 

Heisenberg 

Mary-Louise Parker made her Broadway debut in 1990’s Prelude to a Kiss, in which the plot was set in motion when an older man kissed her character at a wedding. Here, in Simon Stephens’s two-hander, Parker’s character is the one who kisses an older man (Denis Arndt), sending his life spinning into the delirious chaos that is romantic love. 

Oh, Hello on Broadway 

Last winter, when Nick Kroll and John Mulaney brought their cranky, clueless, off-color 70-something Upper West Side alter egos, Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, to an Off-Broadway theater, the limited run sold out in a matter of hours. Now, the comic duo is coming to Broadway in an inspired evening of surreal nonsense that is, I promise, the funniest thing you will see this season. 

Falsettos 

William Finn and James Lapine’s funny, spiky, and heartbreaking 1992 Tony-winning musical, about a neurotic married man who comes out as gay at the height of the AIDS crisis, returns to Broadway with a fantastic cast led by Andrew Rannells and Christian Borle. 

Sell/Buy/Date 

The great Sarah Jones, who won a 2006 Tony for her dazzlingly multicultural one-woman show Bridge and Tunnel, returns to Broadway as more than a dozen characters in Sell/Buy/Date, a hilarious and harrowing look at the sex industry. 

Les Liaisons Dangereuses 

Christopher Hampton’s deliciously nasty 1985 adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s 18th-century novel about sex as blood sport in the ancien régime still has the power to wound (and entertain) in Josie Rourke’s new production from London’s Donmar Warehouse, starring the peerless Janet McTeer as the Marquise de Merteuil, an aristocratic “virtuoso of deceit,” who squares off against Liev Schreiber’s sex-addicted Vicomte de Valmont, and in the process destroys him and everyone else in their orbit. 

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 

After causing a stir at Ars Nova in 2012 and at various site-specific locations thereafter, Dave Malloy’s nifty rock-musical adaptation of a slice of Tolstoy’s War and Peace comes to Broadway. And while the more traditional setting may mean that it won’t feature tableside blinis and vodka shots this time around, it will have a new leading man and lady in pop superstar Josh Groban and rising ingenue Denée  Benton. 

Mouse 

The fantastically off-kilter comic monologuist Daniel Kitson, whose Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church and It’s Always Right Now, Until It’s Later were hits at St. Ann’s Warehouse a few seasons ago, returns to theater, in its new Dumbo home, with his latest, which he describes as “an implausible story” about a mouse and a phone call.    

Dear Evan Hansen

A hit at the Second Stage theater last season, this musical about a misfit teen with crippling social anxiety who tells a compassionate lie that spins out of control is coming to Broadway. Funny, tender, and beautifully observed, it features a gorgeous rock-pop score by the young It songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dogfight) and a thrilling, star-making performance by Ben Platt (The Book of Mormon; the Pitch Perfect films) as the overwrought adolescent of the title. Read More