Tag: economy | Page 3

The fragile internet is a threat to the economy

October 17, 2021/in Internet Security

The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set newsroom policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.

Tae Kim is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology.

It has been a rough few months for the internet.

In June, Fastly Inc.’s content delivery network failure forced some of the world’s biggest e-commerce and media websites offline. Later, there were massive data breaches at T-Mobile US Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch streaming service. And, Facebook Inc.’s main social network, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for about six hours. Then last Friday, it happened again — albeit more briefly.

All the incidents had a common corporate response. It goes something like this: We are sorry, it was an unintentional configuration error, we’ll do better next time! After Facebook’s outage, the engineering director at security software firm Cloudflare Inc. called it a reminder about the fragile nature of the internet, where millions of interconnected systems are dependent on each other to make it work.

There was a time in the early days of the web when these excuses would be acceptable. But the internet, and many of these companies, now constitute the backbone of the modern economy. Billions of consumers and millions of small businesses rely on Facebook’s communication tools for daily living. If the web is held together by rubber bands and toothpicks, it’s clear that the U.S. needs to take urgent action to mitigate those vulnerabilities.

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New Mexico lawmakers look for solutions to hobbled economy

January 20, 2021/in Mobile Security

SANTA FE, New Mexico — New Mexico lawmakers are confronting daunting challenges as they began a 60-day legislative session this week amid an unrelenting coronavirus pandemic and concerns of violence at a Statehouse guarded by troops and encircled by fencing, barricades and mobile security cameras.

Proposals aimed at reviving the economy and rebooting classroom learning are at the top of the agenda for lawmakers in the Democratic-led Legislature. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is pushing for a budget deal that would increase state spending on pandemic relief, education and health care.

Democrats also have drafted lightning-rod initiatives that would allow broad marijuana sales, shore up abortion rights and reform police oversight.

“While we debate passionately in this chamber, we have created a culture of respect — no chaos,” Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth said as the session opened. “We can do this together.”

House Republican leaders said their priority will be proposals that allow students to return to classrooms immediately by providing greater autonomy to school boards, teachers and families.

Most schools are providing remote learning only, with some small in-person lessons for younger students and special education students. Most classroom teaching was suspended in March, and education officials this week said schools can restart mixed schedules that include in-person lessons after an extended holiday pause.

“We’ve got to get our kids back in school, we’ve got to find a way,” House Minority Leader Jim Townsend said. “Children are retreating into isolation, into their electronic devices, instead of friendship. We have desperation setting in among those children.”

The House came into session on Tuesday with calls in English and Spanish of “present on the floor” and “presente.” Most Democrats tuned in via video conference from their offices, and most Republicans were on the House floor.

In the Senate, legislators in masks exchanged elbow bumps and sat down between Plexiglas barriers meant to reduce the spread of the virus. The rotunda and hallways of the Legislature — ordinarily buzzing with lobbyists,…

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IRCTC upgraded e-ticketing website, mobile app launched: Check user-friendly features | Economy News

December 31, 2020/in Computer Security

New Delhi: Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on (Thursday) December 31, 2020 launched the revamped website and mobile app of IRCTC.

The IRCTC upgraded e-ticketing website and mobile app comes with a host of user friendly features and will be operational from January 1.

Salient Features of the Upgraded website:

Complete User personalization linked to the user login, such as the booking of meals, retiring rooms and hotels has been integrated and can be directly along with the tickets, thus providing a one stop solution for the needs of the traveller.
Predictive entry suggestions using Artificial Intelligence to be given to the passenger when he is entering the station or passenger. This will greatly reduce the hassle in searching stations and also save time in ticket booking.
Simpler checking of the refund status at the user accounts page. Earlier this feature was not easily accessible.
‘Regular’ or ‘Favorite’ journeys can be booked easily by automatically entering relevant details.
Train search & selection simplified by putting the information on one page to reduce the time used by passengers and enhancing the booking experience.
All information on one page – Availability for all class are displayed along with respective fares for all trains. Simply scroll the page and choose to ‘Book’ the desired train and class. Earlier each train seat availability and fares could be seen only after clicking on that train individually.
A ‘Cache system’ has been introduced in the backend to provide availability status. This will avoid delays in loading availabilities.
In case waitlisted tickets, its ‘confirmation probability’ is displayed. Earlier this had to be checked for each waitlist status separately.
Availability for other dates can be toggled on the page itself.
Prompts during the booking process for making it easy for even less computer familiar users. This will save his time in wandering on the website for searching the website.
The journey details will be shown also at the payment page. It will prompt the user to check and rectify, if there are any typographical errors. These corrections can only be corrected by visiting a PRS…