Tag Archive for: good
Former DOJ Official: Regulation Good for Crypto
A former official from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said regulation of cryptocurrency would be a good thing.
An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Thursday (Jan. 20) by Makan Delrahim, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump and served as assistant attorney general for the agency’s antitrust division from 2017-21, said blockchain applications could transform the economy. But there’s a caveat.
“Crypto is different in one key respect: It has the ability to create and maintain decentralized marketplaces,” he wrote. “Blockchain can topple incumbents because it is an open technology of decentralized trust. It makes it possible to cut out the middleman.”
He wrote that the White House is poised to issue an executive order directing federal agencies to recommend possible crypto regulations. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) have called for increased federal guidance of stablecoins.
In addition, while Congress debates the issue, a federal judge will rule on whether sales of tokens by international payments processor Ripple should be considered securities transactions that require registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Delrahim called on the President Joe Biden administration to include government competition lawyers and economists in any conversations about crypto guidelines.
“There’s a lot of potential here,” he wrote.
Delrahim’s comments come one day after SEC Chairman Gary Gensler made a push to bring cryptocurrency exchanges within his agency’s remit.
Read more: Gensler Says SEC Is Coming for Crypto Exchanges
Following a Wednesday (Jan. 19) speech on “Dynamic Regulation for a Dynamic Society,” Gensler argued that it is vital for crypto investors to get the kind of protections long afforded stock traders.
“I’ve asked staff to look at every way to get these platforms inside the investor protection remit,” Gensler said. “If the trading platforms don’t come into the regulated space, it’d be another year of the public being vulnerable.”
Hard Numbers: Global vaccine good news, rampant ransomware, 5G growing fast, Spanish wind power
58.1: As of December 17, 56.6 percent of the global population has received at least one COVID vaccine shot. We sometimes don’t realize how big of an achievement this is from just a year ago, when frontline health workers were the first to get jabs.
11: A ransomware attack occurred every 11 seconds in 2021, according to one estimate. Earlier this year, hackers carried out their most famous attack to date against Colonial Pipeline, which supplies almost half of the oil and gas consumed in the US Eastern Seaboard.
540 million: Global 5G connections are expected to reach 540 million by the end of the year, according to a new report. That’s more than double the amount in all of 2020.
23.1: Wind became Spain’s top energy source this year, overtaking nuclear for the first time. Half of the country’s energy now comes from renewable sources, which the government hopes will help bring down sky-high power prices in 2021.
As we celebrate Computer Security Day let’s remind each other of these good habits
Every single one of us relies on some computer for our daily activities. For some, work means sitting in front of a computer. And with the work-from-home shift, this number is quite large now. For some, entertainment is the goal in this era of social distancing and limited gatherings. So pocket computers have been a godsend. The social animal needs the WhatsApps, Twitters and Facebooks to keep in touch with friends and foes, and computers help with that.
That’s all well and good, however, a computer in isolation is limited in utility. We need our computers to play nice with each other to truly enjoy them. The internet is the vehicle through which we link our computers.
You need to collaborate with colleagues on a spreadsheet as you work from home? The internet links you all up and you can share the document. Or even work on it at the same time whilst in different locations. Your favourite YouTuber sends their video to YouTube’s computers and you are given access to YouTube’s computers to watch the video.
It’s all rather beautiful but as it is with physical interactions, wherever people congregate there are others looking to rob, cheat and steal. They seek to gain access into computers they do not have authority to access. Then steal passwords and send themselves money from others’ bank accounts. They hold corporations’ data at ransom until they are paid or even blackmail individual users when they get access to confidential information.
Computer Security Day
The Computer Security Day is ‘designed to raise awareness and to promote best practices in Information Security.’ On this day we should share experiences, acquire knowledge and gain an understanding to safeguard our information – be it personal or organisational.
Basic ways to safeguard yourself on the internet
In general
- Use strong passwords – password managers can help you with this. Read more on this here.
- Password-protect everything – you should require a password to access your phone, computer or any other device. That’s especially true for your router. It’s not that your data could be depleted that’s the biggest worry. Competent hackers can access your computers…