Tag Archive for: life

Apple and Google have made phones the key to your digital life. Here’s what to do if you lose it.

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The night before I was supposed to go on a long and well-deserved vacation, something very, very bad happened: I lost my phone. I had a friend over and, I decided, he must have accidentally taken my phone with him when he left. Which was a problem because all methods I had to contact him — including his phone number and address — were in the one thing I now didn’t have.

There’s nothing like spending 30 minutes panicking that you’ve lost your phone to make you realize just how devastating that loss can be … and how poorly you’ve prepared for the possibility. Access to just about everything I wasn’t already logged into on my computer was dependent on access to my phone, with my mobile-device-only password manager and multifactor authentication apps and text messages. Actually, had I even backed my phone up to my iCloud account? Didn’t I delete my backups to free up storage space? Was I logged into iCloud on my laptop? Would it even be possible to log in, since my passwords and authentication tools were only on the phone?

“I don’t think most people prepare for losing their phone,” Sherrod DeGrippo, director of threat intelligence strategy at Microsoft, told Vox. “Which is surprising considering how many people [have] lost their phone, broke their device, or had it stolen. Despite many people having experience here, they aren’t often taking the right precautions.”

Our phones have become our main — in some cases, only — gateway to so many things. If you lock yourself out of your house, you can call a locksmith to get back in, even if it’s the middle of the night on a holiday. But if you lose your phone, you may lose your keys to a whole lot more, and it may take a while, if ever, to get that access back.

Ironically, this is especially true if you’ve proactively taken the kind of basic digital security measures most experts would recommend. My efforts to secure my accounts from bad actors — some of which relied on having my phone — might have made it that much harder for me to get back into them.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t do those things — you absolutely should. You just want to make sure you’re preparing for the…

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What is the ultimate life hack? | Entertainment/Life

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A “life hack” is any process or technique that reduces chaos in one’s life and makes things easier to manage or more convenient. An internet search of life hacks brings up a dizzying number of videos demonstrating a few helpful things and others that I never knew I needed to know.

For example, there’s a video on how to use a curling iron to get wrinkles out of a piece of paper — or another on how to use a single piece of penne pasta to get the last of the lipstick out of a tube and then use said pasta to apply lipstick. 

That said, there are some helpful hacks, full of common sense, like:

  • Tie a brightly colored piece of cloth on your luggage to help you spot it at the airport.
  • For the short term, tape a dryer sheet over an air conditioner vent to help a room smell fresher.
  • Iron a button-up shirt inside out to make ironing easier.
  • Put pancake batter in a squeezable old ketchup bottle to make more creative pancakes.
  • Use a straw to remove the center and stem of a strawberry. 

You get the point.

Each of those items and plenty more are, indeed, helpful and can improve a circumstance. Certainly, plenty of folks spend incredible amounts of time making videos demonstrating these or similar life hacks.

However, in the difficult times we are experiencing, I’ve started to wonder about other life hacks that might make use of the internet — ones that might make a bigger difference in the world than me spotting my luggage a second faster.

Therefore, I propose folks work toward creating a different strand of life hacks — ones focused on chesed.

What is chesed, you ask? It’s a Hebrew word so rich and loaded with meaning that there is no direct English translation. It means more than benevolence — it’s about living in kindness toward others, practicing compassion and generosity toward those we know well and those we don’t know at all. 

Think about that for a moment. 

What if there were life hacks for:

  • How to treat those who work in a service industry with dignity, compassion and kindness?
  • How meaningful…

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Ex-GCHQ man jailed for life after stabbing US security worker

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  • By Harriet Robinson, Aruna Iyengar & PA Media
  • BBC News

Video caption,

CCTV of ex-GCHQ man’s attack on US security worker

A former UK intelligence worker has been jailed for stabbing a US government employee.

Joshua Bowles, from Cheltenham, attacked the woman in a leisure centre car park, three miles from GCHQ’s base, in March.

The 29-year-old was handed a life sentence at the Old Bailey, with a minimum term of 13 years.

Armed with two knives, Bowles punched and stabbed the woman repeatedly on 9 March, leaving her with cuts to her abdomen, chest and thigh.

The ex-computer software coding developer later said he had targeted her because he could not handle the “murky waters of ethics” and “the power that the American NSA have and the things they do”.

During sentencing, senior judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb found the stabbing was a “politically motivated attack” driven by “anger and resentment” towards GCHQ and women.

She rejected the defence claim that it was not a terrorist incident, saying Bowles’ internet history showed he had a “deep disaffection with society and a desire to challenge authority”.

The court heard Bowles had planned the attack and searched online for topics including US Unabomber terrorist Theodore Kaczynski, attacks on women, and white supremacy.

Image source, Counter Terrorism Policing

Image caption,

Joshua Bowles was sentenced at the Old Bailey in London

In a victim impact statement, the woman said using her attacker’s name made her “feel sick” and brought back “awful memories”.

She said she was “devastated” to find out they had worked in the same place, adding: “This attack has had a profound effect on me and it’s utterly and completely changed my life.

“Following the attack, I went from being in the best shape I had ever been to being the weakest I have ever been.”

On the day of the stabbing, the woman – referred to by code number 99230 – was followed as she and a friend left a Cheltenham leisure centre after a game of netball.

After hearing someone say “excuse me”, she turned and was punched repeatedly in the face.

‘Hated me’

She fought back, kicking and…

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Israel’s digital quality of life plummets to 17th place globally, no longer world lea

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The collapse in internet affordability in Israel has seen it not only lose its spot as a leader in digital quality of life, but fall a whopping 16 places to settle as 17th globally, according to Surfshark’s 5th annual Digital Quality of Life Index (DQL). The index is scored by taking into account five core pillars – Internet Quality, E-Security, E-Government, Internet Affordability, and E-Infrastruure.

The fall in ranking can be misleading as four of the five pillars either kept or improved their ranking from last year – it is Israel’s collapse in Internet Affordability (from 1st to 21st) that most affected the country’s overall score. Its worst performing pillar, E-Security (32nd), which measures how well a country is prepared to counter cybercrime and the quality of a country’s data protection laws, remained the same. Its Electronic Govenment ranking jumped from 33rd to 18th, its Electronic Infrastrure score rose from 28th to 21st, and its overall Internet Quality jumped from 21st to 17th.

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Israel InternetIsrael Internet

Israel’s collapse can be credited to its plummet in Internet affordability compared to other countries.

(Credit: Shutterstock )


Globally, fixed internet and mobile internet are 11% and 26% more affordable than 2022, and Israel’s unallginment with global rates is likely the cause for its drop in this pillar – contributing to its overall collapse.

“In many nations, ‘digital quality of life’ has merged into the broader concept of overall ‘quality of life’. There’s no other way to look at it now that so many daily activities, including work, education, and leisure, are done online,” said Gabriele Racaityte-Krasauske, Surfshark’s spokeswoman. “That’s why it’s crucial to pinpoint the areas in which a nation’s digital quality of life thrives and where attention is needed, which is the precise purpose of the DQL Index.”


In 2023, Israel remains above Turkey (55th) and Saudi Arabia (45th) in Digital Quality of Life, and its Internet Quality remains 34% higher than the global average. Compared to other countries in this pillar, Israel is prepared to fight against cybercrime relatively well, and the country has good data protection laws compared to other nations…

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