The relentless push to add connectivity to home gadgets is creating dangerous side effects that figure to make the internet even less secure. So says an article in MIT Technology Review.
Computer hackers are out there, hacking into websites to shut them down, redirecting users to get advertising money, and doing all kinds of evil things by combining the power of thousands of interconnected computers.
And if you own and have connected webcams, digital video recorders and other gadgets in the “internet of things,” you may be helping them.
“Because these devices typically have little or no security, hackers can take them over with little effort,” the Review wrote. “And that makes it easier than ever to build huge botnets that take down much more than one site at a time.”
According to the Review, last October, a botnet made up of 100,000 compromised gadgets knocked an internet infrastructure provider partially offline. The loss of service to Dyn, resulted in a cascade of effects that ultimately caused a long list of high-profile websites, including Twitter and Netflix, to temporarily disappear from the internet.
“The best defense would be for everything online to run only secure software, so botnets couldn’t be created in the first place,” wrote the Review. “This isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Internet of things devices are not designed with security in mind and often have no way of being patched.”
So for now the question is, how much do you really need that little interconnected device?
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Do religion and science mix?
Do you wonder if religion and science mix? Here is the latest scientific answer:
“One of the most striking scientific discoveries about religion in recent years is that going to church weekly is good for you,” writes T.F. Luhrmann in a guest column in the New York Times. “Religious attendance — at least, religiosity — boosts the immune system and decreases blood pressure. It may add as much as two to three years to your life. The reason for this is not entirely clear.”
Luhrmann is a professor of anthropology at Stanford University, who has researched people’s relationship with their church and is author of “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God.”
Social support is one reason, she writes. “A study conducted in North Carolina found that frequent churchgoers had larger social networks, with more contact with, more affection for, and more kinds of, social support from those people than their unchurched counterparts. And we know that social support is directly tied to better health.”
Healthy behavior is another part of the reason, she wrote. “Certainly many churchgoers struggle with behaviors they would like to change, but on average, regular church attendees drink less, smoke less, use fewer recreational drugs and are less sexually promiscuous than others.”
It’s not that church goers aren’t tempted by such things, but maybe they try harder to resist.
“Yet I think there may be another factor,” Lurhmann writes. “Any faith demands that you experience the world as more than just what is material and observable … I saw that people were able to learn to experience God in this way, and that those who were able to experience a loving God vividly were healthier.”
Want to learn more? Check out page 4C and pick a church to visit on Sunday.
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How did Fayetteville get its name?
We know of the New River Gorge town of Fayetteville in Fayette County as a modern mecca for outdoor adventure, but, if you are not from the town, do you know how the city got it’s name?
The town, as well as the county, was named for America’s favorite Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette.
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, aka Lafayette, was born into a family of noble military lineage in 1757. At age 13, upon the death of his father and then grandparents, he inherited the family fortune.
Inspired by stories of the American colonists’ struggles against British oppression — and being a good Frenchman and thereby hating everything about the Brits — Lafayette sailed to the newly declared United States in 1777 to join the uprising. After some hesitation, colonial leaders named him a major-general in the Continental Army.
He lived long and prospered as a friend to the young American nation, and hence, he has no fewer than 50 cities, counties, bodies of water, parks and other geographic locations named after him.
In 1824, nearly 50 years after his service, he toured the United States as a guest of honor and helped rekindle a spirit of freedom in the still young nation.
