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Insider threats are on the rise and firms are doing more to stop them, according to a new report from Forrester Research. But it warns that insider threat programs can hurt employee engagement and productivity.
One of the ways companies are trying to curtail insider threats is by analyzing employee personal data to better detect suspicious or risky behavior. But IT security may go overboard in its collection process, security may be too stringent, and practices such as social media monitoring might "lead to eroded employee trust," Forrester warns.
An insider threat program can turn adversarial, impacting employees in negative ways. It's up to HR to work with IT security to provide the checks and balances, said Joseph Blankenship, vice president and research director of security and risk at Forrester.
Blankenship further discussed project delays in this Q&A. His responses were edited for clarity and length.
Insider threats are increasing. In 2015, malicious insiders accounted for about 26% of internal data breaches. And in 2019, it was 48%, according to Forrester's survey data. Why this increase?
Joseph Blankenship
Joseph Blankenship: I think it's twofold. You have the ability for users to monetize data and move data in large quantities like they've never had before. The ease of moving that data — and the portability of that data — is one factor. The other big factor is we're looking for [threats] more often. The tools are better. Whenever we see a new capability for threat detection, that's usually the period when we see this increase [in discovered incidents].
Nonetheless, this must be a stunning finding for a lot of firms. How do they respond to it?
Blankenship: Probably like the stages of grief. We see that pattern quite a bit in security. An event happens, and we realized we are at risk for that event happening again. So now we put effort behind it. We put budget behind it, we buy technology, we build a program and things improve.
Accidental release of internal data accounted for 43% of all insider incidents. What does that say about training?
Blankenship: It's also culture. Do employees actually understand why the [security] policy is there? Some of that is people trying to get around policies. They find that the security policy is restrictive. You see some of that when people decide to work on their own laptop and their laptop gets stolen. It's usually people that are somewhat well-meaning, but they find that the policy is getting in their way. Those are all mistakes. Those are all policy violations.
Types of insider threats
Who is responsible in a company for ensuring that the employees understand the rules?
Blankenship: Typically it's the CISO's responsibility to do this kind of security education.
Is this primarily the job of the IT security department?
Blankenship: Certainly, it's in partnership with human resources.
IT manages the internal security program, but many of the risks from an insider threat program are HR-related such as increased turnover or hiring. The HR department's metrics suffer if the program creates employee friction. Is that the case?
Blankenship: I don't think that's necessarily the case. You have to make the employee aware: 'Hey, we're doing this kind of monitoring because we have important customer data. We can't afford a breach of customer trust. We're doing this monitoring because we have intellectual property.' Things become a lot less scary, a lot less onerous, when people understand the reasons why. If it's too heavy-handed, if we're doing things to either punish employees or make their jobs really difficult, it does create that adversarial relationship.
What is the best practice here? Should HR or IT spell out exactly what they do to protect company security?
Blankenship: I don't know if you get into all the specifics of a security program, but make the employees aware. 'We're going to be monitoring things like email. We may be monitoring your computer usage.'
What is HR's role in helping the company implement these policies?
Because HR is the part of the company responsible for employee experience, it is very much incumbent on them to work with the security department and keep it a little bit honest.
Joseph BlankenshipVice president and research director, Forrester Research
Blankenship: Because HR is the part of the company responsible for employee experience, it is very much incumbent on them to work with the security department and keep it a little bit honest. I'm sure there are a lot of security folks that would love to really turn up the dial on security policies. If you remember some years ago, the big debate was should we allow personal internet usage on company issued devices. There were lots of security reasons why we would say, 'absolutely not.' However, the employee experience dictated that we had to allow some of that activity, otherwise we wouldn't be able to recruit any new employees. We really had to find the balance.
It sounds as if HR's responsibility here is to provide some checks and balances.
Blankenship: There's checks and balances as well as helping [IT security] to design the education program. There's probably not a lot of security technologists that are amazing at building culture, but that is absolutely the job of good HR professionals.
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Recovering from ransomware soars to the top of DR concerns
The rise of ransomware has had a significant effect on modern disaster recovery, shaping the way we protect data and plan a recovery. It does not bring the same physical destruction of a natural disaster, but the effects within an organization — and on its reputation — can be lasting.
It's no wonder that recovering from ransomware has become such a priority in recent years.
It's hard to imagine a time when ransomware wasn't a threat, but while cyberattacks date back as far as the late 1980s, ransomware in particular has had a relatively recent rise in prominence. Ransomware is a type of malware attack that can be carried out in a number of ways, but generally the "ransom" part of the name comes from one of the ways attackers hope to profit from it. The victim's data is locked, often behind encryption, and held for ransom until the attacker is paid. Assuming the attacker is telling the truth, the data will be decrypted and returned. Again, this assumes that the anonymous person or group that just stole your data is being honest.
"Just pay the ransom" is rarely the first piece of advice an expert will offer. Not only do you not know if payment will actually result in your computer being unlocked, but developments in backup and recovery have made recovering from ransomware without paying the attacker possible. While this method of cyberattack seems specially designed to make victims panic and pay up, doing so does not guarantee you'll get your data back or won't be asked for more money.
Disaster recovery has changed significantly in the 20 years TechTarget has been covering technology news, but the rapid rise of ransomware to the top of the potential disaster pyramid is one of the more remarkable changes to occur. According to a U.S. government report, by 2016 4,000 ransomware attacks were occurring daily. This was a 300% increase over the previous year. Ransomware recovery has changed the disaster recovery model, and it won't be going away any time soon. In this brief retrospective, take a look back at the major attacks that made headlines, evolving advice and warnings regarding ransomware, and how organizations are fighting back.
The appropriately named WannaCry ransomware attack began spreading in May 2017, using an exploit leaked from the National Security Agency targeting Windows computers. WannaCry is a worm, which means that it can spread without participation from the victims, unlike phishing attacks, which require action from the recipient to spread widely.
Ransomware recovery has changed the disaster recovery model, and it won't be going away any time soon.
How big was the WannaCry attack? Affecting computers in as many as 150 countries, WannaCry is estimated to have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. According to cyber risk modeling company Cyence, the total costs associated with the attack could be as high as $4 billion.
Rather than the price of the ransom itself, the biggest issue companies face is the cost of being down. Because so many organizations were infected with the WannaCry virus, news spread that those who paid the ransom were never given the decryption key, so most victims did not pay. However, many took a financial hit from the downtime the attack caused. Another major attack in 2017, NotPetya, cost Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk hundreds of millions of dollars. And that's just one victim.
In 2018, the city of Atlanta's recovery from ransomware ended up costing more than $5 million, and shut down several city departments for five days. In the Matanuska-Susitna borough of Alaska in 2018, 120 of 150 servers were affected by ransomware, and the government workers resorted to using typewriters to stay operational. Whether it is on a global or local scale, the consequences of ransomware are clear.
Ransomware attacks had a meteoric rise in 2016.
Looking back, the massive increase in ransomware attacks between 2015 and 2016 signaled when ransomware really began to take its place at the head of the data threat pack. Experts not only began emphasizing the importance of backup and data protection against attacks, but planning for future potential recoveries. Depending on your DR strategy, recovering from ransomware could fit into your current plan, or you might have to start considering an overhaul.
By 2017, the ransomware threat was impossible to ignore. According to a 2018 Verizon Data Breach Report, 39% of malware attacks carried out in 2017 were ransomware, and ransomware had soared from being the fifth most common type of malware to number one.
According to the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, ransomware was the most prevalent type of malware attack in 2017.
Ransomware was not only becoming more prominent, but more sophisticated as well. Best practices for DR highlighted preparation for ransomware, and an emphasis on IT resiliency entered backup and recovery discussions. Protecting against ransomware became less about wondering what would happen if your organization was attacked, and more about what you would do when your organization was attacked. Ransomware recovery planning wasn't just a good idea, it was a priority.
As a result of the recent epidemic, more organizations appear to be considering disaster recovery planning in general. As unthinkable as it may seem, many organizations have been reluctant to invest in disaster recovery, viewing it as something they might need eventually. This mindset is dangerous, and results in many companies not having a recovery plan in place until it's too late.
While ransomware attacks may feel like an inevitability — which is how companies should prepare — that doesn't mean the end is nigh. Recovering from ransomware is possible, and with the right amount of preparation and help, it can be done.
The modern backup market is evolving in such a way that downtime is considered practically unacceptable, which bodes well for ransomware recovery. Having frequent backups available is a major element of recovering, and taking advantage of vendor offerings can give you a boost when it comes to frequent, secure backups.
Vendors such as Reduxio, Nasuni and Carbonite have developed tools aimed at ransomware recovery, and can have you back up and running without significant data loss within hours. Whether the trick is backdating, snapshots, cloud-based backup and recovery, or server-level restores, numerous tools out there can help with recovery efforts. Other vendors working in this space include Acronis, Asigra, Barracuda, Commvault, Datto, Infrascale, Quorum, Unitrends and Zerto.
Along with a wider array of tech options, more information about ransomware is available than in the past. This is particularly helpful with ransomware attacks, because the attacks in part rely on the victims unwittingly participating. Whether you're looking for tips on protecting against attacks or recovering after the fact, a wealth of information is available.
The widespread nature of ransomware is alarming, but also provides first-hand accounts of what happened and what was done to recover after the attack. You may not know when ransomware is going to strike, but recovery is no longer a mystery.
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Expert advice on Windows based systems and hardware
Top Office 365 MFA considerations for administrators
With the rise in data breach incidents reported by companies of all sizes, it doesn't take much effort to find a cache of leaked passwords that can be used to gain unauthorized access to email or another online service.
Administrators can make users produce complex passwords and change them frequently to ensure they set a different password for different applications or systems. It's a helpful way to keep hackers from guessing a login, but it's a practice that can backfire. Many users struggle with memorizing password variations, which tends to lead to one complex password used across multiple systems. Industrious hackers who find a password dump can assume some end users will use the same password — or a variation of it — across multiple workloads online to make it easier to pry their way into other systems.
IT departments in the enterprise realize that unless they implement specific password policies and enforce them, their systems may be at risk of a hack attempt. To mitigate these risks, many administrators will try multifactor authentication (MFA) products to address some of the identity concerns. MFA is the technology that adds another layer of authentication after users enter their password to confirm their identity, such as a biometric verification or a code sent via text to their phone. An organization that has moved its collaboration workloads to Microsoft's cloud has a few Office 365 MFA options.
When considering an MFA product, IT administrators must consider several key areas, especially when some of the services they may subscribe to, such as Microsoft Azure and Office 365, include MFA functionality from Microsoft. Depending on the level of functionality needed and services covered by MFA, IT administrators might consider selecting a third-party vendor, even when that choice will require more configuration work with Active Directory and cloud services. IT workers unfamiliar with MFA technology can look over the following areas to help with the selection process.
When considering the purchase of an MFA product, IT administrators must consider several key areas, especially when some of the services they may subscribe to, such as Microsoft Azure and Office 365, include MFA functionality from Microsoft.
Choosing the right authentication options for end users
IT administrators must investigate what will work best for their end users because there are several options to choose from when it comes to MFA. Some products use phone calls for confirmation, code via text messaging, key fobs, an authenticator app and even facial recognition. Depending on what the consensus is in the organization, the IT decision-makers have to work through the evaluation process to make sure the vendor supports the option they want.
Identifying which MFA product supports cloud workloads
More organizations have adopted some cloud service, such as Office 365, Azure, AWS and other public clouds. The MFA product must adapt to the needs of the organization as it adds more cloud services. While Microsoft offers its own MFA technology that works with Office 365, other vendors such as Duo Security — owned by Cisco — and Okta support Office 365 MFA for companies that want to use a third-party product.
Potential problems that can affect Office 365 MFA users
Using Office 365 MFA helps improve security, but there is potential for trouble that blocks access for end users. This can happen when a phone used for SMS confirmation breaks or is out of the user's possession. Users might not gain access to the system or the services they need until they recover their device or change their MFA configuration.
Another possible problem to the authentication process can happen on the other end if the MFA product goes down and blocks access for everyone who has enabled MFA. These probabilities require IT to discuss and plan before implementing Office 365 MFA for the appropriate steps to be taken if these issues arise.
Evaluate the overall costs and features related to MFA
For the most part, MFA products are subscription-based that charge a monthly fee per user. Some vendors, such as Microsoft, bundle MFA with self-service identity, access management, access reporting and self-service group management. Third-party vendors might offer different MFA features; as one example, Duo Security includes self-enrollment and management, user risk assessment with phishing simulation, and device access monitoring and identification with its MFA product.
Single sign-on, identity management and identity monitoring are all valuable features that, if included with an MFA offering, should be worth considering when it's time to narrow the vendor list.
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Boost your ecommerce revenue with Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection – Dynamics 365 Blog
With the booming growth of online technologies and marketplaces comes the burgeoning rise of a variety of cybersecurity challenges for businesses that conduct any aspect of their operations through online software and the Internet. Fraud is one of the most pervasive trends of the modern online marketplace, and continues to be a consistent, invasive issue for all businesses.
As the rate of payment fraud continues to rise, especially in retail ecommerce where the liability lies with the merchant, so does the amount companies spend each year to combat and secure themselves against it. Fraud and wrongful rejections already significantly impact merchants' bottom-line in a booming economy and as well as when the economy is soft.
The impact of outdated fraud detection tools and false alarms
Customers, merchants, and banking institutions have been impacted for years by suboptimal experiences, increased operational expenses, wrongful rejections, and reduced revenue. To combat these negative business impacts, companies have been implementing layered solutions. For example, merchant risk managers are bogged down with manual reviews and analysis of their own local 30/60/90-day historical data. These narrow, outdated views of data provide a partial hindsight view of fraud trends, leaving risk managers with no real-time information to work with when creating new rules to hopefully minimize fraud loss.
One of the most common ways that fraud impacts everyday consumers and business is through wrongful rejections. For example, when a merchant maintains an outdated and/or strict set of transaction rules and algorithms, a customer who initiates a retail ecommerce transaction through a credit card might experience a wrongful rejection known to consumers as a declined transaction, because of these outdated rules. Similarly, wrongful declined transactions can also happen when the card issuing bank refuses to authorize the purchase using the card due to suspicion of fraud. The implications of these suboptimal experiences for all parties involved (customers, merchants, and banks) directly correlates into loss of credibility, security, and business revenue.
Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection
As one of the biggest technology organizations in the world, Microsoft saw an opportunity to provide software as a service that effectively and visibly helps reduce the rate and pervasiveness of fraud while simultaneously helping to reduce wrongful declined transactions and improving customer experience. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection is a cloud-based solution merchants can use in real-time to help lower their costs related to combatting fraud, help increase their revenue by improving acceptance of legitimate transactions, reduce friction in customer experience, and integrate easily into their existing order management system and payment stack. This solution offers a global level of fraud insights using data sets from participating merchants that are processed with real-time machine learning to detect and mitigate evolving fraud schemes in a timely manner.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection houses five powerful capabilities designed to capitalize on the power of machine learning to provide merchants with an innovative fraud protection solution:
Adaptive AI technology continuously learns and adapts from patterns and trends and will equip fraud managers with the tools and data they need to make informed decisions on how to optimize their fraud controls.
A fraud protection network maintains up-to-date connected data that provides a global view of fraud activity and maintains the security of merchants' confidential information and shoppers' privacy.
Transaction acceptance booster shares transactional trust knowledge with issuing banks to help boost authorization rates.
Customer escalation support provides detailed risk insights about each transaction to help improve merchants' customer support experience.
Account creation protection monitors account creation, helps minimize abuse and automated attacks on customer accounts, and helps to avoid incurring losses due to fraudulent accounts
See the image below to learn more about the relationship between merchants and banks when they both use Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection:
Banks worldwide can choose to participate in the Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection transaction acceptance booster feature to increase acceptance rates of legitimate authorization requests from online merchants using Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. Merchants using the product can opt to use this feature to increase acceptance rates for authorization requests made to banks without having to make any changes to their existing authorization process.
This week at Sibos 2019 in London, Microsoft will be showcasing its secure and compliant cloud solutions for the banking industry. Read a round-up of announcements unveiled at Sibos and view an agenda of Microsoft events and sessions at the show. Stop by our booth (Z131) for a showcase of applications relevant to banking, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, which will be generally available on October 1st, 2019. Contact your Microsoft representative to get started.
Author: Microsoft News Center
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VMware's Bitnami acquisition grows its development portfolio
The rise of containers and the cloud has changed the face of the IT market, and VMware must evolve with it. The vendor has moved out of its traditional data center niche and — with its purchase of software packager Bitnami — has made a push into the development community, a change that presents new challenges and potential.
Historically, VMware delivered a suite of system infrastructure management tools. With the advent of cloud and digital disruption, IT departments' focus expanded from monitoring systems to developing applications. VMware has extended its management suite to accommodate this shift, and its acquisition of Bitnami adds new tools that ease application development.
Building applications presents difficulties for many organizations. Developers spend much of their time on application plumbing, writing software that performs mundane tasks — such as storage allocation — and linking one API to another.
Bitnami sought to simplify that work. The company created prepackaged components called installers that automate the development process. Rather than write the code themselves, developers can now download Bitnami system images and plug them into their programs. As VMware delves further into hybrid cloud market territory, Bitnami brings simplified app development to the table.
Torsten Volk
"Bitnami's solutions were ahead of their time," said Torsten Volk, managing research director at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), a computer consultant based out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. "They enable developers to bulletproof application development infrastructure in a self-service manner."
The value Bitnami adds to VMware
Released under the Apache License, Bitnami's modules contain commonly coupled software applications instead of just bare-bones images. For example, a Bitnami WordPress stack might contain WordPress, a database management system (e.g., MySQL) and a web server (e.g., Apache).
Bitnami takes care of several mundane programming chores. Its keeps all components up-to-date — so if it finds a security problem, it patches that problem — and updates those components' associated libraries. Bitnami makes its modules available through its Application Catalogue, which functions like an app store.
The company designed its products to run on a wide variety of systems. Bitnami supports Apple OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux OSes. Its VM features work with VMware ESX and ESXi, VirtualBox and QEMU. Bitnami stacks also are compatible with software infrastructures such as WAMP, MAMP, LAMP, Node.js, Tomcat and Ruby. It supports cloud tools from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud. The installers, too, feature a wide variety of platforms, including Abante Cart, Magento, MediaWiki, PrestaShop, Redmine and WordPress.
Bitnami seeks to help companies build applications once and run them on many different configurations.
"For enterprise IT, we intend to solve for challenges related to taking a core set of application packages and making them available consistently across teams and clouds," said Milin Desai, general manager of cloud services at VMware.
Development teams share project work among individuals, work with code from private or public repositories and deploy applications on private, hybrid and public clouds. As such, Bitnami's flexibility made it appealing to developers — and VMware.
How Bitnami and VMware fit together
[VMware] did not pay a premium for the products, which were not generating a lot of revenue. Instead, they wanted the executives, who are all rock stars in the development community.
Torsten VolkManaging Research Director, EMA
VMware wants to extend its reach from legacy, back-end data centers and appeal to more front-end and cloud developers.
"In the last few years, VMware has gone all in on trying to build out a portfolio of management solutions for application developers," Volk said. VMware embraced Kubernetes and has acquired container startups such as Heptio to prove it.
Bitnami adds another piece to this puzzle, one that provides a curated marketplace for VMware customers who hope to emphasize rapid application development.
"Bitnami's application packaging capabilities will help our customers to simplify the consumption of applications in hybrid cloud environments, from on-premises to VMware Cloud on AWS to VMware Cloud Provider Program partner clouds, once the deal closes," Desai said.
Facing new challenges in a new market
However, the purchase moves VMware out of its traditional virtualized enterprise data center sweet spot. VMware has little name recognition among developers, so the company must build its brand.
"Buying companies like Bitnami and Heptio is an attempt by VMware to gain instant credibility among developers," Volk said. "They did not pay a premium for the products, which were not generating a lot of revenue. Instead, they wanted the executives, who are all rock stars in the development community."
Supporting a new breed of customer poses its challenges. Although VMware's Bitnami acquisition adds to its application development suite — an area of increasing importance — it also places new hurdles in front of the vendor. Merging the culture of a startup with that of an established supplier isn't always a smooth process. In addition, VMware has bought several startups recently, so consolidating its variety of entities in a cohesive manner presents a major undertaking.
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Ponemon: Mega breaches, data breach costs on the rise
The Ponemon Institute's latest study on data breach costs highlights the rise of what it calls "mega breaches," which are the worst types of security incidents in terms of costs and data exposed.
The "2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview," which was sponsored by IBM Security, details the cost enterprises incur after falling victim to a data breach and found that the average total cost of a data breach rose from $3.62 to $3.86 million — a 6.4% increase — with $148 as the average cost per lost or stolen record. This year's report also features data on the biggest breaches, which Ponemon and IBM have termed "mega breaches."
"Mega breaches are where there are more than one million records that have been breached," Limor Kessem, executive security advisor at IBM, told SearchSecurity. "And then we looked at up to 50 million [records exposed], although it could be up to infinity these days. Just last year there were 2.9 billion records exposed, and in 2016 there were over 4 billion records exposed, so a breach can be millions and hundreds of millions as well."
Given that this is the first year that Ponemon has included mega breaches in its annual report and that there were only 11 mega breaches that occurred, there was no data from past years to compare these findings to. However, the report found that a mega breach with the minimum of 1 million records exposed lead to an average total cost of $40 million, while a mega breach with 50 million records exposed had an average cost of $350 million.
After collecting data from more than 2,500 separate interviews that were conducted over a 10-month period with 477 enterprises, the study concluded that mega breaches take 365 days to identify, which is almost 100 days shorter than typical breaches (266 days to detect).
The Ponemon study also discovered that "data breaches are the most costly in the United States and the Middle East and least costly in Brazil and India," given that the average total in the United States was $7.91 million. "The U.S. topped the chart at almost twice the international average," Kessem said. "Of course there are currency differences, but the big thing in the U.S. is loss of business."
Kessem further noted that when consumers were interviewed, 75% of them said they would not want to do business with a company that they didn't trust to safeguard their data.
"People in the U.S. are very aware of breaches," she said. "They topped the charts in awareness of how [data breaches] happen and how many happen and so on. In other words, we know breaches are happening and we wouldn't like to do business with those who can't protect our data and I think this was a major cost center for the U.S. in terms of data breaches."
In addition to the cost per record, companies also experience direct and indirect costs after a breach. For example, Canada has the highest direct costs, according to the report, but the U.S. had the highest indirect cost at $152 per capita, which includes "employee's time, effort and other organizational resources spent notifying victims and investigating the incident." The study also highlights the idea that breaches in the healthcare industry are the most expensive and have been consistently so for several years, according to Kessem, considering the amount of personal data healthcare companies possess.
"Typically [healthcare companies] have a lot of personally identifiable information," she said. "They're also going to have payment information and contact information — the more information is attached to an identity, the more it is going to cost."
Post-breach consequences are further addressed in the report, which states, "Organizations that lost less than one percent of their customers due to a data breach resulted in an average total cost of $2.8 million." However, the Ponemon study also noted that an incident response team has the ability to reduce the cost by as much as $14 per compromised record — a small change that would greatly add up at the end of a breach.
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Microsoft to acquire Bonsai in move to build 'brains' for autonomous systems – The Official Microsoft Blog
Bonsai's team members. Photo courtesy of Bonsai.
With AI's meteoric rise, autonomous systems have been projected to grow to more than 800 million in operation by 2025. However, while envisioned in science fiction for a long time, truly intelligent autonomous systems are still elusive and remain a holy grail. The reality today is that training autonomous systems that function amidst the many unforeseen situations in the real world is very hard and requires deep expertise in AI — essentially making it unscalable.
To achieve this inflection point in AI's growth, traditional machine learning methodologies aren't enough. Bringing intelligence to autonomous systems at scale will require a unique combination of the new practice of machine teaching, advances in deep reinforcement learning and leveraging simulation for training. Microsoft has been on a path to make this a reality through continued AI research breakthroughs; the development of the powerful Azure AI platform of tools, services and infrastructure; advances in deep learning including our acquisition of Maluuba, and the impressive efficiencies we've achieved in simulation-based training with Microsoft Research's AirSim tool. With software developers at the center of digital transformation, our pending acquisition of GitHub further underscores just how imperative it is that we empower developers to break through and lead this next wave of innovation.
Today we are excited to take another major step forward in our vision to make it easier for developers and subject matter experts to build the "brains"— machine learning modelfor autonomous systems of all kinds with the signing of an agreement to acquire Bonsai. Based in Berkeley, California, and an M12 portfolio company, Bonsai has developed a novel approach using machine teaching that abstracts the low-level mechanics of machine learning, so that subject matter experts, regardless of AI aptitude, can specify and train autonomous systems to accomplish tasks. The actual training takes place inside a simulated environment.
The company is building a general-purpose, deep reinforcement learning platform especially suited for enterprises leveraging industrial control systems such as robotics, energy, HVAC, manufacturing and autonomous systems in general. This includes unique machine-teaching innovations, automated model generation and management, a host of APIs and SDKs for simulator integration, as well as pre-built support for leading simulations all packaged in one end-to-end platform.
Bonsai's platform combined with rich simulation tools and reinforcement learning work in Microsoft Research becomes the simplest and richest AI toolchain for building any kind of autonomous system for control and calibration tasks. This toolchain will compose with Azure Machine Learning running on the Azure Cloud with GPUs and Brainwave, and models built with it will be deployed and managed in Azure IoT, giving Microsoft an end-to-end solution for building, operating and enhancing "brains" for autonomous systems.
What I find exciting is that Bonsai has achieved some remarkable breakthroughs with their approach that will have a profound impact on AI development. Last fall, they established a new reinforcement learning benchmark for programming industrial control systems. Using a robotics task to demonstrate the achievement, the platform successfully trained a simulated robotic arm to grasp and stack blocks on top of one another by breaking down the task into simpler sub-concepts. Their novel technique performed 45 times faster than a comparable approach from Google's DeepMind. Then, earlier this year, they extended deep reinforcement learning's capabilities beyond traditional game play, where it's often demonstrated, to real-world applications. Using Bonsai's AI Platform and machine teaching, subject matter experts from Siemens, with no AI expertise, trained an AI model to autocalibrate a Computer Numerical Control machine 30 times faster than the traditional approach. This represented a huge milestone in industrial AI, and the implications when considered across the broader sector are just staggering.
To realize this vision of making AI more accessible and valuable for all, we have to remove the barriers to development, empowering every developer, regardless of machine learning expertise, to be an AI developer. Bonsai has made tremendous progress here and Microsoft remains committed to furthering this work. We already deliver the most comprehensive collection of AI tools and services that make it easier for any developer to code and integrate pre-built and custom AI capabilities into applications and extend to any scenario. There are over a million developers using our pre-built Microsoft Cognitive Services, a collection of intelligent APIs that enable developers to easily leverage high-quality vision, speech, language, search and knowledge technologies in their apps with a few lines of code. And last fall, we led a combined industry push to foster a more open AI ecosystem, bringing AI advances to all developers, on any platform, using any language through the introduction of the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) format and Gluon open source interface for deep learning.
We're really confident this unique marriage of research, novel approach and technology will have a tremendous effect toward removing barriers and accelerating the current state of AI development. We look forward to having Bonsai and their team join us to help realize this collective vision.
Tags: AI, developers, Machine Learning
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Dragos' Robert Lee discusses latest ICS threats, hacking back
Cyberthreats to critical infrastructure are on the rise, but that doesn't mean the U.S. is about to plunge into catastrophic blackouts, Robert Lee argued.
Lee, founder and CEO of Dragos Inc., which specializes in industrial control system (ICS) security and is based in Hanover, Md., talked at RSA Conference 2018 last month about recent attacks and intrusions on power grids and other critical infrastructure. While ICS threats and the capabilities of advanced persistent threat groups are growing, Lee explained the technical challenges of hacking industrial controls and why those systems are much different than typical IT systems.
In part one of the interview with Lee at RSA Conference, he explained why he's generally optimistic about the state of ICS security and how enterprises are making improvements. In part two, Lee assesses the latest ICS threats and how such threats can often be exaggerated or misinterpreted. He also takes issue with public cyber attribution, as well as the concept of hacking back.
Editor's note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
You've talked in the past about how the decentralized nature of the energy grid isn't something that lends itself to one attack spreading across a large region and causing a wide-scale blackout, for example. If it's smaller companies that are mostly vulnerable to ICS threats, does that also lessen the risk?
Robert Lee: Yes, but I wouldn't imply that attackers can only do the smaller ones. I'm saying I'm optimistic about the movement of all the other ones. But, to your point, what concerns me is not the Eastern Interconnection coming down. What concerns me is a 30-minute power outage in Washington, D.C. If a small municipality like D.C. has a 30-minute power outage, watch what happens to the political and regulatory landscape. And the knee-jerk reaction would cycle through the innovation in the industry for a decade. It's our own paranoia and fear that amplify anything that actually does occur.
But, again, there are global manufacturing companies that, before we walked in the door, were doing nothing [about ICS security]. It's not just that larger companies are doing well. It's just I'm optimistic about the traction I'm seeing in an industry that used to be very much stale.
But I'm also still significantly concerned and not super optimistic about what's happening with the smaller players. And that's where we do need to make investments and incentivize some of the movement that we're seeing pay dividends in the larger players. There's no reason we couldn't repeat that with the smaller players.
What were these companies — big or small — doing, if anything, on ICS security before you walked in the door?
Lee: By and large, most of them were doing nothing before. For the ones that were doing something, it was adapting IT security tools to try to fit into ICS, which largely led to a compliance-check-box kind of approach.
It was and is [really] just the basics, like network monitoring. But monitoring the industrial environment to look for threats is nowhere near wide-scale adoption. We see companies largely either doing nothing or adapting systems and technologies that weren't meant for industrial threats.
You've been a critic of how ICS threats have been exaggerated or overplayed. Not to pick on Symantec, but when you saw the Dragonfly 2.0 report detailing a new campaign against the U.S. power grid, and then the news headlines that followed the report, what was your reaction?
Lee: I very much like Symantec as a firm, but I significantly disagree with their assessment. First of all, they said Dragonfly 2.0 was the same adversary group as Dragonfly 1. That's why they named it that way. Our assessment is completely different. There are three distinct teams, not one, and that means a lot of difference in terms of how you defend against it.
And the second thing that I disagree with professionally was they had their technical people, who were then amplified by a lobbyist, sitting in front of Congress in an open hearing saying there were no technical limitations to causing significant damage to the American power grid. And that is not accurate to what the attack was. I looked at the data. We were tracking the threat before it was public, and that [statement] in no way aligned with the actual reality of the situation.
From what they were doing, could they have caused an hour power outage in D.C. or whatever specific companies they had been targeting? Yes. That sucks, and we have to take that very, very seriously. But could they have caused significant damage to the American power grid? No. It's not as easy as just flipping a switch. That's not accurate at all. That's not how that works.
But IT security companies generally view the hard problem as access, because in IT, that is the hard problem. You get access to a Windows system with all the sensitive data, and it's gone. Access is the problem in IT security. But access is just the beginning of the discussion with ICS. Once you actually have access to the equipment operating electric power, then you've got to figure out how to actually do it.
There have been times before where we've set like a pen tester down in front of electric equipment and said, 'OK, you have full access, physical access, make the lights blink,' and they weren't able to do so. I'm not saying it's not extremely doable, and there are adversaries that know exactly how to do it. But let's not conflate access as equating to damage for ICS.
When you look at the threat landscape and you see things like CrashOverride and BlackEnergy malware implicated in recent attacks on Ukraine's power grid, do those things concern you?
Lee: Absolutely. I think one of the unfortunate things is that a lot of American power companies put an amazing amount of effort on [ICS security] post-Ukraine, but for some of them, the idea is, 'Well, that's Ukraine. That's on the other side of the internet.' And that's not how this works.
To your question, I did a 'Little Bobby' comic specific to this issue. This is how much I think it's a joke at this point. The actors behind Trisis and the actors behind CrashOverride and the actors behind the 2015 [Ukraine] attack are different groups, and they have already targeted and gained access to infrastructure of the United States. They have not shown the intent to move past that and to commit disruptive attacks. But we can't say, 'Oh, yeah, we saw literally the same threats in another country taking down power,' and then say, 'Yeah, but that's over there.' You can't have that approach.
If it was a different threat actor and everything else, then maybe we could just be concerned and think about hypothetical scenarios. But when it's literally the same threat group, we should probably take that fairly seriously.
There's been a lot of talk about hacking back at RSA Conference. You've spoken out about this before.
Lee: It's stupid. It is absolutely asinine.
Were you surprised that there are people here and outside of the event advocating for hacking back?
Lee: I can appreciate why. The loud voices in the infosec community have made very inaccurate statements over the years. You have probably heard at some point, 'Well, attackers only have to get one thing right. Defenders have to protect against everything.' That's not true at all. That's not even close to true.
Technically, attackers have to do everything without being detected, and defenders only have to reliably detect one thing in the whole process. So, there's these clichés that have largely been done by the security industry to sell things that do not line up with reality. And so if you are an executive or a politician and you've been told time and time again, 'Defense fails, defense fails, defense fails,' well, you're going to say, 'Let's try something different,' which is hack back on offense. They're not doing it because they're malicious. They're doing it because they've been told for years that defense fails.
In reality, we've seen the exact opposite. Defense is winning and succeeding. Adversary dwell time, according the latest Mandiant [M-Trends] report, is way down from what it was 10 years ago. When you look at the ability to get an exploit on a system, you don't really get an exploit on the system anymore. You need a chain of exploits to get there. You have an NSA [National Security Agency] director [Mike Rogers] all but crying in front of Congress to get a backdoor in security products because of how hard it's become after they lost [surveillance] capabilities. Defense is doing extremely well.
It's not that I think those people who are recommending hacking back are stupid — I think they've been misled. But the idea of hack back is extremely asinine. The idea that that is going to contribute to security at all is extremely silly. Forget the legal ramifications. Forget the fact that you may look like a foreign hacker to some other group while you're hacking back. Forget the potential collateral damage. It's just a poor security investment. When people are having trouble tuning firewalls or doing network monitoring, maybe investing in offensive capabilities is not the best return on investment for a company.
With escalating ICS threats and more groups with these capabilities, are we entering an arms race of sorts with critical infrastructure attacks?
If you look at the Trisis malware in Saudi Arabia, there's no polite or easy way to say it: Whoever designed that capability was intending to kill people.
Robert LeeCEO, Dragos
Lee: It's going to keep going back and forth. You're going have the industrial espionage take place and the trade secrets loss take place. All that stuff is going to happen, but the military aspect of it is concerning. And one of the other things that concerns me is intelligence teams preparing for potential military action that could be perceived as actually military action, or an intelligence team potentially making a mistake in sensitive infrastructure and causing what appears to be an attack. This is a very concerning area that we must address.
And also, if you look at the Trisis malware in Saudi Arabia, there's no polite or easy way to say it: Whoever designed that capability was intending to kill people. That should upset everybody around the world.
You've talked in the past about cyber attribution and how it can create problems. Is attribution harder for ICS?
Lee: If anything, it's probably easier because of the level of capability required to do certain things. It rules out some players. But attribution is not useful. Attribution is in no way useful for security. It's a political topic, but it distracts [from] the discussion on how to actually defend those systems. And it also causes issues to the private sector.
When the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was Russians breaking into routers, what they effectively did was have every single executive around the country spun up about Russian nation-state hackers instead of allowing the security people to actually address the security of what was mentioned in the advisory itself.
I would say not only is attribution not useful, it can also be very harmful. Now, if the government wants to take action off it, that's different. For example, if the government wants to impose sanctions against a country because they can move public attribution of cyberattacks, that's different. But if it's just to throw a name out, it's not helpful — it's harmful.
aboutcriticalCyberthreatsdoesn'tInfrastructureintomeanplungerisethat


This BTEC course introduces you to the business environment and what working in this area entails. As part of this qualification you will study three core units and nine optional units: Enterprise in the business world - you will learn what makes an enterprise successful which is important for anyone who is looking to work in business or to set up their own business. Finance for business - all businesses need to be financially healthy to survive so you will learn how to manage costs and make revenue and profits. Principles of marketing - you will learn the importance of marketing and the different types of markets. Optional units include: Recruitment and selection, Visual merchandising, Customerservice, Promoting a brand, Introduction to retail and Business online.
This qualification will demonstrate an interest in business, which is useful for job applications. It will also provide a route to further study, including BTEC Business or Travel and Tourism at Level 3 or AS Business, Accounts and Certificate in Finance. This course can also prepare you for the Business Career Academy.
English Language at grade C or above would be beneficial. Due to a wide variety of units covered time management is paramount. An interest in business is essential. If you enjoy watching The Apprentice, Mary Portas Queen of Shops or The Fixer, this course will be perfect for you.


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Home Entertainment News Actress Noel Neill – 'Superman's Lois Lane – Dies at 95
Actress Noel Neill – 'Superman's Lois Lane – Dies at 95
Gephardt Daily Staff
Actress Noel Neill as 'Lois Lane' in 'The Adventures of Superman' / Photo Courtesy: RKO Archives
TUCSON, AZ., July 4, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) — Noel Neill, who played the role of Lois Lane on TV's 'The Adventures of Superman,' passed away at the age of 95.
The actress's manager, Larry Ward, revealed the news via a Facebook post from editor Jim Nolt, saying that Neill died in Tucson, Arizona "following a battle with a long illness," according to People.com.
While she is best known for playing Lois Lane in the TV series "Adventures of Superman" (1952) beginning in the second season in 1953. She actually first played Lois in the 1948 serial "Superman" in 1948.
She replaced actress Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane on the TV series when Coates was offered a leading part in another TV series and left the show.
Noel Neill George Reeves The Adventures of SupermanPhoto Courtesy RKO Archives
Although she eventually stepped away from the role as Lane, Neill returned to the Superman franchise in 1978, taking on the role of Lane's mother Ella, and again in 2006 when she played Lex Luther's wife Gertrude Vanderworth in "Superman Returns."
"She was kind, selfless, hardworking, funny with a quick wit, and assertive – all the same qualities that embodied the character of Lois Lane," Ward added in the Facebook post. "Noel truly was Lois Lane, and for many of us, she was the first working woman seen on television."
"Few of her fans actually knew her real name, almost always simply calling her 'Lois' to which she would unfailing answer with a bright smile and a kid word. It was more than a role to her. 'Lois' was someone she believed in and a character she happily and warmly embraced."
Jack Larson
Noel Neill
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'Goonies,' 'Superman' filmmaker Richard Donner dead at 91
Ta-Nehisi Coates writing new 'Superman' film from producer J.J. Abrams
DC Comics to bring Batman, Superman to the future in 'Future State'

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Why the CNC Machine Shop is Vital The CNC machine shop is the oft-forgotten shaper of things, components, products, and many metal parts that have come to make a difference in our lives. By precise definition, a machine shop is nothing more than a location where steel is created, cut, and shaped by machine equipment. However, the notion of the machine shop has evolved from something akin to the fabled ancient "smithy" to the contemporary high-tech multi-million dollar businesses without a hammer or anvil to be found. Somewhere during the evolution of the current machine shop, the level of engineering and creation improved. With the impact of the technological revolution, the rapid production of resources precipitated the arrival of tools that could mass-produce more tools. It's not false, although it might sound unnecessary. Picture the initial batch of devices capable of producing more machines that will then produce a lot more machines. With all the capability to rapidly fabricate and mass-produce machines with standard components that are compatible, more companies had the opportunity to create more machines. Therefore, when you think of the metal parts in your car, your home, or the devices that have been critical when it came to making the elements that get into them, you benefit from years of history and innovation and go back to the industrial revolution and beyond. Today nevertheless, the main technology responsible for many of the metal products we use is CNC, short for computer numerical control.
When your drive your car or use your computer, you directly benefit from the CNC technology, a technology that the business barons of the industrial revolution can only imagine. So what is it? Numeric control, in the most straightforward perception, refers to the automation of machine tools like industrial milling and boring machines. This way, instead of machine tools being controlled by the hands- levers and cranks of the 1700s, they're entirely automated by designed commands, easily replicated and kept on the PC whenever the machine shop must run an additional component. This makes producing the same component, over and over again incredibly simple and cost effective.
Before CNC there only numeric control, which demanded a developer to produce tapes which were used to input the proper commands. However, once again modern computers came into prominence, number subroutines might be used to more quickly and effectively input a list of points and speeds to make the list of "instructions" a device needed to make a specified component. Before long, computer numerical control (CNC) was used together with computer aided design (CAD) in CNC machine shops as well as CNC machining centers all over the world, making the design and machining of steel products much faster and more effective.


On Sunday September 17th, 72 volunteers made their way over to Green Island, located in Brisbane's Moreton Bay, for Ocean Crusaders – Green Island Clean Up.
Green Island has a reputation for being visited by more debris than people and the results of the day speak for themselves with an outstanding 660kg of debris removed from the island.
We are very proud to have been able to support such a great initiative to help clean up our backyard and protect our wildlife!


ONE Commercial Realty Services has been retained on an Exclusive Basis for the sale of 84-14 Astoria Boulevard in Queens. The subject property is a 16,850 SF prime retail strip positioned on a 35,020 SF lot. The zoning is R4B, R4, C2-3, allowing a Commercial Buildable of 1.0, Residential Buildable of 0.9 and a Community Facility Buildable of 2.0.
84-14 Astoria Boulevard is a unique development opportunity, largely due to its proximity to LaGuardia Airport. Just six minutes away (1.4 miles), LaGuardia is currently undergoing an $8 billion renovation, and is already ranked the 19th busiest airport in the country, per the FAA. In 2016 alone, it handled about 29.8 million travelers on more than 369,000 flights. The first half of this project will cost $4 billion and is considered the largest public-private partnership for infrastructure in the United States. Upon completion, a 1.3 million-square-foot building with 35 gates will replace the outdated "Terminal B". A proposed 1.5-mile-long Air Train to LaGuardia is also in the works. It would connect with the New York City Subway and Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in Willets Point in a similar manner to the Air Train at JFK Airport. Construction is expected to begin in 2019, and is projected to open by 2023.
In addition to being in proximity to millions of travelers, 84-14 Astoria Boulevard is just 3.4 Miles (11 minutes) by car to the Arthur Ashe Stadium, home annually to the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, one of the largest and most viewed public events in the world. Last year 691,143 fans attended the tournament inside the stadium, while thousands of others flocked to the area just to be in proximity of it. Another venue nearby is Citi Field, just 2.3 Miles (9 Minutes by car) home to the New York Mets, who saw 2,460,622 fans attend their games in 2017.
From a development perspective, a mixed-use hotel makes sense, due to the large volume of tourists, travelers and fans that occupy this up and coming area of Queens every year.


If you read my recent blog post on Embracing Slow Fashion, you'll know that the fashion industry is something I hold close to my heart and have a great interest in. A few years ago, I was completely unaware of all of the terrible things that happened in the industry to produce the cheap, fast fashion items that many of us buy on a daily basis. Check out the post if you want to read more here.
Anyway, I thought I'd do something that was a bit of fun and create a quiz that'll make you think about your shopping habits. I am no saint when it comes to eco-friendly fashion, but it is something I am really trying to embrace. Although I am a self-confessed Boots and ASOS addict, I have tried to cut back on my shopping sprees and to make more of an effort to recycle and reuse my old clothing in the last little while, and certainly hope to make more life-long changes as the year continues. If you'd like to embrace the slow fashion movement, keep checking back to see my latest tips and tricks!
I'd love to hear your results and thoughts on the topic – is there anything simple you think that we could all do to make a difference to the world of fast fashion? Let me know on the wonderful world of social media!
I'd love to hear your results and thoughts on the topic – is there anything simple you think that we could all do to make a difference to the world of fast fashion? Let me know on the wonderful world of social media (links below)!
I got Eco-Fashion Warrior! I become aware of fast fashion after Marzia Bisognin mentioned it in her blog posts and YouTube videos. I still shop at H&M every now and then, but I have cut down a lot on my shopping habits.
Haha I am apparently an eco fashion warrior too. I liked the idea with the quiz. The one about washing clothes was harder to answer because it depends what kind of garment it is, but my answer obviously didn't ruin my score. I think it's great that you're getting people to think about this in a fun way.
Great quiz! I didn't know you could do that, so cool!
Such a fun wee quiz. I'm a eco fashion warrior! Only question I struggled with was style icon as I don't really have one. It's a great way to get people thinking about their purchase habits. Thrifty all the way!
Loved this! I'm an eco warrior too, and it has definitely made me more conscious about where and what I'm buying. A great quiz with an even better point!
I loved the quiz and I got the results that I thought I would…average Annie. I know I have to do better in this department!


Ref:-NFIR's letter No.lV/MACPS/09/Part 10, dated 20.02.2017.
The undersigned is directed to refer to item No.3 of the record note of discussions held on 12.10.2015 on MACPS anomalies whereby NFIR have stated that ACP Scheme is more advantageous than MACPS for certain catggories of employees viz. office Clerks/Accounts Clerks, Commercial Clerks,Stenographers, Technician Gr.lll and Shroff category.
i. The employees directly recruited as Office Clerk (GP Rs.1900) are getting Grade Pay of Rs.4600 as 3rd MACPS whereas under ACP Scheme no further financial upgradation beyond GP of Rs.4200/- would be admissible.
ii. The employees directly recruited as Technician Gr.lll (GP Rs.1900) are getting Grade Pay of Rs.4200 as 3rd MACPS whereas under ACP Scheme no further financial upgradation beyond GP of Rs. 2800/- would be admissible.
iii. The employees directly recruited as Shroff category (GP Rs.1900) after their promotion as Hd. Shroff in GP Rs.4200 have further been granted 3rd MACPS in Grade Pay of Rs.4200 (as next promotional cadre post of ADC is also in the same Grade Pay of Rs.4200/-) whereas under ACP Scheme there is no provision for grant of 3rd financial upgradation.
iv. The employees directly recruited as Stenographer (GP Rs.2400) are getting Grade Pay of Rs.4800/- as 3rd MACPS whereas under ACP Scheme no further financial upgradation beyond GP of Rs.4600/- would be admissible.
v. The employees directly recruited as Accounts Clerk (GP Rs.1900) are getting Grade Pay of Rs.4600 as 3rd MACPS whereas under ACP Scheme no further financial upgradation beyond GP of Rs.4200/- would be admissible.
3. From the above, it can be seen that MACP Scheme is more advantageous than the ACP Scheme for the aforesaid categories.
4. Federations are requested to appreciate the factual position as mentioned above.
I have been appointed as Jr. Stenographer in September 1998. Sir, kindly advise me when I am eligible for the Grade pay of Rs.4800/-.
Railway Board has clarified that MACP Scheme is more advantageous than the ACP Scheme for certain categories. Railway Board has requested to federations to appreciate the factual position.


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Q: my custom site.css inside my asp.net mvc-5 is not overriding the built-in styles I am working on an asp.net mvc-5 web application. and i have the following inside my shared _layout view:-
<link id="bs-css" href="~/Content/css/bootstrap-cerulean.css" rel="stylesheet">

<link href="~/Content/css/charisma-app.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="~/Content/css/bootstrap-responsive.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="~/Content/start/jquery-ui-1.10.3.custom.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
@Styles.Render("~/Content/templete")

so mainly i am referencing the built-in bootstrap .css files first, then i am referecning the bundle @Styles.Render("~/Content/templete") which contain our site.css. so this means that the site.css should override the built-in .css files, since i am referencing the site.css after them...
now the problem i am facing is that i have the following style define inside my site.css:-
.input-validation-error {
    border: 1px solid #ff0000;
    background-color: #ffeeee;
}

to show a red boarder if an input have any validation error. now inside my application i will not get this faulty behavior as follow:-

where as shown in the picture the input field will not have any red boarder unlike the drop-down field. now as shown in the firebug , the following css rules which are defined inside the bootstrap-cerulean.css will override the site.css style (although i am referencing the site.css after the bootstrap-cerulean.css):-
textarea, input[type="text"], input[type="password"], input[type="datetime"], input[type="datetime-local"], input[type="date"], input[type="month"], input[type="time"], input[type="week"], input[type="number"], input[type="email"], input[type="url"], input[type="search"], input[type="tel"], input[type="color"], .uneditable-input {
    background-color: #ffffff;
    border: 1px solid #cccccc;
    border-radius: 3px;
    box-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.075) inset;
    transition: border 0.2s linear 0s, box-shadow 0.2s linear 0s;
}
select, textarea, input[type="text"], input[type="password"], input[type="datetime"], input[type="datetime-local"], input[type="date"], input[type="month"], input[type="time"], input[type="week"], input[type="number"], input[type="email"], input[type="url"], input[type="search"], input[type="tel"], input[type="color"], .uneditable-input {
    color: #555555;
    display: inline-block;
    font-size: 13px;
    height: 18px;
    line-height: 18px;
    margin-bottom: 9px;
    padding: 4px;
}

so can anyone adivce how i can force this style , to have the intended effect on the input fields ?
.input-validation-error {
    border: 1px solid #ff0000;
    background-color: #ffeeee;
}

A: Attribute selectors have higher specificity than class selectors.  Even though your class selector is later in the stylesheet, it's still overridden by the more specific attribute sectors higher in the file.

input[type=text] {
  background: #FFF;
  border: 1px solid #DDD;
}

.error {
  background: rgba(255,0,0,0.3);
  border: 1px solid #F88;
}
<input class="error" type="text">

Try adding the attribute part to your error class to increase the specificity of it.

input[type=text] {
  background: #FFF;
  border: 1px solid #DDD;
}

input[type=text].error {
  background: rgba(255,0,0,0.3);
  border: 1px solid #F88;
}
<input class="error" type="text">

I haven't read it, but this article looks pretty good: https://css-tricks.com/specifics-on-css-specificity/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Norwich City have signed Chelsea striker Patrick Bamford on loan until the end of the season.
Bamford, 22, signed a new three-year deal at Chelsea in 2015 but spent the early part of this season on loan at Crystal Palace.
But he did not score in nine outings, describing the spell as "disappointing" before returning to Chelsea.
Bamford joins a Norwich side 17th in the Premier League and has not played for Chelsea since a £1.5m move in 2012.
"I'm really happy to be here, and the sooner I'm able to get involved the better," Bamford told Norwich's official website.
An impressive 2014-15 season on loan at Middlesbrough saw the England Under-21 international score 17 league goals in the Championship.
"He's a young forward determined to make his way in the game, and adds competition for us at the top end of the pitch," Norwich boss Alex Neil told the club's official website.
Bamford - who has also had loan spells at Derby and MK Dons - has yet to score a Premier League goal.
He joins forward Steven Naismith, winger Matt Jarvis, defenders Ivo Pinto and Timm Klose, and midfielder Ben Godfrey to join the Canaries this month.
Bamford leaves Chelsea 24 hours after the Blues signed Brazilian striker Alexandre Pato on loan from Corinthians.


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The Modern Medicare Agency Blog
Do I Have to Sign Up for Medicare When I Turn 65?
Everyone's specific circumstances will determine whether they must sign up for Medicare at 65, meaning that there's more than one answer to the question. However, it is imperative to know the correct answer to the question - Do I have to sign up for Medicare at 65?...
Should I Get a Medicare Supplement Plan?
Medicare Supplement Plans aim to fill the gaps in your medical expenses, and it is also referred to as a Medigap plan. When your Medicare expenses are adding up, Medicare supplement plans are here to prevent you from paying deductibles and high coinsurance bills. ...
The 5 Best Retirement Communities in New York
The list of retirement communities to choose from within New York state is almost never-ending, which means that choosing the right community could become confusing and overwhelming. Fortunately, here, readers can also learn more about finding a Medicare Agent in New...
Top 6 Reasons to Choose a Medicare Advantage Plan
In 2022, we saw a significant upsurge in the number of people enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans from 2016. By 2023, about 60% of recipients will have signed up for these plans. The reason is simple: people want more comprehensive healthcare coverage while keeping...
A Comprehensive Overview of Medicare Costs for 2023
A Comprehensive Overview of Medicare Costs for 2023 Determining what your healthcare spending's for 2023 will be is just one of the many things which you have to do at the dawn of the new year. This can sometimes be confusing and difficult to determine, and therefore...
What You Need To Know About Medicare Plan G
Medicare Supplement Plans, or Medigap plans, are policies that help pay for the deductibles and coinsurance of your Medicare expenses. These plans are popular with people who want very little or no copays. Medicare covers only 80% of Part B expenses, meaning that the...
Is Original Medicare Enough Coverage: All You Need to Know
Did you know that 81% of Medicare beneficiaries have additional supplemental coverage like Medicare Part D prescription coverage, Medicare Advantage, or a Medigap plan? While some Medicare beneficiaries find that Original Medicare is adequate to cover their medical...
Pros and Cons of Medicare Advantage Plans: The Ultimate Guide
As your 65th birthday approaches, you've likely begun considering enrolling in Medicare. Many people don't realize there are different types of Medicare plans and several options to choose from, including Medicare Advantage plans. There is no single one-size-fits-all...
What Is A Medicare Flex Card For Seniors?
The proliferation of information regarding Medicare Flex Cards for Seniors has been rife, but there remains a deal of uncertainty. This is not surprising as most of the claims seem much too good to be true. Unfortunately, that is exactly the case. Still, that does...
Does Medicare Cover Dental Implants?
It's a common question that's asked when it comes to medicare, and unfortunately, it does not have a positive answer. Under Original Medicare, you do not get dental care. Therefore, they don't provide cleanings, fillings, extractions, dentures, tooth extractions, or...
Medicare Flex Card for Seniors: What It Is and How to Apply
Advertisements around certain Medicare benefits are rife this time of the year during the open enrollment period. One benefit that's come under the spotlight is a flex card for seniors. Advertisers claim that Medicare offers a free $2,880 card to seniors to spend as...
Finding A Medicare Agent in New York
New York is a state of innovation and is well regarded when it comes to medical care. There are a plethora of choices, and it can be tough finding a Medicare agent near you who can give you the advice you need regarding not only reputable healthcare practitioners and...


A turtleneck at first glance, yet upon closer inspection you'll find this one-piece is a bodysuit—one that's done in a soft, silky-smooth cotton. Best of all, it never rides up, so you can layer it with jeans, pencil skirts, and trousers. And, thanks to the snap-crotch closure, no bathroom aerobics.


I have been privileged to work with Roxanna Bassi on her most recent tool for GeSCI (Global e-School and Communities Initiative, http://www.gesci.org) to create some financial guidance towards Ministry officials considering a 1:1 computing education project, such as the One Laptop Per Child concept.
Roxana is an Information Systems Engineer that has worked in ICT for development for 20 years. She currently advises Ministries of Education on ICT4E issues as ICT Specialist for GeSCI.
GeSCI provides strategic advice to Ministries of Education in developing countries on the effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for education and communities of learning. Adopting a demand driven, collaborative and comprehensive approach, we aim to improve the quality of teaching and learning through the strategic and effective use of ICTs, thereby transforming education, empowering communities and promoting development.
[T]he OLPC project's top-down technology-push model counters locally-driven development solutions that have proven to be more effective. The OLPC project, in an attempt to capitalize from economies of scale, has required national governments to make large quantity orders of laptops rather than smaller orders for specific communities. Instead, local communities and governments should selectively apply some of the previously discussed alternative frameworks such as those utilized by the Global Learning Portal and the UNESCO digital divide project. These methods can be incorporated into a more localized strategy which can also employ specific acquisition, distribution, and usage techniques which will be more beneficial overall to a developing country.
Countries seeking to diffuse the laptops more naturally to communities with diverse needs may utilize micro-financing strategies to balance between egalitarian distribution and demand-driven technology adoption. Networking strategies can allow smaller nations or even communities to band together to take advantage of emerging economies of scale offered by both the OLPC project and its competitors. In addition, these groups will be better served by localized content and problem-solving generated by many teachers and policymakers alike working together within a community-based system like the GLP.
Developing countries are rightly skeptical in purchasing OLPC laptops to facilitate ICT and educational development. The total cost of the laptop, including delivery, set-up, and training, continues to increase, while the price of commercially-developed laptop computers with similar specifications continues to decrease. Additional uncertainties in implementation, networking, and financing, contribute to the risks involved in the OLPC project. Furthermore, the OLPC Foundation.s resistance to pilot projects casts an ominous shadow of doubt on its feasibility as an education project, considering fiscal constraints. The combination of factors that limit the control of both local communities and national governments question the large-scale purchase of OLPC laptops. Many developing countries will be better off waiting to see how the OLPC laptop technologies and costs develop vis-à-vis commercially-developed computers with similar specifications. Governments of developing countries should resist the temptation to adopt the OLPC project in its current state without either the development of proven metrics for success, or modifications to the project enabling demand-driven solutions addressing locally prevalent issues. Ultimately, a combination of both localized supply-push and demand-pull strategies must be implemented for any ICT-based education development plan to produce measurable and sustainable positive results.
My thesis for the Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas. I treated interactive dialogues that appear on-line, in webpages, newsgroups, e-mail and IRC, but the focus of my paper is on IRC, as it is a medium which is incredibly diverse and unique among Internet conversations, and has recieved almost no academic attention whatsoever.
On the eve of Y2K, the extent that computers are interwoven with our lives is painfully obvious, yet only relatively recently has the academic eye taken interest in the events going on on-line. Despite this attention, there still remain new frontiers that have not been explored on the Internet. The phenomenon of real-time interaction is the best example of these. Some commentaries have treated the social aspects of MUDs, a special subspecies of real-time interaction, but more pure textual conversations have not been examined closely.
This treats the weird functions of action verbs within an online context from a philosophy of language viewpoint.


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Q: Can't find pip, conda, python modules after OSX Catalina update I recently updated to OSX Catalina. First thing I noticed is that the anaconda3 folder was in the 'Relocated Items' folder so I moved it to /Users/ethanfuerst/. Now, neither conda nor pip will run in my terminal. When I try to run python files, it says none of my modules are imported.
I did the fix recommended here but this fix gives me this error:
zsh: /Users/ethanfuerst/anaconda3/bin/conda: bad interpreter: /anaconda3/bin/python: no such file or directory

What do I need to do to get my modules to run and pip and conda to work in my Terminal?

A: I was able to develop a workaround for this issue by installing miniconda from Homebrew (https://brew.sh/). After installing Homebrew, type the following into Terminal:
brew cask install miniconda

Once miniconda is installed, conda commands should be accessible through Terminal and you may also want to run conda update conda to ensure the packages in your environment are consistent.

pip Commands
To get pip to be recognized, run conda install pip after following the above steps.

Finally, you will have to reinstall tools such as Jupyter Notebook and may have to change your approach to opening them. Such tools can be accessed via Terminal with the prefix conda run ...
For example:
conda run jupyter notebook

will open Jupyter Notebook, but the command
jupyter notebook

might not work.

Reinstalling Jupyter Notebook
conda install -c conda-forge jupyter_contrib_nbextensions will install Jupyter Notebook, its dependencies, and its extensions.

A: Are you sure you have moved the directory /Users/Shared/Relocated\ Items/Security/anaconda3 to you home directory? If not, move it first.
Alternatively, use the following command instead
export PATH="/Users/Shared/Relocated\ Items/Security/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"

In addition, you can always download and install Anaconda again on macOS Catalina. It worked out-of-the-box on my computer.

A: I had the same problem after the update 10.15.2. What I did was: I changed back the terminal shell to 'bash' (from -zsh). The command I used is: chsh -s /bin/bash
You will then be prompted to enter your password. After closing and reopening a window you will see that the original bash is set.
Alternatively, you can open the terminal preferences and under: "General" "Shells open with:"
you can select "command complete path"
and enter /bin/bash.
If you wish to reverse the command and linked to -zsh back you simply run the command above using -zsh this time chsh -s /bin/zsh.
Readings:
Official from Apple Support: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208050
Geek: https://www.howtogeek.com/444596/how-to-change-the-default-shell-to-bash-in-macos-catalina/

A: Just copy all your codes in a new folder, close and open again anaconda.
That works for me


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Exiles Sue Expedia's Trivago for 'Trafficking' in Cuban Property
By Jonathan Levin | June 20, 2019
A family of Cuban exiles sued a unit of Expedia Group Inc. for compensation over a hotel property confiscated when Fidel Castro took power, in the latest of several lawsuits filed since Donald Trump upended a quarter-century of U.S. presidential practice.
The Mata family of Miami alleges that the Expedia subsidiary, Trivago GmbH, serves as an online-booking platform for its former family-controlled hotel in Cienfuegos, the Hotel San Carlos. Trivago has been earning commissions, fees and other remuneration from business dealings involving the San Carlos, according to the complaint. The family is suing over "unlawful trafficking in their property and for just compensation for themselves and a class of similarly situated persons."
The Matas claim that Trivago did the same for "scores of properties" like the San Carlos, and the law firm Rivero Mestre LLP is seeking class action status for the lawsuit. The complaint says the Mata family has given notice to other Expedia entities — including the parent company, as well as competitor Booking Holdings Inc. and its affiliate Booking.com BV — of plans to add them as defendants.
That will happen "if they do not promptly compensate the Mata heirs and the class for the unlawful trafficking of their property," according to the suit.
Expedia declined to comment on the suit, citing a policy of not remarking on pending litigation. Booking Holdings didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit is one of a number to emerge under a contentious but long-dormant provision of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 that Trump put into effect on May 2, as part of an effort to punish the communist regime for its support of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro.
The provision, Title III, allows those who lost property at the hands of Castro to target outside companies now using their assets, despite widespread speculation that the suits could hurt American firms and those of U.S. allies in Canada and Europe. It was so potentially explosive that every other president has waived its implementation.
Exiles have already targeted Carnival Corp., the Miami-based cruise company that had begun to offer journeys to the island, allegedly using "trafficked" docks and port infrastructure. Another lawsuit from the same plaintiffs as the Expedia suit — Marisela Mata and Bibiana Hernandez — targets the companies operating their family's hotel.
Under Helms-Burton, trafficking means, roughly, using seized property for profit. The accusations don't mean defendants themselves had any role in seizing the property. They almost invariably didn't.
The case is Mata and Hernandez v. Trivago GmbH, 19-cv-22529 U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.
Categories: National NewsTopics: Booking Holdings, class action, Cuban exiles, Expedia, Helms-Burton Act of 1996, lawsuit, Rivero Mestre LLP, Trivago
Okla. at Trial's End Says Opioid 'Kingpen" J&J Fueled Epidemic


Sketches of Kia's facelifted flagship luxury sedan, the 2019 Kia K900, have emerged, showing a more elegant and imposing vehicle than the current model.
Not available in Australia, the K900 is a rival to the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Series – a previously unimaginable playground for a Kia to be in. Based on the Genesis G80 and G90's BH-L platform (nee Hyundai Genesis and Hyundai Equus), the K900 is available internationally with a 3.3-litre V6, 3.8-litre V6 with 246kW, and the 5.0-litre 'Tau' V8 with 313kW and 510Nm.
This major update could see it score the Kia Stinger's 272kW 3.3-litre twin-turbo donk. From the sketches, we can infer a much more striking vehicle, with a six-window design, pinched crease beltline running the length of the car, and jewelled tallamps reminiscent of a Bentley Mulsanne.
At the front the 'tigernose' grille has been reimagined with 176 jewel-like cells that point away from the centre of the grille. Dual LED daytime running lights integrated within the headlamp cluster also create a unique facade.
Given the current model's exclusion from the Australian market, it's hard to believe this new model will arrive here wearing a Kia badge, assuming it is even built in right-hand drive. In any case, it will be built in Korea and go on sale in selected global markets in the second quarter of this year. We will bring you highlights from the New York auto show and any news relating to a potential entry to the Australian market.


Yimiton's Blog: Pictures of what Kanye West, Kim and other big stars will look like in 20 years time.
Pictures of what Kanye West, Kim and other big stars will look like in 20 years time.
Emmm... it must be some bad belles that made these stars look this way oh. This Angelina Jolie's dress is ugly no be small. Brad Pitt looks like a cave man, these pictures are cracking me up.


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Artist Proofs
PostersPosters
Artist ProofsArtist Proofs
Canvas PrintsCanvas Prints
PostcardsPostcards
Carlsbad Caverns National Park Artist Proof
Title: Carlsbad Caverns National Park Artist Proof
Artist: Robert B. Decker
Paper: "Conservation" 100% recycled, domestically produced.
Inks: Soy based.
The Carlsbad Caverns National Park Artist Proof is an original work by Robert Decker and features the Temple of the Sun at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
The Carlsbad Caverns National Park Artist Proof is a limited edition, and only the first 25 prints pulled from each press run. I personally inspect these proofs on press and sign off on them before the balance of the posters are printed. The Artist Proofs feature the pressman's "color bars", which he uses to ensure that prints stay registered and colors stay consistent throughout the press run. Artist Proofs are numbered 1-25, dated and signed. My signature attests that I have personally inspected and approved each print — and further verified that no unsigned or unnumbered copies within the limited edition are known to exist.
USPS Priority Shipping in a Flat Mailer is highly recommended!
This Limited Edition Carlsbad Caverns National Park Artist Proof is an original work by Robert B. Decker. An Artist Proof is one of the first 25 prints pulled from each press run, and features the pressman's "color bars". He uses the color bars to ensure that prints stay registered, or aligned, and that colors stay consistent. Numbered 1-25, dated and signed. My signature attests that I have personally inspected and approved each print -- and further verified that no unsigned or unnumbered copies within the limited edition are known to exist.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park Posters
The Carlsbad Caverns National Park Poster is an original work by Robert Decker and measures 13" x 19". Posters are printed on "Conservation," a 100% recycled, domestically produced (80 lb.) paper stock with soy-based inks. They are printed by one of the greenest printers in America, right here in Colorado. From start to finish, each poster is 100% American Made. Carlsbad Caverns is located in New Mexico.
Click here to see the Carlsbad Caverns National Park Poster
Carlsbad Caverns National Park Canvas Prints
Printed on superior-quality, artist-grade canvas, designed for museum display and gallery exhibitions. This 350 gsm, acid-free canvas has a tight, natural weave which maximizes image quality, while also revealing the texture of an artist's canvas. Canvas prints are available in two sizes: 16" x 24" and 24" x 36", are shipped free and are ready to hang.
Click here to see the Carlsbad Caverns National Park Canvas Print
Photographer and graphic artist Rob Decker studied photography with Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park during the summer of 1979. The experience solidified his love of photography and our National Parks. Now he is on a journey to photograph and create iconic WPA-style posters of all 59 major national parks as we celebrate the next 100 years of the National Park Service.
"I'm trying to make a difference by giving back to the amazing organizations that support our National Parks. I donate 10% of annual profits, so when you buy one of these original works, you're helping these trusts, conservancies and associations, too. I feel that it's important to protect America's special places, and to connect people with nature. And it's up to all of us to pitch in. Perhaps more importantly, we need to inspire the next generation of park stewards."
Learn more about our Giving Back program.
Robert B. Decker retains the sole copyright of the original Carlsbad Caverns National Park poster image. Any unauthorized reproduction violates international copyright law.
Robert B. Decker - Limited Edition Carlsbad Caverns National Park Posters - www.National-Park-Posters.com
All posters are shipped out USPS First Class Mail in a 15" mailing tube free of charge.
You can choose the Expedited Shipping Option at checkout, which means your order will ship out USPS Priority Mail in a flat mailer.
Orders are typically shipped the same day, or within one business day of purchase.
Customers are provided with a USPS Tracking Number to track their orders.
There are no in-store pick up options at this time.
Mailing tubes and flat mailers are recyclable, and we encourage our customers to recycle these materials.
About National Park Posters
National Park Posters is the premiere source for original art of America's National Parks! Rob Decker is the creative spirit behind the National Park Poster Project and he donates 10% of annual profits to many organizations that support our National Parks.
rob@national-park-posters.com
ABOUT THE WPA
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© National Park Posters


Lace Up Leather Ankle Boot (VED28506) by Kinloch @ Pavers Shoes - Your Perfect Style.
Showcasing a classic lace up design, the ladies ankle boot sits on a mid block heel to height to your everyday wear. Created with durable leather suede the short boot features a side zip fasten for instant wear, complete with a cushioned leather insole.


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